Gospel & Universe

Annotated Contents

Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs

🪐 — PREFACE ~ starting points: personal, philosophical, & politicalSituating 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 ❧ P.O.V. 3: Fault LinesA 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, & illustrationsLayout: 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 UnconvincedThe Courage of Non-conviction - Convinced Scientific Atheists - Theistic Existentialism - The Unconvinced Agnostic Geometry: Triangles - The Doors - Circles - More Circles - Pascal’s Sphere Lucia: —1: Parma2: 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, & religionOverview 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 SmallMan’s Best Friend

♒️ — A RIVER JOURNEY ~ historical roots of doubtMountain 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 impressionsThe 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 IndiaA 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 lifePoor, 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 religionOverview Six Versions of Infinity: Unlike 5, Evenly Divisible by 2 & 3 - A Qualification & A Caveat - Daoism - Ideals & Incarnations The Creation of OutcastsA 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 AssyriologyIntroduction & Overview: Religion vs. Religions - Sums - OutlineCurrents 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 MysteryPost & 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 beliefMere Religion?: Frameworks - Hopeful Systems - Laws on Earth as They Might Be in HeavenSystems of Dread: Multiples of Hope - The Dreadful Truth - Egypt: From Dread to Hope - Persia - Greece: From Shades to SunlightCurrents of Christianity: Greeks and Romans - The Multiplication of TruthAbraham’s Vice: The New Chosen People - Singular PeoplesAgoraphobia: Do Not Inquire About Their Gods - The One & Only - Alexandria, 415 AD - A Book of Many BooksSelective Grace: Universal Judgment - Dante's Difficult Grace Exclusive Geographies Christianity 2.0: The Problem - Then & Now - The Afterlife - Vain PhilosophySystems of Operation: Neither New Atheist Nor Evangelical - [In progress]Veils: Theists, Atheists, and Agnostics - Proving the Unprovable - Spectra - VeilsGods & Souls: If Only the Atheists Were Wrong - The Force of Chance - Oh, WellThe Scoundrels of TheologyVersions of Deity: Hindu Substitutes - Why Not? - From “Agnosticism” (1889)Churches of Thought: The Metaphor of Churches - The Pendulum - Core & Secondary MessagesUnlimited 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 ChristianityRapt 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 thinkingThe Genealogy of MortalsMoses & the Apple MerchantsGodsGolden CalvesThe Holy BinFinal JudgmentsAzizAstronomers of Babylon12In the BeginningAdam & the SnakeWest

🇫🇷 THE PRIEST’S DILEMMA ~ a priest struggles with evolution & cuneiformRivers of GodPinpoints of LightGolden TriangleNinevehQue Sais-je?Priest & Pastor

💫 BELIEVING IN THE MYSTERY ~ Whitman, Laozi, & ZhuangziIntroduction: Daoism & Whitman’s TranscendentalismI: The God That Has No NameA 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 SimurgAll the Letters Mixed UpWhen Religions CollideComing TogetherEruptions of the SacredReturn of the SimurgFlapping EagleTwo AdamsAmina: The RockThe Poet & the Three Weird SistersFlight of Angels

Coda

☠️ ARS MORIENDI ~ Death, the country that has no bournTeeing OffBatter’s Up!Sky TrainDying by the LawPost Scriptum, Post Mortem, AgnosticumOn Time: Crystal Ball - On the Death of My Brother - Stella d’Artois - Spinning - Further Than Haut-Médoc - Karma Samsara & the Bug - 75 YearsLike Flies to Wanton BoysThe Deadly Force of ChanceLiving by the NumbersDying by the NumbersThe Readiness Is AllBeyond Whose BournThe Pageant Faded

Next: 🪐 Preface: Situating Agnosticism

Back to Top

Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs