My Jesus

I don't know what I think about Jesus, sometimes. I'm clearly a believer--a believer in his life, in the resurrection, in the atonement, in salvation and exaltation, in his hard moral teachings. But sometimes the ways I believe in these things seem so different from how I understood them before that some might not recognize them as Mormon.

I believe in the resurrection. I know it's unprovable historically, but I am pretty convinced the Book of Mormon is a historical narrative (not textbook), and that Christ's visit probably happened. At the same time, I'm nearly certain that Joseph Smith expanded on some parts of the original text he was translating/revealing, so I don't claim absolute certainty about much from the Book of Mormon. I just don't see evidence to suggest that the physical visit was an expansion without having first concluded Christ's visit was impossible. I also believe in the possibility of technological resurrection. I think Jesus knows how to do it, and it is a physical process (since it is restoring a physical body), so why can't we learn how to do it? We are expected to learn to be like Jesus in other ways, why not this one? Resurrecting people may not be the highest thing on my to do list, but I don't see why we should discourage anyone else from doing their best to be like Jesus--even if I agree that faith and repentance ought to be higher on the list. We can each work on more than one good thing.

I believe in the atonement. I believe that Christ suffered to bind us all together and cover our sins, if we would join him. But I have a hard time seeing it as something magical in the ways I used to. What I see is an existence where pain and harm will never go away, even for Gods, and so if we would be with our Heavenly Parents--if we would be Gods--we must accept this pain. We must feel the harm our choices, and even eternal life, inevitably cause. We must choose to go forward together in full knowledge that eternal rest does not mean freedom from pain--love comes at a cost. So every one of us must atone, just as Jesus did what he had seen his father do. Jesus's atonement is miraculous to me partly because it is such a powerful example of atonement, and also because choosing to stay together in relationships with those who sometimes hurt us is simply miraculous, to me.

I believe in miracles. I think most are probably faith-promoting stories that popped up later, just like I think most fantastic stories are today, but I find it presumptuous to claim certain knowledge of very much in the distant past, especially based on negative evidence. Such claims reflect more on the (dis)believer than on what really happened. So I choose to believe many of Jesus's miracles, with very little certainty. To use the terminology of biblical scholarship, as best I understand it, I believe a high christology of miracles, but I bring it almost down to earth. My God condescended perhaps further than most, or perhaps not as far since he never was as unreachable.

But one thing all my uncertainties and earthbound beliefs have not removed is those moments of longing for home with Jesus. One Sunday I was thinking about why I long to be like Jesus. Here are some of my conflicted thoughts:

I want honor . . . He had none.
I want home . . . He wandered.
I want understanding . . . He was questioned.
I want life . . . He died.
I want redemption . . . He suffered.
I want certainty . . . He submitted.
I want peace . . . He brought a sword.

Why do I long for this?
Yet I do.

My Wife's Sunday Wisdom (Softened)

Stop defending Patriarchy. It's animal instinct raised to social dogma. It's using your lower brain. It's not using your higher reasoning powers. It's the definition of the natural man.

It's not enough to say, "I'm a benevolent ruler." You need to use your power to give power to those without it. Sometimes at the expense of your own power.

Amen.

After the test of life

I remember wondering how the Millennium could include all the just of the earth--both those destined for celestial glory and those for terrestrial glory--and everyone wouldn't simply convert to Mormonism? For years I satisfied myself with the answer that the spirit world and the Millennium must look enough like other religions' conceptions of the afterlife that there would still be room for confusion. And maybe lots of people simply won't want to be as good as is required to become celestial beings. They will be happy with stunted potential. But I don't get that anymore. If you could become a God, why would you choose less--especially if eternity is involved? Maybe you aren't in a rush to become a God, but would you honestly refuse the possibility--forever?

So what are the differences among the kingdoms of glory? From a naturalistic perspective that rejects arbitrary or authoritarian definitions of justice or punishment, and also rejects the arbitrary power of God to bring everyone to heaven and celestial glory simply through His grace and love, what distinguishes a God from a servant of God?

