A (not so) alien theology
Posted: Mon Mar 07, 2016 6:58 am
Most aliens in my conworld believe that God exists.
God is one. He has only one power, the power to destroy. He uses this power to destroy whatever displeases Him. This results in the two poles that drive all the changes in the world, namely, life and death.
Life and Death are actual objects that exist in an exalted sphere directly below God. The boundary separating Life from Death reflects upon itself and gives birth to the sphere of the archangels below the polar sphere. Four objects exist in this sphere. The two poles are visible, and each spawns a champion archangel. The archangel of Life is called Inside. The archangel of death is named Outside. Inside and Outside are locked in eternal strife over the boundary separating Life and Death.
Their competition creates another sphere below the sphere of the archangels, the sphere of the angels. This sphere contains 16 objects. Two of the 16 objects are the two poles, Life and Death. The archangels are also visible in this sphere, but each archangel looks like two different objects and they wield enormous power here. The ten remaining objects are the angels born from the sparks flying from the archangelic clash. Their names are Neither, Deathly Difference, Living Difference, Conjunction, Equivalence, Dichotomy, Exclusion, Living Inclusion, Deathly Inclusion and Disjunction.
The angels engage in complicated interactions of rational disputation, which gives rise to the sphere of the greater spirits situated below that of the angels. This sphere contains 256 objects. The poles are visible as always. Each archangel manifests as three distinct objects here. The angels also take on multiple avatars. The remaining objects are the greater spirits, too numerous to name here, who manage the cosmological processes of the universe. The chief features of this sphere are great power united with serenity.
The great cosmological processes interact to give rise to the sphere of the lesser spirits containing 65536 objects. Two of these are the poles. Each archangel looks like four distinct objects, the angels take on more bodies, and even the greater spirits are multiple objects. The remaining objects are the lesser spirits who manage natural processes. The chief characteristics of this sphere are beauty united with proliferation.
The ceaseless multiplication of beauty in this realm gives rise to another sphere below it, the sphere of heroic deeds. The unique objects in this realm represent every possible great deed heroes might perform. It contains a total of 4,294,967,296 objects. The heroics of this realm give rise to the realm of acts of kingship, which gives rise to the realm of perfect deeds, which gives rise to the realm of adequate deeds, which gives rise to the realm of careless deeds, which gives rise to the realm of sinful deeds, which gives rise to the realm of every possible deed, which gives rise to the realm of impulses to act, which gives rise to the realm of fleeting sensations. This list never ends. Each rung represents diminishing power, increasing depth of resolution in representing the things present in the world, and a number of objects equal to the square of the number of objects present in the sphere above it.
But what does all this mean? At one level, one way to get nosy children to stop asking questions is to get them to calculate increasingly large squares. At another level, the names and their interactions recorded in this theology helps shape cultural narratives. But most people consider it to be a representation of Boolean algebra with a thin veneer of genealogical list-like qualities. It works like this:
Consider a Venn Diagram with no variables. There is just one set containing every object in the universe. There are only two ways to pick objects in this case: Pick everything, i.e. choose Life, or pick nothing, i.e. choose Death. These are the two poles. Now that we have the number two, we have the concept of one thing versus another thing. This lets us introduce one variable into the Venn Diagram that divides all the objects in the universe into those that are Inside it and those that are Outside it. Of course, "object" here does not refer to boundaries, else we'd get in trouble with Russell's Paradox.
Now we have four things: Life, Inside, Outside and Death. This lets us draw four bounded regions in the Venn diagram, each representing a line in the truth table for two variables. What are these? ~A & ~B, ~A & B, A & ~B and A & B. If we have four objects, then we can select over them in 2^4 = 16 ways. Two of these are the two poles T and F. Two of these are avatars of Inside, A and B. Two of these are avatars of Outside, ~A and ~B. 16 - 2 - 4 = 10. Each of these is a possible Boolean operator, variable order pair: A NOR B, B & ~A, A & ~B, A & B, A XNOR B, A XOR B, A NAND B, B -> A, A -> B, and A + B. This is the complete list. There are no other possibilities that cannot be reduced to one of these.
