Good things and bad people FINAL

2008-01-29

Oooh yeah. Feel that excited chill moving up your spine? That's the sweet, tingly sensation of a regular tuesday update!

It seems that we are locked, even as two buffalo contending for the right to mate, on the subject of the nature of God. Thank you to everyone who added their thoughts to last week's discussion! I will be incorporating some of what you said (yes YOU) in this post, and will be responding to others directly. Please keep up the discussion! It is no small feat, and is absolutely essential in order for our coating to be truly candyrific. With your help, we will have us a lovely discussion and roast some marshmallows over the fire-like heat of our gradually melding minds.

Now, on to the meat and potatoes of this sumptuous mental feast! I promised to pursue a thesis that may have seemed to some entirely fantastical and unrealistic: discussing why not ever being able to know God does not make trying to know God a worthless endeavor.

By way of setting ze scene, allow me to first ask you this: Can you ever achieve perfection? Can you ever become so proficient at a task, or so embody a virtue, that the label of perfection can be justly applied?

The answer, of course, is no. Yet we do not allow this to stop us. Every single day we strive for perfection without having the least chance of succeeding in attaining it. Why do we do this?

Our attempt to know God can be viewed similarly. As with perfection, it can be understood that there can be merit in a process without necessarily reaching any specific goal. This, then, begs the following question: What merit could attempting to know God and his Will possibly get us?

Well, not much if you're going to have THAT kind of attitude! For serious, would it hurt to be just a little more perky?

Knowing God is not like knowing a cup. This is not a terribly deep statement, I know, but just give me a chance to explain myself. As Immanuel Kant pointed out in his Epistemology theory, knowledge is formed when we have the concept for the thing and the sensory perception to confirm it's existence. We have the concept for a cup and the sense of touch or sight to confirm it and say "that there is a cup," and thereby we have knowledge of it. Following this rather incontrovertible theory, it can be proven that we can never "know" God directly. For where, specifically, can we point to and say "that there is God."

Therefore, we naturally must default to indirect means. Jesus said: "I am the way and the light;" Muhammud said: "if you doubt what we have revealed to Our Servant, produce one chapter that is it's like;" the Buddha said to follow the noble eightfold path to achieve enlightenment; Zoraster taught that to follow asa, or truth, and to live a goodly life is to achieve Godliness; Krishna said: "Those who follow this path and resolve to seek Me alone, attain singleness of purpose;" Abraham exhorted all to follow the one true God and to stop following the gods of their idle fancies; Moses declared: "Who is on the Lord's side? Come to me;" Baha'u'llah said: " O kings of the earth! He Who is the sovereign Lord of all is come. The Kingdom is God's, the omnipotent Protector, the Self-Subsisting. Worship none but God, and, with radiant hearts, lift up your faces unto your Lord, the Lord of all names. This is a Revelation to which whatever ye possess can never be compared, could ye but know it."

What were all these people saying? And how is it that they said such similar things? How is it that, throughout history, these individual people have appeared and claimed to not only speak for God, but to have special knowledge of what his Will is for that day and age? And how is it that they were all so successful? Do such occurances mean anything, when taken as a whole?

This and more, next post, when we explore the Baha'i concept of progressive revelation.

Now, discuss!

Good things and bad people part 1.5

2008-01-22

In response to my earlier post (just two down from this one!) my fine, upright compatriot gave the following comment:

"I guess a follow up question for youwould be: if God doesn't sit around making bad things happen all day(or perhaps even good things for that matter), what then does he do?"

Ahhh, yes. The classic question: What the heck does God do all day? Have endless bowling sessions (if you're God, you don't have to pay or borrow germ infested shoes)? Draw really impressive/hilarious caricatures of the most embarrassing moment of every human being ever yet born and soon to be born? Watch Rachel Ray?

The shortest of answers is that I have no idea. No one has any idea. It is a philosophical fact that God, as a concept, is an oxymoron. By extension, almost all religion is contradictory to itself. Consider: Religion exists (and by religion here, I refer to the major monotheisms of the world, as well as Hinduism) so that mankind will know God's will. However,  it is also stated by these religions that we can never know God. He is, in point of fact, the Unknowable.

Luckily, we live in a sophisticated enough age where we can at least partially deal with oxymorons! The trouble with the conceptualization of God, and indeed the trouble with understanding what He does, is that the very concept of God is necessarily outside the bounds of human thought. If there truly is something out there that made everything, it only follows that we would be unable to grasp it's essence.

For proof of this, consider our existence. We humans are pretty cool, with our growing sophistication and our dominance of this planet, but, unfortunately for us, our planet is only one in a system, and that system is only one of billions in the galaxy, and that galaxy is only one of billions in the Universe. So, naturally, we would have no chance at understanding something that created all of that, when by comparison we are not even specks. We're not even specks of specks! We're like...specks to the negative million exponent of specks.

