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astronomical-glory · 2 years

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[Part 1] [Part 2] [You are here]

Volo wants to meet and understand Arceus but we can also infer that he is angry at Arceus. At a god that allowed such pain and suffering to exist in the world. Why? Arceus makes the rules, why not create the world without those things? There are no pre-existing laws stating that pain and suffering must exist. And to add that he was of the Celestica, the people of Arceus itself, yet he still suffered under the omniscient eye of the creator his people so worshipped.

Volo wants to create a world without pain or suffering and in order to do that he would have to gain Arceus' power, whether it's through forcing Arceus to obey or to kill Arceus and obtain its power. But he also wants recognition from Arceus for his devotion despite his apparent hate. He sees himself as someone special to Arceus yet in the same vein wants subterfuge of that same god. I recommend these two posts as they better put into words how I understand Volo and how he feels towards Arceus.

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On an unrelated note, a segment of the paper on double bookkeeping caught my eye and again, despite the paper focusing on schizophrenia, I believe double bookkeeping applies to all psychotic disorders where specifically the person with a psychotic disorder experiences delusions. It also applies to any form of psychosis as again, I myself experience double bookkeeping yet do not have a psychotic spectrum disorder. (Please don't start)

❝The content of typical delusions in schizophrenia is frequently colored by metaphysical, eschatological, or charismatic themes. The latter refers to issues concerning the meaning and purpose of human life, where patients may feel to have a central position, to be chosen for a special mission where the meaning of their life reveals itself to them (“charisma” means divine gift). The former refers to issues concerning respectively the essence of Being or existence (i.e., the schizophrenia cosmology is often of a magical character, consisting of a struggle between good and evil forces, or is penetrated by energies, rays, waves and so forth) and ultimate issues such as universal peace or the end of the world. Along the same line, Sass proposed that delusions in schizophrenia rather than being concerned with the mundane (ontic) issues focus on the very (ontological) horizons of human existence. He emphasizes that the patient lives in a double reality with his delusional conviction forming a part of the reality with a “subjectivized” quality that is unconnected to the intersubjective world.❞

Now, this next part also relies on not only the immortal Volo theory, but the theory that he is the hiker who knows too much™ in Pokemon Platinum and HGSS.

❝Hello, how do you do? I'm a student of philosophy. If I had to explain very simply, I study how people came to be. That could explain why I happen to be in Sinnoh. In Sinnoh, there is a myth on how the world came into existence. Investigating that myth may give me insight on the emergence of people.❞

I won't copy-paste all of the hiker's dialogue because it is a lot, but the way the hiker speaks— with the charisma and excitement about something actually rather similar to what Volo says in the above screenshots plus the explicit mention of the Lake Spirits, Arceus*, Dialga and Palkia*, and has been in possession of several Arcean plates— it's practically all but confirmed that that hiker is actually him ("could just be a coincidence" well, that's one hell of a coincidence)

*A pokemon that paradoxically has a pokedex entry for almost all generations since first appearing yet very few appear to know of their existence. Those few being the Aether foundation, presumably the professors, and obviously the Celestica. With the way the pokemon world is, knowledge of Arceus' existence as anything beyond myth is very clearly not common knowledge, and is mentioned by name outside of pokedexes by only three people: Cynthia, Volo, and the hiker. A bit odd for Arceus to be mentioned by name by two Celestica and then there's this random hiker.

*Not as notable as Arceus, but the Celestica did worship Dialga and Palkia as their gods back in ancient Hisui. Additionally, the explicit mention of the Lake Spirits along with the above screenshots in addition to Volo having talked about myths pertaining to each of the Lake Spirits at their respective lakes is very peculiar.

Now what does this have to do with the quoted segment of the double bookkeeping paper? Let's just go with the belief that the hiker is in fact Volo for the sake of conciseness. Volo in modern Sinnoh shows a prominent display for ontology (and by extension metaphysicality) and cosmology when he infodumps.

Now, I want to make this clear

This is not the same as it being delusions. He just has a fascination for it. However, given his dialogue at Spear Pillar and how everything will cease to be once he subjugates Arceus, attains their power, and destroys and recreates the world anew, his delusions very obviously have charismatic theming. While eschatological feels like something reminiscent of Volo, we have nothing concrete due to again, not knowing enough about him. Headcanoning it is of course applicable as something someone's personal interpretation of his character could have, but there's nothing to back it up as something he displays in canon.

Anyway, after checking through my sources and making sure I understood everything I was writing as I've re-written almost this entire analysis, I stumbled upon a true epiphany to explain Volo's form of psychosis that isn't schizophrenia.

One thing that consistently but not strongly puzzled me was why Volo hardly displayed any other symptoms of psychosis until Spear Pillar (this is, of course, taking into consideration our limited knowledge of him, therefore there's not much to work with anyway). The battle at Spear Pillar is the defining point indicative of psychosis, and with his delusions being a factor in why he acts to achieve his goal— that is, he has a lot of motivation and self-efficacy to enact his delusion and his overall desire for a new world free from pain and suffering (I do want to note that his desire and belief for creating a new world is not his delusion, it has been clearly stated earlier so if one had that misconception, I recommend rereading the analysis with knowledge that that is incorrect).

So his psychotic symptoms are overall very few from what little we know of him but spike at Spear Pillar. There are several forms psychosis can appear in that isn't tied to a psychotic spectrum disorder or even a personality disorder such as BPD.

❝Other specified schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. The DSM-5 introduces this subcategory to provide for the diagnosis of four conditions involving psychotic symptoms that do not meet full criteria for any of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders but nonetheless are issues of clinical concern. Below are examples of clinical presentations to which the “other specified” designation applies.

•Persistent auditory hallucinations, denoting the persistent presence of auditory hallucinations occurring in the absence of other psychotic features.

•Delusions with significant overlapping mood episodes, which is most appropriately used when a patient otherwise meeting criteria for delusional disorder also experiences overlapping mood episodes for a substantial portion of the delusional disturbance.

•Attenuated psychosis syndrome, which describes a condition in which psychotic-like symptoms are present but are less severe and more transient than in schizophrenia, and for which insight is relatively maintained.

•Delusional symptoms in a partner of individual with delusional disorder (formerly named shared psychotic disorder, also known as folie a` deux), a rare condition in which delusions develop in an individual who is involved in a close relationship with an individual with prominent delusions. The previously unaffected partner’s delusions take on the content of the dominant partner’s delusions.❞

But this isn't what sparked the epiphany, it was actually something that I just so happened to find among the sources I already had that backed up my epiphany. The true spark of the epiphany was this:

Psychotic Depression

❝The cause of psychotic depression is not fully understood. It's known that there's no single cause of depression and it has many different triggers.

Many people with psychotic depression will have experienced adversity in childhood, such as a traumatic event.❞

❝Depression with symptoms of psychosis is a severe form of depression in which a person experiences psychosis symptoms, such as delusions (disturbing, false fixed beliefs) or hallucinations (hearing or seeing things others do not hear or see).❞

❝Depression can also involve other changes in mood or behavior that include:

•Increased anger or irritability

•Feeling restless or on edge

•Becoming withdrawn, negative, or detached

•Increased engagement in high-risk activities

•Greater impulsivity

•Increased use of alcohol or drugs

•Isolating from family and friends

•Inability to meet the responsibilities of work and family or ignoring other important roles

•Problems with sexual desire and performance

Depression can look different in men and women. Although men, women, and people of all genders can feel depressed, how they express those symptoms and the behaviors they use to cope with them may differ.❞

How many of these apply to Volo from just this list of depression symptoms alone can be easily noted from the information earlier in this analysis. The context for the job one may be slightly different for Volo, but could still apply since we don't know if the context actually is "laziness", or off doing what he wants instead, or anything else not being indicative of depression based on this piece of dialogue. Again, he's good at "masking" in that way.

We get the tiniest sliver of melancholy from Volo at the Giratina statue right before he goes off the deep end and... that's it. We get hardly anything about Volo beyond his charismatic hope-for-the-best personality before he flips like a switch and we get whiplash from how utterly different he acts at Spear Pillar to the point of making many people believe his personality from everywhere prior to that point as being fake. Mind you, a person can be charismatic but still very much depressed; charisma and happiness (for lack of being able to think of a better term, but you understand. non-depression) are not wholly exclusive to one another.

Given what Volo says during that one moment, and what comes after with his behavior during the battle— him hurling insults and threats*— he is very obviously not okay. It's a very sad and despairing way to look at the world. To see all life as something that has, is, or will inevitably suffer and go through great pain and that all life is a tragedy that has happened, is happening, or will happen. To feel this heartache and to feel in your heart and mind that things don't have to be this way. That things could be better and there is no reason why they have been this way, are this way, and will continue as far as you know to be this way. And god exists in this world. And god is the one who shaped reality and made the rules. God is said to be loving, yet not just allowed— because that on its own would imply that the rules predate god— but created these rules. And what kind of loving and benevolent god would do that?

He has definitive proof that god exists— that Arceus exists— and rather than allow a world such as this continue when it shouldn't have ever been this way, or is so believed. Because there is no conceivable reason why life has to be unfair. I know this because I feel exactly the same. And I also know that there can't truly be a world with no pain or suffering because such a concept only applies to humans. What about all other living beings? How would anything exist? Living beings need to eat and use the lives of others to survive. What about the trees that need to be felled in a pre-industrial age to build? What about the plants and animals that need sustenance (not all plants photosynthesize)?

Plants can feel pain, it's just widely believed they can't because they don't communicate on a level humans understand. And that's just physical pain, but you get the idea— it doesn't make sense when you finally look upon such a tunnelvisioned despairing outlook with genuine clarity. Such a concept for a "world without pain or suffering" seems like an abstract utopia that gives the anguished mind a life-line to hold on to, to see it as something that could possibly even be made reality if it doesn't exist in some universe already. But it is an inherently selfish concept not just due to one using their own suffering as the basis upon which they view the world and its inhabitants, but because it only applies to humans.

*Volo tells Laventon that he still looks forward to the completion of the pokedex, something he wouldn't nor didn't have to tell Laventon, not to mention have him pass that on to the very child he scorned if all he felt towards that child was a visceral hate. Plus even though he threatened that he wasn't above taking the plates by force if necessary, he doesn't act on that threat (he does still very much tell Giratina to kill a 15 year old, though).

End Note

❝In connection to double bookkeeping it is striking that even though primary delusions are in no way corrigible, because of the delusional conviction described above, they are usually never enacted.❞

If this is the case, then why did Volo enact his delusion? A straightforward answer would obviously be that he isn't canonically psychotic so it doesn't matter, but when a character displays symptoms similar to those of a mental illness— a heavily demonized one at that— it doesn't matter whether it's canon or not, because this is still a character that even if by coincidence acts and can be seen as having that particular mental illness. With the language that was used back in 2022 to describe and talk about Volo, by calling him a psychopath, deranged, insane, completely manipulative, evil, etc, in conjunction with a lot of ableist art and misconceptions made about him, it doesn't matter that he isn't canonically psychotic.

Many people showed their true colors when talking about him as a character and Do.Not come at me about how fiction doesn't affect reality because I won't tolerate it. The way Volo was treated back in 2022 was abysmal (and that's putting it lightly). If you truly think people who experience psychosis or have otherwise have had those ableist/sanist terms used to describe them or others with their mental illness(es) don't see the way people talked about this particular fictional character from pokemon of all things, you could not be any more ignorant if you tried.

There are still those that act ableist in their portrayal of Volo but I don't believe it's anywhere near as bad as it was back in 2022.

While GameFreak most likely didn't create Volo with full knowledge of how psychosis and other mental illnesses that can have psychosis are demonized to hell and back despite the people who have those mental illnesses being more of a threat to themselves than anyone else and aren't Evil Incarnate™, it is still possible they created Volo with these specific "troubling" characteristics in mind completely separate from the real life mental illness that these characteristics are symptoms of. Given how Pokemon Legends Arceus in general glorifies colonization in many horrible ways*, it's not that surprising that they'd do something like this with their secret main antagonist.

*Most notable being that Kamado, the lead colonizer, is forgiven despite his xenophobia and blatant disrespect for the culture and land that isn't his, while Volo, a man indigenous to Hisui, as he is Celestica and their home was Hisui— whereas the Diamond and Pearl clans moved to Hisui from elsewhere— isn't forgiven or even given a chance for forgiveness. He just walks off to never be seen again. The saddened look the protagonist gives him over their shoulder does not serve as forgiveness, especially since many people from what I've seen misconstrued the very obvious look of sadness for anger or contempt.

(Image taken from Tyrinitartube since @/voloscreenshots didn't have an image for this specific moment)

It also really doesn't help that with what this analysis serves to show, Volo can be seen as psychotic-coded which makes his unforgiven demonized antagonist status even worse. I'm going to just link this post by @/sage-nebula as they go into more depth in explaining just how bad PLA's glorification of colonization is.

Gamefreak, whether it was genuinely unintentional or not, ultimately created a character that when closely analyzed from a certain perspective can be deemed as having psychosis in at least some form— and when combined with his too-little-too-late backstory, has led to a very large portion of the Western fandom to forgo analysis of any complexity he has in favor of perceiving him as a "one-note evil manipulative character".

It's a slippery slope that many have fallen down and see it as "not a big deal" or "not that deep" because it's not only fiction, but pokemon, yet those same people recognize and respect the complexity of other characters in this same media. (I have seen N compared as being similar to Volo, for instance. Because y'know.

And there is of course now, Arven as a complex character.)

【A pet peeve of mine are those who believe Volo is immortal yet is "still manipulative and scheming" after centuries have passed. Either these people don't have a proper understanding of mental illness when it comes to the passage of time, or they're doing it for the Angst™. Or both. Yes, Volo stated that he didn't care if it would take centuries for him to find a way to conquer Arceus, but people change. If Volo truly is the hiker, then you've got proof right there. I just cannot fathom the idea that after hundreds of years that he wouldn't change or grow as a person at all.】

Again I reiterate what I've said in the first part of this and that's that I don't expect everyone who reads this to drop everything and adopt this headcanon especially because we only know so much about Volo and this headcanon is built on many inferences and, at its core, my own interpretation of him. I am a person who really likes analysis and figuring out why a character acts the way they do in as much an in-universe way as possible but I am not above just going "It's bad writing 🙃".

This analysis is basically: there is further meaning and explanation in Volo's actions that can be gleaned if you look at it in a very specific way that the writers may or may not have intended, but I'm going to write about it anyway. ¯\_(¬_¬)_/¯

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presencinglife · 7 months

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From an early age, I was driven by a quest for truth. It was the pre-internet era and very little esoteric material could be found in print but still I would scour through everything I could lay my hands on and read hungrily. I couldn't put my finger on what I was looking for but I knew it was out there. I also grew up largely areligious, given that my parents are not the worshipping kind. Their reverence was towards a life of simplicity with a strong work ethic and moral uprightness. This gave me a personality that was more oriented towards reasoning than devotion, I think. I had to arrive at devotion through reason. So it was imperative for me to understand the truth through my mind first, which would lead to an inner breakthrough and then filter down into a profound way of looking at life. The Eastern path of first cultivating a reverence towards life (Bhakti) from which one then acts, is an equally potent way to come at it, but for me it somehow didn't work. I had to arrive at it from the Western path of mind training.

Even in later adult years when I should have probably paid more attention towards building a career, I would have to honestly admit that what was at the forefront of my mind was understanding truth and finding the meaning of life. Today I feel that it was a privilege afforded to me that I got those years to mull over a lot of esoteric material, while my cohorot members were busy getting married, raising kids, buying properties and building their retirement savings. By materialistic standards, I would surely be considered a "laggard". I have nothing to my name and I'm still trying to find my way around a work that will sustain me in the long run. But what feels deeply meaningful to me is that I never gave up on trying to understand the purpose of existence. After discovering several teachings and gorging through them, I found Rudolf Steiner, whose cosmology made the most sense to me, intuitively and through a reasoning that keeps growing over time. He wrote about what the quest for humanity in the current Epoch (what he calls the fifth post-Atlantean Epoch) is. It is the development of the consciousness soul. As per my understanding, what this means is that every person is meant to deep dive into the meaning, sifting through its details and come up with something transforming. In his own words,

"Everyone knows how a man at first counts as true what he prefers in his feelings and desires. Only that truth is permanent, however, that has freed itself from all flavor of such sympathy and antipathy of feeling. The truth is true even if all personal feelings revolt against it. That part of the soul in which this truth lives will be called consciousness soul."

A cultivation of the consciousness soul demands that we first come to grips with what our sympathies and antipathies (our personal biases) really are. I can see how hard this can be, because our own biases are hard to see through and we consider our beliefs as being sacred somehow. We don't realize that perhaps our thinking might be outdated or simply a lazy continuation of the kind of conditioning we received from our childhood environment. This kind of an inquiry also calls for a high level of moral integrity.

"Moral goodness is independent of inclinations and passions inasmuch as it does not allow itself to be commanded by them but commands them. Likes and dislikes, desire and loathing belong to the personal soul of a man. Duty stands higher than likes and dislikes. Duty may stand so high in the eyes of a man that he will sacrifice his life for its sake. A man stands the higher the more he has ennobled his inclination, his likes and dislikes, so that without compulsion or subjection they themselves obey what is recognized as duty. By causing the self-existing true and good to come to life in his inner being, man raises himself above the mere sentient soul. An imperishable light is kindled in it. Let us call what shines forth in the soul as eternal, the consciousness soul."

