Software Development Stories - Inventory Version

 This probably belongs in a Reddit post somewhere, but... Anyone that's undertaken a software development career has probably encountered what I'm about to describe. And it's too long for Reddit, so...

I spent more than a decade of my three decade stint in software development working in manufacturing, and invariably, the companies avoided buying certain commercial off-the-shelf solutions and using them as delivered because "we're different than everyone else". 

Sometimes, that claim is legitimate. Here's a candidate that supports that claim.

I joined a company that assembled large commercial ships, which required large steel plates for hulls, bulkheads, keels and the like. They had relatively limited space - imagine around 120 stacks of plates arrayed in a grid over 4-to-6 acres of floor space, with a big A-frame crane straddling it. There was a bunch of other piles of bar stock and forged I-beams beyond this grid, as well. 

The plate department's challenge was to have the plates in position to move into production every day throughout the year, even though they didn't have enough room to accommodate the year's material in 120 stacks. So, over the decades, they devised a process that would allow incoming steel to arrive (for example) at the upper left-hand corner of the grid, and leave at the lower right-hand corner. In between the time a plate arrived and the time it was required for production might be 6 to 9 months or more, so the workflow needed to accommodate that time span. During that period, each plate movement was intended to help make the stacks nearer the exit corner progressively more organized, so that when the required start date arrived, the steel was all in one stack as close to the exit corner as possible.

The enterprise inventory management system could keep track of which department had stewardship of the plates, and probably was suitable for tracking smaller components by warehouse area, row, rack and bin, but had no capability for helping the steel plate team decide where on the grid to move a giant plate to keep material converging towards a single stack for the planned production start date.

Enter Microsoft Access ... circa 2000 was my guess. One analyst - not a formally trained developer - created a little Access app that could keep track of the plates and print out move instructions to show the crane and forklift operators where to reposition plates each day. The intention was to help them take the chaos of the entry corner and transform it into a carefully organized sequence of stacks by the time start day arrived.

The innovative scheme they devised was to name rows of stacks, and individual stacks within each row, in accordance with the stack's purpose, but not a specific start date. It was logical to name the rows and stacks at the top of the grid nearest the entry corner more vaguely. Think "Quarter 1, "Quarter 2" and so on. Towards the middle, this scheme became more specific, such as "Two months out", "One month out" and "This month". Finally they reserved a couple of rows nearest the exit corner to dedicate for exact dates, so that 14 days before a production start date arrived, they'd have an empty stack that they could start piling plates on. Thus the material for that day was all in one place.

This all sounds simple enough - any competent software developer could write a few procedures to help them perform a "converge" operation on a stack that they wanted to clear out for re-purposing.

Here's the rub:  The plate department couldn't tell you all of the rules for plates that fell outside the simplistic process I outlined above. For instance, they might have special rules for departments X, Y or Z, and the rules might be different for each, but everything else would follow the general outline. Then there were rules for plates that were below a certain size or thickness, or above a certain size or thickness. You get the idea. 

What's a developer to do?  

AHA! Look at the existing code! Great idea, but, as I said, the innovative fella that created this app was not a developer by trade, so the code was crap.  

Wait! There's more! He had left the company 5 years before I arrived, so as that app started to behave in unexpected ways, the department considered it "broke" instead of acknowledging that something about their process had changed. 

My IT predecessors tried to maintain the app ... but our manager saw that it should be replaced, so he received approval to find a commercial replacement.

Two more years went by. The plate department could tell you about 60% of what the app did for them, but the "converge" operation was a mystery. And they didn't know exactly what all the tables in that application were used for. My predecessors then left, as well.

Enter your humble correspondent. Our department had spent about 2/3 of the replacement budget looking for a COTS solution. I walk in the door, 1000 hours already gone, and get handed this beauty on the 5th day I worked there. Oh, and can you complete this by Christmas? (We're in October when I find this out). Oh, and your prior responsibilities are a bunch of old desktop apps that need to be replaced. So I had about 20 hours a week to work on this.

Fast forward six months, most of the replacement is built, but the Converge operation is still a mystery to the clients, remember that it's THEIR process, so it's still a work in progress. And we still don't know what all of the tables in the app are for, so we start whacking them until something breaks.

Our department (IT) digs its heels in one day and drags the main analyst and his manager over for a User Acceptance review, and we are told that they want to be able to relabel all of the stacks whenever the need strikes. You can imagine that this was never in the requirements - and you'd be right. The main analyst had told us that they'd never changed the grid layout before - but the new manager wanted this feature. And the label text of the stacks was required by the Converge operation in order to execute the converge logic for repositioning the plates in the stack being converged out of. We put this request on the software development backlog, but I made a deal with the supervisor: You define the details of the Converge operation - put them into your plate management system docs, if you want - and I'll give you an estimate of what it would take to enhance the application to do this.

Three years go by ... no Converge documentation, ergo no grid re-labling enhancement. Problem solved.

There's kind of a happy ending to this, in that I, with the occasional help of a contractor or two, delivered this app about a year late. And an even happier part was that we never got a service ticket on it that wasn't related to the data coming from the external IMS system. Several years, and no legitimate application errors.

There's also an interesting challenge for me, if I ever get bored in my old age. That late requirement to re-label the stacks (and presumably rows) could actually be implemented while retaining the proper functioning of the Converge operation. It would take several hundred hours, and might even require a home-grown business rules language, but I can picture it.

But I'm looking forward to the release of Diablo 4, so I probably won't have time. Too bad!

A Physical Universe

As an complementary explanation of the atheism that I adopted between the late '70s and mid-90s, I offer the following.

Sometime in the last decade, my nightime-just-before-falling-asleep revery became imagining the conditions of the early universe. That, or Jennifer Lawrence. One of the two.

When a non-believer like me starts to outline their reasons for non-belief, in my case, at least, it centers on the apparent fact that this is a physical universe consisting of physical things. That notional ontology can take you from considering that a wood table is real; 

...back though the table's stages of manufacture;
...back through the wood's parent plant's stages of physical growth;
...back through the plant's evolution from a eukaryote;
...back through the eukaryote's evolution from archaea;
...back through the appearance of self-replicating molecules and metabolism and lipid vesicles that precede the appearance of "whole" living things;
...back through the creation of the chemical (multi-molecular) precursors of these, both on earth, and previously in the universe as some of the hundreds of molecules that form in clouds between the stars;
...back to the creation of the first heavier elements in the hearts of supernovas;
...back prior to the time of last scattering (recombination) where the CMB emerges;
...back through initial "big bang" nucleosynthesis that created hydrogen, helium and lithium in the very first few minutes.

