Eternal Torment Threat Management Theory: Why and how humanists and humanitarians of any faith or lack thereof should get involved with the future of theology in Abrahamic religions.

Eternal Torment Threat Management Theory: Why and how humanists and humanitarians of any faith or lack thereof should get involved with the future of theology in Abrahamic religions.

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This is a work in progress, currently in the early stages of development.

Introduction

My review of the literature on TMT (Terror Management Theory)–for a decent brief introduction to TMT, I think Wikipedia suffices: Link–has indicated that there is no adequate treatment of the key differences between the fear of death and the fear of eternal torment, which I will henceforth usually abbreviate as “ET”. These key differences are:

1. Death is unavoidable, whereas ET is ostensibly avoidable if one does or believes the right things
2. Death is universal to all living things; ET is for “them”, while heaven, we hope, is for “us”
3. ET could be a far more terrifying concept than annihilation; there should prove to be clinical implications.

Of the three differences, the us/them dichotomy should prove to be the most socially significant.

I propose that these differences justify an additional theory, which we might call Eternal Torment Terror Management Theory (ETTMT).

Summary of the Scope and Purpose of This Document

As I began to review the extant literature on TMT (Terror Management Theory) and on correlations between belief in eternal torment (ET) and social behavior, I at first found the opposite of what I expected to find. I found studies that showed a positive correlation between a belief in ET and pro-social behavior. But this finding would turn out to lead my research to something much larger and more complex than I’d originally expected to find.

It appears that the belief in and/or fear of ET may not promote pro-social behavior, as some have theorized, but only pro-ingroup behavior, while reinforcing hostility towards outgroups. Most obviously relevant to contemporary international relations would be the hostility and conflict between Islamic and Christian communities. However, I will propose that the doctrine of ET contributes to a range of destructive intergroup phenomena that is exponentially broader than that. Or, as I intend to frame it in a planned follow-up work (See: http://ettmt.com/finished), the “need and opportunity for reconciliation” is far grander, and goes much deeper than any of the more soundbite-worthy conflicts favored by facile media trends. See this paragraph further down on this same page for more detail on that.

Further research is needed to better establish correlations between the fear of ET and intergroup hostility and conflict. Many of the central hypotheses put forth in ETTMT would not be difficult to research, even experimentally. Experimental research could determine a causal relationship by utilizing, for example, priming and implicit behavioral measurements.

More importantly, however, the establishment of a relationship between the belief in ET and intergroup hostility would justify a call to specific action, funded by social impact investments from humanitarians of every ilk.

The following summary will provide the theoretical frameworks for a full spectrum of social harm that may result from the widespread belief in ET, and it will suggest a viable and specific response from the humanitarian community.

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Initial Summary of Hypotheses & Suggested Humanitarian Responses

I propose the following:

