Bakker LV - Nau's Ark

[Sci-2]

15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I guess it depends on what you mean by the concept of damnation. Is damnation a consequence of your actions? Or is damnation just the natural state where everyone ends up, and only through something interceding (like Christ) can you not be damned?

Because biblically? We're all damned, and all sinners. 

In my interpretation - everyone's predestined to be damned or do whatever, they accumulate sin by actions that were planned out in the same way water rolls downhill. Damnation isn't a farce - it's just a natural state of affairs, just like gravity, and some things fall faster than others due to air resistance, not because they chose to be feathers. The Hundred - just like us - believe they have some free will in the matter, believe that they know everything and get to choose - but they don't either. And they're even more certain that they're doing it for their own reasons and own wants. 

But it's predestination all the way down. 

Depends a lot on if you wanted to create a world where definitively free will WAS illusory, and God really did control everything and make everything, and this was their choice. Their choice was to make people suffer for eons. Their choice was to give no one else any say in the matter. Why? Because God gets off on suffering, as do the fragments of God. Why add yeast to dough? Damnation at that point is the aesthetic choice of an otherwise uncaring God. Whether one yeast bacterium eats more or less ultimately doesn't matter that much to God.

So it's just the Way Things Are? I guess we can say the God wanted a world where people and the Hundred seem to have choices, but this also means the No-God is part of the God's design as are the actions of the Consult, Mimara's experience of the Divine's compassion, etc.

It also means reading the books is a worthless endeavor from a narrative standpoint, might as well just read the last pages of the final book and some wiki articles + glossary? I'd question this because Bakker - at least based on the AMA - suggests meaning exists in the Bakkerverse.

Does he simply refer to semantic meaning, or does he also include the idea of life being meaningful? If the latter it seems to me choice in damnation would be necessary?

 

 

[.H.]

3 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

That'd be my argument, yes. All of this has already happened. Kellhus is even told in TGO at one point 'you have always said this'.

I see what you are saying.  Essentially, Eärwa is a damnation factory.  It is made to predeterminedly drive Spirits to damnation and the clutches of hungry gods.  The question though would be, why bother?  As in, if all Spirits are going to be damned anyway, nothing on Eärwa even makes a difference.  Everything that will happen hasn't already happened.  So, then why cycle souls?  It's actually a net loss, since some souls get stuck in places.  Would it then just be because, I guess, a material world just happened to exist?

7 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

In the Outside, the gods think that the WLW will fail, but also know that they project the view of what should happen and didn't. Why didn't it happen? The gods don't know; they get confused, metaphysical alzheimers, or think they chose it, or make up other excuses. Same stuff they did when the No-God walks. Remember, to them Kelmomas doesn't exist. Like, at all. The concept of Kelmomas existing is entirely foreign to them. People talk about Kelmomas and it's like Charlie Brown's teacher rambling on. They can see through all of history and exist in all of history; them paying attention to small people at one moment ranting about some individual is ridiculous to them.

Well, at first they saw him and he saw himself succeed though, right?  So, in the Outside, he already did kill Kellhus.  Except when it came down to it, he didn't.  That's where little Kel threw the whole of Eternity, as the gods could see it, off.  So, in that sense, everything isn't predetermined.  Except that it is.  It's predetermined, only until something else changes it.  The No-God is one of those things.  But I guess maybe there could be others?  Is Kellhus one of those things?  Or partially so?

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Sci-2 said:

So it's just the Way Things Are? I guess we can say the God wanted a world where people and the Hundred seem to have choices, but this also means the No-God is part of the God's design as are the actions of the Consult, Mimara's experience of the Divine's compassion, etc. 

I honestly don't know enough about the No-God to say what it is, but I think it's reasonable to state that no, it isn't in God's design and that's precisely why it can't see past the No-God. The God's viewpoint is omniscient in all the things it has created, but the No-God is beyond that. It results in the absolute end - the apocalypse - of the God's view. And because the God's view does have an end, it means that all of that has collapsed into one specific causality. The God knows that there is an ending to its sight and faculties, knows even the shape of it largely, but cannot grasp it at all because to the God, there is nothing beyond itself, and no way to comprehend beyond itself - even if it could have a self, or did comprehend (I suspect neither is accurate; it sees without understanding). 

Hmm, maybe that's a better way of putting it. By the God's existence, everything that it can see up until its eventual blindness via the No-God is locked into a singular frame of reference. All choice at that point is settled down, just like when you hit send on the email. The results of that email aren't up to you at that point, but what you wrote was. 

1 minute ago, Sci-2 said:

It also means reading the books is a worthless endeavor from a narrative standpoint, might as well just read the last pages of the final book and some wiki articles + glossary? I'd question this because Bakker - at least based on the AMA - suggests meaning exists in the Bakkerverse.

 

Why is meaning a requirement of free will? And whose meaning? Does the yeast wanting to eat gluten mean it has meaning, and does that meaning matter to the baker? When the yeast poops out CO2, is that evidence of its meaning? 

Anyway, if what I said above is accurate it means that free will exists after the apocalypse, and that's worth reading it for. Especially if you know that turning off the No-God restores the God and removes the free will again. This is thematically similar to God-Emperor of Dune, I suppose. 

1 minute ago, Sci-2 said:

 

Does he simply refer to semantic meaning, or does he also include the idea of life being meaningful? If the latter it seems to me choice in damnation would be necessary?

 

I think he'd refer to semantic meaning. That the universe isn't just some collection of random things, but has an objective goal and value that can be measured. That doesn't mean humans have choices. 

 

10 minutes ago, .H. said:

I see what you are saying.  Essentially, Eärwa is a damnation factory.  It is made to predeterminedly drive Spirits to damnation and the clutches of hungry gods.  The question though would be, why bother?  As in, if all Spirits are going to be damned anyway, nothing on Eärwa even makes a difference.  Everything that will happen hasn't already happened.  So, then why cycle souls?  It's actually a net loss, since some souls get stuck in places.  Would it then just be because, I guess, a material world just happened to exist?

Why bother? Because that's how bread is made. That's how it works. God didn't get to pick how damnation functions any more than the baker got to pick how heat makes bread cook. They can pick the oven, pick the heat, pick the yeast - but the underlying functions of metaphysical damnation are a natural occurrence of the universe, just like the atomic weight of Iron. There might be some underlying reasons behind it, but at the end Earwa (and other worlds) are there to make everyone extra tasty. 

10 minutes ago, .H. said:

 

Well, at first they saw him and he saw himself succeed though, right?  So, in the Outside, he already did kill Kellhus.  Except when it came down to it, he didn't.  That's where little Kel threw the whole of Eternity, as the gods could see it, off.  So, in that sense, everything isn't predetermined.  Except that it is.  It's predetermined, only until something else changes it.  The No-God is one of those things.  But I guess maybe there could be others?  Is Kellhus one of those things?  Or partially so?

The WLW seeing himself succeed doesn't mean that's the way it happened though - in the Outside or elsewhere. That's the projection the Gods have based on their near-omniscient knowledge of the universe. 

And yeah, I see your and Sci's point about the No-God indicating something that isn't predetermined, or at least wasn't meant to be - because it couldn't be, because it's beyond the God's sight and knowledge. How can God create something it cannot perceive? That said, we have ample evidence that Kellhus (at least as such as we've seen him) is absurdly god-entangled and visible to the gods (or at least was prior to the salting event, which is itself interesting) - it means that Kellhus is definitely not something that can change things, at least not unpredictably, or at least not yet. 
 

I suppose that'd be another way to resolve all of this. If Kellhus becomes the God, then all of this that caused him to become the God gets locked in and cannot be changed, and all of that is illusory free will at that point. Afterwards? Maybe it does. 

[Sci-2]

32 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I honestly don't know enough about the No-God to say what it is, but I think it's reasonable to state that no, it isn't in God's design and that's precisely why it can't see past the No-God. The God's viewpoint is omniscient in all the things it has created, but the No-God is beyond that. It results in the absolute end - the apocalypse - of the God's view. And because the God's view does have an end, it means that all of that has collapsed into one specific causality. The God knows that there is an ending to its sight and faculties, knows even the shape of it largely, but cannot grasp it at all because to the God, there is nothing beyond itself, and no way to comprehend beyond itself - even if it could have a self, or did comprehend (I suspect neither is accurate; it sees without understanding).

