A reality based upon a lie can only end in obliteration
For a lie is the inversion of reality
Reality Based Upon a Lie
What We Are, Fundamentally- Where We Begin
Presupposition)
I have already discussed the physical-materialist view of determinism, and also the contrasting-premise-but-identical-conclusion view of fundamental chaos. I wish to say something more about that fundamental chaos view, which asserts that since the building blocks of reality—and of our own persons—are subject to random quantum mechanics, every system and decision that is built upon those transient parts must also be random and nondeliberate.
For a moment, let us assume that this theory is correct. Let us assume that all of our choices and behaviors are based upon their material composition, and that the root of that material composition is random and unpredictable.
Even then, this view presupposes that we all begin at the material. It assumes that there is nothing that comes before the random fluctuations of the quantum mechanic layer.
Back to the Metaphysical)
But who is to say what might come before the random? If you were to fall asleep in a thousand theaters, and in each one suddenly wake up in the middle of the second act of a play, the first line of dialogue that you heard would always appear to be random. But none of them actually would be random, they would be the continued thrust of all the unseen moments that came before.
From the metaphysical view, where the material world begins is the same as suddenly gaining consciousness in the middle of the play. Who is to say that there is not an imperceptible spirit whose invisible choices travel through the spiritual realm and then continue their thrust into the material world via quantum mechanics? And the quantum mechanics only seem random because we cannot see all the parts of the play that came before.
If we ever are certain that we have found the true root of the material, that still does not mean we have necessarily found the root of being. Indeed, the more our understanding of the material leads us to conclusions that defy our basic perceptions, such as humanity being all preprogrammed or humanity being all chaotic, the more it seems apparent that the material is not telling us the entire story. The more we know of the physical world the more it seems incapable of aligning with reality by itself. It continually and increasingly becomes apparent that there is something immaterial at play as well.
With that, I will end my examination on these matters for now, though I won’t be surprised if I return to them at some later date.
What We Are, Fundamentally- Chaotic Nature
Competing Nihilism)
I have already criticized the logic of the determinist in my previous posts. Today I will continue by introducing an alternative view that emerges from the same physical-materialist foundation, but which comes to an opposite conclusion.
The determinist, as already discussed, concludes that there is no free will or metaphysical reality because they assume that the environment, stimulus, and reaction are all part of a biochemical closed loop. Because every aspect is controlled, all behaviors are entirely predictable, if only one could measure all of the participating factors.
However there is another argument that also concludes that there is no free will, but by arguing that our material nature is nothing put pure, unpredictable chaos. This notion is based on the observation that our most fundamental components—protons, electrons, leptons, and quarks—seem to be subject to random quantum mechanics. If the lowest level of our material trembles between random states of reality, then how can we claim that everything built up from them, including ourselves, could act in a way that is deliberate, conscious, and chosen?
Both these viewpoints go to great lengths to deny the reality of human choice, but by totally opposite means. On the one hand humans are rigid, fixed machines that only act and react according to predictable programming, on the other hand humans are unpredictable, wild, and chaotic, whose behaviors have nothing to do with thought or reason.
Consistent Inconsistency)
As with determinism, this chaotic view once again defies our basic experience. Perhaps the chaotic view seems to provide a solution for why our behaviors are not totally ordered, but it raises an even bigger problem for why our behaviors aren’t totally chaotic either. Sometimes we do keep to plans, we do hold to our word, and we do follow through. And sometimes we maintain that reliability our whole lives long. How do we have these consistent streaks if at our beginnings is nothing but chaotic noise?
Our own experience balks at the idea that we are either totally predetermined or totally chaotic. These arguments sound intelligent because they take a long time to explain, but they are each childish in their lack of nuance. Their complexity does not bring life into sharper understanding, they try to flatten it into an over-simplistic single dimension.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools- Romans 1:22
What We Are, Fundamentally- The Result of Determinism
Determinism Again)
Yesterday I spoke of the physical-materialist theory of determinism, which maintains that all of our behaviors and “choices” are actually predetermined programming. The stimuli to our senses come from an environment that we cannot control, and our reactions to those stimuli are dictated by the preset mapping of the synapses within our brains.
