Five points are descriptive of the essentials of any primal world: Time first, the progression of events as we may know it. Life, and its essential aspect. Free will, as contrasted with both determinism and existentialism. The uniqueness of presence in the world. And God. I make no attempt to be thorough in any point. Mathematics has not yet built a set of propositions from which to derive such a world; and I actually feel that such a construct is of little value, since the object of a description is not the least number of degenerate equations, but the broadest conceptualization of the forces, or drives, which occur around us. Study of this life tends to introduce spurious concepts which color the study. The primitive methods of data accumulation which are current in ancient tribes is more thoroughgoing, and is also less subject to coloration by spurious concepts. Since seeing the extent to which my religion was so colored as I grew up, I observe and respond to the world as spontaneously as possible. I hope to avoid the overlay of theology with cultural prejudice. Even the great scientists have failed to avoid this, but we must never stop extending the study of the world we can know for sure. Can we in all of modern society cast off the overlay of centuries of hashing over what was observed? Not likely. The tribal folk were close enough to see the world behind the analysis. But for a few now, and those they influence, it is not only possible, but quite natural; an accomplished fact. The frontier is hardly gone from the world, and some few will always know the real world so long as they flee the stultifying confines of society. Just look around at the young having a ball, lawless and loving, and be grateful that they are still able to carouse in freedom.
We have, each of us, a long line of progenitors, both genital and intellectual. I try to hold on to what is known as my own. Scots tradition is hard to accept by those who feel that a man should be this way or that. The drives to excell at competition, to praise the day that you were born, are not either unnatural or contrary to Christian faith. Christ asked of us only two things, to be baptised with His spirit celebrate our faith. We celebrate rumptiously, and are bettered by it.
The modeling of space-time is a critical departure point for the comparison of modern with ancient world-views. The primal world of the adherents of any religion must reflect their capacity to accept tenets of a proselytizing newcomer. A failure to understand the consequences of our modern four-dimentional manifold has led to pseudo-scientific departures, which purport to have answered the ancient questions of religion about the correct attitude toward the future. It is common to hear that Minkovski has opened up a new causal, or deterministic, dimension. Exactly what is meant, is that the present can be considered as a moment between two infinitely running, but semantically equivalent stacks of similar moments. That is, there is no difference between this moment and the last, nor the next, nor that moment a year from now, in any way essential for our understanding of the view we take of the world. The various popularizations both by theologians and philosophers have adopted this misconception to the world structures which had been built atop our Christian world-view over the last few centuries.
The present in any description of reality, the world in which we know or believe to know, must have a unique property which I like to compare with a nozzle. Prior to reaching the nozzle, the moments are well ordered and describable by a degenerate set of equations; after entering the nozzle, we cannot speak of any such construct as a moment in time. During the traverse of the nozzle, we are dealing with what has been known as the present. Projections from the present cannot be made with a degenerate equation so valuable in the representation of the past. Using the model, we encounter turbulance; the present may be extended to include that which we can predict, but this is very limited. The gross predictions which we can make of the future are not nearly comparable with the minutiae of our knowledge of the past. The present is the latest, but in a very real sense the last, in a series of moments which have gone to make up the world. Any attempt to include a future in the world is entering a discussion of something as unreal as a unicorn. The divergence at the present is reflected in our primal world by a few concepts which hold little importance for modern scholars, but which make daily life so very dear to the layman. The past is very much more real than we are led to believe by the scholarly cosmologies. We do not have the option of assigning any objective reality to the future until it has become the present. A living being is a creature of a world consisting of his past and present. One might be well advised to acknowledge this when considering the possible effects of his life on his descendents. Our actions live on when we are dead and buried; we leave a part, perhaps the most significant part, of ourselves with the world when we die. This can only be understood by an examination of the world in which we live now. From the continued existence of the actions of our ancestors, we accept on faith alone, since there is yet no future, that we will live on. When we die, we are a part of a 'living' matrix which developed as our culture.
