Thread by @ZoharAtkins

Here's a weird theological syllogism or thought experiment (thread)

Is God simple or complex? 2/

If complex, then God has many parts of each of which is co-responsible for God being God--but that's not sounding so monotheistic...(it does sound Kabbalistic, but that's for another thread). 3/

So God is simple, then? Aristotle thought so. The cause of all things is cause of itself. Even if you don't buy the prime mover thing the insight in it is that God is mono-causal, not multi-causal (or complex) 4/

Now ask yourself are indispensable things (ideas, people, institutions, relationships) simple or complex? 5/

I would submit that the more indispensable something is the more complex it is and vice versa--because simple things can be easily replaced or imitated. Multi-component entities are "moats" as they say in VC land. 6/

But wait. God is simple! So God is imitable and dispensible? God can be automated? Outsourced? No! Therefore God must be complex! 7/

If God were simple God would be unsophisticated. But if God were complex, God would be, as it were, caused by many things, making God no longer the cause of all things. Hmm. 8/

If God is simple, the world is. God is a "meat and potatoes" kind of God. But that's so cliche of God. Might as well be a different God--any God could create a simple world. 9/

Mi Kamocha...Who is like you, Oh God, amongst the gods, say the prayers. Ergo God has a moat ergo God is complex. Simplicity is for other gods. 10/

But then God is not really one, b/c that's simple. God is also not love, wisdom, or any other single virtue like absolute knowing, because that's reification ie turning God back into a meat and potatoes god. God must be super quirky. Perhaps the quirkiest God there is. 11/

Quirky enough to create a quirky world that just as easily could not have been. This one. 12/ fin.

I lied. thread isn't over. This is now a #Chanukka thread

The Greek wisdom wants God to be "basic" as in "ya basic." The Jewish/Biblical tradition imagines God to be idiosyncratic.

The God of philosophy has flawless execution but not choice over what God executes--it's all necessary and logical. The God of the Torah is messy; the world is an "MVP"; God iterates. Creation is discovery.

The survival of Jewish people to Chanukka and to this moment is the celebration of the contrarian God against the basic God; a contrarian people against empty formal universalism.

One symbol of that survival is a small canister of oil--b/c contrarian ideas illuminate not because they are dominant, but because they are different

rabbis could have made the military victory the thing to celebrate but they didn't because to a contrarian the victory is first and foremost a spiritual one, not a political one.

politics is a game that must be played, but it's not the essential game. anyone can have an army. what's hard is having ideas worth fighting for.

without ideas and imagines to differentiate us, it doesn't matter who wins--all armies are the same.

on a more subversive note, the rabbis suggest that winning the battle may not be what endures (since history is volatile and cruel). what matters is persevering even when you're in the "opposition" or "minority". the jar of oil represents that.

Chanukka is thus not a celebration of winning, but of not losing.

Tldr: Language is the latke of being.