Why we can't ever intellectually understand God

Podcast of this article. Longer version.



(Picture of the relationship between God and the finite above, click to enlarge)

1: What kind of thing is God compared to e.g. a chair?

Saying that God is infinite raises a lot of questions. What does that even mean? What is an infinite object like compared to a finite object, like e.g. a chair? We may understand what an infinitely long line would be like, but what is an infinite object like?

I think the answer is that the core difference between infinity and finite existence is that infinity doesn't allow for a concept of distinctions. For example, if you had an infinitely long and wide plain of grass then you could not find your location on it, since every place has the same attributes as every other place. So infinity tends to take away distinctions.

That's how actual infinity I think 'reaches' infinity, because it comes from a world where there aren't any distinctions at all, and within this distinction-less existence somehow every possible distinction exists, 'distinction-lessly'. That's basically what kind of object God is: a distinction-less object. It's how God knows everything; within His distinction-less existence every possible distinction is contained in a way that allows Him to look at every possible distinction (∞) all at once.

That's why finite reasoning is limited. Since there are an infinite number of possible distinctions between things (e.g. various numbers, sizes, dimensions...) you need the vantage point provided by the 'distinction-less' world to know everything. Or you will always have more possible distinctions to think about.

2: Why this means we can't ever intellectually understand God

This explains why our intellectual (but not necessarily emotional) understanding of God is always messed up: our reason *always* tries to introduce distinctions everywhere it goes, but when it comes to God this simply isn't reflective of reality. And there's just no alternative way of looking at our creator without tying our reasoning in knots. In other words, we can't understand distinction-less existence, and yet we must to understand God.

So, to sum up, we're left with a flawed intellectual understanding of God, or mystery. But we can still know God on an emotional/spiritual/soulful level, which we and God have in common (by that I mean, our soul is somehow like God in the sense that it's made in God's image).

3: A few important clarifications on God being love, a person and a trinity

I want to point out that this seems like a strange idea of God, very far from the loving father of Christianity. The Bible says that God is love. How is the God that I've described love?

I think we need to remember that something being simple in finite terms is very different from the kind of judgements anyone can make about the infinite, the reasons for which I've partly covered. In finite terms, something is simple if there's just 'one' of them, so 'one' is a simple, easy to understand number. In finite terms, the idea of God I've just described is a very 'simple' idea of an ultimate reality, because there's just 'one', it's easily defined and so on.

Finite simplicity argues against the Christian God. But finite simplicity has no connection to the kind of judgements you can make about the infinite, because the infinite is an entirely different kind of thing. So actually, what's simple when it comes to the infinite may be complicated to the finite. I think that the trinity, God being a person, and love coming from God, are such issues.

Somehow, for some reason, the infinite is three persons in one person, which are both three and one at the same time. Finite reasoning has just been thrown out the window, but that's OK, because this is on a different 'level' of reality. Distinction-less existence in other words, is a person, a trinity, and love, in a way that seems really complicated to finite reasoning but which actually isn't. God is the simplest kind of thing you could imagine, but from an infinite perspective rather than a finite perspective, which pretty much makes no sense to finite reasoning but oh well. We shouldn't expect it to.

Original sin and God's terrible compromise

Introduction: God's terrible compromise

In a nutshell, where does our moral badness and suffering come from?

It's a result of what you might call the 'great compromise' (or terrible compromise) that God had to make to create beings that were something like Him.

Think about this: can God make another God? Can God make another being fully equal to Himself?

The answer seems to be no. God cannot make another God.

Why?

Because whatever God is, it's a 'possessive' kind of thing. Only God gets to be God, in other words. No one else can be God.

So right away, we know that to make beings in His image, God will need to make some kind of compromise. God will never be able to make beings with all the great things that He has. Other beings can never be all of what God is.

So God cannot make another God. But can He make a 'half-god', as it were? Can God make something like Himself, without making another full God?

