The Gift
paulbuchheit.blogspot.com
paulbuchheit.blogspot.com
I suspect much of the reason is that the users manuals and wikis that resulted from thousands of years of human wonderings have been so misunderstood and misappropriated for other purposes.
This post reminded me of the ancient Hebrew book of Koheleth, which was translated into the Greek Ecclesiastes. About a man who wondered about many of the same things Paul brought up. Like many of us, Koheleth tried all sort of strategies to find meaning and be happy: to be rich, to be learned, to have fun, etc.
In the end, all he could surmise was that each day was a gift and to make the most of it. Pretty good lesson, I think. Thanks, Paul, for the reminder.
// Submit pull request #5602 to apostlepaul/Christianity.
I've mentioned this before on HN, but I tend to take the view that spirituality isn't something vague or abstract, but rather it's something that's fairly concrete to the point of being almost measurable. My working definition is that spirituality is basically the sum total of all your relationships. That is, your relationship with yourself, with others, your work, the food you eat, your religious practices, etc. And I would define spiritual experiences as those that have implications relating to these relationships or otherwise prompt one to reevaluate them.
That's fairly similar definition to the definition that Wikipedia gives, but I think mine is a little more actionable and also more understandable to those without any sort of academic training in religious studies.
It goes way beyond your relationship with yourself, with others, your work, the food you eat, your religious practices, etc. It's being in the present moment and experiencing how all those other relationships fall out of it. None of those relationship matter if you chase after them, forgetting the present moment.
Academic training does not help you experience here-and-now.
For what it's worth, I see that as being one specific piece of advice with regards to your relationship with time. That is sort of the traditional spiritual path of buddhism, but others might legitimately think differently, e.g. those who find solace in the canon of western lit.
It doesn't describe what spirituality means to oneself -- which, from person to person, can mean many different things.
After all, isn't spirituality really all about personal meaning?
I like it, sounds like Alan Watts/absurdism/I shouldn't have slept in philosophy class.
I was talking to a friend the other day that said the Devil had internet from the start; but it's only now that we see blogs pop up on faith. So thank you Paul for this.
Also, being the top post on HN is just the push I needed to write on my faith. Was initially afraid that it'd turn my readership away. So thank you once again for teaching me to not hold back.
As an Engineer, I'm finding that faith and logic can go hand-in-hand after all. The more I question my faith, the stronger it gets.
I'm also reminded of Dostoevsky's search. Who am I to argue with a Great Thinker who spent years arguing against God's existence only to admit he was wrong in the end.
I'm not sure what "now" you're referring to, but blogs on faith have existed for a very long time now. By relativistic Internet measure, anyways.
What he says is that for religious people, rules of logic and interference only have to applied a limited number of times. So they never arrive at the contradictions their logic really has.
He also says that this mode of thinking is actually default for most people and also works in most cases. So I suppose you can still be an engineer, as long as you are lucky enough to have only projects that are solvable with the "just compute a limited number of steps" rule.
Well, sure, since they are mutually exclusive.
I've talked with a lot of people -- many, non-techies -- that, with that first flowering, all tread through the same paths. They may express it differently. I did the same. It feels original because it is original, even though it has been said in other ways many times.
No book, no art, no music can take you on this journey. It's not code you copy and execute in some other person's brain. Yet once you see it, you start seeing it everywhere, as people imperfectly try to express the ineffable. It seems like reinventing, but eventually, it isn't. You cannot experience unconditional love without being in the present moment; when you start thinking in terms of reinventing things in the past or the future, you are no longer present. How can it possibly be anything other than original when it can only unfold in the here and now?
A different teacher, from a very different path (martial arts) said, "endless variations, never surprising."
It's not limited to techies...but, to put it in techie terms:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
:-)
(But yes ;-) )
I don't accept your implication that it is bad to think for yourself. What kind of spiritual life are you living if you are only repeating what other people say rather than actively engaging with the subject?
As I grew in maturity I realized the foolishness of that statement, because nobody truly "thinks for themselves". Sure, we're using our own brain to enact a decision unique to ourselves, but the vast complexities of how we are influenced by others and our own past - through parents, family, friends, actions (or inaction), stories, the books we've read, the movies/TV we watch, the music lyrics we listen to (I could go on) - really means that our decision-making is heavily skewed by the influences we have consciously, or otherwise, allowed to shape our minds. It really makes you wonder how much we can truly "think for ourselves"
Once I realized the notion that "thinking for myself" is really just a fantasy, I started to understand the importance of the old phrase "GIGO" and how important it is to choose (as best as possible) who will influence my thought processes. With that said, I think it's more than wise to look to masters in every arena of life for wisdom and influence to help us to "think for ourselves" when the time for choice arrives.
Sorry, you can't get yourself out of the picture.
