Thomism's rock and a hard place

Thomism has many virtues - its adherents are trying to make people think more clearly and more formally.  They provide a structure for that.  They began with reacting against the problems of Aristotle's day.  As the world of thinkers took a sharp turn toward naturalism and rationality and formal logic, the Catholics needed a hero to tell the world: "Hey, two can play at that logic game!"  Thomas Aquinas was their man - he took formal logic and turned it to a proof of God - and was rightly made a doctor saint of the Church.

Ever since then, he has come in and out of style.  At times like ours, what with postmodernism and hippies and new atheists and all, Aquinas needed a dusting off.  The atheists claim logic says there is no God and the Catholic church retorts that logic can lead one to God. Modern Thomists seem to ascribe to a theory that a man should first be virtuous and then make moral decisions.  He can be virtuous if he studies the advice of St. Thomas.  A man should not look to the consequences of an action as his guide.  He should not blindly follow rules as his guide.  He should, instead, keep his person free of sin and moral mistakes and then go out to trust his pristine instincts as his guide.  Discussions and thought experiments teach this disciplined formal tact.

It sounds great - I think I agree.  But when I read the conclusions drawn from their thought experiments, I cringe.  So, what little place are they getting stuck between the rock (not being an atheist) and the hard place (not using a bad guide)? 

They are depending too much on logic.  It's a great technique, especially when under attack by atheists, but it has limits.  Logic is a road that can take you anywhere.  You still have to make decisions, even after you embark on the road.  When St. Thomas said he could use logic to prove there was a God, he was winking.  He was countering people who he (probably correctly) assumed were so caught up in logic that they would not notice its limitations. 

We were not atheists in the first place, so we don't need that logic antidote.  We don't have to strictly follow the logic path.  We already see what is going on.  That gives us more leisure to actually analyze the whole scenario in a thought experiment and come up with great answers.  We can notice (and cringe) when Thomists are coming to conclusions that are cruel.  We can find a better conclusion.  We have the advantage of being flexible enough to find a solution that keeps us kind while still keeping us virtuous and while still minimizing harm to others.  It's not being a consequentialist to at least look at consequences.  It's part of the scenario.  Also part of the scenario is 'how did things get this bad in the first place?' and 'how can we comfort victims now if we couldn't comfort them in the past?' and 'how can we prepare the next generation to see these scenarios even more clearly?'. We don't have to take all the medicine that was prepared to counter atheists - we were never sick in that way.

Thomism and group thinking

First a couple of Wikipedia-generated quotes to define groupthink:
The majority of the initial research on groupthink was performed by Irving Janis, a research psychologist from Yale University. In an influential 1972 book, his original definition of the term was "A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive ingroup, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action."
Janis claimed to have found eight "main symptoms" of groupthink: "invulnerability," "rationale," "morality," "stereotypes," "pressure," "self-censorship," "unanimity," and "mindguards (a member of a group who serves as an informational filter, providing limited information to the group and, consciously or subconsciously, utilizing a variety of strategies to control dissent and to direct the decision-making process toward a specific, limited range of possibilities.)
[I purposely chose quotes that suit me for this discussion.]

Someone asked me to support my comment that Thomism blogs engage in group thinking - not that there is anything wrong with group thinking if you choose the right group.  My point is that the pot (Thomism blogs) is calling the kettle (atheists who rally for reason) black.  I quickly chose some comments from adherents to Thomism.

invulnerability, "Sophie should have stood her ground against the Nazi with both of her children at her side, rather than watch her daughter be dragged off." [Invulnerabilty because I've noticed Thomists imply that they could have done better in a difficult situation than their straw man could.  Yeah, right, commenter, I really believe you would have stood your ground against Nazis - sure.]

rationale, "I want to suggest that the correct moral judgment in that case (given the fact that any rational capacity could be mustered in that situation) would be to let both children be taken away by the Nazi! In order to figure out why, it is important to identify some relevant views held by an adherent to (at least an Aristotelian) virtue ethics:" [That's what we need in order to figure out 'why'?  I think not.]

morality, "I believe that the moral choice would be to allow both children to die, as presented in the view of the virtue ethicist. For reasons presented above, it would bring about the greatest amount of happiness and remove oneself from the evil act in all ways" [Your children are both dead, lady?  That sucks.  But just think about how happy you are going to be.] Weird morality.
 
 stereotypes, "Really, let's try to think, rather than just playing silly "gotcha" games of the sort people like to crap up comboxes with, shall we?" [Why oh why does no one besides us Thomists know how to think?]
 