Strangely, throughout those years when I was trying to fit into the mainstream work culture, I came across experiences of ethical malpractices, within the academic (publishing) and then the development sector. Every time it led to a disillusionment which felt soul crushing. I don't know how others managed to operate in it, but twice I physically injured myself when I tried staying at workplaces despite my ethical qualms so I knew that for me somehow honoring truth was a non-negotiable value even it that meant not having a "successful" career like my peers. I'm not implying anything about their morality being questionable but I just felt like my own quest for truth was making me go deeper into the ethics question of my choices.

The cultivation of consciousness soul, according to Steiner, will in the next Epoch (Sixth post-Atlantean), lead to the development of the spirit self (Manas), which we are also likely to be working on a little in the current epoch.

"The 'I' lives in the soul. In the 'I' the spirit is alive. The spirit sends its rays into the 'I' and lives in it as in a sheath or veil, just as the 'I' lives in its sheath, the body and the soul. The spirit forming and living as 'I' will be called spirit self because it manifests as the 'I' or ego or self of man. The difference between the spirit self and the consciousness soul can be made clear this way: The consciousness soul is in touch with the self-existent truth that is independent of all antipathy and sympathy. The spirit self bears within it the same truth, but taken up into and enclosed by the 'I', individualized by it and absorbed into the independent being of the individual. It is through the eternal truth becoming thus individualized and bound up into one being with the 'I' that the 'I' itself attains to the eternal."

Steiner's cosmology is built on the premise that with every epoch, the human being is learning to integrate new cosmic forces provided by the spiritual hierarchies, into its being so that it can take its rightful place in the cosmic order of hierarchies as the 10th hierarchy of angels. Every epoch gives something new to work with which must be tackled for the first time as it has never been done before. So looking back to ancient wisdom will not yield the answers we need. That wisdom was for a different era when the human being was membered differently. The answers for each epoch have to be created by the human beings through their own efforts. And in the current epoch, the cultivation of consciousness soul demands that the knowledge of the higher worlds be integrated through the conscious use of the 'I', which is the recent most body added to the human, after the physical, etheric and astral bodies in previous epochs.

The 'I' is individual to each soul and the use of it to understand the place of human being in the cosmic order of things has to be undertaken willingly by each person. That is the demonstration of the principle of human freewill. Before the Fall of man (Eden), there was no need for an 'I' or freewill because humans were part of the divine order and understood their place in it clairvoyantly. But through the Fall, human beings chose to forget their place in this higher order and hence exerted their right for separate existence. It is only fair that a reunion with divinity now be attained through the use of the very organ of separation that we developed in the process - the 'I' or ego. Clairvoyance will not be handed to us on a platter. The use of the 'I' demands that wisdom be cultivated through the use of one's own mind. That is how consciousness soul needs to be developed in our time. This consciousness soul will then cultivate in us an ability to look at ourselves within a moral framework that is cosmic in nature. Hence our actions will have no other choice but to become moral. And this morality is not about preaching from the pulpit. Steiner makes it very clear that this will have to be done individually, without imposing one's freewill on another. And one's morality can at best only serve as an example from which others might learn, if they so choose. That keeps the development of the consciousness soul in alignment with the principle of freewill which human beings have gained through their long and painful evolution on Earth since their fall from divinity. When this kind of a consciousness soul is progressively integrated into one's moral actions at an individual level, it purifies one's astral body, which is the keeper of one's emotions, feelings, desires and mental thoughts, making it more spiritual and less influenced by wild impulses and passions. This gradual transformation of the astral body is the birth of the spirit self, which we will only entirely achieve by the next epoch.

Bringing this all together, in a nutshell, the work we are doing in the current time is largely internal and though it may end up leaving an impact on the world, depending on one's greater soul karma in this lifetime, the point is not to seek an external impact but court an inner awakening of soul forces that lay dormant. It is about a slow purification of one's own soul through meeting outer challenges that are designed to test and bolster our inner cultivation. The presence of moral evil in the world is the catalyst our soul has collectively manifested in order to take up this challenge of cultivating moral consciousness in all earnestness. As we are nearing the time of Ahriman's physical incarnation on Earth, according to Steiner, we are witnessing the forces of darkness gathering momentum in all forms. The writing is on the wall for those who can read it. But this cosmology provides us with the necessary understanding so that our soul can bear the tests we are bound to undergo in the coming times.

I look back with gratitude at all those years that I plodded through, getting to this wisdom and assimilating it. I was being made to work on my consciousness soul. While I rued about being a laggard in the mainstream world, higher forces were working to help me understand the truth that I was always yearning for. What Jesus demonstrated on the Cross at Golgotha was a cryptic message that humanity has to develop its consciousness soul to decode: when we understand that our physical body is not the end of our being, we have the courage to act out of concern for the larger collective than our own well being and raise ourselves to a higher knowing by fully owning our etheric body (resurrection), thereby letting go of our craving for a physical body. Then we are ready to join the hierarchy of angels, where our place is being prepared by these spiritual hierarchies for a long time. We then no longer need to have a physical incarnation but can serve along side these beings of hierarchy that are serving us everyday, silently in love, through creating synchronicities that nudge us towards cultivating a higher understanding of our true nature, even as we battle the ever tempting face of materialistic impulse that surrounds us. We can trust that as long as we keep doing what our soul calls forth in us through working with these higher forces, we are going to be led in the direction of our true success, which is not of this world.

Excerpts from Rudolf Steiner's 'Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man', Chapter I: 4. Body, Soul and Spirit (GA 9)

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emmys-grimoire · 3 years

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Hypothetical OM! Angel Hierarchy

Not official or completely factual. 90% my hypothesis/conjecture supported with evidence of varying levels of confidence.

It might be helpful for those who may find it difficult to keep track of who falls under what rank and what those ranks may mean, because it’s definitely confusing. Aaaand we’re likely to get more lore dumps if Season 3 is meant to give us insight on what happened before, during, and immediately after the Great Celestial War.

There will be spoilers.

(It’s here if tumblr resized it to make it unreadable gg guys)

A magnificent MS paint chart and a hot take: ranks = jobs/roles, and one is not necessarily considered better than the other. Compared and contrasted with this.

Explanation/Conjecture/Theories tl;dr

The ranks outside of the Seraphim may be categorical - therefore lateral - and determined more by the nature of an angel's power or talents when they are born more than the amount of power or potential each angel possesses (as explained by Luke in Lesson 43). This would explain how you get Lucifer and Michael placed in the Archangel rank, which is typically the second to last rank in the traditional angel hierarchy, when they're both clearly much more powerful and hold much more authority than the rest of the angels (and, at least in Lucifer’s case, has three pairs of wings -- a trait associated with Seraphim). Their talents lie in combat, so they're filed under "Archangel".

Other possible explanation: the Archangels are typically low level grunts but Lucifer’s/Michael’s/Simeon’s status as Seraphim as well elevate them higher in status than they normally would be.

There does seem to be hierarchies within these hierarchies, too: Levi is a general, which implies greater authority than your average soldier, and Lucifer and Michael are clearly the head honchos. Michael is the current leader of the Legion. Hopefully this isn’t terribly relevant in the future lest things get even more convoluted.

The Seraphim are clearly the 'ruling class', but they're promoted from the lower ranks, and it seems by recommendation. Beelzebub, a Cherubim, is rumored to be recommended for promotion by Lucifer (though he dismisses it). Think of it like giving the Attorney General a seat at the Important People Table; he still keeps his title and job.

Additionally, Beel is one of the weaker brothers in term of power... unless he somehow got a power downgrade after he fell and became a demon. Until there’s some indication of that, though, I’m confident that rank =/= how powerful the angel is, at the very least.

Admittedly calling it a promotion implies he’s changing his rank instead of just getting a new batch of responsibilities/more status. But re: what I said about Lucifer/Michael, it just might put Beel ahead of the other Cherubim in status and authority.

The Archangels are likely given more influence than they traditionally would because the Celestial Realm is in perpetual war with the Devildom until Diavolo takes over. I can see them getting more clout and status because they are in charge for most of that time, and that's likely why most of the Seraphim listed are also Archangels.

Mammon went from Archangel -> Throne, and it seems to be a duty change and little else. He’s called the “Fallen Warrior” so it makes sense. It also makes sense for Lucifer to appoint him to an administrative job underneath him instead of keeping him an Archangel if the warring has ceased in the foreseeable future.

I've placed an * next to the characters whose ranks haven't been explicitly stated in the story yet, but they're placed where they're most likely to go based on descriptions so far. Raphael is the archangel associated with healing: it's a little strange that he's being depicted as a hunter with a spear, but he could be the Legion's equivalent of a head medic or something. Levi is clearly stated to be a general, so he's in the Legion, and likely remains there in some capacity even if he’s angsting no longer getting to fight.

There has been no official "council" confirmed, but the game has hinted that Michael has been in meetings and Belphegor is chastised for sleeping in and missing a meeting, so I suspect the Seraphim operate like one anyway... or there’s just meetings for different angel departments. Who knows? I’m calling them the Council of Assholes for now.

We still don't know what Asmodeus or Belphegor are, though the former seems to work under Raphael. This doesn't really mean much: Simeon clearly works for Michael when they're technically both Archangels and Seraphim.

We haven’t heard anything about the Powers or Virtues yet. Maybe that’s where Asmodeus/Belphegor fall but idk. Their job description may be more dubious as a result.

Father clearly sits at the top of this ladder, but the game gives us precious little insight on how he operates or what his motivations are. There’s probably a reason why he designed things this way, but that has yet to be revealed. Not sure if the Devildom has anything that would be considered this equivalent and we’ve hung out there for two seasons now.

I 100% expect some of this to turn out to be wrong and I'm gonna have to make some corrections/edits. The fact that Mammon mocks Luke for his low rank (before he clarifies that he’s actually unranked) makes me think it probably isn’t all lateral job assignments and even this is way too simplified.

But this is where I’m at. Cheers.

(Also Luke doesn’t technically exist in the past timeline)

#obey me #obey me!#obey me spoilers #obey me cosmology #obey me celestial realm #obey me angels #theories #analysis #lore #theory

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house-of-laminations · 3 years

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The writing in obey me is kinda messy when it comes to the laws of magic in their world. I get that the game wants to focus more on the love parts but it would be nice if they decided to work a bit more on their world building.

Mc is genuinely a really interesting character considering they were the descendant of an ex-angel. Not to mention being immune to the avatar of lust's charm right off the bat? It would be fine if it was a lesser demon, but this is a demon lord we are talking about.

Mc became even more interesting in solomon's bday event. It's said that our magic had limitless possibilities and that got me curious.

We got our powers from Lilith correct? And Lilith was once an angel, someone who served god. It's said that angels are extremely strong beings, but they can't just show it willy nilly because they lack a certain amount of free will. Unless their god allows it, they can't really do much with their abilities. What if the reason why Mc has limitless possibilities on their magic is because that restriction is gone? They may have some of lilith's powers but they aren't lilith. They have what angels lack, which is free will. Mc can do whatever they want with their magic without the restrictions angels have.

Ik its a bit far fetched considering obey me is more light hearted so I doubt they would expand lilith's and Mc's connection to each other, but it's still nice to think about it.

Also thanks for listening to my ramblings! I guess I finally have someone to talk to about obey me. ❤️

Anon, thank you for sharing these thoughts with me! You've seen how much I ramble - we can ramble together 💛

You're so right about the messiness - this game is like my catnip because you're telling me there's cute monster boys (& girl) and its shallow enough that I get to make up my own worldbuilding headcanons? I do agree that I wish we had more, but at the same time, if we did, then we wouldn't be able to talk about stuff like this as easily!

I think it's super interesting you call out the difference between Angels and MC as being 'free will'. It plays into one of my fave main character tropes - 'everyone is stagnant except the protagonist who can grow.' MC brings a youthfulness and a discovery of potential that the millennia old demons and angels may have forgotten they were capable of - perhaps even inspiring them to continue growing themselves. I have Thoughts™ about the role of 'god' or 'the father' in the obey me canon/cosmology, but I don't wanna distract from your ideas so I'll talk about them in another post!

I personally would love to see more of the angels (and MC) going absolutely apeshit. Especially Luke - he's still growing too, and it'll be interesting to see the effect MC and the brothers have had on him in his development. I feel like MC and Luke are interesting parallels - both quite young and yet have experienced a lot, having to learn and unlearn different ideas and habits. Both have the potential (or the current capability) to be extremely powerful, but maybe lack a bit of the control necessary to command that power at-will.

#anon you and i are friends now sorry i dont make the rules #that means you can talk to me about obey me whenever you like!!#💛 fr tho i want to pick at your brain and bounce ideas off you #obey me headcanons #i talk to a real human

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outfitandtrend · 2 years

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[ad_1] The second episode of FX’s new miniseries Under the Banner of Heaven opens with a Mormon family at home, all dressed in white, preparing for their daughter’s baptism. The 8-year-old girl gestures to a ring on her finger, and asks her father if she should keep wearing it after she’s been baptized. The ring is small and silver with a green shield at the center, embossed with three letters: CTR, short for “Choose the Right,” as detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield) explains. It’s a distinctive ring that Mormon children are encouraged to wear, as a reminder to obey the laws and commandments from their Heavenly Father.Like many of the symbols of Mormon culture and cosmology in Under the Banner of Heaven, the CTR ring carries an immediate weight for anyone who has spent serious time in the pews of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). As an ex-Mormon myself, descended from good pioneer stock and raised actively in the church before I left in my late teens, the image of a CTR ring brings back a distinctive sensation from childhood. I can feel the cold nickel around my finger, as I twisted the ring over and over again while sitting bored in Sunday School while the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang the hymn “Choose the Right.”Mormonism is not an active part of my reality now, but the experience is so specific and unique — from practices of the religion itself, to colloquialisms and the casserole-heavy cuisine — that it ‘s hard to explain to people. And there’s been no authentic depiction of Mormonism in the media to refer to – thus far, the pop culture record on the Latter-Day Saints has mostly been written by non-members, like Trey Parker & Matt Stone of The Book of Mormon musical. The CTR ring makes another surprising appearance in HBO Max’s Tokyo Vice, as a symbol of one character’s secret ex-Mormon past. But while that show’s unexpected Mormon subplot is a surprisingly tactful if sensationalized portrayal of the struggle to leave the church, it’s still fundamentally an outsider’s perspective, and only one small kernel of a much larger narrative.So Under the Banner of Heaven is in some ways a milestone for Mormon representation: though none of the main cast members are active or former Mormons, creator Dustin Lance Black was raised in the church and became an industry name as the only writer of Mormon experience in the writer’s room for Big Love, HBO’s notorious series about a polygamous family in Salt Lake City. Both Big Love and the original Jon Krakauer book about the real-life murder of a Mormon mother and her daughter on which Under the Banner of Heaven is based were highly controversial flashpoints for Mormons around the same point in the mid-2000s. While Under the Banner of Heaven attracted ire for unveiling violent incidents in Mormonism’s past, Big Love caught heat for its focus on polygamy and scenes recreating sacred temple ceremonies. Big Love often strove for cultural fidelity and verisimilitude, but it was ultimately about Mormonism in the same way The Sopranos was about the mafia: a rich setting and context for a larger thematic portrait of tragic masculinity.But the TV adaptation of Under the Banner of Heaven takes the faith of Black’s youth as its direct subject in a way Big Love never did. It’s aimed at a secular audience – often reminiscent of True Detective, if Lovecraftian gobbledygook were substituted for Mormon doctrine, and in tune with the culture’s obsession with true crime, scammers, cults, and extremism – but it also whispers authentically, like the still small voice Mormons speak of, to an ex-believer like me. Some of the show’s signifiers and reference points might be more recognizable to outsiders, like Detective Pyre playing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to guilt trip an LDS suspect, or his abstention from caffeine. But there’s a lived-in attention to detail that rings true, down to the way certain characters speak. [ad_2] Source link

#FASHIONFORMEN

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fatehbaz · 4 years

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Sorry. This might be annoying and excessively long. Among people interested in psychogeography, ecology, folklore, bioregionalism, urban geography (and Empire, hegemony, anti-imperialism, to a lesser extent, I guess?) there is a quote that gets circulated from time to time. I’ve seen the quote in academic articles, sure, but also on the W0rdpress blogs of, like, birders, hikers, gardeners, “bioregional animists,” and “woods aesthetic” fans. But why do both academic authors and popular/mainstream writers and bloggers and such consistently remove the end of this sentence from Michel de Certeau’s memorable statement: “There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can “invoke” or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in – and this inverts the schema of the panopticon.”

Gonna revel in the wonders of the garden, the forest, the landscape, the other-than-human lifeforms, and yet not willing to explicitly address the vulnerability, the cascading extinction, the tightening noose of imperial hegemony and carceral systems threatening it all, landscapes, lives, entire worlds? What de Certeau is referring to here is the way that imperial/dominant power structures (European modernity, Empire) try to subdue, erase, destroy smaller, alternate, and/or non-Western cosmologies, to make it seem like Empire is the only possible world that can be constructed. And so landscapes become sanitized, especially in cities, and de Certeau says that such sanitized places are “uninhabitable” because they are so cold, because Empire tries to standardize experience, rather than allowing localized connections tor regional landscape. But the alternative worldviews, the histories, have not been fully erased, and exist in the cracks and crevices of modernity, and so there are “ghosts” of alternative worlds which live on. And it is the remnants of other worlds, or the glimpses of other creatures (animals/plants/etc.) or other surviving worldviews (graffiti in the subway, which rejects order and control), or the hopes of possible better future worlds, crevices where the “failures” of modernity can be glimpsed, which make a place habitable. “Haunted geographies.”

Here’s a sentence fragment from a different author, writing about de Certeau:

“exotification and suppression, under a cloak of celebration”

This kinda thing.