Anyway, I disagree with your premise. Sure, we are subject to many influences. And probably, very few people stop to consider and analyze those influences, to decide how much weight to give each. But it is possible to do that -- and to the extent you do, you are indeed thinking for yourself.
The fact is, this sort of influential unawareness happens on a major scale throughout the majority of childhood and adolescence, which is when much of our deepest neurological programming happens -- especially in the "critical period" of childhood development. In this period, all of our neurological processes and decision-making are deeply and richly influenced by others, on a level that we don't even have the capacity to understand.
This isn't some new concept, time and time again experiments have proven that the individual capacity for self-delusion is high and our individual capacity to reason objectively about ourselves is limited. After all, that's why we often look to others we trust when we want objective feedback.
So how much do we really "think for ourselves"? Is it 50%? Doubtful. 1%? .01%? Whatever it is, our decision-making processes have already been thoroughly influenced by many things BUT ourselves over the course of our life. You might think you are picking a particular course of action because of a produced set of rationalizations, but maybe it's really just how your parents used to behave around you as a child. Either way, we can't know for sure, which results in all sorts of objective & analytical blind spots.
Sure, I'll honor the fact that we do ultimately empower a decision, but how much of that choice to act is truly "us" is something that's questionable... as such, I think the best thing we can do is maximize the time we are shaped by positive influences that stimulate our brains and minimize the time we are shaped by garbage.
But the author's spiritual understanding is indeed unique. It's not simply an affirmation of the primacy of unconditional love, but also an explicit rejection of any other spiritual motive. I haven't read Ecclesiastes, but from your depiction, it only partially addresses the first part of the piece. "Making the most of your day" neither says anything about what positively constitutes "most" (to the author, "most" is the result of acting with unconditional love), nor what negatively constitutes "most" (killing for God, etc).
Indeed it's important to remember to make the most of your day, but for the author, it's equally important to frame impulses that disregard unconditional love as wrong. The fact that he took the time to express this point indicates to me that he doesn't believe it to be broadly held. Thus the piece also represents social comment, far beyond a mere reinvention of something.
I started reading the article in full (having read the criticism first), and soon realised that the god notion described doesn't really match anything in traditional religion, or anything that one would typically criticise. The god introduced doesn't seem to require anything tangible from the reader or anyone who believes in such a god. It requires no submission, suffering, organisation or decrees. It simply makes an offer. (and it very expressly makes that offer within a fable, not a description of reality)
The end paragraph is pretty hard to deny. You just needs to be careful not to associate your cached thoughts with the word 'God'. Essentially what the story concludes with is: love is a good thing; we should share it; and we should offer it to ourselves too[1].
This kind of love is most noticeable by its absence I think. After a couple of hard years, I recently looked back on the things that had been troubling me, and noticed that throughout it I had been very hard on myself, and very hard on others.
I think the god analogy as a source of love is one that is only useful to some people.
I'm sure that making physical world predictions based on the existence of any higher power is sure to result in predictions that aren't useful.
Regardless, the general point about love, suffering, loss, forgiveness and learning can be taken without changing personal beliefs, and without god. Equally, a very personal god who offers and requires only what Paul describes gives identical results.
As such I argue that the god described has no need to be excluded from this essay, or Hacker News. I urge those criticising it to read it again with strict mental effort on avoiding the 'god = bad' association that one leaps to out of past experience.
[1] (and it says this in an excellent way, and with more nuance than I describe, I know)
It's not "baggage" but "meaning".
If you don't attribute intention, agency and potency to the "God" then you are just using words in a way they aren't intended to.
Some atheists deliberately choose the meaning of "God" that makes people look like idiots and conspicuously ignore meanings of "God" that are internally consistent and reasonable.
To me, that's baggage.
If the author didn't want to tie his concept of "deity-as-avatar-for-goodness" to a religion with so much baggage, he should have chosen a different word.
Perhaps I needed to manage the transition between the parts a little more smoothly to avoid losing people who have an allergic reaction to the g-word.
When things are difficult, talk of God inevitably arises from many good and well meaning people. The difficulty of course is that the God concept has so much ugly baggage attached to it. You can reject it outright, as so many here are eager to do, or you can embrace and nurture the good in it.
Alas, it's very tricky to navigate the waters between the dogmatic believers and the dogmatic unbelievers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
What's worse, the second part rests on a mountain of assumptions that are never articulated, let alone justified: that God is good, that there is only one God (not zero, not many: exactly One), that there is absolute good and absolute evil in the world and that there is an ongoing fight between the two, etc.
But thanks for sharing anyway.
- - -
PS: "dogmatic believers" vs "dogmatic unbelievers" puts superstition and reason on the same level; they are not.
The issue is that so many crazy people use religious teachings as an excuse for their craziness and it hurts the whole thing, as it were. Mind you, crazy people use almost everything as a justification (and we're all a little crazy).
