Life II

My Mom, who was a High School science teacher for many years, now retired, says that the capacity for growth and self-repair is crucial to identifying what is alive.

Life

Life, what is it? A question that biologists and philosophers do ponder, what is the essence of life? What separates animate from inanimate? Life is a property of certain objects. Is life a property of God? A basic answer to the question would be 'movement.' Any form of self-started movement characterizes living things. Things that have no movement, in and of themselves, aren't alive. Something made by a scientist that is able to move itself would be considered living by this definition. For example, a lawn mower, able to start itself, perform its function, shut down, and start itself again in 2 weeks to perform its function again, would be considered a life-form. Even when the lawn mower is shut down, it has tiny movement going on within in the form of a timer and maybe a sensor periodically scanning the grass. Should we think that life is something that must be given by God?

Deaths in the Family

On Earth, all living things die. Humans die. I just saw in the online 11/7/09 RBL (Review of Biblical Literature; see bookreviews.org) a listing of a 2007 book by a Robert M. Price, Jesus is Dead (Cranford, NJ: American Atheist Press). Join the club, Jesus. My grandparents are dead. My Dad is dead. My brother Michael is dead. My Aunt Ida, my Aunt Edith are dead. My Uncle Bob and his wife, Aunt Mill, are dead, too. My cousin Tommy is dead. At some point, I guess I'll be dead. May God have mercy upon the dead! I think there are more people dead than alive. Jesus, before he died, said that all are alive to God (cf. Mt. 22:32). As an article of faith, I believe that Jesus is not dead, though he died.
George Washington, first President of the USA, is dead. The great Abe Lincoln, orator extraordinaire, is dead. I can think of certain religious figures who didn't die, according to the Bible, namely, Enoch and Elijah. The Taoist religion is big on immortality. Immortality also has its place in Greek myth. Plato and other ancient philosophers, taught that humans possess an interior component which is immortal, the soul. What is the truth of the matter? There is life. There is death. Moses told his fellow Israelites that I Am (YHWH) had sent him. There is God.

Killing

One of the Ten Commandments delivered by Moses from God to the children of Jacob is "Thou shalt not kill." By means of the Bible, all people should consider themselves ordered by the Creator not to kill one another.

Become as Passersby; Gospel of Thomas

Saying attributed to Jesus in Gospel of Thomas. "Become as passersby." James Geary includes it in his section on Jesus of Nazareth in his book, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 239ff. He lists 4 parallels to the saying. Here they are. "As long as he gives it, take care of it as something that is not your own, just as travellers treat an inn" (Epictetus [this is just the last sentence of a 10 sentence quote]). "Live your life without attracting attention" (Epicurus). He has not lived badly whose birth and death has (sic) been unnoticed by the world" (Horace). "Be in the world as if you were a stranger or a traveller" (Muhammad). Btw, Geary has the version, "be passersby." I prefer to include the word 'as' or 'like,' since this word is actually in the Coptic text recovered at Nag Hammadi and reminds one of similar usage elsewhere in Jesus' speech (e.g., Lk. 13:18f., kingdom of God like a mustard seed; Mt. 11:16, this generation is like children sitting in the marketplace). Jesus, may I say, was fond of making comparisons to draw out his meaning. We have in the saying, "become as passersby," a latent comparison between being at home and being 'on the road.' One may imagine Jesus observing his disciples and telling them, so, you are at home in the world; amen say I to you, become like passersby (for you know not the hour of your death). Jesus was a man with many miles on his sandals. We are all travellers, passersby, and too often forget it.

Why is there something, rather than nothing?

I remember hearing or reading something years ago that has stayed with me. I think I may have read it in a college textbook for one of the philosophy courses I took. What I had read was something like, ...a major contribution of much German philosophy to rational thought/analysis of the world is, why is there something at all; why not nothing? I think the quote had come from a British philosopher. I remember being impressed by this statement and thinking that German thought must be profound indeed, to ask such a question, which places the human agent in a godlike position, questioning, not reality, but the basis of reality. What is the basis of reality? Wouldn't you like very much to answer this question?