Let's get out of the way some ground rules. Three degrees of glory is simply a convenient grouping, not a walled reality. Beings are as diverse as we see on earth--or more. What makes a God is only based on the power to create worlds and new Gods--any other characteristics must be justified. Now I've already shared my reasons for hoping that Gods are compassionate, empathetic, and willing to contribute to a creative and loving society. Now I want to share why I think atonement is so miraculously hard.

As Mormons we have two stories we love to tell. The much more prominent one is that Jesus's suffering in the Garden far surpassed anything he suffered after. That time in the Garden of Gethsemane was when he took on himself all our sins. All the sins of all who lived or would live on this earth. All the sins of all who would live on other earths. We often add that he suffered so we don't have to suffer. I'm not exactly sure I believe that anymore.

The second story we tell less often, but still love. This is the story of God weeping when the great flood killed so many of His children. It's hard for me to imagine this was like my 4 year-old melting down because I accidentally stepped on the bug we had been looking at--"You killed my bug! Now I can't see it!" I'm glad at my 4 year-old's valuing life, even of insects, but that isn't how I picture God's compassion. I see a Father--and a Mother--weeping at the pain, loss, and suffering of their children. Weeping because of what their children were experiencing and losing. I see Them weeping sometimes at the pain of any God or proto-God, and there are a lot of those.

But our Heavenly Parents go on, enduring to the end. But remember, there is no end. They watch children grow and succeed, grow and fail, experience joy, sorrow, love, loss, good, evil, learning, languishing, and the list goes on. And on. In this cosmos it doesn't stop. It doesn't stop for us. It doesn't stop for the Gods. The form changes. I trust that we will one day overcome disease and death. The lamb will one day lie down with the lion. The child will play on the hole of the asp. Not all of eternity will be the hell of mortal life. But when we are free of mortality, we will not be free of suffering for others.

Remember the one, unavoidable job of the Gods. They must make world upon world. They must raise up God after God. If they slow down for any reason, they cease to be Gods. Other beings will surpass them, and after few generations all the new Gods born in the cosmos will be the children of these other Gods. Countless lives brought into being and living under the rules and in the society of these other beings. Whether bad or good, that is a mathematical certainty. So even without killing off ineffective reproducers, evolution can exert pressures to make them inconsequential for most every living being.

What does that mean in the words of Mormon thought? The rest of God is not a freedom from work. It is not even freedom from sorrow or pain, even if we have overcome death, because we cannot overcome emotion. We cannot lose the empathy that would free us from sorrow, because we need that empathy to be reproductively fit. We need it to work as a society. We need it to cease destroying the work of others. We need it to desire children.

But what happens to those who are just, who have empathy, who overcome death and the impulses to harm others, and yet somehow choose not to be Gods? What do they do? Why might they choose irrelevance or servitude over godhood?

I think the answers are likely as simple and complex as several of my friends shared when I asked this question. One more way my Gods are in our image. Why do people choose to not become parents? But remember, the group we are looking at is the just men and women of the earth. It isn't the murderers, thieves, and others who have proven themselves motivated first by selfishness. This life weeded those out and left them to their kingdom of selfishness until they figure out how to be happier. Why would just beings reject parenthood? What are the good reasons?

For one, it will cause pain. There is no path to godhood except through a life like this one. There is no path to godhood without bringing beings into self-awareness and empathy and watching them lose their brothers and sisters. You are inviting the most empathetic and loving to become Gods, and those are the ones who will watch a Lucifer lead away a third of their brothers and sisters. Those are the ones who will watch more suffer through mortal life. Those are the ones who will watch more choose selfishness and give up their chance at godhood. Those are the ones who will watch even more turn away from godhood when it was in their grasp. They will watch some just and loving brothers and sisters choose other paths because they don't want the work and uncertainty of Godhood. Those will choose paths of greater certainty, but less evolutionary fitness. But these loving Gods will watch others walk away, not because they were too evil, or selfish, or averse to uncertainty for godhood. These last will choose other paths because they feel too strongly the pain and suffering of other beings and they are not willing to bring others into a cosmos of sorrow. Because sorrow doesn't go away when you are God. These may even serve the Gods because they want to alleviate sorrow. They may feel both pain and joy more intensely than the Gods--for eternity.