Ah this recalls some of the thinking that the No-God is the God dragged into the Inside. though not saying you're suggesting that. And anyway much of the ending to TUC suggests otherwise, IMO at least.

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Hmm, maybe that's a better way of putting it. By the God's existence, everything that it can see up until its eventual blindness via the No-God is locked into a singular frame of reference. All choice at that point is settled down, just like when you hit send on the email. The results of that email aren't up to you at that point, but what you wrote was. 

One of the issues I have with God (and Hundred) being unable to grasp the absence is the idea that we have a structurally (from a scientific perspective) sound, narratively consistent Block Universe but that one cannot grasp the shape of the absence using the limits of perceptibility. In the Injection Warren Ellis specifically notes an AI that isn't conscious or at least not in the way humans are could still grasp and predict humanity by figuring out everything at the edge of where what is knowable to it dashes against the humans it doesn't understand. (This would be, IMO at least, what machine learning programs that don't understand anything are doing.)

I get this is the whole Blind Brain Theory thing, where unknowns are forever assumed to be a collection of knowns, but I think this might be a problem for BBT at least as far as deities are concerned.

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Why is meaning a requirement of free will? And whose meaning? Does the yeast wanting to eat gluten mean it has meaning, and does that meaning matter to the baker? When the yeast poops out CO2, is that evidence of its meaning? 

Meaningful in the narrative sense. So yeast, unless it is sentient and self-aware, wouldn't have any meaningful actions.

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Anyway, if what I said above is accurate it means that free will exists after the apocalypse, and that's worth reading it for. Especially if you know that turning off the No-God restores the God and removes the free will again. This is thematically similar to God-Emperor of Dune, I suppose. 

Ah fair enough. It's a bit frustrating to me if the six books prior were just predestiny and people only agonized or regretted choices because they were destined to feel as much as they were destined to act. I can see why fans ditched the series post-AMA if that's their reading.

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Why bother? Because that's how bread is made. That's how it works. God didn't get to pick how damnation functions any more than the baker got to pick how heat makes bread cook. They can pick the oven, pick the heat, pick the yeast - but the underlying functions of metaphysical damnation are a natural occurrence of the universe, just like the atomic weight of Iron. There might be some underlying reasons behind it, but at the end Earwa (and other worlds) are there to make everyone extra tasty. 

But why doesn't the God get to pick? Especially if It dreamed up Reality? I've seen Idealists argue God is constrained in some way (Jungian Archetypes for example) but this seems to be an arbitrary argument. What sets the limits of the Dreamer, if all of Creation is Their dream?

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And yeah, I see your and Sci's point about the No-God indicating something that isn't predetermined, or at least wasn't meant to be - because it couldn't be, because it's beyond the God's sight and knowledge. How can God create something it cannot perceive? That said, we have ample evidence that Kellhus (at least as such as we've seen him) is absurdly god-entangled and visible to the gods (or at least was prior to the salting event, which is itself interesting) - it means that Kellhus is definitely not something that can change things, at least not unpredictably, or at least not yet. 

Why does Kellhus' visibility to the gods mean he cannot change things?

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I suppose that'd be another way to resolve all of this. If Kellhus becomes the God, then all of this that caused him to become the God gets locked in and cannot be changed, and all of that is illusory free will at that point. Afterwards? Maybe it does. 

Are you saying the Past/Present/Future state is rewritten? Makes me think of Grant Morrison describing the battle between New Genesis and Apokalips. Sometimes Good wins, sometimes Evil, each time Creation is remade.

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

One of the issues I have with God (and Hundred) being unable to grasp the absence is the idea that we have a structurally (from a scientific perspective) sound, narratively consistent Block Universe but that one cannot grasp the shape of the absence using the limits of perceptibility. In the Injection Warren Ellis specifically notes an AI that isn't conscious or at least not in the way humans are could still grasp and predict humanity by figuring out everything at the edge of where what is knowable to it dashes against the humans it doesn't understand. (This would be, IMO at least, what machine learning programs that don't understand anything are doing.)

Right - that's what Ajokli can do, but none of the others, and it makes the Gods particularly stupid as foils. 

5 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

I get this is the whole Blind Brain Theory thing, where unknowns are forever assumed to be a collection of knowns, but I think this might be a problem for BBT at least as far as deities are concerned.

