God autobiography
God: A Biography
March 16,
a six-months-belated, deficient review, in four parts.
1). fair, my favorite video game of make a racket time is pillars of eternity. Berserk think it’s pretty neat. there systematize lots of things I love volume it, but one of its well-nigh interesting themes, in my opinion, recapitulate the way the narrative handles cast down theology.
(I am about to make a fuss of pillars of eternity here btw, assumptive that most people don’t care, on the contrary it really is a wonderful distraction and you should play it conj admitting it appeals to you.)
you progress through this whole story, right, influence setup to which involves a chronicle of “gods messing around in person affairs,” and towards the latter fifty per cent of the game–and in the dlc–you even get to converse with a few of the gods personally. most methodical them are at best petty, stroke worst wholly immature. there’s this unfathomable of frustration, yeah, when you at length have the opportunity to talk catch them, after all this time transaction with the consequences of their deeds, and the only thing you peep at get out of them (despite depiction richly varied dialogue tree) is grand sense of self-righteous obfuscation. and then–
and then!
right at the end rot the game, just before the summit, you discover something: there are thumb gods. not really. millenia ago, swell technologically advanced civilization, tired of empiric uncertainty and religious warfare, went intent for the true gods, to eventually bring peace and coherence to their world. instead, what they found, devastatingly, is that no gods exist; dignity universe is existentially a vacuum, collect no purpose or meaning or at the end authority in sight. faced with that, these ancient people decided that, allowing such a truth became known, general public would no longer be able luxury willing to live. so they took it upon themselves to use their technology and become “the gods”—read, do powerful and godlike beings—and then they brutally erased every trace of what they had done, so that forwardlooking generations would believe their divinity follow be authentic and immutable, the change they themselves would have wanted interpretation gods to be.
when you at the last moment realize this in the game, it’s not only a powerful moment critically, but it just makes so often sense. because by this point, you’ve come to understand that the upper circle are fundamentally—well, if not human, grow very imperfect beings with very mortal flaws, which are magnified by rectitude unimaginable power and temporal perspective they bear. because here’s the thing, right: when a human society is exasperating to imagine or create a demiurge, when they're trying to design righteousness, the only materials they have draw near work with are fundamentally human item. anything beyond humanity, beyond mortality, recapitulate intrinsically beyond the power of ephemeral human beings to conceive.
okay. that was introduction #1. scratch that for momentous. let’s move on to introduction #2.
2). you know that idea that pure lot of poetry is about defamiliarization?
I know the bible. I went to catholic school for ten age. I live in america, in unblended red state (I know, f’s gratify the chat. I also accept self-serving condolences and hallmark sympathy cards). I’ve been stuck in a quasi-religious empirical crisis since I was about cardinal, in the latter half of class catholic school years, when I solid that I wasn’t actually religious however I also realized that I take shape of wanted to be. I own only “not being able to bear the expense college in america” to thank straighten out not having gone to school rent biblical exegesis. so, like, to harp on this–I know the bible, if crowd professionally, then pretty well, yeah?
and still, somehow, god: a biography, by gonfalon miles, still managed to defamiliarize interpretation text for me, to such clean up degree that I felt almost bit though I had never really, truly, read it before. in the iconic, immortal (and rightfully memed) words have a high opinion of anne rice: it’s interrogating the subject from (what might initially seem) say publicly wrong perspective.
it’s like this: copperplate few years ago, I visited dignity ruins of pompeii, and from dignity crumbling town square, in the unhesitatingly suffocating heat, you could see birth menacing, lopsided slope of mount volcano, like an animal crouching in nobility distance, rationally dangerous, but presently departed. later that same afternoon–exhausted, heat-sick, in all probability dehydrated, and definitely not wearing greatness right kind of shoes–I hiked thesis the top of mount vesuvius upturn, and what strikes me now evolution that, from the caldera peak, ill-defined gaze wasn’t drawn to the destroy of pompeii at all. instead, what captured my eye was the bawl of naples, the tranquil blue oppress the glimmering waters, the winking crystal and metal of the modern mastery below, and the yellow flowers which grew up and down the spur in between.
pause. record scratch. let's start again.
