Pat Oliphant for June 14, 2012

I wonder if Assad and Putin will be sent to the same circle of the Inferno…….

@emptc12I’ve read the Inferno maybe 15 times in my life (whereas the Purgatorio and Paradiso only twice each, which may say something about me……) And Larry Niven’s and Jerry Pournelle’s two Inferno books are favorites of mine. I should point out that there’s a great line in the first book, one of the damned sinners referring to God: “We’re in the hands of ultimate power and ultimate sadism.” And I wrote a parody of a hard-boiled detective taking the Inferno tour (which I really need to revise someday and see if I can get the damn thing maybe published………)

I clipped a “Mr. Boffo” cartoon years ago and put it in my copy of THE DIVINE COMEDY:

The scene is in Hell. As Satan and a demonic minion look on, two brutish-looking men have popped into existence before them. The men are grinning, and one exclaims to the other, “We made it!”

The caption to the cartoon is “Management Material.”

Remember, history (or fable) is written by the winners. The only documentary “evidence” of Satan’s evil-doing is in a book dedicated to the pagan war-god Yahweh, and that thing is a slaughterfest of murdering men, women, children, razing villages, slavery, incest, you name it… all motivated by Yahweh. Heck, he killed a bunch of slaves, livestock and children of his greatest worshiper (Job) just to prove to Satan that Job was a stand-up guy and would still worship him. And this Satan guy is evil?

’toon: odd how much marketing of used Russian weapons, like “Hinds”, is through Israeli Defense Industries.

A premise of the Niven/ Pournelle books is that each damned soul has the opportunity to leave Hell: No more “damned for all eternity,” Free Will still operates. When did such metaphysical flexibility begin to come about? Will Hell eventually be empty? Can even Satan be re-habilitated?

When George Burns and Morgan Freeman portray God as kinder, gentler, ironically humorous, and even sarcastic, you must figure blasphemy is passé. God is the rich bachelor uncle rather than Lord of Creation.

How has Satan gradually become less the implacable Adversary, more a Syndicate bully? It’s said that Milton’s Satan is the most interesting character in PARADISE LOST, even sympathetic. Mephistopheles in the various Faust works can be tricked. And here we are today with the Hell-Raiser movies, and Hell Boy, the cute little cartoon character Hot Stuff, and a Satan worshipper running for congress.

The modern Universe is so big that nothing we can conceive of could possibly have dominion over it all? So even the concepts of a regional franchise God and Devil are discarded?

So what is Evil, what is Good? In this age, is Evil the deprivation of human rights and life up to the ultimate, mass murder? Is Good happiness in comfortable possession of material goods and interesting hobbies? Do we so depend on human laws to combat evil and apportion punishment; so that if the person isn’t caught and punished, that’s the end? It seems that so many political and business types operate as if they don’t fear the afterlife, that’s for sure

I always thought Evil, once you started to side with it, was the ultimate Unfairness in the afterlife, with no reprieve; while Good in the afterlife was painfully achieved but the ultimate Gratitude and Satisfaction. Now, everything stops with personal death. What is after death, nothing (at most, “violet light and a hum”)? Or reincarnation? Or, most terribly, continued exploitation (conf. Joe Haldeman and Harlan Ellison stories).

Hey, Inquisitor, just tossing philosophical Frisbees in the playground of my mind (conf. Niven). Don’t shoot them for skeet.

@emptc12Considering that Benito Mussolini DOES escape from Hell in the Niven/Pournelle version, it’s hard to think of who might not be able to. (Dante put Brutus and Cassius with Judas right between Lucifer’s fangs as the three worst sinners of all, but c’mon, Julius Caesar slaughtered tons of Gauls when they weren’t looking, and it wasn’t exactly in self-defense…….) It’s very hard to escape from Hell, of course, but most sinners don’t even try, accepting their fate because deep down they think they deserve it. In my parody I put in a lot of modern people, from the obvious like Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, to Nixon and Ferdinand Marcos. Also people like Ken DeLay of Enron infamy, and more than one televangelist. (And Dr. Seuss’s first wife in the Wood of the Suicides, primarily for the shock value…………) I could actually accept a “regional” God (and Heaven and Hell) to some extent. (Let’s say each galaxy gets its own?) But then there’s that pesky multi-verse to consider………..

Have you read “Three Versions of Judas,” by Jorge Luis Borges?

“Without Judas, there would have been no crucifixion and no salvation.”

That does not necessarily follow; if Judas hadn’t betrayed Jesus, perhaps someone else would have. If you’re “Jerusalem’s Most Wanted,” it’s not unlikely that you’ll be caught, particularly if you are making no real effort to conceal yourself (and in fact INTEND to be caught).

“Why would Judas be in Hell when he was doing God’s will?”