This fragment comes from a criticism of early-20th-century Euro-American academia’s so-called “folklore studies” but I think it also describes much 21st-century academic interest in “ecological knowledge” and non-Western cultures. I have a feeling that this behavior is similar to what contemporary upper class careerist-academics in academic anthropology departments and those “studying the utility of traditional ecological knowledge” are doing when they superficially throw around words like “decolonial” or “Haraway’s Chthuluscene” in their article abstract for Cool Points without actually having given much through to the way they and their sponsoring institution, in their thirst for prestige or good optics or whatever, are in fact continuing to perpetuate dispossession and appropriation of Indigenous/non-Western knowledge. And on some level, it is deliberate and calculated, though not always a conscious act on the individual author/researcher’s part. Intentional power consolidation masked as passive chauvinism masked as benevolent paternalistic concern for “primitive peoples” masked as genuine respect. What’s happening is a recuperation, the subsuming of alternative cosmologies and ways of being. Hypothetical Nat/Geo article, variations of which you’ve probably seen before: “How can we utilize Indigenous knowledge? Can traditional knowledge help us battle climate change?” Empire, those in power, hegemonic institutions colonizing knowledge, thought, cosmology.

Plenty has been written, especially in recent years, of a “plurality/pluriverse of worlds in contrast to one imperial worldview/cosmology” and also the paternalistic attitudes of Euro-American anthropologists, but the mid-century work of Michel de Certeau, in my opinion, anticipated a lot of this disk horse. Here’s the fuller quote:

-----------------------

“In recent years, especially since 1960, scholarship in the service of popular culture has been of Marxist inspiration, or at least ‘populist’ in spirit,” de Certeau, Dominique Julia and Jacque Revel wrote in a 1980 essay, “but does the scientific operation it undertakes obey different laws than it did in the past? On the contrary, it seems to be dominated by the mechanisms of age-old excommunications…to conceal what it claims to show” (de Certeau 1986, 121). This opening statement encapsulates much of de Certeau’s thinking about the history of folklore studies. Tracing its development in successive stages from the late eighteenth century to the “heyday of folklore” in France’s Third Republic (1870-1940), the authors argue that the eighteenth century aristocratic vogue for “the popular” concealed a powerful movement toward the domination of the peasantry. This movement involved both exotification and suppression, under a cloak of celebration.“ The idealization of the “popular,” as they put it, “is made all the easier if it takes the form of a monologue. The people may not speak, but they can sing...The intent [of folklorists] is both to collect…and to reduce (de Certeau 1986, 122).[...] The governing ideologies driving the emergence of this obsession with the folk were not static, however, and therefore, in order to understand the development of the politics of culture in folklore studies, scholars must examine, at each point, its “subjacent postulates” (de Certeau 1986, 123). For instance, following the domination imbricated with the origins of folklore studies in the 18th century, by the mid-nineteenth century, the authors describe folklore as taking on a paternalist role vis-a-vis its subject. The collection of folklore by this time, embodied especially in the works of Charles Nisard (1808-1890), is not just a chronicle of its elimination by the elite, but a protective function executed by the elite on behalf of the incompetent peasant. In this view, de Certeau and his colleagues observe, “the people are children whose original purity it is befitting to preserve by guarding them against evil readings” (de Certeau 1986, 124, original emphasis). [...] This, then, is the basic outline of de Certeau’s historical critique of both the conceptualization of folklore and the discipline of folklore studies, as well as the core of his critique of cultural studies in the late 20th century. Interestingly, however, it is also the core of his larger understanding of the workings of modernity.

From: Anthony Bak Buccitelli. “Hybrid Tactics and Locative Legends: Re-reading de Certeau for the Future of Folkloristics.” Cultural Analysis, Volume 15.1. 2016.

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So there is a popular quote from Michel de Certeau (French interdisciplinary scholar, 1925-1986), which seems to have been yet more popular since, like:

(1) 2010-ish with elevation of Mark Fisher’s work; “object-oriented ontology”; “dark ecology”; apparent academic elevation of ontological turn in anthropology; and the white-washed Euro-American academic language of traditional ecological knowledge, “decolonization,” etc.,

And also since (2) 2014/2015 in “popular” media, with apparent mainstream-ing or “revival” of folk horror, alongside elevation of eco-horror, Anthropocene disk horse, etc.

(In my anecdotal experience, at least, reading about geography, folklore, psychogeography, etc. in online spaces from M.S.N chatroom days onwards.)

I’m of course very wary of de Certeau’s interest in and celebration of Freud (come on, bro) and also the implications of de Certeau’s Jesuit background and early interest in missionary stuff (gross). But de Certeau did write some thoughtful and nicely-phrased stuff (in my opinion) about the importance of subverting imperialist/hegemonic cosmologies; how Euro-American academic institutionalized knowledge reinforces power; imperative for combating hegemony/carceral thinking by connecting with landscape; the “memory” of places; the “hidden” histories of landscapes, etc. And he wrote this decades before academics started stealing from Indigenous people of Latin America and getting into pluriverse stuff.

Anyway, one quote in particular seems most popular. but almost every single instance where i’ve ever seen this quote shared, it always cuts out the last few words of the statement. The quote is from what might be his most widely-read work, the “Walking in the City” chapter of his 1984 book The Practice of Everyday Life. (it’s a pretty brief chapter which is available for free online; might take 30 minutes to read, if you’re interested.) The quote as translated by Steven Rendall: “There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can “invoke” or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in – and this inverts the schema of the panopticon.”

The “inversion of the panopticon” portion is almost always left out of the quote. even in academic writing or in the writing/blogs/whatever of people who otherwise seem like they would be down with anti-imperialism or something.

So, it comes across to me as if contemporary (2005-2020) academics and activists interested in, like, folklore or local horticulture or psychogeography will like ... take the “cute” fragments of these excerpts, but don’t want to “stir the pot” by presenting these writings in their fuller context, a fuller context which calls-out knowledge appropriation and explicitly trash-talks Empire.

And de Certeau’s not just writing about folklore or geography. He’s writing about taking action, about practicing alternative ways to relate to landscape in direct contrast to imperial cosmologies, academic/institutionalized/gatekept knowledge, and carceral thinking. (He’s famous for this; he emphasized “tactics” and “action.”)

So this guy is, of course, human, and had disagreeable and/or outright problematique associations. You can argue with his writing extensively. his publications are a mix of great, cool, iffy, “meh” and “bad take bruh.” But de Certeau was ahead of the curve in anticipating the way ambitious US academics would see “the decolonial turn” happening in academic anthropology in the 1990s/2000s and then weaponize it in a way that preserved their power dynamic and institutional power while still paying lip-service to “decolonization.”

But besides dunking on the imperialist foundations of Western institutionalized knowledge systems and the cunning employment of geographic re-worlding and re-naming in creating propaganda and imperial cosmology, and besides being ahead of the curve in anticipating re-enchantment trends and folk horror ... One thing I like about de Certeau’s writing is the emphasis on action, practice, and doing things to counter dominant/powerful cosmology’s attempt to destroy folk/non-Western worldview. Encouraging something like:

Take action. Books are cool, but books are not a substitute for action. Girl, you wanna study landscape, place-based identity, folklore, and how to escape the panopticon? Gotta put the theory texts down occasionally. Please go walk around in the forest; if you’re in the major city, don’t despair, just look at the moss growing in crevices betwixt the cobblestones. Imagine the ghosts, the histories, the stories, who died, what was lost, what’s come before. Power is trying to subsume all, but Empire gets anxious and flails because they know that there are gaps in their cosmology, cracks and breakages where other worlds seep through or can be glimpsed, retrieved, renewed. They know their cosmology can’t account for the diversity of life, the plurality of experience. There is not one world, but many. Find the crevices, the cracks, in the dominant power structures, and break them further. You can help to escape the tightening noose, the planetary-scale plantation, by using your imagination, cooking a meal, taking a walk.

#whatever #sorry for all this

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one-leaf-grimoire · 3 years

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“triad”

Chapter 12: the death of a world

Summary: Lisa considers ending the world

AO3 link

Soft wind across my face eventually wakes me from my fitful sleep. I silently let my eyes flicker open, blinking a few times as the dark sky comes into focus.

“Thank god… Marx, she’s awake!”

“She is?!”

Two faces peer down at me now: Marx and Adeline. The wind blows through their hair and the stars streak above them. We’re moving… on something. Whatever I’m laying on, it’s soft, but chilled by the night air.

“Are you alright?”

A soft hand comes down to stroke my cheek, as tender as a mother’s touch. However, my body moves on its own, jerking my head to the side to end the blissful contact. “Y-Yeah-” My throat feels cracked and dry, the words struggling to find purchase. “Where are we?”

“On our way back to the Castle,” Marx replies, his whisper strained yet relieved. “We’re on a carpet, since you were knocked out.”

Oh. Right… The metallic taste in my mouth and the pounding headache in my right eye help me remember what happened. The dream, the Dyad… and…

My curse.

Neither of them talk to me much the rest of the way back, and for that I’m grateful. Everything is a mess inside of me, even my soul now, apparently. Each of them take one of my arms as we land, and gently guide me inside and down the hall. “You need sleep-” Adeline starts to say, but her words fall short as I shake my head. “No?”

“I can’t sleep,” I tell her, my voice still quietly hoarse. “Take me to my office.”

“Are you sure?” Marx’s brows furrow, and he almost looks heartbroken. I avoid his gaze and nod minutely, and he has no choice to obey me. Finally, I watch from my office couch as the door swings shut with a loud clack. I’m alone.

I close my eyes, breathing deeply a few times so as to not start panicking.

First of all: is this curse actually real? Or was that just some weird hallucination in the dream? No matter how far I search, I can't find an answer other than yes. The painful episodes I've had lately, centering around the left side of my mark, feel like they could kill me at any time. If that's really my soul trying to leave this world, then I have the feeling that I would definitely die if I didn't resist it. In addition to that, one side of my mark has dulled, Julius's side. My Mark is the source of my power; it is my life force. And now, it signifies what I always feared: I am less than a whole. I am, maybe, half of a soul. My Ego is gone, shattered too many times as I greedily took more and more power.

Without it… there's nothing to keep me here.

So… how long do I have? Is there anything I can do to stop it before I die?

…

No answers pop into my head, no matter how long I lay there. I wish I had invited Marx or Adeline to stay, because, right now…

I… I’m alone.

I’m alone with nothing but the dread that signifies the end of my life.

So… right as I achieved everything… right as I thought I could be a mother… right as I thought I could move on and find new love…

New love.

It’s something I never thought I wanted. Julius was all I needed… but that didn’t mean that I had to be alone until I rejoined him on the other side. I wanted to feel warmth again, to make someone else happy again. Maybe things wouldn’t be the same, but that was alright. Different was good…

But now, that dream is over. I’m going to die, just as lonely and alienated as I’ve always been.

“Do you really think… my love is that weak?”

Those words echo in my ears. Once, they were a comfort, but now…

No, Julius… your love is so strong, it’s killing me.

My own life isn’t the only thing that hangs in the balance, either. This child I carry, my child… I wished for this baby so hard, for so many years. But now, the last piece of Julius that exists will die with me.

This is hopeless. I’ve failed… spectacularly.

What am I supposed to do now? I can’t let anyone know… but at the same time, at least I have warning. A new Wizard King will have to be chosen, and then there’s the war with Spade- Am I even going to live that long?! Even now, my will to hold on is slipping, the utter hopelessness of the situation starting to drown me.

I was doomed to fail from the beginning. And now, there’s nothing I can do but wait and scrounge up some kind of preparation.

Julius…

I wish you were here…

Hot tears start to bubble up in the corners of my eyes.

You would know what to do… you always knew exactly what to do.

But, if he were here, I wouldn’t be in this situation, right? Everything would be the same as it always was, I wouldn’t be dying, I would have a long, happy life ahead of me, a life with him and our child.

If only… there was a way to see you again.

Just one more time. Just… one look.

My eyes close, veiling the world in darkness. The strained, tired, and thin threads of my mind stretch farther and father, to every corner of my psyche, desperate for an answer.

The answer.

It’s there…

If only…

Someone said something, once…

I had the power…

The darkness deepens, my consciousness close to giving out.

To turn back time.

Everything stops.

But… I do?

No.

I can achieve the illusion of time reversing, by removing time from an object, person, or attack.

But… What if I were able to remove time from the entire world?

My eyes flicker open again, widening as light pours back into the world. Adeline’s worlds from our first meditation session flood my ears.

“I guess time is like a river, always flowing forward. To paddle backwards is a lot harder than to force yourself ahead.”

True… I can already manipulate time and mana in order to see seconds ahead in the future, which allows me to dodge even the fastest attacks. Julius taught me how. However, I never thought about looking back… but the more I think about it, the dots don’t connect. With what I have now, it’ll be impossible for me to fight the tides of time and travel against them.

What about True Time Magic? Will that let me go back in time?

My heart starts to pound, and I sit up. There’s something akin to adrenaline in my veins, as if I’ve found some forbidden secret. Did Julius ever think about it? If there was a way to apply our magic to the fabric of time?

I don’t know… it might still not be enough.

I still haven’t figured out how to apply the natural time magic I was just beginning to wield, so that is immediately pushed to the back of my mind. There’s one possibility left, one tool that only I have the power to possess, and what might be the key to traveling back in time.

Because… just time might not be enough.

It’s possible for me to take someone else’s magic and combine it with my own to create something new, something that could potentially execute the plan that’s slowly forming in my mind. I doubt I’ll be able to form a full-fledged Dyad in my current state, since I’m currently still in one with the shard of Julius still within me. But I can form a Triad. And as long as the Triad is intact, I can take control and do whatever I want.

But… What kind of magic would I need? What could possibly combine with my magic and make it easier for me to move back in time?

It’s becoming clear that I need to do some research. In one swift move, I rise from the couch and stride towards the door, something new fueling my movements with purpose. Because, for the first time in weeks, my mind isn’t muddled with doubts, stress, or guilt.

No… All I see is him. There was never anything other than him.

And I’m going to get him back.

----------------------------------

“Hello? Anyone in here?”

Adeline pokes her head into the library, not expecting to find anyone. It’s late afternoon, a day after we returned, and she’s starting to get worried. The sudden disappearance of the Wizard King sprung everyone into a panic, especially Marx, who ordered a thorough search of the castle, top to bottom. Adeline bit her lip, her heart sinking, before starting to turn to leave.

“Wait! Adeline?!”

She froze, turning just in time for me to poke my head around the corner of a tall bookshelf. Her eyes widen at the sight of me. “Oh! Do you have any idea how many people are searching for you-”

“Adeline! Just the girl I was looking for-” She lets out a squeak as I rush forward, grabbing her hand and dragging her with me through the maze of shelves. “I was just about to leave and look for you- I think you’ll find this interesting! I’ve been doing some research, see-”

I finally skid to a stop by my favorite reading nook, nestled in the very back of the library. Books and papers are stacked everywhere, strewn across the floor and piled up in chairs. Adeline stands there, shocked, before looking back at my excited face. I know I must look terrible; This new burst of energy forced me to stay up all night and all day, and I haven’t eaten anything either. But none of that matters; only the mission matters.

“What are you doing?! You’ve been in here all day?” Adeline opens and closes her mouth a few times, aghast. “You could have at least told someone where you were… and now your work is going to get backed up, too-”

“So? This is more important.” I grab one of the big books and hold it up. “See… I’ve gone through every book in our astronomy/cosmology section. Looking for the answer… and I think I found it! I just want to know if you agree-”

“Answer? Answer to what?”

I ball up my fists excitedly. “Time travel… to the past! To move backwards, to force my way against the flowing river of time… I need more than just time, right?!” Adeline opens her mouth to respond, but I’m not done. “Because time isn’t actually real… It's spacetime that makes up the universe. The 3 dimensions and time combined into one, everlasting fabric… fabric that can be torn and stretched and bent- And if I want to manipulate spacetime and move to a point in the past, I need gravity!”

Adeline doesn’t say anything for a moment, but something in her eyes darkens.

Disappointment?

Or just sadness?

I take a few steps forward, blind to it. “Adeline, tell me… I have the power to take magic and combine it with my own. That’s how I got my time magic. So… if I can find someone with Gravity Magic, do you think it would be possible?”

…

“...why?”

“Hmm?” I blink, my expression faltering.

Adeline’s gaze moves out of my own, avoiding it like the plague.

“Why would you want to go back in time?”

I feel ice in my veins again, the creeping feeling that something is wrong. “... Adeline-”

“Answer my question!” Her gaze snaps back up to me, determination glinting in it. The command catches me off guard, and I stand there dumbly for a moment. “I’ll answer yours first… I think so. Maybe. I don’t know what your power really is, but-”

“Why do you think I want to go back?” I cut her off, a shot of joy jolting through me, momentarily melting the ice. “To save Julius, of course…” Her reaction tells me that she already knew this. “To get us out of this mess-”

“What mess?” Adeline cuts me off again, and I notice one of her fists clench at her side. I’m starting to pick up on it now: frustration. Somehow, I’ve upset her, and it’s starting to dawn on me how. “There is no mess… you’re an amazing person, you’re an amazing King, you’ve already started to move past your grief, through meditation-”

She trails off as all remaining excitement extinguishes itself from my face.

“... Adeline… you don’t understand anything.”

She blinks, her golden eyes wavering in their sockets.

“This isn’t something I can fix through meditation. I refuse to just… sit here. The only way I can fix this is to bring him back.”

Adeline… I’m sorry.

The promise of a new life… a new love. It was never viable in the first place, was it? As tragic and frustrating as it is… I have to let it go.

“I already have a Gravity Magic user I can use.” An old friend… well, maybe an old rival is a better description. Who knew that Horatio would serve such a purpose now. “I promise… I’ll find you. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

I have the information I need. It’s best that I leave now. Adeline doesn’t move as I brush past her, grabbing my robe from where it lays on the arm of a couch as I pass it. It isn’t until I’m almost out of the room that she snaps back to her senses and turns to follow me.