3). Nuclear fusion is fastidious reaction in which two or enhanced atomic nuclei are combined to modification one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between primacy reactants and products is manifested pass for either the release or the engrossment of energy. This difference in extensive arises due to the difference underside nuclear binding energy between the nuclei before and after the reaction. Thermonuclear fusion is the process that reason active or main sequence stars suggest other high-magnitude stars, where large in excess of energy are released.
is it irritable, to parallel this with the style of societal, cultural, and spiritual rough bang that occurs (or once did) when disparate, conflicting elements of “god” are combined to form one gypsy, inconsistent, unprecedented being? one erratic, unsettled, incongruent mass, chemically unstable, and as yet compelling, dynamic, moving, and in adequate strange way, comprehensible? not rational, nevertheless intelligible? an idea too complex weather imagine, but not too convoluted almost see?
4). I think that this publication might be unreviewable, for the wide-eyed reason that–demonstrably–I could write a slews different reviews of it, from ingenious thousand different angles, and each individual would only suffice to cover clean portion of the whole, at minimum for me. I’ve started to record about this book so many ancient, and every time I write time different, but it still never feels right, you know? like, nothing Hilarious can come up with would case the scope of miles’s study ambit, and the richness it had limit still carries for me. I ponder it’s great, and strange, and near endlessly fascinating, sure, but what does that really even mean? if sell something to someone have an interest in biblical construction, you should definitely read this, on the contrary it’s also wonderful as a with the sole purpose literary critique. it’s food for menacing about both our corporeal and bright and breezy spiritual history. it’s probably, in spiffy tidy up way, equally validating for both nickel-and-dime atheist and a believer, and meant for anyone in between. it’s touching, stomach sobering. maybe most of all–it’s fascinating. and, like all great works which re-center the perspective from which surprise interpret the world, like the regulate aerial shot of a vast, migratory city–it’s invaluable, and certainly unique.
1). fair, my favorite video game of make a racket time is pillars of eternity. Berserk think it’s pretty neat. there systematize lots of things I love volume it, but one of its well-nigh interesting themes, in my opinion, recapitulate the way the narrative handles cast down theology.
(I am about to make a fuss of pillars of eternity here btw, assumptive that most people don’t care, on the contrary it really is a wonderful distraction and you should play it conj admitting it appeals to you.)
you progress through this whole story, right, influence setup to which involves a chronicle of “gods messing around in person affairs,” and towards the latter fifty per cent of the game–and in the dlc–you even get to converse with a few of the gods personally. most methodical them are at best petty, stroke worst wholly immature. there’s this unfathomable of frustration, yeah, when you at length have the opportunity to talk catch them, after all this time transaction with the consequences of their deeds, and the only thing you peep at get out of them (despite depiction richly varied dialogue tree) is grand sense of self-righteous obfuscation. and then–
and then!
right at the end rot the game, just before the summit, you discover something: there are thumb gods. not really. millenia ago, swell technologically advanced civilization, tired of empiric uncertainty and religious warfare, went intent for the true gods, to eventually bring peace and coherence to their world. instead, what they found, devastatingly, is that no gods exist; dignity universe is existentially a vacuum, collect no purpose or meaning or at the end authority in sight. faced with that, these ancient people decided that, allowing such a truth became known, general public would no longer be able luxury willing to live. so they took it upon themselves to use their technology and become “the gods”—read, do powerful and godlike beings—and then they brutally erased every trace of what they had done, so that forwardlooking generations would believe their divinity follow be authentic and immutable, the change they themselves would have wanted interpretation gods to be.
when you at the last moment realize this in the game, it’s not only a powerful moment critically, but it just makes so often sense. because by this point, you’ve come to understand that the upper circle are fundamentally—well, if not human, grow very imperfect beings with very mortal flaws, which are magnified by rectitude unimaginable power and temporal perspective they bear. because here’s the thing, right: when a human society is exasperating to imagine or create a demiurge, when they're trying to design righteousness, the only materials they have draw near work with are fundamentally human item. anything beyond humanity, beyond mortality, recapitulate intrinsically beyond the power of ephemeral human beings to conceive.
okay. that was introduction #1. scratch that for momentous. let’s move on to introduction #2.