1. The widespread doctrine of an all-powerful God who will subject many, if not most, human beings to eternal torment causes tremendous social harm. The following pages will provide theoretical frameworks that could link the belief in eternal torment (ET) to the following range of social and psychological responses: us-vs-them mentality, groupthink, intergroup conflict, cognitive dissonance, punitiveness, judgmental attitude, support for authoritarianism, the belief that “might makes right”, support for torture, support for capital punishment, submissiveness and susceptibility to manipulation, intellectual paralysis (or “closed-mindedness”), terrorism, xenophobia, racism, fear, anxiety, bibliolatry, legalism, apocalypticism, and distrust of the universe/reality/existence.
2. There is a viable alternative doctrine, the viability of which is demonstrated partially by its widespread acceptance within Judeo-Christian populations both contemporary and historical. That is the doctrine of Universal Reconciliation (UR), otherwise referred to as Christian Universalism. I’m short, UR maintains that, although hell may exist, it is used for remedial, rather than punitive purposes. Therefore, any person who is condemned to hell remains in hell only as long as necessary to bring about spiritual transformation, which is inevitable for all humans. Therefore, no person will remain in hell for a literal eternity.
3. The viability of the UR doctrine is established by a multitude of factors besides its adoption by religious communities. See, for example, my succinct article at https://owlcation.com/humanities/Why-I-Dont-Believe-in-an-Eternal-Hell, The Argument from Beauty on my blog, or the truly massive collection of resources and information at https://tentmaker.org.
4. It is possible to persuade many people, including evangelical Christians, to accept the theology of Universal Reconciliation, and doing so would mitigate tremendous social harm. There are already significant groups of evangelicals who now accept the idea of Universal Reconciliation, and have done so even while maintaining belief in Biblical inerrancy and salvation through Christ alone. There are a large number of Biblical arguments to support the teaching, and Biblical arguments against it have been thoroughly refuted without denying beliefs such as Biblical inerrancy.
5. Perhaps a majority of Christian believers in ET are ready to accept UR, but they are simply not aware of it, or are certainly not aware of its viability from scriptural, historical, linguistic, and philosophical standpoints. Most Christians today may already accept UR to some degree on a subconscious level, but reject it on a conscious level. This inner conflict (cognitive dissonance) itself is the root of additional psychological and social ills.
6. Targeted outreach through PPC (search engine and social media) and organic digital marketing (SEO and SMM) may be the most effective means of popularizing UR, and of bringing about widespread awareness of both its existence and its viability for Christian individuals and communities.
7. Funding for such outreach is needed, and after further research, could be justified for social impact.
8. Many of the central hypotheses put forth in ETTMT would not be difficult to research, even experimentally. Experimental research could include, for example, the use of priming and implicit behavioral measurement. The results of such experimental and non-experimental research would provide sufficient evidence to justify such funding.
9. A cogent demonstration of the points above should be used to secure a broad base of support from many social impact investors and humanitarians both inside and outside the UR movement, and even outside the Christian faith.

In the pages that follow, I will examine each of the above points in depth, attempting to demonstrate for the reader the need for further research into each of these points. I will also describe research methodologies that can be used for those purposes, and I will further discuss possible ways of marshaling a strong and effective humanitarian response.

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Point I

“The widespread doctrine of an all-powerful God who will subject many, if not most, human beings to eternal torment causes tremendous social harm. This is especially manifested via an us-vs-them mentality, groupthink, intergroup conflict, cognitive dissonance, punitiveness, judgmental attitudes, support for authoritarianism, the belief that “might makes right”, support for torture, support for capital punishment, submissiveness and susceptibility to manipulation, intellectual paralysis (closed-mindedness), terrorism, xenophobia, racism, fear, anxiety, bibliolatry, legalism, apocalypticism, and distrust of the universe/reality/existence.”

There are a variety of theoretical frameworks, novel and established, with which to frame the various types of social harm proposed to result from the doctrine of eternal torment (ET).

1. Key Differentiator Framework

The novel theoretical framework involved has already been stated. It can be summarized by reiterating that death is universal and unavoidable, whereas eternal torment (abbreviated “ET” going forward), as traditionally understood in evangelical Christianity, is for “them”, not for “us”, and it is avoidable. The “us”, in this context of evangelical Christianity, refers to all Christians who believe and practice “the right way”. In the same context, “them” refers to all non-Christians, or even those who call themselves Christians, but do not believe or practice “correctly”.

In theory, these crucial differences may take the usual dynamics of TMT, but add elements of intergroup conflict that are not present in TMT, based on its addition of an ingroup/outgroup dynamic not present in TMT.

Such intergroup conflict could play out in a variety of ways:

• Extreme political ideologies
• Extreme religious beliefs and behaviors
• Groupthink
• Racism
• Xenophobia
• Intergroup violence, including terrorism
• Judgmental, biased, or prejudiced attitudes and behaviors
• Self-serving bias

2. Socialization

Socialization is an already well-established theoretical framework. Essentially, it states that humans can and often do learn beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors by watching others, especially others who are parental or authority figures.

I think that the idea of socialization can be extended to a person’s conception of the divine. In this sense, one’s mental image of “God” becomes an additional parental/authority figure, and one thus tends to learn attitudes and behaviors from what God “does” (aka, what they believe God to be doing). In other words, to some extent, we become what we worship.

