Thirty theological argument pileup

By the standard ontological argument we can see that God, the goodest gooder than which not one can be, exists. By using Ebonmuse’s Manichaean Reductio, we can just as well prove the existence of Negagod, the baddest badder than which not one, not even any politician, can be. God and Negagod are both omnipotent, omniscient, and several other omnis as well; but they are at the opposite ends of a moral spectrum.

Now the question rises of how that moral spectrum is defined: is it something basic in the structure of All, or just a whim?

If we assume it is a whim, that is, not inevitable and fixed, it must be either the whim of God, which is by that morality good, or the whim of Negagod, which is by that morality all evil and disgusting. As any morality-decreeing source clearly and universally declares itself good, the whim must be that of God. This, however, neglects the fact that God and Negagod, being reversed polarities, are in all things save morality equal: thus Negagod must have declared a morality as well; we may call this evil morality “malority” for ease of reference. Now, reasoning according to malority, Negagod is good, and God evil. The results are the reverse of but indistinguishable from those obtained through morality. Thus there is no such thing as fixed good or evil, just as assumed for this tine of the fork, and thus illustrated; and moreover each deed and its opposite are both both good and evil. As this is depressing, it cannot be; thus the other alternative is true. (See the note on the presuppositional argument below.)

Thus let us assume that morality is fixed, that is, not decreed by either God or Negagod. As we assume that morality is then a basic constant of the universe, we must turn to the origin of the universe for further illumination on the question of morality: and here the pertinent question is, which came first, God or Negagod?

Evolutionary chicken-related arguments will not be accepted here because they are elitistic, scientistic, reductionistic and materiarationalistisnistic.

The impeccable cosmological argument, a proper theological tool, shows that all things have their causes, and in the beginning of all must lie the first cause. Now this cause cannot be God or Negagod alone, for that would be symmetry breaking which is bad. Just likewise the first cause cannot be both God and Negagod, for that would assume co-operation, which would assume coincidence of moralities, which is absurd. Thus the first cause is neither God or Negagod, but a being we can call Ur-God; the first god, presumably the origin cause of God and Negagod as well.

Some readers may protest that this has gone too far, proving the existence of three separate gods already, with one of them being evil to boot, and another ambiguous on the matter; but to those readers we respond with the presuppositional argument, which says that if you disagree with us you’re incoherent and should not speak.

Now since we have two gods, God and Negagod, with moral desires, it is clear that they wish people to act according to those desires, and wish to reward those that do, and punish those that don’t. As they are equal in power, their equal strength in this either cancels out or results in dividing the world into two halves.

In the latter case, God holds dominion over the fates of one half of mankind, and Negagod over the other. In God’s domain those that do good go to Heaven, those that do evil go to Hell. In Negagod’s domain, the evildoers go to Negaheaven (presumably a nice place of rewards and rest), and the good-doers go to Negahell (a place of punishment; especially nasty as it is set up by a Supremely Evil God).

However, if the moral reward-desires of God and Negagod cancel each other out, being of equal but opposite intent and equal strength, neither God nor Negagod can reward humans for their thoughts or actions. But what about Ur-God? The preceding arguments have not established the moral character of Ur-God, except as far as noting that he is the prime cause of the universe, which has a universal moral law in it.

However, by the argument from design, that is, by observing the nature, we can deduce the character of Ur-God, for since God and Negagod are of equal and opposite character their effect on nature and man sums to zero, and the character of Ur-God decides. Even a cursory glance at the kingdoms of animals and plants shows a horrendous amount of cruelty, violence, pain and pure evil, and yet at the same glance immense amounts of grace, care, beauty, altruism and good. Thus we can say that by the evidence of the universe Ur-God is morally either indifferent (the balance of God and Negagod dominates) or then unstable (both good and evil are caused).

