#Postulates

[adventism-atheism-orthodoxy-me]

Proving God, or Not.

It's somewhat odd to be making this post, given that my starting point was a series of first principles - posits.

My first was that there is more to the universe then what I can see, smell, taste, hear and touch.

The second was that what I can't interact with is just as varied as what I can.

My last was, that for the sake of argument, what I could interact with is a subtotal of the entire universe, arranged in a hierarchy with something at the top.

This brings us to the idea of God.

He is therefore not a proof, but a definition. Much like in geometry - a point must be defined before anything else happens. Based upon that point, a whole host of further postulates and theorems can be generated, ending with the totality of Euclidean Geometry.

I see the work of God in the Unified Field Theory, The Grand Unified Theory, and in any study which seeks to understand the world around us as systems, such as the water cycle, and processes such as economics, rather than as discrete objects unrelated to one another. I am especially excited when I see things that were once considered separate, joined together in a larger context. In my mind, That larger context gets us closer to God. (John 12:32, Ephesians 1:10)

Let's talk Schrodinger's cat. Only by cat, I mean God. We've all heard Pascals wager, the one about living ones life as if God existed. Here's the thing, the proof of God will be revealed one way or another, I just don't think it will be during our lives or in this earthly realm. I think we'll have to die ourselves before we are able to open the box. By then, having the proof will be too late. Germs existed long before viruses and bacteria were discovered. The Atomic Bomb started as a postulate before it became a reality. I think of God in the same terms.

I read the Bible. I go to a protestant Church. But most Christians would probably call me a heretic. Even though Christ himself understood the difficulty of belief in things unseen. (John 20:29, Luke 16:27-31) He did give himself as a referent to God the father (John 14:9)

It is clear that I'm writing to people who aren't really interested with what I'm saying in that I've written several years of posts covering this stuff. I've highlighted my disdain for certain Christian tropes that I think are distortions of what we are called to be as Christians.

I take my regular readership to be a handful of hodgepodge Chistians covering a host of denominations, and possibly one political philosopher.

My goal isn't to engage in apologetics, I'm not trying to get anyone to believe in a God they don't want to believe in. Atheists want me to prove God, when all I care about is, assuming God exists, what might he be like, and how would he want me to live my best life in harmony with everyone else's best life (I'm including naked mole rats, rubber boas, and really anything else that has a claim to life here on earth).

I look to native concepts of "the all father" to see how they implemented the concept of God into their praxis and liturgies.

My personal belief is that the Eastern Orthodox Churches by-and-large come the closest to my idea of God within the Christian world.

And while Rationalist Atheists scoff at miracles, The Eastern Churches still have them, though you won't hear them publicized (Per Luke 16, among other verses). I've also been told that Eastern Orthodoxy respects and integrates Native American experience and traditions in a way other Churches don't. I don't know how true that is, but it's the report I've heard.

[j-august]

"No," said Powell bitterly, "he's a reasoning robot - damn it. He believes only reason, and there's only one trouble with that--" His voice trailed away. "What's that?" prompted Donovan "You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason -- if you pick the right postulates."

Isaac Asimov, I, Robot

[the-barefoot-hatter]

Geometry on a curved surface is considered non-euclidean, where regular rules about lines and angles might not apply-

AKA, the AU where you got wasted on your birthday with your Muse and one thing led to another and you REALLY screwed math and now you gotta deal with the results, FORD. (he didn't know he could that! neither did the other one! and neither remembers what exactly they did to do that!!!)

[the-muppet-joker]

I am even more bald now than ever before

[proxycrit]

Part 1 / Part 2

Emmet remembers when he and Ingo first brought Elesa to explore Celestial Tower, back when they were fourteen and thought they were immortal.

“Allegedly, the bell chime will bring ghosts home”, ingo had told emmet with the pompous knowing energy of a child who read way too much brochures. “It’s culturally significant! We must ring it.”

