I'm stoked that you responded so positively. Writing that was a trip (like a "journey", but short). I put a lot of myself in both the main characters, and landed in such a right funk after the first day's writing that it took real effort and several false starts to even get close to writing an ending. I got completely stuck trying to make Robert feel better about the situation, even though that had been the goal from the beginning.sgttomas wrote:I really liked this story. I found it an open and honest assessment of our experience of things. I can relate directly to the characters involved, and I think that this inner experience is a defining characteristic of humanity.QuantumTroll wrote:I've got a couple of things for you. One is a short story, written but in need of revision, which I hope to release next week (edit: here!). It's fantasy, set in a different universe than ours, but it deals with universal (omniversal?) questions of faith, doubt, meaning, and loss.
I'm definitely interested in writing more in this universe, and almost definitely with Father Quentin. I don't see him ever answering the fundamental question, because it's not epistemologically possible for an in-universe character to know whether they can influence God through writing (*cough* prayer *cough*). He will never grow to accept God's values, who seems to put people through painful trials for some unfathomable reason. Still, he sees the good that he can do in reconciling people with God's mysterious ways and in showing people the larger, more meaningful context in which their suffering takes place. So Quentin definitely believes in God, but despite (or because of?) his erudition and expertise, he doesn't understand.There is also some delicious irony in a fiction story that is literally about the interplay of narrative and theology.
Her is where things really peaked for me:
“Is it meaningful?” he began, “This searching for literary devices? Aren’t we just picking out patterns in meaningless chaos? Confirming only the things that fit the pattern we seek, ignoring or denying all the things that don’t? How do you know that the Scribe is real?”
“Does a mathematician ascribe geometric forms to the natural world merely according to how she sees, or does the natural world actually follow those forms? Or is it something in between?”
And you introduced another great theme here:
“I see what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t work that way. For one, you can’t break character. For another, there’s always a story. I think abandoning Iria would be your undoing, and only make her death more certain.”
....which addresses the conundrum of God's foreknowledge and the reality of fate.
And what would we do without a resounding sense of metaphysical dread about fate and God in light of suffering in the world:
As for myself, I knew that I would lie sleepless that night and question why an all-powerful creator would prioritize a riveting story above the life of a little girl and her father’s love.
This definitely leaves me curious about The Scribe and how this narrative structure became established into a religion!
Even the most ardent of believers will admit that prayer can't do everything, e.g. replace amputated limbs. In Scribe-world, the limitations are that the story must stick to established literary rules, including internal consistency. Prayer, it seems, can only accomplish things that appear consistent (albeit unusual) with the natural course of events.
The future story ideas that are floating around my mind mostly center around the sort of reasoning that would be possible in a world governed by literary rules. I'm also interested in how Quentin's view compares with a "true believer's" view, if it actually matters that Quentin doesn't believe in the real power of "prayer". To explore that, I'm considering a story where Quentin and a younger initiate (who believes) travel out to deal with a particular situation that's come up. How will the initiate's reactions and decisions be different from the older, more cynical man's? It's an interesting question.
Aha, my bad for forgetting that key "detail"!Well, I told you about that though. It's that "little matter" I spoke about ("The only issue at stake here is the trouble with defining a set of criteria to distinguish divine messages from profane ones.")Quantum Troll wrote:The other thing is, unfortunately, the age-old protest of atheists: what makes your faith special? You've touched upon this in the claim that the Quran describes God in a way that is consistent with your axioms.
Hmm, well, since everyone is free to define their own set of distinguishing criteria (within reason), do you agree with my claim that your argument is very universal?My interpretation may or may not be interesting to you. I didn't really explain myself here, and for a reason. While my desire to convey the beauty of Islam and invite people to it is a central driver in my life, what I see in our contemporary culture is a complete lack of language that properly articulates what I mean by "God" in this essay. So many ways and places we see "God" used. ....have people asked for an inspected one another's definition for this term?
It isn't just God. We have real trouble in giving an account of knowledge and reality in a self-consistent manner. If we can't do that, well then why are we rushing ahead to explore the religions that are supposed to be based on knowledge and reality???
Hehe, there's a reason I left the circular reasoning, and you pointed right at it! It's difficult to formulate sensibly, but my intuition is that there's some value in self-consistent circular reasoning if the reasoning bears some resemblance to observed reality...Well, I'd like you to unpack this circularity a bit more. If you look back at our original essay, the words "circular reasoning" and "recursive knowledge" came up there too. The appearance of some kind of circularity is not something I try to avoid - in other words, the recursion of knowledge is something I specifically structured. Our awareness informs our selection of axioms and this in turn informs our awareness. It's a rather awkward state of affairs, but when dealt with properly, it opens up very productive avenues of thought.Quantum Troll wrote:I would charge that it is your interpretation of the Quran that is consistent with your axioms. Other people's interpretations are not necessarily consistent with those axioms. Moreover, I claim that there are interpretations of the Bible and other religious and secular (!) texts and schools of thought that are consistent with your axioms. Therefore, I would say that the Quran isn't special in itself. Other traditions are equally special to other people. In my opinion, in order to maintain intellectual honesty, your discussion must include (and preferably conclude with) this reality.
((Another way to look at this is to turn things around. It is immediately obvious that people all around the world have experiences of God and faiths that are (to them) meaningful and (sufficiently) self-consistent. If the axioms you've listed are to be meaningful, then it must be possible to map this variety of God conceptions to those axioms. Assuming that this is the case (i.e. assuming both you haven't made the axioms too restrictive and that we can construct this mapping), then we can turn things back around and see that your axioms actually lead in all kinds of directions, not only Islam.
Hmm, in writing the previous paragraph I realized that it resembles circular reasoning, but I'll leave it, albeit inside these apologetic double parentheses.))
One thing I will say, however, is that the particular attribute of "The God" that I lay out in this essay do impose some exclusive domains. By analogy, we would say that defining a circle precludes it from being a square, so too can I rightfully say that "The God" excludes other deities from consideration. This isn't an exclusion by preference but by necessity. I agree that one does not have to adopt this definition for "The Creator", but I believe I am justified in saying that any competing claims to Creation need to be help up to mine for comparison. If "The Creator" is a justified attribute of "The God" that I lay out here, then it is a necessary attribute of that which exclusively accounts for existence and everything in it. Hence the expression "there is no god but Allah". It isn't a claim of hubris, it's an expression of the comprehensiveness of "The God" in comparison to other powers and beings that stake claim to existence and independence.
Having said that, I am not closing off as many avenues of inquiry as it may seem at first. The non-God world is a distinct, valid option in my essay. A lot can be accomplished there.
....tons more I hope we can get into, but I have to cut this off here for now.
Peace,
-sgttomas