Personally, I liked his definition of religion and God, but then i subscribe to a religion which explicitly forbids talking about itself (which is probably the best part of it). When I say subscribe, I suppose that I mean take meaning and solace from.
Bear in mind that the actuality of a particular belief has little or nothing to do with its usefulness for living a life, so even if I (or the author, or you) are completely mistaken about our spiritual beliefs, then it makes no goddamn difference to our lives.
The only real difficulty is when one attempts to force said beliefs on someone else, and that's where all of the badness and evil that is rightfully associated with religion(s) seems to come from.
Incidentally, could you provide definitions of superstition and reason? Two very tricky concepts I find. Reason once said that of course the earth is flat, now it says of course it must be round, so which was superstition and which was reason?
To carry this analogy a little further, which of your beliefs (rational of course, like all human beliefs) are factually incorrect? I would bet that within 100 years, many of them will be proven to be so. Does that mean that you will be retconned into superstitiousness?
Incidentally, i think that you may have misinterpreted what the author meant with the false and true gods analogy (or at least you constructed a different meaning to mine) so I would humbly suggest that you perhaps try to read that part of the piece again (as will I).
The difference between superstition and science/reason is not that one is true and the other is false. It's that only one claims to know absolute truth - superstition. Reason, in the context of science anyways, demands to be challenged and is open to change (it may take a long time, but it happens).
Thus, whereas reason allows for us to evolve our understanding about the world being flat, superstition in it's most extreme forms, demands that we limit our understanding to what's already written. For example, believing that the earth is 6000 years old.
If you haven't already listened to it, you might like "What Is The Light", from "The Soft Bulletin" by The Flaming Lips. It's a bit on-the-nose but is basically a poetic encapsulation of what you just wrote; Wayne Coyne wrote many of the songs on that album while metabolizing the death of his father, and pulls it off without ever becoming funereal or morose.
I can't quite put my finger on why but have always felt that album --- basically one of the three best pop/rock albums of the last 20 years --- was uncannily resonant for (our yes yes lazily romanticized concept of) entrepreneurs.
I saw the play, and it's really terrific, especially since almost everyone has a connection to cancer and loss. And the music is terrific.
"do you realize / that everyone you know / someday / will die"
Like many others however I was a little surprised, and, yes, disappointed with the "God" part at the end. Is this what it was all about?
What does "God" has to do with any of this? Can't one love their children, their partners, their siblings, with all their hearts, and leave it at that...?
What is "the personification of all that is Good"? What is Good? (Good for you may be bad for someone else; absolute good is hard; historically, Gods have not been known to be good: they were jealous, mean creatures). And even admitting there would be some "absolute good", why would it need to be "personified"?
The finale reads a little like this: Gods other people believe in are "false Gods", and guess what? the God I believe in / custom built to my specs is the One True God.
This, for me, I'm sorry to say, ruined a perfect moment.
What do these all-powerful beings have to do with his daughter and her struggle to live? What does it have to do with all of the doctors and nurses who cared for his daughter? Why thank this all-powerful being who did nothing for your child, but take for granted all of the people who worked to help her?
From what I tell by reading his actual words--and of course such summaries are fraught with peril--Paul's god is the collection of structures which offer "unconditional love" in the world. I see no mention of omnipotence.
Then to answer your questions:
1) He described being 'reduced' to unconditional love during his daughter's struggle.
2) Nothing, really. He seems to be talking about the doctors and nurses only as background information for his experience.
3) Paul didn't thank his god in this post at all, nor did he disregard the doctor's and nurses. In fact, most of his story has to do with the doctors and nurses and what they did, and very little about gods. You seem, again, to be projecting the beliefs of... well, I don't know who... your parents? Sarah Palin? ... on Paul.
Again, no offense is meant. Maybe its also due to recent events, but it seems odd.
thanks
I'm not sure how to really ask this, but what does it mean to live your life as though it may end at any moment?
For example, does that literally mean to pursue today as if you could really be gone tomorrow? And if so, how?
Does it mean that if you really want to go sky diving you should do it soon (i.e. now)? If you've been thinking about moving to another place for a while, but just keep putting it off for semi-trivial reasons, should you just go and see what happens?
I've heard people say that they live each day as if it could be their last, but I'm not sure what that means, practically speaking.
There have been several things that I wish I'd done, looking back, but I didn't mostly out of fear.
The idea of living each day as if it could be your last has always intrigued me.
It means stop living in fear, and stop distracting yourself with bullshit.
Lots of people are afraid of the shame of failure, the shame of rejection, etc. If you really were going to die tomorrow, it would strip away all the fear that you have of living with this burden.
I've been through some health scares and believe me, there is nothing more sobering than being in an MRI machine looking for a brain tumor. All the day-to-day bullshit that many people worry about, like "Why didn't I get that promotion" or "I really want that car" gets stripped away pretty quick, and the things that really matter surface immediately.
