Letter to a friend on the nature of Agency

I shared this with a friend I met in San Francisco. I’ve removed the personal detail – but this touches on the fundamentals of what this life is all about and is a suitable introduction to the Essay Just Whose Fault Is It Anyway, Thoughts on Immortality and Agency.

Dear [redacted]
I’ve been meaning to write you since our conversation last Thursday, I want to express how grateful I am that there are good men and women like you and your wife trying to make a positive dent.
Again my deepest condolences for recent the death of your son. I’d like to say I don’t have any words, but knowing me you know that would be a lie, but perhaps what’s true is that I may not have the right words to assuage what pain you and your wife must feel.
No matter what one believes or knows to be true about afterlife/eternal life, in the best of circumstances we will miss our loved ones greatly. I just shipped my wife off to Los Alamos to do her grandmother thing with a new arrival but I will miss her in even that month she is gone. Even though she is alive – she is yet gone. I feel to say the similar thing to you {redacted}, though your son is gone, yet is he alive; not in a book nor a God’s tape player.

I was very curious and I think it was you that I asked “why you believed strongly enough to find yourself standing on a street corner when so many competing beliefs might vie for your acceptance” and I think the reply was not that “God spoke to me” or something direct and definitive but simply – “this was the most logical explanation for the holy writ you could find.” Perhaps I have you mixed up with another fellow but I’ve heard that more than once. But even with that best guess strategy, It is generally acknowledged that some views espoused by {redacted} have changed on a few topics as better enlightenment presented; so perhaps, maybe you might be open to more of that?

I’ve never approached our conversation as me trying to argue my perspectives or directly challenge yours. I genuinely wanted to know why you believed and have appreciate your explanations. Obviously I have my concerted views and my own reasoning’s that I don’t mind sharing - but its not my mission to persuade – I’m perfectly satisfied that God will have a mansion in heaven for anyone like you with his heart set on doing right. Still if I could offer you and your wife, in your time of trial, a glimpse of something even more grand than being a “memory stick” in God's archive - a more sure relationship with the divine, I would, if I could.

As we broached the topic the other day of our inherent worth or worthlessness, it seemed clear that scriptural references could readily interpolate the fundamental nature of man as either an inherently eternal spiritual being OR with a different perspective be interpreted much more glumly as just “talking gadgets -Memorex tape.” That latter interpretation also leaves us sadly with the unavoidable conclusion that whether we are resurrected or not doesn’t matter at all to the individual Not resurrected. AND if you believe the promise about “no tears” in the future heaven/paradise then even those that are resurrected won’t miss them! Huh! Yup that’s what you have to walk away with – the logic is solid and most poignant.
In my efforts to come to grips with my own previous dabbling with atheism and the scientific attempt to claim that artificial intelligence can be achieved, I dug in and came away with what I feel was some enlightenment from God. There is just so much evidence that our ability to choose is a God like characteristic that cannot be duplicated with gears and levers. Trust me that’s essentially all that electronics is. I can make a machine that chooses. That’s not a problem, a traffic light computer chooses but it’s just a machine that is all darkness inside, whirling gears and sliding levers, mere electrons running around – That ability to be self-aware, to step outside of yourself- actually proves that our root entity IS essentially “outside of ourselves” or at least this physical part. And when this shell fails, that sentient, self-aware part that's outside of ourselves “goes back to God who gave it. “

I captured this in a short writing that I hope you can find useful. You seem like a searcher and unless your truth bucket is already full up, then perhaps something God gave to me may be useful to you.
God Bless you
Steve

Who’s Fault? Thoughts on Immortality and Agency

If religion is anything it should attempt to explain ‘why we are here’, ‘how did we come about’, ‘what we should be doing’ and ‘where we are going?’ Surprisingly, most religions leave out the Why, What and the How altogether. This leads to many thinking individuals having no faith at all or distorted, hazy, at best half formulated answers that satisfy only the most shallow investigation.

