Gospel & Universe
Annotated Table of Contents
Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs
🪐 — PREFACE ~ starting points: personal, philosophical, & political ❧ Situating Agnosticism: Doubt - Grace - Historical Bearings - A Middle Position ❧ Approach, Overview, & Aim: Approach - Overview - Aim ❧ Rivers of Change: Heraclitus - Rivers in Time ❧ Paradox: A Logical Trap - Mortality’s Condition - Apostasy - Freedom of Thought ❧ P.O.V. 1: Family: Starting Points - The Right Point of View - Audience ❧ P.O.V. 2: Literature: Literature & Agnosticism - The Epic & Agnosticism - Religion & Agnosticism ❧ P.O.V. 3: Fault Lines ❧ A Positive-Sum Philosophy: The Problem with Superlatives - Plusses & Zeros - Liberty & Religion - Intolerance of Intolerance ❧ Freedom of Thought: Choice - England - From Chaucer to Mill - Christianity 2.0
🧩 — INTRODUCTION ~ definitions, approaches, & illustrations ❧ Layout: Form & Tangent - Two Parts - Other Lines ❧ Q & A (chart) ❧ Core Beliefs (chart) ❧ Two Infinities: Double Mysteries - Infinities - Non-Selective Infinities of the Physical or Practical World - Selective Infinities of the Metaphysical or Theological Realm ❧ The Mysterious Heavens: Andromeda to NGC 224 - The Mystic Astronomer - Giordano Bruno ❧ Huxley’s Definition ❧ To Believe And Not to Believe: Eastern Religion: the Challenge of Hinduism ❧ Types of Agnosticism ❧ Sitting on Fences ❧ A Literary Approach: Literature & Experience ❧ On Nightingales & Unified Sensibility: Keats’ Nightingale - Unified Sensibility ❧ The Unconvinced∙The Courage of Non-conviction - Convinced Scientific Atheists - Theistic Existentialism - The Unconvinced ❧ Agnostic Geometry: Triangles - The Doors - Circles - More Circles - Pascal’s Sphere ❧ Lucia: —1: Parma —2: Florence —3: Rome
PHILOSOPHY, SCIENCE, & RELIGION
🏛 — SKEPTICS & STOICS ~ Greek & Roman precursors to agnosticism ❧ A Rough Chronology (Introduction) ❧ Agnosticism Among the Isms (chart) ❧ Not Quite Skeptical 1: Suspension of Belief & Disbelief - Pyrrho of Elis - Deep Water ❧ Not Quite Skeptical 2 ❧ Nor Quite Stoic 1: Meditations: Agnosticism & Stoicism - The Emperor's Notebook ❧ Nor Quite Stoic 2: The Bigger Picture: Stoicism & Agnosticism - Wide-Angle & Telescopic - For Anyone, But Not For Everyone - The Dangerous Sea - [In progress] 3 The Uncertainty of It All
🔭 — THE SUM OF ALL SPACE ~ astronomy & our view of the universe ❧ Third Spinning Rock from the Sun: Jet Lag 1 - Copernicus: Location x Location x Location - Moses: The Moving Sky ❧ Of Sand & Salt ❧ Competing Explanations: At 23.5 Degrees - Ptolemy - Gospel & Universe - The New Almagest ❧ Cities of God: Geocentrism ❧ Dogma & the Stars: Dogma - A Convenient Narrative - Jet Lag 2 - Notes and Scales ❧ The Chinese Sky: Li Bai's Milky Way - Tang Astronomy - Maybe ❧ The Outer Reaches 1: All of Space - Universes ❧ The Outer Reaches 2: Hubble Volumes ❧ The Unknown Arcs of a Sphere: The Straight Line - The Circular Park - Andromeda & the Greeks - Línea Recta ❧ Alas, Poor Yorick: Species - Tinnitus - Final Frontiers - Cosmic Writ (+ commentary)
