At the end of the day, I’m droppin reflections here that don’t fit anywhere else. Tell me why I don’t know what else to tell you.
First installment.
Any legitimate “teleological suspension of the ethical” isn’t a true suspension. It is just graded absolutism. …and the Noble Lie was already available as the perfect example (we do not owe the truth of their targeted victim’s location to a would-be murderer). And that is how you resolve Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac (plus the resurrection, which is how Paul had already resolved it). (Contra Kierkegaard.)
When Jesus says you won’t believe unless you see signs, and yet they rejected signs because they were more interested in being wowed than following the evidence where it leads (the point that would paradigm shift all of their previous assumptions around it) — and you can see that the only reason we really like signs is a) we like to be wowed (we are suckers for sophistry), and b) we’re lazy and like to outsource our responsibilities—curtailing the effort required in gaining informed consent—but see which sign Jesus used to gain ours.
So it’s kind of interesting that in the Genesis narrative the first choice was naming everything to notice you didn’t have a match. There wasn’t anything external to you that you could name that was like you out there. It’s almost like you couldn’t name yourself. Kinda like person couldn’t equal person yet.
Then it’s not like in the garden they didn’t have access to life, which was the quality tree.
There was a whole ‘nother tree, the knowledge of good and evil, which, if they ate of it, they would die. Obviously not the quality (life) tree. …and it required a choice. Only after they made that choice did they lose access to the tree of life — the quality tree. Before that everything was perfect between them and God, there was no broken quality. Everything was beautiful.
So you could say the fruit of the tree of life represented value.
…and the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil represented nihilism—choosing otherwise than life/value.
…because before they chose the knowledge of good and evil, it was all good/quality/beautiful/value.
How are you gonna put that choice on the same tree? A tree only grows one kind of fruit. Unless you graft in this totally ‘nother fruit, but forget all that, you’re just messing up the analogy/metaphor.
It’s kind of funny though ‘cause we can be grafted into the vine & grafted back out (Paul), and he says that good fruit comes from a good tree (Jesus) and yada yada yada.
So the serpent/adversary was lying and said God just doesn’t want you to be like him, knowing everything.
…but what does it mean to know everything, and how does nihilating stuff make you know more of what’s essential/life/quality?
…or is knowing triadic? ;^)
There’s a certain amount (nay, quality) of information past which you’re no longer being informed. It’s just junk. It’s just extra. It’s just random trivia. All white is just noise. Truth is in distinction.
And that is why Emily can claim to be an atheist (if Dr. Craig is right that B theory completely contradicts Christianity) and say she doesn’t have any reason to believe A theory is TRUE… while still being open to being shown to be wrong.
They both need C Theory.