I also think it means pursuing big, important goals like fixing a broken neighborhood, writing a book, and so on. If I die in the middle of one of these projects, I probably leave small messes in neglected areas for someone to clean up, but it's worth the risk and why it's important to start as soon as possible and work quickly.
Thankfully a lot of things don't require that trade; for example, being a good dad to my children means teaching them to take care of small things and is also part of a long-term goal. There are other things like this. I think there is certainly a place for hedonistic activities like travel and skydiving, but not destructive ones like criminal activity or breaking a relationship to pursue another one.
I think that is a good start to an answer to your question.
The other thing (which more often than not gets me into trouble) is "It is a moral imperative to do what you love." Do that, and the question kind of answers itself.
I would like to talk about one idea you brought up: the idea that the Christian Gospel involves some sort of coercion. In particular, the little story you told about God vs. the devil.
This is what the gospel says. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16
We're sinking in quicksand. God reached out His hand to save us. But if we refuse, we will die. Does that make God a monster?
Indeed, if you refuse God's love, the consequences are not good. If you refuse my offer of a kidney transplant to you, the consequences are not good. Does that mean I'm raping you by offering to save your life?
Please do not blame God that there are people in hell. God doesn't use hell as an instrument of coercion. We sink into hell under the weight of our own evil. We put ourselves there. We wouldn't be happy in heaven, if we don't like God's rules here on earth.
But God loved us even though we could not repay him in the least. He is rich in mercy. God gave the world an unspeakably wonderful gift that we can never, ever repay. Jesus Christ took my hell upon himself. He took all the punishment I deserved on Himself. How can I repay that? That's the essence of unconditional love. And He offers this gift to you.
Christ is my brother, my friend. He died for me. He forgives my sins against Him and helps me every day with my pride and my bent toward sin. Do you realize this is not a game? He has seen what you wrote -- don't you think it hurts Him?
I'm genuinely confused why you insert such strong language in a thoughtful post about loving life and valuing the right things. If you disagree with the Gospel, feel free to say so. But why do you want to vilify the God I love, call Him "the devil," call Him a rapist? He is grieved by these remarks. I am grieved as well.
I will pray for you. You seem to be lashing out at God with the grief and difficulty you have experienced. That's an awful place to be in. I know from personal experience that my words are not able to help you, but God is able to help you. I hope that some day, you believe in Christ and come to understand that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. No one can go to God the Father except through Him.
> God doesn't use hell as an instrument of coercion.
Oh yes, he very much does. The Christian god as portrayed in scripture is the worst imaginable kind of needy psychopath.
> We sink into hell under the weight of our own evil. We put ourselves there.
No we don't. Christian doctrine invented the concept of original sin to ensure that.
> But why do you want to vilify the God I love, call Him "the devil," call Him a rapist?
Because his followers insist that he acts like one.
In the Romans verse, it explains that God has shown His love for everyone. He did it without expectations for something in return. He did it for people who couldn't repay Him. He did it for people that were His enemies. This is by definition unconditional and there isn't a single verse in the Bible that contradicts this.
Matthew 23:37 - O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
The Matthew verse shows that this love must be accepted. Jesus says that He wants to show His love in a close relationship, but the expressions of His love are rejected.
That Matthew verse also points to something that is often overlooked/misunderstood about hell. The worst thing about hell is not fire, darkness, demons, etc. The worst and most significant thing about hell is being separated from God. Heaven is where people have reciprocated God's love and experience complete intimacy with Him. Hell is where people have rejected God and experience complete separation from Him. With that understanding, it shows that it makes no sense to say "God sent someone to hell." Hell is the choice of someone that has rejected God's love. God, not being a rapist, does not force anyone to love Him.
This statement does not compute.
Does anyone else find this quote hilarious? It's like saying "John, not being a rapist, does not force anyone to have sex with him" when the guy's presently in a backalley with his pants down and a knife at some chick's throat. He's not forcing the matter--he'll just kill them if they don't comply. That's clearly still a choice!
(Perhaps this is also why there are never any "legitimate" rapes??)
For example, isn't god supposed to be all powerful, so that he created everything, including the devil, hell, and death? Would it cost him anything to simply make you not die - contrary to a human giving a kidney to another human, which indeed would be a high price to pay. Hasn't god, in fact, also created kidney disease? And what is the sins you are talking about? It sounds to me as if there are conditions for being granted eternal life after all, which practically amounts to coercion again.
Anyway, I really just felled compelled to reply because I thought your reasoning was not all that bad (for a religiously deluded person - sorry :-). I am willing to believe that at least you mean well.
Right now what we have is free will, without a seatbelt. When an average person become angry or jealous, they may hurt someone, but usually not too badly, but when a mentally ill person becomes angry or jealous, the sickness in their brain may leave their violence unchecked, as in Sandy Fork.