The difference between the quick and the dead, the walking and the buried, is small indeed if we do not give credence to a non-actual concept of the living as somehow contained in a box called the 'body,' motorized by a 'soul' which leaves intact at death. Considering the essential quality of the living as their 'activity,' or interaction with the present, leads to a reevaluation of life itself. That which is affecting change in its surroundings is living. Here we can understand the force which is within each entity we encounter, whether it be rock, plant, animal, man, or spirit. Each is living in the sense that it effects change in its surroundings. The rock's 'life' may be only the detour we make around it, or the mote the rain forms around it, but that's quite different than the absence of life. The plant's life may only be observable as the change in tribal activity at harvest time, but that's quite different than total lack of volition. The animal's life may be in part the actions which it takes to maintain its territory, but is also the culture of the tribes which hunt it. The recent dead are very much alive in the events attributable to their activity in the world; it takes considerable time to revert into the past from which we all have come. Some great men of the very distant past still live today, effecting day by day changes in the present.
Activity in the present is dependent on all the influences which converge in an individual. To say that a first cause, a supreme God, or an alfather was prior to the world is not to say that He no longer lives in the world. Rather, His life is in all that has ever been, He will live until all that He created is no more, is forgotten; as long as the world shall be. But each moment proceeds to the next via a present which adds its own unique presence to the nexus. We add our own contributions to that present, as do all individuals. The spirits of the elements which were created first live on in the climate of the times. We may beseech them more readily than the alfather, for their individual natures are more easily conceptualized, adn thus more easily addressed. The recent dead, while their lives still have influence over ours, are even more easily known and addressed. Very important is the point that the life of the recent dead has a cast to it which changes only with the ongoing evolution of the family, or tribe, or culture to which they belong, not with the daily activity of a localized body. Thus, until he is forgotten, a 'dead' man can be beseeched for strength of character and certainty of outlook. So, if we consciously beseech our ancestors for guidance, we do not change as radically due to events.
"You can only choose what you want - now," Heck Ramsey in The Century Turns. The present is unique in our ability to effect it. All effects happen only in the present. The results of our present choices can only be conjectured from our understanding of the parameters of progression in time. These parameters are not absolutes, but are rather tendencies. When we attempt to leave the present altogether in our conjecture of future events, we are left only with mounting uncertainties. A construct made up only of uncertain terms has no place in an objective description of the world. The past, conversely, is absolutely set. The hosepipe from which the present blooms. In that past is when the creation occured, when the powers of the world live, when our lives reside. From a study of it, we may see the trend of events, the living aspect of those who were. In the present, the reachable world, we do only what we can do now. We are influenced by all that has happened before, but we cannot do other than choose among the influences which will guide us for the moment. Based on those choices, the next moment comes into existence. We provide the setting of the nozzle, whether the future be finely tuned or rich with possibility.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word is the world. God spoke, and the day and the night were. God spoke, and the world was as we know it. God spoke, and life flowered, a miracle to behold. God spoke, and the moving creatures were in the world. God spoke, and the moving creatures knew the world. God spoke, and the image of God was in man. God rested; the world was good. All that happens is an echo of that time, and its promise. The ancients heard God's promise when they listened; they seldom listened, but a few heard. And even more seldom, the world responds to the Word by providing miraculous events. These days, we seldom hear the echos of God's promise, and is there more to hear than those echos? Does God still take an active role in the present? These questions can only be posed, and answered, by the faithful, and only denied objective meaning by unbelievers. Yet conversion necessitates our instilling the belief that God does take an interest in the ongoing developments of the moment. He expects us to forgego the temptation to listen to the nearer voices in the world, and hearken to His, 'though it echos (Oh, so softly!) in our bustling culture.
The question of whether God is in the world is the most misunderstood that I have studied. The answer is said by both sides not to effect the physical sciences. That thesis is untenable when the concept of God means what I believe it to. All supernatural forces in the world, whether they be social results due to the actions of singular individuals, or the results of large scale events (the 'Acts of God' of the insurance companies,) can be interpreted as extensions of the causative entity. If in the beginning was the Word, then all that is now is consequent of God's statements. All which we see around us is an extention of God, being an aspect of Him. This is the only sense in which He is in the world. When He speaks again, He increases the content of the world, but the immediate consequence will be a reduction of freedom of our action. He has promised in Christ that He will enter the world nevermore until such time as we know Christ in all our actions; then He may without breaking His promise enter the affairs of men. So the question of His being in the world is moot; He will not restrict our freedom by acting - being, if you prefer - until we know Him in a way that His actions will not be an encroachment on our free will.
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