🔬 — SCIENCE & MYSTERY ~ science, astronomy, & religion ❧ Overview ❧ Possible Explanations ❧ Dante’s Journey ❧ Don’t Forget the Miller: Chaucer & Dante - The Miller's Tale - Boethius ❧ Summa Post Theologica: The Accumulation of Facts - The Possibility of an Explanation ❧ Primum Mobile: Cherubs & Nitrogen - Walt Whitman - Who Knows? - Our Primum Mobile ❧ Bruno & Saint Francis: Rome: Campo de’ Fiori - Assisi: The Tomb of Saint Francis - The Lower Basilica - The Upper Basilica - Pound: If Only ❧ Secrets & Mysteries: Starting from Touch - Learned Astronomer - Moments - Voltaire - Secrets - from Song of Myself ❧ Two Sides of the Fence: Life on the Fence - Belief - Disbelief ❧ The Crystal Ball of Science: Scientific Philosophers - All Things Large and Small∙Man’s Best Friend
♒️ — A RIVER JOURNEY ~ historical roots of doubt ❧ Mountain Springs: Pope’s Pierian Spring - Ranges ❧ A Chinese Interlude ❧ Montaigne: Que Sais-je? - Farther Than Haut-Médoc ❧ French Currents ❧ Riverboats & Sheep ❧ Fry Day: The Atheist Fish: skipping skool - the unholy haul - the drowning fish - fins & wings - bad friday ❧ Prufrock ❧ Rome 1: Sunset: From Vineyards to a Field of Flowers - The Lights Dims Over the Cities of Light ❧ 2: Odysseus, Prufrock, & the Philosopher’s Cave: Invocations - The Half-Deserted Streets - The Philosopher’s Cave ❧ 3: The Eye of the Gods: Oculi - The Tiber ❧ Heraclitus: Athens & Allahabad ❧ Rushdie’s Sea of Stories: A Tale of Birds & Fishes: Rushdie’s Oceanic Oeuvre - A Flight to Save the Ocean
❤️ — THREE LITTLE WORDS ~ critical thinking in Greece, France, & England ❧ Critical Distance: Je Sais Pas - Colaba (Mumbai) - Non Capisco Più Niente - Doors ❧ Locke’s Double Key: Model of Mind → Model of Society - Getting Critical Distance - A Pivotal Moment in Time ❧ Locked into this World: Texts - Dreams ❧ Que Sais-je? ❧ Teacher: The Apple Cart Before the Horse - More Uncertain than Socrates ❧ Montaigne’s Balance: ❧ Pyrrho’s Equilibrium & Zhuangzi’s Pivot: Pyrrho’s Ataraxia - Open & Closed Agnosticism - Zhuangzi’s Pivot - Zhuangzi’s Butterfly ❧ Hegel’s Dialectic: ❧ Whitman’s Cosmos Free Thinking - In and Out of the Game ❧ Byron: Carrying Sail ❧ Byron: Trickster of Change ❧ Keats’ Negative Capability: The Hiker - The Romantics - Tadpole of the Lakes ❧ The English Garden of Sense: Giardino Inglese - Grey - Questions ❧ Tennyson’s Ulysses: The Arch - Literary Tradition - Homer, Dante, & Shakespeare - Keats & Byron - 19th Century England ❧ On Warnings: Ecclesiastes 11:5 - Meaning Without System ❧ The Problem with Explanations: Locke, Newton, & Bees - The Sum - Huxley
⛱ — SENOR LOCKE ~ a travelogue take on the tyranny of sense impressions ❧ The Gringo Takes Stock: From Howl - Tequila Therapy - Robbery Poem ❧ Under the Umbrellas: John Locke - Umbrellas ❧ Campfires ❧ Beneath the Aonian Mount 1 ❧ Seeing Double ❧ Train of Memory: Blossoms - Point of Departure - Time to Ramble On - Spots, Slips, & Slides - High School Confession - Time to Ramble On, Take 2 ❧ Howling at the Moon: Howling at the Moon - Rant - San Francisco ❧ Aonian Mount 2: Mexican Waitress - John