Based on what most say about God, you would have to conclude that Its God’s Fault. –all or it – every good deed, every bad – all acts of war, each lie, each kiss – absolutely everything is God’s fault IF ….

…IF God made the very essence of our beings, if our physical beings (and for those who believe in a spiritual self, if that “self”, the life force, spark of intelligence that makes you you) was created wholly by God, then by God, He is responsible for the outcome. But what if that’s not the case…?

With only casual thought, many – even most, glibly reply, “No, no, no, God gave man his agency, his free will, his ability to choose…so is not God’s fault.  Hmmm let’s see – does that make any sense? If I make a machine that can choose, what would be the mechanism for that? – If I make the thing perfect then what causes the perfect thing to execute one way today and another way tomorrow? You would need something like a random number generator. If the device, so endowed, chooses “right” one day and “left” the next, shall fault be found with the device for doing what it was created to do?, Ought not the maker be asked what was his intent, that He should have discontent in His creation - considering that it behaves precisely as designed! How could it do otherwise?

When claiming that the perfect God made the perfect man – all aspects thereof - as a perfect being - it is not consistent to then claim that it is also flawed – It’s a logical contradiction.

There is insight into this topic by examining the character of “god” as a self-existing, self-motivating being. If I were to try to define what to be ‘a god’ was, I suppose I should start with what God himself said about the matter in this classic passage when God is speaking to another God (or just talking to Himself as some theologians have Him doing a lot) and said, speaking of Adam and Eve “They have become as one of us, knowing good from evil.” This came about by the expression or in other words, the exercise of agency or free will. So we learn that a keen attribute of a class of God-beings to be able to act and to be aware of your circumstances; a sentient being.

Unlike inanimate objects, plants and even animals, each of these must be acted upon. They react and their programmed instincts play out, but God is self-motivating, self-aware, able to act and not just be acted upon.

Notice how God places man as “one of us…”  Many a “Bible believing” sect has all but rejected strict plain interpretation of that and minimize that otherwise profound import. If you don’t try to make an allegory out of such striking statements, one can find in the Bible some very revelatory truths connecting God with mankind; not as His collection of talking gadgets, but as His children and all that implies.

But by saying “implies” one need not infer that I am teasing some obscure meaning from the plain spoken Biblical text. I’m saying that it’s hard to not see what the scriptures plainly say.

In several Biblical passages, a powerful being, variously called Lucifer, Satan, Son of the Morning, rebels from God and is cast out of the presence of the God called Father. He believed he would be greater that the Father God. “How would that be possible - to be greater than God the Father, the one said to be the “Beginning?” …How indeed could such a thought be even conceived… unless there is more to the nature of God’s Children than a mere metaphor.

We already discussed “they have become as one of us knowing good an evil” but I hasten to add that this sentient awareness was ½ the equation, the inherent ability to act independently was the other. Without awareness there really cannot be independent action, only reaction. This is KEY.  Some theologians ever anxious to denounce adding to the word of God do just that adding popular phases not found at all in the writ like “God granted to man free agency.” Remember our discussion on agency? Did God really “grant” them anything they did not inherently possess?

What then are we? What is our essence? Examining the nature of spirits, it is claimed that “God is Spirit”. Other Scriptures like Rom 8:16-18 speak of God’s Spirit speaking to Man’s Spirit and declaring that man is His children and that we are on some par with Christ Jesus himself. Jesus affirmed the same saying, “I go my father and your father, my God and your God.”

Satan was another sentient being also defined as a Spirit being. Story after story is told in the Biblical record of even multiple beings possessing a common physical being – even animals and that these spiritual beings could then control the physical. It would seem from all that was said that the Spirit is what animates the body. For example when Jesus died, - “He gave up the Spirit.” In another place it reads, “…the spirit returns to god who gave it.” Its just untenable to cling to the notion that we are talking about breath! The repeated context does not support that. This is animation and interaction at a high level.

