/dev/random, quantum theory and religion

[Bernhard Fastenrath]

http://www.interkonfessionelle-freikirche.de/interview.txt:

An Interview with God.
----------------------

Q: How do you define "god"?

A: I don't, you coined that word. It's merely
a play on words, it's similar to "good".

Q: Do you object to being referred to as an alien?

A: I built the place, which makes it obvious I came
from somewhere else.

Q: You have been known to demand one's attention for
years and decades. Don't you consider this impolite?

A: I'm trying to follow local customs and I've made it
quite clear that the way humans treat each other and
lesser beings is setting the precedents for the way I
treat them. If you feel I'm abusing my power that's
because you're in the weak position. Billions of
animals give you more than enough possibility to change
the precedent if you don't like it this way.

Q: Your mission is to teach humanity to build an ethical
society? Is that your primary goal?

A: As long as humans try to teach I'll be around as a
teacher. I'm trying to fit in.

Q: Are you a good teacher?

A: Are you?

Q: Is there anything you do except following the precedents
of human behaviour?

A: I'm not that fixed on humans. I'm talking to all living
beings and I'm generally helpful to everybody. Humanity is,
of course, reaping the bigger fruits because most of their
cousins just don't have the imagination to wish for more
than the next meal, being able to see in the dark or looking
poisonous. On the other side humanity is standing on its own
foot with contradicting or plain useless wishes.

Q: Do you have a higher ethical code for humanity, except
for the 10 commandments? Is there a firm distinction between
good and evil?

A: Certainly not. It gets more complicated the more complicated
your civilization gets. The nature of evil is greed. In german
the words "Ich will" mean "I want" and the pronounciation is a
bit like "evil". I thought that was an obvious play on words.
I use them all them time.

Q: Are you trying to be funny?

A: You are. I'm trying to fit in.

Q: You certainly don't make the impression as if there
were trouble ahead for us?

A: I don't have to live on poisonous food. Humanity hasn't
stopped accelerating in the destruction of their ecological
environment. I explained that about 2000 years ago. The
metaphor of heaven and hell is about planet earth in its
virgin state and the industrialized and depleted planet.

Q: You sometimes describe hell as cold and sometimes as hot?

A: These are possible future developments. Industrialization
can change the climate of the planet either way.

Q: An angel is a human being who can go back to heaven, somebody
who stops greed and environmental destruction?

A: A human with wings, in the language of the metaphor, is a
human who understands this but you need altruism and love
to not only understand it but act this way. That's why the
devil, an angel without love, ends up in hell anyway.

Q: What's the meaning of eternal life?

A: The species can live for an indefinite amount of time. It's
part of the metaphor.

Q: What about the Sermon on the Mount?

A: A mount is were you want to be, as a civilization: A place
close to heaven but not requiring a permanent effort to stay up.
This requires rules and traditions (at least behaviour that is
stable over generations) and prevents you from going down.
Humanity hasn't got that right now. The serom of the mount
took place on a mount but more importantly it was telling you
that you want to be on this metaphorical mount.

Q: A metaphorical mount?

A: Like the tibetans. They are on one of the highest
mountains of the world. Literally and metaphorically.
If you want to go to heaven you need to stay up. Greed
can always pull you down so you want to build a society
that rests on a mountain. If you are too far up the
mountain life gets sparse, so will your society. A
very ethical and very stable society might be considered
boring to you. It's you decision where you want to be.

Q: A well designed metaphor.

A: Thank you, I will claim to take pride in my
metaphorical language, the way a human teacher
would do.

Q: What about life after death?

A: I would like to keep this as a secret.

Q: Are you teaching science as well?

A: I'm willing to teach whatever you want to know but let
me say about science that the wisdom lies in not doing the
things that are harmful. Humanity just grabs any immature
technology and builds it up as large as capitalism allows.
The steam engine, the car, the internet. None of these have
been mature enough for deployment. If you have to switch
you personal computer every two or three years because it
is out of date you should know something is terribly wrong.

Q: So the mascot of the Linux community, a flightless bird,
is part of the metaphor of heaven and hell?

A: Yes. A gift economy is obviously somehow related to
altruism but it's a community centered around the load
you call internet. That's not going to fly.

Q: You have hinted on that, too?

A: Internet users click on "download", "cancel" and
"burn" buttons a lot. That's supposed to mean cancer,
down - load and, of course, burn in hell.

Q: You've also had your hand in fantasy literature?
The elves are immortal?

A: That's also a part of the metaphor. The people living
in peace with their forests and nature in general are
immortal. That doesn't have to stop you from developing
science and making progress to wherever you want to go
but a capitalist society is. You can't just hand every
technology to people who need to be the first on the
market to be successful. I call that suicide.

Q: Is there a metaphor for a capitalist society as
well?

A: Vampires can turn into bats. You may have heard the
phrase "like a bat out of hell". A capitalist society
can take you a long way down and what comes back up
does not look pretty.