pressure, "The way to persuade (most) philosophers is to provide the best and most cogent argumentation you can. Exciting unnecessary and unhelpful emotional agitation poses an obstacle to a reasoned debate/discussion."  [Sue, you ignorant slut.]

self-censorship,"I'd like to add that Aristotle's notion of virtue is not only compatible with selflessness, but rather demands it." [Let me clarify all the many ways I follow Aristotle! His notion of virtue is my notion of virtue.]
 
unanimity "Although this is a hard position to take, I think that a virtue ethicist, in order to be consistent and to make his/her position effectual, needs to avoid any moral decision that relies primarily on a consequential calculus. Rather, a consistent virtue ethics needs to be targeted squarely (and unflinchingly) at the horizon of what is uncompromisingly valuable, noble and perfect," [Let's none of us flinch, people!]

mindguards "I can't know what's going on in every reader's head, and thus I cannot know whether this or that remark really reflected nothing more than confusion or ignorance, or was instead a cheap shot on the part of someone who should know better. Pick the one that applies and ignore the other." [I had a hard time choosing, but I think I'm gonna have to go with ignorance.]

Thomism and Santa Claus

I heard a well-known Thomist argue against telling children there is a Santa Claus.  The reason for that is that natural law tells us that speaking against one's mind ('lying' as we would call it) is intrinsically wrong.  I disagree about Santa.  Don't listen to me, however, because in general I am rather not bothered about lies very much - which explains a lot of my bad habits - but I digress ...  Anyway I love telling children there is a Santa.  I think it is a great lesson to demonstrate 'a better way to think' than literally.

It expands their viewpoint, but kindly.  When they find out the 'truth' it gives them lots of food for thought.  Hmmmmm ... they think back to what transpired.  "I always thought it was weird that Santa had the exact same wrapping paper you did, Mommy!"  Yes, dear, you are a clever boy. "Then, are you and Daddy God too?"  No, darling, God is really real.  "You know, I sort of thought it might be you and Daddy that were Santa, but I figured you guys would never buy us that much stuff ."  Well, see, we did!  There is a whole other side to us that you didn't know about.

And technically, as I am sure to point out to them, Santa is real.  The story is real in our society: Santa exists and if you don't believe me, go to any mall in America. 

Santa exists because we all love him.  Awesome.  And then, in the case of an older child, she can be in on the fun. "Don't tell Molly, ok, dear?  We want her to enjoy Christmas, she is little still.  You can conspire with me now - you are a big girl."  In other words, "You have an expanded viewpoint of something now.  You are wiser.  You can see something as real and unreal at the same time."

And when you grow up and people use reason to try to convince you to blame the victim of crime or to think there is no God, you will know a 'better way to think': it's called wisdom. 

Thomism and its frenemies

I am so glad I discovered Thomism blogs before March 24th, because this is going to be a great fight:  Thomism reason vs. Atheism reason.  I have my front row seat.  How about you?  If ever there were two opposing groups who needed each other more, I can't think of them.  Maybe it is rigged (like some people say about professional wrestling).  I heard a rumor that the big halftime show will be a cage match between strawmen.

Thomism's ladders

Logic, especially as practiced formally, is a ladder.  I will pick on Thomism here because (check out my sidebar) I have been reading those blogs.  The professors of Thomism speak a different language from mine.  Which is fine; I am learning to translate.  They are constructing thought ladders with very particular steps in order to arrive at true conclusions (the windows).  They keep the ladders in great shape - most are not missing any rungs.  If a rung is missing, their colleagues will let them know.  Tighten those rungs, guys!  The ladders are polished.  They are oiled.  They are fancy.  Aquinas would be proud of the ladders - he helped invent the concept.

I am the nosy neighbor lady who yells over at them, "You are climbing to the wrong window!  Move your ladder."

The thing about ladders that the Thomism folks seem to have not noticed is that you can look up at the windows FIRST.  Choose a window and then use your ladder to reach it.  Simple.  If you go up and fix the wrong window, you are not helping anything.

Lowered entropy

"I have already mentioned the unidirectional process of a cup breaking. Another is mixing cream with coffee. It is virtually impossible to reverse these processes. This is beautifully illustrated by running a film backwards: you see things that are impossible in the real world. This unidirectionality, or arrow, is precisely reflected in the fact that the entropy of any isolated system left to itself always increases (or perhaps stays constant)."
from Julian Barbour's The End of Time.

This is how the direction of time's arrow and entropy (always lower in the past and higher in the future) are explained.  An omelet never turns back into an egg, and therefore time moves in only one direction.