What is the rest of God? It must be a peace in the midst of joy and sorrow. It must be something we can learn. It must be something we can find even as we navigate existence in a society of Gods, where different needs and desires forever conflict, and where we continue to hurt one another, even if it is only through the inevitable unfairness of making conflicting choices.

So what is the miracle of atonement? It is the Gods choosing to be, and act, together despite their different desires. Despite the pain they will cause each other, again and again, throughout eternity. It is the Gods choosing the joys of relationships, and choosing to rejoice in the success of others, even if it is sometimes at their own expense. It is the Gods choosing to lift other beings up to godhood, knowing that those beings--Their children--must suffer through pain, death, separation, and uncertainty. Knowing that even after the pains of mortality suffering will not be all gone, because only those who love can become Gods. It is choosing to continue in the society of Gods knowing that life will be forever uncertain. This, for me, is the miraculous atonement. It is why Jesus had to suffer the pains of all creation, and why we will have to choose the same. It is why we all must partake of the atonement. It is why, if we are not one, we are not God's. It is our joy and our song.

SURT notes I.2.1 p.46

I love the erudite blasting of string theory and the multiverse hypotheses:

Rather than acknowledging such underdetermination as a limit or a failure of insight, it has tried to turn a detriment into a benefit by describing the former as the latter.

 String theory is almost totally untestable:

The large preponderance of equations, or of their admissible parameters, refer to circumstances that we have never found and may never, even in principle, find.

A temptation is to equate mathematical space of theories with physically possible space and then with actually realized space:

The distinctions between the mathematically conceivable and the physically possible, and then between the physically possible and the physically actual, are attenuated or even effaced [by believing the MWI or multiverse hypotheses].

A difficult to test theory is very different from an impossible to test theory. [The same is true with cenceptions of God. Evolved Gods are testable, at least in pieces, or at least through emulation.]

String theory is derailing science because it is not observable or testable (it isn't really one theory, and inherently includes theoretically unobservable components):

Any assumptions that threaten to derail science from this course [proceeding based on observation], by weakening the disciplines that chasten and guide it, deserve to be reconsidered.

Whether laws are deterministic or statistical, the laws as currently formulated (and assumed in most models) are still unchanging.

You can't get outside the universe (what I typically call the cosmos). If it affects the universe, it is part of the universe by definition. If it doesn't affect the universe, it is irrelevant. [A God who is outside of nature is irrelevant. If God affects nature, God is part of the cosmos. If not, it's irrelevant.]

The world isn't timeless, but time is timeless. We and god will end, unless we evolve.

No sooner do we begin to subvert the distinction between initial conditions and laws applicable to particular configuration spaces, by generalizing the terrain of its application to the whole of the universe, than we are forced to question the idea of timeless laws governing a world the elementary structure of which is also timeless.

Evolutionary mechanisms change with both environment and the tools of the evolving beings to respond to the environment: bacteria follow different rules than yeast than sexual reproducers. Contextual truth is the pattern in biology, history, social science, geology. Is cosmology the exception to this? [Is theology?]

Entropy holds time real in ways quantum mechanics doesn't. Quantum mechanics fails to model reality in this regard [it is time agnostic].

The microscopic can only be understood in light of the macroscopic--history and thermodynamics.

Unifying all the current laws isn't enough. You need to explain their history, too.

And the elusive final unification of theory is a fool's errand if we advance it only by putting ideas that analyze how the forces and phenomena of nature work in place of theories that explain how they came to be what they are.

Physics can survive without timeless, transcendent laws. How deep into physics does evolution extend? [How deep into theology?]

Strong reductionism fails because the cosmos has a history that can't be reduced.

Some things are easily explained by law. Other processes require more, path dependent, historical information to effectively explain them.

Most things are very stable, especially in cosmology, but none are immutable. Even atoms can change, and even subatomic particles.