After the crucifixion, the disciples seeing Jesus thought it was a spirit, implying obviously that a spirit is a being – another dimensional existence?  Perhaps?? What is then Spirit? What about seeing the spirit? One scripture reads that “You cannot see the face of God and live”. Well that implies that God has a face that under some circumstance could be seen. Recall the Israelites who were invited to meet God and they being convicted of their imperfections were afraid and blanched at the opportunity. In fact, at one point they saw God or parts of his being but God covered His face to keep the visitors from perishing. This all sound very real and in some dimension perhaps tangible.

So what does establishing the Spirit nature of Man’s essence have to do with agency? Again, what is ‘free agency’, if not the ability to Act for themselves and not be simply acted upon. We observed that that was a key and salient attribute of God – being an independent actor. So Spiritual beings have ‘agency’ as an inherent quality. That is the connection between God and man.

Indeed, it was Jesus himself that affirmed the ancient prophetic statements that “Ye are Gods! [and let the follow-up axiom sink in] and children of the most high!” Lest we wrestle obscurity and nonsense out of the plain and clear, this affirms why God is interested in us. God says that “We are Gods”. The definition is then ‘a self-motivated being; a being with power and the inherent spark of life and intelligence.’ This is one of the most profound statements in the Bible [though ignored and oft avoided] and it is uttered by none other than the acknowledged God himself “Ye are Gods! and children of the most high!” The context of that profundity is fully supportive. The Pharisees were criticizing Jesus because he claimed to be the Son of God and he retorted paraphrasing “Why do you think it so strange that I said I was the Son of God when your own Scriptures teach – Ye are Gods!”

I know some might turn that exchange into allegory, the favorite means to dismiss something important, but the critique being levied against Jesus was about his lineage; who He was and they thought it blasphemy to claim direct ancestry with God. To say Jesus sidestepped that fundamental accusation with a clever play on words is weak and out of character. What was in common character was for Jesus to place us in the same intimate relation to His father as He Himself and that was what He did again when answering the Pharisees. 

Can you see where we are going with this? God was obviously involved in forming Man’s physical body, but somehow God our Father was also involved in forming our Spirit – I am going to suggest that like we have demonstrated, that the essence of living man is the Spirit that resides in Man, that that spirit hath elsewhere its beginning, that like our Father who had no beginning in essence, that the essence of man likewise has no beginning, and that solves the great riddle as to how man was supposed to have an eternal existence, yet had a ‘beginning’. That man was nothing and then became everything was always an inherent contradiction and as we see a contradiction inconsistent with the truth.

That truth, so cleanly expressed by Jesus, explains the actual brotherhood of man. God, then, is not a metaphorical father but a Father indeed of our spirits making us in reality brothers and sisters; perhaps in some dimensional existence –tangible beings.

"If you examine the import of the observation, "I think therefore I am" it is speaking to the idea that there is an intrinsic extrapolation of the self from the self. This might sound like Jabberwocky at 1st but consider that one can iterate the thought about thinking about the fact that one is thinking....Your body in fact becomes a sort of avatar! Consider if a person lost an appendage. Does the person no longer think he is the person? In other words your arm is not you. The concept of conscious awareness also entails the concept of abstraction; of you from your physical self. Religions that appreciate the concept of a soul or spiritual self, thus see the body as a true avatar and the mind as a processing engine and keyboard connecting the actual self from the physical interface. Consider a mechanical computer. It is levers and gears and conditional sliders and so forth. An electronic computer is nothing more nor less that lots more of the same. If you observed a room full of sliders and gears and levers would it be logical think that a sufficiently bigger and bigger room of the same would be self aware? No! Self awareness is of necessity the ability of that real self to not in very fact to be part of that physical self."

It is our self-existing intelligence that makes us independent actors and thus responsible for those acts. Agency was not created or “granted” to man or Lucifer or any other spiritual being, but is inherent in the substance and thus while God somehow gave that substance form and expression as Spirit entities, the expression is fundamental and fully explains one of the grand questions of who we are and why we are so important to God. We are clearly of great potential – God has foreseen it!

William Wordsworth 1770-1850  Ode - Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home: