Love, Free Will, and Genesis

Great Debates
1

As I see it, there is a Love so great that to simply breathe it in is to live forever. It is a Love that transcends this electromagnetic-gravity suspension we call the universe, and reaches into the nonsuspended eternity.

As I understand it, God was basically sitting around one day, and said, “You know, the very best thing about me is my love. In fact, now that I think of it, that is all that I do. I don’t do anything else.”

He stroked his beard and went outside to take a walk.

“It occurs to me that as much as I love myself, wouldn’t it be incredibly cool if there were other me’s out there that I could love!”

So, God made the angels.

“Wow, this is great! I love all of you! Do all of you love me?”

“Oh, yeah!” came the chorus in unison. “We love you like a mighty mighty jack! We hep to you, Lord. Oh, we luv ya luv ya luv ya. Yep. Oh, yep. We love you all right. Mmmm, yeah.”

God looked out over the top of his skeptical spectacles. “Why do you love me?”

“Oh,” came the reply, from each one at the same time, perfectly synchronized, “We gotta love you, jack. We wuz born to love. Heck, we couldn’t do nothin’ else if we wanted to. Oh, we luv ya cause we luv ya. Oooh, yeah! We jus’ luv ya, that’s all. Don’t know why.”

“Hmmm,” God said. “That’s not quite there yet.”

So, he thought about it. Twisting his toe in the sand, he said, “What I need are beings like me. Beings who love because they choose to. Beings who could choose not to. But how do I do that? I already know everything. If I already know everthing, then I already know which ones will choose to love me and which ones won’t.”

God sat down and chewed on a blade of grass.

“It won’t be like they have a choice at all, because if I already know which ones will love me and which ones won’t, then I might as well make only the ones that do. It’d be might damn cruel, not to mention pointless, to make a bunch of beings who I already know won’t love me. And if I only make the ones that I know will love me, then I got nothing really any better than these angels.”

God leaned back against the rock.

“No, it’s gotta be somethin’ different from all that. It’s gotta be … Whoa! Wait a minute! That’s it!”

He stood up quickly.

“Hey,” yelled all the angels at once, “God’s got an idea! Oh, wow! We luv his ideas! Yep! We jus’ luv ever little idea da boy has!”

He swatted at them like flies. “Oh, give it a rest. Leave me alone. I can make love like yours from these grains of sand. It’s meaningless. That’s not love, that’s just adoration.”

“Oh, yeah! We adore you, jack! Oh, man, whatchoo talkin’ 'bout!”

He walked to the shoreline and gazed at the waves.

"By my word, there is nothing that I cannot do that I choose. I, and I alone can choose because I know both good and evil. I am good because I choose to be good. I love because I choose to love. There is no being that can do this but me.

"I therefore will make a box and call it the universe. When there come to be creatures who can perceive me, I will tear off pieces of me and place them in their consciousness. Each piece of me that I tear off will have its own will, just as I do. It will live in a world of good and evil. It will make the same kind of choices that I make. And of its own will. I will know all of the choices it can possibly make, but none of the choices that it will make.

"Any piece that finds its way back to me, it will be a piece that loves me and has sought me out. Any piece that does not return has fallen away, and will not seek me out.

“In this way, I diminish myself to make myself greater. I give up my life to gain my life. My wonderful and perfectly good love will multiply and multiply and multiply.”

The angels started to dance. “Whoo! God’s gonna multiply! Mul-tee-ply, baby! God’s gonna multiply! Luv that guy, yep!”

God waved his hand, and there was a flash of brilliance in the void.

“By the way… note to self… Get some trumpets for these angels.”

2

Which, by the way, is not omniscience, but limited omniscience since such a being is purposely not knowing everything that is knowable. Such a being may have omniscience, but choose not to use it which is what allows free will. I know you didn’t mention omniscience, but I could help it. And don’t bother with the sum of parts thing, I ain’t buyin’ it. Once God tears off a part of Him, in my eyes since it is cut off from the rest of the omnipotence and omniscience, it is no longer God, but an effectively seperate entity. Therefore, God is Himself a seperate entity and chooses to have limited omniscience, even though He could have omniscience if He wanted too.

“Glitch … download” - Glitch’s final action. sniff

3

God walked over to his box.

“Hmmm. I see that the one who calls himself Glitch is now awakening. He’s the one my rotted pieces tried to spoil. But his spirit knew that it did not recognize me in them, and foiled their evil plan.”

The angels blew their trumpets.

“I know that in one of every possible scenario, he will look at how the box behaves and go, ‘Aha! He made the cells to divide just as he divided himself!’ In that scenario, he will realize that when a cell divides, there are not now two halves of one cell, but two cells! They are the same, but separate. He will see that there was really no division at all, but a multiplication! But is that the scenario he will choose?”