“Hmmm,” emmet had responded suspiciously. “Brother. The bell is at the top of the tower.” The implication stands: Ingo, there are thirty flights of stairs between here and the top, and no elevator to speak of.

Don’t be a coward, Litwick had told Emmet with the blaise tone of somebody who’s going to be piggy backing off of somebody else. Go ring the bell. Tynamo, sensing a litten fight, floated towards a loitering blitzle.

Ingo turns his lilipup eyes on Elesa, who’s squinting at the carved stone faces of the front door.

“Elesa? What do you think?”

Elesa thinks. She shrugs. “We already made our way here,” she said in accented galarian. “Might as well make it the rest of the way. Ganbatte!”

Emmet sighs. “This is a mistake,” he tells the two in exhaustive patience, but lets himself be dragged into the building.

Last time the twins were here, Ingo caught litwick— but not before she managed to nab a good chunk of Emmet’s soul. It’s not terrible; he felt fatigued for a week and bounced back pretty quickly, but it was the principle of the whole situation— celestial tower’s a pain in the ass and Emmet will stand by that until the day he dies.

Like right now.

The map isn’t working. Emmet checked it once. He’s checked it twice. He’s taken out his pen and written on it, which he would usually never do but desperate times call for desperate measures. The compass he brought spins useless circles. It’s like chargestone cave up here, but worse because instead if electric pokemon it’s all ghosts.

“We’re lost, yyup yup!” He announced to the crew. “I vote we eat Ingo first.”

“I love you too,” Ingo told Emmet placidly. “But we all know between the two of us, you’re the tastier one.” Litwick gives Emmet a thumbs up. Emmet gasps in mock affront.

“Elesa, help!”

Elesa gives the two of them a wary look. It took two floors for her to realize this is not just a weird temple with strange rocks, but a full out graveyard. She’s not very happy about that development.

“Don’t drag me into this,” she tells them. “Teme wa urusaii.”

“I will take that as a compliment,” Ingo reports back.

Emmet, who’s cheerfully struggles with Galarian on a good day, simply gives her a thumbs up.

The three painstakingly crawl their way up. And up. If all else fails, Emmet told himself, at least they can orient themselves towards high ground.

“We’re like pidoves,” Ingo gasps. He has fallen behind them on the stairs, with Emmet taking the lead through sheer spite despite his legs going numb on floor twenty two. “We, hah, we are attracted by the magnet of the bell, like, like probopass-“

“I am emmet! You are not making, sense!” Emmet called back. Elesa, who’s stuck between them and looking two steps from perpetual collapse, giggles.

“No, no hear me out, Ingo wheezes. “What if the bell’s a magnetic pole? And that’s why your compass doesn’t wo, woo, hahh, work.”

Emmet stops to rest, just because Ingo is using precious breathing air to infodump. Elesa gratefully slumps against the railing. Tynamo and litwick, lazy in their still small size, have settled on a weary blitzle and look very smug doing so. (Emmet is not jealous, he tells himself. Emmet is also lying.)

“The bell’s important,” Ingo had repeated.

“Okay,” Elesa responds. “If it’s important to you, then it’s important to us.”

And Emmet finds that he agrees with Elesa. Partially because they crawled up twenty fucking three flights of stairs, but also because Ingo thinks this is important, so it is.

And here’s the thing—

— emmet doesn’t remember much after that.

The rest of that trip was a blur of exhausted groaning and burning legs, and by the time the trio managed to breach floor thirty, people’s brains have all but dribbled out their ears. Emmet remembers being disgustingly sweaty. He remembers blitzle almost tripping to death and litwick’s swearing. He remembers tynamo sticking to his neck like a damp towel. He remembers Ingo’s excited sneasel smile, and the way the sunset bounced off of Elesa’s hair.

He remembers the brassy ring of the Celestial bell. It sounded like victory.

But it was Elesa’s cackle turned scream as Ingo swiped cold hands down her neck that sounded like home.

