Zompist Bboard Again

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 7:26 pm Was it, perhaps, a kind of committee compromise between the different ideas about the nature(s) of God and Jesus that were sort of floating around in the general atmosphere of the time? It would be kind of fitting if the Trinity would be a deity designed by a committee.

That's probably close to the truth; the Council of Nicea was a committee.

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:45 pm Perhaps it's worth pointing out that even the terms of the debate only make sense if you accept Aristotelian metaphysics. (E.g. what is a "nature", or a "soul", or a "will".)

Precisely the issue!

(Transubstantiation has a similar issue, by the way.)

So, the Christian idea is that Jesus is an avatar of God. Pretty easy, though don't tell an Evangelical. '

I’m pretty sure this is in fact one of the heretical positions? Though I couldn’t tell you which… probably Monophysitism, if I had to guess.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 7:26 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:45 pm
(Personally I wonder if there's a connection. An avatar is a very weird idea for a 1st century Jew to come up with.

Well, reading your and bradrn's posts on all this, there's one specific 20th century Jew whom I could imagine having come up with stuff like that...

Eh?

rotting bones wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 11:36 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 10:36 pm There's a Neoplatonic influence on the later doctrine of the Trinity, sure. The avatar part isn't Greek though.

The issue with the avatar hypothesis is that Jesus doesn't behave like an avatar of Yahweh. Krishna plays the flute like Vishnu, strikes the poses of Vishnu and does the same things as Vishnu: serenade women and defeat evil. Instead, Jesus is more like a "procession" from the One, which involves hollowing out its powers and falling far away from it. He is a scapegoat, a lamb led to slaughter. In the Christian story, the purpose of all this is the sacrifice that redeems creation. This is of course followed by Jesus returning to the Father.

You're making a lot of assumptions about what an "avatar of Yahweh" would do.

One distinctive factor about the Jesus story is that his followers admit his helplessness against the powers of the world. This is what suggests a Late (Middle and Neo-) Platonist framing.

No, it suggests a Jewish framing. Judaism is the religion of a people who had experienced multiple apocalypses. What kind of God lets his people get conquered and his home on earth destroyed twice? A God who is biding his time. There is some reason he's not using his omnipotence-- probably due to humans not being worthy yet.

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 10:36 pm I'd say, don't underestimate influences from the East just because Westerners do. The Gospels themselves have the birth of God blessed by magi-- that is, by Zoroastrian priests. Jews were quite familiar with Persia-- a large number of them lived there-- and were grateful to the Persian Empire for ending the first Exile. I suspect they felt validated by Mazdaic monotheism.

Did Zoroastrianism have avatars?

No, I'm not saying the idea of the avatar came from Persia, only that the only religion and culture the Jews actually admired was from Persia.

Under true Neoplatonism, you'd have to say the Holy Spirit is the procession from the Father and Jesus is the return to Him. (Sounds right, except the Holy Spirit happened first.) If you switch the order, you get: Jesus is the procession from the Father and the Holy Spirit is the return to Him. (Whatever that is, it's not Christianity.) Or possibly Jesus proceeded from the Father and then returned to Him. (Yes, but that story leaves out the Holy Spirit.)

Instead what you get in Christianity is Constantine's lawyers grafting a Neoplatonic Trinity onto the Middle Platonic Gospel of John.

But Constantine didn't invent the Trinity either. As Brad's list shows, there were a bunch of interpretations of the Trinity bouncing around in the 300s; and even those were a winnowing of the even more exotic ideas spreading in the 100s. (Cf. Bart Ehrman's Early Christianities.)

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 10:36 pm The Neoplatonists believed in a theory of time which said that the more ancient a thinker, the better their theories. They didn't apply this to the Milesians. Instead, they thought Pythagoras was the greatest sage. After that, Plato was a great dialectical expositor of the True Meaning of Pythagoras, but which left out Pythagorean depth. After that, Aristotle captured aspects of Plato's system in various technical schemes like logic, but he produced a more superficial system than Plato. They were trying to restore the Original Meaning of Plato by applying his ideas to Pythagoras.

Sure, this was how both classical and medieval thought worked. People believed in their Authors, couldn't quite believe that they got anything wrong, and believed that the world was steadily going downhill, thus ancient was better. Chalcidius even declares that when you find a difficult passage in an Author, you must interpret it in the way "worthiest the wisdom of so great an authority". This is of course a principle which will lead to reinterpretation of old authors using whatever ideas are currently in vogue.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 4:54 am

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:45 pm Perhaps it's worth pointing out that even the terms of the debate only make sense if you accept Aristotelian metaphysics. (E.g. what is a "nature", or a "soul", or a "will".)

