The Journal of Applied Impossibility
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Consider the Stars (part 1 of n)
Note: originally posted on my personal site. Date changed here to reflect original posting date as I migrate my blog here.
I recently found these notes, which I wrote on 18. July, 2016
There is an ancient argument for the existence of God. For many centuries it worked to produce pious men and women. Even brilliant thinkers were swayed by its simple clarity. The argument runs thus:
Consider the stars.
This alone was enough -- once to persuade the souls of men that there was an author of sublimity. But tonight, I look upon the night sky in my city -- which I have loved -- and see the glow of growth: reddish, and when there is fog, possessing its own beauty. ...
...But this is not sublimity. The city lights block out the stars. To be sure, the brightest still shine through. But not the milk-like swirls that inspired our home-galaxy's name. Not the countless pinpricks that St. Thomas took for angels -- that Aristotle took for holes in the firmament. We stand in an ocean of divine light, and when our star dips below -- when our horizon lifts above it -- we could see this light leaking into our dark world as though the heavens were a gauze through which we peered toward God.
That this would suffice becomes clear to those who have been atop secluded peaks. But in the city, it is another matter.
My thesis is that the language of our time has a similar effect -- destroying other arguments. Not because they annihilate the stars themselves, but because they obscure them.
​In the 1990s, there was a massive outage in Los Angeles. Its denizens called the police -- afraid of the glowing clouds. We know that they were being invaded -- by the angels.
I write about all sorts of things. This is one of the places where I do it.
Commonplace Book
Conceptual Tools
Consider The Stars
Determism
Metapolitics
Theistic Arguments