God sat down and began to draw in the sand.

“I know all that is knowable. But of his will, I can know nothing, except what he chooses to reveal to me. There is now a new God in him, a piece of me that has taken on its own new life. It has its own will, just as I have mine. It can do all that is doable, just as I can. It can know all that is knowable, just as I do. But of my will, it can know nothing, except what I choose to reveal to it.”

God stood up and held his box.

“In this box I see all times and all places at once. I will go myself into the box, and live inside a man that I make with my own seed. Then, I will let all men know my will. There will be many who hate and despise me, and who will conspire to kill me there. But when I rise up and return here, there will be many who believe. Those who had sought me all along will believe, while those who never sought me will shrug their shoulders and continue seeking meaning in the atoms.”

God breathed into the box.

And Jesus sat down and began to teach them.

“For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day.
For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” — John 6 38-40

4

“It can know all that is knowable, just as I do. But of my will, it can know nothing, except what I choose to reveal to it.”

Earlier, you said that God couldn’t know the will of humans because he consciously chooses to “ignore” that information which is already available to him. Now, you say that we are the same as God, but that we cannot know. Which is it? If the relationship is symmetric, then God isn’t just “ignoring”, he is incapable (or he’s actually omniscient, which you deny). Or, if the relationship is asymmetrical in this regard, why do you assume it is symmetric in all others?

Also, I suspect you mean “he can know all that is knowable” by believing in God, etc., but isn’t that coercion a denial of free will?

5

And then, unto the hearts of the all who would believe in other Gods or no god at all, great apathy and hatred grew toward this cliched, new narcissistic christian god with the beard, cud, bifocals and angelic yea-sayers. And it was a Strong Hatred and a Righteous Apathy, indeed. For the unbelieving masses were great and stretched into the far history and future of the World, outnumbering the new believers by billions upon billions to one. They were truly the enlightened ones, the holders of the true love, beholden to noone. They are the meek, the true heirs to Earth and Time.

Ye who are seekers of adoration and self-love, repent.

Ye who seek to rule my soul, repent.

Ye who plague this earth with preaching and poorly written hypothetical mythology, repent!

Yet to be reconciled with the reality of the dark for a moment, I go on wandering from dream to dream.

6

God heard voices from his box.

“Oh, how I love my children. Even those who curse me are dear to me. It is my will that they believe in me, but alas, they have their own will.”

He sat down in the shade.

“With their words, they describe their atoms perfectly. But when they describe me, their words are like wax in the desert. They measure the box perfectly with their numbers, but when they measure me, their rulers bend back on themselves and end where they began. Would that they would discern their atoms with their brains, and discern me with their spirits.”

The angels blew their trumpets.

“Dammit!” God said. “Must you blow those things right at me?”

The angels turned away and blew their trumpets. He looked back into his box.

"I love the games they play about me — what they call their paradoxes. They ask whether I can make a stone so heavy that I cannot lift it! Do they not know that were I a God of contradictions, even their words themselves could have no meaning? If A could be Not A, how would they communicate among themselves? If evil could be good, would I be God?

“They want me to know what I myself have designed as unknowable, which I have done by my unbounded power. ‘Ah!’ they say, ‘but if your power were unbounded, then you could know the unknowable!’”

God smiled as he walked along his Möbius trail.

“They wonder what is outside their box. Some among them understand that there is no outside. There is only inside. And that inside is boundless. Were they to look through their telescopes as far as they could see, they would see the backs of their heads. They are like the creatures in my flat sheet who go round and round the circle that I placed there, wondering where it begins and ends.”

He stopped and peered longingly into his box.

“Oh, how I wish your will were my will! But were that so, you would be like these angels with their blasted trumpets! Do you know what will is? Do you know what consciousness is? Do you know identity? Though you squint and squint, you cannot exercise your neighbor’s will with your own. A is not Not A. You can only force him against his will. Though you be empathic as a gypsy, you cannot know the consciousness of another. A is not Not A. You can only read his signs and not his mind. You cannot be someone else; you are yourself. A is not Not A.”

God heaved a heavy sigh.

“I designed existence without contradictions. This was so that you could be accountable for yourself, and not accountable for your neighbor. This was so that you could choose, and your neighbor could choose differently. This was so that you would have your own will, and not mine, unless mine was the will you freely chose.”

He stood up.

“If I did not have my own identity, if I did not fold back boundlessly into myself, then you would not be you. You would be your neighbor and your neighbor would be you. But you, the real you that came from me, you can live in me, and I can live in you if it is both our will. It is when our will is the same that we are one.”

The angels blew their trumpets.

“Note to self… get some harps.”