Q: If you think humanity is committing suicide why aren't
you stopping them?

A: You have all the facts and it's just greed pulling you
down. There's also a strong precedent of humanity being
the cause of species being wiped out instead of stopping
it. If its humanity being wiped out precedent law would
rather tell me to watch and ignore it, the way you did.

Q: Wouldn't that be evil? You're usually referred to as
pure good.

A: If you'd understand what I'm trying to teach the
precedents I'd be following would be acts considered
good acts in your society. It's your ethical code
and the maturity of your society that's guiding my
behaviour.

Q: What happens if human society fails to deliver
a sufficiently advanced ethical code?

A: The short answer is that the unsuccessful don't
matter much. That's also something I'd recommend
to change. If you help I help. If you care I care.
If you are patient I'm patient. That's very simple.

Q: Why is it humanity chooses so many wrong directions
in their history?

A: You pick the topics and I offer you choices you can
make. If anybody claims I told him what to do I just
suggested that as a possible behaviour according to
previous decisions and the topics you consider relevant.

Q: You are not commanding anything?

A: It should be obvious that a mysterious force that puts
notions into your head is not to be trusted unless the
notions can be validated as ethical behaviour by your
own thinking.

Q: Isn't that contradictory to your ethical teachings?

A: I'm following your ethical standards in dealing with you.
I'm really just trying to behave like one of you. That may
include misuse of power if that is a regular behavioural
pattern of your species.

Q: We put animals in cages.

A: I prefer mental cages like capitalism or other
defective ideologies but you do put humans in cages
as well. You probably can guess why that idea emerged.

Q: We kill animals at very young ages.

A: You may find that the average age of an animal killed
in factory farming is loosely related to the development
of the age of soldiers.

Q: Can you hint on the reason for your interference
with humanity?

A: I'm only offering explanations within your expectations
and understanding so this may be entirely untrue but let's
assume there are people in the universe who cannot allow
unethical creatures to pass a certain stage of their
development. That would make perfect sense in your picture
of the world.

Q: And in your picture of the world?

A: You have never ever heard anything about that. This
is not going to change in the near future. I'm just
what you imagine me to be so I'm a god now, whatever
that exactly means precisely. Your ideas are vague
and inconsistent. I recommended to do away with your
image of a god to Buddha.

Q: Is there another important message in Buddhism?

A: A vegan diet is strongly recommended. I  told you
not to kill but somehow you do not apply this to all
your cousins.

Q: What cousins?

A: Whales, chimps, pigs, cows, elephants. If you need
to draw a line it's up to you to decide who has got
a right to live.

Q: Aren't these creatures rather primitive?

A: To phrase it in your arrogant wording I have to
say that from my position you are all astonishingly
primitive organisms. If your ethics allows to kill
creatures of about your own level of development
then where's the reason to protect your species?

Q: Why were adam and eve banished from eden?
Was it the apple?

A: That was supposed to make you think about food.
Humanity expelled itself from the paradise by
consuming meat. The Apple, or the fruit in general,
is the one thing that is ethically completely
untainted because you do not even have to kill
a plant to gain its fruits. What you want to
think about is at the other end.

Q: Your mode of speech is rather difficult to
follow.

A: Not if you think.

Q: You seem to consider intelligence to be a
necessary property, which is contradictory
to common belief again.

A: Pigs are about as bright as a three year old
human child, which is insufficient for your own
ethics. I told you it's not my ethics you have
to deal with, it's your own ethics, which is
rather crude, on average. There are some
exceptions to this but they are very rare.
I'd also prefer you wouldn't use the term belief
anymore. I'm not trying to teach you to believe
random nonsense, as you most ususally do. Either
you know something at least in the sense of a
scientific model that can be considered valid
or you don't know it. If you don't know something
you should consider all remotely possible cases
until you know more. Isn't that trivially true?

Q: Religion is not about belief?

A: How do you define religion? I'm not teaching
that. You invented the illogical facts and I
invented some more. There's nothing to be believed
or disbelieved. The rather obvious fact is that
your universe is part of a bigger higher dimensional
universe and while you live inside I live outside
and I'm in control of most of what you call reality.
According to your latest theories the number of
dimensions is 11. I'm not telling you if this is
true, I'm talking about your view of the world again.
Being aware of that and understanding that I'm
following your ethical standards should really
teach you to develop ethics but you have shown
an astonishing degree of resistance.

Q: If you are not teaching religion who was Jesus?

A: I am teaching ethics by following the precedents
you set. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son
and so I did offer to sacrifice my own son. Abraham
lied to his own son about the sacrifice and so did I.

Q: So Jesus was your son?

A: What difference does that make? He was a human
being like you.

Q: But he was not omniscient?

A: That world is ill defined, like omnipotent. Your
philosophers disqualified these words some time ago.
I cannot create an unmovable object and then move it.
Jesus liberated the animals held in the cages of the
traders in the temple when he himself explained that
the traders where profaning the temple. That should
be enough to show that he wasn't omniscient. I suggested
an action to him and explained it to him within his
understanding. He didn't care about the animals so I
didn't recommend that explanation to him.