The answer would seem to be yes. God is a possessive kind of thing that doesn't allow for another God (that's the idea behind monotheism). But He should be able to make 'half-gods', things sharing in Godness to some degree.

That's what we basically are: half-gods. We share in the 'possessive' kind of thing that God is, without being another 'full' God.

The terrible compromise that God had to make, is that the stuff making us 'half-gods' rather than a 'full' God is totally alien, totally different to God. Otherwise there'd be stuff lying around the place that is as great as God that isn't God or connected to God. So God had to make humans using stuff that has literally nothing in common with Him, because we're 'half-gods'. And that leads to problems.

Which parts of us come from God - are 'Godlike' - and which parts of us are different to God - 'less-than-God'?

We can tell what parts of humans are 'Godlike' and which parts are 'less-than-God' by comparing ourselves with the idea of a perfect, personal God.

Our reasoning and knowledge is 'less-than-God', clearly, because we don't know everything that God knows.

Our body is 'less-than-God' because we're not everywhere like God is.

Our moral sense, free will and consciousness are 'Godlike', exactly like what God has, because we are held to God's moral standard, we have free will like God, and we are self-aware like God.

Our love and other emotions are 'Godlike' because God is loving (and feels other emotions).

So our reasoning, knowledge and body have to be made out of something totally alien to God, in keeping with the idea that we're 'half-gods'. But not our moral sense, free will, consciousness, love and other emotions, that come from God (and are 'Godlike').

If the former things are in the 'less-than-God' category, and the latter things in the 'Godlike' category, then does this present any problems?

This view predicts that reason should have a quirky and uncomfortable relationship with morality, free will, consciousness, and emotions, because our reason is from the 'less-than-God' category while those other things are from the 'Godlike' category.

That's true indeed. Reason views emotion as irrational; it views free will and consciousness as a mystery; and it can just barely work out a moral system through reason by appealing to self-interest. But as self-interest is a product of irrational emotion (self-love) then even there, reason doesn't have anything to say about morality by itself.

Specifically, one of the side-effects of 'less-than-God' reason is that our reason doesn't support what our moral sense says. Our 'Godlike' moral sense says that we should always do the right thing, but our 'less-than-God' reason, in the specific way shown above, has no relationship with morality.

So our mind is pulled in different directions. On the one hand, our 'Godlike' moral sense pulls us in the direction of always doing the right thing, and our 'less-than-God' reason pulls us into passivity or to ignore our moral sense. The arbiter of which side wins out is our free will, which is in the 'Godlike' category.

But we won't pick the 'moral' side over millions of contests. So we fail (sin) frequently.

'Sin' is essentially committing a category mistake. It's treating humans as an object when we should be treating others as 'half-gods'. It's putting humans in the wrong category: 'less-than-God' rather than 'half-god'.

Our moral sense tells us what the appropriate conduct towards 'half-gods' is. The problem is that any part of our thinking that comes from the 'less-than-God' will tend to pull us away from the 'Godlike', because it's totally alien to the 'Godlike'.

It's because of sin that the 'Godlike' parts of humans have to be pushed away from God. Sin essentially corrupts the stuff we get from God, and that means that the stuff we get from God (the soul) can't be closely connected to God, which causes suffering.

So in this analysis, all of our moral failings and suffering is the result of a great and terrible compromise that God had to make to create beings in His image. Because we cannot be full Gods we must be half-gods. All of our sin is made possible by the 'less-than-God' aspect of us, which exerts a constant force to make us trip up, and not follow the moral standard of the 'God' part of us. This unfortunately prevents us from having true happiness, because our 'corrupted' God part must then be disconnected from God.

What does this have to do with original sin?

We have to be 'half-gods' - that cannot be different. But God can protect us from the 'gravity-like' pull towards making a category mistake that comes from our 'less-than-God' aspect. That's the idea behind the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve.