Back and back and back and back ... almost ad infinitum.

And all of it is on extremely firm observational and experimental ground.

That's a lot of detail supporting the idea that this is a physical universe based on protons and neutrons and electrons - and their constituents.

When you compare the above to arguments for the various supernatural world views, one wonders where these supernatural components fit in the universe.

All of the physical bits can be verified in most elementary and secondary schools, and most colleges and universities. But Thor can't, and there's the problem. Where is Asgard? Where did Odin come from? Why does a universe need Asgard and the Norse Gods for earth to exist? And Yahweh? Yeah, right.

I should leave this piece as-is, except that what got me started today, was considering the formation of the solar system and the planets. So we turn the clock in the other direction and go forward from big bang and creation of the earliest stars to the pre-solar nebula; to the spinning presolar disk; to that first fusion of hydrogen in Sol; then on to the accretion of the planets. 

From CE (Current Era) to 4.6 GYA, to 13.8 GYA. And back again. Assuming that between the time of last scattering (370k years after the big bang) to the creation of the first stars (100M years???) to the earliest supernovas and creation of heavier elements (110M years???) ... it may have been a billion years before there was sufficient quantities of heavier elements for the widespread production of the precursors to life. But that still leaves 8.2 billion years between then and the creation of the solar system. It may be that self-replicators and metabolism arose quadrillions of times in the universe before our planet formed. And its conceivable that protobionts  arise anywhere in the universe where red and yellow dwarf stars have rock planets orbiting them stably. Several hundreds of million years appears to be what's required for the simplest organisms - bacteria and the like. If our world is any indication, it could take 1 or 2 billion years to go from bacteria to prokaryote to eukaryote, and then on to multicellular life, most places in the universe where worlds like ours exist.

Thought-provoking.

It just might be a one-shot deal

Part 2 of answering to answering these questions from Dr. Michael L. Brown

Dr. Brown's questions are:

1. Is Your Atheism Based on Study or Experience?
2. Do You Have Purpose and Destiny?
3. Does God Exist?
4. Can Science Explain the Origin of Life?
5. Have You Questioned Your Atheism?
6. Are You Materialistic?
7. Would You Be Willing to Follow God?

This afternoon's offering is #1 - Is Your Atheism Based on Study or Experience?

Both.

I grew up in a nominally Christian household, but my father was Lutheran by family tradition, and a non-participant in practice. My mother was Episcopalian by choice, so we children assumed that the Episcopal church was our flavor of Christianity. I did not have a fervent belief in God or Jesus until around age 21, when I became Born Again and joined a Four Square Pentecostal church. I aspired to be the best Christian I could be, and started by reading the New Testament word-for-word. So far, so good ... Jesus was the man. 

The next step was to get the background that (I assumed) only the Old Testament could give me, so I read that word-for-word as well. This is where the trouble starts. To paraphrase Richard Dawkins (of whom I was not familiar until 25 years later), Yahweh was a reprehensible character, and his actions absolutely betrayed what fellow believers told me I should believe about him. How could Jesus represent this cosmic dick? It was time for a quick reassurance that Jesus was good, and that Yahweh was not that relevant to one's place in the world and potential salvation. So I reread the New Testament.

After reading NT, then OT, then NT again in fairly quick succession (8-12 months?), I stepped away to get perspective. Far away. It would be another ten years before I would reconsider my rapid conversion, then deconversion. 

In brief, Round 2 was circa 1985, and included another reading of OT, then NT in fairly crisp order. I may have had a little outside study - it would have been only about who wrote the Bible, and when, but it did not reaffirm my earlier faith that God exists and that Jesus would save my soul.

Round 3 was mid-1990's, and occurred after I had gotten married. Same result as mid-90's, added by more internetz to highlight some of the issues (problems) such as the Synoptic Problem. I don't know that my wife ever knew about any of this until the last 10 or 15 years. She, btw, was never a believer, but neither did she consider herself an atheist. She just saw no reason for belief.

Round 4 was circa 2011, OT then NT again, and included an on-line Bible study group of both atheists and believers. I also took on-line courses (Yale videos, Great Courses CDs) and still more independent roaming the internetz.

That is it for me. There will be no more agonizing re-appraisal of religious beliefs. The idea that this is a physical universe behaving in accordance with observed "laws", and contains nothing supernatural, does not trouble me. To quote the great philosopher Frank Zappa, "it just might be a one-shot deal".

I can be wrong about some or all of this, but I don't think so. I don't see a reason to waste time on worry.

Questions about atheism.

 I ran across a tweet in my Twitter "Thinkers" list that got me thinking. Darn the luck!

A response by @RealAtheology (here)  to some questions by @DrMichaelLBrown got my blood going, and serves as an excuse to continue the train of thought that I left at the station in 2016 (here)

Dr. Brown's questions are:

1. Is Your Atheism Based on Study or Experience?
2. Do You Have Purpose and Destiny?
3. Does God Exist?
4. Can Science Explain the Origin of Life?
5. Have You Questioned Your Atheism?
6. Are You Materialistic?
7. Would You Be Willing to Follow God?

Although no one asked my opinion, I'll consider question 3 to be "Does God Exist?", and touch on the others in another post soon.

Since I can't say definitely that God does or does not exist, I'll consider it as a evaluation of my belief that the proposition "God Exists" is true.

First, I use the term "belief" as meaning "a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing". Specifically "a state of mind in which confidence is placed in some thing" ... the "thing" being the proposition that God exists.

Assuming that absolute knowledge is not possible, and that absolute certainty is thereby not possible, I end up establishing a credence value in the range 0.01 to 0.99, much as you might see a probability value expressed for some scientific topic. Mind you, I don't do this every day. Ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent of the time, "credence" and "probability" are just not things that pop into my head.

So, about that credence.

For this post, I presume God to be the omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, omnipotent creator of the universe and judge of all mankind. Let's examine only what the "creator of the universe" part means. First, if I accept that Genesis is notionally worthwhile as a starting point, God exists before the world does. That presents us with a puzzle, since we have to presume there is a realm occupied by God in order to perform the work of creating the heavens, the earth and all of creation. Taken literally, Genesis 1:1 through 1:31 doesn't reflect what humanity knows to be the case. What do we do?