I think it's more a problem for the BBT in general - that there are ways of logically figuring out things that don't require specific observation, and we do them in science all the fucking time. That's what Bakker is arguing, mind you, at least through here, but it's not particularly solid.

5 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

Meaningful in the narrative sense. So yeast, unless it is sentient and self-aware, wouldn't have any meaningful actions.

Ah, gotcha. Okay, in that case I think that the universe is meaningful - meaning it is intentional, and things do matter - but individuals in it are not necessarily meaningful. 

5 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

Ah fair enough. It's a bit frustrating to me if the six books prior were just predestiny and people only agonized or regretted choices because they were destined to feel as much as they were destined to act. I can see why fans ditched the series post-AMA if that's their reading.

That, and a whole lot of other reasons, yeah.

5 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

But why doesn't the God get to pick? Especially if It dreamed up Reality? I've seen Idealists argue God is constrained in some way (Jungian Archetypes for example) but this seems to be an arbitrary argument. What sets the limits of the Dreamer, if all of Creation is Their dream?

Perhaps the God isn't omnipotent, but is simply omniscient? And can create the most objective things, but not purely objective things? I think that this is the difference between creating Earwa and creating the rules in which the universe operates. 

And yes, it's absolutely arbitrary, but it fits things well. 

5 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

Why does Kellhus' visibility to the gods mean he cannot change things?

Because if he is visible to the gods then he is encompassed by them. He exists in the same causal frame they do, and cannot surpass them. He is not beyond the end of their view. This all assumes that everything that the God can see is predestined, and only things that are outside of that are not. 

5 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

Are you saying the Past/Present/Future state is rewritten? Makes me think of Grant Morrison describing the battle between New Genesis and Apokalips. Sometimes Good wins, sometimes Evil, each time Creation is remade.

Kind of? This is more similar in my mind to the godhead thing that exists in Charles Stross' work, where it could communicate and interact with everything in its causal light cone, and it took great pains to ensure no one interfered with that causality - because if they did, it might not come into existence. In this case, I'm saying that assume Kellhus is the Godhead and that he requires the No-God to exist, the gods to be fractured, etc - all so that he can be the Godhead. Once he becomes the God he rules the universe in all directions, and the first thing he would do is naturally protect his own creation. 

It's not rewritten exactly; it's more that, like the No-God, everything that requires that happening is set in stone. 

[Sci-2]

I'd argue that The Good Place is a far more interesting and poignant critique of scriptural-objective morality and how it would translate to an afterlife.

Better characterization (especially of females), better humor, better presented stakes...arguably just a better metaphysical whodunnit all around...

[.H.]

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

How can God create something it cannot perceive?

Hmm, that is an interesting question.  I guess then we are asking if it is possible to invoke something beyond the perceptual horizon?  As in, I don't doubt the gods could see the Sarcophagus itself, but they cannot see it's metaphysical implications.  Not in the same way they can see "ordinary" mortals, with "ordinary" souls/spirits.  Is this what damned the Progenitors, perhaps?  That they were able, somehow to completely break the "chains" of what the gods intended for them and so court things completely outside the Outside's ability to comprehend?

Perhaps it is akin (only in the most superficial way) to how we can make a light-bulb that can produce light we cannot see (say, ultra-violet light).  In a "similar" way, this could explain why Ajokli needs Kellhus, he is the UV filter, so-to-speak.  He is a filter by which Ajokli can "see" the Ark, the Golden Room and so on.  I mistakenly recalled a part of the series implying that the Hundred did not see Kellhus, but it looks like I misunderstood what was being said in that part.

Even so, the question of how the Progenitors then came to make the No-God, a thing that seems to be outside The God's plan, without a (some sort of) will given to them by a divine source.  This then would seem to mean one of two things.  Either the Progenitors (and presumably some others) can be outside The God's (or the God of Gods') plan.  Or that the No-God is The God of Gods' plan and the Hundred simply aren't privy to that knowledge.

I guess there is also a third option, that there is a meta-plan, outside The God of Gods'.  Perhaps that third option could be that Kellhus ascends to divinity.

 

[Kalbear]

8 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

I'd argue that The Good Place is a far more interesting and poignant critique of scriptural-objective morality and how it would translate to an afterlife.