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It is not difficult to imagine the types of social harm that could result from such “divine socialization” with a God who eternally torments people:

• An attitude or belief that “might makes right”; a view, therefore, that justice, in some sense, is arbitrary
• Punitiveness
• Support for torture
• Support for the death penalty
• The implicit belief that violence is acceptable or even “Godly”

3. Cognitive Dissonance and Existential Inauthenticity

Cognitive dissonance is another theoretical framework that has been well-studied. For believers in ET, cognitive dissonance is inherent in the conception of divinity. For example, most Christians would agree with the statement, drawn from the Christian scriptures, that “God is Love”. In Islam, likewise, Allah is called “The Merciful”. It should be readily apparent that an extreme cognitive dissonance exists between holding a belief in an all-loving, all-merciful God, and holding a belief in a God who torments humans for a literal eternity.

Central to the cognitive dissonance framework is the concept that people use a variety of mechanisms to reduce the intensity of perceived cognitive dissonance. For the sort of cognitive dissonance I’m discussing here, for example, if a person believes that God will admit “Us” to heaven, while consigning “Them” to eternal torment in hell, one could reduce the intensity of this felt dissonance by searching for ways that “They” might actually deserve such a fate. So, to think of “Them” as humans just like oneself is much too uncomfortable. To deserve their fate, “They” must be demonized to the maximum extent possible. “They” must truly be evil. One can imagine how this mechanism could feed into the conflict dynamics between cultures where different religions predominate, and each of those religions believe in an eternal hell. The relationships between predominately Muslim societies and predominately Christian societies would provide excellent examples wherein such conflict dynamics could be expected to play out.

I will also discuss cognitive dissonance as contrasting with the existentialist construct of “authenticity”. I propose that in one sense, authenticity involves a degree of coherence between one’s various beliefs, between one’s beliefs/attitudes and behavior, and between one’s behavior in one context with one’s behavior in a differing context. Framing authenticity as containing the aforementioned elements, cognitive dissonance can be framed as an element of existential inauthenticity.

I will propose that the cognitive dissonance that results from the simultaneous holding of extreme opposites in the conception of the divine (all-loving vs. as cruel as is possible to imagine) is so widespread through Western civilization both contemporary and historical that it constitutes an existential inauthenticity so pervading Western culture that existential inauthenticity could be seen as a key element of the Western zeitgeist.

4. Existential Anxiety

The existential anxiety that can result from a belief in eternal torment could, for many individuals, be far more overwhelming than the anxiety that results from a belief in annihilation. Research could investigate links between such intense anxiety and the following responses:

• Intellectual paralysis, colloquially known as “closed-mindedness”.

I think that extant research on the Openness to Experience construct from Costa and McCrae’s ubiquitous Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality could end up providing excellent support for an inverse relationship between intense existential anxiety and Openness to Experience.

• Submissiveness and/or Susceptibility to Manipulation

A relationship between fear, submissiveness, and susceptibility to manipulation is well established by history and by research. Fear is often used, for example, by governments against their own citizens in State Terrorism, with the intent to manipulate and control.

• Generalized Fear and Anxiety

Existential anxiety could be thought to contribute to generally fearful/anxious personality types in individuals, or even to clinical anxiety disorders. Clinical anxiety disorders, and even sub-clinical levels of anxiety as a personality factor, contribute negatively to the

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lives of both anxious individuals and the people who relate to them in any capacity. Thus, anxiety, when it is not adaptive, is detrimental on both an individual (clinical or  psychological) basis and a social and sociological basis.

• A fear of, or even a strong belief in ET will likely be easily demonstrated to correlate or even cause bibliolatry, legalism, apocalypticism, and distrust in the universe/reality/existence. Each of these phenomena are subjects of with profound and broad implications, and a great deal of writing and study has been done on them to date. I will look further into how these phenomena not only alienate believers in ET from their doctrinal “Other”, but alienate their doctrinal Other from them. In other words, things like bibliolatry, legalism, apocalypticism, and even the belief in ET itself are major factors that create negative attitudes toward Christians and Muslims among numerous individuals within certain demographics, including, but not limited to: atheists, agnostics, scientists—Christians/Muslims and these other demographics are not all mutually exclusive—, humanists, humanitarians, “New Age” practitioners of myriad kinds, Neo-Pagans, indigenous pantheistic/animistic traditional religions from all over the world, Buddhists, and Hindus.