Locke & the Vera Cruz ❧ In the Valley of Darién: 2000 - Alfred J. - Timelines: The Fall of the Epic ❧ Aura 1 ❧ The Tiny Pyramids of Ra: Day of the Oyster Shell - A Day in the Life - Amour at the Little Crazy - Et Qui Reboivent Encore ❧ Señor Locke & the Jaguar ❧ Aura 2: The Devil & the Deep Green Sea - The Stamp of Nature ❧ Cuba: Asylum - Ambos Mundos - Memories ❧ Aura 3: Inside Van Gogh’s Ear: Junctions - La Strada e Pericolosa - Only Disconnected[In progress] John Locke on the Beach of the Dead∙Hotel Cervantes ❧ Aura 4: In the Shadow of Macbeth: Supernatural Emanations - Vibrations & Auras - A More Rational Lodging - Extrasensory Control - More Spooks in London: More Things Than Are Dreamt Of? - Jumping the Life to Come ❧ The Floating World
🦖 — ATHE WILD & FOG ~ science & mysticism in Bleak House & Passage to India ❧ A Misty Maze, But Not Without a Plan: Chapter Overview - Literary & Historical Context ❧ Pope: A Mighty Maze ❧ What the Dickens ❧ Love Amid the Fog ❧ God Among the Scientists ❧ Hutton’s Hammer ❧ Jardine’s Monkeys ❧ Darwin’s God [In progress] God & the Devil at the Inns of Court∙Angels Fallen & Angelic, etc. ❧ A Passage to Forster: 19 Going on 20 - 1924: A Passage to India ❧ From London to the Marabar Caves: A Passage to India - Only Connect - Back to Holborn Hill
🎲 — ALMOST EXISTENTIAL ~ existentialism in everyday life ❧ Poor, Bare, Forked: Unaccommodated Man - Lear - Outing the Brief Candle - Uncertainties ❧ Between the Flippers:Thirteen-Year-Old at the Wheel - The Shadow & the Butterfly ❧ Doctors of Revolt: dam and Evil - Sartre: Existence Precedes Essence - Camus' Revolt ❧ In the Shadow of Borges: In the White Room - Ulysses, Son of Laërtes - Ithaca ❧ The Status Quo: Chaos, from Ages to Age - Existential Origins - From Shakespeare to Arnold - Theodicy, 2008 -Rumpelstiltskin ❧ Hitler’s Perfect World: The Best of All Possible Worlds - Pilgrimage to Birkenau - Berlin Underground ❧ Ontology Precedes Epistemology: I Know Not Seems - Jean-Paul Revisited - With Flu, at 100 Degrees - This Quintessence of Dust ❧ The Permeable Self: Karma-Samsara & the Bug - Sartre, Camus, & Gnosticism - Petals - The Civic Architecture of Deities and Men - Romantic Revolt - Relativity ❧ Starbucking: Moksha Latte - At Starbucks ❧ Cloud Illusions ❧ Petals Fallen from a Wet Black Bough: Poetry - Petals - Before the Garden Frost
🧜🏽♀️ — THE MERMAID: EXISTENTIAL & THEN SOME ~ existentialism & mysticism in “A Whiter Shade of Pale” ❧ The Epic Heroine: Introduction - Interpretation - Argument - Textual Variants ❧ The Wine-Dark Sea: Into the Drunken Depths - Gilgamesh & the Ale-Wife ❧ The Miller: The Chorus - The Miller on the High Seas ❧ Neptune: Stanza 2 & 3 - The God of the Sea - Sartre’s Whiter Shade of Pale - Odysseus and Gilgamesh ❧ The Queen of Love: Stanza 4 - The Framework of Logic - Johnny Walker Wisdom ❧ Beyond Alienation: “A Salty Dog” - “Crucifiction Lane” - “Suzanne”❧ Myth & Mysticism: “Cerdes” - “Homburg”
Currents of Religion