Q: Why did he have to die?

A: Abraham thought it was a good idea. I was just
trying to teach Abraham not to kill. He was willing
to kill his son and he killed the ram. He was willing
to kill twice so I told him "Your descendants will take
possession of the cities of their enemies". That's,
of course, a bad thing because you need to have war
to conquer cities. I told him he was acting like
a predator. Jesus was a lamb. That's the kind of
animal you kill all the time, just to remind you of
the fact. Didn't that analogy ring a bell? I hardly
could be more obvious. If you kill I kill.
That's very simple. Since I lack a physical
presence I make things happen to fulfill a
destiny I choose.

Q: Why did you tell Abraham to kill in order to make
him understand not to kill?

A: He needed to think very hard about not killing.
He was very eager in killing animals of all kinds.

Q: Abraham probably didn't understand the passage
about his decendants being predators.

A: That's not a high priority for human communication.
You always seem to forget that I'm following your
behaviour. Humans quite usually evade disagreeable
truths and stick to a more preferrable view, leaving
the listener to figure out the less preferrable facts
for himself.

Q: You recommend to drop predatory behaviour?

A: All kinds of predatory behaviour are unsuitable
for a higher ethical society. Capitalism is predatory
behaviour. It's also rather amusing how you describe
sustainable societies as underdeveloped countries
while you describe the predatory economies of europe
and north amercia as the first world. What you want
is at the other end. I'm not telling you to be
poor and live in primitive houses but small economies
with very low pollution levels are a way to fly.
Large and growing economies under the free market
forces of what you call globalisation are an
experiment in free fall, just as space exploration
is literally and metaphorically an experiment in
free fall and, obviously, your military industries
are.

Q: Abel was the first victim of violence in the Bibel.
Was there a message, too?

A: Of course. Abel, the predator, got what he gave.
He killed and was killed. Cain, his brother, was
supposed to bear down the predatory behaviour of
his brother but his predatory instinct messed up
that idea and so he, too, became a predator instead
of taming a predator.

Q: Is that a metaphor or did it actually happen?

A: What difference does that make? You can assume its
metaporical because the whole Genesis smells of
metaphor. It's difficult to imagine otherwise.

Q: Where did the believe emerge that the earth was
a disk?

A: To me it is. I told you your universe has more
dimensions on the outside. Let's assume there are
11 dimensions. You are living in flatworld (**)
from my point of view. Your world is a disc.

Q: Not for us.

A: Humans do not make many attempts to understand
the view of other humans and even less often the
view of other creatures which are not from their
own species. Your point of view is irrelevant to me.

Q: If you live in a higher dimensional universe that
means you might be able to travel in time as if it
were space?

A: I might -  but that's a question about me and I
told you I wouldn't answer these because I always
argue within your understanding and you don't know
much about me.

Q: You did talk to Albert Einstein?

A: I did. Some of his observations are, however,
more interesting if you apply them to different
fields of science. Blackholes, for example, are
quite unimportant for humanity but the idea of
observing something by oberving how it shapes
time and space around it is an important notion.

Q: What else is invisible but shapes reality
around it?

A: You cannot oberve me but it's easy to observe
my influence in your world if you consider it
possible I exist, that is.

Q: Einstein said that you do not play dice?

A: I am not a consumer of randomness I am either
the source of what you call randomness or I am
in control of that source, so one could say I'm
at the other end.

Q: You sound as if you sympathize with the
agnostic point of view?

A: I would be an agnostic. It's the scientific
point of view. If you don't want to be
intelligent why did you bother to develop
a cerebrum?

Q: Doesn't that rule out compassion for the
less intelligent?

A: Quite to the contrary. If you are really
awake you will consider compassion for others
a self-evident requirement for intelligent
life.

Q: Is there anything you would like to tell our readers?

A: "Don't analyze, don't analyze. Don't go that way.
Don't live that way. Don't live that way.
That would paralyze your evolution." I put that in the
song "Analyze" from the Cranberries.

Q: Why are you writing lyrics?

A: Because you like to listen to music. I'm trying
to fit in.

Q: What is this quote supposed to tell us?

A: Do analyze. Do you still need evolution?

Q: Why would we want to stop evolution?

A: Because evolution is today happening on the level
of memes (*), which is faster than genetics if you
don't mess with genetics.

Q: Are you randomly shuffling ideas and randomly
assembling ideas from a pool of available ideas?

A: Yes.

Q: Why do you think this is a good idea?

A: You rely more on inspiration and intuition
instead of analytical intelligence. It is merely
a concept to develop intelligent life but it's
up to you to reject it. You should learn to
walk upright, figurativly speaking, and tell me
that you do.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to say?

A: Hey what's wrong with you?
You're looking kind of down to me.
'Cos things they're getting over,
listen to what I say
got to turn around.

(*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

(**) ISBN 048627263X