Solzhenitsyn said, after years on observing mans depravity, that the line separating good and evil run through the heart of every person. We're all in a way guilty of the same sin.
Was it possible to just learn good and evil in a perfect world without all the death?
The "Eternal life" thing sounds like coercion when you think of it as "do this or you'll be tortured in hell" but the point is God lets you chose to be with him or to not be with him. If God is everything that is good, then there's not going to be a way to make a place that does not have him and yet is pleasant to be, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcionism
This particular belief system of unconditional love vs condemning judgment and promised reward, in the context of Christianity, was completely anticipated two thousand years ago. And then criticized.
Instead of reinventing the wheel in this way, you should consider following the grooves of people who have already carved the path. At least you will understand why they turned the way they did.
My larger point is that the religion of unconditional love has already been invented, as has Paul's detour. An appreciation for this history would save a student from a lot of intellectual blind alleys.
And aptly, it is Marcion's failure to grapple with Christianity's continuity with Judaism, to appreciate the history and deal with its paradoxes, that led him into heresy. His heresy led him all the way to publishing a version of the Bible with the parts he didn't like cut out.
Paul's post here felt very similar to me.
It's as if someone took a few beautiful pictures of picturesque landscapes and then in the last few shots the bottom of the photo included their stinky foot and some empty cans of Bud Light. You could make $20 predicting the moans about that, too.
What does belong is the heart wrenching story of prioritization of life following the death of a family member, same with complications of a daughter. Many of us are planning on having children soon, so the perspective is very interesting.
You know what I think would make this posting better? If 'pg added a feature I just came up with to HN that allows us to collaboratively edit Paul Buchheit's stories as if they were Wikipedia articles or Stack Overflow answers. I bet, as a group, we'd sure do a great job of capturing what Paul thinks about what's important in life, and also we could better inform people about why they shouldn't use vi because modal editors are relics best left to the 1970s.
It's not given or taken. It's not a thing. It's not a pie -- in which, once you've eaten it, no one else can.
It sometimes feel like it is a thing, a limited resource that we must hoard. Something made up of hormones and bioenergy. Something precious and delicate that we must protect. But that's fear, not love.
We're born in love. We receive it from our mother and father. But as we grow older, we forget that Love Is. So we attribute it to our parents. Our parents have bad days too. And we learned to seek out attention by doing things. We've substituted need for approval for love.
And then puberty happens.
What is it that the ancients say? A thirsty man stands in the middle of a river, screaming his heart out because he doesn't know what he needs it right there in him.
The gift is in remembering it's always been there. It's not something someone gives you because you've been a good boy. It's not that special: everyone, regardless of sex, race, or faith or lack of faith -- regardless of the acts you've committed, the shame, guilt, fear that tortue you -- everyone is loved. That is the "unconditional" part of "unconditional love."
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", asks the nerd. "No, for thou art not a day in a particular season and the comparison would make no sense. Also, stop using vi."
Sometimes I disagree with you, but man, Thomas, you are on point in this thread today. Thank you.
Sometimes the occasional jab at fundies is overlooked, sometimes the occasional mention of solace in a higher power is tolerated; but the nature of Paul's characterization was beyond the cultural norms of this board.
The strength and appropriateness of someone's statement in areas that are beyond his or her's direct involvement in a particular project or field should come directly from the innate strength of the arguments themselves and from the innate appropriateness of the arguments themselves.
Paul is a great man. He's directly impacted my everyday work flow and many of my ideas - but the closeness of this community is damaged by divisive and potentially offensive claims. If anything he should be setting the standard for what is expected here; and I say this with full knowledge of of how many of his potentially offensive arguments rang truth to my ears.
If someone is in pain and they wish to talk to someone close to them, even with potentially offensive ideas, that is one thing. Writing something on the internet and submitting it to an online forum, however, is an implicit acceptance of the review of others at that board.
I truly believe he is well meaning, civil, caring, etc. But this place will devolve quickly when the subject matter becomes highly subjective and divisive.
I suggest examining how the concept of God bothers you in the essay; I'm not saying this to say you don't get it or that you are wrong. That disturbing feeling is the Jungnian shadow speaking when one is trying to reject something. Unconditional love is unconditional: even the concepts and feelings that disturb you.
Though ... if it doesn't bother you, then there's nothing further to say, eh?
Anyways, good luck, man.
I can tell you that, if you meditate (mindfully) long enough, you will trip out. Whether what you see while tripping out is something you want to call gods, or God, that is up to each individual. The religions you encountered as a child will frame much of the experiences you have during the trip, whether you want that or not.
There is a big difference between talking about being mindful, and practicing mindfulness. People like talking about it for a variety of reasons, and none of that helps with practice. Being mindful, you are probing into the fundamental nature of things: things come and go, they don't satisfy, and they are not you.
