severe heresy

more stuff i've been thinking about:

the physical relationship between evil and freedom

in a newtonian clockwork universe you could hold God accountable for everything-- every star, every butterfly, every case of cancer, every child hit by a car-- the universe would be set in motion and the conclusion would be written at the moment of formation and every single event would unfold as planned.

this sounds very boring for God. and it also sounds wrong. (but hear me out, there's predestination and free will all wrapped up together in the package ahead...)

because we don't live in a newtonian clockwork universe. we live in a heisenberg uncertaintly principle, quantum mechanics, schrodinger's cat universe full of collapsing probability fields. we're not on a table of billiard balls all colliding predictably down to the last particle; the universe is built with chaos woven right into it.

in a newtonian clockwork universe, every thought you ever thought would have been destined from the beginning of time. you would move through your life like a wind-up doll, feeling spontaneous because you were programmed to feel so and dying at the moment it was planned for the truck to hit you or for your heart attack to occur.

in a heisenberg uncertainty principle universe, you are a set of probabilities down to the chemicals in your head and the atoms that make them up and to the unimaginable tiny bits of reality that make up the atoms themselves. in order to give freedom of thought you have to weave it into the fabric of reality, down to the chemicals that the neurons use to talk to one another, down to the tiniest details of the universe.

but this freedom comes with a price-- earthquakes and cancer and typhoons and flower pots falling on your head and the thousand accidents of physics and happenstance that you allow when you let the universe be the kind of place where freedom can happen. at this price you buy autonomy for your servants, you graciously allow them to chose to love and serve you.

predestiny can still happen in this setting, but it is more subtle. an apple seed is made capable of growing into an apple tree-- of setting out its apple leaves, of growing its apple tree trunk, of bearing its apples. this is destiny-- your goodness is inside you in the same way the apples are inside the apple seed: secret, hidden, possible...

more heresy

moving on to more things i've been thinking of:



the purpose of reality

i've been struggling with why God would want a universe in the first place and us in it in the second and i can't say i've gotten very far with this. given the choice, i think people of faith would rather simply sit at the feet of God in adoration rather than eat and sleep and fart our way through wherever we are right now. God, being kind beyond measure, must have some reason. we, being servants, must serve some purpose.

i was watching a movie yesterday called fast cheap and out of control (which was interesting for many reasons, but i'm not writing to try to get you to watch it) and one of the people in it started talking about the interaction between consciousness and sensation. i think the point he was trying to make was that you need some sort of environmental input in order to shape consciousness. imagine a brain in a box with no way to interact with anything (somehow alive-- hey, it's a thought experiment: anything's possible in a thought experiment). i think it would be very boring for the brain and that the consciousness residing in that brain wouldn't get very far. now if you stick some hands and eyes and, well, a whole body around that brain and set it in a complicated world it would become a lot more interesting very fast.

maybe people are like clay-- if you want to form them you have to form them against something: push against them with your hands or with tools and they turn into a vase, let them just turn untouched on the potter's wheel and they remain unformed lumps.

not really sure, but maybe that's the point of having a universe full of stuff-- maybe that's the stuff that pushes against consciousness and helps it form into something interesting.

heresy

so i've got a few things i just have to say in public and i don't know if anyone is out there and i don't know how any of it is going to go over but here it is:

the transcendent unity of God

a few concepts keep running through my mind and then click into place. they're heretical, hence the title. the first one i want to write about is the transcendent unity of God.

God makes a huge point of being one God, the one and only but why bother? if you are the only God there is, then whoever is praying is praying to you. you feed them and tend them and look into their hearts and listen to their prayers-- what does it matter what they call you? why bother pointing out that you are not only the river god and the mountain god and the god of the trees and the sun but all thoes wrapped up together?

and, being God, who sees into everyone's hearts, you know that people who are praying to you each have a different concept of who you are. they are, in essence, each praying to a slightly different god. you, being more than can fit into the mind of a believer, squeeze yourself into their hearts and, being patient, do not mind the flaws in their concept of you. why bother to correct them with your number?

i think the point of the distinction is to keep people from fighting tribal wars, all in the name of "my god is bigger than your god" by reminding them that you are the God of their tribe and the God of their enemy, of the rocks and the trees and the oceans-- that there is no need to fight over you, that you wish they would stop.

i've heard speeches about "false gods", about money and status and sex and i agree that these are distractions and can't be the direction of a meaningful life, but i don't think anyone is seriously sacrificing goats over them. to call them false gods is to use metaphor; i don't think those are the false gods at all.

it is a subtle thing, but i think that when we bicker over whose religion is "right" we are setting up false gods ("their god" and "our god") while setting aside the point i think God is trying to make-- he is God of everyone. we are all wrong and we are all right. we are all mistaken about God and God is big enough and patient enough to let it slide. but we need to stop pretending that we disagree about who is God-- there's only one and God is the only game in town. the unity of God unifies religion. everyone who prays prays to God and God hears us all.

am i doing this wrong?

so about a week ago one of my friends showed up to work in a headscarf. she called me over and told me she'd been thinking about it for years now and decided that this was the moment, this was the time. and the time she decided this was while she was watching me give a talk at work.

so today it's off.

and yesterday, at eid, i was the only woman there in a scarf. it was a south indian party, so there's kind of a cultural difference in interpretations of what you're supposed to wear, but i felt just about a conspicuous as i always do.

i think that's the thing. i feel conspicuous. and paradoxically naked. if i were walking around in a miniskirt and cleavage no one would be able to tell my religion or how important it was to me. granted, they still really can't-- with me all covered up-- but with this thing on my head i think they can hazard a guess. and they're right: yes, i'm muslim. yes, religion is very important to me. yes, i think it's safe to say that i spend all day trying very hard to do the right thing, the kind thing. and i'm always worried that i'm falling short.

i eat halal. i don't paint my fingernails. i'm (sporadically) trying to learn Arabic. when i pray i mean it. but somehow the depth of my faith-- and, frankly, the name of my faith in this Christian-majority country-- are kind of personal. and they're much more personal to me than my hair.

so today i sat in the middle of work feeling like a ridiculous fraud in my pretty, pretty scarf and for the millionth time since i put it on i thought about taking it off. and for the millionth time i didn't.