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This paper is still unfinished, and the above (along with the bibliography below) is currently all that has been written. In the near future, I want to finish this paper by providing deeper expositions of each of the eight points listed near the beginning of the paper. I welcome collaboration and assistance on this project. If you are interested in participating in any capacity, please contact me at justinaptaker@yahoo.com.

Partial Early Draft Bibliography (must also be formatted)

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Dalsklev, Madeleine, and Jonas Rønningsdalen Kunst. “The Effect of Disgust-Eliciting Media

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Fergus, Thomas A., and David P. Valentiner. “Terror Management Theory and Scrupulosity: An

Experimental Investigation.” Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders 1, no. 2 (April 2012): 104–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2012.01.003 .

Friedman, Mike, and W. Steven Rholes. “Successfully Challenging Fundamentalist Beliefs Results in Increased Death Awareness.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43, no. 5 (September 2007): 794–801. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2006.07.008 .

Greenberg, Jeff, and Spee Kosloff. “Terror Management Theory: Implications for Understanding

Prejudice, Stereotyping, Intergroup Conflict, and Political Attitudes.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 5 (September 2008): 1881–94.

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Arndt, Jamie, and Matthew Vess. “Tales from Existential Oceans: Terror Management Theory and How the Awareness of Our Mortality Affects Us All.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 2 (March 2008): 909–28.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00079.x

Dalsklev, Madeleine, and Jonas Rønningsdalen Kunst. “The Effect of Disgust-Eliciting Media

Portrayals on Outgroup Dehumanization and Support of Deportation in a Norwegian Sample.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 47 (July 2015): 28–40.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2015.03.028 .

Fergus, Thomas A., and David P. Valentiner. “Terror Management Theory and Scrupulosity: An

Experimental Investigation.” Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders 1, no. 2 (April 2012): 104–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2012.01.003 .

Friedman, Mike, and W. Steven Rholes. “Successfully Challenging Fundamentalist Beliefs Results in Increased Death Awareness.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 43, no. 5 (September 2007): 794–801. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2006.07.008 .

Greenberg, Jeff, and Spee Kosloff. “Terror Management Theory: Implications for Understanding

Prejudice, Stereotyping, Intergroup Conflict, and Political Attitudes.” Social and Personality Psychology Compass 2, no. 5 (September 2008): 1881–94.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2008.00144.x .

Greenberg, Jeff, Linda Simon, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Dan Chatel. “Terror

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The Day i Saw God

yesterday
or was it today? i can’t really tell
i saw God
more clearly than i’ve ever seen anything

She was
struggling to breath
unable to understand
why everything was pain
why She’d been so alone
away from all those She loved so much

Her eyes bleary and fading
joy erased
but we were there with Her
She could feel us again
along with Her children and sisters huddled against Her
for one last image
equally at a loss

but the last image She gave me
was when the sedative finally kicked in
and i sat face to face with Her
gently stroking Her beautiful head
She finally made sounds of joy again
or they could have been pain
but i think they were joy
and i think i saw joy again in Her eyes
i think the medicine had relieved the fear and pain
just enough for Her to feel the joy of me loving Her

but that moment was cut short
as they took Her away
i cried “goodbye sweet baby”
sweet Angel, sweet Love
then i fell apart
completely

the next time i saw God
all the life had departed from Her
all that remained for me
was Her still, beautiful form
eyes open, but lifeless
and my eyes are open, but lifeless
until I see God again

• In loving memory of Boo, an angel who was taken from us too soon on 7/10/2021

The Night the Stars Fell from Heaven (ca. 2018)

at last something broke you
and that thing, it was you
you were closing your eyes
you were seeing it through

you blew up and sold
the world outside and within
and i fell on your black day
you showed me how to live

you showed me how to die
and no matter how hard i try
to stare at the sun
it is black to my blind eyes

and suddenly my eyes are open
somehow things begin to focus
high

we are all illuminated
light is shining on our faces
blind

until our rapture
falls to pieces

these are stolen
bits and pieces

*

new york is hot
how i loathe where i’m living
Bharata, you fought
now it’s i who is giving
up 
and now fly

now fly from your empty cage, girl
you are rust and the sky
always killing the bird
see, i am the night
jesus christ i suppose
see, i am the light

i don’t mean to remind you
of anything you gave me in song
you blessed my muse with your light
what you did was so wrong

the light in us was darkness
how the night is so long
light a fire, wait for summer
we black stars wander on

smoldering embers
september’s come and gone
here comes my december
half beast
and half gone