It's here that I might estimate whether Genesis through verse 31 has a high likelihood of being true. It's helpful to have some other benchmark that can be used for comparison, so that, for example, claim A.1 can be said to be more or less likely than competing claim B.1.

Let A.1 be "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.". Then let B.1 be "The universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature."

Claim A.1 has as a prerequisite that there be a thing called God, while B.1 requires that there be space-time, matter and energy, and the physical laws that describe the interaction, structure and behavior of these. Right off the bat, we are presented with the bare assertion that God exists, in order to get to Genesis 1:1, the creation of the heavens and the earth. Likewise, the believer should ask, why is the pre-existence of "space-time, matter and energy...etc"  any more plausible? In both cases, you need a starting point.

At this point, you could make the claim that God is a simpler proposition than "space-time, matter and energy, and the physical laws that describe the interaction, structure and behavior of these" - thus Occam's Razor tells us God is a better starting point. But that's a gross over-simplification of God.

If we're being fair, claim B.1's prerequisites are also at question. Where did they come from? The main Big Bang models (the expansion of space; particle horizons; thermalization) do not make claims as to the provenance of the Big Bang prerequisites, but they can be observed and measured so that we can verify that they pertain in all cases. Can we put God on that same footing? Let's try.

Given that the prerequisites for claim B.1 are assumed to be real because they can always be verified under close examination, can we then make the claim that "God is assumed to be real because it can always be verified under close examination?"

This is where we run into a problem. For someone that conceives of reality as space-time, matter, energy and physical laws that describe them - no corresponding description of God - that I can find - is testable and would yield a confirmation. It sounds labored and dismissive to say, but proponents of God's existence never walk over to a window and point to God  directly. They never point to a flower and say God made that, and here's how. They never hop into a car and drive you to an institute of higher education and sho off the observations that could lead us to verify God's existence. Yet, you can go to a biologist and ask them to describe how the flower germinates and blooms, how it propagates for reproduction so that its species can persist. They can describe the chemistry that is required to perform these activities, or can defer to chemists who can explain the chemical activities in detail. The chemists can refer to the physics that describe how chemicals come to be, and cosmologists can then describe how the elements and molecules, monomers and polymers come to be so that chemical processes can take place. Cosmologists can also describe how the structures of the universe - stars, galaxies, planets, comets, asteroids etc. - come into existence. All of this can be traced back to a hot dense state in the universe some 13.8 billion years ago. 

So you can "net it out" by comparing the two claims and how well they explain the features and behavior of the universe. Claim A.1 relies on God, whose existence is more or less proposed in the Hebrew Bible, and assumed to be true by Hebrews, Christians and Muslims. God is assumed to be responsible for, or a participant in the narrative put forth in the Old and New Testaments and the Koran. You can somewhat infer what God is and what his leanings are by the writings in these books, but it is neither accurate, precise nor consistent in the way that a description of a chemical process (derived from claim B.1 and its results) is.

On this basis alone, I feel that God - as described in the Bible - very likely does not exist.

Hello World - 2022 version

I've spent more than six years not blogging. Is "not blogging" an activity that one can be said to spend time on?

One of the things I noticed this morning (Monday, 9/26/22) is how good it made me feel to consider a topic, draft an outline, and fill it out so that it says (what I hope is...) what I intended when I first conceived it. I'm a little rusty, but we'll see how it turns out.

Post #2 in this decade ... coming up shortly.

Validating God - for Dummies

I, the believer, get to define God.

Not completely, but I take what I have heard from my parents, my siblings, the kids in the neighborhood, and my Sunday School teachers, and I fashion a mental picture of God that may - or may not - resemble other concepts of God that others may have. Does my God-Concept match the one in the Bible? Maybe a little, but I’ll discover decades later the problem with that. Does my GC match the God of classical theism? You must be kidding! I won’t know what that is for another 30 or 40 years.

If and when I try to validate my GC against reality, you can imagine what I’ll come up with. If there’s a "Standard", mine won’t be it. Regardless of how far my God-Concept deviates from some norm, if I want to be justifiably confident of my GC, I should frame it as a hypothesis that can be compared against the real world to assess its validity.

As a bonus, developing a justificatory argument that defends my view of the proposition “God exists” prepares me to win hearts and change minds should I ever bring it out into public to debate a dissenter, and also helps me to identify gaps, weaknesses and outright flaws. Who knows, I might have to modify or discard some or all of my GC and adopt a new one that provides a better explanatory framework!

Now, where do I start? How can I test my God hypothesis against the real world to verify its plausibility? I’ll start with something accessible to me, like how often God answers prayers. Granted, this ability is not explicitly embodied in a “classical” definition of God, but seeing as how I don’t expect to see her, him, it as a physical person, the answering of prayers is the closest the lay person can get to detecting God's existence.

So ... I pray. And sometimes my prayers are answered - HALLELUJAH! But if I’m honest with myself, is it an expected result? Should I expect that a prayer is answered on occasion? Could there be a simpler explanation? Of course, so let’s try something tougher - let’s try praying for an amputee’s limb to be restored. And - as we know - this never happens. It. Never. Happens. So we have a negative result on our test of the hypothesis that God answers prayers. But there’s a snappy rejoinder to this disconfirmstion of God’s existence, the ever-useful “But God works in mysterious ways”. And the counter to that inane bit of apologia is that you’ve just declared God to be an unreliable subject for observation. Which means we can’t know anything about her. Which means we don’t know if God has our best interests in mind. Or which means we don’t know whether God is interested in us at all. Or which means God could be a trickster, or evil, or not there at all, because when we declare “But God works in mysterious ways”, we’ve pretty much ruled out any hope of doing more than speculating. So maybe we should shut up a while.

While there is lots more to be said here, I’ve summarized my initial thoughts on validating my (hypothetical) God-Concept. Keeping in mind the problems of reliability in going from a real-world occurrence to a human perception, to a human interpretation and eventual rationalization, you can see how many hurdles we face when trying to justify that the God that you (or I) believe to be real actually exists

A Natural Model of the Universe

I was reminded by SecularOutpost about a paper from Physicist Sean M. Carroll titled Why (Almost All) Cosmologists Are Atheists.

I’ve reread the entire paper twice in the last several days because I admire what Carroll says AND how he says it. One paragraph has always jumped out at me. Read it for yourself below, then I’ll explain why.