The idea of the Garden of Eden is a state where God protects humans from our 'less-than-God' bits by helping us only think good thoughts. That's how Adam and Eve can live with God near the 'tree of life' and not feel ashamed which arguably wasn't necessary for them to feel (shame symbolises awareness of other people's condemnation, and therefore a loss of complete innocence).

Because God didn't want to mentally enslave us, He allowed us to 'opt-out' of this system at any time, and this is what the Fall symbolises. In the Fall, humans chose to 'opt-out' of receiving God's help, which protected us from the 'less-than-God' in humans. That is, Adam and Eve symbolically exercised their free will to make it through life without help; to make choices without God's protection.

That's why Genesis says 'On the day that you, Adam, eat of this tree you shall surely die' (referring to spiritual death, which is disconnection from God). What God is referring to is that there's no way that 'half-gods' cannot sin without God protecting our thoughts, because the 'less-than-God' exerts an extremely strong force on us to get us to make 'less-than-God' choices. Without God's protection, some degree of sin is inevitable.

So on this interpretation, the tree of knowledge of good and evil didn't make us morally responsible, because Adam and Eve already were morally responsible and, up until they fell, were morally faultless. The knowledge of good and evil they received was knowledge of good and evil of their own selves rather than knowledge of good and evil controlled, moderated and mediated by God. Independent rather than dependent knowledge of good and evil (which meant that they would surely make moral mistakes, and get disconnected from God).

So if people had a 'Fall' then why didn't God just reset everything after the Fall happened?

I think the reason is that without experiencing a Fall, and knowing what God is protecting us from, everyone chooses to Fall. That's why it wouldn't have accomplished anything for God to make another Adam, because eventually, everyone chooses to Fall. So God ended up persevering with a world where people start off Fallen.

And God didn't reset Adam to a non-Fallen state because He wanted to honour Adam's choice to have God not protect Adam's thoughts.

We all share in Adam's sin in the sense that a) God foreknows that everyone would choose to Fall if *we* had been in the Garden and not Adam, and b) God honours that hypothetical choice by letting us experiencing morally wrong thoughts (lacking God's protection) to begin with.

That's the sense in which we all share in Adam's sin. Not in a direct way, but in a roundabout, indirect way.

Having a 'Fall' and losing God's protection for our moral choices isn't a completely bad thing, because afterwards people can find themselves in a non-Fallen state on much more solid ground. Why? Because experiencing sin and making a strong decision to go to a non-Fallen state puts your decision to have God protect your thoughts above any possible temptation to Fall. After experiencing sin and evil for ourselves, we know how bad it is for God not to protect humans' thoughts. That's why the people who choose to go back to a non-Fallen state, after experiencing suffering and sin, will last in a non-Fallen state forever.

In Christ, God will once again protect us from making category mistakes (sins) through grace, by the Holy Spirit working within people.

The period after original sin, and the period before the Kingdom of God, is an interregnum period. In this middle period God doesn't do anything to protect us from being pulled into sin by the 'less-than-God' in us. We need to choose to have this protective cover reinstated before it is restored, because it's very important to God that we freely choose to have it (for the sake of preserving freedom).

[Added] What about angels?

Come to think of it, there are actually beings who never choose to 'Fall' in a sense and reject God. What about the angels who never sin?

I think that angels possibly have a different kind of free will to humans. It's long thought that when an angel makes a choice, somehow the choice is 'forever'. So whereas humans constantly make choices that make them better or worse people, angels possibly only make one choice - to never sin or to sin - and then they stick with it forever. So angels somehow have the ability to 'stick' to a choice never to sin forever that humans can't do. It's because the choice to follow God comes up again and again that ensures we would all have fallen in the Garden of Eden (in my interpretation).

So why don't we all have 'angel style' free will where we make choices forever?

