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"Raise your glass, Mountain Pirates..."
Sep. 5th, 2003 11:56 amSo last night, we hung around and Talked About Stuff.
It started out being about politics, somehow or another. Somebody brought up Orwell (maybe me) and this jumped to socialism, then Marx... and then it became, through Tim, about Human Nature -- he thinks of a lot of attributes of people as inborn and immutable...
Eventually, it got into a discussion 'bout the natures of God and Time and Life, the Universe, and Everything (as these things normally do), and I was trying to get Tim to reconcile free will, predestination, justice (and hell), and a supposedly benevolent (or even just) God, all of which he was supporting. I haven't heard any really good way of getting all these ideas together yet: I've been grinding at it for a while... if you're taking the position (as a lot of people do) that "Well, you have free will, but God knows you so well, because he created you, that he's already predicted everything that you're ever going to do", then first off, that's not really Free Will, because God chose to create you how he did. He knew. He knew from the beginning and he chose to make you in such a way that you would do what you would do -- he could've chosen to make you one of the so-called "elect". And if he knew that you would be how you are, why did he create you such that you would screw up and then get tormented eternally in a horribly unpleasant lake o' fire? That's a) wasteful, and b) sadistic. I think at least one of our ideas of "free will", or "predestination" (all of this could be danced around if God could somehow not predict your actions -- if your will really was free), or "justice", or probably more likely, our whole conception of God, is pretty well b0rked. So I set this problem up before Tim and let him have a go at it.
... which was really interesting. He busted out the CS Lewis (and the "this moment contains all moments", God-experiences-time-all-at-once thing), and I opened up a can of Miguel de Unamuno... and then Marty walked in the door and jumped in. I think Marty wins this sort of discussion, in as far as it can be won, by asserting that there can be no rational discussions of philosophy. But we discussed regardless. And I don't think anybody changed anybody else's mind, but we enjoyed it.
Also, we now have an iPaq with Linux on it in the room, and Cimmy's coming over this afternoon :) Yay!
It started out being about politics, somehow or another. Somebody brought up Orwell (maybe me) and this jumped to socialism, then Marx... and then it became, through Tim, about Human Nature -- he thinks of a lot of attributes of people as inborn and immutable...
Eventually, it got into a discussion 'bout the natures of God and Time and Life, the Universe, and Everything (as these things normally do), and I was trying to get Tim to reconcile free will, predestination, justice (and hell), and a supposedly benevolent (or even just) God, all of which he was supporting. I haven't heard any really good way of getting all these ideas together yet: I've been grinding at it for a while... if you're taking the position (as a lot of people do) that "Well, you have free will, but God knows you so well, because he created you, that he's already predicted everything that you're ever going to do", then first off, that's not really Free Will, because God chose to create you how he did. He knew. He knew from the beginning and he chose to make you in such a way that you would do what you would do -- he could've chosen to make you one of the so-called "elect". And if he knew that you would be how you are, why did he create you such that you would screw up and then get tormented eternally in a horribly unpleasant lake o' fire? That's a) wasteful, and b) sadistic. I think at least one of our ideas of "free will", or "predestination" (all of this could be danced around if God could somehow not predict your actions -- if your will really was free), or "justice", or probably more likely, our whole conception of God, is pretty well b0rked. So I set this problem up before Tim and let him have a go at it.
... which was really interesting. He busted out the CS Lewis (and the "this moment contains all moments", God-experiences-time-all-at-once thing), and I opened up a can of Miguel de Unamuno... and then Marty walked in the door and jumped in. I think Marty wins this sort of discussion, in as far as it can be won, by asserting that there can be no rational discussions of philosophy. But we discussed regardless. And I don't think anybody changed anybody else's mind, but we enjoyed it.
Also, we now have an iPaq with Linux on it in the room, and Cimmy's coming over this afternoon :) Yay!