If Ur-God is morally indifferent, it has no will to reward or punish; and thus there is no Heaven or Hell of his device. This cannot be so. (The presuppositional argument. Only our view is coherent and possible.) If, on the other hand, he is unstable, he has moral desires, and consequently a Heaven and a Hell, but the criteria of entry are based on a blind whim, constantly changing as the winds of time blow. As this is the historically accurate view of Christian morality, we have thus shown not only the existence of a Christian God, but of two other gods as well!

* * *

(Masks of Eris: apologetics perverted and cats flattened while U wait.)

Also, the title “Thirty theological argument pileup” is echoed from Thirty Xanatos Pileup, courtesy of the most horrible timesuck on all of Internet, TV Tropes. Doesn’t hurt it’s so close to dirty theological argument pileup, either.

This is Finland

A bank robbery in Vaajakoski, Finland, today.

The robber’s weapon of choice? A crossbow.

A crossbow.

Sorry; I can’t add anything to that.

Well, except that there is some trouble over identity; the robber was dressed in a way that made the police unsure of whether they’re dealing with a he or a she. Consider this a possible crossdressing crossbow bank robber if you so will.

A crossdressing, crossbow-wielding bank robber.

That I can’t add anything to. (…and due to lack of money, feeling quite cross?)

According to a news sidebar, in the prior crossbow-related crime history of Finland — mostly a period that ended c. 1750 — in 1994 a disgruntled conscript used a crossbow — not army issue, I suppose — to kill two people while on a leave. That must be among the more unexpected ways to go. (“Oh, that’s just awful. How did he die?”)

(Oh, and for linguistic understanding: a crossbow is in Finnish either jalkajousi, a “foot-bow”, because many models have a loop for your foot to ease pulling the string back, or varsijousi, a “bow with a stock”, which is self-explanatory.)

(Yle; in Finnish)

Twice made up Atlantis

Seems the problem with writing a holy book is that once you’ve done it… well, it’s not groupies. It’s that you begin to think of all the other such texts you could write, all the odd forms of self-expression you could try — a King Gozer Bible, a Necro Noma Eikon the True Translation of the Book of the Mad Arab Abd-ul-al-Azreed, a Discordian Book of Fairy Tales and Nightmare Fuel, a Dark Silmarillion (“Suppose Melkor was half-decent… and all other Valar were utter bastards, and Eru was nothing but an Azathoth”), an Account of the Absolutely True and Unaltered Folk Tales, Superstitions and Common Habits of the Finnish People, a travel guide to a made-up place (have read a couple of these but can’t recall the names), a textbook from an alternate history — and so on, the whole lot of false documents. (Carrie, Watchmen, Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z; I have a major soft spot for these.)

It probably does not surprise the reader that the English homework that most excited my fancy at high school was “Write a list of ‘rules of conduct’ for a school” — I went all thus, thou, verily and commandment the n:th on that, being the somewhat demented  and quite officious autocrat of an imaginary place. The teacher was amused.

And so the following, too, just bubbled out of my head while looking at the Wikipedia page for Atlantis; I don’t know if I will go looking for the Quenta Silmarillion for which this would be the closing words of Akallabeth.

* * *

And so Atlantis was swallowed up by angry seas; and a great fury and despair came over the soldiers of Atlantis besieging the city of Athens. To their former scorn and disgust was now added a terrible measure of heedless hatred; and they stormed the walls of the city with no regard to their own losses, and broke in, and struck down every defender, and every man, and woman, and child, every living thing within the walls of Athens, and as they did this their faces were terrible to behold for they were like carvings of mad gods of despair, cold and inhuman.

When all of Athens was slain, they brought torches and ropes and burned the city; and what would not burn they pulled down; and they harnessed their beasts of burden and sowed salt into the ground that nothing should ever live in that place; but the western wall of the Great Temple they spared to bear in paint and carving the sign of DOOM, of Ib and of Sarnath, many times repeated.

