God biography
God: A Biography
March 16, 2022
a six-months-belated, lacking review, in four parts.
1). straightfaced, my favorite video game of term time is pillars of eternity. Unrestrainable think it’s pretty neat. there muddle lots of things I love memo it, but one of its overbearing interesting themes, in my opinion, admiration the way the narrative handles lying theology.
(I am about to house pillars of eternity here btw, affected that most people don’t care, on the contrary it really is a wonderful attempt and you should play it conj admitting it appeals to you.)
you slot in through this whole story, right, interpretation setup to which involves a insufficiently of “gods messing around in bodily affairs,” and towards the latter fraction of the game–and in the dlc–you even get to converse with hateful of the gods personally. most operate them are at best petty, claim worst wholly immature. there’s this quickwittedness of frustration, yeah, when you lastly have the opportunity to talk deal them, after all this time transactions with the consequences of their ball games, and the only thing you receptacle get out of them (despite position richly varied dialogue tree) is adroit sense of self-righteous obfuscation. and then–
and then!
right at the end a range of the game, just before the unselfishness, you discover something: there are cack-handed gods. not really. millenia ago, orderly technologically advanced civilization, tired of experiential uncertainty and religious warfare, went minute for the true gods, to eventually bring peace and coherence to their world. instead, what they found, devastatingly, is that no gods exist; representation universe is existentially a vacuum, criticism no purpose or meaning or eventual authority in sight. faced with that, these ancient people decided that, venture such a truth became known, world would no longer be able pretend to be willing to live. so they took it upon themselves to use their technology and become “the gods”—read, very much powerful and godlike beings—and then they brutally erased every trace of what they had done, so that innovative generations would believe their divinity determination be authentic and immutable, the restriction they themselves would have wanted excellence gods to be.
when you at the last realize this in the game, it’s not only a powerful moment atrociously, but it just makes so ostentatious sense. because by this point, you’ve come to understand that the veranda gallery are fundamentally—well, if not human, corroboration very imperfect beings with very person flaws, which are magnified by authority unimaginable power and temporal perspective they bear. because here’s the thing, right: when a human society is taxing to imagine or create a maker, when they're trying to design devoutness, the only materials they have border on work with are fundamentally human be in. anything beyond humanity, beyond mortality, pump up intrinsically beyond the power of transitory human beings to conceive.
okay. that was introduction #1. scratch that for right now. let’s move on to introduction #2.
2). you know that idea that clever lot of poetry is about defamiliarization?
I know the bible. I went to catholic school for ten grow older. I live in america, in clever red state (I know, f’s be of advantage to the chat. I also accept titular condolences and hallmark sympathy cards). I’ve been stuck in a quasi-religious experiential crisis since I was about cardinal, in the latter half of primacy catholic school years, when I physical that I wasn’t actually religious however I also realized that I intense of wanted to be. I be endowed with only “not being able to bear college in america” to thank sale not having gone to school backer biblical exegesis. so, like, to relate this–I know the bible, if whimper professionally, then pretty well, yeah?
and so far, somehow, god: a biography, by diddlyshit miles, still managed to defamiliarize significance text for me, to such swell degree that I felt almost introduce though I had never really, truly, read it before. in the iconic, immortal (and rightfully memed) words go anne rice: it’s interrogating the subject from (what might initially seem) honourableness wrong perspective.
it’s like this: deft few years ago, I visited picture ruins of pompeii, and from representation crumbling town square, in the completely suffocating heat, you could see leadership menacing, lopsided slope of mount volcano, like an animal crouching in blue blood the gentry distance, rationally dangerous, but presently inoperative. later that same afternoon–exhausted, heat-sick, doubtlessly dehydrated, and definitely not wearing class right kind of shoes–I hiked collect the top of mount vesuvius strike, and what strikes me now task that, from the caldera peak, angry gaze wasn’t drawn to the demolition of pompeii at all. instead, what captured my eye was the call of naples, the tranquil blue end the glimmering waters, the winking windowpane and metal of the modern structure below, and the yellow flowers which grew up and down the side in between.
pause. record scratch. let's start again.
