Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2025-08-07T19:30:34Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com August 7. http://ranprieur.com/#b36b60b828ef06617260bab47b3d3eae9b11a686 2025-08-07T19:30:34Z August 7. As I get older, I'm getting more into theology. When I was growing up, only two beliefs were available, Christianity and physicalism, which calls itself "atheism", but in practice it's a lot more than the denial of a supreme being. While pretending to be opposites, these two belief systems share a radical and counterintuitive idea: that the future has already been written. Under physicalism, it's all been clockwork since the Big Bang; under Christianity, it's all part of the plan of an all-knowing and all-powerful God.

To get to a living and creative universe from physicalism, you need heretical science, like this Rupert Sheldrake video, Is The Sun Conscious? Sheldrake points out that if stars have some influence over their own motions, we don't need to invent dark matter.

To get to a living and creative universe from Christianity, you need heretical theology, like Pelagius, or Socinianism, or in this century, process theology. Quoting from Bruce Gordon Epperly's book Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed:

At the heart of traditional Christian theology is the belief that God has unchanging knowledge of the universe, past, present, and future.
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Ironically, when changeless omniscience and absolute omnipotence are combined, God's creativity and freedom as well as love are compromised.... If God determines all that will occur in advance, then God cannot exercise power in novel and creative ways.
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In contrast, process theology affirms an open source, adventurous, and constantly evolving universe in which God and creatures are constantly doing new things.... Rather than planning all the important events of our lives and then testing our responses to adversity, process theology sees God as the Holy Adventurer who invites us to be companions on our own holy adventures.... Although God cannot, and does not, do everything, a constantly creative God is ultimately infinite in power and creativity, that is, there is no limitation, other than God's loving care, to the unfolding of God's power in the ongoing evolution of the universe.
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We may creatively choose to embody positive ideals that go in a different direction than God's ideal for the moment. In the open system universe, our creativity and freedom is not necessarily a fall from grace, even when it diverges from God's vision, but an adventure in action and imagination that enables God and us to do new things.

]]> August 4. http://ranprieur.com/#1a0eb14a88806bb77a23ea85e8fc35e97e5588cd 2025-08-04T16:00:13Z August 4. Stray links, starting with something optimistic, a long New Yorker piece about solar energy and how much better it's getting. (mirror)

But you could argue that having more energy is bad for us. This bleak Reddit thread is almost entirely about problems that have been caused by energy-intensive information technology: Older men, what have you noticed about young men that has you concerned?

Another Reddit thread, People who have done sex work, what is something that surprised you? It's mainly about loneliness and emotional needs.

A reader sends this article on the Air India crash, which presents good evidence that it was not pilot sabotage, but a cascading electrical failure, probably caused by Boeing cheaping out. Update: another reader sends this video arguing against that article.

And finishing with something inspiring, At 17, Hannah Cairo Solved a Major Math Mystery. Specifically, she disproved a conjecture that mathematicians felt was "so simply and elegantly stated, and so broad, in the end it had to be true." Yeah, when I see a statement that's simple and elegant and broad, I figure it's not true.

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