Failing to find an explaination in knowledge I began to search for it inlife, hoping to find it in the people around me. I began to observe how these people like myself lived, and how they delt with the question that led me to dispair.

And this is what I discovered among people whose position in life, as regards education and lifestyle, was similar to my own.

I found that these people of my circle had four methods of escape from the dreadful situation in which we all find ourselves.

The first method of escape is that of ignorance. It consists of failing to recognize, or understand, that life is evil and absurd. The majority of the people of this kind are either women, or very young, or very stupid and have not yet understood the problem of life that presented itself to Schopenhauser, Soloman, and Buddha. They see neither the dragon that is waiting for them, nor the mice that are gnawing away at the bush from which they are clinging, and they lick the drops of honey. But they only lick them for a while: something will turn their attention to the dragon and the mice and the licking will come to an end. There was nothing I could learn from them for we can never cease knowing what we know.

Wow … lots of stuff here to chew on. A side interest of mine for the last few years has been macro economics and the housing market in particular. It became clear to me that something was wrong with the state of affairs when an engineer could not afford to buy even a modest condo in San Diego county. So, I left knowing that life was better elsewhere and it wasn’t worth my time to wait for the situation to right itself. People like my parents and certain friends were like these ignorant people. I think they all stopped licking their honey in the last year!!!

Currrent events aside, I am struck by that last sentence that says that we cannot cease knowing what we know. This brings to mind the root cause of why I cannot simply just join with all the other lemmings in church, even though I might wish to. I cannot simply forget the key events which have transpired in my past and have shaped who I am today. The events of my life are in direct conflict with some very key tennants in Christian thought and this will forever cause problems for me. One of the things I would ask God if given the chance is to know the meaning of the parable of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I sometimes wonder if the search for knowledge that Tolstoy and people like him embark on is really something evil and someting to be avoided! For whatever reason, God didn’t want them eating from that tree. I’d REALLY like to know why. Perhaps knowledge really isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. And the real downer is that knowledge is a one way street. You just can’t go from enlightenment to ignorance.

Several times I said to myself, ‘But perhaps I have overlooked something, or failed to understand something? It cannot be that this state of despair is common to all men.’ And I searched for an answer to my questions in all branches of knowledge acquired by man. I sought long and laboriously. I did not search half-heartedly, or out of idle curiosity, but tormentedly, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation, and I found nothing.

I searched all branches of knowledge and not only found nothing, but was convinced that all those who had searched the realms of knowledge like myself had likewise found nothing. Not only had they found nothing, but they had plainly acknowledged the same thing that had led me to despair: the meaninglessness of life as the only indisputable piece of knowledge available to man.

If only poor Tolstoy had read ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’, or simply asked Google. Hee Hee. It is interesting to me how some people can get so stuck on finding meaning in their life, while other could care less. Even more interesting on how the search for meaning can so consume some of the more intelligent folk around. I think that my day job keeps me from falling into this particular black hole. Instead I hover near the event horizon.

Chapters 5 and 6 are kind of boring as he keeps harping on the meaninglessness of life and his futile search for meaning. Still, he mentions some relevent truths about the nature of science and philosophy, religion being a subset of philosophy.

The most important thing was that my own personal question, the question of what I am with all my desires, was left completely unanswered. I understood that these studies are very interesting and attractive but that their precision and clarity are inversely proportionate to their applicability to questions concerning life: the less applicable to the questions of life, the clearer and more precise they are, whereas the more they try to provide solutions to the questions of life, the more obscure and unattractive they become.