Having 16 lets us descend to the next iteration, but the interpretation becomes more cultural from this point. Nevertheless, further features of the theology argue strongly in favor of this interpretation. God destroys by forgetting things that He loses interest in, and this happens in a very particular way.
First of all, God sees all that exists. However, certain things, represented as combinations of properties, draw his attention more than other things. As He fixates His attention on those things, His mind fills with True Names. Once no room is left in His attention for anything else, the rest just fades away from the world.
Consider a world with two boundaries/variables/properties/predicates A and B. A and B are not objects in this world in accordance with the laws of type theory. There are four objects in this world: Thing1 is neither A nor B, thing2 is not A but B, thing3 is A but not B and thing4 is both A and B. Suppose God is interested in looking at things 1, 3 and 4. If He is not interested in looking at thing2, then this lack of interest is in itself an enactment of the angelic power called Living Inclusion. The object represented by the logical formula ~A & B fades away from existence, resulting in a world where every object that is B is also A.
At the instant of this transition, God's mind fills with the True Name "B -> A", which the aliens more commonly write "A A uncollocated B uncollocated" or "A B uncollocated B uncollocated". To understand this, look at the Venn diagram for B -> A: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=B+implies+A Every portion of the diagram is colored except the part of B outside A. If that white part were to be erased, then the only part of B remaining in the diagram would be included in A. B would become a proper subset of A. Any object that is B would also be A. In this way, "B implies A" is a True Name of the collection of objects thing1, thing3 and thing4, and what the world God desires to examine looks like from the world that existed before it. The word used in the sense of "uncollocated" has more mundane meanings of "stake" or "strike through" and represents the NAND operator. NAND means uncollocated in the sense that A NAND B means A and B cannot be affirmed simultaneously. In Polish notation, "A A NAND B NAND" is "(A NAND A) NAND B" or B implies A.
God's mind fills with such selection parameters ranging over all properties represented in the world, and things that bore Him disappear.
God is one. He has only one power, the power to destroy. He uses this power to destroy whatever displeases Him. This results in the two poles that drive all the changes in the world, namely, life and death.
Life and Death are actual objects that exist in an exalted sphere directly below God. The boundary separating Life from Death reflects upon itself and gives birth to the sphere of the archangels below the polar sphere. Four objects exist in this sphere. The two poles are visible, and each spawns a champion archangel. The archangel of Life is called Inside. The archangel of death is named Outside. Inside and Outside are locked in eternal strife over the boundary separating Life and Death.
Their competition creates another sphere below the sphere of the archangels, the sphere of the angels. This sphere contains 16 objects. Two of the 16 objects are the two poles, Life and Death. The archangels are also visible in this sphere, but each archangel looks like two different objects and they wield enormous power here. The ten remaining objects are the angels born from the sparks flying from the archangelic clash. Their names are Neither, Deathly Difference, Living Difference, Conjunction, Equivalence, Dichotomy, Exclusion, Living Inclusion, Deathly Inclusion and Disjunction.
The angels engage in complicated interactions of rational disputation, which gives rise to the sphere of the greater spirits situated below that of the angels. This sphere contains 256 objects. The poles are visible as always. Each archangel manifests as three distinct objects here. The angels also take on multiple avatars. The remaining objects are the greater spirits, too numerous to name here, who manage the cosmological processes of the universe. The chief features of this sphere are great power united with serenity.
The great cosmological processes interact to give rise to the sphere of the lesser spirits containing 65536 objects. Two of these are the poles. Each archangel looks like four distinct objects, the angels take on more bodies, and even the greater spirits are multiple objects. The remaining objects are the lesser spirits who manage natural processes. The chief characteristics of this sphere are beauty united with proliferation.