*

broken and cold
but all is still holy
halleiluah and through you
yes everything, holy

did we want it darker
so you turned out the light?

now i’m doing time
playing with meter and rhyme
longing to be in the house
of my own secret life

until the sea must free us
i’ll wait for you there
you came just to see us 
all we sailing where?

all of us sailors
rowers, keep rowing
now no light is showing
now the danger’s approaching

row gently, never gently!
upstream to ignite
row never gently!
rage at that night!

oh captain, my lying captain
turn around and take me home
a long time ago
i thought you’d died alone

everybody knows this boat’s leaking
all the white horses stopped sleeping
the ponies stopped running
i the band just keep playing
though the girls now are aging

lilac wine, sweet and heady
how my hand is unsteady
how aghast and unready
like my love that is ending
like the last night you danced me

when the music was over
you turned out the lights
you kissed me goodnight
with a thousand goodbyes

still in my dreams you walk dripping
from the sea where i’m slipping
from the sea that shall free me
to my hut that is ripping
through the masterpiece 
tripping

how my soul is worn thin
i can’t even begin
to speak
so i’ll speak no more

and if it be your will
i’ll sink beneath your wisdom
like a stone

like a stone
i’ll wait for you there

alone

my eyes reflect
the void
i walk in
children walk by
i avert my gaze
they don’t need to see it

4/23/2016

heavy

the burden of all being
rests heavily on me
for i am

the poet’s madness
communicable disease to the masses

memory I grasp at
who I was
what I was
before I was

this body
this story
unparalleled glory
unfettered and gory
seer and seen all the same

the one of infinite names
always coming and came

i bleed words into being
i breathe verbs into doing
what they’ve always done before

eternal occurrence
repeating endurance
faith discarded, acquired
again and again

this moment is heavy
my hand is unsteady
breathless and heady
thin air where i’m treading

prepare the unready
within you that’s getting
worn out and sold out
with every beat of the sun

nothing new
nothing special
and average at best you’ll
never find rest till
the tiller is turning you

the sun that is burning you
gives life through the chlorophyll
and finally free from
your burden of thought

~ justin aptaker, 7-28-2018

Looking Inward

What if I were to stop reading voraciously, literally as if my life depended on it? What if I were to stop browsing the web constantly, craving it whenever I’m awake? What if I were to stop looking for the ideas or words of others to save me, to bring me solace, and instead simply looked inward?

Looking inward, can I find anything that is not just tropes recycled from everything I’ve taken in from the outside world? Can I find anything that exists prior to all that sensory input, rational processing, animal instinct, and social conditioning?

How would I distinguish the voice of my Self from all the other voices chattering inside my head?

I’m not quite sure, but I think it is at least time to start listening.

8/30/19

Everyone’s been talking about how 
the universe will either expand 
indefinite cold star death
or collapse and then repeat itself

meanwhile i’m a slave proper
in every sense of the word physical
bound to the elements hunger
a criminal for speaking my thoughts aloud

a loud or a soft noise unheard
unseen and unknown and unthinkable
still I would try to define it
humanity, always effing the ineffable

i’m one and apart and the same all the same
the universe cloaked in name after name
every man and woman a star
in their own drama melodrama how dramatic

i am in a word addict
again you might say i’m back at it
rhyming with rhythm but static
sense or nonsense and i’ve had it 

The Argument from Beauty: Another Defense of Christian Universalism ~ Section II

Two Kinds of Faith

The last section ended by stating that it may “take a bit of faith” to believe the message of universal salvation. However, I’ll argue now that is also takes faith–more faith, in fact–to believe that God will not eventually save all people. To see what I mean by this, begin by looking at the following quote from a different article I wrote:

“If God is Love, then surely he wants the best for every person. Many scriptures support this. 1 Timothy 2:4 says ‘God … wants all people to be saved’. He “does not want anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). I also believe God is powerful enough to accomplish whatever He wants. Isaiah 46:10 says ‘I (God) will accomplish all that I please’. When Christ’s disciples once asked him ‘Who can be saved?’, part of his response was, ‘With God, all things are possible’, by which we can infer: God can save anyone! If God desires that every person be saved, and he is able to bring about all that he desires, how can anyone not be saved? The doctrine of eternal damnation suggests that either God’s love or God’s power is deficient.”

