Infinite Good Person

Hope has an affinity for infinity.

Hope likes endless skies and boundless space.

It likes beginnings without ends

and doorways into new worlds.

When cynicism gets stuck on today,

eyes of hope see the future laden with glory.

What faith cannot comprehend, hope desires.

Eternity! Infinite time. Endless ages!

A sun always on the rise, never falling into dark.

Fountain of youth. Tree of life. Immortality!

Ever feeling fresh in the glory of unending morning!

Heaven. Nirvana. Paradise. Valhalla. Promised land!

Swords into plowshares. Lions lay down with lambs.

Peace. Contentment. Safety.

We want it. We yearn for it. We hope for it.

More than mere gazing at the stars,

we want to live among the galaxies

and pick flowers on other worlds.

We want to be one with the universe

and the universe to be one, forever.

This eternal desire, this paradise instinct,

glows in every heart.

Paradise instinct is our survival instinct on the spiritual level. We will do whatever it takes to keep living and avoid death. The survival instinct keeps us going through the long dry deserts of life. It kicks in when the house is burning in the middle of the night, rushing us to wake the kids, and escape to the front lawn. The survival instinct wants to keep our body alive. The paradise instinct wants to keep our soul alive.

The child within all of us wants our life story to continue with happy-ever-after. The energy and wonder of our youth desires to continually explore friendships and landscapes. The overworked adult we have become just wants rest and relaxation on a sun drenched beach. This is all part of our paradise instinct.

Furthermore, we want a place surrounded by people sharing positive faith, hope, and love. We want all injustice and crime to end. We want pains soothed and all sufferings ended. We want the human family to be restored in body, mind, and soul to live forever in peace and harmony.

Paradise instinct craves both quality and quantity of life. It is a specific kind of hope that reaches up to the spiritual dimension and that looks for life beyond the grave. It seeks to break the limits of evil now and always.

When you think about it, faith, hope, and love are creative powers that belong in a perfect and endless universe. There is no good reason that they should ever be broken or come to end. Except for our selfish choice, there is nothing to keep them from springing forth from the heart with a freshness and vitality that never gets old, drains us, or wears us out.

This is our paradise instinct. It is our deep-seated connection to a once perfect universe long ago and to the restoration of that ideal in the future. It is said that our bodies are made of star stuff. That is true. And our inmost souls glow with the essence of celestial light.

Nobody really wants to die. Nobody really wants to live in a perpetual, confusing battle between good and evil, pain and pleasure. We want resolution and we want good to win and evil to be eliminated.

Our paradise instinct yearns for Hope to fulfill all its promises so we can actually see and experience them.

Like floods on a fire, some people are assailed by trouble more than most. When others seem to dance in the light, these are held captive in the darkness. Their cynicism and desperate skepticism threaten to quench the dying embers of hope.

If you are one of those sufferers, please do not give up. What may feel like cold charcoal in your heart is actually indestructible crystal. It cannot burn itself to ash. It is the receiver that catches rays of hope from one who is an infinite good person. The Spirit and the Light are always shining, ready to brightly reflect in every heart.

Those who suffer the most from evil are destined to appreciate and teach goodness the most. The farthest will become nearest. The last will be first. The forgotten will be surrounded by friends in the center.

You may feel your hope is gone, but Great Hope is looking for you.

Once upon a timelessness a Mommy and Daddy sat upon a throne. They had many princes and princesses that grew up to be kings and queens in their own realms. Mommy and Daddy would visit their children, help them with their goals, and share in their joys. On a regular basis, the family would gather around the parents‘ throne.

One day, Mommy and Daddy announced they would go on a very long trip, but they would leave robots in their places. After saying goodbye, the kings and queens returned to their own homes, but things did not feel quite right. The robots would visit and programmatically repeat messages of affirmation, but it was not the same.

The family would gather as usual, but there was a mechanical emptiness at the center. There were likenesses of Mommy and Daddy on the throne, but there was no heart, no soul, no genuine connection.

Like never before, the children had a new appreciation for their parents.

Then one day, longer than they wished but sooner than they expected, Mommy and Daddy returned. Everyone cheered and hugged! The perfect universe could not be perfect without them.

It takes people to make personal patterns for people.

All of us are spiritual people, spiritually positive or spiritually negative, but spiritual nonetheless. We are souls filled with faith, hope, and love. No machine, robot, artificial intelligence, or Mind-In-The-Sky can understand or communicate with us on a personal level. No impersonal essence or set of scientific laws can satisfy our needs or fill the longings of our heart. We need a mother’s lap in which we can curl up in comfort and a father’s shoulders upon which we can sit in safety and see farther down the path.

Only a heart feels another heart. Only a living hand shares the warmth of love and life. Only spiritual people make and consume spiritual patterns. Only an infinite good person can personally believe in me and love me for all eternity while at the same time also giving you and everyone else exactly what they need.

If we were robots, then a robot deity would be good enough.

Infinite goodness can design, create, and operate a flawless, but cold, universe forever.

Only an infinite good person can share with us everlasting paradise.