The essence of materialism is to model the world as a formal system, which is both unambiguous and complete as a description of reality. A materialist model may be said to consist of four elements. First, we model the world as some formal (mathematical) structure. (General relativity describes the world as a curved manifold with a Lorentzian metric, while quantum mechanics describes the world as a state in some Hilbert space. As a more trivial example, we could imagine a universe which consisted of nothing other that an infinitely long list of ”bits” taking on the values 0 or 1.) Second, this structure exhibits patterns (the ”laws of nature”), so that the amount of information needed to express the world is dramatically less than the structure would in principle allow. (In a world described by a string of bits, we might for example find that the bits were an infinitely repeated series of a single one followed by two zeroes: 100100100100…) Third, we need boundary conditions which specify the specific realization of the pattern. (The first bit in our list is a one.) Note that the distinction between the patterns and their boundary conditions is not perfectly well-defined; this is an issue which becomes relevant in cosmology, and we’ll discuss it more later. Finally, we need a way to relate this formal system to the world we see: an ”interpretation.”

Back when I stopped being Christian in the ’70’s, I still retained this slight suspicion that reality still contained some supernatural aspect. Years later, as I tried to assemble a somewhat accurate picture of reality, I backed in to the idea that the universe that I can observe consists of space and time (later, “spacetime”), matter and energy, and exhibits behaviors that could be observed, and could help me to validate my mental picture of it. Naturally, I tried to imagine where supernatural things might fit into this picture.

I once thought it obvious that there could be only a few ways to reconcile the supernatural with the natural. 1) the supernatural is the framework upon which the other things rest. 2) we exist wholly within some supernatural environment. 3) the supernatural is separate, but somehow meaningful in ways that are unclear. 4) we - and the universe - ARE wholly supernatural, and we just don’t recognize it (Or refuse to acknowledge it). Clearly some of these ideas overlap, but that’s what I can recall.

Once I had my framework for thinking about the universe to validate my (4) suspicions on what the supernatural might be, ideas of supernatural agency in the universe started to drop by the wayside. By the start of the new millenium, this informal process was complete - I was functionally - if not consciously - atheist. So what’s that have to do with Carroll’s paper?

When I read Why (Almost All) Cosmologists Are Atheists a few years ago, it validated the approach I had taken to arrive at a naturalistic world view. The specific paragraph that I quote above, although more eloquent and more complete than I was thinking, essentially turns into this for laypeople like me:

1. describe what entities there are in your system
   
2. describe how they behave
   
3. define the extent of the system
   
4. compare your model to reality and articulate it for review
   

Easy as pie!

Objective Moral Values - the 2016 Edition

I tried to post the following on The Secular Outpost , but Disqus yakked up a hairball when I tried to log in, so I’m posting it here. Read the post first, if you’d like context. Jeffrey Jay Lowder was inviting an open discussion on objective moral values.

---

I’m with the “approachable scientifically” contingent.

As a non-philosopher, I get stuck on the term “objective”. Given that objective means true or false regardless of what people think about it, and that morality is a body of standards regarding right and wrong behavior, then I can imagine some spongy “globally recognized standards” that might obtain for long periods of time. I find truly objective morality - true or false regardless of what observers think about it, presumably eternally - impossible to pin down without stipulating some bedrock thing(s) that we agree not to investigate further.

I can envision it boiling down to this: We procreate, and adopt behaviors that make procreation more likely. To become social, we adopted more complex behavior to help families, kin, clans and communities thrive. So, I might be able to derive some objective moral values and duties that apply universally, eternally to basic social creatures.

If that is what we’re trying to discover, then yes, I’m convinced that objective moral values exist, as a set of properties and behaviors of biological creatures that succeed at being social.

Once we move beyond that, it starts to appear to this untrained eye as a bunch of engineering exercises performed by people with different outlooks and goals. Thought-provoking, but abstract.

Lrrr's Toothpick

I can’t remember what caused this to pop into my head, but it’s stuck. So I need to get it out.

Russell’s Teapot

is an analogy first coined by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making scientifically unfalsifiable claims rather than shifting the burden of proof to others, specifically in the case of religion.

It (kinda) takes the form “I claim there’s a china teapot orbiting the sun between the Earth and Mars. You can’t disprove it, therefore I expect you to accept that my assertion is true”.

Since claims of God and lesser supernatural things often take this general form, it surprised me to hear - not too long ago - a theistically-inclined correspondent claim that you could in principle prove that said teapot does not orbit the sun as described, thus the analogy does not apply to God (so if Russell's Teapot is your go-to rejoinder to the claim that God exists, well, you’ve failed, Mister Godless Heathen).

Huh?

When Russell first brought this analogy into the public consciousness c. 1952, it was in practice impossible to disprove the existence of the teapot. The technology didn’t yet exist, and certainly the will and resources to undertake such a low reward endeavor didn’t (and still don’t) exist. But wait - there’s more!

The Russell's Teapot analogy is actually too narrow in scope, given what we know about the cosmos today, if you take it literally. Which you shouldn’t. Because it’s an analogy.

Scale the analogy up to fit the cosmos that we observe today, and you could claim that there’s a pure diamond toothpick that was once owned by Lrrr, Ruler of Omicron Persei 8, that now floats freely between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. In principle, it could be verified. In practice - extremely unlikely!

That crystallizes what I think is the point. You - Miss Straw Woman That I Constructed For This Exposition - want me to accept that God exists because I can’t prove she doesn’t. You - Miss SWTICFTE (for short) - present me with 2 equally fruitless options: believe in something that has never been verifiably observed in history, or commence my search of the cosmos to prove that it doesn't exist. That pisses me off. You're trying to get me to waste my life, and I won’t do it. There are other alternatives in life, and THAT is where I may find a fruitful path.

Investigating the World

Today, this blog is as good a place as any to jot down an idea that is probably in the foundation of any religious person's world view. I 'm presuming that to be religious in the way that I once was decades ago, one has to accept the following premises:

1. There is a Supernatural component to reality
   
2. The Supernatural contains entities that can affect our existence
   
3. Humans have souls
   
4. The Supernatural realm has some relationship to the soul.
   
5. Supernatural entities have some effect on human souls
   
6. Humans should think and behave in a way that is most likely to bring about the kind treatment of us in the physical world ... and/or ...
   
7. Humans should think and behave in a way that is most likely to bring about the kind treatment of our souls in the supernatural world
   

Obviously, the religiously and/or philosophically inclined might find more or less about this brief brain dump that they'd include in the consideration of the world - whatever they conceive it to be - but it seems like a good place to start the investigation.

How's Your Soul?

I’m sure that there are other concepts of religion, but the ones that most of us think of (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, etc) include some idea of a soul and an afterlife.

When was the last time you had a soul check-up?

I bet if you went to the doctor and asked for a soul check-up, you’d be told politely that they don't do that.

Try a chiropractor. Or a dentist. Don’t laugh - a dentist is a perfectly sensible choice to check your soul, given that we don’t know where a soul might reside. Maybe your opthamologist knows. Maybe not. A palm reader? Maybe they’d take your money. Your pastor? You never know, but he or she might offer to pray with you about the health of your soul.

Try an auto mechanic. Or a appliance repair man. I bet these guys don’t know soul from shinola. Nor do I. Which brings me to my point:

Shouldn’t we stop being touchy-feely-spiritual procrastinators and get that soul check up right away? And shouldn’t we stop worrying about it after the verdict comes back that souls are bronze-age fabrications?

String Theory is what?

String Theory is - as a theory - a topic of controversy this week, as articles by Ethan Siegel and Sabine Hossenfelder attest. I recommend reading both posts and following links within them for a full morning's reading!

What does it mean for the working stiff?

Physics still explains all of the fundamental features of reality that affect us.

Do I care about features that are smaller than protons, electrons and neutrons? Intellectually I do, but practically, not so much.

Do I care about features that are larger than our galaxy? Intellectually I do, but practically, again it has little meaning.

So why do I even care enough to write a few words about it? Because I still think that experiencing life as fully as I am able is one of the driving forces of my human existence. And the work of the theoreticians and experimentalists helps me to expand the scope of what I consider conceivable, and thus expand the scope of what might be experienced.

Ramen!

A Letter from God

I was musing about how we might react if we received a sign that God exists. Imagine that I send a letter to my sister. It’s hand-written, and signed “Love, Johnny”. My sister receives the letter in the mail, opens it up, reads it, recognizes my handwriting, sees my signature, and instantly knows that the letter came from me. After all, she knows that I exist (we DID grow up together!) and she knows I can write. She’s 99.999,999,999% sure that Johnny wrote her a letter. She has good reasons to.

In contrast, suppose my sister receives a letter, and it’s signed “Love, God". If God is the “uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power” that some theologians posit, then it would presumably be capable of writing and sending a letter to my sister. But how sure can she be that the supreme, no-lie, it's-really-her God actually did this?

If you’ve thought about this sort of thing before, then that last sentence is where it gets interesting. You see, Sis can know that Johnny sent her a letter signed “Love, Johnny” because she knows to a very high degree of certainty that I exist prior to any scenario involving a letter. She’s seen me. She’s yelled at me. She’s tried to hit me. She’s even kissed me. Unless her senses and intellect are unreliable, she knows I exist and that I am capable of writing letters. This should bolster her belief that she currently is in receipt of a letter from me. But she has no such experience with God. If God fell out of the sky and landed on her head, she wouldn’t know him/her/it from shinola. There’s nothing in her experience that demonstrates to her that an actual entity in this world is God. She has to rely on her ability to mentally picture what God might be, and to feel some certainty that he/she/it exists in the form she imagines, without having a concrete demonstration that it actually does. Is writing a letter that demonstration?

In fact, she can’t confidently associate this piece of evidence (no matter what it points to) with God unless God is either 1) a known entity with a propensity to write letters to pretty ladies, or 2) her conception of God is a better explanation for a letter that is signed “Love, God” than all competing explanations. The evidence points to a letter-writer. That’s all. And here is the crux of the problem for most arguments that God exists. That “uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power” that theologians posit cannot be established as a sensible concept in isolation from other concepts. There are no observations, hypotheses or theories that point to such a being existing as part of physical reality. Here in the twenty-first century, ideas such as “there must be a cause of the universe, or a designer, or a fine-tuner, or a being of greatest perfection” do not lead us to find an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power. In fact, finding a place where this thing might be situated is not even sensible. As cold as it sounds to people hoping there is a personal god behind the scenes, it appears that physical features are all there is. Space-time, matter, energy, the laws governing them and the attributes, behaviors and relationships that allow what we observe to be observed. There may always be that nagging question: “but what caused THAT?” - but the god-thingy doesn’t help us answer that question. It doesn’t stand on its own. Mankind continues to look for answers, and continues to find hypotheses such as the god-thingy useless in the search.

So, a letter signed “Love, God” ends up being better explained by a human letter-writer than an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power that also writes letters. It turns out that Sis has no good reason to believe she got a letter from God, because there’s no good reason to think God exists, based solely on this letter. I'm not suggesting that she can't believe in God, or have some other reasons to believe that don't rely on (weak) evidence like this. But this letter from God isn't a good reason. When you apply this type of thinking to the bigger questions - the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the existence of moral values, you find that those are not good reasons to think that God exists, either.

Was BlogPress for iPad finally fixed?

Yes, it was.
It's a miracle!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

The Incompetence of the Bible

I’m rewriting this post - “The Incompetence of the Bible” - because I was never happy with what it said, or how I said it. I can only remember withdrawing or rewriting a post once in my life, but it’s time to do it again.

While re-reading the New Testament, my focus this time around was 1) matches and gaps between the Gospels and 2) what Paul has to tell us about Jesus. The Gospels aren’t bad - this was (probably) my fifth time through them chapter-by-chapter. I took some time comparing them via the Gospel Parallels - good stuff. Then I get to Acts - ehh. I don’t know why, but I’ve already forgotten it after just a few months. Its just not that impressive to me. Now I’m into the Epistles, and for some reason I’m irritated. Paul just doesn’t know Jack about Jesus. And I let that irritation consume the original post. But my general idea still holds - that the Bible is full of incompetence.

