The Insufficiency of an Argument from History

This is a paper I wrote about a month ago and for some reason or another I decided not to post it back then. Anyway, it's an expansion of the argument I brought up before, except this time with a concentration on the New Testament in particular.

Introduction
On one hand, religions like Buddhism have a well-defined set of laws in their Four Noble Truths and can begin practicing their religion from the get-go. On the other hand, the Abrahamic religions, and the Christian religion in particular, are not so clear-cut. Modern Christians must wade through a myriad of historical documents in order to parse out what Jesus taught during his approximately thirty year tenure on Earth. A great portion of the history that most Christians base their beliefs off of comes from the New Testament itself, which brings to bear concerns about how reliable the New Testament is as a historical source.

Deterioriation Through Translation and Time
Prior to the written record, most of the material incorporated into the first Gospel was likely passed along by word of mouth in the Aramaic language and perhaps also informed by other now-scattered documents. When it made its transition to written form, it was translated into Greek. There is no doubt that some peculiarities of the Aramaic language were lost in the Greek translation. We must also acknowledge that the Gospel of Mark, the first of the Gospels, was written around thirty-six to thirty-nine years after Jesus’ death and alleged resurrection. In the ancient world, thirty-some years would constitute approximately two generations since women would typically have children as young as sixteen or eighteen years of age. The fact that the first of the Gospels was not recorded until after two generations of oral transmission would mean that even if the authors of the Gospels sought only to relate events exactly as they occurred, much of the historical data would not reflect the truth; events would be left out, altered, or even invented completely.

The Bias in the Synoptics
However, we should not assume that the authors of the Gospels sought to present a completely unbiased account. Based on the parallelism of content in the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and Mark, modern scholars have deduced that the former two Gospels must have been written using the latter one as a reference. It is within these synoptic Gospels that the authors’ own biases, especially Matthew’s, are most evident. We see a great amount of content in Matthew is borrowed from Mark and indeed Matthew’s Gospel evidently tries to parallel the written structure found in Mark’s. However, Matthew makes several edits that would cast Jesus in a more Godly light and make it easier to reconcile Jesus with Messianic prophecies. For example, when Jesus was rejected at Nazareth, Mark 6:5 relates that he “could do no mighty work there,” which would perhaps imply that Jesus was powerless. Matthew 13:58 “corrects” Mark’s account to read instead that Jesus “did not do many mighty works there.”

An even more striking edit to Marks’s Gospel is found when Jesus meets the rich man. In Mark 10:17-18, the rich man refers to Jesus as “Good teacher” and Jesus rebukes him because “no one is good but God alone.” However, this would imply that Jesus and God are not one and the same. Matthew 19:16-17 changes the context completely so that the rich man asks Jesus, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?” Instead of rebuking the man as in Mark’s account, Jesus then answers “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is One who is good.” And so because of Matthew’s attempt to cast Jesus in a more Godly role, we see quite a discrepancy between the accounts even though Matthew’s Gospel was written using Mark’s as a reference. It is likely that Mark’s and Luke’s own accounts of Jesus’ life were also tempered by their own bias and motives as well.

The Reason for John's Departure from the Synoptics
In the Gospel of John, there is an even greater departure. Jesus abandons the parables and epigrams altogether and makes many strong “I” references. Furthermore, the only reference to a kingdom is “my kingdom,” which is quite a departure from the “kingdom of heaven” and “kingdom of God” references in the synoptic Gospels. This idiosyncrasy of John’s Gospel could be explained by pointing to John’s own writing style. Additionally, we must also consider the fact John’s Gospel was written shortly after a formal schism between Judaism and Christianity. Perhaps John’s portrayal of Jesus as the Son of God was an attempt to further amputate Christianity from the Jewish tradition. At any rate, if we wish to examine John’s Gospel purely based on the merit of its accuracy, we must also keep in mind that it was written around the last ten years of the first century, and was thus recorded approximately four generations after Jesus’ tenure on Earth. Thus we can consider John’s Gospel even less accurate than the synoptic Gospels because of the deterioration of historical data over time, especially with regard to the ancient world.