“I’ve often heard it objected that God will not save everyone because He respects the “free will” of each person. However, if one believes the passages quoted above, then one must also conclude that no person will freely choose for all eternity to not be saved. God earnestly desires that all people be saved, and per Isaiah, God not only can, but will accomplish all He desires.”

“Again, the Christian scriptures say, “God is Agape (Love)” and “Agape never fails” (1 John 4:8, 1 Cor. 13:8). So, the “free will” of humans will not thwart God’s plans or wishes. Universalism is the only position that is in full harmony with the nature of God, as described by Christians and the Christian scriptures.”

From An Argument for Christian Universalism: Why I Don’t Believe in an Eternal Hell

In fact, there are many passages from the Christian Bible that indicate that God will save all people. Here are more examples.

Now, if you believe that the Christian scriptures were, in fact, inspired by God, all these scriptures should present you with a major problem if you also believe in an eternal hell. Setting aside, for the moment (I will return to the topic), the idea of free will, consider the faith now required to believe in eternal torment. You must now take it on faith that the statements from these scriptures, although inspired by God, are in some way not quite true.

Consider that the passage from Isaiah, quoted above, is not merely stating that God can accomplish anything He desires, but that He will accomplish everything He desires. Then the other scriptures, quoted and linked to above, unequivocally state that He desires that no person “perish”, but that all people be saved. Therefore, from a scriptural standpoint, all people will be saved. To believe otherwise now requires a great deal of faith.

I’ll have more to say about “free will” later, but if one believes the passages quoted and linked to above, then one must conclude that no person will eternally and freely choose to not be saved, for God earnestly desires that all people be saved, and God will accomplish all He desires.

There is an important distinction to be made between harmonizing your beliefs with the Bible and harmonizing your beliefs with the nature of God, in accordance with the scriptures. This is why “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”. What is the Spirit, if not the essence of God? As already discussed, the Spirit of God is the Word of God. The mere letter of the law/book, without that Spirit, is death, written in decaying human symbols (language). Therefore, we must always interpret the letter in accordance with the Spirit, rather than attempt to define the Spirit in accordance with the letter. The Spirit of God is the essence, or Nature, of God, and that Nature is unfailing and unconditional Agape, as described in 1 Corinthians 13.

So, if one believes that these scriptures were inspired by God, it should now take less faith to believe that God will save all people than it takes to believe that He will not. To believe that He will not save all people requires one to somehow believe that God’s nature is not what scripture says it is. One must believe that either He will not, in fact, accomplish all that He wishes to accomplish, or that He will accomplish all He wants, but He simply does not want to save everyone. If you believe the scriptures, you’ll realize that only Universalism causes no contradictions about the nature of God. So, to believe otherwise, I imagine, would take a lot of faith.

So, you must now choose between two beliefs. They both require faith. One of these beliefs, however, requires faith that contradicts both scripture and the Divine Nature. The other belief requires faith that agrees with scripture, and thus ascribes only the best attributes to the nature of God.

One of these beliefs is the belief that Being/Reality is beautiful. The other belief amounts to a perception of a Reality that is ultimately not beautiful at all.

If you must, by faith, choose between one idea that life is beautiful, and another idea that life is not beautiful, wouldn’t you rather believe in that which is beautiful?

Beauty is a Big Deal

As I began doing my research for this series, I became acutely aware that, until now, I had not given the concept of “Beauty” nearly the amount of thought that it merits. I further realized that I was not alone in this.

It turns out that Beauty is a central concept in sacred literature from all religious traditions. Moreover, it is a pervasive concept in science, mathematics, metaphysics, and mysticism. Indeed, for how central the concept is to the grander domains of human thought, it is given shockingly little popular attention. Or rather, the popular attention is directed mostly towards cheap social ideas of beauty, such as those that the magazine covers urge us to strive for. However, beauty, as a concept, is far more than skin-deep.

