Subsonic

[pasithea]

I stand by my post last night, save for one thing. It's too long. I've been thinking about how to condense it into a soundbyte. Something people might actually listen to. The best I've come up with so far is:

Religion is like trying to count to infinity or never counting past ten.

That gets to the core of it, what I want people to think about. It puts the message in an almost koan form. Even the most pious asshat might think about what I mean there because the hostility is hidden. People are generally quick to choose sides. I myself am quite guilty of this. I see an ambiguous comment and I want to pass judgement on the person so I think about the statement until I et what it is they're driving at with it.

The problem is that the above doesn't flow quite right and it's still not short enough to put on a bumper sticker. I think it's got the core info even if it loses some of the detail. What I need now is a prettier compression algorithm. (This is like making a GIF or JPG with words) Religion is like counting to infinity or always leaving off at ten. Better. 'trying' was too positive a word. Makes more a better understanding of the futility of it, while removing a hint of my personal bias. On the other hand, 'always' has a more positive spin than 'never' and 'leaving off' is less redundant than 'counting past'. Further masking my intent and making it flow better. Of course, saying 'Religion' is still a key that it's an agnostic or atheist statement, so it's not too ambiguous but no other word 'God', 'Dogma', 'Theology' works as well. I think if I change 'infinity' and 'ten' to their mathematical symbols, I have something that will fit on a bumper sticker. Something provoking enough to be read but not so provoking it gets my house firebombed. Something that will stick in someone's brain. Make them think and argue it internally. That's what I'm looking for. That's what I've been looking for for several years. I don't know if this is it, if this is THE think button, but it's a lot closer than I've ever been before.

On related to this post and maybe as a hint that I'm done with this thread, I've realized that for someone who tries to be an artist, I tend to not think very graphically so I thought I might try making an image that summarizes what I'm thinking about in my posts. Realistically, I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up but it's an interesting idea to try. Have to see how it goes. Though if this one is any indication, it's not going to go well. This is kinda a feeble drawing.

Comments

[barberio.livejournal.com]

Yes. Failing to understand your own religion is like counting to infinity.

However, some of us understand that infinity is a mathmatical concept that can not be counted to but still exists.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

There is no mathematical proof for infinity. By definition it is unprovable and while it is a concept introduced by math, I don't believe that it is used in any formulae except as an unprovable result or open-ended set. Infinity cannot be added, subtracted, multiplied, or divided. In and of itself it is useless. 0 is far more purposeful to math than the infinite.

My earlier post did not debate the existance of God. It said only that religion does not represent God in any meaningful way unless God is limited. If God is limited, why worship him? There are probably better options available.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid you're expressing a basic misunderstanding of the concept of infinity.

Infinity is not a number. (More accuratly, Infinity is not a Cardinal Number, or representative of a count. Neither is Zero.)
Infinity is an expression of topological space, and set theory. The presence of infinate sets and spaces have been sufficently proven, specificaly by Bernard Bolzano and Georg Cantor.

As for it's utility, there is a whole branch of mathmatics currently being used in quantum theory. That of Renormalization, used to construct mathematical relationships or approximate relationships between observable quantities, when the standard assumption that the parameters of the theory are finite breaks down, giving the result that many observables are infinite. This came as a direct result of problems run into during quantum electrodynamics research.

Incidently, 'Proof' is a dificult concept, and is not entirly as solid and clear cut as you assume. Look into the Halting problem and Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

Aside from mathmatics, your position makes some faulty assumptions to gain a false dichotomy. That a religion could not represent an Infinate spiritual presence in *any* meaningful way is fundamentaly flawed an assumption, since it brings an unclear subjective viewpoint in on what is and is not meaningful.

[3catsjackson.livejournal.com]

Interesting distillation. I've been reading the recent thread with interest, finding myself falling somewhere in between "your religion is stupid" and "nobody has a monopoly on truth" -- guess that makes me a not-so-militant agnostic. But I'm glad you've been willing to say the former, because I'm getting sick of it being too taboo to criticize religion.

For the bumper sticker, what about Religion is counting to infinity and stopping at 10?

[centauress.livejournal.com]

Religion is like counting to ∞ and stopping at 10.

[zeeth_kyrah]

Fundamentalism: counting to ∞ but stopping at 10.

Religion: Controlling spirituality since politics was invented.

[centauress.livejournal.com]

Yours is prolly better, but fundamentalism is too long and not stirring enough. Dominionist, maybe, though that's more like counting to ∞ but stopping before you get to 1.

from the Reading-for-Readying-Dept.

[acertaindoebear.livejournal.com]

If you wish, you might want to check out this (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbmorgan/whitehead.html). It's by the British writer Colin Wilson on symbolism and meaning.

Take care.

[paka.livejournal.com]

I like what you have to say, and I like the image, but what I really like is the idea behind making the image - the exercise of putting down what you're actually feeling, on paper. Maybe I should make myself do something like that?