Addressing Popular Counter-Arguments
One might argue that even though the integrity of the historical data deteriorates over time and the data is subject to the motives and bias of the authors, there are some aspects of these Gospels that would incline one towards believing in a general idea of what Jesus taught and how Jesus lived, died, and lived again. The first such objection appeals to the fact that the first witnesses of the resurrection were women, or a woman, depending on the Gospel. He who raises the objection asks, “Why would the authors of the Gospel write that it was women who first saw Jesus live again, since at the time, women were considered second-class citizens and their testimonies were considered unreliable?” However, this type of argument is about as convincing as the defense of a painting thief who argues that it was not he who stole the painting in broad daylight, because he wouldn’t have been so stupid to do something like that.

A second argument appeals to the fact that there were so many sightings of the resurrected Jesus, so something along the lines of resurrection must have happened. We must then consider that during Jesus’ time there was no shortage of magicians who performed “miracles” and no shortage of “resurrection appearances” from popular deities such as Isis and Asclepius. Additionally, many of the alleged testimonies may in fact have been substantiated by absolutely nothing. David Hume, in his “Of Miracles” rightly claimed that surprise and wonder are “agreeable emotions” and that perhaps many people “place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration of others” by giving false testimony of a miracle.

The New Testament's Pauline Bias
We could further argue that the New Testament presents an incomplete picture. There is little doubt that Paul the Apostle’s writings dominate much of the Bible. Of the twenty-one epistles, thirteen are definitely attributed to Paul, one may be attributed to Paul, and the remaining epistles are divided among four other apostles. Additionally, Paul dominates much of the second half of Acts. However, Paul was in fact only one of the many pivotal players during the age of early Christianity. With regard to interpretation of Jesus’ teaching, James the Just, the brother of Jesus and the first bishop of Jerusalem, was one of Paul’s greatest rivals; whereas Paul believed in the sole sufficiency of faith, James is usually associated with Jewish Christianity and believed in the strict observance of Mosaic Law.

Eventually, Paul’s interpretation of the faith likely became the dominate one for two reasons. Firstly, Paul’s interpretation allowed for an easier adoption because it was easier to reconcile with. We can see a parallel in Mahayana Buddhism, which became the dominant form of Buddhism in East Asian countries. Like Pauline Christianity, Mahayana Buddhism allows for a salvation purely through faith. The second reason for Paul’s eventual dominance is due to the fact that his ministry and influence existed in relatively rich areas and so it followed that he had the advantage of superior funding. Paul’s dominance of the New Testament could mean that the other apostles had very limited say in the final account. Indeed, to this day other historical texts such as the Gospel of Judas (EDIT: or Thomas, or Mary, or Philip, among others) remain very far outside the bounds of canon Christian belief.

Conclusion
The Gospels are undoubtedly an imperfect source of historical data. They were written several generations after Jesus’ life. They were tempered by the bias and motives of their authors. Much of the testimonies that lend substance to the Gospels were given by primitive and ancient people. And finally, they present an incomplete account. Though none of these arguments decisively disprove the common beliefs regarding Jesus’ life and teachings, they do shed light upon the insufficiency of arguing for these beliefs from historical documents.

The Fool's Explanation, Part IV: Hell and Salvation

This next point is arguably the most subjective of all. Whereas the previous reasons can be backed up by evidence or logic, this one appeals mainly to the emotions. Originally, I didn’t want to post it because of the subjectivity and also, in order for it to work, one needs to presuppose for a second that Christianity is true. I guess you could call it an argument from the other side of the fence. "Too long; didn't read" version is: if the most important part of Christianity is true, then people I love will end up going to Hell to burn for eternity if they’re not already there; if God is real, either He doesn’t care (a la the Deist tradition) or it is His intention for people to burn forever in Hell.

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Heaven and Hell
So in case your didn’t know, the mainstream Christian belief is that one’s soul goes to Heaven only if they believe that Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice and died on the cross for our sins, otherwise one spends eternity in Hell. I say “mainstream” because there are inclusivists (I’ve met two in my life) who believe that it is possible for non-Christians to be saved through Christ even if they didn’t believe in him. However, most exclusivists would claim that there is no evidence for this inclusivist ideology, and from my point of view, it seems to be begging the question as well. More on this later. Anyway, based on my limited understanding, to a Christian, the greatest sources of controversy that I discussed in earlier parts of this blog are window dressing compared to the necessary belief that Jesus died in order to save humanity.