(Transubstantiation has a similar issue, by the way.)

Absolutely.

So, the Christian idea is that Jesus is an avatar of God. Pretty easy, though don't tell an Evangelical. '

I’m pretty sure this is in fact one of the heretical positions? Though I couldn’t tell you which… probably Monophysitism, if I had to guess.

It's standard theology that the Second Person "incarnated" as Jesus-- which is all "avatars" do. All the heresies start when you start to ask how that worked in Aristototelian terms. The question just didn't come up (so far as I know) for Hindus.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 5:23 am It's standard theology that the Second Person "incarnated" as Jesus-- which is all "avatars" do. All the heresies start when you start to ask how that worked in Aristototelian terms. The question just didn't come up (so far as I know) for Hindus.

I guess that makes sense.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 4:54 am

So, the Christian idea is that Jesus is an avatar of God. Pretty easy, though don't tell an Evangelical. '

I’m pretty sure this is in fact one of the heretical positions? Though I couldn’t tell you which… probably Monophysitism, if I had to guess.

It's difficult to tell, because avatars (thankfully) aren't explained in terms of Aristotlelean metaphysics, but I think it is indeed Monophysitism, because I think that denies that Jesus is fully human, which I think is correct for an avatar (God X in human form) but not for an orthodox interpretation of Jesus (nature of God Y and a human nature of united… somehow¹).

¹ Which I can blame on different churches disagreeing, and not on the fact I understand absolutely none of the relevant positions.

Lērisama wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 5:30 am It's difficult to tell, because avatars (thankfully) aren't explained in terms of Aristotlelean metaphysics, but I think it is indeed Monophysitism, because I think that denies that Jesus is fully human, which I think is correct for an avatar (God X in human form) but not for an orthodox interpretation of Jesus (nature of God Y and a human nature of united… somehow¹).

I think you're misinterpreting what avatars are. They are human. This is explicit in the Ramayana: the demon Ravana has (by ascetic meditation) obtained a boon from Brahma that he cannot be harmed by any god. Vishnu incarnates as Rama precisely to avoid this rule and defeat Ravana.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 5:42 am

Lērisama wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 5:30 am It's difficult to tell, because avatars (thankfully) aren't explained in terms of Aristotlelean metaphysics, but I think it is indeed Monophysitism, because I think that denies that Jesus is fully human, which I think is correct for an avatar (God X in human form) but not for an orthodox interpretation of Jesus (nature of God Y and a human nature of united… somehow¹).

I think you're misinterpreting what avatars are. They are human. This is explicit in the Ramayana: the demon Ravana has (by ascetic meditation) obtained a boon from Brahma that he cannot be harmed by any god. Vishnu incarnates as Rama precisely to avoid this rule and defeat Ravana.

Ooh, that does sound promising.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 4:54 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 7:26 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:45 pm
(Personally I wonder if there's a connection. An avatar is a very weird idea for a 1st century Jew to come up with.

Well, reading your and bradrn's posts on all this, there's one specific 20th century Jew whom I could imagine having come up with stuff like that...

Eh?

Rube Goldberg.

zompist wrote:Perhaps it's worth pointing out that even the terms of the debate only make sense if you accept Aristotelian metaphysics. (E.g. what is a "nature", or a "soul", or a "will".)

For amusement value, perhaps we could work out a brand-new set of heresies based on modern understanding of the brain. Actual believers will probably want to look away. (Though no disrespect is intended; as the universe is not Aristotelian, the traditional theology can't be correct anyway.)

I'll assume that God is outside the system entirely, thus not made of matter; I'll also assume that there is no such thing as a non-material soul. What does he do to incarnate?

Does he just "upload his consciousness" into a human brain as if it were a computer? Is there a set of neural connections that approximates divinity? Does God need more neural connections, new types of neurotransmitters, new neural circuits?

We send the human through a matter duplicator (such as Star Trek uses to duplicate foods). Do we now have two incarnations of God? What happens if we use the transporter instead— does the divinity get transmitted too?

Simply rewriting the entire brain could be said to erase the brain's humanity; after all our instincts, our evolutionary predilections (how to see, the infant swimming reflex, what is sexually attractive) are all in the genome and expressed by the brain. Does God reproduce all that, or leave parts of the brain in place?