So perished the city that had been the fairest of all in that time, save the cities of Atlantis. The temples of the first gods of the first Grecians were destroyed, and those gods were forgotten; and their people were scattered and forgot their glory; and when after long millennia Athens rose again, it had only dim shadows of its former glory, pride and fall. Even those it heard from other, older places.*

When this was done, the soldiers of Atlantis, a quarter of the number that had stormed the walls of Athens, and a pitiful fraction of the strength that had gone to war against it and its allies, were a broken army; for if they had been like carvings of mad gods, like reliefs frozen to show beasts in their inhuman fury and disregard of death, now they were like the weeping willow and the mourning brook: weary and moved more by nature than by their own will.

Some of them took ships or the long land route and made slow way to the Gates, and to the ocean shore. There they gazed west, and saw only a turbulent sea where the mountains of the Island Continent should have reared; and the most of them that had come so far laid down and died in the wet sand, and the waves pulled them to the sea and buried them along with their kin.

* : (Footnote: Plato tells that Solon the Lawgiver (6th century BCE) learned a garbled version of the story of Atlantis from Egyptian priests; but Plato’s version reeks more of the second Grecian gods (Zeus etc.) than of puerile Egyptian animal-worship. End of facetiously old-time scholarly footnote.)

Ragamuf the Prophet

What follows is what goes through my mind every time a movie (especially the voiceover of a post-apocalyptic one) invokes prophecies of a Savior for Downtrodden People X.

* * *

The following is translated from the Secret Book of Scud, the Scribe of Ragamuf the Prophet, Who Prophesied That A Savior and A Messiah Would Come To The Little People To Free Them From The Bondage Of The Malician Empire, end title, which was made true 501 years after the prophecy by the arrival of the reluctant violent loner in a black trenchcoat.

And I walked with the Prophet one day to the Pool of Yellow, and I asked him: “O ancient and powerful one, you have often spoken of this Savior who shall come. Why should you not tell me when he shall come? Our people are impatient and hate their malicious masters. They yearn to be free.”

And the Prophet he said: “I know not the hour of his coming.”

I mulled this, and then spoke: “How can that be? Are ye not the Prophet For Whom All Future Is Laid Bare? How can ye know the Savior shall come, yet not know the hour, yea verily even the second of his coming?”

And the Prophet answered: “It is mightily complicated.”

I requestioned him with impious vehemence, and was with impiety answered. He spoke words no other shall ever hear, for it is with me only that the Prophet shows his human capacity for exasperation and anger. Which he often does.

And he the Prohet said to me: “Sod you then, you fool. I shall tell you all. I know camel-shite of any Savior; I have never seen a copulation worth of him. I made up the lot so the little people should have hope; eventually some poor bastard shall come and they shall call him the Savior, and if he overthrows the Empire thereby and with that added vigor all shall be fine, milk and honey and free beer; and if not, they shall wait for the next one. With these rubes what you prophesy shall happen, because there is time everlasting and prophecies only get more old and venerable with time, ye shriveled genital of a donkey of a scribe. And tell not one else of this; for they would not believe you, for you are known as a dud.”

Whereby he laughed in the most wild and horrible manner, and I was struck dumb.

Words in mathematics

You learn all kinds of words doing mathematics.

Yes, more than just curses.

For an example, the first time I came across the word “annulus” (2D donut) I was certain it was a misprint because, by Gawd, surely I’d have heard a word like that somewhere before if it existed, as all the geometric terms before that had been respectable English words — but no.

It does not help that, apparently, the word is sometimes spelled “anulus”, which sounds like an unspeakable speculum for the hinter regions.

Brings unpleasant reflections of the whole “but ass. f anal.” subject. (Actual blackboard quote. And there was much rejoicing at the psych department. “‘But assume f is analytic’, they said! Ke ke ke!”)

Another is the word “trivial” — I have a hypothesis that while most people know what it means, the only ones that can actually use it are mathematicians, apart from those that append “pursuit” to it. Same with “corollary”: most people sort of know what it means, but only a mathematical person would actually utter the word.