I think possibly for two reasons. a) The same proportion of angels disobey God as all humans reject God, so it doesn't save more people, and, b) It increases God's glory to have people constantly choose to be good over being evil, rather than only evaluate the decision once and in only one decision choose to be good over evil.

Podcast: Do Christians give up thinking?

Podcast Notes:

-Do Christians give up thinking? When you become a Christian, does that mean that you lose the use of your reasoning? Why does Christianity have such an emphasis on action rather than reasoning?

Title: Do Christians give up thinking?
Time: 15:29 minutes
Size: 7.1 MB mp3

Direct link to the audio file (Right click and 'Save As')
Link to the audio file page

Further reading:

-What was I referring to when I talked about souls being infinite? And humans being partly infinite and partly finite?
-A look at 'active' versus 'passive' thinking on the issue of objective morality.
-Where does love come from, the most primary emotion in theology?
-What is a soul?
-Why is God good?

The way infinite God theology works

1. Find a way to place the answers to theological and philosophical questions outside of what humans can ever know.
2. Explain why God didn't do a better job of making it possible for us to know the answers.
3. Doing number 1 is easy. The question is, how does one explain why God didn't make it possible for us to know the answers? He's all-powerful after all. You can use the 'possessiveness' of infinity (∞ + ∞ = ∞) to explain this. We had to be partly infinite, because only God can be completely infinite (only one infinity allowed), and the answer to these questions lies on 'infinite level' reasoning which partly infinite beings can't have. So our reasoning is on the wrong 'level' to understand the answers. And because we have an infinite soul, many of these answers (e.g. the nature of free will, why we suffer) apply to humans as well as to God.

There remains the question of what sense do we make of an infinite object.

How does the atonement work? What did it 'do'?

The atonement dealt, basically, with intentions. It dealt with the intentions (inclinations to act) of humans towards others that were not loving.

What was put on Christ was essentially an eternity of morally imperfect intentions. This is what sin is; holding bad intentions towards others. Sin isn't like a crime where you go to prison for a specific amount of time, it's basically just bad intentions of the heart (1 John 3:15; Matt 5:27-28).

That's why sin goes away when you repent. It goes away because one's intentions are no longer bad if one changes one's behaviour for good.

But repentance doesn't stop a person from continually sinning and repenting forever, in a neverending cycle of sin and forgiveness. God doesn't want us to live in the Kingdom of God and be continuously sinning and repenting, because that's a bit of a difficult situation. It's not good enough for God, not up to God's standards, to be permanently involved in a cycle of sinning and repenting forever and ever. God wanted to deal with all our sin once and for all.

That is the difference between the atonement and just asking God for forgiveness - the atonement dealt with sin once and for all, whereas asking for forgiveness deals with sin until we sin and ask for forgiveness again.

God prevented a situation of people in the Kingdom of God constantly sinning and repenting, which we do in this life, by putting all of our wrong intentions, including all the ones that we would have had over an eternity with God (in every possible future in the Kingdom with Him) onto Christ.

Because intentions come from the world of Mind, they need to be transferred to something in the world of Mind to get rid of them. They can't be transferred to a stone, for example. So our bad intentions needed to be transferred to a Mind. We could also just have repented and asked God for forgiveness, but as we saw a situation of continual sinning and repentance isn't good enough for God's Kingdom.

The mind that God planned to transfer our wrong intentions to had to be a perfect mind, because this process should be two-way. We need to get something back for our wrong intentions, otherwise we'd be replacing our morally wrong thoughts with no thoughts at all (a complete absence of thought), or the thoughts of another, equally flawed person. That would not be a huge improvement for us either way.

We need to get back perfect intentions forever, to allow us to meet God's standards and thus be in heaven. That's why the sacrifice needed to be Mind, and a morally perfect mind, rather than a) a stone, b) losing evil thoughts with nothing to replace them with, c) a flawed mind, or d) just asking God for forgiveness again and again.