Here are just a few examples:

• In the Genesis account of the creation, when God proclaims everything “good” over and over again, the word translated as “good” is the Hebrew word טוֹב, which also means “beautiful”.
• In Jewish, Christian, and mystical traditions, the idea of “completion” is central. In Genesis, for example, God declares His work “finished”, and then rests on the seventh day due to that fact. Thus, the number seven is associated with completion. Also, just before Jesus died on the cross, He is said to have proclaimed, “It is finished”. This theme of completion is closely connected in religious and linguistic ways to both the concept of “perfection” and the concept of “beauty”.
• Beauty has long been, and continues to be, a guiding principle in mathematics and science. This is related to the mathematical/scientific concept of “symmetry”, which has long been thought indicative of a theory’s likelihood to express something true. This emphasis on symmetry has come under attack in the last few years, but the likely result will not be that we jettison the idea of symmetry entirely, but rather, that we balance it more appropriately with other principles. This, I believe, will not amount to a rejection of beauty as a guiding principle. As explained below, it will more likely result in a more subtle definition of mathematical/scientific beauty.
• While mathematics and science have long sought beauty in symmetry, Heraclitus proclaimed millenia ago that “the most beautiful arrangement is a pile of things poured out at random”. The word he used for “arrangement”, naturally, was the Greek word “κόσμος”, that is, “Kosmos”, from which we get the English word “Cosmos”.
• If Heraclitus was correct, and if the contemporary scientific consensus about the general randomness of the universe is correct, then perhaps Leibniz, though ridiculed for supposing that we inhabit “the best of all possible worlds”, was also correct. I digress. However, my point is also that there are infinite such digressions, and so it turns out that “Beauty” will lead us on a very deep and wide journey.
• Consider the common fact that the human perception of beauty in another human face is directly related to the symmetry of that face. However, upon second thought, this is only partly true, as the symmetry in question is entirely that of symmetry across the vertical axis. Were a human face to be also symmetrical across the horizontal axis, it would not look beautiful. It would look grotesque.
• Perhaps then, beauty is actually a balanced juxtaposition of symmetry and non-symmetry. That is, perhaps it is equal parts Heraclitus and contemporary mathematics/science. After all, isn’t the beauty of life, in all its diversity, on planet earth, in some way the beauty of the juxtaposition of all that order against the background of apparent cosmic randomness and chaos?

I’ll conclude this line of thought for now, as I think I’ve sufficiently illustrated just how far the contemplation of Beauty can take us. This illustration doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface, as we will later see.

Shame is Also a Big Deal

What is shame?

May I propose that shame is nothing other than our perception of ourselves as being ugly in a deeper-than-cosmetic sense. We often feel shame when we commit deeds that we perceive as ugly deeds.

Note: this chapter on shame will not end here. It is presently unfinished, but will be completed shortly.

Much more to come very soon…

Here is a very rough, very early outline of future sections in The Argument from Beauty. These are personal notes made into a mindmap.

The author lovingly dedicates this article to the memory of two dear friends: Gary Amirault, who passed from this world on November 3rd, 2018, and his wife, Michelle Amirault, who preceded him in death on July 31st, 2018. Gary and Michelle lived their lives passionately in love with Love, and on behalf of Love. Indeed, this article would likely have never come to be, were it not for Gary and Michelle’s love. Gary and Michelle tirelessly promoted what they called the “Victorious Gospel”, otherwise known as Christian Universalism or Universal Reconciliation. In short, they proclaimed to the world that “Love Wins”. Tentmaker Ministries (https://tentmaker.org/) is just one of their enduring legacies.

Far more importantly, however, Gary and Michelle were both the embodiment of the kind of relentless love that they preached. They were the warmest, kindest, most hospitable people I have ever known. I believe that anyone who was graced with knowing them personally would say exactly the same thing.

Laudanum

how can i afford the cure? 
the cure is my disease
how can i speak with words still pure? 
my doctor poisons me
yet will i laud
and make it
soft
the words of the wise
are plainly lost 

Written ca. 2011

koans

like koans
halting in their tracks
your logical thought
processes like a train, black and long
when it runs in a padded room
small, silent, white

Written ca. 2006