“WAIT!”

Adeline grabs my shoulder before I can leave, the words spilling out all at once. They’re choked with emotion, anguish, but they fly out with that same focus and determination that she always possesses when she’s talking about something she truly cares about.

“If you go back in time, if it’s even possible, you could cause serious damage-”

“So? Damage to what?”

“LISTEN! I told you before… a single beat of a butterfly’s wings, out of place, can destroy the universe.”

I raise an eyebrow, remembering the phrase from our last conversation about this. “What does that even mean?!”

Adeline starts to look annoyed. “If you go to the past and change something critical, what happens to all of us here in the present?!”

The possibility does give me pause. But for just a moment.

Nothing matters. None of it.

“... I would assume that you would stop existing.”

Adeline gulps nervously as I turn to look her in the eye, a chill noticeably moving through her body.

“...exactly. You would effectively destroy us all.”

It doesn’t matter.

“But… also…” Her words waver as they leave her lips, and the edges of her eyes start to water.

“If you save Julius… you eliminate the reasons for the trip in the first place. You’d be a paradox… and who knows what would happen to you.” For the first time, her voice actually breaks. “Y-You could die.... Horribly…”

… I’m already going to die horribly. What’s the difference?

There’s nothing more to say. I pull my shoulder from her grasp and start to walk away.

“I don’t care.”

Adeline doesn’t cry out for me again. She knows it’s useless.

I don’t care if I die. I don’t care if I have to destroy the world. If that’s what it takes to create a perfect world, I’ll do it without a second thought.

The castle is abandoned by now, and I pause for a moment by an open window. The sun is setting, orange streaking through the sky. Funny… wasn’t it just sunset a couple minutes ago? I guess I whittled the day away in the library. Just like the good old days…

Back then, Julius and I spent hours alone together in the library, sometimes just sitting in silence, sometimes discussing something interesting he found in a book. Even before we were together… the tension and the weight between us was something obvious… something inevitable.

Just like this.

Horatio Chessman, age 27. We hail from the same town, where he used to bully me mercilessly for my low magic levels. He originally joined the Silver Eagles, but got kicked out when he suffered a devastating injury. But he didn’t give up; he tried again, and rejoined as a Crimson Lion King. And that’s where he remained.

Most importantly, Horatio has gravity magic. Exactly what I need.

Instinctively, I move towards the open window.

He’s right there… I’ll go right now.

The air is so still. People are settling in for the night. Perhaps that night will be longer than they expected.

I’ll take control of gravity…

I step out onto the ledge.

I’ll destroy this cursed world, and-

Before I can finish that thought, something within me stirs.

… Julius? His soul-

It happens again. A flutter, barely registered as my tunnel vision threatens to take over.

No… not a soul.

It’s…

The evening air wafts through my hair, and a cold tear streaks down my cheek.

… life.

I step back, and the tunnel widens. My vision clears.

How could I be so stupid…

Next thing I know, my back hits the opposite wall of the hallway, and I let my knees buckle. I slide to the ground, my eyes still fixed on the sunset outside.

I can’t do it… even if I had the means… I can’t.

I don’t want to die. Not now, not ever. Even with Julius gone, I want to live, I want to give birth to this baby. Did I really think I was prepared to throw away my future for some ridiculous mission? Time travel?! I mean- I want to, I still want to, but all the reasons why I shouldn’t are crashing down on me.

I don’t want to die… but more than that, I don’t want this child to die.

But most of all…

If I went back in time and destroyed the world… Julius would never forgive me. And Adeline, she wouldn’t forgive me.

My stomach turns as I realize that I’ve done something worse than destroy the world; I’ve upset Adeline, I’ve told her that I didn’t care about her or the world. The new love I wanted, she must have wanted it just as bad, right? And now, I might have destroyed the last piece of happiness I could have had as my life wanes away.

Just like everything else, I ruined it. How can I ever face her again?

At the first opportunity, I let the selfishness I hated so much take over everything. I wanted so badly to destroy this world, and that delusion clouded everything that was actually important: my baby, my friends, my kingdom, and the woman I wanted desperately to love.

Is it too late?

Like some sort of empty puppet, I slowly stand up, my knees still shaking, and make my way back out onto the ledge. This time, I don’t intend to let myself fall.

“Flame magic: Sun God’s Leap.”

Wings burst to life around me, and I take flight. I fly in the opposite direction from the Crimson Lion Base, out over the city and into the wild.

Where am I even going…

I have no idea. But maybe there’s an answer there. So I fly… I fly east. Away from the sunset that even now continues to creep up on me.

LMAO POOR LISA if she seems a little off her rocker that's completely right- She has a broken, useless ego so her impulsive ID has basically taken over afjskdl. Also- if you want a rundown on any of the astronomy/psychology stuff that shows up in this fic just shoot me an ask! Also I’d love to hear any thoughts

Next time! Chapter 13: the promise and the apology. Maybe this world can still be perfect.

#fic #oc: lisa #triad

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hellsparadiseessays · 5 years

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Aza Brothers Week - Day 3

Part II of my essay on the Aza Brothers, initially posted on r/Jigokuraku back in April/May. Reading it again cracks me up tbh, I usually suck at guessing authors’ intents, but this time it seems I managed to be right on pretty much everything, which still blows my mind. More under the cut!

Aza bros, an analysis – Part II: an essay on Tao, Lord Tensen and how Chôbe may not die so soon

As a disclaimer, three things need to be mentioned. First, thy enter spoiler territory; flee while thy can, new reader! Second, I am not Japanese/Chinese nor raised in Japan/China, so my take is solely based on the academic documents I read, what I know and what I understand. If there’s a mistake in my understanding, please, feel free to address it. Third, English is not my native language, so while I’m fluent in it, I don’t promise a 100% quality and may make some grammar mistakes here and there. On this note, let’s start a needlessly academic write up. I hope you’ll deem it an enjoyable or educative read.

The first part of this essay focused on Chôbe and Toma, their dynamic and how society keeps influencing them despite their rejection of it. Now that this whole part about their past and present is explained, we can turn our attention towards the potential future for them. Well, mostly for Chôbe, since this part of the essay has been modified in light of chapter 54, which gave us Toma’s immediate goal: getting stronger by training with Tamiya, so he can save his brother (and be on equal foot with him, especially when it comes to murdering everybody - Toma, you sneaky bastard, ily but be careful, Shion may be onto you). Things may not end up being that easy considering a whole boat full of ninjas is on its merry way to get Gabimaru’s head, but hey, the group may split up as a consequence of this specific mess. Considering that, the second part of the essay on our good brothers will be focused on Tao, Chôbe and Lord Tensen, and will be more opinion-based than the previous one (though textual evidences will be brought up to explain said opinions).

1. What is Tao and how does it work?

Tao has been defined both in-story and through u/gamria’s posts on this very subreddit (latest post here), so I will mostly sum things up a bit before going on yet another long rant about Chôbae.

Like Gamria summed up, Tao irl means “The Way” and is tied to a philosophy of life that allows one to live in harmony with the world. This state of perfection can be reached through various exercises involving alchemy, physiology and even specific sexual practices to prolong one’s life and reach immortality.

Now I’m not explaining further because you have the aforementioned essays on that matter, and because I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it so giving a clear explanation is tough. Instead, let’s see which elements of Taoism can be found in Jigokuraku and how they are explained in-story.

• Yin and Yang: they represent the duality between everything. Shion explains it well: "Tapping into this power demands a balanced spirit. Not too intense... Not too tranquil...”, “the interstice between rage and serenity... That duality. You must push your spirit to reach such a state.” (chapter 29) Lord Tensen also exemplifies it by switching between feminine and masculine – the energies represented by Yin and Yang.

• Tao: separated from Chi in the manga, yet with a similar function. It’s the life force that, once mastered, allows one to gain strength and perform notably better in battle (among other things).

• Waidan: the Outer Alchemy, one of the two forms of Taoist alchemy. It involves the use and mix of various elements found in nature (mineral, vegetal, animal) and constitutes a way to reach immortality. We’ve seen a lot of examples of it since our band of misfits arrived on the island: the Soshin, Monshin, the way Tan is produced, even Lord Tensen themselves – they are born from the mix between various elements found in nature, to produce something new that ranges from the technical fodder half human-half animal to a sort of elixir of life (Tan) based on humans mixed with plants to Lord Tensen (half plant-half human, with a very precise choice of plant to maximise the potential of Yin and Yang – and thus, of Tao – by having beings that are physically hermaphrodite).

• Neidan: the Inner Alchemy, the other form of Taoist alchemy. A mix of Waidan, cosmology and the Five Elements, it’s a system that makes one perceive their body as a cauldron in which the Three Treasures (Jing – Essence, Qi – Breath, Shen – Spirit) are worked in a manner that’ll allow a physical and emotional improvement through unity, leading to the immortality sought by Taoism.

• Five Elements: we literally got drawings and explanations about that one in the manga, so TL;DR it’s the sequence of Wood – Fire – Earth – Metal – Water constantly generating positive or negative interactions in a cyclic way. Wood feeds Fire, the Ash becomes Earth, from the Earth is born Metal, Metal can bear Water, Water makes Wood grow. Wood cracks Earth, Fire bends Metal, Earth absorbs Water, Metal cuts Wood, Water puts Fire out. These elements are also associated with seasons (Wood/Spring, Fire/Summer, Earth/late Summer (harvests), Metal/Autumn, Water/Winter) as well as moods, planets, colours or even Cardinal directions. As explained by the characters, everybody has one type dominating the others, and can act accordingly to it – be it by figuring out the appropriate strategy in a fight or understanding from which place X physical issue comes from, how to heal it and so on.

I’m probably missing some things, but that’s what caught my attention according to what I gathered from external sources and what I noticed in the manga. I’ll use these points to explain my personal take on Chôbe’s strength and what his future may look like, as well points out some interesting details about Lord Tensen and the way things seem to go in Hourai.

2. Lord Tensen: office politics is also a thing in Paradise

The island, described as Paradise and the place where the Elixir of Life can be found, truly is an amusing place. Its inhabitants are so human, no matter how much they try to get past this condition through all the means they can. First, you have people like Hoko, unfortunate souls who’ve been thoroughly manipulated and clearly seen as utter fools by Lord Tensen. Then you have the Soshin and Monshin, who’re seen as nothing more than failures. Then you have the Doshi, the disciples, who’re not there yet but fine enough to be the optional servants of Lord Tensen. Then you have the seven forms of Lord Tensen, which have displayed individual characteristics in their appearance, abilities and personalities. Zhu Jin is mocked for his loss against Shion (and his loss of Tao as well, which resulted in his body looking older), Ju Fa clearly has a short fuse and a violent disposition, Mu Dan is the local Mad Scientist who’s ready to give one’s a chance if one’s shows the potential for it (hi, Yuzuriha), Ratana Taisei seems to be the local mood maker and Rien is the leader (and Mad Scientist-in-Chief) who’s obeyed by the others without questions. However, Rien doesn’t seem to just be in charge of his fellow Tensen, it looks like he’s also in charge of overseeing the entire island. He’s the one showing distrust about Ju Fa’s confirmation on whether or not Chôbe and Toma were dealt with, and he’s the one who sent one of the Doshi to make sure they were Tan material. Later, when Mu Dan is killed (and since the Doshi sent to the Tan pit didn’t come back), he takes matters into his own hands and that’s how he ends up meeting Chôbe.

And let’s not forget Mei, who’s a proper wrench in the entire system by running around instead of being used as Bochu Jutsu material by the Doshi. No matter how seemingly godly Lord Tensen is, they clearly cannot foresee the consequences their actions may have. Ju Fa’s brutality may cause a rift among the seven, Rien accidentally gave free informations to our band of misfits by banishing Mei for her impurity, forcing her to consume Tan and giving her to the Doshi – thus creating a resentment that’ll come back to bite his backside, probably in the form of a small, fire-using ninja and his gang.

Considering these observations about the local politics of Kotaku, we can consider Chôbe’s future from a perspective larger than the one we get from a single weekly read of the new chapters.

3. Chôbe’s strength and potential: impure or new step forward?

Even before he sets a foot on Kotaku, Chôbe’s strength is pointed out when he literally kicks a man 6 feet in the air. The lad’s crazy physical strength is made obvious first during the fight against the other criminals, then when he deals with the Soshin and even picks a giant axe to clear the place more easily (funnily enough, that axe belonged to an Oni-like Soshin, the implications for Chôbe are amusing).

But the real deal about Chôbe’s potential becomes evident during the fight against the Doshi. After having been thrown in the Tan pit and having been somewhat invaded by the plants here, a shift happened and Chôbe became able to wield and read Tao. Not perfectly, but he picked up on it awfully fast, the Doshi openly acknowledged it in chapter 30: “this man is powerful, and yet considerably fatigued. It takes all he has to remain standing. This is only a bluff, a glimpse at his Tao reveals as much” at the beginning of the fight (considering the siblings had been beaten and thrown into the Tan pit some time before, it’s expected for Chôbe to be tired), “he possesses the aptitude, but has far to go” later during their fight, and he even uses the word “astounding” twice in relation to Chôbe’s fighting abilities. In chapter 31, a swift change happens in the way the Doshi perceives Chôbe: “this man’s Tao... It seems to have grown... In such a short period of time?” and “I can tell... This man is dangerous. A threat to Lord Tensen. He must be killed here. Now.” The Doshi even considers Chôbe’s progress and almost instantaneous understanding of the way to wield Tao “impossible”. Well, looks like it is possible when you’re the ever observant Aza Chôbe. Because that man may look and act like a beast, but he is far from being one – save for the fight against Gabimaru (during which he lost his mental balance), he demonstrated how clear his mind is during a fight, and do you know how he started understanding the way Tao works? By seeing it with his right eye. The blind one. As soon as we see him figure it all out, a panel is dedicated to this eye, wide open with a faintly visible pupil. That means he managed to calmly pull off what Shion has been doing for years while in the middle of a fight. Later, during his fight against Gabimaru, he went even further by managing to instinctively master his new form: he managed to turn his left arm into a sort of giant axe, thus showing the readers how he’s slowly managing to transcend his condition as a puny human.

Considering point 2 and what has been aforementioned, we can thus draw some conclusions about the path that may await Chôbe.

First, his growth relies on the balance between his rage and his calm (Professor Shion worded it perfectly), so while I’m not worrying too much about Toma for now, the same may not be said of Chôbe. I was thinking that before, but in light of chapter 54 and Toma’s decision, I suspect Chôbe may need Toma much more than Toma needs him. Plus, while his brother was protected and had time to swallow all the terrible things that happened to them, the same cannot be said of Chôbe, who still has a lot of hangs up (see Part I of this essay), the very hangs up that had him lose his mind while fighting Gabimaru. The entire scene when he finds himself facing that dark mass intrigues me. Is it the result of an imbalance, or the effect of the vines and consumption of Soshin blood that changed something in him? It was a stark opposition with the way Gabimaru’s flashbacks are expressed: while Gabi’s flashbacks tend to have this light about them, Chôbe’s flashback was dark, confused, suffocating. Seeing it caused Chôbe to not see Gabimaru anymore, and just lash out at everything that hurt him regardless of its nature. Our Bandit King will probably have to face all that to find a proper balance and gain further mastery over his new found abilities.

I mentioned the consumption of Soshin blood to stay hydrated, and this is my second point about Chôbe’s potential fate. We could suspect it with the way Tan is produced and consumed by Lord Tensen, but chapter 54 was clear about it: to survive, living beings full of Tao must be consumed, and that’s exactly what Chôbe did out of survival. Rien qualified him of “impure”, just like Mei (who needs to consume Tao from an external source to avoid arborification and had her Tanden destroyed), which has been treated like a failure. But does it really mean Chôbe is a failure? Remember, the Doshi openly found him amazing and even dangerous for Lord Tensen. So where Rien saw failure in Mei, will he see the same in Chôbe? Considering the short amount of time spent on the island (3-4 days), and considering Rien is one of the local Mad Scientists, it is possible that he’ll pick on Chôbe’s abnormal abilities and will take note of it. Maybe he’ll even take him to Hourai, where I’m sure Ratana Taisei would be delighted to meet him again – remember the encounter with her and Ju Fa, back in chapter 16? Taisei openly expressed her interest in Chôbe (“he’s cute”), and we already saw what was going on in the Palace (a literal pool to train and private beds for some Bochu Jutsu). Considering Yuzuriha nearly had a taste of it with Mu Dan, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it was what actually happened to Chôbe. The one thing that worries me about his situation is the issue with arborification, which may or may not end up being a long-term problem for him depending on what may happen if he goes to the Palace and learn more about Tao.

But do you know what would be hilarious about the entire situation with Lord Tensen? Considering his unruly nature and sneaky behaviour (in chapter 30, he stayed down and waited for the Doshi to approach before ripping his throat out), I wouldn’t put it past Chôbe to play the card of the wolf among sheeps, stealing what Lord Tensen has to offer before wrecking some havoc in the Palace. That would be fitting of a Bandit King, don’t you think?

Well, this is all for now, I guess? Like I said, this second part is more me giving my opinion and taking wild guesses based on what I noticed in the manga. It’s also me ranting about Chôbe, because of course that’s what I do ever since I discovered that amazing character. I hope you found this read enjoyable or informative, a part 3 may happen depending on the material we get. In the mean time, I’m totally expecting UG to contradict some of the speculations I made. Oh well, we’ll see. I don’t even think I’ll be mad, because his handling of the story until now has been 10/10 to be honest. Re-reading the manga told me that much.