The belief, if true, would condemn the majority of all people who have ever lived and ever will live (there are about 4.5 billion non-Christians living today). Indeed under the Christian framework it is theoretically possible for a mass murderer to become Christian post facto and be saved while a philanthropic and selfless non-Christian will burn in Hell. And how can a Christian argue that non-Christians cannot possibly be philanthropic or selfless? It’s all too easy to invoke Gandhi and Tenzin Gyatso. Also, all major religions are well represented in the area of service and disaster relief.

Of course, what I find most disturbing is how such a system would affect me on a more personal level. If true, then it would affect the majority of my friends and the entirety of my family very negatively. Though all these people are definitely flawed, they are no more flawed than the average Christian. Christians are still people after all. The judgment, in my opinion, is disproportionate to the alleged “crime” of being human. Why should someone suffer forever for a finite number of sins? To drive home the idea of infinite suffering, I’ve borrowed this analogy from a webpage about a particularly large number (the Clarkkkkson):

"Imagine a ball of steel the size of the sun. Imagine that every trillion years, a fly lands on it. When the ball of steel has eroded away from the friction of all the flies landing, infinity will not even have begun."

On Salvation and the Inscrutable Will of God
Christians claim that salvation is like a gift…take it or leave it.

I claim that this view is way oversimplified. If you are atheist, it’s more like someone is offering you a gift, but doesn’t tell you where the gift is and the onus is on you to find it. Also, the gift may or may not exist. Also, people who claim the gift is real have a bunch of other beliefs that can be refuted by physical evidence and logic. And there are multiple gifts of similar nature, but you can only have one at a time. If you are a non-Christian theist, then your beliefs probably also suggest that the “gift” offered by Christians is actually a rabid bobcat with a laser attached to its head, and once you open it, it’s gonna maul you…take it or leave it.

So is it so strange that most people never become Christians?

I would also claim that if the Christian God does exist, then either He could care less about how many people are saved or, even worse, it is even His intention for the majority of people to burn forever in Hell. Some people will never convert because they already have faith in a conflicting religion or because they believe that there is no reason to believe something for which there is no evidence. My grandpa had his family murdered in front of his eyes and his estate taken away from him. He ended up receiving some aid from Christians and sending my dad to a primary school administrated by Christian priests and nuns. Yet despite the help my grandpa received, neither he nor my father ended up becoming Christians, because they felt there was no evidence for Christian beliefs. My grandma will never convert because she passed away when I was in fifth grade.

When you ask a Christian why God didn’t just create a world where everyone was a good Christian and everyone could go to heaven, you inevitably get an answer like, “God gave people free will and the ability to make decisions, and some people choose not to accept Christ and so they are not saved.”

Well, it would actually be possible to save most everyone and still preserve free will.

For those who don’t how Saul of Tarsus became Paul the Apostle here is a summary. Prior to his conversion, Saul was dedicated to the destruction of the Christian church, since they were widely regarded as heretics who were trying to contaminate Jewish ideologies. Acts 8:3 describes him busting into Christian homes and dragging out men and women for imprisonment. Saul suddenly becomes Paul in Acts 9:3-6 and goes on to become one of the greatest early missionaries of Christianity. Why the sudden change? Basically, on the road to Damascus, Saul had a sudden revelation in which an image of Jesus appeared before Saul and blinded him. Really, I can’t blame the man for converting. If Jesus appeared before me and slapped me in the face, I’d be a Christian too.

And so why doesn’t God give other non-Christians the benefit of this type of conversion? It didn’t destroy Saul’s free will. Saul had the choice to continue what he was doing (or not) just as Adam and Eve had the choice to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (or not). It is true that some people are converted to Christianity without this type of revelation, but you cannot ignore the fact that 4.5 billion people will go to the grave without believing in Christianity. And since God is supposedly omnipotent, it would be within the breadth of His abilities to send a revelation to each of these people and convert them without destroying free will. Because He doesn’t, it wouldn’t be illogical to assume that if He exists, He is either non-intervening and aloof (and so might as well not exist) or it is His intention for most people to go to Hell.