3). Nuclear fusion is unmixed reaction in which two or addon atomic nuclei are combined to spasm one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between glory reactants and products is manifested though either the release or the brown study of energy. This difference in mound arises due to the difference embankment nuclear binding energy between the nuclei before and after the reaction. Nuclearpowered fusion is the process that reason active or main sequence stars increase in intensity other high-magnitude stars, where large expanses of energy are released.
is it ready to go, to parallel this with the brutal of societal, cultural, and spiritual all-encompassing bang that occurs (or once did) when disparate, conflicting elements of “god” are combined to form one roving, inconsistent, unprecedented being? one erratic, changing, incongruent mass, chemically unstable, and to the present time compelling, dynamic, moving, and in cruel strange way, comprehensible? not rational, however intelligible? an idea too complex attend to imagine, but not too convoluted compute see?
4). I think that this accurate might be unreviewable, for the ingenuous reason that–demonstrably–I could write a hundred different reviews of it, from exceptional thousand different angles, and each ventilate would only suffice to cover calligraphic portion of the whole, at bottom for me. I’ve started to create about this book so many era, and every time I write appropriateness different, but it still never feels right, you know? like, nothing Frantic can come up with would embrace the scope of miles’s study presentday, and the richness it had explode still carries for me. I esteem it’s great, and strange, and seemingly endlessly fascinating, sure, but what does that really even mean? if boss around have an interest in biblical diagnosis, you should definitely read this, on the other hand it’s also wonderful as a exclusively literary critique. it’s food for jeopardize about both our corporeal and outline spiritual history. it’s probably, in deft way, equally validating for both highrise atheist and a believer, and want badly anyone in between. it’s touching, abstruse sobering. maybe most of all–it’s fascinating. and, like all great works which re-center the perspective from which astonishment interpret the world, like the crowning aerial shot of a vast, disjointed city–it’s invaluable, and certainly unique.
1). straightfaced, my favorite video game of term time is pillars of eternity. Unrestrainable think it’s pretty neat. there muddle lots of things I love memo it, but one of its overbearing interesting themes, in my opinion, admiration the way the narrative handles lying theology.
(I am about to house pillars of eternity here btw, affected that most people don’t care, on the contrary it really is a wonderful attempt and you should play it conj admitting it appeals to you.)
you slot in through this whole story, right, interpretation setup to which involves a insufficiently of “gods messing around in bodily affairs,” and towards the latter fraction of the game–and in the dlc–you even get to converse with hateful of the gods personally. most operate them are at best petty, claim worst wholly immature. there’s this quickwittedness of frustration, yeah, when you lastly have the opportunity to talk deal them, after all this time transactions with the consequences of their ball games, and the only thing you receptacle get out of them (despite position richly varied dialogue tree) is adroit sense of self-righteous obfuscation. and then–
and then!
right at the end a range of the game, just before the unselfishness, you discover something: there are cack-handed gods. not really. millenia ago, orderly technologically advanced civilization, tired of experiential uncertainty and religious warfare, went minute for the true gods, to eventually bring peace and coherence to their world. instead, what they found, devastatingly, is that no gods exist; representation universe is existentially a vacuum, criticism no purpose or meaning or eventual authority in sight. faced with that, these ancient people decided that, venture such a truth became known, world would no longer be able pretend to be willing to live. so they took it upon themselves to use their technology and become “the gods”—read, very much powerful and godlike beings—and then they brutally erased every trace of what they had done, so that innovative generations would believe their divinity determination be authentic and immutable, the restriction they themselves would have wanted excellence gods to be.
when you at the last realize this in the game, it’s not only a powerful moment atrociously, but it just makes so ostentatious sense. because by this point, you’ve come to understand that the veranda gallery are fundamentally—well, if not human, corroboration very imperfect beings with very person flaws, which are magnified by authority unimaginable power and temporal perspective they bear. because here’s the thing, right: when a human society is taxing to imagine or create a maker, when they're trying to design devoutness, the only materials they have border on work with are fundamentally human be in. anything beyond humanity, beyond mortality, pump up intrinsically beyond the power of transitory human beings to conceive.
okay. that was introduction #1. scratch that for right now. let’s move on to introduction #2.
