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God, the Anomaly
In my bit on science and God, James wrote:
The problem with science is that it spends too much time on things that fit the general rule and not enough time on the exceptions to those rules. The problem with religion is that no one agrees upon doctrine.
Which I think is really interesting, although I’m not sure about the second half of it. In response to it, Carlos later wrote:
what if that’s all god is, an anomaly? no wonder science can’t see the evidence, anomalies are fudged or ignored.
This raises all kinds of cool possibilities for me. The first thing it reminds me of is the aim of Fortean studies, which is finding things that are anomalous and which don’t fit the prevailing paradigm. People in Fortean and paranormal studies often talk about a really cool rule when it comes to science. Namely, that they don’t have to prove that all the cases they are studying are legitimate. Not every haunting is caused by a spirit. Not every case of ESP is real, etc. But if there’s any chance that one single case out of the ten thousand that they have collected has any legitimacy to it at all, then that proves there’s a hole in accepted scientific understanding. Conversely, in order to “prove” science, you have to basically reach a point where there are absolutely no contradictions to your theory. In other words, it can’t violate experience. Through the study of statistics though, science often ignores these anomalous individual experiences in favor of looking at trends (which are of course very useful in their own right).
But anyway, is God an anomaly? Is God the glitches in the Matrix, the individual cases which don’t fit the trend?
August 24th, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Is infinity an anomaly? Why does it fascinate children, but cause divisions among philosphers?
Or erase “infinity”, and write “nothingness”, “space”, “eternity”, “substance”, “life”, “truth”, “virtue”, “terror”, “art.”
Transcendant concepts are the direct reflections of the one thing. Meister Eckhart tells us that insofar as we are Good, we are God, since there is no Goodness, Life, Truth, etc. apart from God.
“Eternity” is not time unending, but eternal Prescence.
If we take the masters (and our own intuitions) seriously, we know that the transcendent is prior to the particular. Systems of thought are created by us and imposed on reality. Glitches in systems are the natural boundaries of those systems. We should not be surprised to see these glitches, we should rather be surprised if we cannot find them: that would seem to imply that we are operating entirely in the context of that system.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:10 pm
god is a construct of the religious. a dogmatic anchor to imprison our souls and blind us to our own divinity. the concept makes us fight wars and grind flesh into the dust. our own intuition sets us free from the will to feel like shit. we are the gods who make the grass green, after all.
August 24th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
To my mind, any a priori rejection of “gods” is as limiting as an assumption of them.
For instance, I don’t know how much chaos magick stuff I have read that has people spitting on crosses and such. If you are free of the cross’s power, then you have no need to demonstrate it. (”Real gangsta ass niggas don’t flex nuts/ coz real gangsta ass niggas know they got’em.”)
It’s like teenagers who reflexively do the opposite of whatever their parents approve of. Whether they rebel or not, they have still allowed the domain of possible actions to be defined by someone else.
A more fruitful approach to the problem of religion is to recognize that it is the natural result of misinterpretation upon literal reading upon misinterpretation over the course of the history of civilization. “Kabbalah water” and “Davey and Goliath” can both be traced to the Eschaton, just like everything else.
August 24th, 2005 at 3:02 pm
Why can’t we just explore anomalies? Why do we have to call them “God”? It seems like an awkward attempt to force a synthesis between our own explorations and a silly idea from our childhood about an omnipotent sky father deity who looks like us. And if that’s not what you mean by “God,” then it’s a mistake to use a word that carries that baggage.
Now small-g “gods” are different, because they’re just flawed entities who manipulate our world from a realm we don’t understand, and that actually fits with what the anomalies are telling us.
How about this: the entire universe, with the exception of the little corner we have explored, is an anomaly.
August 24th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Why does the corner we explored have to be the only one that’s not an anomaly? To me, that seems like the weirdest one of all.
August 24th, 2005 at 3:15 pm
“Since when are Catholic priests even remotely like Matrix-style warriors?”
They are! It is critical that you think about this proposition until it makes sense to you! The Priests aren’t the bad guys anymore; everything is backwards! Morality, the scientific method, and truth itself are all under attack and we need all the help we can get, even from - oooh, stinky poo (for you) - The Roman Catholic Church!
August 24th, 2005 at 3:32 pm
That’s backwards. We are told that “we are made in God’s image.” This means that God is not anthropomorphic, WE are God-morphic. Insofar as my eyes see, they are the Eye. Insofar as I live, I am Life. Insofar as I act, I am Action.
Why should we be ashamed of our childhood stories? They are closer to where we came from than we are now. We should “become as children.” If we have hang-ups, they are our own inabilities to deal. The Judeo-Christian control structure is your heritage. You can no more ignore it’s influence on you than you can your parents. We can rail against the Demiurge, but that must be a passing phase. Even the Demiurge is the spitting image of the One.
Our concept of “God” may be anthropomorphic, but that is our concept. The same goes for small-g gods. If I had been raised in polytheism, what would my perspective be?
August 24th, 2005 at 5:50 pm
I know I always bring up ‘pataphysics, but since we’re talking about God as an anomaly, I am reminded of Alfred Jarry’s quote at the end of his book “Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician” (one of the funniest satires on science and religion ever written):
“God is the tangential point between zero and infinity”
August 24th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
It’s because we’ve explored it that it’s not an anomaly. I think I wasn’t clear enough in my language. We explore something, we tell stories about it, we explain it, but always it merges into something beyond that we can’t explain yet. So we explore that, we change our stories to explain it, we find more anomalies beyond that, and so on. I see the universe as an onion, where we peel away layer after layer, except we start from the center of the onion, and it’s infinite!
As for God, I think it’s really a tactical question. “God” is a brand, with lots of associations we don’t agree with, kind of like the American flag. Do we try to redefine the brand for our own uses, or do we drop it and make something new?
To me, “become as children” means to always look at the world as if we’ve never seen it before, to be constantly ready to cast aside old concepts and make new ones. To hold onto old myths is the opposite.
August 24th, 2005 at 7:12 pm
Actually, a big part of what kids seem to do is revel in learning the old myths, because they are not old to them.
August 24th, 2005 at 7:23 pm
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God Brand
Ran left some interesting thoughts on my piece about God as anomaly: “God” is a brand, with lots of associations we do […]