No human was found worthy (Rev 5:2-5) to be the 'transferral person', because no human is capable of having perfect intentions all the time, so any transfer of bad intentions from us to him/her would have been pointless. We'd just have gotten flawed intentions back.

So God had to become a human, a morally perfect human, to be the mind undergoing the transfer (i.e. sacrifice).

Once all of our wrong intentions were transferred to Christ, then Christ had to suffer an incredibly painful separation from God, as would anyone who took on that degree of evil intention (literally an eternity of evil intentions over an infinity of hypothetical situations that we could have sinned in, per mind, for billions and billions of minds).

Because Jesus is, in fact, a morally perfect person, He did not bear our evil intentions forever. After a certain amount of time, the wrong intentions placed upon Jesus simply 'evaporated' somehow. Meanwhile, all of our wrong intentions over an infinity of hypothetical situations had been swapped for Jesus' perfect intentions. So Christ within Christians does everything in the areas where we used to sin, making us meet God's standards once and for all with no good works necessary.

This allows us to be in the Kingdom of God without having to constantly repent and get forgiveness, because in this way God has prevented us from having morally bad thoughts, as all of our morally flawed thoughts (but one, see end) were given to Jesus. This is the only way that God could give us a new heart (Eze 11:19) because He needed a mind-mind transfer to get rid of our flawed intentions, and to get good intentions back that mind needed to be perfect.

By being 'atoned for' in this way, for the first time people will actually be able to have their soul (which is made in God's image) connected to God as opposed to disconnected from God. This will allow Christians to be as happy as God is, a happiness that no sinner has ever known and literally cannot imagine (1 Cor 2:9).

Christians remain very imperfect individuals because this process hasn't fully occurred yet (it fully occurs on the day of redemption - Eph 4:30). God wants to use our sufferings and struggles on earth to 'refine us as silver is refined' (Zec 13:9). Through our struggles with sin, we learn to rely on God, so God has delayed the full effect of the atonement until after we die. Through learning to rely on God we won't be tempted to leave God when we're in the Kingdom of God. Someone who is hesitant about entering the Kingdom of God and would want to leave it is not fit for it (Luke 9:62). So it's important that we learn not to want or do that.

What do I mean when I say that God is an 'actual infinity'? What does that mean?

Podcast of this article.



(Picture of the relationship between God and the finite above, click to enlarge)

One might think that infinity is special because it reaches the 'end' of all numbers, like reaching the 'end' of a circle. But this doesn't explain what an 'actually infinite object' (such as God) would be like...

What kind of qualities does an 'actually infinite' thing have compared to a finite thing?

The most important quality that an 'actually infinite thing' has is that it exists in a world that doesn't allow for the concept of 'distinctions'. Like between 1 and 2, or red and yellow.

How could I ever go about showing such a strange conjecture?

Well you can use a thought experiment to show that infinite things cannot have distinctions.

Take a plain of grass somewhere. If it's finite, then it has an edge and a centre. There are lots of different places on the grass.

What if it's infinite? If you have an infinitely wide and infinitely long plain of grass, then there is no edge and no centre! So if you were on such a plain, then looking around, you could not distinguish your position from any other position on the grass. There is no 'middle' anywhere, no edge, no possible locating coordinates. So being actually infinite, as you can see, starts taking away distinctions... at least when it comes to location and trying to be at the centre of an infinite plain of grass.

Imagine that the plain of grass is turned into a cube, infinitely high, infinitely wide and infinitely long. Suppose you're inside it. Where's the edge? Where's the centre? It goes on forever. You can't distinguish your position from any other position in it in any way. When it comes to location and size, there are no distinctions in any infinite sized objects.

So you can see that objects start to lose their complexity and sense of difference/distinction when they're made infinite.

There are more reasons for believing the 'no distinction' idea. For one thing, there needs to be some kind of 'break' with finite thinking to enable potential infinity (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ad infinitum) to become actual infinity. Otherwise numbers would just keep going up forever without reaching infinity. Actual infinity being 'distinction-less', while 'distinction-lessly containing all possible distinctions', would be a good candidate for such a break.