I think it's just a point of view.  It  looks like that because, always for us or for any object, the future is an undetermined wave with energy generalized over the whole wave, and the past is a particular past.  A particular past contains energy that has been distilled out of the generalized wave, and it is rather high energy in comparison to the wave.

If I hold my freshly made omelet "now" and look back into the generalized past (not my own past), it does not necessarily become an "egg" in that general past.  The egg existed on my one and only actualized past, yes.  But all those other paths are a wave - and in that wave those particles that make up my omelet were probably part of a dog or a sand dune or a vase.  They were only an egg in one past.  If I could erase my past and just look back on a general wave (which is what I am doing when I look into the future), I would not see lower entropy.  I would see higher entropy for those particles.  I see higher entropy no matter which 'direction' I look.  So there is no asymmetry of time!

And that is also why it looks like everything depends on initial conditions: because we can look back to one particular past.  We can't look back to the general unactualized past.  There are initial conditions on our path.  But there are not initial conditions in the generalized wave-like unactualized past.  We see it as lowered entropy, but that is only our point of view (even a rock has a point of view in that same way).

Time's arrow revisited

Someone who knows x to the thousandth degree more about science than I do kindly told me I was describing the Block Universe theory.  And he also said that my description does not have anything to do with thermodynamic symmetry, etc.  And probably he is correct.

However, I still think there is a different way to look at time.
If it all existed from the beginning (all the almost infinite possibilities of each moment), it would look sort of like a Block Universe, but much more filled out.  It would include all the paths.  It would include paths that had never been used.  It would include all the paths that never will be used.  And it would, of course, include all the paths that had and will be actualized by use.  It would be full - almost effervescent:

 "N" stands for "now".  It is me, now.  Everything past and everything future exists as a wave.  It has thermodynamic energy that is generalized over the whole wave.  It is in thermodynamic equilibrium.  All of reality, if looked at this way, is in equilibrium.

But paths that were actually used have higher consolidated thermodynamic energy.  We'll call the paths below me in the diagram the past and the paths above me the future. Here is the path that I actually took in my past:

 It is now separated out from the wave.  Sort of a particle path.  If I am looking at the general past, it has equilibrium thermodynamics.  But if I look at my personalized path it has high thermodynamic energy.  I used some of the general energy of the wave to make ice cubes yesterday for instance.

In my future, all of the paths are already there.  But I am only going to actually travel ('live') on one particular path.  In my whole life, I will not affect the whole universe at all (it was already the way it is before I got here).  I do not change anything.  I only travel through something that already exists.

But do you see that in picture 2 where I am looking out into an unactualized future, I see the future as being in a lower thermodynamic state than my present and past are in?  I see it that way because it is a wave.  It has equilibrium energy.  That equilibrium energy is lower than my path's particular energy.  The ice I made will melt when it meets that future.  Unless, of course, I choose a path wherein I keep it in the freezer.  The ice has low entropy, yes, but only because of the path I traveled.  I took free-floating wave energy and turned it into ice for my own personal life.  In the future, if left alone, that ice is sure to melt.  But it does not melt because the past is lower entropy and the future is higher entropy.  That is only one viewpoint.  All reality stays in equilibrium thermodynamically no matter what.  It is symmetrical because it stays energetically low all the time in comparison to a real actualized path.

Time's arrow

An award winning blog article on time discusses how entropy may or may not increase in the future or decrease in the past.  There are two viewpoints on that - Is time's arrow real or imagined?  Is time symmetrical or not?

But, I think they are looking at it wrong.  Here is a sentence from the article:
"The mystery of the arrow of time is that entropy only increases towards the future. Put another way, why does entropy actually decrease towards the past, despite what the statistics predict?"

Isn't that just exactly what it would look like if all of time existed in the way that all geographical coordinates exist?  If we had traveled ('lived') on a path that has already been chosen out of many possible paths as to the past and has not yet been chosen from many possible paths as to the future?  If time is like landscape?  Would it not seem that way?

It would account for how entropy and thermodynamics look.  Of course there is less entropy in the past - we have already chosen the path there.  Of course there is more entropy in the future - there are almost infinity of paths that we could choose.

If I am traveling on land, no one is surprised to hear that my path has less entropy behind me (it is confined to one chosen path now).  Or that my path has massive entropy ahead of me.  I could go anywhere.  I could walk to the mountains, that street there or that street there or over to the stream or to the store.  Ahead of me is a mess of unchosen paths.

