vol VII: Notes
2014
Notes
[Notebook: DB 77 Discretion]
[Sunday 9 February 2014 - Saturday 15 February 2014]
[page 62]
Sunday 9 February 2014
Back to an old emotional problem which may be traceable to my expulsion from the order, a feeing of inauthenticity which may arise from 'going against the grain' of a huge, powerful and all encompassing organization like the Church. This seems to be why I have stuck to simple trades like carpentry and plumbing since those days, things that are easily seen and tested [why I want to make theology testable]. I feel that I have always undercharged for my work and felt indifferent about its quality, although I now have a very long list of satisfied customers who keep coming back for more. This problem seems to be arising again as I work my way out of being a tradesman into being a writer, where the criteria of authenticity and success are more difficult to discern. In particular I have been reluctant to promote my website because [it is not finished and] I am not fully convinced that it is trustworthy and I do not want to lead people astray. I marvel at those (in the alternative medicine industry, for instance) who are able to make false claims with straight faces and get rich in the process. From my point of view, the Church falls into this category, since many of its claims are clearly false but seem to be sincerely held by the Pope and his crew. I feel, on the one hand, who am I to upset these people, and on the other hand that it must be done to eventually place the human race and our interactions with one another and the world on a firm footing, even though it takes me out of my 'comfort zone'. One's comfort zone is defined to a large degree by one's social milieu, and as I look around me I can see very few people who can comprehend the radical upheaval that I propose for the Church. Writing paragraphs like this, however, makes me feel better about the whole thing, and reinforces my desire to go ahead with the whole project even though I do not expect much success in my lifetime. A century is a short time in theology, which is not quite
[page 63]
geological, but nevertheless deeply embedded in the human zeitgeist. [Perhaps one should aim for a million fans by 2040].
The standard Christian model of God recorded by Thomas Aquinas contains some difficult points. How can God both know everything and yet be absolutely simple, with no markers to store all that data? Here we begin with a sub-problem: how can this god be both eternal (immutable) and living (mobile)?
Following Aristotle . . .
The Papal definition of infallibility is a denial of dynamics.
The only thing that we can say about God is that it is, and we are part of that being.
On eternity: speakable and unspeakable. Longergan misunderstood symmetry as something without explanation, but it is real with explanation, it is nothing beyond the bounds of consistency. An earthquake, while consistent, is also violent because consistency cannot predict/explain the sudden slip, it only exists as a consistent possibility
Another significant insight: a message like this is an instance of eternity bounded by its creation and annihilation (coming after a long whinge). These things seem so powerful when they one appear. Each fixed point in the Universal memory is eternal (formal) until it changes, moved by the underlying dynamics.
Not Eureka Street, Washington Post or NYTimes, then pitch New Yorker.
Can we write an ethics app that you can ask questions
[page 64]
and it will give answers consistent with natural religion, that is an optimizing interface with reality, eg the Sun.
In answer to page 62: The eternity between insights.
As long as . . . (totally forgotten). Train of thought: the Church must become more dynamic accepting that infallibility is of very limited use in a dynamic world. It is limited to the fundamental symmetries of physics which provide the materials in which more complex forms are constructed.
Gittins, Sydney Morning Herald: 'Economics is the study of "the daily business of life".' Ross Gittins
Church says contradictions in the nature of God are mysteries but there is no reason why something which was a mystery to the ancients should be a mystery to us. Nor is there any reason why God should be a mystery: if nothing else we expect God to be perfectly reasonable.
Sanger and Schmitt: It sounds as though the security on the documents that Snowden copied was minimal. David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt
Aquinas definition of eternity: 'The simultaneoulsy whole and perfect possession of interminable life: - "aeternitas quod est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta posessio.' Aquinas 45
eternity is not-time.
Monday 10 February 2014
Fixed points as we understand them obey the 'tota simul' part of the definition but fail on the 'interminabilis'. Nevertheless they fulfill the definition of being outside time and being immutable as long as they last [like photons], ie in their static lifetime from creation to annihilation. Although a fixed poinrt like myself is eternal in this limited sense, I still complrise a vast array of ephemeral fixed points yielded by the quantum process and networks of quantum processes that maintain my fixedness while I am alive. Fixation implies some degree of control, annihilation a loss of control, formally an error.
The mystical root of theology is the via negativa. Layers of consistency, which may be desroyed by adequate violence right down to the dissolution of space-time into black holes.
Aquinas lays the picture out clearly. Perfect simplicity is consistent with fixed structure because the symmetries are the boundaries of dynamics, ie the non-existent space of actual contradiction. We live in a space of logical consistency, that is the transfinite computer network, transfinite memory addresses by local Turing machines.