The Fool's Explanation, Part III: Confirmation Bias

"Too long; didn't read" version is: everything I see confirms my preconceived notions.

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Confirmation Bias and Credibility and…Science
Confirmation bias and Morton's demon. Applies to everyone to some degree. When taken to the extreme, you have blind faith, blind atheism, fundies, etc. As you might have guessed, the third reason I’m not a Christian has to do with my own confirmation bias and how I perceive some Christians to be “trying too hard.” After the author I mentioned in “Lol, Science” threw out radioisotope dating, he tried recommending alternate dating methods, such as measuring helium in the atmosphere. Under such a system, the Earth appears to be around 2 million years old. Too bad he failed to account for the fact that helium escapes through the atmosphere. At any rate, 2 million is still significantly larger than 6000. Really, something like this just makes it seem as though he and his affiliated group are trying too desperately to come up with strategies to prove some preconceived idea in their heads. Shouldn’t evidence lead to ideas and not the other way around? There are of course many other examples of “trying too hard,” such as citing irrelevant facts: Darwin gave up his own ideas on his deathbed and most people are Christian (and they can’t all be wrong). Now I’m well aware that scientists, and theoretical physicists in particular, are guilty of ad hoc reasoning as well. But science is a lot more flexible; the idea of a steady state universe was thrown out like thirty years ago. At times, some theories may sound insane and contradictory (string theory says “we’re all vibrating strings” and brane theory says “no, we’re all intersecting BRANES, dude!”) But the difference between science and religion is that science has the benefit of mathematical equations that back up the solutions. Beyond that, I’ll admit that at this point, theoretical physics has the scientific basis of religion. However, when you ask a Christian how the universe came to be, you invariably get some answer that involves God. And this answer is purely faith based, as far as I’m concerned. If you ask me the same question, I can choose from a whole menu of explanations, but I don’t. I don’t endorse any of the theories because the evidence for any of them isn’t hard enough for me. I don’t know and don’t claim to know. It’s that simple, and I sleep soundly enough at night.

Confirmation Bias and Credibility Personal Example
On the last Christian retreat I went on, word leaked out that I was an atheist. Some older gentleman, Pastor Something, took me aside and requested that I ask God to reveal himself to me, or something along those lines. We then “prayed” together for a couple minutes. I say “pray” because, really, to what end does an atheist pray? What would I pray to, a God that I don’t believe in? Nevertheless, I was asked by multiple groups to pray with them after that. Later during the retreat, in a large group setting, a different guy made an interesting offer. He said something like, “I understand that some among us are still searching for God. It is my hope that by the end of this retreat, everyone would have found Him. If you have not yet found God, please raise your hand and I will pray for you.” This interesting offer was repeated years later in a Pittsburgh church, during Bible study, when a student made a prayer request for everyone who wasn’t yet a Christian to be saved by the end of the next week. Though, by that time I was pretty open about my atheism and indeed I asked a bunch of questions that made my beliefs pretty transparent. Anyway in my mind, all these requests, the requests to ask God to reveal Himself, to pray (pointlessly), to raise my hand, seemed like applications of cognitive dissonance. In psychology class, I’d learned that cognitive dissonance basically entails resolving a tension between a belief and an action (or another belief) by changing the belief. In this case, the action of doing Christian stuff would conflict with my atheist beliefs (or disbeliefs, whatever) and the idea is that I would rationalize what I was doing by changing those beliefs. The next day of the retreat, a guest speaker took the podium and talked about the evils of psychology and recommended some books that expanded on these views. Touché.

The Fool's Explanation, Part II: History and the Bible

"Too long; didn't read" version is: the Christian (and really anyone's) account of history is shaky, there exist opposing ideas/documents regardless, and the Bible can be used to prove anything.