So, if time is like that, and I think it is, we should not be surprised to hear that "entropy" is massive in my future.  I haven't chosen any path through reality yet.  But that does not mean that time's reality does not exist already, anymore than walking on land means that the landscape does not already exist whether I go there or not.

Aquinas and flooded engines

I think the philosophers like Thomas Aquinas were not so much trying to prove there is a God as they were trying to prove that man could prove through reason that there is a God.  Have you ever read any layouts of this kind of process?:

"The third proof is taken from the natures of the merely possible and necessary. We find that certain things either may or may not exist, since they are found to come into being and be destroyed, and in consequence potentially, either existent or non-existent. But it is impossible for all things that are of this character to exist eternally, because what may not exist, at length will not. If, then, all things were merely possible (mere accidents), eventually nothing among things would exist. If this is true, even now there would be nothing, because what does not exist, does not take its beginning except through something that does exist. If then nothing existed, it would be impossible for anything to begin, and there would now be nothing existing, which is admittedly false. Hence not all things are mere accidents, but there must be one necessarily existing being. Now every necessary thing either has a cause of its necessary existence, or has not. In the case of necessary things that have a cause for their necessary existence, the chain of causes cannot go back infinitely, just as not in the case of efficient causes, as proved. Hence there must be presupposed something necessarily existing through its own nature, not having a cause elsewhere but being itself the cause of the necessary existence of other things---which all call God."

That type of thing.  It's almost a circular type of formal reasoning where you cannot deviate from the logic plan.  "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" could be a criticism of this.

In the winter here in Iowa, back a few years when car engines could flood, I would sometimes get rescued by my incredulous husband: "Take your foot off the gas!"  "But it won't start."  "You are making it worse.  Take your foot off the gas and let it alone for five minutes."  "But I have to get to work."  "Here, get out and let me do it,"

That's what I think logic is if you pursue it like Thomists do.  You compound any errors you have by keeping consistent and insistent.  "Sophie's choice Sophie conspired with evil."  "No she did not - can't you see she was a victim?"  "But this is my job, philosopher!"  "Here, get out and let me do it. Sheesh.  There's a better way to think than this.  Your mind is flooded."

Pretty close

This is pretty close to what I'm thinking about time:  Time Does Not Exist by Robert Vaessen.  I would not call it 'time not existing' though because it is more 'time is different than we used to think".  And I don't agree with his version of what a person who believes in God would take from it. He says, "If you believe that someone else (god) chooses the path for you, then you have come to the conclusion that "your" destiny has been pre-ordained, and you are simply an observer."  Nope.

But, other than that, it's the closest I've come to finding out what this theory is.

Background fabric

I am reading a most fascinating book called "The Quantum and the Lotus" by Ricard and Thuan.  I'll bet I said that recently; typing the names rings a bell.  With 'Thuan' I have a feeling I am showing cultural ignorance because that is perhaps his first name and not his last name ... I really should google it or I will have that same thought every single time I write or hear his name.  The whole point of the book is to stop having the same silly thoughts over and over.  I wonder if the authors know that google is a pathway to nirvana in that it often stops my erroneous silly thoughts in their tracks.

The best thing in my world right now is my kindle fire.  I had a eureka moment upon being shown a friend's new modern gizmo.  I must have one!  Today!  And so I got one - our world is magical.  Never before had that happened.  I never wanted a cell phone, ereader, angry birds, facebook ... nothing ever until I saw a kindle fire.  I now actually read books cover to cover because the fire makes that easy.  This is the first cover to cover philosophy book I've done in years.

Buddhism is explained.  I now see what is meant by non-dualism.  Buddhism takes the mind as the real thing and the world of matter as an apparent thing.  The physical world is in a constant flow, but the mind can be ordered with lots of practice to be happy and fulfilled.  It's about dropping our attachment to unreal things.  There is no god-reality-outside force that is real.  Everything is a pairing of our mind and the flow of unreal reality.  It is possible to come to scientific knowledge through contemplation.  But it is hard to duplicate experiments.  However, the fact that you actually can duplicate contemplation experiments gives substance to the authors' claims.

That's neither here nor there.  What struck me most is their description of the controversy in mathematics about whether there is a real kingdom of math outside of our minds or whether math is simply an expression of what our mind can know.  It reminded me of my own controversy brewing in my imagination over whether there is a real kingdom of completed time outside of our minds or whether time is an expression of what our mind can know.  And it also reminded me of the authors' mental controversy between Buddhism and the west over whether there is a real physical world outside of our minds or whether physics is just an expression of what our mind can know.