When we look at the world, we see fixed point, that is enduring objects, everywhere, like stars, We can only see stationary points, communication in fixed writings like the pattern of pixels on your screen as you read this. [We cannot see the dynamics because of the invisibility theorem.]
All sets in the Universe are open [do not contain their own boundaries] in themsevles, but bounded by the next transfinite layer. A tranfinite number is any number higher than some chosen numbr (formally speaking).
One loves to see people making love [but it may be a breach of privacy].
[page 66]
God fucks itself in every act of love.
Tuesday 11 February 2014
Wednesday 12 February 2014
God made the natural numbers, ie God made the fixed points, ie God reveals itself to us through fixed points, the boundaries of divine dynamics.Thursday 13 February 2014
Natural theology: the Universe is divine.
Preface: Galileo and the political control of science.
Introduction:
c1: The classical God: the foundation of hope
c2: A scientific history of the world: the history of salvation
c3: The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics
c4: Creation and annihilation: life and death
c5: The five billion year picture
c6: Stability and maximum entropy
c7; The transfinite network
c8: Scientific faith, hope and charity, the answer to war
Maybe we should stick to the old scheme 1 Method, 2 Model, 3 Physics, 4 cybernetics, 5 biology, 6 psychology, 7 theology, 8 love, 9 culture, 10 religion, 11 politics, 12 economics, 13 design, 14 work, 15 heaven, 16 faith, hope and charity
Friday 14 February 2014
Our emphasis here is on reconstructing the Church more than on a witchhunt of previous crimes, although
[page 67]
some mention of the past is necessary in order to justify reforms.
Economics is about raising the potential to make money (value) flow (move). Politics is about what to move where. how to implement the economic system, capitalist communist etc etc or a superposition of all of these.
Physics is so simple it cannot distinguish between different elements of a superpositions, The superposition encodes all the possibility but we only see the probability structure of the set of possible operations [ie executable Turing machines]. The invisibility theorem says we cannot look inside these structures, all we can see is their completion in a stationary point, fixed point, etc.
The basic premise of natural religion is that all religious differences around the world are illusions developed by elites for their own advancement. [ie they are all symmetrical in their essentials].
Saturday 15 February 2014
There are two principal insights or definitions in theology: that God is all that there is, [all that is possible], so that theology is the theory of everything; second, that the reality of God is unspeakable: all we can talk about is what God is not. Here I must quote Aquinas;
Cognto de aliquo an sit, inquirendum restat quomodo sit ut sciatur de eo quid sit. Sed quia de Deo scire non possumus quid sit, sed quid non sit, non possumus considerare de Deo quomodo sit, sed potius quomodo non sit. . . . Potest autem ostendi de Deo quomodo non sit, removendo ab eo ea quae ei non conveniunt, utpote compositionem, motum, et alia huiusmodi. Primo ergo inquiratur de simplicitate ipsius, per quam removetur ab eo compositio.Once we know that something exists, we can ask how it exists in order to understand what it is. But, because we cannot know what God is, only what it is not, we cannot study how god is, but rather how god is not. . . . We can show how God is not be removing from it things which are not appropriate to it, like composition, motion and other similar features. Therefore we first inquire about God's simplicity, through which composition is denied to God.
Aquinas used the language developed by Aristotle to write a treatise on God (representing a model of God).
I have left the Catholic Church almost completely behind in the theological sense, denying its fundamental premise, that what we call God is other than the world.
[page 68]
Like many other priestly elites, the Catholic Church made a living out of its position by appointing itself sole channel of communication with God. This position is not acceptable to me and I take a broadband view to communication with God, all my experience, I feel, is experience of God.
It is axiomatic that the status quo suits the ruling elite, who are quite stable in their position and difficult to move.
Logic is a science that studies the relationships fixed points may have to one another [established by the underlying dynamics].
Physics tells us that the observable world is digital but that there is an underlying dynamic process that joins the observable fixed points together. Fixed points are the messages transmitted.
Fixed points are the via negativa of the dynamics even though we know that they are inside the dynamics, those points that form the boundaries f the dynamic space, the envelope. And some people like gymnasts and wrestlers want to explore that evelope in both a physical and psychological way.
All science is the science of boundaries, where nothing happens, as in the passage to the limit.
. . .
Greene: Human Factor page 238: 'She put her hand in
[page 69]
his; it was an act much more intimate that a kiss—one can kiss a stranger. She said , "We have our own country. You and I and Sam. You never betrayed that country, Maurice." ' GreeneAll religions are different brands of the same product, working both in cooperation and competition with one another. Often the competition leads to death, which is going too far. Do not kill. God holds the power of life and death which is usurped by agents that kill to maintain their status.