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A Single General Account
The last argument that seems to be pretty popular is the argument from history. The idea is that there are a bunch of historical documents that seem to confirm a “single general interpretation” of the events that surrounded Jesus. And this begs the question of how reliable history is to begin with. The initial account is often biased toward whatever party is in power. The dissemination of history is also problematic. Ever played the game Telephone? After about five iterations of the game, the information is greatly changed from its original form. Add a little bit of bias and subtract some objectivity and you end up with some information that is way off. And actually, there was much controversy among early Christians about how to interpret Jesus’ teachings. For example, the notion of the Trinity was a topic of heated debate. It wasn’t until Constantine adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire that a single general account was agreed upon. Constantine not only cleared up the controversy surrounding the Trinity; he executed anyone who didn’t agree with him. This tradition was continued for hundreds of years after Constantine. In fact the people that the Church executed for heresy were rarely atheists. Atheists were considered so bat shit insane that they were generally ignored (though occasionally burned for blasphemy if they attained positions of power). Condemned heretics were usually people who agreed with the Church’s account for the most part, disagreeing with some minor details such as Trinity or whether Mary was actually a virgin. It’s a bit ironic how Christians often talk about how they were persecuted, yet they turned the tables as soon as it was possible. Anyway, you have a “single general account” of Christianity firstly because of Constantine’s intervention and secondly because if you questioned that account you found yourself hanging by your neck, doused in gasoline and set on fire, staring up at the bleeding stump of your neck, or having a staring contest with some fish.

Beyond that, later Christianity was also tempered by Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy (recovered from the Muslims after the Crusades) which no doubt led to a significant departure from early Christian ideas. Also, I kept talking about a “single general account,” but even within that account there were enough controversies to lead to major schisms within the Church. Finally, there actually are historical documents that lend some uncertainty to the canon Bible (some Dead Sea scrolls and Gnostic texts). Christians seem to ignore this however, and instead choose to invoke only documents that inform their beliefs.

The Bible
Seriously though, you can back up anything you want by cherry picking from the Bible: white people are actually the master race, eating shrimp is a one way ticket to hell, slavery is okay, slavery isn’t okay, dwarves and little people are that way because they are sinners, the world is flat, the world isn’t flat, infanticide is okay, Westboro Baptist Church, etc. I’m not saying this proves some inherent flaw in the Bible, I’m just saying that any time someone invokes the Bible, I take what they say with a grain of salt.

The Fool's Explanation, Part I: Science and Logic

This is part one of a long entry about why I’m not Christian. "The Fool" is a blanket term that Saint Anselm of Canterbury used to describe atheists. Anyway, the “too long; didn’t read” version is: introduction, there is conflict between religion and science, and Christian logic is flawed.

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I've spoken with, and listened to, a lot of Christians and it seems like about a half of them presuppose or subconsciously insinuate that Christianity is like the default religion that everyone gravitates to, even going as far as accusing atheists or non-Christians or whatever for consciously choosing evil and turning away from God/Jesus. This of course is delusive and one-sided, to say the least. Christianity is only “default” in the sense that most American families are Christian and tend to raise their children accordingly. (Even then, there is a definite downward trend in the percentage of American adults who identify with Christianity.) Not everyone was raised Christian though, myself included. For these people, God isn’t a matter of common sense. I’d imagine the concept of nirvana or reincarnation would be just as much common sense for a Christian as God is for me.

As for why I'm not a Christian, well, there are a number of reasons. Most of the reasons tend to be, unsurprisingly, centered about shaky evidence and shaky proof for Christianity. I’ll expand on them in no particular order.

Lol, Science
I wrote a little bit about this last year. Science doesn’t put an end to the whole notion of faith, but I think there is definitely some tension. It certainly knocks old earth creationism out of the picture. Though, if you're a theistic evolutionist, none of the criticisms levied here apply to you. Some of my (old earth creationist) Christian friends have given me some books with titles such as Christianity and Science or Biblical Science. Regardless of the title, I can’t skim one of those books for more than five minutes before setting the book down and crying a little. I remember one passage where some guy was trying to refute the validity of radioisotope dating by citing a couple results that made no sense. Firstly, I wonder why he failed to consider that when people date things they use multiple isotopes which usually point to an age that’s orders of magnitude above the young earth estimate of around 6000 years. Secondly, in high school chemistry class, we were tasked with finding absolute zero. I think my lab group found that absolute zero is something like 150 Kelvin, which is very wrong. Because of this one result (plus a bunch of weird results other groups got), should we now assume that the science behind measuring temperatures is completely wrong? No, because experiments invariably have some manner of human, machine, or environmental error that confounds the results. However, this guy took three examples where radioisotope dating gave weird results and decided that the entire science should be thrown out the window.