🌎 MANY TRIBES ~ a global overview of comparative religion ❧ Overview ❧ Six Versions of Infinity: Unlike 5, Evenly Divisible by 2 & 3 - A Qualification & A Caveat - Daoism - Ideals & Incarnations ❧ The Creation of Outcasts ❧ A Specific Version of Infinity: Deity & Exemplar - Orthodox & Liberal ❧ Nothing in Damascus: 1, 2, 3, Zero - The Outcast - The Necklace - Lamp-Black Eyes ❧ Myth & Religion: Sun Gods - Mesopotamia - India & China- Zeus & YHWH ❧ East & West: An Eastern Flow - A Western Break ❧ One God: Monotheism & Henotheism - Brahman & Dharma - Absolute Monotheism - Polytheism - Definitions & Anti-definitions - Que Scais-je? ❧ Anti-Definitions: Definitions & Anti-definitions - Que Scais-je? ❧ All Those Things the Wise Men Say: Working on a Mystery - Water Spirits - Parents
♒️ THE CURRENTS OF SUMER ~ the challenge of Assyriology ❧ Introduction & Overview: Religion vs. Religions - Sums - Outline ❧ Currents of History: Bottéro’s History - Currents ❧ The Whore ❧ The Flood: Borrowings - Arks ❧ The Exegete & the Philologist: Enns & Bottéro - Sensitivities & Contexts - The Sensitive Philologist ❧ Zero & Positive Sums: In This Distant and Utterly Foreign World - A Numbers Game - Positive Sum Cosmogony ❧ More Zero Sums: Silly Stories - Philology - Astronomy ❧ Gaming Out: Working With It - Future Games ❧ The Bounty of Sumer & Akkad: An Immediate Strangeness - A Strange Familiarity - Reformations ❧ Friendly Gods: Shamash, Ea, & Enkidu - Siduri & Ecclesiastes - As Flies to Wanton Gods? ❧ Again, Minus 1 Plus 1 ❧ Rewind & Fast-Forward: The Unity of Religion - The Afterlife & Grace ❧ Grace: The Most Positive Sum: Grace I: The Afterlife - Grace II: The Here and Now - Types of Grace ❧ Myths of Sin & Divinity: Poetry & Ambiguity - Seven Types of Ambiguity - Bottéro: Before Original Sin - The Archaeology of Mystery ❧ The Archaeology of Mystery ❧ Post & Other Scripts: Perhaps - The Net - An excerpt from Rivers of God ❧ The Return of Enlil: Penticton, July 7, 2022 - Iraq, Spring 2003 - Penticton, July 7, 2022 - River Lethe, Date Unknown - Notes
⏯ SYSTEMS ~ the difficulty of altering belief ❧ Mere Religion?: Frameworks - Hopeful Systems - Laws on Earth as They Might Be in Heaven ❧ Systems of Dread: Multiples of Hope - The Dreadful Truth - Egypt: From Dread to Hope - Persia - Greece: From Shades to Sunlight ❧ Currents of Christianity: Greeks and Romans - The Multiplication of Truth ❧ Abraham’s Vice: The New Chosen People - Singular Peoples ❧ Agoraphobia: Do Not Inquire About Their Gods - The One & Only - Alexandria, 415 AD - A Book of Many Books ❧ Selective Grace: Universal Judgment - Dante's Difficult Grace Exclusive Geographies ❧ Christianity 2.0: The Problem - Then & Now - The Afterlife - Vain Philosophy ❧ Systems of Operation: Neither New Atheist Nor Evangelical - [In progress] ❧ Veils: Theists, Atheists, and Agnostics - Proving the Unprovable - Spectra - Veils ❧ Gods & Souls: If Only the Atheists Were Wrong - The Force of Chance - Oh, Well ❧ The Scoundrels of Theology ❧ Versions of Deity: Hindu Substitutes - Why Not? - From “Agnosticism” (1889) ❧ Churches of Thought: The Metaphor of Churches - The Pendulum - Core & Secondary Messages ❧ Unlimited Agnosticism: Either/Or, or Neither - Walking the Line - Neither / Both - My Friend Harb ❧ “Open Your Heart” —1: Reasons - A Friend in High Places - Practical Reasons ❧ —2: Reasonable After Lives - Location, Location, Location - Suspension ❧ —3
