[Vision2020] An answer (or expansion) on Ted's good and evil post

[Joan Opyr]

On Friday, Dec. 2nd, Ted posted:

“Consider that the universe is likely populated by numerous species of 
intelligent beings on a variety of planets, deriving the energy that 
sustains life from stars of one sort or another, unless you can offer 
some other source of energy that may allow life to evolve on planets or 
in space, in what is otherwise a very, very cold, empty universe, who 
find within their cultural worlds numerous versions of Ethics.  
Consider the unlikely theoretical scenario presented below, useful for 
illuminating my answer regarding the universality of Ethics as being 
embodied in the structure of the universe in a manner that mandates 
there are ultimate standards of "good" and "evil," that all of these 
life forms share in common that are always and forever.

What would happen if all the stars heating and supplying energy to all 
these intelligent life forms went supernova, destroying these life 
forms totally?  Skip the possibility some life forms may be so far from 
such a massive explosion that they survive, just for the sake of my 
point, please.

Would the universe cry out in despair?  Would any Mind remain to feel 
compassion, to feel the unthinkable sense of loss, to provide an 
ultimate foundation to the high and mighty sense of righteousness and 
judgment, the logical Ethical principles we think so "ultimate," that 
fuel our sense of right and wrong?

I say probably no.  The universe would not blink, except for the time 
it takes for these supernovas to flare out.

Maybe life would evolve again, but in the meantime, Ethics as we know 
it would not exist.  Therefore there is nothing always and everywhere 
good, and always and everywhere evil, in any sense mandated by the 
structure of the universe, unless you can convincingly demonstrate that 
the universe always and everywhere contains life forms with common 
Ethical standards.  Ethics exists inside the nervous systems of evolved 
life forms, and no where else, therefore take away these nervous 
systems, and no Ethics exist.

In short, Joan, people invent God or Gods or Goddesses (amazing how 
sexual politics invades human spirituality, a human reproductive 
oriented obsession no doubt connected to our primitive state of moral 
evolution) in part to provide an ultimate foundation in the structure 
of the universe for what many suspect, but do not admit to themselves 
very often, in part because of the cold dark loneliness they do not 
want to face, and because of the punishment that may be inflicted for 
removing the veil from our illusions, that we as life forms are alone 
in the universe, and our Ethics, in its various forms, has only the 
trembling and fearful, doubtful and confused, or arrogant and dogmatic, 
human heart to either affirm or destroy it (despite the logic that may 
be employed to "prove" otherwise), and it can be destroyed easily by 
the cleverness of reason, or by the violence of our fellow humans.

Ted Moffett”


Dear Visionaries:

Ordinarily, I clip bits and pieces of posts for the sake of 
convenience, ease of download, and to answer the parts I feel that I 
can or should answer.  I can’t clip Ted’s post.  It should remain 
intact, a whole, coherent, sensible argument – one that I find very 
compelling.

Imagine that linear time as we know and experience it doesn’t exist?  
(It doesn’t; Einstein proved that.)  Imagine that the Universe we know 
was created by not “the” Big Bang but “a” Big Bang?  It expands, and 
expands, and expands, and then it contracts.  Energy is neither created 
nor destroyed, and so the Universe will never simply peter out.  It 
will eventually collapse back onto itself, contract into a gaseous 
ball, and then boom – another Big Bang.  This, I believe, is true 
eternity.  We are part of an endless loop, an eternal circle, not a 
great chain of being but a great necklace.  Round and round we go, and 
where we stop, nobody knows.

Perhaps, just as there are higher orders of intelligence among the 
creatures on Earth, there are higher orders of beings in the Universe.  
I know this is a reach, but I’ve been watching re-runs of the great 
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and if he can believe in alien life, then so can 
Ted and I.  Why should we be the only sentient creatures in the 
Universe?  There’s primitive bacteria on Mars; maybe there are Klingons 
somewhere else.

Is God (or Goddess, or the Gods and Godesses) a higher order of being?  
Not the creator of the Universe but something ancient, something 
mysterious, something beyond our ken?  (If this is beginning to sound a 
bit too L. Ron Hubbard, I apologize.  Or rather, “Dianetics: How to 
apologize, p. 38.”)

Some of us need God/Goddess, Ted.  We need the/a deity make sense of 
our lives, our ethics, our relationships, and our inevitable deaths.  I 
do.  I need the God of the Hebrews, the God of the Covenant.  I’m not 
an inerrantist, a Biblical literalist, or a dictatorial proseletyzer.  
I don’t think for a minute that I have all of the answers; I’m not fit 
to have all of the answers.  If I had them, I’d give them out to all of 
the other students, and then we’d all cheat like mad on our various 
souls’ journeys and tests.

I believe that the definition of Hell is life without God.  (I also 
know that Hell is named for the Northern goddess, Hel, and that it’s 
entirely without foundation in Judaism, so I’m really just winging it 
here.)  By that, what I mean is life without some hope for higher 
meaning, higher purpose, and the ethical foundations that sustain me.  
I believe in the mitzvahs.  I believe in tzedekah.  I believe that 
these will lead me to God/enlightenment/ideas and thinking beyond my 
limited self.

But I’m also a Universalist.  I believe it’s possible to be ethical and 
atheist; ethical and agnostic; ethical and Hindu, Zorastrian, 
Christian, Buddhist, animist, Wiccan or pagan.  I don’t believe that 
there’s one path to God (or to kind and ethical behavior).  I’m not 
that arrogant.  We kill one another in the name of religion for no 
other reason than that we’re threatened by difference.  If someone else 
has a different answer to the god question, then our own answer may be 
wrong, and by God/god, that can’t be!  That would be far too scary.  
So, we bump them off in the name of righteousness.  What a load of 
shitheads we are – and I mean that literally.  When it comes to 
religious tolerance, we’re all like competing tribes of monkeys, 
crapping in our hands and flinging it at one another.  Not a pretty 
sight.

This isn’t an answer to my original question; it’s simply an expansion 
on what Ted has said; an expansion and a fundamental agreement.

Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment
www.joanopyr.com
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