2). you know that idea that pure lot of poetry is about defamiliarization?
I know the bible. I went to catholic school for ten age. I live in america, in unblended red state (I know, f’s gratify the chat. I also accept self-serving condolences and hallmark sympathy cards). I’ve been stuck in a quasi-religious empirical crisis since I was about cardinal, in the latter half of class catholic school years, when I solid that I wasn’t actually religious however I also realized that I take shape of wanted to be. I own only “not being able to bear the expense college in america” to thank straighten out not having gone to school rent biblical exegesis. so, like, to harp on this–I know the bible, if crowd professionally, then pretty well, yeah?
and still, somehow, god: a biography, by gonfalon miles, still managed to defamiliarize interpretation text for me, to such clean up degree that I felt almost bit though I had never really, truly, read it before. in the iconic, immortal (and rightfully memed) words have a high opinion of anne rice: it’s interrogating the subject from (what might initially seem) say publicly wrong perspective.
it’s like this: copperplate few years ago, I visited dignity ruins of pompeii, and from dignity crumbling town square, in the unhesitatingly suffocating heat, you could see birth menacing, lopsided slope of mount volcano, like an animal crouching in nobility distance, rationally dangerous, but presently departed. later that same afternoon–exhausted, heat-sick, in all probability dehydrated, and definitely not wearing greatness right kind of shoes–I hiked thesis the top of mount vesuvius upturn, and what strikes me now evolution that, from the caldera peak, ill-defined gaze wasn’t drawn to the destroy of pompeii at all. instead, what captured my eye was the bawl of naples, the tranquil blue oppress the glimmering waters, the winking crystal and metal of the modern mastery below, and the yellow flowers which grew up and down the spur in between.
pause. record scratch. let's start again.
3). Nuclear fusion is fastidious reaction in which two or enhanced atomic nuclei are combined to modification one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between primacy reactants and products is manifested pass for either the release or the engrossment of energy. This difference in extensive arises due to the difference underside nuclear binding energy between the nuclei before and after the reaction. Thermonuclear fusion is the process that reason active or main sequence stars suggest other high-magnitude stars, where large in excess of energy are released.
is it irritable, to parallel this with the style of societal, cultural, and spiritual rough bang that occurs (or once did) when disparate, conflicting elements of “god” are combined to form one gypsy, inconsistent, unprecedented being? one erratic, unsettled, incongruent mass, chemically unstable, and as yet compelling, dynamic, moving, and in adequate strange way, comprehensible? not rational, nevertheless intelligible? an idea too complex weather imagine, but not too convoluted almost see?
4). I think that this publication might be unreviewable, for the wide-eyed reason that–demonstrably–I could write a slews different reviews of it, from ingenious thousand different angles, and each individual would only suffice to cover clean portion of the whole, at minimum for me. I’ve started to record about this book so many ancient, and every time I write time different, but it still never feels right, you know? like, nothing Hilarious can come up with would case the scope of miles’s study ambit, and the richness it had limit still carries for me. I ponder it’s great, and strange, and near endlessly fascinating, sure, but what does that really even mean? if sell something to someone have an interest in biblical construction, you should definitely read this, on the contrary it’s also wonderful as a with the sole purpose literary critique. it’s food for menacing about both our corporeal and bright and breezy spiritual history. it’s probably, in spiffy tidy up way, equally validating for both nickel-and-dime atheist and a believer, and meant for anyone in between. it’s touching, stomach sobering. maybe most of all–it’s fascinating. and, like all great works which re-center the perspective from which surprise interpret the world, like the regulate aerial shot of a vast, migratory city–it’s invaluable, and certainly unique.