A Potential Proof of the Existence of God

I often think that evil indirectly proves the existence of God. Howso, you ask? The amount of evil in the world seems to be so great, that a supernatural explanation is called for. I don't want to fall into the fallacy of petitio principii here, that is, assuming God or the Devil to be behind events. I'm wondering, is the evil in our lives and the world at-large natural and proper?

Examples of evil: a tsunami kills a hundred thousand people, a little girl is kidnapped and held captive in atrocious circumstances for some eighteen years, a person has a bad habit and is not able to stop it. Are such things proper to our world? Imagine a life, a world without evil. Is such possible?

I guess it's not currently possible with our mathematical knowledge and computer technology to label things good or evil on a cosmic scale and tabulate them and compare to see which is greater. What if they are in perfect balance? What if the number of good things is equal to the number of bad things? What does that tell us? Such an outcome (of a rational, moral analysis of reality) wouldn't seem to indicate we live in a chaotic, randomly organized world.

Examine the concepts, good and evil. Are they legitimate? They are useful or seem to be practical in our quest to understand ourselves, gain final wisdom. Yet they don't seem to be scientific, that is, based on facts which can be explained in a manner that is provable. Take an example from above, a tsunami that has killed a hundred thousand people. From the viewpoint of global overpopulation by our species, one might say, could in fact say, that such an event is good. Even, "let's have more of such events, especially in southeast Asia, where overpopulation is a particular problem, so the planet can recover from the effects of pollution." Or one might justify destroying Saudi Arabia's oil industry, since it fuels economies that are 'endangering the Earth.' However I don't think a healthy individual would like to number himself among the victims of such disasters. Of course, there are suicide bombers.

Good and evil are malleable. Like beauty, they exist in the mind of the beholder and like beauty, we would not want to throw them out. How could a nation defend itself from attack without a notion of right and wrong, good and bad?
What is the source of good and evil? A universe has come into existence; is this good or evil? I say it's good. Who am I? I'm not the creator of the universe. So good and its opposite are simply human judgments with practical utility; useful for getting on in the world. Questions about morality, in the end, revert to questions about moral agents, that's us. Who are we?

Wrongdoing

Questions of right and wrong are basic to human being. As long as we're alive and functioning, we're analyzing behavior in moral terms. "Is this right?" "Is that wrong?", we ask. Persons have a need to know if they're right or not. If a person thinks their action was wrong, he or she will try to justify it or else apologize for it. Rarely will a person say they've done wrong and just accept it. We don't like to think of ourselves and our actions as bad. We want to be good. A philosopher or theologian queries the entire moral enterprise. "What is morality?", they ask. Certainly, lower forms of life do not have moral issues on this level. A chimp may criticize a neighbor or family-member for 'bad behavior', but would a chimp or meerkat or squirrel question the way that their species does things? A philosopher may look at the human species and judge it to be evil as a whole. A theologian may make the same judgment and say we need God to improve us, stop us from being bad. This higher-order capacity of the human mind is behind ethics as a discipline of study. So morality is observed in people and cultures and abstracted to a universal level and analyzed. Is there a consensus? There is not, I think. It is agreed that morality is proper to humans, but its content, other than basic words like right and wrong, good and evil, is debatable. Note that these basic moral concepts are dialectical, that is, they are opposites representing extreme positions for reasoning or argument about behavior. How are they to be applied? I live in the U.S.A., where civil laws might be used to judge whether acts are right or wrong or The Ten Commandments could serve to label acts right or wrong, though without the force of law. What is the point of it all? Whence cometh good and evil? Here is an answer: the idea of good and evil is intrinsic in our nature, yet there is nobody on Earth capable of explaining its origin scientifically. We evolved from primitive forms of life. Therefore anything pro-life is good; anything anti-life is evil. Does this sound scientific?

Death

Historical Jesus Scholarship

I've just read April DeConick's blog from Jan. 29th on the problems and perils of trying to reconstruct a historical Jesus, i.e., a Jesus 'as he really was' (see forbiddengospels.blogspot). She expresses extreme skepticism about the validity of the entire enterprise (she says, "it's bankrupt") since its methods, e.g., multiple attestation, do not inspire "confidence." What is needed is a new methodology, perhaps? I doubt this last. I doubt the Jesus of scripture will ever be overshadowed. I think any new method or discovery will tend to corroborate the Jesus of the canon. Why? There is mighty truth therein for eyes that see.
Look again at scripture. See the beauty of the words. Feel them. Open our hearts to the Spirit.