✝︎ SAINT FRANCIS ~ pros & cons of Christianity ❧ Rapt Angel: Bodhisattva - The Beach of the Dead - Doctrine - Pascal Revisited - Intentions ❧ San Francisco: Do Unto Others - On the Other Hand ❧ The Baby & the Bathwater: The Bath Water - Negatives - Positives ❧ Keeping Baby: Deeper than Dogma - 3 X 4 - Water Spirits - Baby and the Floating Rubber Duck ❧ Believe It or Else: Threats - Metaphor & Dogma ❧ Pascal’s Wager 1: Pensées: Introduction - Pascal in a Larger Context - Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, & Infinity ❧ Pascal 2: It Isn’t Necessary to Wager: Pascal’s Argument - Six Problems ❧ Pascal 3: God & Infinity: Infinity - Mathematics - A Sicilian Angel -Whitman’s Spider - Defining God - The Church of Infinity ❧ Pascal 4: Zhuangzi in Tipasa: Zhuangzi’s Pivot - Consider Everything - Thou Shalt Choose - Albert, Geoffrey, & John ❧ Pascal 5: The Cosmic Casino: Thou Shalt Choose - Without - Plato’s Cave - Pascal Revisited - Pascal’s Trap ❧ Holy Dreamers: Reveries - Bit Torrent Dream - Dreams Without Belief - Dreams - The Sanctification of Dreams ❧ From Kerry to Crete: Killarney - Xaniá - La Pace di Santa Maria ❧ Canticle to the Stars: Sorella Luna - You Go Girls!
🍎 THE APPLE-MERCHANT OF BABYLON ~ Moses develops a new way of thinking ❧ The Genealogy of Mortals ❧ Moses & the Apple Merchants ❧ Gods∙Golden Calves ❧ The Holy Bin ❧ Final Judgments ❧ Aziz∙Astronomers of Babylon1 ❧ 2 ❧ In the Beginning ❧ Adam & the Snake ❧ West
🇫🇷 THE PRIEST’S DILEMMA ~ a priest struggles with evolution & cuneiform ❧ Rivers of God∙Pinpoints of Light∙Golden Triangle∙Nineveh∙Que Sais-je?∙Priest & Pastor
💫 BELIEVING IN THE MYSTERY ~ Whitman, Laozi, & Zhuangzi ❧ Introduction: Daoism & Whitman’s Transcendentalism ❧ I: The God That Has No Name ❧ A Global Picture ❧ [In progress] II: The Self That Has No Definition ❧ III: The Way That Has No Path
🇮🇳 THE FICTION OF DOUBT ~ Rushdie’s use of cosmology, mythology, & mysticism [the entire chapter is in progress] ❧ Rise of the Simurg ❧ All the Letters Mixed Up ❧ When Religions Collide ❧ Coming Together ❧ Eruptions of the Sacred ❧ Return of the Simurg ❧ Flapping Eagle ❧ Two Adams ❧ Amina: The Rock ❧ The Poet & the Three Weird Sisters ❧ Flight of Angels
Coda
☠️ ARS MORIENDI ~ Death, the country that has no bourn ❧ Teeing Off ❧ Batter’s Up! ❧ Sky Train ❧ Dying by the Law ❧ Post Scriptum, Post Mortem, Agnosticum ❧ On Time: Crystal Ball - On the Death of My Brother - Stella d’Artois - Spinning - Further Than Haut-Médoc - Karma Samsara & the Bug - 75 Years ❧ Like Flies to Wanton Boys ❧ The Deadly Force of Chance ❧ Living by the Numbers ❧ Dying by the Numbers ❧ The Readiness Is All ❧ Beyond Whose Bourn ❧ The Pageant Faded
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Next: 🪐 Preface: Situating Agnosticism
Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs