:=8D

Don't ferget u can always e-mail the MooCow with cowments at MooCowMoo@aol.com!!!

So, I'm reading Thomas Aquinas this evening ('cause, geek that I am, that's what I do - small wonder why I am a lone cow...), and I began to think philosophically. I know, god forbid! This is always a path fraught with peril...

Anycow, Aquinas made a remark during one of his usual circular discourses about the nature of God concerning the nature of infinity: for example, no matter cow big a number one thinks up, because you can always add one more to it you can never get to the actual largest number (just, as I believe he was positing, that we as humans (err... devine bovines) can never actually come to understand God because he is always just beyond our ability to understand).

This seemed to be a vexing paradox. Cow is it, for example, that an infinity, any infinity, can exist within or at the same time as something finite? For example, human understanding is obviously finite, therefore cow can we possibly grasp that which has infinite understanding? (God)

So cow does an infinity exist within something finite? Well, according to moost scientists, we (humans and cows) live in a finite universe, on a curved planet, in a curved universe, within a curved space-time cowtinuum. Yet, we certainly have infinite abstracts within that universe. But not only abstracts!

For example, say we define a universe which is exactly 10' x 10' x 10' - a 10 foot room with 4 equal ten foot walls, floor, & ceiling. Say we put in 1 person and one light bulb within that room. Well, there is obviously a finite amount of space in that room(universe), a finite amount of air moolecules, a finite distance to walk from one wall to an udder, even a finite amount of energy photons emanating from the light souce(the light bulb), finite number of cells within the space, etc - everything is finite!

Except... if you use the old 1/2 a distance formula, by which I mean, walk to the nearest wall but taking steps each exactly half as much as the previous, you never get there, you will moove infinitely(true, by our perception the person will not appear to moove, because very soon such steps would be inperceptibly small and very quick to make), but theoretically that person is still mooving, and will cowtinue into infinity. That same person in that same space can think of the largest possible number, and that number can still be enlarged, and therefore the value can go on for infinity...yet, that person remains within a very definite finite space.

So we have a situation where not only is an abstract concept capable of achieving infinity (number values), but very concrete physical reality(walking an ever-decreasing distance) also can achieve infinity within the very same finite space! What does this mean?

Well, this perhaps helps me udderstand a bit moore the possible nature of God. Let me explain: for years, one of my favorite arguements against the possibility of the existance of God was the evidence of reality itself. We are told (continuously!) that God is infinite and all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipotent. Cowever, I always argued, if God is omnipotent, then why do we humans exist? Why does the universe exist? Why does reality exist? Existance requires some sort of reason - things don't just come into being for no reason, human perception has taught us at least that mooch. There must be a reason for reality to exist, for the world to exist, for us to exist.
But if God is omnipotent and infinite, then what could that reason possibly be - why would God even need a reason? What need would our existance serve? If God is truely omnipotent and infinite he would have no reason for anything, because he would have no need for anything. We exist, therefore we fill a need, and if God has a need, then God is not omnipotent, and therefore does not exist as we define him. And, if God is perfect, why is everything around us, the entire universe, so imperfect (especially when we are told constantly that we and everything else are made in His image)?

But now, I begin to wonder if the true nature of god lies is a paradox, like the one I mentioned previously with reguard to an infinity within a finite spaciality. What if God both exists and doesn't exist? What if he is both omnipotent and not omnipotent at the same time?? God can be both perfect and imperfect at the same time. Cow is this possible? Well, as we have seen before with udder paradoxes, it is certainly possible. I won't go over all the historic Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neo-Platonic reasons for why God is supposed to be perfect and omnipotent - and I have just mentioned above my reasons for why God wouldn't be perfect or omnipotent (and therefore not exist).

Well, if everything in the universe is flawed in one way or an-udder, and everyting in the universe has been created by God, in his image, God theefore is flawed because he has produced flawed results. But, even if he is perfect and flawless, he would still be flawed, because as being both all things and infinite, he would also be their opposites. He would be everything and nothing at the same time. If he is everything, then by definition he also has to be nothing, because nothing, or everythings' opposites, is part of the definition of everything.

So what the hell is God anyways?? :=8/

The only way of udderstanding that I see (as a rational cow, that is) where something is everything and nothing at the same time would be the scientific cowcept of the singularity. When scientists were trying to explain the Big Bang theory as the animator of the universe, they posited that everything in the universe was at one point concentrated into one tine, indefinable, unmeasurable point, called a singularity, and this singularity held everything in the universe(and also held nothing, because nothing is part of everything). The Big Bang was the point where, because the singularity could not hold together without massive forces, heat, pressures, etc, it all exploded into one giant cataclysm in which everything (and nothing) were formed.

Was God similarly so? Was God, at some point, both everything and nothing, perfect and yet imperfect, timeless, and yet chained by time to explode, mooch like our universal singularity?

And what about time, is God both affected and unaffected by time? A stone block(as far as we can tell) does not have the ability to perceive time, yet is affected by it in the form of erosion. We have just now been able to detect the so-called "dark matter" which makes up the bulk of the universe, we can't see it but we know it is there indirectly through mathematics - it affects us directly, even when we didn't know it existed. Jst because something isn't known doesn't mean that it can't exist. I've never been to Belgium, but I know it exists (unless there is the mother of all cowspiracies going on out there...). So too God - if he is beyond human knowing and understanding, if we are unable to grasp his conceit, if God is beyond rational 9and is, therefore irrational), yet still God may exist. In fact, if you listen to Aquinas, Spinoza, and a host of udders, the fact that God cannot be understood, or is irrational, proves that he does exist(rather than disproves) because our definition of God is such that we have made him cowpletely unknowable and outside of rationality.

So cow do you believe in something that is both rational and irrational, that both exists and does not exist, which is both omnipotent and finite, etc? I guess that is the final nature of faith. Faith therefore is the belief in the irrational, the belief in everything that our logic and common sense tells us cannot exist. Yet, if God exists, then he is beyond both faith and logic, because he would both exist and not exist at the same time. Therefore, can one believe and not believe in God contemporanously?

Does this sort of rational work for everything - can we as a specific species of creatures living in a finite physical world both live and die at the same time? Well, yes - we are living, yet from the mooment we are born we are also dying, that is, mooving towards our own inevitable death. Our bodies cowstantly grow new cells to replce ones which are dying in our bodies, so the life/death dual matrix exists within each of our cells, even on a moolecular level.

If that is true, then perhaps the mooment of death is in fact the mooment of life at the same time, although we may not be able to perceive it that way(like not being able to see the walker in the 10 x 10 x 10 room moove at the half of each step, yet he still does, beyond our abilty to perceive). Is the ability so perceive this paradox like some dark matter, which we are able to know only by proxy, and never directly? Or will we discover a window into this paradox as we evolve, such our udderstanding of time, self-awareness, and udder abstractions came as a result of our evolving brains? Perhaps our concept of God is as mooch a product of our cowtinuing evolution as our physical bodies.

I suppose the first step in dealing with the concept of god is to throw away the historical duality of either believing and disbelieving in God, and accept both.

God is a paradox. So is life.

My head hurts. :=8(

Time for cookies and moo juice. Maybe next time I'll read a nice Stephen King short story... :=8/



- posted by The MooCow @ 9:54 PM