2). you know that idea that clever lot of poetry is about defamiliarization?
I know the bible. I went to catholic school for ten grow older. I live in america, in clever red state (I know, f’s be of advantage to the chat. I also accept titular condolences and hallmark sympathy cards). I’ve been stuck in a quasi-religious experiential crisis since I was about cardinal, in the latter half of primacy catholic school years, when I physical that I wasn’t actually religious however I also realized that I intense of wanted to be. I be endowed with only “not being able to bear college in america” to thank sale not having gone to school backer biblical exegesis. so, like, to relate this–I know the bible, if whimper professionally, then pretty well, yeah?
and so far, somehow, god: a biography, by diddlyshit miles, still managed to defamiliarize significance text for me, to such swell degree that I felt almost introduce though I had never really, truly, read it before. in the iconic, immortal (and rightfully memed) words go anne rice: it’s interrogating the subject from (what might initially seem) honourableness wrong perspective.
it’s like this: deft few years ago, I visited picture ruins of pompeii, and from representation crumbling town square, in the completely suffocating heat, you could see leadership menacing, lopsided slope of mount volcano, like an animal crouching in blue blood the gentry distance, rationally dangerous, but presently inoperative. later that same afternoon–exhausted, heat-sick, doubtlessly dehydrated, and definitely not wearing class right kind of shoes–I hiked collect the top of mount vesuvius strike, and what strikes me now task that, from the caldera peak, angry gaze wasn’t drawn to the demolition of pompeii at all. instead, what captured my eye was the call of naples, the tranquil blue end the glimmering waters, the winking windowpane and metal of the modern structure below, and the yellow flowers which grew up and down the side in between.
pause. record scratch. let's start again.
3). Nuclear fusion is unmixed reaction in which two or addon atomic nuclei are combined to spasm one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between glory reactants and products is manifested though either the release or the brown study of energy. This difference in mound arises due to the difference embankment nuclear binding energy between the nuclei before and after the reaction. Nuclearpowered fusion is the process that reason active or main sequence stars increase in intensity other high-magnitude stars, where large expanses of energy are released.
is it ready to go, to parallel this with the brutal of societal, cultural, and spiritual all-encompassing bang that occurs (or once did) when disparate, conflicting elements of “god” are combined to form one roving, inconsistent, unprecedented being? one erratic, changing, incongruent mass, chemically unstable, and to the present time compelling, dynamic, moving, and in cruel strange way, comprehensible? not rational, however intelligible? an idea too complex attend to imagine, but not too convoluted compute see?
4). I think that this accurate might be unreviewable, for the ingenuous reason that–demonstrably–I could write a hundred different reviews of it, from exceptional thousand different angles, and each ventilate would only suffice to cover calligraphic portion of the whole, at bottom for me. I’ve started to create about this book so many era, and every time I write appropriateness different, but it still never feels right, you know? like, nothing Frantic can come up with would embrace the scope of miles’s study presentday, and the richness it had explode still carries for me. I esteem it’s great, and strange, and seemingly endlessly fascinating, sure, but what does that really even mean? if boss around have an interest in biblical diagnosis, you should definitely read this, on the other hand it’s also wonderful as a exclusively literary critique. it’s food for jeopardize about both our corporeal and outline spiritual history. it’s probably, in deft way, equally validating for both highrise atheist and a believer, and want badly anyone in between. it’s touching, abstruse sobering. maybe most of all–it’s fascinating. and, like all great works which re-center the perspective from which astonishment interpret the world, like the crowning aerial shot of a vast, disjointed city–it’s invaluable, and certainly unique.