Things come and go: that includes any of the heavenly and angelic beings you might encounter while tripping out meditating. Easy to do if you don't want to believe their realness in the first place. However, that also includes any fears and aversions you might have about religion.
So ... the religious and mindfulness are not really separate. I've written some cheat-sheets and minor how-tos on how to practice mindfulness while avoiding bringing in religion. Because I know a lot of people have hangups that trigger this. (And I want to eat :-)). But essentially: if you are religious, then the attachment you let go is that of slavish worship; if you are not religious, then the attachment is in the aversion to anything smacking of religion. Either way, your actions and thoughts are being controlled by things that happen in the early childhood, ... that's not really being mindful ...
I don't know how to talk about the "first flowering" -- that first time you feel unconditional love while meditating -- without bringing in talk about the wisdom traditions. At best, I say, "practice this, and see for yourself." Usually it is, "practice this so you can feel calmer and be more effective living your life." And if they start blissing, well, let them be even then. They can come to their own conclusions.
I don't know if that helps you talk with your friend or not. I think it will come out better in your own words anyways :-D
@leibniz sound interesting, how about taking this privately by email?
Thanks for sharing, Paul.
Better? I believe Paul is really referring to an abstract concept here, not what most people think of as God.
My mother-in-law is afraid of dying. But more than a healthy respect that one might expect with regards to ceasing to exist, so afraid that she cannot talk about it. She cannot utter its possibility, nor conceive thoughts which involve a state of the world in which she is no longer living. It really puts a crimp in estate planning as you might imagine. Here is a person who refuses to write a last will and testament. The will is only a useful document when you are dead, and to think about the things you put into a will you have to start with "ok so when I am dead ..." And for her, she will not think that thought. She cannot even think of being dead in the abstract her fear is that powerful.
I've met people who respond that way thinking about God. Abstract or not, conversational or theological, just can't go there. My Dad is like that. Its because he has combined the notions of "God" (sort of the abstract concept that Paul talks about of forgiveness and love) with "Religion" which Paul talks about as using Fear and Greed to exhort behaviors.
It is sad when being unable to think thoughts about a subject causes hurt to those you love. Their love prevents them from bringing it up, and the circle is complete.
Nowadays I aim to focus on the underlying intent, rather than the literal meaning. God is a fairly abstract, catch-all word that can mean a lot of different things to different people.
Exactly right.
What I have observed however that talking about God locks some people up. Sometimes in an actively un-responsive way. So for them the word is associated with a meaning they are running away from. And you can't talk about their meaning because, well they are running away. The is the circle I alluded to in my original comment.
This is incredibly presumptuous.
You and I both know there are plenty of people on HN who both believe and don't believe in God, and you had to have known that a comment like this would cause contention and detract from the point of Paul's post.
Words really can't express how this article made me feel... but it's rare for something I've read on HN to cause me to take a step back and reflect on what's important in life.
Extremely powerful sentence.
Also, if you watch Neal Goldsmith's talk about the need for unconditional love for promoting proper psychospiritual development, I think there begins to emerge a clear blueprint for architecting more systems around this:
What if someone made a social network that revolved around unconditional love, where social interactions were subtly designed in ways to promote community and psychospiritual development? I think something like that would have a real chance at blowing Facebook out of the water.
examples please.
I'm from India, never bought anything from them, It is possible I never will, but I've said this story to atleast 10 people after that. This is the positive side of unconditionally being kind to people.
I lost my father to pancreatic cancer when I was only 18. Even though I'm only 20, this is something I constantly have in the back of my head. Although I don't live each day exactly like it's my last, I no longer stress out over small things and am a lot more questioning of the decisions I make. Death really does strip away everything doesn't matter.
Then suddenly critisism of Islam. It doesn't make sense. Oh well. Why must there always be a good and a bad god?
You, like many in this thread, are personalizing something that Paul didn't actually say because it's important to you and you're ready to defend it. Objectivity is not a strong point when it generally comes to the religious; I'm sorry to paint with so broad a brush, but that's on display here. The mere mention of a-god-like-concept has put a number of folks here into a tizzy, and it's sad.
I'm not competent to categorize other faiths.
That may be true but Catholicism is a really bad example when you had popes believing in apokatastasis.
I think that is one of the potential problems in discerning between the "true God(s)" and the "false god(s)".
Allow me to demonstrate what I mean.
When you say "If a God threatens to send you to hell for loving the wrong person, it's a false God." it seems to imply a couple of things that must be accepted apriori to the statement-
1. That God stating what consequences will be for actions taken by us constitutes him ''threatening' rather than him explaining a cause and effect relationship. If I'm a genuine doctor and tell you that if you eat a certain piece of food that you will die or get sick I'm not threatening you. I'm simply pointing out the causality connected with an action to warn you.