Evolution is only derivatively biological. It comes from cosmology.

The principle of the mutability of types is thus not confined to life and to the life sciences. It is a general feature of what I earlier called the first state of nature (the second in order of time [the cooled down universe]). In this state, nature is differentiated but no aspect of its differentiation, expressed in a set of types or natural kinds, is essential or eternal. The principle of the mutability of types is only derivatively a biological principle. It is in the first instance a cosmological principle. It requires us to import into cosmology some of the ways of thinking that we associate with natural history.

It contradicts the project of classical ontology, which sought to provide an account of the abiding varieties of being. It conflicts as well with any practice of science that treats a permanent structure of being as one of its presuppositions.

Differences between things co-evolve.

Reality is context dependent.

Not only does the universe lack a stable and permanent repertory of natural kinds but the way in which the natural kinds differ from one another is also subject to change. If nature in its first and normal state presents itself as a structured and differentiable manifold, the character of its divisions is as impermanent as their content.

Laws are regularities. More general laws express further reaching regularities. Current laws emerged with current phenomena. They didn't exist before, but they are compatible with earlier laws.

Not only is moral law contextual, physical law is contextual.

To represent these regularities as part of the eternal and timeless framework of the universe is a philosophical move with no operational meaning or justification. [Ouch!]

. . . change changes discontinuously and repeatedly.

The methods of change change, too.

The methods of change, which we express as explanatory laws, shift with the appearance of life. They change again with the emergence of multicellular organisms. And then again with sexual reproduction and the Mendelian mechanisms. They change with the emergence of consciousness and its equipment by language. These are not just changes in the kinds of beings--in this instance, living beings--that exist. They are also changes in the way in which phenomena change as well as in the distinctions between them. . . .

Co-evolution of phenomena and laws can be applied to the universe without fallacy, but it introduces the meta-law conundrum [that meta-laws evolve, too?].

[In tearing down the walls between the living and non-living, many biologists have thought they were introducing determinist philosophy into biology. Instead they were taking away from physics and opening the door to a broader understanding of agency and of life. Agency is constrained choice.]

Unpredictable life:

. . . the biosphere . . . has so many [distinctive features] that its emergence in unpredictable and unaccountable on the basis of the laws of nature prior to the beginnings of life.

[What does purpose even mean? Intention? Conscious intention? Is purpose emergent, like consciousness? Are there hierarchies of purpose, like hierarchies of agency? Why can organisms "literally have no purpose but act as if it were purpose dirven"?]

Biology doesn't solve cosmological problems, but shows they can be examined fruitfully without timeless laws. But some big problems have to be worked out first.

The Blinding Sun

I recently published this poem on Rational Faiths under the title "Growing Doubt". I need to publish it here, and I just encountered a famous sonnet that uses the same imagery. The messages are both the same and contrary. I will let you enjoy and judge them as you wish.

I was once told. . .

2002

I was once told there’s danger in a question—
Faith and doubt cannot live in one mind,
And doubt leads men to shun the truth and fight
Their God—so I was told. I also learned
Truth shines eternal in the Son, and that is
All the light we need—straight from the source—

But I’ve seen mortal eyes fixed on the sun
Now following his brightness filtered through
Closed eyelids, doing good and seeing the world
As this light tells them it must look. Then when
Night comes they work to morning, filling their call
And telling those who stand in darkness what
The sun is like—the joys of fixing on his light.

They have forgotten that the child of night
Is not the child of darkness. There is truth
At night. The moon and wandering stars reflect
That same sun closed eyes preach, but no closed eyes
Will find these lights; and stars we cannot see
Give still more light than the sun that leads the blind.

I was told I’d built a tower to see the heavens,
And the Lord would cast it down and show
The foolishness of men. Maybe it is so,
But truth is good and light, and I will love it.