—-

So when the conductor at thirty one, lost and disoriented in the Impossible Place, heard the sound of a familiar bell, ringing over and over and over-

-the sound of laughter-

-EMMET! Elesa cried-

-like a homing pidove, the conductor, thinks nonsensically as something in him perks up.

(Emmet had always liked winning, more than anything else, and the sound of victory calls him home.)

—

Elesa catches lightning in a bottle. Elesa, arms outstretched, finds purchase in her brother, and does not let go.

Emmet is so, so cold, Elesa thinks as the wind steals air from her lungs. (That’s okay. She’s already breathless from a terrible business called hope.)

Emmet stares back. His hands flap against Elesa’s jacket. Elesa desperately drinks in his wan face and too wide eyes and his frost bitten lips. In a tiny, meek voice, almost lost to the wind, he asks:

“Are you real?”

Elesa lets out an ugly sob. Her tears whip away in the wind as they fall. Emmet’s frightened countenance turns immediately to alarm. His shaky grasp becomes a solid grip as they spin through the air, cushioned by chandelure’s psychic.

“I think so??” Elesa warbles. She sees Emmet’s eyes dart to her mouth. He’s reading mirroring her, she realizes with giddy delight— it’s such an Emmet thing to do, to read lips, and-

“I am Emmet,” Emmet breathes. His eyes have started to water. “Yyou are Elesa- Oh dragons, Elesa!?“

Elesa reaches. Hesitates.

Emmet grabs elesa by the lapels and crushes her tight against him. Elesa holds on, and the grief and relief in her accumulates into a wet sopping mess. She’s ruining his jacket, she mourns, but its okay because he’s dripping all over hers.

She can’t hear what he’s saying into her shoulder, can’t read what he says, but everything’s okay because every part of her is chiming

You came back

You’re here

I’m not alone anymore.

Around them, the air distorts as Chandelure’s psychic wavers, flutters, and solidifies. Gravity reverses its call as they settle gently on the ground, dust billowing in all directions.

The ghost pokemon drops next to them, shaking so hard the musical clang of glass makes Elesa flinch.

You fucks, Chandelure gasps. DON’T GO LEAPING OFF BUILDINGS, I AM NOT YOUR EMERGENCY PARACHUTE.

“I’m sorry,” Elesa gasps, still giddy from the adrenaline.

AND YOU! Chandelure howls, whirling on Emmet, who’s still staring at the ghost with huge eyes. He’s gripping on to solid ground with the energy of a man who realized he could have been a splat on the ground.

YOU LEFT!

Emmet winces.

You- You left us, you left me-

Ah, ah no, Elesa thinks as golden globules of light shed from Chandelure. This is what a ghost looks like crying.

Emmet holds out his arms. Chandelure drifts into his embrace, and shakes, and shakes, and shakes.

You left me, the ghost pokemon whispers. How dare you. How could you.

“I didn’t mean to,” Emmet whispers. “I’m sorry.”

Stop doing this to me, Chandelure demands. Golden brine joins human tears, like drops of sun trapped in wet glass. Stop going where I can not follow.

And Emmet holds his tongue, because he knows he can not promise staying. Not while Ingo and Eelektross are still in Hisui.

(In the back of Emmet’s hurt and shattered mind is a spark. Synapses connect. The cold breach of the Distortion does nothing to drown out the sudden flare of hope in Emmet’s chest, so great he can not breathe, so strong he can not feel, because there’s a path. A difficult, painful path through the Space that Can Not Be, but a path all the same.)

“Elesa, Chandelure-“ Emmet’s voice breaks. He wants to tell them about Eelektross. He wants to tell them about the terrible past that is Hisui. He wants to explain how the last five months were filled with horror and wonder and fear and hope.

Hope, he thinks. So he says this:

“I know how to get Ingo home.”

NOTES:

AAAAAND THAT’S ALL FOR THIS DRABBLE. ITS OUT NOW. I CAN FINALLY GO BACK TO POSTING HAPPY SHENANIGANS! (Now you know the shape of their story.)

Thanks for reading this monster of a post!

