Best Laid Schemes of Mice and Men and All That......

Continuing with my theme of what drives me, what I navigate my life by, the next cardinal direction on my compass rose after my values is my philosophies.  This is really just the same thing, from a different direction.  I think a lot about what I'm passionate about, so while my values drive my heart, the philosophies behind them drive my mind.  I don't have an abundance of these, just a few important ones.

The first one is kind of like God = The Matrix.  This kind of has strong roots in both SF and Christianity.  This goes as far back as the apostle Paul saying that in Jesus, "we live and move and have our being,"(Acts 17:28) to George Berkeley's Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge.   In that, Berkeley responded to a scientific theory that he tended to disagree with, which went by Materialism.  That's the idea that all we see and feel and perceive is produced by matter independent of the sensations that we perceive them through.  He argued that dreams and visualization support the idea that minds can already fabricate all the sensations we perceive through, so there is no need to come up with the idea of matter to do it, when his culture, being Christian, already supplied the mind likely to be powerful enough to supply all the sensations humans share in common; namely, the Holy Spirit.  As far as atheists are concerned, even Elon Musk believes we're living in a simulation.  The belief is that if the universe really is billions of years old, then the likelihood of humanity being the first advanced civilization since the dawn of time is quite low.  In fact, it's far more likely for an advanced civilization to have developed untold millions of years ago by now, and since we aren't aware of them or any of their artifacts, then there is a good chance we are living inside one of their artifacts, namely an incredibly powerful artificially intelligent supercomputer.  To me, this defeats the atheists' own beliefs, because if we live in a computer, then by definition our universe has a creator, perhaps even a controller.  Just saying.

The next belief is that Jesus is the Authority.  If you accept that our universe is created, then you have to take seriously the claim to be an incarnation of that creator.  Based on good archaeology, history, and rationality, it is safe to say that Jesus was a real person who really said a lot of the things he is recorded as having said, meaning he is either right or crazy.  The historical voracity of his miraculous doings is pretty likely, too, meaning he has pretty solid evidentiary support for his claims, too.  Within the confines of the worldview that he presented himself, the Judeo-centric perspective, he is the only person in recorded Jewish history that was resurrected under his own power, by his own volition.  Every other person ever resurrected in Jewish history was brought back to life by a third party, an outside power, an agent of El, or Yahweh.  So, considering his power, when he claims to be an incarnation of the Creator, I take him seriously.  Which means everywhere else in Judeo-christian scripture, God is presented by a human go-between, an ambassador so to speak.  With Jesus, he is the source.  His teachings represent the beliefs of God himself.  In this way, any translation issues between us and the mind of God that might rise up when using Moses or David or any of the many Prophets of the Old Testament instead of Jesus, can be corrected.  You can always use the teachings of Jesus as your filter through which you judge the voracity of the rest of scripture.   Also, in this vein, is the belief is that the Church is meant to be incarnation of God on Earth in the present day.  This is reflected in the idea that Jesus is the vine, we're the branches, also his promises to leave the Holy Spirit when he moved on, and so forth.  The apostle Paul was a fan of this, too, in that he repeatedly uses the illustration that Jesus is the Head of the Church, which is the Body of Christ.  Structural memetics is the route I take with this concept, and that is my own route.  When God created Adam and Eve and set them loose upon the Earth, one of his first commands was to go forth and multiply.  This is a reflection of the value of human genetics, in that there were so few people on the planet that in order for there to be an ongoing civilization, more had to be made.  When Jesus moved on, he left us with a similar commandment, but vitally different at the same time.  He commanded us to "go and make disciples" in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  The Church calls this the Great Commission.  It essentially translates our priorities for a genetic playing field to a memetic one.  From now on, our focus is on the field of ideas, of beliefs.  Studying memetics helps put this in perspective, at least for me, and I will definitely come back to this in the future, but it helps that Jesus left a ton of memes, or driving concepts, behind for us to build our foundational beliefs and priorities on.  

The next two philosophies are based on the idea that when God made humanity, he made something special, something made in his own image.  In Genesis, God talks to themselves and makes man in "our own image." This is generally seen to be the royal we, or even the plural we if we accept that God is triune, which I do, but this can also be seen as gender neutral pronouns, a la "they/them".  I don't think any of these are wrong and, in fact, they can all be right at the same time.  Whatever the case, being made in the image of our Creator carries with it an inherent value, something that many modern evangelists lose sight of in their focus on sin and God's grace and mercy in forgiving it.  

That being said, the first philosophy is based on the idea that God's very nature is reflective of love.  Of all the descriptors of God, being powerful, good, wise, just, all that jazz, love is the only one that is equated with God.  The others are all adjectives.  God's very nature is loving.  All the qualities that are his adjectives flow from this.  One of the things love values most is freedom.  Because of this, I believe that free will is paramount to the philosophies of God.  Our choices are what bring value to everything we do.  As such, education, agency, and protection are things I value politically.  I am a socialist libertarian.  I believe certain things should be guaranteed by our government, including food, housing, healthcare, access to education; but that in other respects, unless we step on the safety or rights of others, I believer we should all be free to make our own choices.  

Which comes to the last belief that I will talk about today.  That's the value of human creativity.  The very same story that tells us that we were created in God's image is a story of his astounding creativity.  I like to think our creativity and relational nature is what makes us reflective of his nature.  As a triune God, part of what makes him him is his deeply intimate relationships between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Another is that he is the Prime Cause.  He created everything whole-cloth, completely out of nothing.  The first thing he did ask of Adam was to name the animals.  While the level of creativity such a thing entails is orders of magnitude less than it was to create a universe, it is still a deeply creative endeavor.  I believe God wants us to co-create with him.  As such, human innovation and ingenuity is to be treasured and valued and encouraged.  Genuine science and the technology derived from it is a reflection of this line of values.  

That's it for now.  The next step in my series has to do with other driving things for me, like seeing the world through a collective lens, and how communities can be made better, or ministry, and seeing the world through an individual lens, and how the self can be made better.