This quirky relationship reminded me of the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics, and is why my main blog is named ‘Quantum Theology.’ Interestingly, I think a big reason why 7 day creationism still holds sway is the fact that this is required to maintain precision and clarity withing the construct of Christianity. What I mean by this is that a very key foundation to Christianity is the assertion that the Bible is without error. This was an error discovered by Galileo back in the early 17th century when he went toe to toe with the inquisition regarding the ‘unbiblical’ notion that the earth orbited the sun. Galileo introduced the very practical notion that the Bible was authoritative in the matters of ‘faith and morals’ only and should not be made authoritative in matters of science. Sadly, his advice was not heeded for centuries. The need for precision and clarity is also a motivating factor in the differences that ‘modern’ Christians have with ‘post-modern’ Christians. Modern Christians have issues with the obscurity of the relativistic and ‘wishywashy’ philosophy of post modern Christians.

Now, more on science and religion.

If we turn to those branches of knowledge that attempt to provide solutions to the questions of life, to physiology, psychology, biology, and sociology, we encounter a startling poverty of thought, extreme lack of clarity and a completely unjustified pretension to resolve questions beyond their scope[...]

This is the same point Stephen J. Gould makes in his book ‘Rocks of Ages.’ Science cannot answer questions like ‘Why do I live?’ or ‘How should I live?’ Neither can philosophy, or religion, answer the questions pertaining to the natural world. This does not stop them from trying.

You are a randomly united lump of something. This lump decomposes and the fermentation is called your life. The lump will disintegrate and the fermentation will end, together will all your questions. This is the answer given by the exact side of knowledge, and if it adheres strictly to its principles, it cannot answer otherwise.

However, the truth is that this answer does not reply to the question. I need to know the meaning of my life, and the fact that it is a particle of infinity not only fails to give it any meaning, but eliminates any possibility of meaning.

The experimental side of knowledge vaguely compromises with the speculative side in saying that the meaning of life lies in development and in the encouragement of this development. But owing to the inaccuracies and obscurities these cannot be regarded as answers[...]

[...]There is the same mistaken approach to the understanding of development and perfection, with the only difference that in one instance we have the development of everything, and in the other the development of peoples lives. This mistake is identical: development and perfection can have no purpose or direction in infinity, and as far as my question is concerned, no answer.

This compromise between the speculative side and the experimental side is the tact taken by prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Tolstoy hit the nail on the head with the problem with this approach. It’s like trying to use a compass in the absense of a magnetic field.

There is an old Eastern fable about a traveller who is taken unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveller hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare to climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding onto the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveller sees this and knows that he will eventually perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse - day and night - are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet.

More later.

I seems to me now, even if it didn’t at the time, that bible studies are conducted much in the same manner that historians study history. Gaining knowledge and understanding is important, but at some point it becomes very important that you discover something new. The old truths are boring and you need to show your spirituality or justify your tenure, by finding something new. This is usually accomplished by making small things important,important things small, and by altering the lighting to make things look different.

A few weeks ago I asked a bombshell of a question, that probably went over many peoples heads. It was the type of question that called into question the whole leaning of the discussion and the whole manner in which some elders conducted their spiritual walk, which is what we were being instructed on. I didn’t get a satisfactory answer, and I really didn’t expect one. It was one of those questions that just might not have an answer. Unfortunately, the answer really is important to me personally.

Last week, I had multiple strangers come up to me to congratulate on my question. It appears that I ’scored’ points by being able to find something original (to them) to ask. Similar to finding some new truth when none really exists. The fact that the answer I got didn’t make sense didn’t register to people. It was ‘The Question’ that was killer. One guy emailed me about ‘The Question’, and I had a very very frank reply which laid out exactly what the answer wasn’t really an answer and why the answer was so important. I didn’t hear back.

The simple truths are enough to keep me occupied for the rest of my life, and questions that don’t have answers will keep my head spinning for quite some time. I just don’t have the patience for things that distract. Pretending to have answers when you don’t is one of those things that distract.

I should tie this in to Tolstoy. I had saved this post and was just flipping to chapter 4 when the closing part of chapter 3 jumped out. So appropriate.