When you read Genesis, its easy to see something’s wrong. The universe that we observe today has features that lead us to believe to a high degree of certainty that it was smaller, denser and hotter in the past. Projecting backward in time, approximately 13.8 billion years ago this model reaches maximum density and temperature, and minimum size. And that’s all we know for sure. What came “before” is a mystery, so much so that some physicists think using the word “before” is incoherent. But Genesis tells us a different story, and that’s where my claim of incompetence first finds an example. If God inspired or directed the authors of Genesis to write the account of the first appearance of the universe, it doesn’t appear that it made it to the twenty-first century correctly. And if God is the omni-bestest at everything - and our conceptions of God generally do assume this - then something is amiss. And without unpeeling what exactly is amiss, we must assume that if God is the inspiration or direction behind this account, then she failed to insure the story remained accurate down through the ages. And this is this first indication to us that God - again, if she exists - is not the omni-bestest that we might have thought. Other thinkers have suggested that God is a trickster, or God has a reason to allow this incongruity to persist, but I have (intemperately) decided to describe it as incompetence because Genesis was the ideal place to establish God’s bona fides. She could have even directed the author to end it with a caveat that admits that subsequent books are not inspired or directed by the great one, and we could still be confident that, in spite of what others subsequently said, that God does indeed exist in the form that was described in Genesis. But we don’t have that.

What we have us people trying to kill each other over supposedly God-inspired differences on how to worship and behave. And that tends to make one think that the concept of God as malicious, or a trickster, or negligent, or disinterested, or incompetent, applies.

I tend to think that the Bible was a combination of good-faith guessing about the universe, along with much borrowing from other traditions and some inventions to reach the concept of salvation as described in the New Testament. This is an oversimplification, of course, but it looks like they made a hash of it. Thus, every time I read it nowadays, I tend to see how hashed up it is, and think about how a supreme being could have prevented it, but didn’t. And it just looks like they did a bad job.

Or maybe God was never there.

NT: 1 Thessalonians

I continue my cursory review of the New Testament with 1 Thessalonians, considered by many to be the first Epistle written, thus the first of any book in the New Testament. I’ve already skimmed over Galatians and James, also considered by some to be the first books written. It’s not relevant to me which is truly the first, because there seems to be nothing in any of them that tell me that this or that book is a direct consequence of meeting Jesus or those who met him. (See my NT index here for the entire series so far.)

I admit that my notes here are shallower than you might expect, given that this is the Bible we’re talking about. I’m a little surprised myself, having read this at least three other times over the decades - probably four. I attribute this to a slightly different point of view over the years. In the seventies, it was “this is the Bible - its the Word of God”. Then it became “this is inspired by thoughts of the divine, but probably muddled through human error”. Now it’s “where’s Jesus in all of this? How do I know that Paul is a fair broker?” Consequently, what Paul says, absent some clear authority from Jesus, is not that interesting to me. My sparse notes are a reflection of that ennui.

Chapter 1 is entirely a salutation.

Chapter 2 recounts travails at Phillippi, and expresses love for the Thessalonians. Verse 15 mentions that the Jews "... both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets". Red meat for the Mel Gibsons of the world?

Chapter 3 is more blessings and encouragement of the faithful. Meh.

Chapter 4 contains even more exhortations ... but includes a future meeting with Jesus and “them in the clouds” - clearly some imagery that took hold in Christianity.

4:17
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Chapter 5 is still more exhortations ... and a closing blessing. That’s it.

As I sort through these early Epistles, I’m struck at how no mention of Jesus’ miracle-working is made. Ignore the lack of historical or biographical information - the idea that people might have witnessed healing the blind, curing the sick, raising the dead, turning water into wine, or walking on water is never brought up. I understand (via a Dr. Robert M. Price video) that the explanation for this is that the recipients of the letter would have already known about these, thus mention of the miracles was not necessary, but I find that ... ummmmmm ... interesting. Weren’t miracles noteworthy? Anyway, 1 Thessalonians is yet another example of an Epistle in which Jesus is mentioned solely as the object of worship, not as having performed behavior similar to actual beings.

Here are the mentions of Jesus that I can find:

1 Thessalonians 1:1 (KJV)
Paul, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians [which is] in God the Father and [in] the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace [be] unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 1:3 (KJV)
Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;

1 Thessalonians 1:10 (KJV)
And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, [even] Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.

1 Thessalonians 2:14 (KJV)
For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they [have] of the Jews:

1 Thessalonians 2:15 (KJV)
Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men:

1 Thessalonians 2:19 (KJV)
For what [is] our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? [Are] not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?

1 Thessalonians 3:11 (KJV)
Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you.

1 Thessalonians 3:13 (KJV)
To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.

1 Thessalonians 4:1 (KJV)
Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort [you] by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, [so] ye would abound more and more.

1 Thessalonians 4:2 (KJV)
For ye know what commandments we gave you by the Lord Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 4:14 (KJV)
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

1 Thessalonians 5:9 (KJV)
For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,

1 Thessalonians 5:18 (KJV)
In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (KJV)
And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and [I pray God] your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:28 (KJV)
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with you.

A Theory of the Supernatural - Part 3

In my prior two posts on "A Theory of the Supernatural" (Part 1 and Part 2), I laid out what I thought were possible arrangements of S-world and N-world such that S-objects might be able to cause effects in N-world, much as we might expact a deity to.

In case I failed to mention it, it seems to me that there are a series of contingencies that must play out successfully for a human theory of the supernatural to be plausible. My list:

1. A supernatural realm must exist to provide the possibility that supernatural entities exist
   
2. The supernatural entities that we're interested in would have the ability to act independently, and cause physical effects in the Natural realm
   
3. The means of maintaining awareness between the supernatural and natural realms must exist in order for actions in the supernatural realm to be carried out as expected in the natural realm
   
4. A means of transmitting the action from S to N is required.
   
5. An entity with at least one characteristic of unrivaled excellence exists in S-world that we might refer to as God

There are a number of quibbles that Theologists and Philosophers might have with these contingencies, such as whether God and the realm in which it exists are separate ideas, and whether the first four items in my list are even germane when we're discussing some entity that can perform any act, such as God allegedly can. But I'm sticking to my guns for the moment - I believe that asking "how does she do that?" is as meaningful as asking how we know that a particular event or circumstance is a result of God's action.

I realized during drafting my last post on a theory of the Supernatural that belaboring whether simpler Supernatual entities such as ghosts, faeries, poltergeists (etc.) exist, doesn't necessarily improve the case for a supreme being, so I'll skip it entirely. Let it be said that a Deity might exist in a Deity-capable realm, and ignore any further navel-gazing.