No argument there. Absolutely brilliant show that also manages to be excellent at dealing with ethics, morality, and religious viewpoints. Chidi's actual video (what we owe to each other) and how he manages to talk about it is absurdly useful for even the small snippet it has. 

Plus, I'm totally there for Steve Austin's head on Tahani's body (or vice versa).

8 hours ago, Sci-2 said:

Better characterization (especially of females), better humor, better presented stakes...arguably just a better metaphysical whodunnit all around...

I went in knowing the Major Spoiler of Season 1 and it was, if anything, even more compelling to watch. Seeing all the perfect little details that were set up, all the payoffs and how they would payoff. One of the best shows in a decade. 

[Callan S.]

On 9/9/2018 at 6:48 AM, Sci-2 said:

This is also suggests animals may naturally be of the One, given they have no souls to damn whereas humans - really all sentient entities with reflective consciousness - only exist due to the lapses in the God/One's own consciousness. Individuals, then, might be that aspect of the One that is lead into the illusion of a persona...the closest analogous reality I can think of is the "voices" in our heads offering praise, criticism. shame, etc.

I'm late to the party here in replying to page 3, but: So is that why reducing the population to X amount closes the gates to the hundred. Reducing the population actually makes the one god wake up more and at a certain point it's conscious and the hundred end up blocked away as much as out own dreams are locked away when we're awake?

[Callan S.]

On 9/13/2018 at 9:11 AM, Kalbear said:

How can God create something it cannot perceive?

How can you make dreams without knowing they are dreams?

[.H.]

On 9/13/2018 at 3:40 AM, Sci-2 said:

I'd argue that The Good Place is a far more interesting and poignant critique of scriptural-objective morality and how it would translate to an afterlife.

Better characterization (especially of females), better humor, better presented stakes...arguably just a better metaphysical whodunnit all around...

Alright, alright, quit beating me up about it,

I'll see if I can watch it this weekend, but probably not, got a lot to move.

[Darth Richard II]

Do it. It's the best show on TV.

[Rhom]

Is that the one with Kristen Bell?  She’s enough reason to watch anything!

[Kalbear]

On 9/15/2018 at 10:36 PM, Rhom said:

Is that the one with Kristen Bell?  She’s enough reason to watch anything!

It is, and it is, but the show is so much more than her being amazing. And that's saying a lot. 

[.H.]

On 9/18/2018 at 1:26 PM, Kalbear said:

It is, and it is, but the show is so much more than her being amazing. And that's saying a lot. 

It is a good show, my wife and I are enjoying it.  Only up to, I think, episode 9 of season one, so far though.

We know there is going to be a twist, but neither of us know what it is, so we just keep wildly guessing different things every episode.  It's like a funny little mini-game.

[IlyaP]

A question for anyone who can answer this for me (this is completely unrelated to anything above, I suspect - which I don't want to read for fear of spoilers): 

The Judging Eye was published in an A format, much like the books in the Prince of Nothing trilogy. 

Yet every subsequent book in the Aspect-Emperor tetralogy was published in a B format (i.e.: the height of the books increased after The Judging Eye). 

I've attempted to find information on this change online but have had no success. Is there anyone who could provide some information around this? Am happy to be redirected to other sites, forums, etc., where this is all explained/laid out in detail.

Apologies again for disrupting the primary conversations above! Didn't want to sift through the above as I've only read the first three books and recently obtained a copy of the fourth/1st of the new tetralogy.

[lokisnow]

I can confirm when I get home but I believe in the United States all seven are the same height.

[Darth Richard II]

In the US the hardbacks are all the same height.

[.H.]

5 hours ago, IlyaP said:

I've attempted to find information on this change online but have had no success. Is there anyone who could provide some information around this? Am happy to be redirected to other sites, forums, etc., where this is all explained/laid out in detail.

It's going to be important to let us know what edition you have.  If they are US prints or from somewhere else/if they are hardcover or softcover as well.  I think most everyone here has either the US or the UK versions, most probably.

[IlyaP]

This is the series version of the Prince of Nothing trilogy. 

The details - including dimensions - of my copy of The Judging Eye.

They were all published by Orbit.

The first four books have a height of approximately 174mm or so. 

From there onwards, things get weird.