The questions seemed so simple, stupid, and childish. But the moment I touched upon them and tried to resolve them I was immediately convinced, firstly, that they were not childish and stupid questions but were the most important and profound questions in life, and secondly, that however much I thought about them I could not resolve them. Before occupying myself with my Samara estate, with the education of my son, or with the writing of books, I had to know why I was doing these things. While I did not know why, I could not do anything. Amidst my thoughts concerning the farm, which at the time kept me very busy, a question would suddenly come into my head: “Well fine, so you will have 6,000 desyatins in the Samara province and 300 horses, and then what?” And feeling completely taken aback, I would not know what to think next. Or, beginning to reflect on the education of my children, I would ask myself, “Why?” Or deliberating on how the peasants might achieve prosperity I would suddenly ask myself, “What concern is it of mine?” Or thinking about the fame my own writing brought me, I would say to myself, “Well fine, so you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespheare, Moliere, more famous than all the writers in the world, and so what?” And I have absolutely no answer.

This was a dark time for Tolstoy, because he had questions to go around, but no answer that seemed like it might be true. The path to those answers turned out to be the road less traveled and placed him on the fringe. So it will be with me, for better or worse.

Chapter 3 is quite short, but the gist of it is that Tolstoy is quite lost.

Living as I was then, like any individual I was tormented by the problem of how to live a better life. I did not yet understand that in answering ‘live in conformity with progress’, I was speaking exactly like a person who is in a boat being carried along by the wind and waves and who when asked the most vital and important question, ‘Where should I steer?’ avoids answering by saying, ‘We are being carried somewhere.’

…

In reality, I was still confronted with the  same insoluble problem of how to teach without knowing what I was teaching. In the higher circles of literary activity it was apparent to me that I could not teach without knowing what it was that I taught, for I saw that everyone taught differently and that in our arguments we only concealed our own lack of knowledge from each other.

At this point he only knew that he was missing something important. I suppose some might wonder how you can teach without knowing the subject matter you teach. This is something that very smart people are aware of. A high school physics teacher may teach on the theory of relativity, and I can guarantee you they do not understand it. If they did, they probably wouldn’t be teaching high school physics. I learned calculate things with the quantum wave function, but I did not understand it. I was simply performing the mechanical mathematical steps that I was told to do and I forgot them shortly after I walked out of the final exam.

Interestingly, I got a version of that question evasion that Tolstoy mentions in the first portion. At church they were discussing how to discern the voice of God and how to develop that personal relationship. It was suggested that you need to listen to that inner voice, consider scripture, and seek the council of others. To be sure these are all good things, but there is a more complex question. How do you avoid the group think herd mentality that has ensnared others in the church in the past? How was it possible for so many Christians to hate and treat their black brothers as sub-human? Where was the voice of God in them? How could they be so wrong? I’m sure the inner voice was nothing other than the bigotry they were raised in, and considered only the portions of scripture that might be twisted to support that bigotry, and consulted with others with equal amounts of bigotry. The answer I got from the guys with white hair was nothing more substantial than “we are being carried somewhere.” I suppose I didn’t expect a satisfying answer because a substantial answer would have to consider the reliability of the thing they were teaching. I suspect that they do not know that they do not know what they teach. I suppose that is why they are sane and why they sleep at night.

Do not be yoked with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people.” “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the LORD Almighty.” Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.

2 Corinthians 6:14 - 7:1

The assumption here is that the ’stuff’ in Christian was different than the ’stuff’ in others. That might have been true when Paul wrote this, but I find that this assumption no longer holds among the so-called Christians that you find in the church today. The Christian church today has boiled down to a social group. This group is dotted with people who are more sincere than others, but as a group I can’t see anything really different between a group of Christians and a random group you pull off the street. Sure, they will talk differently and hold different world views. World views and opinions, and manner of speech  says nothing about the manner of ’stuff’ that is within you. Holding a Christian world view or not swearing does not mean that you have a greater heart of love than another who swears a bunch, and things we evolved from monkeys.

Formerly, I would consider dating anyone who was not a Christian on the basis of the previous scripture. I was mistaken with this and for a long time I excluded one who was really very well equally yoked with me. I discovered my error much too late.