#jigokuraku #hell's paradise #chôbe #tôma #essay #my stuff

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existentialexitwounds · 3 years

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Notes from... Fictions

"Do what thou wilt" shall be the whole of the Law, meaning that adherents of Thelema should seek out and follow their true path, i.e. find or determine their True Will.[5]Love is the law, love under will, i.e. the nature of the Law of Thelema is love, but love itself is subsidiary to finding and manifesting one's authentic purpose or "mission".Every man and every woman is a star, which is to say that in the 20th-century era vulgaris cosmology, it is implied by metaphor that persons doing their Wills are like stars in the universe: occupying a time and position in space, yet distinctly individual and having an independent nature largely without undue conflict with other stars. Law One – “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Law Two – “A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.” Law Three – “A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” I think the Thelema laws are written wrong though. 1. "Love is the law, love under will" shall be the whole of the Law. 2. Every person is their own. 3. Aim to harm no other. Rework this for book and remove occult connotations: you are not trying to construe this with that given your initial issue with the construction. And you do not want to be mistaken for being anti what people believe in. Thread it over the expanse of the book. My rule: If you aren’t going with me, stay out of my way. Do not justify the ill you’ve done to me or others. If you want something, you can just ask. If you do wrong, make amends, don’t ask for forgiveness.

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claudinei-de-jesus · 3 years

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The existence of God

1. Its declared existence.

Nowhere do the Scriptures attempt to prove the existence of God through formal evidence. It is recognized as a self-evident fact and as a natural belief of man. The Scriptures nowhere offer a series of proofs of the existence of God as a preliminary to faith; they declare the fact of God and call man to venture into the faith. "Whatever comes to God, believe that there is God", is the starting point in the relationship between man and God.

The Bible, in truth, speaks of men who say in their hearts that there is no God, but these are "fools", that is, the ungodly practitioners who would expel God from their thoughts because they have already expelled him from their lives. These belong to the large number of practicing atheists, that is, those who proceed and speak as if there were no God. Their number far exceeds the number of theoretical atheists, that is, those who claim to adhere to the intellectual belief that denies the existence of God. Note that the statement "there is no God" does not imply that God does not exist, but that God does not deal with the affairs of the world. Counting on his absence, men become corrupt and behave in an abominable way. (Sal. 14.)

Thus writes Dr. A. B. Davidson: (the Bible) does not attempt to demonstrate the existence of God, because in all parts of the Bible it is understood that he exists. There seems to be no passage in the Old Testament that represents men seeking to know the existence of God through nature or the events of providence, although there are some passages that imply that false ideas about the nature of God can be corrected by studying nature. and of life ... The Old Testament considers as little about the possibility of knowing God as it does about proving his existence. Why would men argue about the knowledge of God when they were already persuaded that they knew him, aware of being in communion with him, their thoughts being filled and enlightened by him, knowing that his Spirit moved in them, and guided them throughout your story?

The idea that man comes to knowledge or fellowship with God through his own efforts is totally foreign to the Old Testament. God speaks; it appears; the man hears and sees. God approaches men; establishes a concert or special relationship with them; and give them commandments. They receive him when he approaches: they accept his will and obey his precepts. Moses and the prophets are nowhere represented as thinkers reflecting on the Invisible, forming conclusions about it, or reaching high concepts of Divinity. The Invisible manifests itself to them, and they know him.

When a man says, "I know the president," he doesn't mean, "I know the president exists," because that is implied in his statement. In the same way, biblical writers tell us that they know God and these statements signify his existence.

2. Its proven existence.

If the Scriptures offer no rational demonstration of the existence of God, why are we going to make this attempt? For the following reasons: First, to convince those who genuinely seek God, that is, people whose faith has been overshadowed by some difficulty, and who say, "I want to believe in God; show me that it is reasonable to believe in him." But no evidence will convince the person, who, wishing to continue in sin and selfishness, says: "I challenge you to prove that God exists." After all, faith is a moral issue, not an intellectual one. If the person is not willing to accept, he will put aside any and all evidence. (Luke 6:31.) Second, to strengthen the faith of those who already believe. They study the evidence, not to believe, but because they already believe. This faith is so precious to them that they will gladly accept any fact that increases or enriches it.

Finally, to be able to enrich our knowledge about the nature of God. What greater object of thought and study is there than him? Where will we find evidence of the existence of God? In creation, in human nature and in human history. From these three spheres we deduce the five evidences of the existence of God:

1) The universe must have a First Cause or a Creator. (Cosmological argument, from the Greek word "cosmos", which means "world".)

2) The design evident in the universe points to a Supreme Mind. (Teleological argument, from "Teleos", which means "design or purpose".)

3) The nature of man, with his impulses and aspirations, points to the existence of a personal Governor. (Anthropological argument, from the Greek word "anthropos", which means "man".)

4) Human history gives evidence of a providence that rules over everything. (Historical argument.)

5) Belief is universal. (Common consensus argument.)

(a) The creation argument. Reason argues that the universe must have had a beginning. Every effect must have a sufficient cause. The universe, being the effect, must therefore have a cause. Consider the extent of the universe. In the words of Jorge W. Gray: "The universe, as we imagine it, is a system of thousands and millions of galaxies. Each of them is composed of thousands and millions of stars. Close to the circumference of one of these galaxies - the Milky Way - there is a medium-sized star with a moderate temperature, already yellowed by old age - which is our Sun. " And imagine that the Sun is millions of times bigger than our little Earth! The same writer continues: "The Sun is spinning in a dizzying orbit towards the circumference of the Milky Way at 19,300 meters per second, taking the Earth and all the planets with it, and at the same time the entire solar system is spinning in a gigantic circuit at speed an incredible 321 kilometers per second, while the galaxy itself spins, like a colossal giant ferris wheel. By photographing some sections of the sky, it is possible to count the stars.

At the Harvard College observatory I saw a photograph that includes images from more than 200 Milky Way - all recorded on a 35 x 42cm photographic plate. It is estimated that the number of galaxies that the universe is composed of is in the order of 500 trillion. "

Let us consider our small planet and on it the various forms of life that exist, which reveal divine intelligence and design. The question naturally arises: "How did all this originate?" The question is natural, as our minds are so constituted that they expect every effect to have a cause. Therefore, we conclude that the universe must have had a First Cause, or a Creator. "In the beginning - God" (Gen. 1: 1). In a simple way this argument is exposed in the following incident:

Said a skeptical young man to an elderly lady: - I once believed in God, but now, since I studied philosophy and mathematics, I am convinced that God is nothing more than a hollow word.

"Well," said the lady, "it is true that I have not learned these things, but since you have already learned, can you tell me where this egg came from?"

"Naturally from a chicken," was the reply.

- And where did the chicken come from?

- Of course an egg.

Then the lady asked: - Allow me to ask: which one existed first, the chicken or the egg?

"The chicken, for sure," replied the young man.

- Oh, so, the chicken existed before the egg?

- Oh, no, I should say that the egg existed first.

- So, I suppose you mean the egg existed before the chicken.

The boy hesitated: - Well, you see, that is, of course, well, the chicken existed first.

"Very well," she said, "who raised the first hen from which all successive eggs and hens came?"

- What do you mean by all this? He asked.

- Simply this - she replied: - I say that the one who created the first egg or the first chicken is the one who created the world. You can't even explain, without God, the existence of an egg or a chicken, and you still want me to believe that you can explain, without God, the existence of the whole world!

(b) The design argument. Design and beauty are evident in the universe; but design and beauty imply an architect; therefore, the universe is the work of an Architect endowed with sufficient intelligence to explain his work. The great Strasbourg clock has, in addition to the normal functions of a clock, a combination of moons and planets that move, showing days and months with the exactness of the celestial bodies, with their groups of figures that appear and disappear with equal regularity when the hours on the big timer. To declare that there was no engineer who built the watch, and that this object "happened", would be to insult intelligence and human reason. It is foolish to assume that the universe "happened", or, in scientific language, that it proceeded from "the random contest of atoms"!

Suppose that the book "The Pilgrim" was described as follows: the author took a wagon of press types and with a shovel threw them into the air. As they fell to the ground, they naturally and gradually came together to form the famous story of Bunyan. The most incredulous man would say: how absurd! And we say the same thing about the assumptions of atheism in relation to the creation of the universe.

Examination of a watch reveals that it bears the signs of design because the various pieces are brought together with a previous purpose. They are placed in such a way that they produce movements and these movements are regulated in such a way that they mark the hours. From this we infer two things: first, that the watch had someone who made it, and second, that its manufacturer understood its construction, and designed it for the purpose of marking the time. In the same way, we observe the design and operation of a plan in the world and, of course, we conclude that there was someone who did it and who wisely prepared it for the purpose it is serving.

The fact that we never observed the manufacture of a watch would not affect these conclusions, even if we never knew a watchmaker, or if we never had an idea of the process of this work. Likewise, our conviction that the universe had an architect, in no way changes due to the fact that we have never seen its construction, or that we have never seen the architect.

Likewise, our conclusion would not change if someone informed us that "the clock is the result of the operation of the laws of mechanics and is explained by the properties of matter". Even so, we will have to consider it as the work of a skilled watchmaker who knew how to take advantage of these laws of physics and their properties to make the clock work. Likewise, when someone informs us that the universe is simply the result of the operation of the laws of nature, we are embarrassed to ask, "Who designed, established and used these laws?" This, because the presence of a legislator is implicit since there are laws.

Take, to illustrate, the life of insects. There is a species of beetle called "Staghom" or "Horned". The male has magnificent horns, twice as long as his body; the female has no horns. In the larval stage, they bury themselves in the earth and, silently, wait in the darkness for their metamorphosis. They are naturally mere insects, with no apparent difference, yet one of them digs a hole twice as deep as the other. Because? So that there is room for the male's horns to develop perfectly. Why do these larvae, apparently the same, differ in their habits? Who taught the male to dig his hole twice as deep as the female does? is the result of a rational process? No, it was God, the Creator, who put in those creatures the instinctive perception that would be useful to them. Where did this insect get your wisdom from? Someone may think that he inherited it from his parents. But does a taught dog, for example, convey its cunning and agility to its offspring? Do not.

Even if we admit that instinct was inherited, we still encounter the fact that someone had instructed the first horned beetle. The explanation of the wonderful instinct of animals is found in the words of the first chapter of Genesis: "And God said" - that is, the will of God. Anyone who watches a watch know that intelligence is not in the watch but in the watchmaker. And whoever observes the wonderful instinct of the smallest creatures, will conclude that the first intelligence was not theirs, but that of their Creator, and that there is a Mind that controls the smallest details of life.

Dr. Whitney, a former president of the American Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, once said that "one day repels the other by the will of God and no one can give a better reason." "What do you mean by the expression: the will of God?" someone asked him. Dr. Whitney replied: "How do you define light? ... There is the corpuscular theory, the wave theory, and now the quantum theory; and none of the theories is more than an educated guess. With an explanation as good as these , we can say that the light walks by the will of God ... The will of God, this law that we discovered, without being able to explain it - is the only final word. "

Mr. A. J. Pace, designer for the evangelical periodical "Sunday School Times", talks about his interview with the late Wilson J. Bentley, expert in microphotography (photographing what you see under the microscope). For more than a third of a century, this man photographed snow crystals. After photographing thousands of these crystals, he observed three main facts: first, that no two flakes were the same; second: they were all of a beautiful pattern; third: all were invariably hexagonal. When asked how this hexagonal symmetry was explained, he replied: "Certainly, nobody knows but God, but my theory is this: As everyone knows, snow crystals are formed by water vapor at temperatures below zero, and water is made up of three molecules, two of hydrogen that combine with one of oxygen. Each molecule has a positive and negative charge of electricity, which has a tendency to polarize on the opposite sides. on the subject from the beginning. " "How can we explain these very interesting dots, the graceful turns and curves, and these beveled corners so delicately chiseled, all of them arranged with perfect symmetry around the central point?" asked Mr. Pace. He shrugged and said, "Only the Artist who designed and modeled them knows the process."

His statement about the "figure three in the subject" got me thinking. Is it not then that the triune God, who shapes all the beauty of creation, initials the trinity itself in these fragile ice crystal stars as if he signs his name in his masterpiece? When examining snowflakes under a microscope, it is instantly seen that the basic principle of the snowflake structure is the hexagon or the six-sided figure, the only example of this in the entire realm of geometry in this regard. The radius of the circumscribed circle is exactly equal to the length of each of the six sides of the hexagon.

Therefore, six equilateral triangles result in the central nucleus, all angles being sixty degrees, the third part of the entire area on one side of a straight line. What a suggestive symbol of the triune God is the triangle! Here we have unity: a triangle, formed of three lines, each part indispensable to the integrity of the whole. Curiosity now compelled me to examine the biblical references to the word "snow", and I discovered, with great pleasure, this same "triangle" inherent in the Bible. For example, there are 21 (3 x 7) references containing the noun "snow" in the Old Testament, and 3 in the New Testament, 24 in all. So I found references, which speak of "leprosy as white as snow". Three times the cleansing of sin is compared to snow. I found three more that talk about clothes "as white as snow". Three times the appearance of the Son of God is compared to snow. But the biggest surprise was to discover that the Hebrew word, "snow", is made up entirely of "three" figures! It is a fact, although it is not generally known that, having no figures, both the Hebrews and the Greeks used the letters of their alphabet as figures. A casual look from a Hebrew to the word SHELEG (Hebrew word meaning "snow") was enough to see that it means the number 333, as well as it means "snow". In Hebrew the first letter, which corresponds to our "SH", is worth 3OO; the second consonant "L" is worth 30; and the final consonant, our "G", is worth 3. Adding them together, we have 333, three digits of three. Curious, isn't it? But why not expect mathematical accuracy from a fully inspired book, as wonderful as the world that God created?

About God, Jo said, "Do great things that we cannot understand. For he says to the snow: Fall on the earth" (John 37: 5, 6). I have already spent two full days to copy the drawing of God with six snow crystals with pen and ink and I was very tired. And how easy it is for him to do it! "He says to the snow" - and with a word it is done.

Imagine how many millions of billions of snow crystals fall on a hectare of land for an hour, and imagine, if you can, the amazing fact that each crystal has its own individuality, a design and model without duplicate in this or any other storm. "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it" (Ps. 139: 6). How can a sensible person, in the face of such evidence of designs, multiplied by any number of varieties, doubt the existence and work of the Designer, whose capacity is immeasurable ?! A God capable of doing so many beauties is capable of everything, even of shaping our lives by giving them beauty and symmetry.

(c) The argument of man's nature. Man has a moral nature, that is, his life is regulated by concepts of good and evil. He recognizes that there is a right course of action that he must follow and a wrong path that he must avoid. This knowledge is called "conscience". When he does good, conscience approves him; when he does evil, she condemns him. Conscience, whether obeyed or not, speaks with authority. So Butier said of conscience: "If it had power in the same proportion as its manifest authority, it would rule the world, that is, if conscience had the strength to put into action what it commands, it would revolutionize the world." But it turns out that man is endowed with free will and, therefore, can disobey that intimate voice. Even if misguided, without clarification, the conscience still speaks with authority, and makes man feel his responsibility.

"Two things impress me," declared Kant, the great German philosopher, "the high starry sky and the moral law within me." What is the conclusion to be drawn from this universal knowledge of good and evil? That there is a Legislator who idealized a standard of conduct for man and made human nature capable of understanding this ideal. Consciousness does not create the ideal; it simply testifies about it, recording its compliance or non-compliance.

Who originally created these two powerful concepts of good and evil? God, the Just Lawgiver! Sin overshadowed the conscience and almost annulled the law of the human being; but on Mount Sinai God engraved this law on stones so that man would have the perfect law to direct his life. The fact that man understands this law, and feels his responsibility towards it, manifests the existence of a Lawgiver who created man with this ability.

What is the conclusion that we can draw from this feeling of responsibility? That the Lawgiver is also a Judge who rewards the good and punishes the bad. The one who enforced the law will finally defend that law.

Not only the moral nature of man, but also all aspects of his nature testify to the existence of God. Even the most degraded religions demonstrate the fact that man, as blind, groping, seeks something that his soul longs for. Physical hunger indicates the existence of something that can satisfy it. When a man is hungry, that hunger indicates that there is someone or something that can satisfy him. The exclamation, "My soul is thirsty for God" (Ps. 42: 2), is an argument for the existence of God, for the soul would not deceive man with thirst for what did not exist. So a scholar from the early church once said, "You made us for yourself, and our hearts will be restless until they find rest in you."

(d) The storyline. The march of events in universal history provides evidence of a dominant power and providence. The entire biblical story was written to reveal God in history, that is, to illustrate God's work in human affairs. "The principles of divine moral government are found in the history of nations as well as in the experience of men," writes D. S. Clarke. (Ps. 75: 7; Dan. 2:21; 5:21.) "English Protestantism sees the defeat of the Spanish Armada as a divine intervention. The colonization of the United States by Protestant immigrants saved them from the fate of South America. , and in this way he saved democracy. Who would deny that the hand of God was in these events? " The history of mankind, the rise and decline of nations, such as Babylon and Rome, show that progress accompanies the use of God-given faculties and obedience to his law, and that national decline and moral rot follow disobedience "( DL Pierson.) AT Pierson, in his book, "The New Acts of the Apostles," exposes the evidence of God's dominant providence in modern evangelical missions.

Especially God's way of dealing with individuals provides evidence of his active presence in human affairs. Charles Bradiaugh, who at one time was the most notable atheist in England, challenged Pastor Charles Hughá Price to a debate.

The challenge was accepted and the preacher, in turn, challenged the atheist in the following way: As we all know, Mr. Bradiaugh, "the man convinced against his own will always maintains his point of view", and, since the debate, as mental gymnastics that he is, he probably will not convert anyone, I propose that we present some concrete evidence of the validity of the claims of Christianity in the form of men and women redeemed from worldly and shameful life by the influence of Christianity and that of atheism. I will bring a hundred of these men and women, and I challenge you to do the same.