2. That for any given person their loving of any other given person can/will never genuinely harm them.
I don't know about you, but those conditions (which seem to be inherent to the view given here by Paul), are hard for me to accept just on mere assertion. I think that it is possible that two people loving each other, in certain contexts, can be detrimental to both of them. This whole 'love conquers all' thing depends very much on what you define 'love' to be. And, while I certainly can think of certain types of love that CAN AND SHOULD be universal, I can also think of types of love that can infringe on the previous types as well as carrying vast detrimental potential for all connected to them. Human connection, Human relations, intimacy, it all is very much a force of nature and, as such, has destructive potential.
The next statement I fully agree with--
"If a God tells you to coerce people into worshiping him, it's a false God." but it also presents it's own complexity.
As a father of 20 month old boy I run into situations all the time where there seems a thin line between guidance and coercion. In fact, throughout my life I've often found that many of the same principles that bind us in society, that make humanity work, are the very same ones that, without genuine love and genuine concern for the welfare of the person, are those which lead to things like Jonestown. Hence the shared root between "cult" and "culture." The very idea of turning earth (that is - to cultivate) implies applied force to direct natural processes to beneficial means. Who is benefiting is very much linked to the aim and not as much to the methods.
The means of trying to encourage people to commit to some actions so as to, in some way, improve the welfare of the aforementioned people can virtually always (in my experience) be seen in a coercive light by those wanting to see such coercion.
Yet if there is some true benevolent force, and a person knows about it, then is it not reasonable/logical, to expect said person to somehow convey access to that benevolent force's to others? Whether that's knowledge or some other beneficial thing?
Where then do you draw the line between those who are actively trying to convince others that they've found some true benevolent reality that can, and seeks, to help others? Certainly some things seem obvious. It can't be something that is telling untruths. But, and this should be obvious to virtually all parents out there I'd suppose, there are times when, for the welfare of a child, it seems wise to withhold at times information OR to even go along with implicit appearances.
An example I can think of would be where some things a parent has done prior to becoming a parent, say something like teenage-to-young-adult-years stupid kind of things. One doesn't generally go blurting those things out to a four or five year old when they ask some related innocent question.
"Genuine, unconditional love is a gift that must be freely given and freely accepted, with nothing expected in return. Love can not be delivered at gun point, or with the threat of eternal damnation. That's more like rape."
I have to say that this paragraph puts me in a light that I believe is a bit unique due to a personal experience.
I'm presently in Lima, Peru. Here I have to take all kind of precautions due to being a tall white guy with a gringo accent. Otherwise I stand a good chance of being mugged. I know this because of an attempted robbery I already lived through where I was physically assaulted.
That being said I've never felt hate here for being who I am. And I can say the same for virtually every where else I've been throughout my life, regardless of where or what context--with the exception of one place -- Santa Cruz, CA
If you want to feel hated, and I mean something on the verge of knowing some of the people hating you have lynch mob like ideas entering their mind, go walking down Pacific Ave in Downtown Santa Cruz as a "Mormon" (LDS) Missionary (I imagine it could be even worse now post Prop. 8).
For a land filled with hippiesque love and peace centric bumper-stickers and an intellectual heal the world, free love vibe all over I have NEVER felt so much hate or had so many people heckle and curse (most under their breath as we passed by but quite a few yelling loudly) me just for me being who I was. They knew nothing about me other than the fact that I had a well worn white shirt, a tie, and some slacks and a black lapel pin. They didn't know the missionary that was walking beside me was an intellectual Boston, MA native who converted in his early twenties. They didn't REALLY know much at all about me--but I was, in there eyes, someone who fit the very labels that Paul here associates with one who follows a "false god" and uses like methods to "rapists."
Their own certitude of the pretexts upon which they saw me seemed to render them incapable of unconditional love. Contrary to the way they might have seen it, I was not there to condemn them, nor to coerce them to anything, nor to tell them not love someone, nor to offer a mob-esque protection arrangement. But that's how they all saw it.
And so using a metric very similar to what Paul puts forward for a discernment between the 'gods' I was deemed and infidel worthy of being looked down upon, or even just ignored, because I happened to believe something that superficially could be made to look intolerant and even hateful when it was actually quite the opposite.
I was going to say that I found this entirely improbable, until:
<quote>
If you want to feel hated, and I mean something on the verge of knowing some of the people hating you have lynch mob like ideas entering their mind, go walking down Pacific Ave in Downtown Santa Cruz as a "Mormon" (LDS) Missionary (I imagine it could be even worse now post Prop. 8). </quote>
Yea no shit. Try walking down Main Street urban USA in your white sheet and clan outfit an see what kind of reaction you get.
If people were hating on you, and I have no problem believing that you may have been followed, harassed and even threatened, it is not because of you as a human, but you as a representative of an oppressive, smug, petty, abusive and racist proselytizing space ship fantasy land thy wants to impose your particular lunacy on the rights of others.