"Become Like Passersby" 2

More comment on this saying of Jesus from Gospel of Thomas here follows, because the meaning of the saying hasn't been exhausted. ('Meaning' is a deep lake.)

Taking the saying as a guidepost to right conduct, one is instructed not to get involved with things of this world (e.g., marriage, career, family, country), a leitmotif of the NT. This world, according to Jesus, for example, in Mark 13, is coming to an end. So we may interpret the saying against this backdrop. The saying arises from an apocalyptic worldview. It espouses a peculiar sort of wisdom -

'don't get involved, because your involvement would be with things that are doomed.' Was Jesus this radical, annihilating the whole world in thought and value and advocating an ethic of non-involvement?

Maybe followers of Jesus, in strict obedience to the teachings, are in a sense strangers.

"Become like passersby"

This is a quotation from the Gospel of Thomas and may be found at #42. It is a saying attributed to
Jesus of Nazareth in that document and do note that it is not to be found in the New Testament, though it may well be an authentic utterance of Jesus (this would depend, for our knowledge, on
historical argument). Please do not be confused about the meaning of this simple saying (n.b.: the
translation from the Coptic is not so simple). It means, we, hearers of Jesus, trying to obey his teachings, should not understand ourselves to be at rest, at home, arrived at our final destination, but
to be travellers through this world/life headed to another world and life. It is easy, natural, for a person to think stability in lifesyle is a good thing, something to be accomplished as an adult and then
treasured and defended. 'Becoming like passersby' implies an awareness of an end or goal to human
life not contained in this material world and so all the situations we find ourselves in are understood
to be transitory. What might be this goal of human existence?
Further light on this saying may be had by reading the parable of the good Samaritan in the Gospel
according to Luke.

Pondering the Cosmos

How is it possible that I can ponder the cosmos? I am a structured conglomeration of molecules
that is very tiny living within a gigantic universe, yet my brain is able to grasp said universe intellectually as a whole in relation to myself and think about it; its origin, its end, its continuing existence, its purpose or meaning, its makeup. Is the human brain, in some sense, bigger than the cosmos? I cannot physically grasp the cosmos with my hands, but I can imagine it as a whole, like
a bubble or a cloud, and examine it with my mind's eye. Light and darkness put together with eyes
to see and what have I got? Do light and darkness have any meaning apart from vision (someone's)
or perception? Why is not all dark? Is light a characteristic of the cosmos or of an eye (like the one
pictured on the back of a U.S. dollar bill)? I do not know. There is light in the cosmos, which Dr.
Einstein said is the fastest travelling phenomenon within it, and there is darkness in the cosmos.
Scientists, cosmologists are puzzled by what is called 'dark matter' and 'dark energy,' yet they, we,
cannot come to understand the universe without these dark, unknown things which are out there
affecting gravity. Light is made up of photons. Perhaps darkness, physically, is not absence of light,
but micro-matter, which by its nature, voids light. So yes, darkness on a cosmic scale is absence of light, but what is there in place of light that causes its absence? The cosmos is filled with light of many wavelengths, but there is also darkness. Is this fact because light has not reached certain areas of the cosmos or because light cannot possibly reach certain parts of our universe because these parts already contain dark matter? Is it a law of physics that dark matter (I don't know; call it a gloomy mix, each
dark particle - a 'gloomer' with distinct properties yet to be measured) cancels out photons? What is
more primal, light or darkness? I realize that I'm speaking about dark matter and dark energy without fully understanding these concepts in the context of cosmology. The word 'dark' is used therein to refer to human ignorance of what is being observed with telescopes and other technology.
Yet philosophically, I'm speaking of basic properties of our cosmos, Carl Sagan' s cosmos. These things have a lot to do with the eye of the beholder (not unlike a certain tenet of quantum physics).
So here I'll leave it and ponder some more. Later.