It may be a variation on the “Scourge of God” thesis, where God makes use of the unrighteous to apply a little “tough love” to His children (Attila was “allowed” to ravage Christendom in order to purge (and thereby strengthen) a culture that had become decadent and complacent, but that didn’t make Attila any less of a monster, or mean that he would have found favor with God upon his own death). Besides, in most traditions Judas betrayed Jesus of his own free will, although Jesus (being omniscient) knew of it, predicted it, even relied upon it. That in no way makes the betrayal any less of a sin. And we already have the precedent of Adam and Eve (and all humanity) being cast down for the sin of eating forbidden fruit that God knew full well they were going to eat (and which sin they committed before they had any knowledge of Good and Evil). There is also the precedent of God “hardening Pharaoh’s heart” when Moses demanded that the Irealites be released from bondage. Pharaoh presumably would have freed the Jews a plague or two earlier, but then Jahweh wouldn’t have gotten to show off His miracles. So who’s to say God plays fair?

But no more of that (at least from me). Isn’t anyone going to acknowledge just how beautiful Pat’s artwork is on this one?

I suppose I must bear the blame for using my free will to start this entire “Inferno” discussion, but to tell the truth, I didn’t think the comic itself was all that impressive. I had the feeling that Oliphant had to rush it out under deadline pressure (even great writers and artists are sometimes forced to rush things out under the dreaded deadline pressure, arbitrary as most deadlines in history are, were, and will be.) That said, I’ve enjoyed all of this discussion a great deal! So maybe I can get just a tad bit of credit besides bearing the blame? I will say one thing more. In the classic Britcom “Bless Me, Father”, the wise (yet crusty, natch) old Irish priest says something like the following: “Who in their right mind would deny the existence of Hell? And who, understanding anything about the Lord, would be fool enough to think there would be anybody there?” (I’m only paraphrasing here, yet it’s always been something I definitely agree with.) Anybody who can find the actual exact phrasing, I’d be much obliged.

“Interesting” does describe the Book of Job well. What lessons people draw from it can be even more interesting. Personally, I do not find it to be a compelling theodicy.<>On inconsistencies: some hold the view that Satan hasn’t been cast out of Heaven (yet). Though he rules the Abyss, he can pop in for tea and have a chat with god whenever he wants until the tribulations when he will be cast out and sent to the Abyss. Unless the tribulations already happened… <>Now then, to the comic: Does Putin fade into the darkness, or does the darkness emanate from Putin? I expect the last thing to disappear would be his eyes…

I’m certainly no expert, but I have the impression (from a course I took long ago) that there are historical layers in the Jewish Bible, and the concept of Satan differs in the different layers. Also, I don’t believe that the serpent in Eden is ever explicitly named Satan— that’s a later identification with no clear proof in the text. But I don’t read Hebrew, and this is all second hand from years ago.

“If God needed Judas to betray Christ, Attila to scourge his fallen people, and Pharoh to get all stiff-necked to teach the Hebrews a lesson, and if He planned for it. knew it would happen, and counted on it, the whole idea of free will flies right out the window. And they are all doing the will of God and being obedient, so you can’t call THEM evil. They’d be evil if they disobeyed. So either they did good or God is evil.”

Free will may be incompatible with foreordination, but not with foreknowledge. The sticking point is that we only see events in chronological order, but God (theoretically) does not. A baseball game is being played today; it’s outcome (at this point) is in doubt. Those playing the game have the influence over its outcome, and those attending the gave (or watching it on TV) will see the events unfold in real time. If someone TIVOs the game and watches it tomorrow, the outcome will still be in doubt FOR HIM until he finishes watching it, although the outcome had actually been determined the day before. If he had a machine which showed him the game the day BEFORE it was played, he knows that the runner on second will get picked off trying to steal third to end the game, but that knowledge doen’t conflict with the baserunner’s decision (of his own free will) to make the attempt. And if the pre-viewer places a large bet on the outcome before the game, and makes reservations at a fancy restaurant for after the game, he is planning on the runner getting picked off so that he can afford the restaurant, relying on it, but he’s not gambling on it since there is absolutely no doubt. Does the baserunner act according the the pre-viewer’s will, or according to his own?

If a mugger kills a man, and the police catch the mugger but find out that the victim was a notorious terrorist carrying a suitcase bomb which would have (but for the mugging) destroyed half the city, do they let the mugger go? Give him a medal? Or do they stll throw him in jail as a murderer, since his action was criminal and malicious despite its fortunate (on the grand scale) outcome? Check out Middleton’s “Revenger’s Tragedy”, in which the hero Vindice orchestrates the death of the corrupt Duke (as well as his entire corrupt family; if you like a “corpse-strewn stage” you can skip “Hamlet” and go straight to his Jacobean imitators), and at the end of the play the first action of the new (and righteous) Duke is to order Vindice’s execution as a regicide (despite the fact that the New Duke’s wife had been raped and driven to suicide by either the Old Duke or one of his sons).

If a modern thriller were made from the “mugger kills bomber” scenario, if a season of “24” ended with the guy Jack Bauer has been chasing getting killed by a random street thug, everyone would complain about the Deus Ex Machina ending, but a Classical or Renaissance audience would have understood that this is how gods handle things.

“Could our above villians NOT follow God’s plan? Is it even POSSIBLE to go against the will of God? Is God’s will so weak that it can be so easily stymied by puny man?”

