Friday, June 27, 2008

Pardon me, but it seems that I'm not here,
or
Oh bother, my mind just broke.

Quick and strange thoughts before sleeping.

First off, you should not try to think about concepts like infinity or eternity. I think that doing so has just unhinged me. So don't read this post. I mean, really, navigate somewhere else or go make yourself a snack.

You've been warned!


...


Okay, now that those wussies are gone, it's time to get down to business:

I was thinking about exaltation tonight (eternal life/lives, whatever), and this is how I have understood it. There are an infinite number of intelligences. God or gods put them into spirit bodies. Some of those bodies eventually get physical bodies. Some of those will end up becoming like God and participating in his work. Clear enough? Everyone followed that? Good.

Now, here's my issue. Because God is love, eventually everyone that is of His species (no word for it really, but you know what I mean) gets a chance to become like him. All intelligences get the chance to be embodied and exalted. Some in each batch (like cookies) will not make it, but those that do become like God then add their manpower to the family business and "cookie making" proceeds at a greater rate. At an exponential rate, actually. Acceleration is the name of the game.

However, if we accept that 1) there is an infinite number of intelligences, and 2) God's process of apotheosis (deification) is carried out in finite batches, then we have trouble. Any finite number you subtract from infinity still leaves infinity. Therefore, there exists an infinity of intelligences that will be waiting for an infinite amount of time to become like God. However, an infinite amount of time is by definition a period that never ends. If you must wait an infinite period for your waiter to bring your meals to your table, you never get to eat. Ever. Mealtime never happens.

Thus we are now facing an infinite number of intelligences who will never get the chance to become like God.

Let's take this in a scarier direction. Express the problem as a ratio, or a division: finite:infinite or finite/infinite=functionally zero. Any number divided by infinity is NOTHING.

Ergo, we don't exist. Our existence is a total impossibility.

On the other hand, the fact that I am writing this is evidence that I exist. We cannot imagine our non-being, because the act of imagining itself implies being. Try to imagine traveling through the empty space of the universe, dodging stars or whatever. You never get to the end. Even if you run into an enormous, spheroid brick wall that encompasses all the space you have flown through, you can still take a hammer to the bricks and start making a dent. Either you eventually break through, or there is just more brick, but you can conceivably keep chipping away forever, never ceasing to move forward, albeit slowly.

Thus, ultimately, we cannot conceive of either finite space or time. That is, we cannot pass into non-being or annihilation. Existence cannot cease.

As it turns out, then, we can neither exist any more than we can not-exist. So we have two mutually exclusive impossibilities (which is, in itself, by definition, an altogether convoluted and impossible state of affairs).

3 comments:

The Olsen's said...

Try warm milk! It will help you fall asleep faster so you don't have to have such deep and convoluted thoughts before embarking on sleep!!!

adamf said...

This stuff warps my brain pretty well... but I love thinking about it. My thoughts about "infinity" or "eternity" is not that there is an endless (or "begingless"?) amount of time, but rather, there is no time, so in that sense, the intelligences are not waiting at all, because what is waiting when time does not exist? But that warps my brain as well, lol.

Also, if there are ostensibly an infinite number of Gods as well as intelligences, so infinite/infinite = 1? We're all 1? lol. Thanks for the post. :)

dixonfamily said...

I have almost made myself physically ill by trying to comprehend the concept of eternity. There is a reason we aren't gods yet. Don't hurt yourself by focusing on the mysteries. I had fun chatting with you yesterday. See you soon!