Input + Function = Output, and because the Input and the Function are controlled, so is the Output.
Free will and control are only illusions that arise from the fact that the environment and the brain mapping are so complex that we cannot predict the outcomes before they occur. But just because we mortals can’t predict those outcomes, doesn’t mean that they aren’t predestined. The things that we do are simply the things that we were always going to do.
Moral License)
If this theory is true, though, then I cannot be responsible for anything that I do. I might feel as though I make my own choices, that I wrestle between decisions, but that’s simply my computer-brain evaluating between two programmed priorities, until it finally settles on the option that its biological algorithms were pre-weighted towards. I was always going to come to the conclusion that I was going to come to, and I am no more responsible for coming to that conclusion than a domino is guilty of falling when pushed.
Thus, if I decide to kill another person, there was no alternative to that outcome. There was no option for me to have chosen otherwise. I might have chosen differently if I had been born to a different environment, or if I had a different composition of the brain, but the function and the parameters were already set, and so I simply had to give the only possible output: murder.
And if I were to go around proselyting for this worldview, and the logic of it were to incite a person to decide there was no morality and that he truly was permitted to do anything and none of it would be his fault, and if he were to then go out and planted bombs that killed hundreds of innocent schoolchildren, well it couldn’t be helped because his mind was already such as to take the input of my words and derive those predestined conclusions. And it couldn’t be helped that I inspired him to do those things, because I was also predestined to make those arguments. And though it may appear to the outside world that I had influence and he had choice, even though everything in our natural perception and experience screams at us that such is the case, it would all be a lie and an illusion. The creation of that terrible, bloody would have been necessary and unavoidable.
Common Sense)
The horrifying conclusions of determinism are reason enough to reject it, but even more important than the unacceptable nature of its ends is the fact that it defies so much of our common sense that we have to conclude it isn’t true. Like I said in the last paragraph, everything in our natural perception and reason tells us that we actually do choose what we do, and that the evil are guilty, and that people can decide whether to live as good or evil.
Determinism asks for an even greater level of blind faith than any system of religious morality. It not only asks us to trust its claims, but to do so against all of our perception and reason. It asks us to deny the apparent and obvious reality to accept an unprovable and theoretical one. Everything natural and instinctive about us protests that is a lie, and that would explain why its ends are so horrific and destructive. A reality based upon a lie can only end in obliteration, for a lie is the inversion of reality.
What We Are, Fundamentally- Deterministic Machines
The Materialist Position)
I have previously criticized the materialist position, which is that only the material exists and is real. In the physical-materialist view there is no metaphysical reality, such as soul or spirit or transcendence. Debates between the material and the immaterial viewpoints are often based on interpretations of the human experience. The materialist must maintain that even the things that are typically not associated with matter have their origins within it. For the materialist view to be correct all thoughts, feelings, convictions, hopes, and anguish must have an explanation in atoms and protons and minerals.
Many critics of materialism have pointed out the horrifying conclusions that follow when we strip morality and emotion of their spiritual origins. I would like to emphasize a few of these points, observations that have only been briefly mentioned elsewhere, but which deserve the special attention that I will bring to them with this series. I will start today by defining one of the core beliefs of materialism, and tomorrow I will make my critique of it.
Deterministic Machines)
The theory that describes how a person can make choices under a physical-materialist worldview is called determinism, which asserts that there actually is no choice at all. In a physical-materialist view, humans possess no free will. They are nothing more than deterministic machines, and all that they “choose” to do is actually predetermined by their chemical construction and environment.
Each one of us is born with certain synapses and pathways already formed in our brains. That is the programming that determines what behavior we will exhibit in response to certain inputs. The inputs come from the environment that we live in. If the temperature is cold, our brain interprets that fact and executes whatever reaction is programmed as a response.
Since the environment is out of our control, and since the initial state of our brains is formed before we are born, we have no control over what inputs and reactions will come into and out of us. It has all been predetermined, and we are simply reactive beings, constrained to behave in a way that is outside of our own control.
Even if we change our programming, we only do so in predetermined ways. So if a child is pre-programmed to touch a hot stove, and is burned, and then remaps his brain to not do that anymore, he does that remapping as a pre-programmed reaction to feeling pain. Thus, even the changing of one’s mind is predictable.