Also in my prior S-post, I surmised that an arrangement of S-world and N-world could (most likely) be one of the following:

• SR3. N and S are identical
  
• SR4. one supervenes upon the other
  
• SR5. one contains the other

For brevity's sake, let's treat these three views as functionally equivalent. Given that S and N are coincident realms, and that humanity's current problem is just that we can't perceive S and don't understand what S might be (other than a place for supernatural stuff to originate), is there a mechanism that we can posit that will allow S-stuff to occur in N? This immediately brings to mind the idea that, regardless of our current inability to perceive S and understand it, any S-causes that affect N ought to raise an eyebrow. Occurrences that are inexplicable are candidates for S-stuff. If we can identify "S-stuff Candidates", then we might have found a starting point from which we can work back through the postulated S-affects-N mechanism, and establish the reality of S. What might we use to start the investigation?

I'm going to confess that I'm drawing a blank here. What the heck, in the history of the world, can we point to and say "this is unambiguous evidence that S-causes affect N"? We know where thunder comes from. And floods. And locusts. We know what red tide is. We know where the sun goes at night. We know that people sense something that they think is "the supernatural". We know that allegedly supernatural objects (crystals, star charts, spirits, deities) can be used to give people focus, organizing principles, a sense of importance, a sense of community, a feeling of certainty and power over an uncertain and intractable cosmos. So where do we look to find clear evidence of S-stuff?

First, I'm going to be really cold and toss out all personal anecdotes of the supernatural as irrelevant - including my own. I thought for several years that spirits existed, and that my grandmother, who had been unable to speak during most of my conscious childhood, guided me and watched over me after she passed away. How else to explain my ability to persevere and to make good when my life was a mess? Similarly, I felt in my early twenties that Jesus loved me, that God loved me, and that I was destined to find human love and to make a positive impact in the world. And both of those feelings are fully explainable. I was looking to be significant in the universe, to find love and friendship, to have something firm around which to organize my life. And was important to me back then. So it's easy for me to imagine other people - billions of other people - approaching their lives the same way, doing the same general things that I did when I was in need. And I don't see why they shouldn't do that, if they don't have a better plan. But I don't see why anyone should think that this human need, desire, hunch that there is something supernatural going on and is affecting them in a real way is evidence that there in fact is. It could be considered evidence if there were a way to validate its occurrence, then examine possible causes. Absent some good physical explanation, a candidate S-event could be important in our overall probability calculation of S's existence, but unsubstantiated personal anecdotes don't work here.

Let me point to where the supernatural might be found, given that trivial occurences and human feelings of the supernatural haven't produce anything substantive so far. We should look at the Great Unanswered Questions - things like the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the source of ostensibly objective moral values, the apparent fine-tuning of the universe, the origin of consciousness, the fact that the universe is understandable. If this sounds familiar, it's because these are (obviously) some of the topics used in constructing arguments for the existence of God. And I believe that's where I should look, as well. So let's examine one.

Asking the question "where did the universe come from?" often results in one of two answers. First, a respondent might reply "we don't know". Fair enough ... seems like a difficult question to answer. Another answer we hear is "God created the universe". Here's Dr. William Lane Craig on the subject:

Now from the very nature of the case, as the cause of space and time, this cause must be an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power which created the universe. Moreover, I would argue, it must also be personal. For how else could a timeless cause give rise to a temporal effect like the universe?

Craig subsequently states that this cause is a Personal Creator, and that this Personal Creator is God.

Craig didn't think this one up by himself ... there is a history of musings about the "First Cause" - dating back to Plato and Aristotle. Much has been made of Craig's particular argument, with my particular take being that anyone claiming this - an uncaused, changeless, timeless, and immaterial being of unimaginable power that is also personal caused the universe - has the interesting task of explaining how those five exact characteristics are required for a being to create the universe, and how that being exists in some state somewhere in order to effect this universe's creation. These claims reek of bare assertion and flirt intimately with infinite regress.

Without good reason to acknowledge that a creator thingy has to have the characteristics just described, we don't really get any closer to describing a plausible first mover, let alone something that, additionally, has some influence on transient corporeal lives and eternal spiritual lives.

Next time, let me poke around into some of the individual characteristics.

NT: An Index

An index to my brief notes and comments on the New Testament:

• Matthew - The First Four Chapters
  
• Matthew - the Sermon on the Mount
  
• Matthew - the Mission Sermon
  
• Matthew - the Sermon in Parables
  
• Matthew - the Discourse on the Church
  
• How the Gospel of Matthew worked on me
  
• Matthew - the Olivet Discourse and the Crucifixion
  
• Mark - Chapters 1 through 4
  
• Using Gospel Parallels texts
  
• Mark - Chapters 5 through 8
  
• Mark - Chapters 9 through 12
  
• Mark - Chapters 13 through 16
  
• Luke - Chapters 1 through 4
  
• Luke - Chapters 5 through 8
  
• Luke - Chapters 9 through 12
  
• Luke - Chapters 13 through 20
  
• Luke - Chapters 21 through 24
  
• John - Chapters 1 through 4
  
• John - Chapters 5 through 8
  
• John - Chapters 9 through 12
  
• John - Chapters 13 through 16
  
• The Gospels - a Reflection
  
• John - Chapters 17 through 21
  
• Acts - Chapters 1 through 4
  
• Acts - Chapters 5 through 9
  
• Acts - Chapters 10 through 20
  
• Acts - Chapters 21 through 28
  
• A Pre-Epistle Reflection
  
• Romans - Chapters 1 through 5
  
• Romans - Chapters 6 through 10
  
• Romans - Chapters 11 through 16
  
• Romans - Where is Jesus?
  
• Galatians
  
• James
  
• First Thessalonians
  

NT: James

I turn my attention to the Epistle of James (Wikipedia, Blue Letter Bible), mainly because it is said by some that it might be the earliest book in the New Testament.

Fair Warning: James has approximately nothing to tell us about Jesus. He mentions Him by name twice. Two times. That’s all. So, whether or not James is the earliest mention of Jesus is practically irrelevant, since he provides no historical or biographical information that might make Jesus seem real.

Another note, if you’ve read the Gospels and Acts, then read James, you can imagine that itis written either 1) before an actual Jesus appears on Earth, or 2) before the tradition of an actual Jesus (as opposed to a wholly spiritual Jesus) is developed. Read Chapter 5, especially Verse 8 to see what I mean.

In the canonical order, James appears after Hebrews and before 1 Peter. It is the twentieth book in the New Testament. It, like Galatians, is brief, consequently I’ll charge through it in one post.