[homers-filing-cabinet]

Hey

You mates think that Odysseus’ voice is a bit hoarse or gravelly from shouting to fleets for 20 years of his life?

Just curious

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

I am fairly sexually conservative I think and yet I have to say many of my brothers and sisters in Christ have a visceral hatred of sexuality I can only describe as pathological

[bookishjules]

anyway i just think that if simon dove into fantasy worlds as a way to cope with the grief and heaviness after his father died, and followed clary so readily into a real-life fantasy world in part because of his affinity for them, and then forgot about the reality he found among the fantastical, and then was reintroduced and found a new family that he established formative memories with only to lose one of those new cornerstone members of his life just as he's claiming the fantasy world as his own.. where is he to go from there. he can't escape back into reality when the reality of grief has caught up with him, here in this world so like the ones he'd learned to hide in as a kid.

[maculategiraffe]

why do all of colleen hoover's protagonists have such weird fucking names. "lily bloom" is actually relatively normal compared to "lowen ashleigh." it makes me feel like her books take place in an alternate universe where everything is mostly the same except there's guys named "leeds" and "ledger" running around dating girls named "merit" and "verity"

[erotetica]

POSTULATE that Amanyarin elves who follow Vaire wear macrame clothes.

A la Hass Idriss ‘she rises at dusk’ 2020/Denisse M Vera 2018

[deermouth]

AND THEY FLED LIKE MATTER (THE ULTIMATE COWARD) FLEES THE PRESENCE OF THE SUBLIME.

[nicolegendary]

what if i said that giving eddie a comphet coming out arc could indirectly have a lot of. benefits. for a non-fictional person. hypothetically.

[buzelis]

Peter, give us some of your gayest pics of jokic please

well idk abt the gayest but i can certainly give you my favorites:

[colleybri]

I’m trying to have positive thoughts during the long and bleak wait for Andor season 2… I’m so fascinated that there is going to be a whole year’s gap between each arc. On the downside, this makes things very difficult to predict. But the considerable benefit is that fanfiction writers are going to have so much opportunity for coming up with canon-compliant fics to populate all those gaps. That should keep us going for years! 

[my-name-is-mine-to-know]

I rewatched Madoka Magica, and now I've been ruminating on the similarities between the Incubators and TMA's dread powers. Fundamentally, both are sustained via emotion, granting some individuals inhuman abilities, eventually resulting in manifestations of negative emotion.

Now I'm trying to think of an AU and perhaps how to make that into a fic...

Kyubey doesn't usually go for boys or those below their preteens, but a child who has already suffered so much despair from the death of both parents to the neglect of their caregiver to a supernatural encounter that no one believes them about would certainly sacrifice a lot for even a little bit of hope or protection in the form of a wish, and would certainly fall to despair soon after, considering his lack of support system.

All Martin wants is the love of his mother: he wishes for her to be healthy because it would be awful to just magically change a person's emotions so this is the next best thing. Of course, now she can take care of herself, and is even more resentful of his presence. He doesn't need to be there anymore, so why does he insist upon terrorizing her still? Luckily, he's not home much anymore. He works two minimum wage jobs, and when he's not at work, he's hunting witches. The small bit of hope he feels when cleansing his soul gem is the only thing he has that resembles happiness nowadays, and the seeds seem to take away less of the darkness each time, as his depression begins to dirty his soul as much as his magic expenditure does.

What entity do you think the incubators would be? I feel like it would be the End, considering so much as interacting with one dooms a person; but it could also be the lonely, given how terribly isolating it is to be fighting a battle that no one else could understand except for those who find you an enemy, even though you've technically on the same side; or perhaps Hunt, forcing so many into an endless search for the grief seeds that will prolong their life, but every time you find one, you lose even more of what it would restore in an endless cycle of hunt and kill.

Or perhaps it's too simplifying to try to fit in a single category. That's likely the case.

[theresa-of-liechtenstein]

they are waiting for their van outside arrivals :)