So yea, I can believe that Santa Cruz would not be best pleased with you.
May e if you'd offered to smoke pot with people there...
Why? Why do you do this?
Now try being gay - the lynch mob becomes real. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_acts_of_violence_ag... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
It is for such insightful posts that I love HN.
BTW just one remark : "Yet if there is some true benevolent force, and a person knows about it, then is it not reasonable/logical, to expect said person to somehow convey access to that benevolent force's to others? Whether that's knowledge or some other beneficial thing?"
It is not necessarily reasonable or logical if you consider the option that the benevolent force valors individualism (selfishness if you prefer) and figuring things out by oneself.
In this case, it would even be against the spirit of the teachings to spread the word too much and ask people to share the belief. You want them to think by themselves and figure it out.
It's something that seems present in buddhism, and unfortunately lost to many in objectivism.
If you sincerely believe in something that values selfishness and freedom (as in free will), you don't want to spread the word about it - also because that would reduce other people freedom, and their own selfish pride of figuring it out by themselves.
“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say "seeing"? there are no tenses in God - the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a "host" who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and "take advantage of" Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/14816053-the-four-loves
It led me to begin thinking about a simple question: can one have unconditional love and still believe that an act is wrong or that the beloved can or should improve?
Since the concept of unconditional love is difficult (and important) to define, I will try to use the term as it was used in Paul's essay. In this essay, Paul first learned about unconditional love when contemplating his small, helpless child. She was doing nothing to earn love, but he loved her.
Now things are getting more difficult. What aspect of his daughter did he love? Certainly it wasn't her afflictions. That is, he never would have even considered that because he loved her in her helpless state she should be kept in that helpless state. Because he loved her, he wanted to do everything that he could to help her heal, grow, and thrive. Paul's unconditional love was for a being that could grow and change and overcome sickness. And because he loved that being he wanted to help her grow and change and live. Paul had a model of what was good (health) and he wanted with all his heart to see his daughter move toward what was good. That is what love is.
We can be sick mentally or spiritually. We can also grow mentally and spiritually. When someone has unconditional love for us they will want to see us heal and grow and thrive not only physically but also spiritually and mentally. That's what love is.
If that's what love is, then if remove from the lover any sense of what is sick or healthy, good or bad, then you cripple the lover and make them incapable of seeking the interests of the beloved. You cripple their ability to love.
So the answer to my question seems to be that not only is it possible to have unconditional love and still have a moral map that distinguishes between spiritual health and sickness, but that having such a map is the only way to love effectively.
Everyone has his/her moments of grief: don't let they come when it's too late. React as soon as you can: there's people around you that may not be there tomorrow, so take your time to enjoy their company and tell them you do so.
My son was also born prematurely. He's 2 and a half years old now and he's wonderful, but while reading your piece it gave me shivers down my spine, as I know exactly what you and your wife went through. Other people don't realize how awful this was. Personally I wanted to switch places with him, except there was nothing I could do except trusting the doctors and pray for miracles.
My son was indeed a true gift and speaking of spirituallity and death, personally I feel like a part of my soul was transposed in him and the odd thing is that I fear death less since he was born.
One of my sons was born premature and I remember the hospital visits and the incubator all too clearly.
Also the concept of God becomes substantially less abstract when you think of it (at least from the traditional monotheist perspective) as the "Creator" and the "Created".
It's interesting, according to Roe vs. Wade, a fetus is not supposed to be viable anytime before 91 days prior to the due date (3rd trimester).
As a programmer, nothing drives me more crazy than an arbitrarily chosen (and in this case, clearly incorrect) number, as a basis for critical decisions.
I had to share that.
Your essay was precisely what I needed. Though I don't know you, this piece has changed my life in a way that you'll probably never know, and I owe you a lot. I'm sure it's the same for many others. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for ignoring the haters who are bringing noise to you on the discussion of God.
That's fair. That makes more sense than God loving an axe-wielding rapist as much as Mother Theresa.
Riveting article btw. Incredible what you have been through. I was happy to read your daughter is well!
If evil is a decision, how could you make the decision to be evil? Deciding to be evil would itself be an evil act. It is an infinite regress.
If evil is built in, how could you possibly respect a god that punishes what it creates for being as it created it?
As is the god found in the bible, if you've ever read it start to finish instead of (like most people) cherrypicking choice quotes from what you heard the pastor tell you some sunday morning.
I believe God is rational and therefore it is right for us to rationally evaluate the claims of gods and their proponents, however, we proceed with humility, because it follows that if God is God, then his ways are higher than ours.
Belief in God (and Zero) makes the most sense to me, even with my unanswered questions.
It's an article from the Mormon church (the one that believes god lives on a planet and that you will get one too when you die) and is 80% made of bible quotes.
No thanks.