Maybe mathematics is a great potential source of technobabble? “Captain! The trivial core has reached annular mass — we must initiate contour integration in parametric form now!“

“This is not over yet, Augustus De Morgkhaaaaan!“

Eh.

Many mathematical objects are named using already existing English words — but eventually you drift into the “inventor’s name object type” territory (Hausdorff measure, Cox-Zucker machine, Hilbert space — and don’t try to tell me the middle one, so named by a person that wasn’t Cox or Zucker, wasn’t named so with immense malicious snickering), and when even those names are too frequent, you’re in the “well, you could study braaaap which are the nhaaaar of K-(1,n)-thaaaaab” territory — not only are the things horrendously abstract, but even the words are French, German or something such!

(“What do you study?” — “Scheisse functions.”)

(To say nothing of the Finnish words for these objects — but when there are roughly dozen or maybe two dozen people in the intersection of Finnish-speakers and practitioners of this branch of mathematics, you don’t need names other than the English ones.)

Not a native speaker, part deux

Charles Stross happens to write the following words:

I’ll probably get over my dog-in-the-manger mood soon enough

— and I spend a few seconds thinking “Dog-in-the-manger? Whaa?”, and then form the following hypothesis (to be imagined in overhyperexcited George Carlin voice):

Okay, manger. Manger. That’s where the tale had Jesus in, okay? So could it be that this shepherd or wise man or something comes and he’s all like “Oh boy, oh boy, I’m gonna see the King of Jews! Oh boy oh boy —” and he peeks over the edge of the manger and there’s just a dog in there, Joseph’s pet mutt or something. A dog in the manger. A dog in the manger. What a bummer. Awful. Just awful. That’s what it means, huh? Huh?

— and then I google and find it’s about a fable of Aesop’s instead.

Can’t get over the image of a chihuahua in swaddling clothes, with a halo on and some myrrh by its side, though. (Then again, it would be worse if the picture stuck in my mind was a grossly immense Saint Bernard wrapped in a urine-stained sheet, drooling, hanging over every side of a tiny creaking manger, breath wheezing, while Wise Man A screams at Wise Man B “Left at Albuquerque! I told you, didn’t I? But no, you wanted to read the rabbit entrails!”)

(Because, as you know, they used haruspices before the invention of the highway map.)

A little something to read: Erisiana

So, in celebration of Festivia Magna Discordia St. Umyearite, which I decree to be a holiday taking place today, here’s a little something for you to read.

Actually, here’s a bigger link:

ERISIANA!

(pdf, 172 pages, 603 kb)

I namely have, despite my atheism, for a long time felt that it would be really, really interesting to write a holy book — so I did.

As it turned out to be a Discordian holy book, this discord only enhanced the end result. Most of the content is reworked off this blog, but unless you’ve read all 2 1/2 years of it, you haven’t seen most of it; and it’s a holy book in the “Discordian tradition”, which largely is that you throw everything you can get your hands on at a wall, and you scrape what sticks between the covers and add a few barbs and the best mind traps you can find.

The title, Erisiana, means “on matters related to Eris, sweet Discordia, the Grecian and Universal Goddess of Discord and Chaos (part-time)”; the second-best name candidate was HEROSTRATUS WAS HERE; and yeah, that second title should be warning enough about the contents. (As if reading this blog isn’t warning enough. There won’t be any begets inside — that’ll have to wait until a possible second version.)

And since Paul and Mohammed and Smith and similar characters don’t usually comment on this aspect of the creative process, why, yes, it was very enjoyable to write a holy book.

I may even do it again sometime.

Maybe something more formal, with verse divisions and yea verilys and all. A King Gozer Bible, the Zuul edition, maybe. A really holy-booky holy book.

(And why, if you’ve noticed I haven’t posted much over the last week or two, well, I’ve been tinkering with this particular beast.)

