Karaoke

On Sunday night, I was in the Duke of York pub near Blackpool's North Pier with wifey and the in-laws. Earlier in the evening we'd taken part in a free pub quiz (in which we scored an astonishingly bad 14/30) and now they had karaoke on. We'd had some wine and I was feeling relaxed, when my mother-in-law said that I should sing something for them. I was obviously feeling too relaxed, because I got the big book of songs and put myself down on the list. I then felt really nervous. I've never done karaoke before, and the thought of singing in front of a pub load of people gave me the willies. There were a few people before me in the list, so I had a long wait. I was a karaoke virgin, and was trembling with nervousness. Eventually the call came, and I rose to meet my audience with a sterling rendition of Rasputin by Boney M. Well, not that sterling, but apparently people were quite entertained by my crap Russian dancing during the 'Hey, hey, hey' bits. I kind of enjoyed it. I feel like I've gone through a rite of passage. Now I can hold my head high.

Pythagorean dreams

I had a strange dream last night. I was in a class room, and the class was gathered around a table that had a sheet of paper on it. The teacher drew a large square on the sheet and started to tell us that Pythagoras regarded the square as the perfect shape. Within the square it was changeless, while anything that might affect the square was simply reflected off of the square's sides. That was all there was to the dream.

I don't know much about Pythagoras, but I'm pretty sure he didn't say that sort of thing about squares. But I did a quick search on Google and the result was interesting. So far as I can tell Pythagoras philosophy was that 'All is number'. The visible world is changing and corruptible, and what is ultimately real is the changless realm of numbers and their relationships. This is what my dream was about - the notion that what is ultimately real is without change and unaffected by the universe that is in constant change.

Why should I be dreaming about such things? I guess I must have been thinking about theology again, in particular the notion of the immutability and impassibility of God. By the first century Jewish thought had adopted the Greek idea that perfection and ultimate reality was without change. This meant that God was immutable (unable to change) and impassible (unaffected by anything external to God). This idea became so firmly entrenched that it was taken as axiomatic, until fairly recently. Even today, some still hold to the idea.

I was thinking about this idea myself recently. It has huge problems for our ideas of God. Consider God's knowledge of the universe. If God is immutable and impassible then God's knowledge cannot change. This only leaves two options for God. The first option is that God knows nothing about the universe, because the universe cannot affect God and therefore cannot affect God's knowledge. If the universe has anything like genuine freedom, then for God to know what is happening involves God allowing something external to affect God's knowledge. Even if God is able to become aware of past, present and future simulaneously, this still involves God being affected. The only way around this is the other option: God determines everything that happens without exception, and therefore knows everything. The problem with this is that the universe has no freedom. Everything we do is determined by God, and so we cease to be morally responsible to God. If we commit evil acts then it is because God has determined that we are to commit those evil acts.

Neither option looks anything like a Christian conception of God to me. So I either accept that God is completely (though perfectly) ignorant, or that there is no freedom in the universe (including free-will). Or I can decide that God is not immutable or impassible - that the universe does have freedom, and God is affected by what happens in the universe.

I wonder why my sleeping brain fixed on Pythagoras and squares.