When has puny man ever stymied God’s plan? If God’s will is that humans have free will, that does not conflict with God’s foreknowledge (in general or particular) of how we are going to exercise our free will. It just bugs us no end that WE don’t share that knowledge. In Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s “Good Omens”, a distinction is made between “God’s Eternal Plan” and “God’s Ineffable Plan”; the Eternal Plan, as everyone knows, is the war between Good and Evil, culminating in the Battle of Armageddon and the ultimate triumph of Good (although with much suffering and loss of life in the meantime). But God’s Ineffable Plan is known only to God. Can we circumvent the Eternal Plan, to avoid the suffering and bloodshed and figure out how to keep the peace on our own? If we do it, then it must be part of the plan; perhaps (according to Pratchett and Gaiman) that’s the ineffable plan, but we can’t be certain because it’s ineffable.

Thank goodness, Hillary and Obama had that big “Reset” button, for our ‘friends’ the Russians.

It’s pleasant to have an on-line discussion with few pretensions, with the freedom to bring in all the influences of personal reading, even science fiction (I’ve come to prefer the term “speculative fiction.”) If I weren’t writing anonymously I wouldn’t do that. I’ve read widely but superficially and am sure that I misunderstand much of what I’ve read. Which doesn’t stop me from writing, anyway.

I wish I could read … everything! I wish to play all music! (I feel as if I’m going into a Walt Whitman ecstasy right now…) Years ago, I bought A LIFETIMES’S READING, by Philip Ward. My main fantasy is to follow that program of systematic multi-cultural reading. But my poor reading efforts so far are easily enough to know that God, Satan, Free Will, and Predestination are constant topics of all literature of all ages – specifically or subliminally expressed.It’s so obvious The Bible is a mix of several cultural influences, not not fully homogenized, a project of committees. How strange that our eyes slide past the obvious etymology of the title and so naturally accept it as “The Book,” and thus disdain the Books of other religions. That it is the basis for most of Western philosophical, artistic, and literary work is amazing, but is it necessarily a good thing in all ways to continue?

The teachings of the Bible are so a basic part of our own culture that I can’t help but think this is the source of our conflict with the values of other cultures. And yet we’ve twisted many of the teachings — just as other cultures have — to suit political ends. I think that is the Evil of which bad leaders are capable and often practice – that they distort and use our propensity to do good and subvert it to do evil. “Pro Patria” not matter what. If there is a Hell, those leaders will reside in it even if no one else does.

What does all this philosophizing and religious-izing and general expression of human thoughts mean in the large scale of the Universe? Will we and all our works be lost in a fuzz of bacterial infestation or dissipated into vapor from a huge solar event? Somewhere in the far future the Voyager probe might be the sole remnant of the brief spasm of self-reflective impulse that was Humanity — unless our souls reside in some infinite dimension that we call Heaven and Hell.

Another quote from “science fiction,” Walter F. Miller, A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ: “We don’t HAVE souls – we ARE souls. We have bodies temporarily.” I’m still not sure I believe that.

Given his stint as Texas governor, and “shock and awe”, I’d say “W” found Putin’s soul, a mirror to his own. Putin looking into Cheney’s soul? Well, if there’s anything there at all, Putin would have found it utterly terrifying.

“That’s just a cop-out. “We can’t know because it’s unknowable.” Pooh.”

More like “We don’t know because it’s unknown.” Both are tautologies, though, and therefore logically unassailable. Whether by design or circumstance, human understanding has limits. Does a child understand every decision his parents make? What, nobody’s ever successfully kept a secret from you, whether from good motives or bad? It’s not a cop-out if it’s an accurate explanation of the situation.

“God has a plan for my life, my free will can go along with it or not. That I get. But answer me this. God has a plan for your life; I kill you. Have I stymied God’s plan for your life? If not, you’ll have to concede that God’s plan in the first place and I am acting in accordance with God’s plan, and since God only does good and plans good, then I have done a good thing.”

Scenario: God has a plan for me. God, being omniscient, knows that you are going to kill me – of your own free will – in (say) my 25th year. My part in God’s plan will therefore be completed before that time, but you are still on the hook for murder done of your own free will. God knew of your murder of me in advance and planned accordingly, but that does not mean God condones your action. Do I know God’s plan for me? I may THINK I do, but I could be wrong. “There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all.”

I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that I don’t believe in God (or gods) any more than you do. I call myself an “agnostic” in that I can’t claim to KNOW whether or not God exists, but I call myself an “atheist” in that I don’t believe that any god/God exists, and make no allowances for one in my actions. However, I grew up around believers, many of them quite thoughtful and intelligent, and they would be no more troubled by your (exceedingly reductive) questions than you would be troubled by a Creationist challenging you with “If we evolved from monkeys, how come we still got monkeys, smart guy?” If you want to change anybody’s opinions or beliefs, it helps to start from a position of understanding what those opinions or beliefs actually ARE; it also helps to speak the same language.

No insult was intended, but your questions were exceedingly reductive.