Lol, Science Example: Noachian Deluge
Noah’s ark is another example. First, there are the logistics of gathering up all the animals. Some animals, like pandas and koalas require a specialized diet which begs the question of how they carried it along with them. Other animals are poor overland travelers. After all the animals arrived, they would not have been able to fit on the ark anyway, if we assume that every species (the level at which organisms are reproductively distinct) was accounted for. We are not even accounting for dinosaurs (we should, since creationists claim that fossil bearing strata were deposited by the Flood) or water dwelling creatures (a worldwide flood would have seriously messed with livable salinity levels). The maintenance operation would have been epic as well. Lastly, the Flood doesn’t account for a bunch of geological phenomena, like the different amounts of erosion undergone by mountains and how the fossil record is sorted in an order that’s so convenient for evolutionists. (EDIT: If we’re to assume that all species coexisted at the time of the flood, then the fossil record should not be so well sorted; dinosaurs should have made it to the top strata along with lions and tigers and bears). Really, entire volumes have been written about the incompatibility of modern science and the Bible. At any rate, I think science does a pretty good job of refuting the more literal portions of the Bible. Sure, the Bible doesn’t disagree with every single aspect of science, but there are enough incompatibilities for it to be significant.

Domino Argument
No one has actually hit me with the ontological proof for God yet (probably because it doesn’t really convince anyone, not even Christians apparently), so I won’t go into detail here. I guess I'll start with the cosmological argument. One way to illustrate this argument is with a line of dominoes. If no one pushes the first domino, the line never falls. Since the "domino line is falling" i.e. the universe is moving and changing, there must have been someone to push that first domino, right? The argument then goes on to declare that that someone must’ve been God, duh. Firstly this argument can be attacked on several logical fronts. It doesn’t rule out cycles (x causes y causes x), infinite regress (maybe the dominoes were falling since forever), and multiple gods (there could have been fifty million lines of dominoes that were each set into motion by a different person). In the end, the Christian explanation is that it was God that was necessarily the first mover, because by definition He was necessarily the first mover, which is just about as convincing as saying that the sky is blue because by definition the sky is blue.

Unintelligent Design
The argument from design is a partially argument of probability, and can be refuted by probability as well. Think of it this way: the probability of winning the lottery is pretty low. However, if you have a billion people playing the lottery, the probability of one of them winning is pretty high. There are about 100,000,000,000 stars in our galaxy and about 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. The chance that one of these stars is host to a planet that could sustain life is rather high. Granted, the chance that a randomly picked star would have a livable planet is extremely low. So yes, on earth we happened to win the cosmological lottery. Even so, a lot of biological structures are rather flawed. Why do grown humans have appendices, why do human embryos have tails, why do whales have hip bones, and why do flightless birds have wings? Why are neural connections in the human eye placed in front of photoreceptors, thus blocking light from reaching them? The evidence clearly favors evolution.

A Message from the Prophet of Migmorphiism

Recently I've been looking at different aspects of different religions. After running a few religions through a sort of reductionistic scrutiny, it's not difficult to conclude that all these religions share many common traits. In fact, my professor summed up these aspects quite nicely. A "good" religion:

• Is plausible and appealing
• Sounds urgent, confident, direct, and hypnotic
  
• Attends to religions needs by allaying fears, explaining where we stand, providing rites of passage, etc.
• Has a mechanism of propagation, which precludes things like suicide pacts or injunctions against procreation

And here's a religion that I made up for class, which I presented today with a bit of demagoguery (It's rather long and I just have it here as proof of concept):

Introduction
My brothers and sisters, my kinsmen within this universe, listen well! For this morning I have come to see the true nature of our universe and universes beyond. And more importantly, I have conceived of the very purpose of our existence in this world! Praises to the Great Sorter for revealing this truth to me and praises to the Guardian of this universe for allowing me to come here to come today for the purpose of sharing this wonderful information! I bring to you the message of Migmorphiism, so named from the prefix migr- meaning travel and Morpheus, the ancient Greek deity of dreams. Indeed I will explain to you the importance and true nature of your dreams.