Everything I’ve written here is far, far outside the realm of accepted doctrine. Were I to tape this on the front door of my church I would no doubt have people lined up to tell me the error of my ways. So strangely, why I would prefer a wife who shares the Christian faith, I will probably not find one. Christian doctrine says that a husband should toe the line on certain doctrines, and your typical Christian girl expects her husband to instruct her on the proper doctrines and be a spiritual leader. My refusal to blindly toe the line is a very significant problem for me.

This blog was started on the study of Tolstoy’s Confessions, and so I shall tie it in and bring it home.

While listening to the church services I paused at each word and whenever I could I gave it meaning. In the liturgy, the most significant words were: ‘Love one another in unity.’ But further on I ignored the words ‘We believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,’ because I could not understand them.

I fully agree with Tolstoy as to the most significant words. Loving one another in unity. The key word is unity, and so I decided to look it up to fully define its meaning. One meaning is the absence of diversity; unvaried or uniform character. Loving one another in the absence of diversity is absurd if you mean  that you only love people who are the same as you. Not so absurd if you mean that you love everyone equally regardless of their similarity to you. Another definition is : whole or totality as combining all its parts into one. It is said that God is the embodiment of love. If this means to love one another as if you were love in flesh, then I think that is just really cool. Or perhaps it means to love all parts of people. This seems to be common sense, but clearly a marriage should be based on this sort of love. No longer am I going to break out some checklist of theological beliefs as some sort of eligibility criteria.

I will no doubt spend my life trying to live out this one simple statement, yet my refusal to toe the line on something really irrelevant like believing the doctrine of the trinity is a real problem even if I think it’s absurd. Without intending to, I have just expounded on the reason I keep telling my parents to not expect the family line to continue through me.

“With the enemy’s approach to Moscow, the Moscovites’ view of their situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger approaching.

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man’s power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant.”

Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace

This was written on a financial blog, so the implication was that there is a great financial danger approaching, and people are acting frivolously. I think he is right. I think that it’s the job of our leaders to listen to the first voice, while it’s perfectly reasonable for the average citizen to listen to the second. Instead, too many of our leaders are falling prey to the latter, and the ones hearing the former are too few in number and influence, and are shouted down by the latter.

For 10 years I lived in this fashion. During this time I began to write out of vanity, self interest, and pride. In my writing I did the same as I did in life. In order to achieve the fame and fortune for which I wrote I had to conceal what was good in myself and display what was bad. And this is what I did.  Time and again I would contrive in my writings to conceal under the guise of indifference, or even of lightheartedness, those strivings for goodness which lent meaning to my life. And I succeeded and was praised.

When was the last time you really saw an example of a good or moral person in mass media? Is this because good people make others feel guilty, and guilty viewers change the channel?

The decline of my faith occurred in the way in which it has always happened, and still happens, among those from our kind of background. It seems to me that in the majority of instances it happens like this: people live as everyone lives, but on the basis of principles that not only have nothing in common with religious doctrines but are, on the whole, contrary to them; religious doctrine plays no part in life, or in relations between people, neither are we confronted with it in our personal lives. Religious doctrine is professed in some other realm, at a distance from life and independent of it. If we encounter it, it is only as an external phenomenon, disconnected from life.

Now, just as then, it is impossible to judge from a person’s life, or behavior, whether or not he is a believer. If there is a difference between those who openly profess Orthodoxy and those who deny it, then it is not to the advantage of the former. Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel, and immoral people who trend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, strightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.

For something written over one hundered years ago, it is remarkable at how accurately it describes society today. In particular, the last part hits the nail on the head. The owners of the company I work for fit the first part of this description perfectly while the other developers I work with fit the second part equally well. This is something I have pondered for a while. My most recent new friends of the last 5 years are stacked high with non-believers. Have you every heard someone ponder this in a Christian gathering? Chances are you haven’t.