Chapter 1 is addressed to the twelve tribes - apparently of dispersed Judeo-Christians - and begins a sermon on sin. My favorite verse:

21 Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

Naughtiness! Yes, that’s our problem!

Chapter 2 shows us James view on justification - the act of becoming righteous - as he espouses works as well as faith. He sounds like a good man.

15 If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
16 And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
17 Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.

Chapter 3 seems like general advice on not being sinners, while Chapter 4 continues the theme.

17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

Chapter 5 repeats an earlier backhand to rich folk - James loves the poor and downtrodden.

1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

He closes with a final piece of advice.

19 Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him;
20 Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.

James’ epistle is not addressed to a specific group, at least not in the sense that it might be delivered to a particular recipient or group of them. It appears to be a broadcast message. You can imagine printing (if printing had been invented) many tens of copies and leaving them in the public square for general distribution. All-in-all, a nice letter. I like James.

As before, here are the (only two) verses where Jesus is mentioned by name, although “Lord” and “Christ” appear more frequently. Jesus does not seem to be a real person in James’ eyes.

James 1:1 (KJV)
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

James 2:1 (KJV)
My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, [the Lord] of glory, with respect of persons.

More Cheers!

NT: Galatians

I continue my occasional review of the New Testament with Galatians.

The Epistle to the Galatians appears in the New Testament after 2 Corinthians and before Ephesians - it’s the ninth book. It is worth noting that Galatians is thought by some to be the first of Paul’s Epistles to be written - between 45 and 55 C.E. As such, it serves as a window into what the Christian world was like at the earliest times, and may tell us something about what Paul - whom might be called the father of the Christian Church - believed about Jesus and the Jewish world in which he became aware of him.

To be charitable, there are other views about the order in which NT books were written. A quick Googling on “chronology of books in the new testament” returned me other timelines. I've omitted Galatians-first entries, since that seems to be a majority view:

• ”James-first”
  • www.biblestudytools.com
    
  • Grace Fellowship
    
  • www.visitingpreacher.org
    
  • www.voiceofonecrying.com
• ”Thessalonians-first”
  
  • Marcus Borg in the Huffington Post
    
  • www.newtestamenthistorytimeline.com
    
  • Bible.org - Introduction to the New Testament
    
  • a graphical timeline from Jericho Brisancei

Galatians is short, just six chapters, and appears to be motivated by Paul’s concern that the Galatian congregation is already straying from “the gospel” that they’ve been given regarding Christ. From Chapter 1:

6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:
7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

Apparently there’s another gospel or two that are floating around, and which Paul considers bad juju. Here, we can already see that there’s a tradition of preaching about Christ - that there are at least two, in fact - the one that Paul prefers, and the one that he thinks will pervert what he’s preaching. We don’t know (yet) what these gospels are, whether they have a name or a source or what tradition they present, but it will be interesting to see what turns up as Galatians unfolds.

11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.
12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
13 For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:

In the verses above, Paul attests that his version was received by revelation, not from man. Now this-heah is interesting! He hasn’t told us anything about Christ in this letter yet, but he claims his gospel came from beyond. You get the impression that he could be claiming that the revelation is from Jesus himself, but Gal 1:12 could be interpreted as an anonymous revelation _of_ Christ as well. We have no idea what his intention is, except to impress the audience that his words come from on high. That might work if you believe that sort of thing.

Anyway, Paul visits Peter and sees no other Apostles “save James the Lord’s brother”. The adventure begins.

The start of Chapter 2 tells us a couple of things about Paul, and (we might presume) the Christian community that he so strongly influences:

1 Then fourteen years after I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and took Titus with me also.
2 And I went up by revelation, and communicated unto them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to them which were of reputation, lest by any means I should run, or had run, in vain.
3 But neither Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised:
4 And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage:

He “went up by revelation”. Does that meant he didn’t physically go? Curious choice of words!

In verse 4, he reports spies that might want to bring him into bondage. We thus have, in just four verses, a reliance on revelation (or his imagination, if you’re skeptical) and a feeling of persecution. If his followers adopt Paul’s particular way of seeing the world, we could be in for a long, strange trip.

It gets weirder. Paul’s obsession with circumcision is an unfortunate sign of the times. Of course, if the present-day U.S. Government was going around snipping the ends of dudes’ dicks off, I might be as obsessed (and fearful) too. So, maybe Paul’s not as bent as I first thought. One of the defining features of Christianity then appears to be their desire to keep their weiners in one piece. Okay then, we finally have a solid rationale for Christianity!

Among other oddities:

9 And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave to me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.

Wherein Paul mentions a John - but apparently not an Apostle, if the prior chapter is to be believed. Oh, and more dick mangling.

Chapter 3 seems to be one long admonishment of the “foolish Galations”.

In Chapter 4, he gives a shout out to Abba, then continues his rant in slightly more subdued tones. At least he enjoys ’70s pop music.

Now, in Chapter 5 - something memorable:

19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

But he still can’t get off the topic of circumcision completely.

Chapter 6 is just the denouement of his admonishments and encouragements. Kinda anti-climactic.

If Galatians is the earliest record of Jesus, then you’d think there’d be a hint of something more than just the object of worship or salvation. Jesus might be. a Golden Calf, for all Paul has told us. Even the reference to Peter only implies that he’s an Apostle, which implies the existence of an Apostle meme that his audience understands. The best evidence that Jesus is flesh-and-blood is the mention of James as His brother. That’s all that I can detect. So Jesus is pretty mysterious, circa 47 A.D.

Just for completeness, here are the verses in Galatians that mention Jesus. Not a one that gives us historical or biographical information.

Galatians 1:1 (KJV)
Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)

Galatians 1:3 (KJV)
Grace [be] to you and peace from God the Father, and [from] our Lord Jesus Christ,

Galatians 1:12 (KJV)
For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught [it], but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Galatians 2:4 (KJV)
And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage:

Galatians 2:16 (KJV)
Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.

Galatians 3:1 (KJV)
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?

Galatians 3:14 (KJV)
That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Galatians 3:22 (KJV)
But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

Galatians 3:26 (KJV)
For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 3:28 (KJV)
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

Galatians 4:14 (KJV)
And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, [even] as Christ Jesus.

Galatians 5:6 (KJV)
For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

Galatians 6:14 (KJV)
But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

Galatians 6:15 (KJV)
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.

Galatians 6:17 (KJV)
From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.

Galatians 6:18 (KJV)
Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [be] with your spirit. Amen.

Cheers!