And from Joseph Blanco White (1775-1841)

To Night

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath a curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! Creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we then shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

A Mathematician's Apology -- notes and quotes

After listening to The Man Who Knew Infinity, a biography of Ramanujan, I was inspired to read A Mathematician's Apology by G. H. Hardy. I remember my dad mentioning it many years ago. It's only 90 short pages, and here are a few highlights, for me. It's worth noting, I think, that this was written in 1940 by a man who had spent his entire life at the most prestigious university in England and almost literally without women, except for his sister. If you can enjoy it despite his elitism and sexism, it's a fun read.

Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

Did I just hear someone say my name? ;)

I write about mathematics because, like any other mathematician who has passed sixty, I have no longer the freshness of mind, the energy, or the patience to carry on effectively with my proper job.

Good work is not done by 'humble' men. . . . He must shut his eyes a little and think a little more of his subject and himself than they deserve. This is not too difficult: it is harder not to make his subject and himself ridiculous by shutting his eyes too tightly.

'I do what I do because it is the one and only thing that I can do at all well.'

But:

most people can do nothing at all well. . . . perhaps five or even ten per cent of men can do something rather well. It is a tiny minority who can do anything really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent, he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full.

Thankfully, I lack the genius to require that kind of sacrifice. (I think the gifted teacher must be the counterexample to Hardy's 'second-rate minds' barb.) Or perhaps instead of doing math because you are good at it, you do it because it came your way and you might as well:

'There is nothing that I can do particularly well. . . ' . . . most people can do nothing well . . . it matters very little what career they choose.

Approximately what Hardy is going to argue:

• Math is worthwhile even though it isn't practical (despite his recognizing practical applications of some math).
• People who are better at math than anything else should do it even if it ends up being a waste of time.
• Doing something of permanent value, even if it is small, is worthwhile and unusual. Most people don't do anything of permanent value.

The ambition to leave something permanent behind is the greatest ambition, and his target audience is those who agree with this. I once would have. Now I view it as one admirable thing, when balanced with other ethical considerations.

Three driving motivations for research:

• Intellectual curiosity
• Professional pride
• Desire for reputation, power, and/or money

I encountered a recent news article that cited research claiming that science is a reputation economy. Scientists are more interested in reputation than money or power (on average), and I can believe that. Of course, it's a sliding scale.

Math is perhaps the most permanent achievement, since languages die, but math remains. And math is pretty good about giving credit to the people who really did it.

Now for Hardy on art:

A painting may embody an 'idea', but the idea is usually commonplace and unimportant. . . . the importance of ideas in poetry is habitually exaggerated. . . . The poverty of the ideas seems hardly to affect the beauty. . . .

Math lasts longer, but

there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics. [low level of beauty]

As regards applied math:

The 'seriousness' of a mathematical theorem lies, not in its practical consequences, which are usually negligible. . .

Serious math connects many, complex mathematical ideas. Other traits that make math meaningful are depth, beauty, generality, unexpectedness, inevitablity, and economy.

Most useful math is boring, small, and mathematically unimportant. I can concur with this, since my field uses quite a lot of math, but it really is mostly boring, small, specific applications of ideas with much broader mathematical richness. Unexpected pieces of "pure" math do at times become useful, at times, but they are still small pieces.

Hardy closes equating the value of math with the value of art:

The case for my life, then, or for that of any one else who has been a mathematician in the same sense in which I have been one, is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more; and that these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of the creations of the great mathematicians, or of any of the other artists, great or small, who have left some kind of memorial behind them.

I had expected to resonate with Hardy's apology more than I did, but some parts of it rang very true to me. I do aspire to leave something behind. I do hope that it will be unique and beautiful in its sphere. And I feel like I have had only one idea that even approaches the category of mathematical thought. It was the question I asked when I imagined, what if Gods evolved? It's an idea so inevitable that atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris admit the possibility, but reject it's importance and miss its implications. Yet it is an idea that ties together Mormonism and Transhumanism, religion and science, faith and the future of humanity. It accepts that Gods are limited, but goes beyond to reveal what some limits are. It answers the problem of evil--maybe not as anyone would wish, but very cleanly. It claims an empathetic middle ground between arbitrary universalism and eternal damnation. It leaves a place for God to act and to be hidden. It brings atonement into the realms of nature, and makes salvation about relationships, not satisfying unchanging justice. It creates Gods in our own image, but not falsely idealized. It may come to nothing--there's no eternity for bad philosophy--but it is surprising and beautiful to me.