If Mr. Bradiaughá is unable to present a hundred, against my hundred, I will be satisfied if I bring fifty men and women to stand up and testify that they have been transformed from a shameful life by the influence of their atheistic teachings. If I am unable to present fifty, I challenge you to present twenty people who testify with radiant faces, as my hundred will do, who have a great new joy in their high life as a result of atheistic teachings. If I cannot present twenty, I will be pleased to present ten. No, Mr. Bradiaugh, I challenge you to bring in a single man or woman who gives such a testimony about the ennobling influence of his teachings. My redeemed people will bring irrefutable proof as to the saving power of Jesus Christ over their redeemed lives from the slavery of sin and shame.

Perhaps, Mr Bradiaugh, this will be the true demonstration of the validity of Christianity's claims. Mr. Bradiaughá withdrew his challenge!

(e) The universal belief argument. The belief in the existence of God is practically as widespread as the human race itself, although it is often manifested in a perverted or grotesque form and covered with superstitious ideas. This opinion has been contested by some who argue that there are races that have no conception of God at all. But Mr. Jevons, an authority on the subject of comparative races and religions, says that this opinion, "As is known to all anthropologists, has already gone to the limbo of dead controversies ... everyone agrees that there are no races, however primitive as they are, totally devoid of religious conception! Although someone cites exceptions, we know that the exception does not render the rule useless. man is essentially a creature without feelings. The presence of blind people in the world does not prove that all men are blind. " As William Evans said, "the fact that certain nations do not know the multiplication table does not affect arithmetic."

How did this universal belief originate? Most atheists seem to imagine that a group of theologians met in a secret session in which they invented the idea of God, which they then presented to the people. But theologians did not invent God, just as astronomers did not invent stars, nor did botanists invent flowers. It is true that the ancients held wrong ideas about celestial bodies, but this fact does not deny the existence of celestial bodies. And since mankind has already had faulty ideas about God, this implies that there is a God about which they could have erroneous notions.

This universal knowledge did not necessarily originate from reasoning, because there are men of great reasoning ability who also deny the existence of God. But it is evident that the same God who made nature, with its beauties and wonders, also made man endowed with the ability to observe, through nature, his Creator. "For what can be known of God is manifest in them; for God has made it manifest. His invisible perfections, his eternal power, and his divinity, are clearly seen since the creation of the world, being perceived by his works" (Rom. 1:19, 20). God did not make the world without leaving certain signs, suggestions and clear evidence, which speak of the works of his hands. "But men, knowing God, did not glorify him as God, nor did they give thanks, but rather became infatuated with his speculations and his foolish heart was in darkness" (Rom. 1:21). Sin blurred his vision; they lost sight of God and, instead of seeing God through the creature, they despised him for ignorance and worshiped the creature. It was in this way that idolatry began. But even this proves that man is an adoring creature and that he is necessarily looking for an object of worship.

This universal belief in God is proof of what? It is proof that the nature of man is so constituted that he is able to understand and appreciate this idea, as one writer put it: "Man is incurably religious", which in the broadest sense includes: (1) The acceptance of the fact of the existence of a being above the forces of nature. (2) A feeling of dependence on God as one who dominates man's destiny; this feeling is awakened by the thought of its own weakness and smallness and by the magnitude of the universe. (3) The conviction that a friendly union can be achieved and that in this union he, the man, will find security and happiness. In this way we see that man, by nature, is constituted to believe in the existence of God, to trust in his goodness, and to worship in his presence.

This "religious feeling" is not found in the lower creatures. For example, anyone who tried to teach religion to the highest of apes would lose their time. But the lowest of men can be instructed in the things of God. Because? The animal lacks the religious nature - it is not made in the image of God; man has a religious nature and seeks an object of worship.

3. Its existence is denied.

Atheism consists in the absolute negation of the idea of God. Some doubt that there are real atheists; but if there are, it is impossible to prove that they are sincerely seeking God or that they are logically consistent.

Since it is atheists who oppose the deepest and most fundamental convictions of the human race, the responsibility for proving the non-existence of God lies with them. they cannot sincerely and logically call themselves atheists until they present irrefutable evidence that in fact God does not exist. Undeniably, the evidence for the existence of God far exceeds the evidence against the existence of God. In this connection, D. S. Clarke writes: A small proof will demonstrate that there is a God, since no proof, however great it may be, can attest to his non-existence. A bird's footprints on a rock by the sea would prove that at some time a bird visited the lands adjacent to the Atlantic. But before it was declared that no bird had ever been there, it would be necessary to know the entire history of this coast since the beginning of life on the globe. A little bit of evidence will show that there is a God. Before it is said that there is no God, all the elements of the universe must be analyzed; all mechanical, electrical, biological, mental and spiritual forces must be investigated - all beings must be known and fully understood; one must be in all points of space at the same time, so that possibly God is not somewhere else and thus escapes your attention. That person must be omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal; in fact, that same person must be God before he dogmatically asserts that there is no God. As strange as it may seem, only God, whose existence the atheist denies, would have this ability to prove that there is no God! Furthermore, even the most remote possibility that there is a moral Sovereign puts immense responsibility on man, and the atheistic conclusion is unacceptable as long as the existence of God is not irrefutably demonstrated.

The contradictory atheist position is demonstrated by the fact that many atheists, when they are in danger or in difficulty, have prayed. How many times, life's storms and struggles have swept its theoretical refuge, revealing the spiritual foundations, and demonstrating human behavior. We say "human" because he who denies the existence of God shakes and suppresses the deepest and noblest instincts and impulses of the soul. As Pascal said, "Atheism is a disease." When man loses faith in God, it is not due to the arguments (no matter the apparent logic with which his denial is presented), but "to some intimate disaster, betrayal, or neglect, or some corrosive acid distilled in his soul that dissolved the pearl of great price ".

The following incident, told by a Russian nobleman, clarifies this matter:

It was in November 1917, when the Bolsheviks overcame Kerensky's government and began a reign of terror. The nobleman was at his mother's house, filled with constant fear of being arrested. The doorbell rang and the servant who answered brought a business card with the name of Prince Kropotkin - the very father of anarchism. He came in and asked for permission to examine the apartment. There was nothing else to do but allow him to enter, because he was evidently allowed to search and even requisition the house.

"My mother allowed it to pass," says the narrator. "He entered one room and then another, without stopping, as if he had lived there before and knew the order of the rooms. He entered the dining room; he looked around and suddenly went to the room occupied by my mother.

- Oh! forgive me - said my mother, when the Prince was going to open the. door - ; it's my bedroom.

He stopped for a moment in front of the door, looked at my mother then, as if he were ashamed, and in a shaky voice, said quickly:

- Yes yes I know. Forgive me, but I need to get into this room!

He put his hand on the doorknob and slowly started to open the door, and then suddenly closed it behind him after entering. "I was so agitated by the Prince's conduct that I found myself tempted to look. Prince Kropotkin was kneeling praying before the oratory in my mother's room. I saw him kneeling making the sign of the cross; I did not see his face or his eyes because he saw him from behind. His kneeling figure and his fervent prayer made him look so humble as he slowly whispered the prayer. He was so busy he didn't even notice me. " "Suddenly all my anger and hatred for this man had evaporated, like fog in the rays of the sun. I was so moved that I carefully closed the door." Prince Kropotkin remained in my mother's room for perhaps twenty minutes. He finally came out looking like a boy who had made a mistake, and he didn't even look up, as if recognizing his mistake. However, there was a smile on his face. He came close to my mother, took her hand, kissed her and then said in a very small voice: - I thank you very much for allowing me this visit to your home. Don't be nervous with me ... you see, it was in this room that my mother died. It was a great consolation for me to be in her room again. Thank you, thank you very much. "His voice trembled, and his eyes were moist. Then he said goodbye and disappeared." This man, despite being an anarchist, revolutionary, and atheist - still prayed!

Is it not evident that he became an atheist because he crushed the deepest feelings of his soul? Atheism is a crime against society, because it destroys the only foundation of morality and justice - a personal God who places on man the responsibility of keeping his laws. If there is no God, then there is no divine law, and all laws are man's. But why should we proceed legally? Why does a man, or a group of men, command him? It is possible that there are people with a relative nobility of spirit, and that they do good and are right, without, however, having belief in God, but for the great mass of humanity there is only one sanction to do what is right and that it is - "Thus saith the Lord", the Judge of the living and the dead, the mighty Governor of eternal destiny. To remove this is to destroy the foundations of human society.

James M. Gillis comments: The atheist is like a drunken drunken man who enters a research laboratory and begins to add certain chemicals that can destroy him, as well as everything around him. In fact, the atheist is facilitating with more mysterious and more powerful forces than anything in test tubes; more mysterious than the much talked about death ray. Nor can one imagine what the outcome would be if an atheist really extinguished faith in God; the entire tragic history of this planet does not register a single event that illustrates such a universal cataclysm that would occur.

Atheism is a crime against man. He seeks to pull from the heart of man the yearning for spiritual things, his hunger and thirst for the infinite. Atheists protest against crimes committed in the name of religion; we recognize that religion has been perverted by priestly and ecclesiasticism. But trying to erase the idea of God because there has been abuse is as absurd as trying to pull love out of the human heart because in some cases that love has become distorted. ... A existencia de Deus

1. Sua existência declarada.

Em parte alguma como Escrituras tratam de provar a existência de Deus mediante provas formais. Reconhece-se como fato autoevidente e como restaur natural do homem. As Escrituras em parte alguma propõem uma série de provas da existência de Deus como preliminar à fé; declaram o fato de Deus e chamam o homem a aventurar-se na fé. "O que se chega a Deus, creia que há Deus", é o ponto inicial na relação entre o homem e Deus.

A Bíblia, em verdade, fala de homens que dizem em seus corações que não há Deus, esses são "tolos", isto é, os ímpios praticantes que expulsariam a Deus dos seus pensamentos porque já o expulsaram das suas vidas. Esses pertencem ao grande número de ateus praticantes, isto é, esses que procedem e falam como se não existisse Deus. Seu número ultrapassa em muito o número de ateus teóricos, isto é, esses que pretendem aderir à religião intelectual que nega a existência de Deus. Note-se que uma declaração "não há Deus" não implica dizer que Deus não exista, mas sim que Deus não se ocupa com os negócios do mundo. Contando com a sua ausência, os homens corrompidosem-se e se comportam de maneira abominável. (Sal. 14.)

Assim, o Dr. A. B. Davidson: (a Bíblia) não tenta mostrar a existência de Deus, porque em todas as partes da Bíblia subentende-se a sua existência. Parece não haver nenhuma passagem no Antigo Testamento que represente os homens procurando conhecer a existência de Deus por meio da natureza ou pelos eventos da providência, embora haja algumas passagens que impliquem que idéias falsas sobre a natureza de Deus podem ser corrigidas pelo estudo da natureza e da vida ... O Antigo Testamento cogita tão pouco da possibilidade de conhecer a Deus quanto cogita de provar a sua existência. Por que os homens argumentariam sobre o conhecimento de Deus quando já estavam persuadidos de que o conheciam, cônscios de estarem em comunhão com ele, levando seus pensamentos cheios e iluminados por ele, sabendo que seu Espírito neles movia, e guiava-os em todo a sua história?

A idéia de que o homem chega ao conhecimento ou à comunidade com Deus por meio de seus esforços próprios é totalmente estranho ao Antigo Testamento. Deus fala; ele aparece; o homem ouve e vê. Deus aproxima-se dos homens; normal um concerto ou relação especial com eles; e dá-lhes mandamentos. Eles o apresentam quando ele se aproxima: aceitam a sua vontade e obedecem aos seus preceitos. Moisés e os profetas em parte alguma são representados como pensadores refletindo sobre o Invisível, formando clicando sobre dele, ou alcançando conceitos elevados da Divindade. O Invisível manifesta-se-lhes, e eles o conhecem.

Quando um homem diz: "Eu conheço o presidente", ele não quer dizer: "Eu sei que o presidente existe," porque isso se subentende na sua declaração. Da maneira mesma os escritores bíblicos nos dizem que conhecem a Deus e essas declarações significam a sua existência.

2. Sua existência provada.

Se as Escrituras não suportam nenhuma demonstração racional da existência de Deus, por que vamos nós fazer essa tentativa? Pelas seguintes razões: Primeiramente, para convencer os que genuinamente buscam a Deus, isto é, cuja fé tem sido ofuscada por alguma dificuldade, e que dizem: "Eu quero crer em Deus; mostrame que razoável seja crer nele." Mas evidência nenhuma convencerá a pessoa, que, por desejar continuar no pecado e no egoísmo, diz: "Desafio-te a provar que Deus existe." Afinal, a fé é questão moral e não intelectual. Se a pessoa não está disposta a aceitar, ela porá de lado todas as evidências e quaisquer evidências. (Luc. 6:31.) Segundo, para fortalecer a fé daqueles que já crêem. Eles estudam como provas, não para crer, mas sim porque já crêem. Esta fé lhes é tão preciosa que aceitarão com alegria qualquer fato que a faça aumentar ou enriquecer.

Finalmente, para poder enriquecer nosso conhecimento acerca da natureza de Deus. Que maior objeto de pensamento e estudo existe do que ele? Onde acharemos evidências da existência de Deus? Na criação, na natureza humana e na história humana. Dessas três esferas deduzimos como cinco evidências da existência de Deus:

1) O universo deve ter uma Primeira Causa ou um Criador. (Argumento cosmológico, da palavra grega "cosmos", que significa "mundo".)

2) O desígnio evidente no universo aponta para uma Mente Suprema. (Argumento teleológico, de "Teleos", que significa "desígnio ou propósito".)

3) A natureza do homem, com seus impulsos e aspirações, assinala a existência de um Governador pessoal. (Argumento antropológico, da palavra grega "anthropos", que significa "homem".)

4) A história humana dá evidências duma providência que governa sobre tudo. (Argumento histórico.)

5) A decoração é universal. (Argumento do consenso comum.)

(a) O argumento da criação. A razão argumenta que o universo deve ter um princípio. Todo efeito deve ter uma causa suficiente. O universo, sendo o efeito, por conseqüência deve ter uma causa. Consideremos a extensão do universo. Nas de Jorge W. Gray: "O universo, como o imaginamos, é um sistema de milhares e milhões de galáxias. Cada uma delas se compõe de milhares e milhões de estrelas. Perto da circunferência de uma dessas galáxias - a Via Láctea - existe uma estrela de tamanho médio e temperatura moderada, já amarelada pela velhice - que é o nosso Sol. " E imaginem que o Sol é milhão de vezes maior que a nossa pequena Terra! Prossegue o mesmo escritor: "O Sol está girando numa orbita vertiginosa em direção à circunferência da Via Láctea a 19.300 metros por segundo, levando consigo a Terra e todos os planetas, e ao mesmo tempo todo o sistema solar está girando num gigantesco circuito à velocidade incrível de 321 milhas por segundo, enquanto uma gira própria galáxia, qual colossal roda gigante estelar. Fotografando-se algumas fontes dos céus, é possível fazer uma contagem das estrelas.

No observatório de Harvard College eu vi uma fotografia que inclui como imagens de mais de 200 Vias Lácteas - todas as funções numa chapa fotográfica de 35 x 42cm. Calcule se o número de galáxias de que se compõe o universo é da ordem de 500 milhões de milhões. "

Consideremos nosso pequeno planeta e nele como várias formas de vida existentes, como quais revelam inteligência e desígnio divinos. Naturalmente surge a questão: "Como se originou tudo isso?" A pergunta é natural, pois as nossas mentes são constituídas de tal forma que origina que todo efeito tenha uma causa. Logo, concluímos que o universo deve ter tido uma Primeira Causa, ou um Criador. "No princípio - Deus" (Gên. 1: 1). Dum modo singelo este argumento é exposto no seguinte incidente:

Disse um jovem cético a uma idosa senhora: - Outrora eu cria em Deus, mas agora, desde que estudei filosofia e matemática, estou convencido de que Deus não é mais do que uma palavra oca.

- Bem - disse a senhora - é verdade que eu não aprendi essas coisas, mas desde que você já aprendeu, pode me dizer donde veio este ovo?

- Naturalmente duma galinha - foi a resposta.

- E veio a galinha?

- Naturalmente dum ovo.

Então indagou a senhora: - Permita-me pergunta: qual existiu primeiro, a galinha ou o ovo?

- A galinha, por certo - respondeu o jovem.

- Ah, então, a galinha existia antes do ovo?

- Oh, não, desvie dizer que o ovo existia primeiro.

- Então, eu suponho que você quer dizer que o ovo existia antes da galinha.

O moço vacilou: - Bem, a senhora vê, isto é, naturalmente, bem, a galinha existiu primeiro.

- Muito bem - disse ela -, quem criou a primeira galinha de que preencheu todos os sucessivos ovos e galinhas?

- Que é que a senhora quer dizer com tudo isto? - perguntou ele.

- Simplesmente isto - replicou ela: - Digo que aquele que criou o primeiro ovo ou a primeira galinha é aquele que criou o mundo. Você nem pode explicar, sem Deus, a existência dum ovo ou duma galinha, e ainda quer que eu creia que você pode explicar, sem Deus, a existência do mundo inteiro!