All my life I would have instinctively thought that the outside world in all three cases probably did not exist.  I believed in God, but not in a steady reality.  But now that I've thought up a scenario about time being totally real and also totally complete from the get-go, I have changed my mind about it.  I think math and physics and time are objectively real.

And it is so much like quilting.  You can either piece a quilt or applique a quilt.  You can either make your design with the fabric itself or you can add designs as pictures on top of a background fabric and sew it on (neatly).  The 'neatly' part is why I have always abhored applique.  It is a metaphor - is reality a background fabric with pictures sewn on top?  or a picture made out of the fabric itself?  Hmmm ... now I see that perhaps applique really is preferable.  My sister was correct all along.

Aquinas and liberal Catholics

Well, ok, he does not want to be mentioned with liberal Catholics, I am just giving him a hard time.

I love the Catholic church and I love saints.  They have collectively saved my life.  My lives, my earthly life and my spiritual life.  In heaven, Aquinas will have a no-contact order out on me, but hopefully I will still make it in.  I'll stay 500 ft away, I promise.  He got there first and he is a saint and all, so I will have to stifle my opinions.

Thought experiment:  Let's choose a saint we would want to accompany us in wartime horrors.  I choose St. Thomas Aquinas.  I think his intellect will come in handy.  Wartime is sure to bring out the worst in me and I will need lots of moral guidance.  He will keep me honest.  He will keep me virtuous.  If the guards ask me whether anyone is still hiding back at my house, Aquinas will sense that I am saying "I was the last one."  And then he can reprimand me just loud enough for the guards to hear - "Sue, that's not the truth is it?"  And then if the guards pull that "choose one person to live from this group or we will kill them all" stuff, I will look at him and he will scowl, knowing what I am about to do ... and he can say, "She will not cooperate with evil."  And I will nod.  And then I will start looking forward to my future happiness - glad that I am so awesome.  And in our spare time, he can entertain me with summa theologica trivia.

No wait, I'm already getting annoyed.  I will change to St. Maximilian Kolbe.  He was a true rock in the concentration camp.  He turned white when the phone call from the Nazis came to him at the monastery he was in charge of.  They had been hassling him for a while and now they were coming to get him.  He was frightened, but you could tell his real gut-wrench came from his knowing that they would soon come to get his friends, his fellow monks.  It was hellish.  He prayed for everyone constantly, even for the guards.  He was devoted to the virgin Mary.  He stayed pretty calm.  People looked to him for comfort.

When a prisoner escaped, the guards made everyone count off numerically and every tenth person was killed.  Not killed quickly.  They were stuffed into a dungeon to starve to death over the next several days.  One man freaked out with massive loud anxiety when his number was called.  He was delirious with panic (that would be me, I'm sure).  Kolbe asked the guard if he could take the man's place.

That had an effect, a good one, on everyone present.  It was a thought from outside the box.  It was a way to fight the Nazis with confident acquiescence.  Everyone was surprised.  Everyone was made better for witnessing it, I think.

It took a long, long time for Kolbe to starve to death.  Eventually the Nazis just poisoned him to speed it along.  In the dungeon, he kept everyone enthralled with prayer and hymns as they died.  He never tried to make people feel they had failed and cooperated with evil.  I would prefer that.

Thomism and chivalry

Wikipedia:  "St Thomas Aquinas taught that raising prices in response to high demand was a type of theft."

That quality of his makes me think Aquinas valued having virtuous ethics toward the whole group of one's contemporaries.  It was wrong to enrich oneself at the expense of everyone else.

So, in the case of Sophie's choice, would Aquinas have pondered the virtue ethics of the people in line with her?  There was a line of innocents heading toward the gas chambers together.  Was Sophie the only one cooperating with evil in the eyes of Thomist scholars?  Steubenville is being very hard on Sophie.  They are saying she did wrong in attempting to save one child.  They are doing a rough morality post mortem on her as we speak.

Where were the men?  She was Polish.  Where were her Polish menfolk while all this brutality was going down?  Surely some were in the line too.  A woman alone with two little ones being tormented by the Nazis.  And they stood silent?  They cowered?  How were their virtue ethics working out for them?

The men in  our world could, at the very least, support her now.  It's terrible to see groups of guys second-guessing the morality of a female victim of crime.

Virtue Ethics

Virtue Ethics (VE, for those of us who throw the term around) is a fine philosophy.  Wikipedia helped me build a shelf last night to hold my new-found knowledge of ethics.  Virtue ethics' motto could be "Be the change you hope to see in your world".  It means that instead of following rules or determining which outcomes are wonderful in order to decide a dilemma, it is best to simply be a virtuous person and then decide.  You could call it "being in the present as a fine person" as opposed to "I need to memorize the rules of the past" or "I need to see the future outcomes". 