Also, this idea of no distinctions works well in explaining the '∞ + ∞ = ∞' intuition that we have. Infinity times, plus, or minus infinity still equals infinity... no matter what you do, infinity is always infinity. If infinity doesn't support our ideas regarding distinctions, then you could explain why we don't like messing around with the value of infinity because we subconsciously pick up that there are no distinctions in infinity.

There's also a further theological reason for thinking that there are no distinctions in infinity. There are good reasons for thinking of God as an absolutely simple being, without parts or distinctions to make Him complex. If we think of actual infinity as involving no distinctions, then after a theological leap saying that distinction-less infinity is somehow conscious, we can explain how a complex God is actually simple.

This partly explains why there can only be one God (Isaiah 43:10). If infinity is a distinction-less unity of everything, then you can't make another God because there are no distinctions in infinity that will allow you to make another God. There's nothing there that would allow you to separate, split off, or make a distinction between God and another God.

This also explains why finite reasoning cannot understand the infinite very well. Because infinity has a distinction-less existence, you'd need a distinction-less form of reasoning - that also somehow encompasses everything - to understand God and the soul properly. Otherwise with every step you took, you'd just be creating more and more distinctions in God in your analysis, and that wouldn't reflect how the distinction-less really is.

This hopefully explains what an 'actually infinite object' (like God) is like compared to a 'finite object' (like a table). It's a difference of quality. The actually infinite object allows for no distinctions in any way, and exists in a reality that makes that possible. A finite object both allows for and includes distinctions, and exists in a reality that makes such a situation necessary.

Through this weird quality (no distinctions) God gets to have quantitatively infinite reasoning. All possible distinctions are ultimately contained with the distinction-less, the infinite. If that's true, then God can perceive every number at once by checking what the distinction-less summary of all numbers says, that is contained within Himself. So God can say 'Hm... it looks like every number follows a certain pattern' by simply checking the summary of all numbers contained within the distinction-less, and thus use an 'infinite shortcut' to answer every mathematical problem.

A few important clarifications on God being love, a person and a trinity

I want to point out that this seems like a strange idea of God, very far from the loving father of Christianity. The Bible says that God is love. How is the God that I've described love?

I think we need to remember that something being simple in finite terms is very different from the kind of judgements anyone can make about the infinite, the reasons for which I've partly covered. In finite terms, something is simple if there's just 'one' of them, so 'one' is a simple, easy to understand number. In finite terms, the idea of God I've just described is a very 'simple' idea of an ultimate reality, because there's just 'one', it's easily defined and so on.

Finite simplicity argues against the Christian God. But finite simplicity has no connection to the kind of judgements you can make about the infinite, because the infinite is an entirely different kind of thing. So actually, what's simple when it comes to the infinite may be complicated to the finite. I think that the trinity, God being a person, and love coming from God, are such issues.

Somehow, for some reason, the infinite is three persons in one person, which are both three and one at the same time. Finite reasoning has just been thrown out the window, but that's OK, because this is on a different 'level' of reality. Distinction-less existence in other words, is a person, a trinity, and love, in a way that seems really complicated to finite reasoning but which actually isn't. God is the simplest kind of thing you could imagine, but from an infinite perspective rather than a finite perspective, which pretty much makes no sense to finite reasoning but oh well. We shouldn't expect it to.

Podcast: What is free will?

Podcast Notes:

-Podcast on the nature of free will. Do we have libertarian free will? What kind of freedom is it? Why can't we understand it very well?