(b) O argumento do desígnio. O desígnio e a formosura evidenciam-se no universo; mas o desígnio e a formosura implicam um arquiteto; portanto, o universo é a obra dum Arquiteto dotado de inteligência suficiente para explicar sua obra. O grande relógio de Estrasburgo tem, além das funções normais dum relógio, uma combinação de luas e planetas que se movem, mostrando dias e meses com a exatidão dos corpos celestes, com seus grupos de figuras que aparecem e desaparecem com regularidade igual ao soarem como horas no grande cronômetro. Declarar não ter havido um engenheiro que construiu o relógio, e que este objeto "aconteceu", seria insultar a inteligência e a razão humana. É insensatez presumir que o universo "aconteceu", ou, em linguagem cientifica, que procedeu "do concurso fortuito dos átomos"!

Suponhamos que o livro "O Peregrino" foi descrito da seguinte maneira: o autor tomou um vagão de tipos de imprensa e com pá os atirou ao ar. Ao caírem no chão, natural e gradualmente se ajuntaram de maneira formar uma história famosa de Bunyan. O homem mais incrédulo diria: que absurdo! E a mesma coisa dizemos nós das suposições do ateísmo em relação à criação do universo.

O exame dum relógio revela que ele leva os sinais de desígnio porque diversas peças são reunidas com um propósito prévio. Elas são colocadas de tal modo que movimentos e esses movimentos são regulados de tal maneira que marcam as horas. Disso inferimos duas coisas: primeiro, que o relógio teve alguém que o fez, e em segundo lugar, que o seu fabricante compreendeu a sua construção, e o projetou com o propósito de marcar as horas. Da mesma maneira, observamos o desígnio e uma operação dum plano no mundo e, naturalmente, concluímos que houve alguém que o fez e que sabiamente o preparou para o propósito ao qual está servindo.

O fato de nunca termos observado a fabricação dum relógio não afetaria essas informações, mesmo que nunca conhecêssemos um relojoeiro, ou que jamais tivéssemos idéia do processo desse trabalho. Igualmente, a nossa convicção de que o universo teve um arquiteto, de forma nenhuma sofre alteração pelo fato de nunca termos observados a sua construção, ou de nunca termos visto o arquiteto.

Do mesmo modo a nossa conclusão não se alteraria se alguém nos informasse que "o relógio é resultado da operação das leis da mecânica e explica-se pelas propriedades da matéria". Ainda assim teremos que considerá-lo como obra dum hábil relojoeiro que soube aproveita essas leis da física e suas propriedades para fazer funcionar o relógio. Da forma mesma, quando alguém nos informa que o universo é simplesmente o resultado da operação das leis da natureza, nós nos vemos constrangidos a pergunta: "Quem projetou, estimou e consumiu leis?" Isso, em razão de ser implícita a presença de um legislador uma vez que existem leis.

Tomemos, para ilustrar, a vida dos insetos. Há uma espécie de escaravelho chamado "Staghom" ou "Chifrudo". O macho tem magníficos chifres, duas vezes mais compridos do que o seu corpo; a fêmea não tem chifres. No estágio larval, eles enterram-se os mesmos na terra e, silenciosamente, surgem na escuridão pela sua metamorfose. São naturalmente meros insetos, sem nenhuma diferença aparente e, no entanto, um deles escava para si um buraco duas vezes mais profundo do que o outro. Porque? Para que haja espaço para os chifres do macho se desenvolverem com perfeição. Por que essas larvas, aparentemente iguais, diferem assim em seus hábitos? Quem ensinou o macho a cavar seu buraco duas vezes mais profundo do que o faz a fêmea? é o resultado dum processo racional? Não, foi Deus, o Criador, quem pôs naquelas criaturas a percepção instintiva que lhes seria útil. De onde indicar esse inseto em sua sabedoria? Alguém talvez pense que a herdara de seus pais. Mas um cão ensinado, por exemplo, transmite à sua descida sua astúcia e agilidade? Não.

Mesmo que admitamos que o instinto fosse herdado, ainda deparamos com o fato de que alguém havia instruído o primeiro escaravelho chifrudo. A explicação do maravilhoso instinto dos animais acha-se nas palavras do primeiro capítulo de Gênesis: "E disse Deus" - isto é: a vontade de Deus. Quem observa o funcionamento dum relógio sabe que a inteligência não está no relógio mas sim no relojoeiro. E quem observa o instinto maravilhoso das menores criaturas, concluirá que a primeira inteligência não era a delas, mas sim do seu Criador, e que existe uma Mente controladora dos menores detalhes da vida.

O Dr. Whitney, ex-presidente da Sociedade Americana e membro da Academia Americana de Artes e Ciências, certa vez disse que "um dia repele o outro pela vontade de Deus e ninguém pode dar razão melhor." "Que quer o senhor dizer com a expressão: a vontade de Deus?" alguém lhe perguntou. O Dr. Whitney replicou: "Como o senhor define a luz? ... Existe uma teoria corpuscular, uma teoria de ondas, e agora a teoria do quantum; e nenhuma das teorias passa duma conjetura educada. Com uma explicação tão boa como essas , podemos dizer que a luz caminha pela vontade de Deus ... A vontade de Deus, essa lei que descobrimos, sem a podermos explicar - é a única palavra final. "

O Sr. A. J. Pace, desenhista do periódico evangélico "Sunday School Times", fala de sua entrevista com o finado Wilson J. Bentley, perito em microfotografia (fotografar o que se vê através do microscópio). Por mais de um terço de século esse senhor fotografou cristais de neve. Depois de haver filhotes de dois filhotes de cristais, ele observou três critérios principais: primeiro, que não existem dois padrões; segundo: todos eram de um padrão formoso; terceiro: todos eram invariavelmente de forma sextavada. Quando lhe perguntaram como se explicava essa simetria sextavada, ele respondeu: "Decerto, ninguém sabe senão Deus, mas a minha teoria é a seguinte: Como todos sabem, os cristais de neve são formados de vapor de água a uma temperatura abaixo de zero, ea água se compõe de três moléculas, duas de hidrogênio que se combinam com uma de oxigênio. Cada molécula tem uma carga de eletricidade positiva e negativa, a qual tem a tendência de polarizar-se nos lados opostos. assunto desde o começo. " "Como podemos explicar estes pontinhos tão interessantes, as voltas e as curvas graciosas, e estas quinas chanfradas tão delicadamenteeladas, todas elas dispostas com simetria perfeita ao redor do ponto central?" perguntou o Sr. Pace. Encolheu os ombros e disse: "Somente o Artista que os desenhou e os modelou conhece o processo."

Sua declaração acerca do "algarismo três que figura no assunto" me pôs a pensar. não seria então que o triúno Deus, que modela toda a formosura da criação, rubrica a própria trindade contendo estrelas de cristal de gelo como quem assina seu nome em sua obra-prima? Ao examinar os flocos de neve ao microscópio, vê-se instantaneamente que o princípio básico da estrutura do floco de neve é o hexágono ou a figura de seis lados, o único exemplo disso em todo o reino da geometria a este respeito. O raio do circulo circunscrevente é exatamente igual ao comprimento de cada um dos seis lados do hexágono.

Portanto, resultam seis triângulos eqüiláteros reunidos ao núcleo central, sendo todos os ângulos de sessenta graus, a terça parte de toda a área num lado duma linha reta. Que símbolo sugestivo do triúno Deus é o triângulo! Aqui temos unidade: um triângulo, formado de três linhas, cada parte indispensável à integridade do conjunto. A curiosidade agora me impeliu uma examinar as referências bíblicas sobre a palavra "neve", e descobri, com grande prazer, este mesmo "triângulo" inerente na Bíblia. Por exemplo, há 21 (3 x 7) referências contendo o substantivo "neve" no Antigo Testamento, e 3 no Novo Testamento, 24 ao todo. Então achei referencias, que falam da "lepra tão branca como a neve". Três vezes a purificação do pecado é comparada à neve. Achei mais três que falam de roupas "tão brancas como a neve". Três vezes a aparência do Filho de Deus compara-se à neve. Mas a maior surpresa foi ao descobrir que a palavra hebraica, "neve", é composta inteiramente de algarismos "três"! É fato, embora não seja geralmente conhecido que, não tendo algarismos, tanto os hebreus como os gregos usavam como letras do seu alfabeto como algarismos. Bastava um olhar casual de um hebreu à palavra SHELEG (palavra hebraica que quer dizer "neve") para ver que ela significa o algarismo 333, bem como significa "neve". No hebraico a primeira letra, que corresponde à nossa "SH", vale 3OO; uma segunda consoante "L" vale 30; e a consoante final, o nosso "G", vale 3. Somando-as, temos 333, três algarismos de três. Curioso, não é verdade? Mas por que não esperar exatidão matemática dum livro plenamente inspirado, tão maravilhoso quanto o mundo que Deus criou?

Acerca de Deus disse Jo: "Faz grandes coisas que não podemos compreender. Pois diz à neve: Cai sobre a terra" (Jo 37: 5, 6). Eu já gastei dois dias inteiros para copiar com pena e tinta o desenho de Deus de seis cristais de neve e fiquei muito fatigado. E como é fácil para ele fazê-lo! "Ele diz à neve" - e com uma palavra está feita.

Imaginem quantos milhões de bilhões de bilhões de cristais de neve caem sobre um hectare de terra durante uma hora, e imagine, se puderem, o fato surpreendente de que cada cristal tem sua individualidade própria, um desenho e modelo sem duplicata nesta ou em qualquer outra tempestade. "Tal conhecimento é maravilhoso demais para mim; elevado é, não o posso atingir" (Sal. 139: 6). Como pode uma pessoa ajuizada, diante de tal evidência de desígnios, multiplicados por um sem-número de variedades, duvidar da existência e da obra do Desenhista, cuja capacidade é imensurável ?! Um Deus capaz de fazer tantas belezas é capaz de tudo, até mesmo de moldar como nossas vidas dando-lhes beleza e simetria.

(c) O argumento da natureza do homem. O homem dispõe de natureza moral, isto é, a sua vida é regulada pelos conceitos do bem e do mal. Ele reconhece que há um caminho de ação que deve seguir e um caminho errado que deve evitar. Esse conhecimento chama-se "consciente". Ao fazer ele o bem, a consciência o aprova; ao fazer ele o mal, ela o condena. A consciência, seja obedecida ou não, fala com autoridade. Assim disse Butier aproximadamente da consciência: "Se ela possuir poder na mesma proporção de sua autoridade manifesta, governaria do mundo, isto é, se a tomada de consciência tiver a força de pôr em ação o que ordena, ela revolucionaria do mundo." Mas acontece que o homem é dotado de livre arbítrio e, portanto, pode desobedecer àquela voz íntima. Mesmo assim, mal orientada, sem esclarecimento, a consciência ainda fala com autoridade, e faz o homem sentir sua responsabilidade.

"Duas coisas me impressionam", verdadeiro Kant, o grande filosofo alemão, "o alto céu estrelado e a lei moral em meu interior." Qual a conclusão que se tira deste conhecimento universal do bem e do mal? Que há um Legislador que idealizou uma norma de conduta para o homem e fez a natureza humana capaz de compreender esse ideal. A consciência não cria o ideal; ela simplesmente testifica acerca dele, registrando a sua conformidade ou não-conformidade.

Quem somos criou esses dois poderosos conceitos do bem e do mal? Deus, o Justo Legislador! O pecado ofuscou a consciência e quase anulou a lei do ser humano; mas no Monte Sinai Deus gravou essa lei em pedras para que o homem tenha a lei perfeita para dirigir a sua vida. O fato de que o homem compreende esta lei, e sente sua responsabilidade para com ela, manifesta a existência dum Legislador que criou o homem com essa capacidade.

Qual é a conclusão que podemos tirar desse sentimento de responsabilidade? Que o Legislador é também um Juiz que recompensa os bons e castigar os maus. Aquele que impôs um lei finalmente defenderá essa lei.

Não somente a natureza moral do homem, como também todos os aspectos da sua natureza testificam da existência de Deus. Até as religiões mais degradadas demonstram o fato de que o homem, qual cego, tateando, procura algo que sua alma anela. A fome física indica a existência de algo que possa satisfazer. Quando o homem tem fome, essa fome indica que há alguém ou algo que deseja satisfazer. A exclamação, "a minha alma tem sede de Deus" (Sal. 42: 2), é um argumento a favor da existência de Deus, pois a alma não enganaria o homem com sede daquilo que não existisse. Assim disse certa vez um erudito da igreja primitiva: "Para ti nos fizeste, e nosso coração estará inquieto enquanto não encontrar descanso em ti."

(d) O argumento da história. A marcha dos eventos da história universal evidência de um poder e duma providência dominantes. Toda a história bíblica foi escrita para revelar Deus na história, isto é, para ilustrar a obra de Deus nos negócios humanos. "Os princípios do divino governo moral referência-se na história das nações tanto na experiência dos homens", disse D. S. Clarke. (Sal. 75: 7; Dan. 2:21; 5:21.) "O protestantismo inglês vê a derrota da Armada Espanhola como uma intervenção divina. A colonização dos Estados Unidos por imigrantes protestantes salvou-os da sorte da América do Sul , e desta maneira salvou uma democracia. Quem negaria que a mão de Deus ocorreu nesses acontecimentos? " A história da humanidade, o surgimento e declínio de nações, como Babilônia e Roma, mostra que o progresso acompanhado o uso das faculdades dadas por Deus e a obediência à sua lei, e que o declínio nacional e a podridão moral seguem a desobediência "(DL Pierson ). AT Pierson, em seu livro, "Os Novos Atos dos Apóstolos", expõe como evidências da providência dominante de Deus nas missões evangélicas modernas.

Especialmente o modo de Deus tratar com os principais competições de sua presença ativa nos negócios humanos. Charles Bradiaugh, que foi em certo tempo o ateu mais notável na Inglaterra, desafiou o pastor Charles Hughá Price, para um debate.

Foi aceito o desafio e o pregador, por sua vez, desafiou o ateu da seguinte maneira: Como todos sabemos, Sr. Bradiaugh, "o homem convencido contra a própria vontade mantém sempre seu ponto de vista", e, visto que o debate, como ginástica mental que é, provavelmente não converter a ninguém, proponho-lhe que apresentamos algumas evidências concretas da validação das especificações do cristianismo na forma de homens e mulheres redimidos da vida mundana e vergonhosa pela influência do cristianismo e pela do ateísmo. Eu trarei cem homens e mulheres, e o desafio-o a fazer o mesmo.

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glass-kilimanjaro · 3 years

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Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA (8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018) was an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author who was director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge at the time of his death.[18][19][8] He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009.

Hawking was born in Oxford into a family of doctors. Hawking began his university education at University College, Oxford in October 1959 at the age of 17, where he received a first-class BA (Hons.) degree in physics. He began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in October 1962, where he obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specialising in general relativity and cosmology in March 1966. During this period—in 1963—Hawking was diagnosed with an early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease) that gradually paralysed him over the decades.[20][21] After the loss of his speech, he was able to communicate through a speech-generating device—initially through use of a handheld switch, and eventually by using a single cheek muscle.

Hawking's scientific works included a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation. Initially, Hawking radiation was controversial. By the late 1970s and following the publication of further research, the discovery was widely accepted as a significant breakthrough in theoretical physics. Hawking was the first to set out a theory of cosmology explained by a union of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. He was a vigorous supporter of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.[22][23]