Or perhaps he leaves the brain as is, but monitors it closely, and just overrides its actions and thoughts as he desires. Is the human brain aware that it's being controlled like a remote controlled car? If God stops monitoring and controlling for a moment, what is left— a fully functioning though traumatized human?

God isn't limited by 20th century or even 25th century biology, and most likely no one is going to dissect his body. Perhaps he just creates a human-shaped frame whose inside doesn't look anything like human flesh, but is better able to support divine consciousness and power. Of course, the end result is no more "human" than Superman is, even if he's optimized more for teaching than for fighting crooks.

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 3:36 pm I'll also assume that there is no such thing as a non-material soul.

Isn’t this a heresy in and of itself?

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 3:36 pm I'll assume that God is outside the system entirely, thus not made of matter; I'll also assume that there is no such thing as a non-material soul. What does he do to incarnate?

The conception of divinity that I can get the most behind is that God is not really any different than us, but exists as a programmer in a greater universe, in which our universe is but a simulation within a cosmic computer, just like we humans can create simulations such as Conway's Game of Life on computers within our universe.

In turn, of course, God's own greater universe could be a simulation within an even greater universe, and so on and so forth. There might not even be a 'true' reality.

Viva España, Motherfuckers!!

OK, normally I wouldn't care much for Spain, but with both the politics and the sports side being what they are this year...

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 4:03 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 3:36 pm I'll also assume that there is no such thing as a non-material soul.

Isn’t this a heresy in and of itself?

Is it? For some Christians, who don't mind contradicting science, yes. But e.g. Catholicism is not supposed to do that. A Catholic theologian should go as far as possible in accommodating science, only introducing miracles as a last resort. What's the minimum that a soul could be?

I think you quickly run into problems if you look for maximums instead. E.g. we know that memory is a brain process— it's a matter of neural connections, you can trigger memories by tapping a part of the brain (e.g. during surgery), you can lose memories due to a brain malfunction. Yet surely memory is part of "us", available to the soul. Do we just duplicate functions like memory on both the material and spiritual level?

Now, I don't think dualism is disproven either. The theologian can take refuge in that. But it's increasingly a kind of cop-out, a way of protecting cherished ideas rather than understanding the world.

Could people familiar with Chicago tell me whether this take I just saw on Bluesky is accurate?

By Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg / @theradr.bsky.social:

https://bsky.app/profile/theradr.bsky.s ... zwm7dwn222

When you leave Chicago for Wisconsin, it's all fireworks billboards.

When you leave Chicago and head W or S, it's all Jesus / antiabortion billboards.

When you leave Chicago for Indiana, it's all personal injury lawyer billboards.

When you drive INTO Chicago, it's all hair implant billboards.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 6:40 pm Could people familiar with Chicago tell me whether this take I just saw on Bluesky is accurate?

By Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg / @theradr.bsky.social:

https://bsky.app/profile/theradr.bsky.s ... zwm7dwn222

When you leave Chicago for Wisconsin, it's all fireworks billboards.

When you leave Chicago and head W or S, it's all Jesus / antiabortion billboards.

When you leave Chicago for Indiana, it's all personal injury lawyer billboards.

When you drive INTO Chicago, it's all hair implant billboards.

I don't know about the other two, but the going from Chicago to Wisconsin and the going into Chicago parts are true.

bradrn wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 6:12 pm(No, I never have understood the idea of the Trinity myself. As far as I can tell all the comprehensible interpretations have been rejected as heretical.)

Quite. It has always bugged me as a concept as well, although admittedly it has been decades at this point since I have identified with Christianity to any great extent.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2026 7:31 pm
I don't know about the other two, but the going from Chicago to Wisconsin and the going into Chicago parts are true.

Thank you!

Oh also -- going from Wisconsin to Illinois also has weed dispensary signs, as someone noted in the comments.

As an ex-Catholic, the idea of there not being a soul is against the teachings of "The Church", and if you can posit that "God" is outside our universe and can interact with the universe directly (though rarely does), then you can also posit that souls, whatever else they are, are also outside the universe and able to interact with it. None of this can be scientifically proven of course, but it technically doesn't go against anything that science has proven. It just also fails Occam's razor.

Also the Trinity isn't supposed to be understandable to mortals, we're just expected to accept what is said on faith. Hence why it's a Mystery.