And we predetermined machines are perfectly capable to interacting with one another by hooking up our cognitive inputs and outputs to form a larger machine. What you say to me you are predetermined to say, and how I respond I am predetermined to respond, and the same for you, and then the same for for me, back-and-forth, until one of us terminates the conversation because we are predetermined at that point to do so. And what each of us takes away from that conversation will be exactly what we are predetermined to take away.
Commentary)
This model may sound very strange, very different from how we perceive our day-to-day experiences, but it is the only logical conclusion once one decides that only the material is real. So long as there is nothing but matter, choice and free will can only be an illusion, a perception that is ironically pre-programmed into us, just like everything else.
Tomorrow I will discuss the absolute license this theory gives to all immoral and unethical behavior. In short, if everything we do is predetermined, if we have no choice over our own actions, then we are not responsible for any evil that we might do. There is no blame for even the most horrific of crimes, because the people that did those things only did so because they were predetermined to do so. Come back next time where I will discuss this even further.
Equal vs Enough
It is less important to be equal than to be enough.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t a value to equality. Rooting out unfair disadvantages and gross discrimination have their place, but every virtue is bounded by others and each can be taken too far.
Perfect equality is not always the ideal and is not always possible. When a baby is first born, it should receive more care than its older brothers and sisters. The wise should receive more attention than the foolish. The innocent should have more liberty than the guilty.
Even the natural universe follows the pareto principle, in which an uneven distribution is evident, and the minority possess the majority of the resources. In the ant colony there is only one queen and tens of thousands of workers. Only 1% of all mosquito eggs will reach adulthood and reproduce. Ours is the only planet out of thousands studied to have all the correct conditions to support life. The universe is not equal.
So, while it is again worthy to root out flagrant and malicious inequality, one has to have a nuanced appreciation for the fact that absolute equality is impossible. The unbridled pursuit of it can only yield frustration and counter-productivity. Every historical example of absolute and mandated equality has ended in disaster.
In the long run, “is it enough” is a more reasonable consideration than “is it equal.” As mentioned before, the older brother may not receive equal care to his infant sister, but we can ask “is he receiving enough?” Are his physical and emotional needs being adequately met? If it is not enough, he should receive more. If it is enough, then it is enough. Are enough ants born as queen to keep their species alive? If not, they will go extinct. If it is enough, then is it enough.
Over the course of our lives we will never be perfectly equal to all others. In some ways we will always have less, and in some ways we will always have more. But do we have enough? Can we make do with our disadvantages? Can God make up for what we lack? If we can find our way to enough, then it is enough.
Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 24:16-18
16 And the glory of the Lord abode upon mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days: and the seventh day he called unto Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
17 And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.
18 And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
The presence of the Lord descended upon the mountain, but Moses did not go up into it straightaway. He waited for the Lord to call him up, which did not occur until the seventh day. This immediately calls to mind the six days of creation, and the seventh day of rest. The reason for this parallel is not explained.
Perhaps that seventh day coincided with the Jewish sabbath, and the Lord was waiting for that sacred day to call Moses apart from the world. Perhaps the cloud on the mountain was purifying the place before the Lord’s arrival, recreating that part of the earth over six days just like it had taken six days to perform the original creation. Perhaps Moses required the six days to properly prepare his own soul for the meeting. Whatever the reason, we see a pattern of waiting a full measure for the time to be right.
This idea of sacred things taking a full measure to complete is also present in Moses then being up in the mountain for forty days and forty nights. If waiting seven days to ascend calls to mind the Genesis story of creation, then staying up in the mountain for forty days calls to mind Noah shut up in the ark while it rained for forty days and forty nights.
Both the initial conception of the earth and the flood are creation stories. Initial creation and recreation after the first had gone astray. They are symbols of beginning and resetting, of making everything new. Perhaps that was the Lord’s intent with these numbers, to suggest that His communion with Moses would usher forth a new beginning for Israel and all the world, a recreation of laws and principles that had been lost.
Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 24:13-15
13 And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua: and Moses went up into the mount of God.
14 And he said unto the elders, Tarry ye here for us, until we come again unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you: if any man have any matters to do, let him come unto them.
15 And Moses went up into the mount, and a cloud covered the mount.
A number of priests and elders had stood with Moses to receive the witness of God. Now, though, when Moses went to receive the tables of stone with God’s law etched upon them, only Joshua accompanied him. It is interesting that Joshua is described here as Moses’s “minister.” The original Hebrew uses the word שָׁרַת (sharath), which is generally translated as “minister” or “servant” throughout the Bible.
Joshua would, of course, become the next leader of Israel, and so this is an interesting literal manifestation of what Jesus said when he told his disciples, “And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant,” (Matthew 20:27). Joshua was literally functioning as a servant to Moses, and he really would become chief among all the Israelites.
Before Moses and Joshua ascended the mountain, Moses put the care of the congregation in the hands of Aaron and Hur. He said that any matters that needed to be addressed could be brought to those two priests. This, of course, would ultimately lead to their mischief with the golden calf in Chapter 32.
Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 24:12
12 And the Lord said unto Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written; that thou mayest teach them.
Moses is called up into the mountain again, this time for the Lord to write His laws and commandments upon tables of stone and give them to Moses. Of course, the Lord already had given His laws, at least His preliminary ones, and Moses had written them in a book, but it would seem that the Lord wanted to establish His word with something more permanent.
There is obviously symbolic significance in etching the law of God into the stone. As already mentioned, there is the permanence aspect of it. Words on a page could be torn, blotted out, smeared, stained, burned, and washed away. Ink creates its forms for a time, but negligence, misfortune, and malice can all destroy those forms. A table of stone, however, would be immune to all of the methods of defacing mentioned above. So, too, God’s law was not meant to be smeared or crumpled by the philosophies of man, but to withstand all such attacks.
Though it should be noted, tables of stone are not indestructible either. Though they may withstand much more abuse, they can still be broken, ground into dust, and eroded. God’s law is absolute and eternal, but any form of it here on Earth is subject to degradation. Every earthly attempt at permanence is ultimately in vain and ultimately mankind will always depend on the Lord to refresh His words and His law after we have all gone astray.
Though, there is a counterpoint to this that is also symbolized in the Lord carving His law into the rock. This is the Lord putting His words into nature itself, carving His principles into the very face of the mountain. This suggests to us that even if our structures and edifices to God may deteriorate and grow dim, there are infinite other chapels to Him on Earth that will never cease. His law is written right into the layers of our rock, the fibers of our trees, and the lettering of our DNA. All the Earth is secretly imprinted with Him and His word, and those truths can be drawn out by the truly observant in every age.
Scriptural Analysis- Exodus 24:9-11
9 Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel:
10 And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness.
11 And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.
This is a most remarkable event described in these verses, so much so that I am amazed it is spoken of so little. We often hear how Moses saw the burning bush, and how Stephen saw God the Father and Jesus Christ at his martyrdom, and even how Jesus appeared to 500 after his resurrection, but today’s verses may be recording the largest recorded witnessing of the personage of God! Seventy elders, three priests, and Moses all witnessing God at the same moment, as well as “all the nobles of children of Israel,” for which we do not have a number, but which I would assume brought the total at least into the hundreds.
And they did not just see some strange abstraction of God, such as with the burning bush or the pillar of smoke and fire. The declaration of what they saw “under his feet” makes it clear that they perceived Him as having a physical, human body. Of course, there are different opinions as to whether God naturally possesses a body or not. Personally, I believe that He does, but for those that see Him primarily as a spirit, I suppose this body could be interpreted as a manifestation of His condescended form, the man Jesus Christ.
The verses also tell us that God was standing upon a “paved work of sapphire stone,” which was so clear that it appeared like the heavens above. This image of God standing upon the heavens calls to mind His later declaration to Isaiah, “The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.” This verse seems to be showing us the literal manifestation of that claim. All the things of our world are literally beneath God’s feet, He stands above and outside of it all, He has all of it subdued and under His feet. This is the great Outer God, whom we must not forget the reality of, even while we recognize the small Inner God that also resides within us.
Spiritual Wanderings 