[1] + Running /usr/bin/universe

[dr_tectonic]

Religion has come up in a number of places recently, and I wanted to share an idea that I find interesting. I got it from a science fiction novel, so I won't pretend that it's deeply profound or anything, but on the other hand, I think that's as venerable a heritage as most religious/philosophical ideas. (The book is The Genocidal Healer, one of the Sector General novels by James White, and is about the new chaplain of an interstellar hospital.) It's kind of neat that the idea isn't presented as a truth in the world of the novel; it's just another religious idea that some people hold.

The idea is an answer to the Question of Evil: i.e., why does stuff suck? If whoever created the universe is benevolent, why do bad things happen? Why is Creation imperfect?

And the answer is: because it's not finished yet. Creation is still happening; evolution, civilization, scientific progress, all these things are part of God's ongoing creation of the universe.

I like this idea because not only does it answer a tough problem, it also tells you what to do about it. If the universe isn't finished, then as self-aware parts of the universe, clearly our job is to help finish it. The point of existence is to make things better than they were.

Do I actually believe in this idea? Sometimes. Ask me later, when we're done...

Comments

[toosuto.livejournal.com]

Or as Neil Gaiman put it in Good Omens (paraphrased of course), creation isn't a chess match between God and the Devil, it's a very complex game of solitaire.

and because the crazy pills are still showing their effects: the script for Twin Beaks.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Wellcome to the tribe, dr_tectonic! The idea that it's mankind's job to complete God's creation is a central part of Jewish teleology. The term for it is tikkun olam. You spotted it in a sci fi, but that just goes to show that we have our wily ways.

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

Cool! I'm a little bit kabbalistic...

[dpolicar]

Yeah... as ocschwar points out, this is an idea of good standing in some faiths.

Another idea I'm fond of in this context of was once phrased to me as "The Universe doesn't understand 'no'"... deriving from the consensual-reality cosmology, but treating it not as wish-fulfillment but as a kind of template-mapping process... that whatever the referents are for the symbols in your head start to manifest around you, whether you want them or fear them or hate them or whatever. So if you go around thinking "I don't want to get cancer!" a lot, then what manifests is cancer. I usually think of it as the "blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah" theory.

As you say, the issue is not so much whether it's true, but what attitudes and behaviors it inspires. What I like about it is that it reminds me of my own contribution to the problem whenever I get absorbed in attending to my fears and cynicism and anxieties and hates and pains to the exclusion of my hopes and ideals and aspirations and loves and joys. (What I don't like about it is the 'blame-the-victim' aspect... but in general, I think religious precepts apply better in the first person than the second or third.)

Another one I'm fond of is that evil is concomitant with free will (though free will is a hoary old chestnut in and of itself)... the "of course you let your child make mistakes; otherwise they never learn!" school. The fact that some folks can espouse this doctrine alongside the "eternal punishment of the damned" meme seems bewilderingly schizophrenic, though ("of course you let your child make mistakes! And then you lock them in the cellar until they die to punish them for it, right?")

[dpolicar]

...and I'm a little bit rock-and-roll...

Little help down here?

[(Anonymous)]

If I'm supposed to help build this thing, then I want a better blueprint, please.

--Chris