The ceaseless multiplication of beauty in this realm gives rise to another sphere below it, the sphere of heroic deeds. The unique objects in this realm represent every possible great deed heroes might perform. It contains a total of 4,294,967,296 objects. The heroics of this realm give rise to the realm of acts of kingship, which gives rise to the realm of perfect deeds, which gives rise to the realm of adequate deeds, which gives rise to the realm of careless deeds, which gives rise to the realm of sinful deeds, which gives rise to the realm of every possible deed, which gives rise to the realm of impulses to act, which gives rise to the realm of fleeting sensations. This list never ends. Each rung represents diminishing power, increasing depth of resolution in representing the things present in the world, and a number of objects equal to the square of the number of objects present in the sphere above it.
But what does all this mean? At one level, one way to get nosy children to stop asking questions is to get them to calculate increasingly large squares. At another level, the names and their interactions recorded in this theology helps shape cultural narratives. But most people consider it to be a representation of Boolean algebra with a thin veneer of genealogical list-like qualities. It works like this:
Consider a Venn Diagram with no variables. There is just one set containing every object in the universe. There are only two ways to pick objects in this case: Pick everything, i.e. choose Life, or pick nothing, i.e. choose Death. These are the two poles. Now that we have the number two, we have the concept of one thing versus another thing. This lets us introduce one variable into the Venn Diagram that divides all the objects in the universe into those that are Inside it and those that are Outside it. Of course, "object" here does not refer to boundaries, else we'd get in trouble with Russell's Paradox.
Now we have four things: Life, Inside, Outside and Death. This lets us draw four bounded regions in the Venn diagram, each representing a line in the truth table for two variables. What are these? ~A & ~B, ~A & B, A & ~B and A & B. If we have four objects, then we can select over them in 2^4 = 16 ways. Two of these are the two poles T and F. Two of these are avatars of Inside, A and B. Two of these are avatars of Outside, ~A and ~B. 16 - 2 - 4 = 10. Each of these is a possible Boolean operator, variable order pair: A NOR B, B & ~A, A & ~B, A & B, A XNOR B, A XOR B, A NAND B, B -> A, A -> B, and A + B. This is the complete list. There are no other possibilities that cannot be reduced to one of these.
Having 16 lets us descend to the next iteration, but the interpretation becomes more cultural from this point. Nevertheless, further features of the theology argue strongly in favor of this interpretation. God destroys by forgetting things that He loses interest in, and this happens in a very particular way.
First of all, God sees all that exists. However, certain things, represented as combinations of properties, draw his attention more than other things. As He fixates His attention on those things, His mind fills with True Names. Once no room is left in His attention for anything else, the rest just fades away from the world.
Consider a world with two boundaries/variables/properties/predicates A and B. A and B are not objects in this world in accordance with the laws of type theory. There are four objects in this world: Thing1 is neither A nor B, thing2 is not A but B, thing3 is A but not B and thing4 is both A and B. Suppose God is interested in looking at things 1, 3 and 4. If He is not interested in looking at thing2, then this lack of interest is in itself an enactment of the angelic power called Living Inclusion. The object represented by the logical formula ~A & B fades away from existence, resulting in a world where every object that is B is also A.
At the instant of this transition, God's mind fills with the True Name "B -> A", which the aliens more commonly write "A A uncollocated B uncollocated" or "A B uncollocated B uncollocated". To understand this, look at the Venn diagram for B -> A: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=B+implies+A Every portion of the diagram is colored except the part of B outside A. If that white part were to be erased, then the only part of B remaining in the diagram would be included in A. B would become a proper subset of A. Any object that is B would also be A. In this way, "B implies A" is a True Name of the collection of objects thing1, thing3 and thing4, and what the world God desires to examine looks like from the world that existed before it. The word used in the sense of "uncollocated" has more mundane meanings of "stake" or "strike through" and represents the NAND operator. NAND means uncollocated in the sense that A NAND B means A and B cannot be affirmed simultaneously. In Polish notation, "A A NAND B NAND" is "(A NAND A) NAND B" or B implies A.
God's mind fills with such selection parameters ranging over all properties represented in the world, and things that bore Him disappear.