Emergence and the Other Universes
It is a well known fact that our universe emerged from the aether between ten and twenty billion revolutions ago. Our Emergence occurred with an explosion of gigantic proportions that rocketed the matter of the universe in all directions. In time, the matter coalesced into the current recognizable universe. To date, we can still see the effects of Emergence: the ever-continuing expansion of the universe and the cosmic microwave background radiation.
However, it is a much less well known that the phenomenon of Emergence was paralleled an infinite number of times in an infinite number of universes. Indeed one billion new universes may be created or destroyed by the time I have delivered my message. For the most part these other universes are demarcated from our own, for allowing the universes to blend would no doubt throw our universe into chaos. However, brothers and sisters, these other universes may well be closer than we think. The demarcation is governed by a concept that transcends physical rules. We are not separated from the other universes by space or any physical barrier. In fact these universes coexist in the same space.
What then keeps the multitudes of worlds from colliding and creating a cataclysmic mess? Brothers and sisters, it is the unique vibrations of the aether that keep the universes separate! Just as there are differing wavelengths of sound and differing wavelengths of light, then are there differing wavelengths of aether.

Tokens, Death, Beloshi, and Maloshi
When one dies, one’s corporeal husk is left in this world, but the aethereal form is whisked into another universe. We often hear stories of the dying speaking of a “light at the end of the tunnel.” Indeed this light at the end of the tunnel will undoubtedly resolve itself into another universe, for when one sees the “light” one is merely in transition between our world and the next. There are others still who see deceased loved ones in the moments before their own passing. Still there those who dread death and undoubtedly before they go, they see at the end of their tunnel things of an unspeakable and horrifying nature.
A natural conclusion, then, is that there are a multitude of worlds that we may pass into after death. However, the world that one transits into after death cannot possibly be arbitrary. On one hand, is it not true that the virtuous, selfless person often passes into the beyond perfectly at peace? On the other hand is it not the case that the murderous and unholy man, filled with guilt, dreads his passing into the next world? We can then conclude that there exists some mechanism that sorts the aethereal forms into universes that reflect their actions in life.
It is said that when a person does a bad deed, his heart and mind feel heavy with remorse. And when a person does good works, his heart and mind feel light as though soaring. It must be true then, that there are metaphysical Tokens that affix themselves to those who associate with the unholy and the selfsame Tokens are plucked from the forms of the virtuous. And it is the number and nature of these tokens that tend us toward the undesirable universes which we will call Maloshi and away from the desirable universes which we will call Benoshi.
Upon death, it is the charge of a duality of Great Sorter and the Guardian to reach an agreement as to which universe the departing soul will transit to. The Great Sorter weighs and judges the nature of the Tokens of a dying individual’s aethereal form and decides which universe the form will transit to. The Guardian is the grand administrator of the universe and may question the judgment of a Great Sorter from another universe. Sometimes this process is long and drawn out, particularly when many individuals of inscrutable consciences are dying at once. Or perhaps it is just the whim of Great Sorter and the Guardian to delay the transit. In our universe, when an individual takes a great deal of time to pass, it is likely the Great Sorter of our universe and the Guardian of the universe in question are arguing about the individual’s next life and whether he will spend it in Beloshi or Maloshi.
But bear in mind that every individual’s conception of Benoshi and Maloshi are different. It could very well be that one man’s Benoshi is another’s Maloshi. There could very well exist deviants within our own world who would endorse the wholesale killing and cannibalism of babies or other acts of unspeakable nature. And brothers and sisters, such deviants must be purged from this universe before they turn it into the Maloshi that they so crave. When you have all learned the meaning of dreams you will agree that indeed a great part of your redemption lies in their demise!

