The Philosophical Christian: Understanding Easter as Survival of Love

Buddy Christ icon from Kevin Smith's film Dogma

Despite having been raised Christian and celebrating Easter throughout my youth, I'll confess that this holiday never made any sense whatsoever to me. Christmas makes sense. You don't have to believe in the Virgin Birth as a literal event to understand the wonder inherent in the story of the nativity for those who believe it.

My Easter Confusion

Easter is an entirely different animal. Sure, the Resurrection is clearly a miraculous thing worthy of celebration ... but just two days before that is Good Friday, which celebrates the Crucifixion, and you really can't decouple the two. In the traditional Christian view of these events, it's actually the Crucifixion - the blood sacrifice of the son of God - which is the big deal, with the Resurrection being "merely" the event that happens to highlight how important the Crucifixion was.

The result is an Easter weekend (and a religious view) that has always vexed me. See, I don't personally hold with human sacrifice (or animal sacrifice, for that matter). It just seems to me a very poor way for a benevolent deity to structure the universe. "In order to appease me, you've got to kill" is not exactly a starting point that resonates with me. I've never understood how anyone would be comfortable with the central role of this brutal murder in a spirituality of salvation.

This view only makes sense to me in one of two cases:

1. God was powerless to forgive sins without a blood sacrifice of his son.
2. God could have forgiven sin without the blood sacrifice, but demanded it anyway.

Neither of these creates a view of God that I find particularly appealing (although I much prefer 1 to 2), and certainly neither meshes well with the traditional Christian view of God.

A Revised Metaphysics of Easter

But this Easter, I instead heard a new interpretation which actually resonated with me. Attending my Christian Church, which emphasizes a "metaphysical" reading of the Bible over a literal one, the Crucifixion is viewed instead as a the attempt to kill Christ, who represents a perfectly loving being. Christ's Resurrection, therefore, is the bold declaration that, despite all appearances, love cannot die.

This, to me, has profound implications. This creates a view of the Easter weekend events which allow for me to look at them as something other than an indictment of God as a malevolent force. Instead of the Crucifixion being a blood sacrifice demanded as atonement for sin (the traditional Christian view), the Crucifixion can be interpreted as an event that Jesus chose to do to get the attention of those around him, to shake them out of their pre-conceived notions about what was important.

Nor, for that matter, is my minister the only guy teaching this view of Easter. Over on Patheos, there's a post discussing the Easter season (who knew it was a whole season? 50 days of Easter?), and the words he use are in line with the metaphysical interpretation that I heard on Sunday:

Easter invites us to imagine a world without fear. It invites us to imagine what our world would look like if violence and retribution were indeed signs of weakness rather than strength and might makes right. It invites us to imagine that violence and death and the Powers that Be do not have the last word. It invites us to imagine the transformative, mountain-moving power of nonviolence and grace, of faith, hope and love. 

In fact, Easter proclaims that this is true. Easter proclaims this is the reality of the world God has created, and that this had indeed always been the reality in which we live. God has always been calling to us, through prophets and sages of the past, to live as if love, not hate and violence, were the forces that matter most in the world. Easter isn’t true because Jesus was resurrected. Easter is true because it has always been true that God loves us, because it has always been true that God hasn’t been interested in controlling the world with war, violence and oppression like the Powers that Be, but in transforming it with love and the giving away of power. 

... 

Easter invites us to start living, and living fully, and living fully for others rather than living for ourselves, for security, for our small portion of domination of others in the midst of our own oppression. 

Easter is costly.

Easter asks us not to perform penance, but to practice hope. 

This is a view of the Easter events that I can respect. The focus on the literal historical nature of the Crucifixion and Resurrection creates all sorts of metaphysical, logical, and moral problems for me, but ignoring the literal events and focusing exclusively on the message of hope, that works for me.

