On Fri, 22 Mar 2002, Dan Minette wrote: > > *Snort!* I sense a Zeno-style paradox here: if we're pre-ordained, then > > by definition we'll never achieve the fate ordained, thus we are free! > > Yay! :-) > > > > Nah, a Zeno paradox isn't enough to get out of the problem. My hometown > Robert Zimmerman, not the famous neurologist from New York, summed it up in > Rainy Day Women #12 and #35. In the refrain, he refers to the solution to > Zeno's paradox...the use of stones...which refers of course to the work by > Leibniz and Newton. It also refers to, obliquely, the funeral rite of > placing the first bit of earth (stone) on a casket. It is clear we are now > pre-ordained, but will assume priestly functions upon our death. Thus, on > this earth, we are pre-ordained.
Oh, it sounds so good, so good -- you've even managed to bring mathematics and pop culture into the game at the same time, I'm proud of you! -- but you're so wrong, so wrong. Hearken! The application of Zeno's Paradox to the question of preordination (aka predestination) works precisely because the distance to be measured is a spiritual one, not a physical or mathematical one. The "distance" between the elect and the unelect is unbridgeable: no amount of effort can convey a person from one state to the other. Zeno in his Chevy Nova can drive forever towards Oakland, City of the Elect, but when Zeno Jr. cries out from the back seat, "Are we there yet?" poor Junior will always be disappointed because as we all know, in Oakland there's no there there. Likewise, if this division of humanity into the elect and the damned is merely pre-ordained, or pre-destined, then the electing and damning in question is a process begun but never finished, again like Zeno's trip to Oakland. Zeno may be predestined, but because God never finished the job there's no there there, just like Oakland, and thus nowhere for Zeno to fail to reach. If there's no destination, in other words, then predestination has no meaning, and Zeno is Free. Concepts of distance and fate collapse in similar fashions. > Now, a Russell paradox might have a chance. > > _____________________________________ > | The statement inside the box is | > | preordained to be false | > |____________________________________| > > But, that's uncertain. Also, the formation of my box appears to be > dependant on the email reader, so my apologizes if the box doesn't look like > a box. See, now you're just trying to make my head hurt. It is so like you, Dan, to ruin a perfectly good philsophical obfuscation by bringing logic and mathematics into the discussion! ;-) Marvin Long Austin, Texas