VE as practiced in ivory towers, is ... well, let's call it unintentionally ironic.  For example, the lively discussion about Sophie's choice.  Sophie is hypothetical, but we all know this type of thing happens: cruelty and torture in war.  Sophie's problem in the past was that the Nazis tortured her by making her choose between her children in order to save one's life.  Sophie's problem in the present is that scholars are torturing her by calling her evil and implying that Thomas Aquinas is making them do it.

[I'm not criticising Thomism blogs really - they are great reading.  And I think professors have to do this type of thing in college ethics classes.  I'm criticising their removal of my comments for having a different viewpoint - but then, hey, that's why I have my own blog.]

A proper VE take on any moral dilemma should demonstrate one of the highest virtues: that of kindness.

Sophie was a mother of young children, a victim of horror, a person who had no one to help her but many to hurt her.  She walked that path toward the death chambers alone (do these conservative proponents of marriage not take this lack of her being with a beloved husband into consideratation?)  She was the sole protector of her children.  She was terrified.  She had to continue to hide her terror.  The guards must have been her personal hell.  She's hypothetical, but the scenario is not.

Torture chamber time: choose one child who will live.  When you are alone and are responsible for children you just most likely do this: you attempt to let one live.  The ivory tower types can see this in the cases of natural disaster, but not in the case of torture.

When 'Sophie' (any victim of torture, rape, horror) eventually re-enters normal society, the ONLY virtue ethic the rest of us need is kindness.  Whatever it was that she decided, that was the correct decision.  We can help her come to terms with it.  She did nothing evil, in any case.  The Nazis who thought it up did evil.  The victims did not do evil.  We virtue ethicists can help put her mind at ease.

"You chose to save your son?"   "Good, I hope he grows up to kick some Nazi ass."
"You chose to save your daughter?"   "Good, you knew she needed her Mommy at her age."
"You let them take both?"   "Good, it was a choice no mother could ever make."

That is virtue ethics.  You help the good people when you can.  You know you yourself could not do better.  Good people need to stick together in times of hardship and war.

Thomas Aquinas and I

This came in so handy!  I was at a bible study and they were passing around a jar to take donations for starving victims of civil war in Africa.  When my turn came, I simply made everyone take back their money.  "What are you doing, Sue?" asked Father Wonderful.

I told him about Steubenville's theory of virtue.  About how these were God's children.  Sure, we could save a few lives, but we could never save them all.  We would be choosing some to save.  It is evil to make choices like that.  Our donations, although we might at first glance think were helping, were actually turning us into (slightly) evil people.   "I will not cooperate with evil for one more day!", I said.  Father was impressed.   He wants me to come to his office at 2 pm.  Awesome.
**********************
That's a comment I thought was rather funny and clever that I left on Paul Symington's blog just now.  But Paul must have hated it because he immediately deleted it.  He is discussing Sophie's Choice and Virtue Ethics.  Evidently Thomas Aquinas and I do not get along.  He's a saint and I'm not, so that should probably tell you who to believe.

I'm somewhat appalled that this stuff is being taught by my church.  I see Thomism as having no 20-20 hindsight at all.  You would think ethics in the past would be easy to analyze.  But no.  Here is how it works on these blogs:
1.) propose an ethical/moral dilemma.
2.) analyze and come to an odd conclusion.
3.) incorrectly call some of the innocent hypothetical people evil.
4.) stick to your analysis no matter what common sense says.

I'll try to avoid these blogs, but sometimes ... I'm bored and I just can't ...

Giving up logic for Lent

Lent Project: to every day think of something that is enhanced if indeed all futures already exist.  Maybe something conflicts with this theory, but I can't yet find anything.  Garden of Forking Paths*.  GFP, since it seems to have no name yet.

The first thing is Swedenborg's idea of why Jesus came:
The Lord came into the world to save the human race which would otherwise have perished in eternal death. This salvation the Lord effected by subjugating the hells, which infested every man coming into the world and going out of the world, and by glorifying His Humanity; for so He can hold the hells subdued to eternity. The subjugation of the hells, and the glorification at the same time of His Humanity, were effected by temptations let into the Humanity He had from the mother, and by unbroken victories. His passion on the cross was the last temptation and complete victory. --Heavenly Doctrine, n. 293

I have always loved this: He came to subdue the hells which were becoming overwhelming.
Well, if all those wrong paths (all those forks that are not according with God's will) comprise hell ... and they are a domain of evil ... because once a person starts down one, he is stuck in it because of one thing always leading to the next thing ...
Then you can see why the hells would become overwhelming over time.