Electronic Love? -

Lately, a lot of my book choices have come from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. One of these books was David Levy's Love + Sex With Robots. The book is an intriguing analysis and ultimately one which I cannot fault, in general. Basically, Levy argues that the upcoming advances in robotic technologies will result in a certain subset of the population falling in love with robots and having sex with them. It may seem like something out of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer or Battlestar Galactica, but Levy believes that the technology is quickly reaching the stage where it will be a reality.

Levy begins by laying out the research into the various reasons why people fall in love. This can be broken down into ten basic reasons:

• Similarity
• Desirable characteristics
• Reciprocal liking
• Social influences
• Filling needs
• Arousal/Unusualness
• Specific cues
• Readiness for entering a relationship
• Being alone w/ object of love
• Mystery

A quick look at these reasons will make it clear that the majority of them could, in theory, be applied to sufficiently advanced robots. A sophisticated robot could be designed to have any combination of physical traits, to have a personality which matches your own, to portray a reciprocity of emotion, etc. In fact, the largest hurdle is probably the "social influences," but such things change over time and by 2060 or so, who knows what social influences will be at work.

He goes on to discuss situations in which individuals love non-humans ... specifically, the emotional attachment formed with their pets. He also proceeds to discuss the wide range of ways in which people form emotional attachments to electronic devices, and of course love over the internet.

Here's an example of how serious these emotional attachments have already become: The Tamagotchi is a little "virtual pet" from Japan in the shape of a small, flattened egg which contains a video screen. On the video screen is your pet, and through the pushing of buttons you feed it, take it for walks, pet it, etc. If you fail to care for your Tamagotchi, it can actually wither away and die, which is a very sad experience. So sad, in fact, that orthodox Hebrews wanted to care for the Tamagotchi on Saturday, their Sabbath, when they are not even allowed to turn on and off light switches! The sole work that is allowed on Saturday is work in order to sustain a living soul.

So there had to actually be a ruling, from high-ups in the rabbinical organization of orthodox Judaism, about whether or not a Tamagotchi had a living soul!

Their conclusion is (hopefully) obvious, but still, it demonstrates the power of emotional attachments to these electronic beings. Just as you would feed your cat or dog on the Sabbath, many felt that you should equally be able to sustain the "life" of your Tamagotchi. And we know that some people care more for their cat or dog than they do for any other people. Now, imagine that they had a robot who could laugh at their jokes, express wonder at their intellect, and be impressed by the size of their ... well, you get the idea.

Some people, of course, would never allow themselves to see past the illusion, but with all of these factors laid out, it becomes clear that there would certainly be a subset of the population that would very likely fall in love with a robot. The robot would, of course, not love them back, but it would give the illusion that it does ... and maybe that's enough for some people.

Changes Afoot -

Well, though I've let this blog sit defunct for nearly two years, I have not forgotten it. My work as the About.com Guide to Physics has taken up much of that time, as has falling in love and various other matters.

For those who have not heard, I have gotten engaged to my girlfriend of one year, Amber. We are anticipating a wedding in the fall, though still waiting for details to be hashed out, largely related to financial matters. I for one am looking forward tremendously to the marriage ... not quite so much to the wedding itself.

She's quite supportive of my various interests, especially my writing. She's a fan, in other words. Not necessarily a fan of science fiction in general, but a fan of my stuff. This is a plus, in my book, as it indicates that she has excellent taste and obvious refinement. Remember, therefore, that if you want to be cool, you'll read my stuff and like it! You may begin with "Diminished Capacity," which is available at the Abyss & Apex website, or the About Physics site, as your fancy suits you.

For those not interested in science fiction or physics, but still wanting to be cool, I have the entire Philosopher's Stone site and a bit of a MySpace page. In short, I'm all over this crazy World Wide Web like white on rice, my friends! Beware. Be very ware.

So check out the site, check out my writing, and see if anything I say is of any significance. Frequently, probably not. But every once in a while ... very rarely ... I may hit upon some nugget of eternal truth. And I, for one, wouldn't want to miss that!