SURT notes I.1.3 p.30

The Singular Universe, Roberto Unger 

Ch 1 p.30+

The two cosmological fallacies are closely connected. They reinforce each other. They make each other seem to be unavoidable conceptions--indispensable to the practice of scientific inquiry--rather than the contestable options that they in fact are.

Your certainties are disposable options.

The second cosmological fallacy limits our understanding of the variations of nature.

Artificial limit.

The first cosmological fallacy presupposes a view of the workings of nature that makes any other conception of how nature works seem to be incompatible with the requirements of science.

Another artificial limit. Hiding in the unknowable infinite instead of seeking deeper explanations. This is the same false hiding place of the theology of unknowable Gods.

The first cosmological fallacy commits a mistake of method, with empirical assumptions and implications. The second cosmological fallacy amounts to a mistake about the facts of the matter, with wide consequence for the practice of science. The matter that it mistakes is the most important in science: the nature and history of the universe.

Oops.

. . . there is already more . . . in what science has discovered about the universe than our established natural philosophy . . . is willing to countenance.

There is more. As Unger says we need a science that can proceed without absolute, timeless laws to rely on, we need theology and salvation that can proceed without an omnipotent, transcendent God and infallible revelation. Mormonism has them if we Mormons will accept them.

If cause and effect is an illusion, it can be represented by timeless natural law (and thus math). If time is real, we have to work harder to explain the connection between math and nature.

Causal connections . . . form a real feature of nature.

Previous events actually matter for current events, not simply initial conditions and timeless laws. We can't simply decide that nature obeys laws. We have to measure what happens and only generalize as far as is justified. Laws will vary over time.

Relationships shape subsequent events in law-like ways, despite there being no eternal laws. Relationships govern the cosmos. Many are predictable.

The preceding contrasts show that the reality of causal connection is closely or internally related to the reality of time.

Time and causation are both real. This differs from the deterministic, block universe models of string theory.

Time and relationships are eternal. Laws exist because of regularities in relationships, not vice versa.

[The reality of laws], however, is a derivative reality by contrast to the primitive and fundamental reality of causal connections.

Laws are derivative from agency (that defines relationships) from the bottom to the top (since elementary particles have aency).

These [timebound] ideas do their work at the cost of attacking the foundations on which much of our thinking about causes and laws has wrongly come to rest.

Can't make an omelette . . . 

Emergent phenomena can be truly novel. Not just rare, novel, quantum entangled states that Smolin proposes searching for to prove the principle of precedence. I think this supports my view that human choice is incompletely predictable. It's mostly predictable because relationships behave in predictable ways, but when there are emerging problems with unprecedented solutions, there is incompletely predictable agency at play. Otherwise, we are observing predictable agency, but it's all agency.

Cosmology affirms its ambition to be the most comprehensive natural science when it understands itself as a historical science first, and as a structural science only second.

This strikes right at the core of arrogant, deterministic certainty.

. . . we allow a historical explanation to count as a causal account in cosmology and physics . . .

Historical explanations are real science, and emergent phenomena can't always be predicted.

. . . a state of affairs is the way it is because of the influence of an earlier state of affairs, not because it conforms to timeless and invariant regularities. We shall not always be able to account for the influence of the earlier on the later by invoking such regularities. . . . [we must] pay the price of a practice of historical explanation that is not subordinate to structural explanation.

Law is subordinate to cause, and that comes at a price.

Time . . . is not emergent.

Time goes all the way back.

. . . we have reason to resist accepting either that change of laws of nature is governed by higher-order laws or that it is not.

It's a false dichotomy to require a choice between nature governed by laws or lawless nature. Neither one is the best model, but something in between. I think he is saying that discarding the idea of transcendent law is not the same as saying that anything goes.