Therefore, the first thing one must do when trying to understand God is to understand that you can't understand God. I know, it sucks. It's all Zen Buddhist sounding and crap. And frankly, who has the time? But though it may sound convoluted or downright silly, this is logically the only first step that allows for any kind of progressive thought.

So next time: Why never being able to know God does NOT make trying to know God a worthless, frustrating endeavor. And in case this thesis sounds too crazy to be allowed, let me assert here that there will be candy. Delicious candy.

A Note To You, The Reader:

Half of the intention of the Candy Coating is to engender discussion. As such, we ask that if you are someone who thinks things occassionally, that you go ahead and post a comment containing those thoughts! It is preferred on so many levels. So just do it, ok? Ok.

Glad we had this talk. Let's never fight again.

Bees

2008-01-20

We're putting up some new banners for the site, the first one is above.  I don't know why, but bee knees crack me up.  They're just funny is all.  Expect more in the next few weeks.  In the mean time, feel free to comment and let us know what you think.

Why do bad things happen to good people, Papa?

2008-01-19

And also, where do babies come from?

This (the title, not the birth question) is one of the classic questions asked of religious thought. If there is a God, and if He is as described in the Bible, the Quran, and other such religious texts as "all-merciful" and "compassionate," then how can bad things happen to good people?

Now don't fret: this will not be that long of a post. You can still catch Oprah and see her gives all those houseses to the poor peoples. I only intend to tackle what I view as the single, most important aspect of this question: the thin line between fate and free will. This is one of the great mysteries of life, as it presents in it's mere conception an apparent dichotomy. Assuming you believe there is a God, it follows that he is all powerful, all mighty, and therefore that he is in charge of all things. He has power over all things. He directs all things. Such facts are necessarily implicit in the supposed existence of an all powerful Creator.

However, we also have our free will. To confirm this, just put a pile of dynamite under your bed and light it with a long fuse. Did a divine being reach down and snuff it out? Drat, guess we still have free will after all. There can be no doubt to an impartial observer that some of the worst periods in history were of our own making. God did not cause the holocaust to happen. God, for all that He might have been mentioned a lot, did not cause the crusades or any of the other examples of strife caused by fanatical religious belief. This is simple but crucial: the realization that just because God allows us our free will, does not mean that he necessarily approves of what we do with it. Equally, however, if He stopped us when we acted foolishly, it wouldn't actually be free will.

There are many other aspects to this debate, and perhaps this  series of posts will become that most dreaded of phenomena among bloggers: a post suffering from Continuum Disease. The symptoms include fever, backpain, and an irrepressible urge to post multiple times on the same subject.

For now, however, I merely wish to point out that this dichotomy is clearly false. In the same places where it states that God is all-powerful and all-knowing, it also says that he has given us free will. What do we think that means? Kind-of-free will? Free will only during the week, but directed paradise on the weekends?

So, something-like-next-time: Bad things - what exactly do we even mean when we say bad things?

Requiem for a Seam

2008-01-11

Many a picture there is. Many an image, thought, and memory depicting my carefree raggedness. A torn shirt here, a threadbare favorite from fourth grade there. And all adding up to who I was: a walking requiem for seams.

It's been my persona and aura for as long as I've known what those words have meant (6th grade, english class). But I am writing this somewhat paratactic, somewhat halting post to inform you that the glory days are over. The long drawn out siege of adulthood has gradually taken it's toll, and now, just as the noble blood of Isildur had it's last great hurrah with Aragorn, I find myself staring at the sudden end of an era (20 bonus points for those who get that reference without going to wikipedia.)*

Let me be specific: I find myself wanting to dress well. I have night terrors about ill-fitting shirts with wrinkled surfaces and warped collars; day dreams of perfect-fit polos that bring out my eyes.** All and all, i'm sure it's a most natural and healthy trend, but, between you and me blog reader, I lament the carefreeness of my past life. For all that I might look better now, I can't help but think i'm somehow lesser. Like the wild wolf turned faithful companion, I may be more cuddly, but I am distinctly less awesome. I mean, sure, Ekindu was mighty helpful to Gilgamesh once civilized, but he also become kinda whinny and lame.

So in conclusion: I offer this short (yet potent) poem as a testimony to days soon ended.

Fare thee well wrinkled life with your charmingly mismatched colors.  Goodbye golden years of faded hues and misused blues that blatantly clashed with each other. Enter order, symmetry, and shirts freshly clean. Retreat past life and fade, wave,
Becoming a forgotten requiem for seams.

* The Candy Coating bonus points are not redeemable for anything, ever.
** This is patently untrue.