Title: What is free will?
Time: 21:29 minutes
Size: 9.8 MB mp3

Direct link to the audio file (Right click and 'Save As')
Link to the audio file page

Further reading:

-How are things in the infinite world different to things in the finite world?
-A short article on free will.
-A longer version of the above, which includes several other topics.
-A long article on free will that uses the ideas in the above articles to respond to four objections to free will and God's existence: 1) Doesn't omniscience contradict free will? 2) Isn't the way things have turned out God's responsibility? 3) Why didn't God only make people who will go to heaven? 4) Isn't free will's handling of probability incoherent?

What do I mean by 'objective' morality? The Euthyphro dilemma

This picture illustrates the difference between the brain and the soul that I talk about in this article:



[Click to enlarge]

"Does 2 + 2 = 4 because God says so, or does God say that 2 + 2 = 4 because it does?"

"Is the right thing the right thing because God says so, or does God say that the right thing is the right thing because it is right?"

The answer I believe is that 2 + 2 = 4 because it's in the nature of the finite world that 2 + 2 always equals 4. Everything in the finite world expresses this truth; i.e. one rock and another rock will always make two rocks, and so on. In the same way the right thing is the right thing because that's what God's nature expresses in the infinite world. We should look at the second question as being exactly like the first question, with the same answer, following the same 'unconscious grammar'/structure of thought, applying to an infinite domain instead of a finite one.

But one might say, obviously it isn't a logical truth that you should always choose to do the right thing. But we only feel that because our intellect dwells in a realm that is infinitely less than the realm of God and the soul: the finite realm. Our intellect comes from a finite, physical brain. Because of this, our intellect can never grasp the 2 + 2 = 4s of the infinite world. 'You should be good' is such a 2 + 2 = 4. Such infinite knowledge belongs to the soul, God, and God's intellect, but *not* to the finite world.

So why did God make us with an intellect that doesn't tell us to choose The Good all the time? Because only God can be fully infinite, infinite in every respect, as He 'encompasses all possible infinities in His being', and that means our intellect has to be made finite. Our soul is in the infinite world with God, and our soul tells us The Good. But our reason, infinitely divided, monumentally cut-down compared to what God has, can't tell us practical facts like 'just do the right thing' (and will always end up leading us astray - the disconnect that I'm describing relates to original sin).

Morality is objective in theism, I think, because it can find a way to make 'good and evil' into a rather mysterious '2 + 2 = 4'. Any worldview can believe that '2 + 2 = 4' but not every worldview can find a way to look at morality in the same way. This is what I think 'objective' morality must mean.

Where do our emotions come from? 1: Love

In this series I'll discuss some metaphysical speculations on where our emotions come from: love, anger, jealousy, truthfulness/dishonesty, empathy, and so on. I think this is very important because of the challenges that evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience present to unsophisticated Christian beliefs. It has been noted that religion tends to have the view that our feelings and sinful emotions are just 'there' and we just have to 'deal' with them and repent of them where required. The evolutionary psychology view of our emotions coming from a complex evolutionary history involving reciprocal altruism and kin selection tends to present a compelling, albeit very depressing view of human nature. So this post will discuss the most basic human emotion (and as it turns out God's most basic emotion) love; what emotions are; why a god would feel emotion just like we do; and why we have a distinction between 'head stuff' (e.g. reading a book that you agree with on how to be a calmer person) and 'heart stuff' (e.g. that book having absolutely no effect on your behaviour whatsoever).

Just like infinity is a very different number to any finite number, so very different stuff goes on in the infinite world compared to what goes on in our finite world (i.e. the physical universe).

One interesting point about finite existence is that on a metaphysical level it's quite passive. So while the goings-on of the physical universe are not passive, as we see particles flying around, on a fundamental level the nature of finite reality doesn't seem like it would change. In other words, the universe would just seem to go on forever. Inanimate matter just seems to follow a predetermined course, A causes B, which causes C, which causes D, ad infinitum. Not very exciting on a *metaphysical level* (metaphysical: the world behind appearances).