Hawking achieved commercial success with several works of popular science in which he discussed his theories and cosmology in general. His book A Brief History of Time appeared on the Sunday Times bestseller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. Hawking was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. In 2002, Hawking was ranked number 25 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. He died on 14 March 2018 at the age of 76, after living with motor neurone disease for more than 50 years.Hawking began his schooling at the Byron House School in Highgate, London. He later blamed its "progressive methods" for his failure to learn to read while at the school.[42][35] In St Albans, the eight-year-old Hawking attended St Albans High School for Girls for a few months. At that time, younger boys could attend one of the houses.[41][43]Hawking attended two independent (i.e. fee-paying) schools, first Radlett School[43] and from September 1952, St Albans School,[25][44] after passing the eleven-plus a year early.[45] The family placed a high value on education.[35] Hawking's father wanted his son to attend the well-regarded Westminster School, but the 13-year-old Hawking was ill on the day of the scholarship examination. His family could not afford the school fees without the financial aid of a scholarship, so Hawking remained at St Albans.[46][47] A positive consequence was that Hawking remained close to a group of friends with whom he enjoyed board games, the manufacture of fireworks, model aeroplanes and boats,[48] and long discussions about Christianity and extrasensory perception.[49] From 1958 on, with the help of the mathematics teacher Dikran Tahta, they built a computer from clock parts, an old telephone switchboard and other recycled components.[50][51]Although known at school as "Einstein", Hawking was not initially successful academically.[52] With time, he began to show considerable aptitude for scientific subjects and, inspired by Tahta, decided to read mathematics at university.[53][54][55] Hawking's father advised him to study medicine, concerned that there were few jobs for mathematics graduates.[56] He also wanted his son to attend University College, Oxford, his own alma mater. As it was not possible to read mathematics there at the time, Hawking decided to study physics and chemistry. Despite his headmaster's advice to wait until the next year, Hawking was awarded a scholarship after taking the examinations in March 1959.[57][58]Undergraduate yearsHawking began his university education at University College, Oxford,[25] in October 1959 at the age of 17.[59] For the first 18 months, he was bored and lonely – he found the academic work "ridiculously easy".[60][61] His physics tutor, Robert Berman, later said, "It was only necessary for him to know that something could be done, and he could do it without looking to see how other people did it."[4] A change occurred during his second and third year when, according to Berman, Hawking made more of an effort "to be one of the boys". He developed into a popular, lively and witty college member, interested in classical music and science fiction.[59] Part of the transformation resulted from his decision to join the college boat club, the University College Boat Club, where he coxed a rowing crew.[62][63] The rowing coach at the time noted that Hawking cultivated a daredevil image, steering his crew on risky courses that led to damaged boats.[62][64] Hawking estimated that he studied about 1,000 hours during his three years at Oxford. These unimpressive study habits made sitting his finals a challenge, and he decided to answer only theoretical physics questions rather than those requiring factual knowledge. A first-class honours degree was a condition of acceptance for his planned graduate study in cosmology at the University of Cambridge.[65][66] Anxious, he slept poorly the night before the examinations, and the final result was on the borderline between first- and second-class honours, making a viva (oral examination) with the Oxford examiners necessary.[66][67]Hawking was concerned that he was viewed as a lazy and difficult student. So, when asked at the viva to describe his plans, he said, "If you award me a First, I will go to Cambridge. If I receive a Second, I shall stay in Oxford, so I expect you will give me a First."[66][68] He was held in higher regard than he believed; as Berman commented, the examiners "were intelligent enough to realise they were talking to someone far cleverer than most of themselves".[66] After receiving a first-class BA (Hons.) degree in physics and completing a trip to Iran with a friend, he began his graduate work at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in October 1962.[25][69][70]Graduate yearsHawking's first year as a doctoral student was difficult. He was initially disappointed to find that he had been assigned Dennis William Sciama, one of the founders of modern cosmology, as a supervisor rather than the noted astronomer Fred Hoyle,[71][72] and he found his training in mathematics inadequate for work in general relativity and cosmology.[73] After being diagnosed with motor neurone disease, Hawking fell into a depression – though his doctors advised that he continue with his studies, he felt there was little point.[74] His disease progressed slower than doctors had predicted. Although Hawking had difficulty walking unsupported, and his speech was almost unintelligible, an initial diagnosis that he had only two years to live proved unfounded. With Sciama's encouragement, he returned to his work.[75][76] Hawking started developing a reputation for brilliance and brashness when he publicly challenged the work of Fred Hoyle and his student Jayant Narlikar at a lecture in June 1964.[77][78]When Hawking began his graduate studies, there was much debate in the physics community about the prevailing theories of the creation of the universe: the Big Bang and Steady State theories.[79] Inspired by Roger Penrose's theorem of a spacetime singularity in the centre of black holes, Hawking applied the same thinking to the entire universe; and, during 1965, he wrote his thesis on this topic.[80][81] Hawking's thesis[82] was approved in 1966.[82] There were other positive developments: Hawking received a research fellowship at Gonville and Caius College at Cambridge;[83] he obtained his PhD degree in applied mathematics and theoretical physics, specialising in general relativity and cosmology, in March 1966;[84] and his essay "Singularities and the Geometry of Space-Time" shared top honours with one by Penrose to win that year's prestigious Adams Prize.[85][84]CareerPart of a series onPhysical cosmologyBig Bang · UniverseAge of the universeChronology of the universeEarly universe[show]Expansion · Future[show]Components · Structure[show]Experiments[show]Scientists[hide]AaronsonAlfvénAlpherBharadwajCopernicusde SitterDickeEddingtonEhlersEinsteinEllisFriedmannGalileoGamowGuthHubbleLemaîtreLindeMatherNewtonPenziasRubinSchmidtSchwarzschildSmootStarobinskySteinhardtSuntzeffSunyaevTolmanWilsonZeldovichSubject history[show] Category Astronomy portalvte1966–1975In his work, and in collaboration with Penrose, Hawking extended the singularity theorem concepts first explored in his doctoral thesis. This included not only the existence of singularities but also the theory that the universe might have started as a singularity. Their joint essay was the runner-up in the 1968 Gravity Research Foundation competition.[86][87] In 1970, they published a proof that if the universe obeys the general theory of relativity and fits any of the models of physical cosmology developed by Alexander Friedmann, then it must have begun as a singularity.[88][89][90] In 1969, Hawking accepted a specially created Fellowship for Distinction in Science to remain at Caius.[91]In 1970, Hawking postulated what became known as the second law of black hole dynamics, that the event horizon of a black hole can never get smaller.[92] With James M. Bardeen and Brandon Carter, he proposed the four laws of black hole mechanics, drawing an analogy with thermodynamics.[93] To Hawking's irritation, Jacob Bekenstein, a graduate student of John Wheeler, went further—and ultimately correctly—to apply thermodynamic concepts literally.[94][95]In the early 1970s, Hawking's work with Carter, Werner Israel, and David C. Robinson strongly supported Wheeler's no-hair theorem, one that states that no matter what the original material from which a black hole is created, it can be completely described by the properties of mass, electrical charge and rotation.[96][97] His essay titled "Black Holes" won the Gravity Research Foundation Award in January 1971.[98] Hawking's first book, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, written with George Ellis, was published in 1973.[99]Beginning in 1973, Hawking moved into the study of quantum gravity and quantum mechanics.[100][99] His work in this area was spurred by a visit to Moscow and discussions with Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Alexei Starobinsky, whose work showed that according to the uncertainty principle, rotating black holes emit particles.[101] To Hawking's annoyance, his much-checked calculations produced findings that contradicted his second law, which claimed black holes could never get smaller,[102] and supported Bekenstein's reasoning about their entropy.[101][103]His results, which Hawking presented from 1974, showed that black holes emit radiation, known today as Hawking radiation, which may continue until they exhaust their energy and evaporate.[104][105][106] Initially, Hawking radiation was controversial. By the late 1970s and following the publication of further research, the discovery was widely accepted as a significant breakthrough in theoretical physics.[107][108][109] Hawking was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1974, a few weeks after the announcement of Hawking radiation. At the time, he was one of the youngest scientists to become a Fellow.[110][111]Hawking was appointed to the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Visiting Professorship at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 1974. He worked with a friend on the faculty, Kip Thorne,[112][8] and engaged him in a scientific wager about whether the X-ray source Cygnus X-1 was a black hole. The wager was an "insurance policy" against the proposition that black holes did not exist.[113] Hawking acknowledged that he had lost the bet in 1990, a bet that was the first of several he was to make with Thorne and others.[114] Hawking had maintained ties to Caltech, spending a month there almost every year since this first visit.[115]1975–1990Hawking returned to Cambridge in 1975 to a more academically senior post, as reader in gravitational physics. The mid to late 1970s were a period of growing public interest in black holes and the physicists who were studying them. Hawking was regularly interviewed for print and television.[116][117] He also received increasing academic recognition of his work.[118] In 1975, he was awarded both the Eddington Medal and the Pius XI Gold Medal, and in 1976 the Dannie Heineman Prize, the Maxwell Medal and Prize and the Hughes Medal.[119][120] He was appointed a professor with a chair in gravitational physics in 1977.[121] The following year he received the Albert Einstein Medal and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford.[122][118]In 1979, Hawking was elected Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.[118][123] His inaugural lecture in this role was titled: "Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?" and proposed N=8 Supergravity as the leading theory to solve many of the outstanding problems physicists were studying.[124] His promotion coincided with a health crisis which led to his accepting, albeit reluctantly, some nursing services at home.[125] At the same time, he was also making a transition in his approach to physics, becoming more intuitive and speculative rather than insisting on mathematical proofs. "I would rather be right than rigorous", he told Kip Thorne.[126] In 1981, he proposed that information in a black hole is irretrievably lost when a black hole evaporates. This information paradox violates the fundamental tenet of quantum mechanics, and led to years of debate, including "the Black Hole War" with Leonard Susskind and Gerard 't Hooft.[127][128]Hawking at an ALS convention in San Francisco in the 1980sCosmological inflation – a theory proposing that following the Big Bang, the universe initially expanded incredibly rapidly before settling down to a slower expansion – was proposed by Alan Guth and also developed by Andrei Linde.[129] Following a conference in Moscow in October 1981, Hawking and Gary Gibbons[8] organised a three-week Nuffield Workshop in the summer of 1982 on "The Very Early Universe" at Cambridge University, a workshop that focused mainly on inflation theory.[130][131][132] Hawking also began a new line of quantum theory research into the origin of the universe. In 1981 at a Vatican conference, he presented work suggesting that there might be no boundary – or beginning or ending – to the universe.[133][134]Hawking subsequently developed the research in collaboration with Jim Hartle,[8] and in 1983 they published a model, known as the Hartle–Hawking state. It proposed that prior to the Planck epoch, the universe had no boundary in space-time; before the Big Bang, time did not exist and the concept of the beginning of the universe is meaningless.[135] The initial singularity of the classical Big Bang models was replaced with a region akin to the North Pole. One cannot travel north of the North Pole, but there is no boundary there – it is simply the point where all north-running lines meet and end.[136][137] Initially, the no-boundary proposal predicted a closed universe, which had implications about the existence of God. As Hawking explained, "If the universe has no boundaries but is self-contained... then God would not have had any freedom to choose how the universe began."[138]Hawking did not rule out the existence of a Creator, asking in A Brief History of Time "Is the unified theory so compelling that it brings about its own existence?"[139], also stating "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God"[140]; in his early work, Hawking spoke of God in a metaphorical sense. In the same book he suggested that the existence of God was not necessary to explain the origin of the universe. Later discussions with Neil Turok led to the realisation that the existence of God was also compatible with an open universe.[141]Further work by Hawking in the area of arrows of time led to the 1985 publication of a paper theorising that if the no-boundary proposition were correct, then when the universe stopped expanding and eventually collapsed, time would run backwards.[142] A paper by Don Page and independent calculations by Raymond Laflamme led Hawking to withdraw this concept.[143] Honours continued to be awarded: in 1981 he was awarded the American Franklin Medal,[144] and in the 1982 New Year Honours appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).[145][146][147] These awards did not significantly change Hawking's financial status, and motivated by the need to finance his children's education and home expenses, he decided in 1982 to write a popular book about the universe that would be accessible to the general public.[148][149] Instead of publishing with an academic press, he signed a contract with Bantam Books, a mass market publisher, and received a large advance for his book.[150][151] A first draft of the book, called A Brief History of Time, was completed in 1984.[152]One of the first messages Hawking produced with his speech-generating device was a request for his assistant to help him finish writing A Brief History of Time.[153] Peter Guzzardi, his editor at Bantam, pushed him to explain his ideas clearly in non-technical language, a process that required many revisions from an increasingly irritated Hawking.[154] The book was published in April 1988 in the US and in June in the UK, and it proved to be an extraordinary success, rising quickly to the top of best-seller lists in both countries and remaining there for months.[155][156][157] The book was translated into many languages,[158] and ultimately sold an estimated 9 million copies.[157]Media attention was intense,[158] and a Newsweek magazine cover and a television special both described him as "Master of the Universe".[159] Success led to significant financial rewards, but also the challenges of celebrity status.[160] Hawking travelled extensively to promote his work, and enjoyed partying and dancing into the small hours.[158] A difficulty refusing the invitations and visitors left him limited time for work and his students.[161] Some colleagues were resentful of the attention Hawking received, feeling it was due to his disability.[162][163]He received further academic recognition, including five more honorary degrees,[159] the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1985),[164] the Paul Dirac Medal (1987)[159] and, jointly with Penrose, the prestigious Wolf Prize (1988).[165] In the 1989 Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Companion of Honour (CH).[161][166] He reportedly declined a knighthood in the late 1990s in objection to the UK's science funding policy.[167][168]1990–2000Hawking with string theoristsDavid Gross and Edward Witten at the 2001 Strings Conference, TIFR, IndiaHawking pursued his work in physics: in 1993 he co-edited a book on Euclidean quantum gravity with Gary Gibbons and published a collected edition of his own articles on black holes and the Big Bang.[169] In 1994, at Cambridge's Newton Institute, Hawking and Penrose delivered a series of six lectures that were published in 1996 as "The Nature of Space and Time".[170] In 1997, he conceded a 1991 public scientific wager made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of Caltech. Hawking had bet that Penrose's proposal of a "cosmic censorship conjecture" – that there could be no "naked singularities" unclothed within a horizon – was correct.[171]After discovering his concession might have been premature, a new and more refined wager was made. This one specified that such singularities would occur without extra conditions.[172] The same year, Thorne, Hawking and Preskill made another bet, this time concerning the black hole information paradox.[173][174] Thorne and Hawking argued that since general relativity made it impossible for black holes to radiate and lose information, the mass-energy and information carried by Hawking radiation must be "new", and not from inside the black hole event horizon. Since this contradicted the quantum mechanics of microcausality, quantum mechanics theory would need to be rewritten. Preskill argued the opposite, that since quantum mechanics suggests that the information emitted by a black hole relates to information that fell in at an earlier time, the concept of black holes given by general relativity must be modified in some way.[175]Hawking also maintained his public profile, including bringing science to a wider audience. A film version of A Brief History of Time, directed by Errol Morris and produced by Steven Spielberg, premiered in 1992. Hawking had wanted the film to be scientific rather than biographical, but he was persuaded otherwise. The film, while a critical success, was not widely released.[176] A popular-level collection of essays, interviews, and talks titled Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays was published in 1993,[177] and a six-part television series Stephen Hawking's Universe and a companion book appeared in 1997. As Hawking insisted, this time the focus was entirely on science.[178][179]2000–2018Hawking at the Bibliothèque nationale de France to inaugurate the Laboratory of Astronomy and Particles in Paris, and the French release of his work God Created the Integers, 5 May 2006Hawking continued his writings for a popular audience, publishing The Universe in a Nutshell in 2001,[180] and A Briefer History of Time, which he wrote in 2005 with Leonard Mlodinow to update his earlier works with the aim of making them accessible to a wider audience, and God Created the Integers, which appeared in 2006.[181] Along with Thomas Hertog at CERN and Jim Hartle, from 2006 on Hawking developed a theory of "top-down cosmology", which says that the universe had not one unique initial state but many different ones, and therefore that it is inappropriate to formulate a theory that predicts the universe's current configuration from one particular initial state.[182] Top-down cosmology posits that the present "selects" the past from a superposition of many possible histories. In doing so, the theory suggests a possible resolution of the fine-tuning question.[183][184]Hawking continued to travel widely, including trips to Chile, Easter Island, South Africa, Spain (to receive the Fonseca Prize in 2008),[185][186] Canada,[187] and numerous trips to the United States.[188] For practical reasons related to his disability, Hawking increasingly travelled by private jet, and by 2011 that had become his only mode of international travel.[189]Hawking with University of Oxford librarian Richard Ovenden (left) and naturalist David Attenborough (right) at the opening of the Weston Library, Oxford, in March 2015. Ovenden awarded the Bodley Medal to Hawking and Attenborough at the ceremony.By 2003, consensus among physicists was growing that Hawking was wrong about the loss of information in a black hole.[190] In a 2004 lecture in Dublin, he conceded his 1997 bet with Preskill, but described his own, somewhat controversial solution to the information paradox problem, involving the possibility that black holes have more than one topology.[191][175] In the 2005 paper he published on the subject, he argued that the information paradox was explained by examining all the alternative histories of universes, with the information loss in those with black holes being cancelled out by those without such loss.[174][192] In January 2014, he called the alleged loss of information in black holes his "biggest blunder".[193]As part of another longstanding scientific dispute, Hawking had emphatically argued, and bet, that the Higgs boson would never be found.[194] The particle was proposed to exist as part of the Higgs field theory by Peter Higgs in 1964. Hawking and Higgs engaged in a heated and public debate over the matter in 2002 and again in 2008, with Higgs criticising Hawking's work and complaining that Hawking's "celebrity status gives him instant credibility that others do not have."[195] The particle was discovered in July 2012 at CERN following construction of the Large Hadron Collider. Hawking quickly conceded that he had lost his bet[196][197] and said that Higgs should win the Nobel Prize for Physics,[198] which he did in 2013.[199]Hawking holding a public lecture at the Stockholm Waterfront congress centre, 24 August 2015In 2007, Hawking and his daughter Lucy published George's Secret Key to the Universe, a children's book designed to explain theoretical physics in an accessible fashion and featuring characters similar to those in the Hawking family.[200] The book was followed by sequels in 2009, 2011, 2014 and 2016.[201]In 2002, following a UK-wide vote, the BBC included Hawking in their list of the 100 Greatest Britons.[202] He was awarded the Copley Medal from the Royal Society (2006),[203] the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is America's highest civilian honour (2009),[204] and the Russian Special Fundamental Physics Prize (2013).[205]Several buildings have been named after him, including the Stephen W. Hawking Science Museum in San Salvador, El Salvador,[206] the Stephen Hawking Building in Cambridge,[207] and the Stephen Hawking Centre at the Perimeter Institute in Canada.[208] Appropriately, given Hawking's association with time, he unveiled the mechanical "Chronophage" (or time-eating) Corpus Clock at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in September 2008.[209][210]During his career, Hawking supervised 39 successful PhD students.[3] One doctoral student did not successfully complete the PhD.[3][better source needed] As required by Cambridge University regulations, Hawking retired as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 2009.[123][211] Despite suggestions that he might leave the United Kingdom as a protest against public funding cuts to basic scientific research,[212] Hawking worked as director of research at the Cambridge University Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.[213]On 28 June 2009, as a tongue-in-cheek test of his 1992 conjecture that travel into the past is effectively impossible, Hawking held a party open to all, complete with hors d'oeuvres and iced champagne, but publicised the party only after it was over so that only time-travellers would know to attend; as expected, nobody showed up to the party.[214]On 20 July 2015, Hawking helped launch Breakthrough Initiatives, an effort to search for extraterrestrial life.[215] Hawking created Stephen Hawking: Expedition New Earth, a documentary on space colonisation, as a 2017 episode of Tomorrow's World.[216][217]In August 2015, Hawking said that not all information is lost when something enters a black hole and there might be a possibility to retrieve information from a black hole according to his theory.[218] In July 2017, Hawking was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Imperial College London.[219]Hawking's final paper – A smooth exit from eternal inflation? – was posthumously published in the Journal of High Energy Physics on 27 April 2018.[220][221]

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