And so, Jesus came right into the middle of the maze and became a Light for everyone to follow.  And that had the effect of minimizing all the other paths, so the hells were subdued.
_______________________
Wikipedia: * Dr. Albert realized that the "garden of forking paths" was the novel, and that the forking took place in time, not in space. As compared to most fictions, where the character chooses one alternative at each decision point and thereby eliminates all the others, Ts'ui Pên's novel attempted to describe a world where all possible outcomes of an event occur simultaneously, each one itself leading to further proliferations of possibilities. Albert further explains that these constantly diverging paths do sometimes converge again, though as the result of a different chain of causes; for example, he says, in one possible time-line Dr. Tsun has come to his house as an enemy, in another as a friend.
 (Which is only a novel, so we can't fall for it completely or anything, but it shows that Borges (who loved Swedenborg too) had my idea before I did).

Land (2)

What goes well with the Garden of Forked Paths theory, day 2?  I didn't have to look far: the weird way the Bible refers to "land".
Here's what I think - the Bible uses geography to symbolize time. It is a clue that time is similar to geography. Ergo - all futures already exist, although there is only one of each of us and only one universe.  The many futures that exist can best be compared to different lands.  If I go to Omaha today, it will not mean that Des Moines ceases to exist.

Today's reading from Mass:
Dt. Moses said to the people:
"Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom.
If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God,
which I enjoin on you today,
loving him, and walking in his ways,
and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees,
you will live and grow numerous,
and the LORD, your God,
will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.
If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen,
but are led astray and adore and serve other gods,
I tell you now that you will certainly perish;
you will not have a long life
on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy.
I call heaven and earth today to witness against you:
I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse.
Choose life, then,
that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God,
heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.
For that will mean life for you,
a long life for you to live on the land that the LORD swore
he would give to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."
***************
Just wait.  After forty of these, you will see it my way.

Actual vs. apparent time (3)

This Swedenborg passage lends itself well to the idea that time is very concrete in the physical world, much like geographical places are (or at least does not conflict with that idea):

True Christian Religion (Rose) n. 2
2. God is infinite because he existed before the world, before space and time came into being. The physical world has time and space. The spiritual world, on the other hand, lacks actual time and space, although it does have apparent time and space.Time and space were introduced into both worlds for the sake of distinguishing one thing from another, large from small, many from few - one quantity from another, and one quality from another. Time and space allow our bodily senses to discern the objects they are sensing; and they allow our mental senses to discern the objects they are sensing - to be affected, to think, and to choose.
Units of time were introduced into our physical world by the spinning of the earth on its axis and its orbit from point to point along the zodiac. (The sun, the source of heat and light for this whole globe of lands and seas, only seems to be the cause of these cycles.) The result is the times of day: morning, afternoon, evening, and night; and the seasons of the year: spring, summer, fall, and winter. The times of day vary from light to dark; the seasons of the year vary from hot to cold.
Units of space are part of our physical world because the earth was formed into a globe composed of substances whose elements are differentiated from each other and also extended.
In the spiritual world, there are no physical units of space or corresponding units of time. Yet there appear to be. Apparent space and time follow the different states of mind that spirits and angels go through there. The units of spiritual time and space match the desires of their will and the resulting thoughts in their intellect. Apparent space and time, then, are real - they are predictably determined by one's state of mind.
[2] The general opinion on the state of souls after death, as well as of angels and spirits, is that they have no extension - they are not in space or time. This has led to the saying about souls after death that they are in limbo, and that spirits and angels are ghosts, which are thought of as ether, air, breath, or wind.
In fact, souls after death are substantial people who live together like people in the physical world, only with units of space and time that are determined by their states of mind. If the spiritual universe - destination of souls and home of angels and spirits - lacked its own space and time then it could be passed through the eye of a needle or compressed onto the tip of a single hair. This would be possible if there were no substantial extension there. Since there is substantial extension there, however, angels live among each other with clear and distinct boundaries, in fact with even clearer boundaries than people on earth do, where there is material extension.Time in the spiritual world is not marked by days, weeks, months, and years, because the sun there does not seem to rise and set or to swing across the sky. It stands still in the east, halfway between the horizon and the point directly overhead. Because everything that is physical in our world is substantial in the spiritual world, there are units of space there. I will say more on this topic in the part of this chapter that deals with creation [75-80].
[3] From what I have just said, you can see that there are space and time limitations on each and every thing in both worlds; and that people have limitations not only to their bodies but even to their souls. The same goes for spirits and angels.
From all the above we can draw the conclusion that God is infinite or without limits As Creator, Shaper, and Maker of the universe, he gave everything a limit or a boundary. He did so by means of the sun that surrounds him. That sun consists of the divine essence that goes out as a sphere around him. In that sun and from it, the first limitedness occurs. Things are increasingly limited the closer they are to the lowest level of nature in the world. Since God was not created, in himself he is without limits, or infinite.
What is infinite may seem to us to be nothing, because we are finite and limited, and we base our thinking on things that are limited. If the limitations in our thought were taken away, we would see whatever was left as nothing. Yet the truth is that God is infinitely everything; of ourselves, we are relatively nothing.