Dreams
It is not just near death that we witness other worlds; even in life we are not completely cut off from the other universes! The human mind is a receptor for aether-waves as the human ear is a receptor of sound waves. And as the human ear can only make sense of a fraction of the spectra of sound, so the human mind can only make sense of a fraction of the spectra of aether.
Death is often referred to unwaking sleep. And when one approaches death, he sees a glimpse of other worlds which as he nears death becomes yet clearer and clearer. This is because as we approach death, we forgo the senses of our body and instead rely evermore on our minds. It is natural then, that in sleep, when we rely very little on our body’s senses, we catch glimpses of other worlds in the form of dreams when we sleep. Good dreams are no doubt borne from the scintillating lofts of Benoshi and nightmares no doubt are borne from the squalid depths of Maloshi. The types of dreams that we experience are no doubt governed by the same Tokens which either drag us into Maloshi or release us into Beloshi. Is it not true that the virtuous man not only accepts death peacefully but also sleeps peacefully?
However it is not enough to only do good works in order to detach Tokens from one’s aethereal form. Indeed an individual’s form can be so saturated with Tokens that no future tokens will be able to attach. In this case, the Tokens are passed onto the surrounding entities. It is possible to accrue tokens by witnessing horrible acts or associating oneself with evil people. Indeed we become aware of this in our world when a very good person is given a glimpse of Maloshi in the form of a nightmare. It is thus necessary to purge this universe of deviants and to enact statutes severely discourage all evil acts in order to eliminate the possibility of damnation to Maloshi by proxy. This can be precipitated by rallying all to the cause of Migmorphiism. Indeed such a holy deed will alleviate of you of many Tokens, since what can be more uplifting than bringing another closer to the truth? Perhaps one day this universe will be so blessed at to have Migmorphiism pervade its every corner.

Other Glimpses into Other Universes
On rare occasions, the vibrations in the aether of one universe matches the vibrations in our own. When this happens, entities within that universe and ours witness each other. Those who are closed off from the truth of Migmorphiism believe these entities are ghosts, spectres, UFOs, or other anomalies. However, a Migmorphiist takes comfort in the fact that the Guardian of this universe and of the other universe would never allow the entities to truly collide. Thus these ghosts and specters, though real, are very much non-corporeal and thus incapable of affecting us, for better or for worse.

Conclusion
Then brothers and sisters I leave you with this. You now know the true nature of our universe and of your dreams. You know that there exist an infinite number of universes, bounded only by our imaginations and our dreams. You now know that in order to transit into a favorable universe upon your death, you must do good deeds and eliminate the unholy deviants, thereby turning our own world into a Benoshi for others. I do hope that the Great Sorter weighs all of you lightly. Sleep well and dream well.

Winter Break Thus Far

I bummed around my house and other peoples’ houses. I played video games, filmed random movies, and just chilled with said people. I read a bunch of books, saw a bunch of movies, watched a bunch of TV. Of note was Pullman’s Golden Compass trilogy and some random work by Neal Stephenson. I also built a boiler, solving a bunch of problems mentioned in my last post. I designed a website, got an okay for the design, implemented it, and then had said design shot down after a couple hours of implementation. But a few coffees later, I managed to make some “spending money” which will likely be spent on books and food for the coming semester.

On the academic front, I spent a minimal amount of time reviewing Chinese. I failed at sorting out my waitlists, which according to my advisor “do NOT look promising.” I also started applying for study abroad in Shanghai this summer. And by “started applying” I mean I’m aware of the application’s existence in my inbox and haven’t actually looked at it yet.

Throughout all this, I’ve been pulling mini Rip Van Winkles. 2008 hit me pretty fast. Happy New Year!

Resolutions?

I will hang out with people on campus more (I live 10 minutes off campus), get better grades (shouldn’t be too hard since I’m enrolled in two classes right now), and get massive amounts of musculature (this break I stuffed my face with food and amazingly enough, lost weight. Haha.)

Today, I’ve got nothing to do except attend an eye checkup later in the evening. Later this week, I’ve got another get-together to attend. I think. At the end of this week, I’m gonna hop aboard a little choo choo train bound for CMU, which according to the internet stands for, among other things, “Central Michigan University.”