The Tao Of Joe

I love Scott Adams blog much more than his comic, Dilbert. Dilbert, the comic strip, doesn’t do it for me because office culture at it’s worst is something I prefer not to be reminded about. I can read Scott Adams’ Dilbert blog though and nod affirmatively to myself “this is why I blog.” Of the eclectic intelligentsia blogging today, I place Mr Adams near the top.

Over the weekend he did a little cage rattling with his post “The Atheist Who Thought He Was God” and followed that up with “Pascal’s Wager.” The latter probably generated calls to the thought police with his declaration that “The most rational worldview is moderate Islam.” I can only imagine the anguish this statement must of created for at least a few of his readers. Sadism?

I too believe in Spinoza’s version of God and like Einstein find it perfectly acceptable to say so and leave it at that. Life is nothing if it is not at least a lesson in conflict management and Spinoza’s God is an excellent resolution for one of it’s major recurring themes, is there or is there not a God. Here again Mr Adams delivered the goods in his post “God For Weasels“, and like Scott, I too discovered my “personal opinions” were matched by men of letters. How wonderful to have ones ignorance confirmed as brilliance and by my heroes no less!

As for Pascal’s Wager, I always felt that his was a weak argument. In fact, I found Mr Adams argument on Sunday just as weak and his math worse, if one believes in Spinoza’s God that is. The argument concerning hell has always been a warning indicator as to whether an individual possessed a sadistic streak or not. The DSM-III-R list for “sadistic personality disorder” as one of its criteria, “Gets other people to do what he or she wants by frightening them (through intimidation or even terror)” and the hell argument definitely meets this definition. What else can you say about someone who on the one hand professes they are concerned for my(or yours) salvation yet coerce that one must choose to accept Lord Jesus Christ as savior or face eternal damnation. Sadistic pure and simple. Domination is probably in line with their intention also.

When one pauses to consider the cosmos and the vast infiniteness of its expanse and upon reaching even a measure of comprehension and intimates this mind bogglingly vast vastness and then, if you can, hold this intimation momentarily in nowness while resting in it’s paradoxical tautness and overarching sense of freedom and divinity, and then right there, apply again this infiniteness of possibility multiplied infinitely more by itself again and… well hopefully you get my point. The infinite universes containing an equally infinite number of ideas and as infinite as those are, there are at least that many not yet ideated, and as such, then there are just too damn many possibilities that are just too incredibly huge to be limited by such a ridiculous vision as “eternal damnation or hell” much less to posit a single deity or triumvirate of deities orchestrating the whole gawdam thing.

It is more plausible that I am a finite representation of God.

For this bit of stimulating navel gazing I am profoundly grateful. And that is why I love “The Dilbert Blog.”

How about you, are we men or mice?

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