Garden of forking paths (4)

The reason Borges properly named this theory is that he didn't call it 'forking paths' (which would fit any old Many Worlds theory), but instead called it the 'garden of forking paths'.  The garden part is even more important than the forking part.  The maze is contained in a garden - in a solid.  It is not a maze for its own sake.  It is a maze that lives in a garden.  That fits with a theory that all futures do exist - all the futures and all the pasts are contained in one solid mass that can only be observed by God.  It is God's garden.  Within that garden, we each have free will to chose our own adventure.  But the garden exists as is, no matter what we do.  We do not control the garden.  We only control how we maneuver in the maze.

The Bible is full of garden analogies.
Song of Solomon 4:15 A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. Yup.
Isaiah 1:29 For they shall be ashamed of the oaks which ye have desired, and ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen. Exactly.
Jeremiah 31:12 Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the LORD, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. Amen.

But, of course the mother of all garden analogies is the garden of Eden, where we all began our adventure.
Genesis 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Think about the garden of Eden and how it can go nicely with a Many Worlds theory.  There were lots of trees, which as all Swedenborgians know, symbolize thought patterns.  They are the paths that fork.  Most of them are fine, saith the Lord, but not the one that ascribes all power to humans.  All the paths worked at the beginning except for the thought pattern that convinces man that he himself rules.  That one led to less vision for mankind. That one led to disaster.  Once that path was chosen, mankind from then on was born into sin.  Born right into the faulty thought pattern. 

Before the fall, mankind was living in a delightful paradise in that he had vision and could enjoy all the fruits.  It was a feast.  But that wrong path chosen led to a darkness, where man fell into an earthly path where he could not 'see' much.  He could no longer see that all futures exist just as all land exists.  He became limited by his new groping experience of time as a complete mystery.

Subjectivity (5)

In Humanae Vitae Was Right by Janet Smith, there is an explanation by John F. Crosby of Pope John Paul's philosophy of the subjectivity of mankind:

"We do not have to hear John Paul talk for long before we realize he is fascinated with, and in awe of, the personhood of man." "... he makes much of the conscious experience which the person has of himself." .... "This is nothing other than the belonging of the person to himself as it is experienced from within by the person." "In [an essay] he claims that the objective approach, left to itself, runs the danger of losing what is distinctive of man as a person. He goes so far as to claim that the whole Aristotelian metaphysics runs the risk of "reducing man to the world", of failing to do justice to the proprium of man, to what makes him a person. He says there is a cosmological focus of the Aristotelian tradition which needs to be completed by a more personalist focus ..." "Nobody can use a person as a means toward an end, no human being ... not even God the Creator ... if God intends to direct man toward certain goals, he allows him to ... know those goals so that he may make them his own and strive toward them independently." (God respects the personhood of man).

I have to say, I started out thinking, "Sheesh, what is my church trying to say about birth control, anyway?  It makes no sense." to coming to really love Pope John Paul after I read his Humanae Vitae. It is very enlightened I think.  Very kind and hangs together in a way that all great philosophies do.  A little idealistic perhaps, when translated into our lives, but wonderful nevertheless.

*************
That has nothing to do, really, with a Many Worlds theory, except for the importance on man's subjective experience.  That subjective experience would go well with thinking that we experience time in a way that it really is not.  Time seems to flow from here to far into the future.  But that is only because we can only 'see' it from our subjectivity.  It could all exist at once, just as certainly as all land masses exist at once.  If we could not 'see' in a physical geographical sense, we would think we were creating space as we move along. We would be surprised later to find out that Iowa and Idaho and Oklahoma all existed at once, since we could only experience them one at a time.