In the infinite world I believe that reality is metaphysically very exciting. So instead of things passively existing as themselves (what I call the 'A = A distinction of finite existence') in the infinite world there is a basic kind of 'activity' going on. So instead of 'A = A' (passive metaphysical existence) it is 'A => A'. Infinity is, for some reason, endlessly remaking itself, again and again, ad infinitum; it has already done so an infinite number of times in the past and will do so again an infinite number of times in the future.

So in this endless procession, you have infinity, infinity remaking itself (a basic kind of activity), and that infinity remaking itself again and again ad infinitum.

An interesting problem with this, which actually helps clarify things, is that there are no distinctions in infinity. This would seem to invalidate what I just said, because I just said that A => A and if there are no distinctions in infinity then A can't remake itself, because there are no distinctions allowed (see what I mean by 'no distinctions' here). Nevertheless, I think that something like A => A can fit with a world in which there are no distinctions. It would mean that 'A going-to' is the same as 'A arriving-at', but it doesn't mean that the basic activity I'm talking about in 'A => A' can't be going on. So A => is the same as => A, but there's still a '=>' instead of an '=' as in finite existence. So instead of a procession of infinity endlessly remaking itself, the 'previous infinity' and the 'next infinity' actually blend into the same thing because there are no distinctions. What you have is a basic impulse: love, which is A => A distilled into its basic essence without distinction: infinity loves itself.

The way God makes a human is that first of all He gets a finite brain going... He sets up a finite brain that handles reasoning, knowledge, and a lot of other things. Then after the brain exists He connects the brain to infinity, *but* only in such a way that the brain handles most things. So the brain handles reasoning, knowledge, and a whole lot of other stuff, and infinity 'handles' whatever the brain doesn't handle. So there's enough left over for infinity to do stuff that the brain doesn't do. That is, free will and consciousness which can only exist in the infinite world (this is why our consciousness encapsulates in a single thought everything we are, our entire past, personality, habits, choices, everything about us in a single moment, because there are no distinctions in infinity/our consciousness).

This is how you can get conscious beings that aren't God. If it was *just* infinity then you'd have God and nothing else. But by getting the brain to handle a lot of stuff, you can get something that's conscious (i.e. a human) that isn't God, because there are non-infinite parts (finite parts, being infinitely less than God, can make a distinction between God and not-God. Although the finite is from God as well, it's from God in a way that's so insignificant compared to God that a distinction emerges).

So where does love come from, the most basic and primary human emotion? Through the infinite part of us, our consciousness, we tap into the A => A of the infinite world. So we share the primeval love for everything that exists that God has.

Ah, but we don't love paintings, rocks, and galaxies in a way anything like we love other people. Sure, we think nature has some value, but obviously people are worth so much more than a lifeless galaxy.

But this actually goes perfectly with this theology, because there's just so much more *stuff* within a person than in the universe! Actually, you could have a billion universes, to the power of a billion universes, to the power of a googol universes, and what you'd have, in this theology, would be something infinitely, inconceivably less significant than a single person. A googol^googol universes is merely finite, although large. But what I'm saying is that our brain is connected to an infinite soul, to which the finite can have little comparison. So that explains why we love other people so much more than finite stuff. If love is existence loving existence (infinity loving itself), then an incredible amount of love should be given to partly infinite humans compared to finite matter. This also explains why the Bible says that you should love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, much more than we even love ourselves, literally with every fibre of our being, because the absolute infinite = everything.

So we love and know about love because the part of us that's actually infinite is in the eternal process of loving itself, loving existence, loving other people and loving God because infinity loves itself. But through free will, another thing we get from actual infinity (which our finite minds can never understand, as it's an infinite thing) we have the power not to love like we ultimately are, which is sin, and everyone uses their free will to sin, for an extremely powerful reason (see other posts on this site for this).

In the next posts in this series I'll talk about other emotions, like empathy, truthfulness/dishonesty, selfishness, jealousy, anger and so on coming from this infinite process I've speculated on.