Condolence failures

I have no excuses for this except that it was fun to write, and I hope no-one comes across this needing only the first parts of the thoughts below.

* * *

My thoughts are with the surviving family.

Because my thoughts are this floating pale yellow amorphous thing I can detach and send to observe people while I drool and twitch on the floor. I try to keep it in, but it wants out.

I’ll keep them in my thoughts.

Yes, a hairy portal will open in my forehead and they will be sucked in, their terror-contorted faces bathed in the blood-red radiance from within; a great moaning wind will carry them to the claws that clasp and unclasp, to rift valleys of ebon contemplation and suffocating tightening tunnel-mazes of paralyzing foetid black terror: they shall be in my thoughts, and they shall never be seen again.

I’ll say a prayer for them.

“O great Shishio, who taught us the weak are the food of the strong; I know a couple of people who are not very strong right now…”

My condolences go out to them.

Yes, all spread, nine feet long, steel-tipped and jagged, my condolences extend to them, ready to snap shut at the first sign of… wait, I think I have the wrong word here.

I feel their pain.

Yes, I feel their pain. The machine works, professor. You are a genius. Please shut it off, please. It hurts. Let’s try it on the pleasure of that hot lady next door now. Please?

Words alone cannot express my sympathy.

Thus I painted this. I used the blood of everyone I love. And my dog Puffy was the brush. I tried to copy Munch’s “The Scream”, but he ended up smiling and giving the finger. I think it is better this way, and it really looks like you. I don’t know where the hermaphrodite zombies came from. A pretty good mural anyway… hey, when does the pastor come? I didn’t have time to ask him for permission, and the church front was the only big white wall in town.

Set days

As I have nothing much to say at the moment, here’s a random set of three elements, drawn from among “gruesome beasties”, for which no addition nor multiplication has yet been well defined.

It’s an open set, though.

* * *

And after that, a note on other matters: Usually the new comic drops at Lemmata at midday Finnish time every day. It didn’t do so today because my mathematical colors showed up once again, and I forgot there are 31 days in January, not 30. Situation fixed, now.

(Which makes one wonder if there are any webcomics or the like with update schedules that are other that this, that and the other weekday — say “the first 29 days of each month, and no more”?)

The comfort of the void

Some atheists say they wish there was a God. It would be comforting and all, and so on.

Not me.

Think of noma; think of droughts and ichneumon wasps and nature red in tooth and claw. Think of all the ills we humans have made and are prone to.

If there is no God, that just is the way things are: blind pitiless indifference. Nature isn’t cruel; Nature isn’t kind. Nature just is, and mostly it is things that are not purposeful or meaningful but just good in sticking around.

However — if there is a God and this is His creation, He is an irredeemably evil, callous, cruel, cold bastard: noma is allowed by His designs, droughts and horror-insects could not exist without His permission, His approval. (Neither could the Devil. And introducing the horned fellow, or casting this world just as a gauntlet for Heaven or Hell really doesn’t help any.) If there is a God, there are Reasons and Purposes for everything, and things are the way they are because He wanted or allowed them to be so. To disagree would be to reduce Him to a powerless, bungling imp.

We live in a world with such fucked-up horrible aspects mixed in with all the beauty that any Designer of such a thing would be a monster. Indifference and lack of intention and purpose, and also of cruelty and malice, are a million times more comforting wards against sorrow than any cackling Noma Architect wanting to be your buddy would be.

Such a void might be unsettling to some; I say it is good for it is a license to make up your own purposes and meanings of life; so take up your own colors and run with them, and dodge as you best can the flaming chunks of random shite the blind universe happens to fling your way.

That’s my opinion and my comfort, anyway. The comfort of others might not include great flaming chunks of shite. (Also, there’s something charming in noticing that the answer to “Why me?” really, actually, and with all possible depth, is “Shit happens.”)