That survival instinct, that will to live, that need to get back to life again, is more powerful than any consideration of taste, decency, politeness, manners, civility. Anything. It’s such a powerful force. — Danny Boyle

Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual’s instinct for self preservation. — Albert Einstein

Fear is a survival instinct; fear in its way is a comfort for it means that somewhere hope is alive. — Theodore Sturgeon

If a man is a man and not a sheep in the flock, he has a survival instinct in him that leads him to fight even if he realizes he’s fighting in vain, even if he knows he will lose. — Oriana Fallaci

Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise. — Tommy Douglas

Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise. — Victor Hugo

I have only one dream. It is the oldest of humanity, of man, in time. It is paradise. I would like to give paradise to everyone. — Frei Otto

The path to paradise begins in hell. — Dante Alighieri

Even paradise could become a prison if one had enough time to take notice of the walls. — Morgan Rhodes

As a child in Catholic Chicago I distinctly remember viewing God as the Nice Guy In The Sky. Someone good was watching over me and my world. When I was a little older, my parents sent me to a Baptist Vacation Bible School where they gave me a little black New Testament. I remember reading it and thinking that those prophets and apostles knew God and God did great things for them. My expectations were raised a couple notches.

Entering my teen years, I began noticing gaps and contradictions between the little black book and the world around me. “Where are the prophets and apostles?” kept ringing in my ears. Where was the powerful spirit of love and goodness in my community, my church, my family, my dad, especially my dad?

The tension resolved itself one autumn day as I crunched dead leaves beneath my feet. God is dead, I concluded. He might have been alive 2,000 years ago, but now God is dead. My mental stress dissipated and I relaxed in the logic of my conclusion that explained everything I had experienced to that point.

However, the relief soon turned to gnawing disappointment which I could not pinpoint. The world had felt so much better with a Friend in charge. What I did not understand then was that I was lonely. I felt abandoned. My inescapable disappointment continued for a few years until a remarkable encounter.

I was sitting at a table in a library reading some history when suddenly things came together in my mind and a Being stood across the table from me with a slight smile. Our connection lasted only five to 15 seconds. I still do not know if it was real or just a vision, but all the ups and downs and tangled situations in world history and my personal history came together. The key was choice.

People make choices. God makes choices. All these choices join or clash or swirl together making history lurch forward or sideways or backward.

I did not realize it at the time, but that moment in the library was the initial conception of the ideas in this book. My immediate reaction was a question, Was that real? Was he real?

I spent years chasing the answer to that question. Then I spent years refining and simplifying all the details down to the essential fundamentals. This book, and especially this chapter, is the culmination of those efforts.

This chapter will help us define what we are looking for when we gaze into the starry heavens. It will help us connect clear reasons with unexpressed feelings. We are defining our mission in preparation for the next book where we begin the quest to connect with an infinite good person.

This chapter connects all the previous concepts and brings us to the edge of an important decision. My hunch is many readers will be referred to this chapter without the benefit of reading the previous chapters. Thus, a quick review is in order, then I will outline the approach of this chapter with a cautionary note.

This book started at zero with universal observations rather than a philosophical statement or religious dogma. Our foundation has been the unbiased reality of universal interactions. We all see them everywhere and can find no exceptions.

We then saw that spiritual interactions are based on choice which is based on faith, hope, and love. As intelligent human beings, we thrive on trust, cooperation, hope, respect, etc... When these motivations and processes turn negative, we fall into personal despair and society disintegrates. Again, we find no exceptions to this universal pattern.

Because we each have a survival instinct, for body and for soul, we want positive interactions to continue and to grow as long as possible. This paradise instinct is satisfied only by a truly endless happy-ever-after where everyone is united in perfect trust, hope, and love.

It was hinted, and now will be explained, that only an infinite good person can supply the physical and spiritual patterns of experience to make such an eternal paradise possible. Therefore, we will dissect the meaning of those three ingredients: infinite, good, and person.

I am not trying to be complicated. I am trying to be clear. Different religions have different Gods. They all have a box with “God” on the label, but different ingredients inside. The most popular God—the Christian God—which is somewhat infinite and somewhat good, is the most influential and usually the reference point in debates and discussions. It is not mine. The religion of that God drove me to atheism.

This chapter is good for religious and non-religious, atheist and Christian. Most people have not examined the roots of their beliefs. They have not dug down to critically analyze the foundation of their belief system. They avoid deep thought by throwing one-liners at the opposing side. This chapter will challenge the way we look at the real universe and the possibility of a real infinite good person.

In a nutshell, evil does not disprove an infinite good person. On the contrary, it proves our need for one. If evil is quarantined in time and space (in an otherwise perfect universe) for both healing and learning, then an infinite good person makes sense. If that being did everything possible to prevent evil from being chosen, and spared no pain to end it as soon as possible, then that being is worthy of our admiration and loyalty. Is this true or is it wishful thinking? that is the great question at hand.

Finally, a note: Infinite good person can be cumbersome to keep repeating, so I will sometimes use IGP or GOOD. When a pronoun is needed, I will use the old-school generic “he,” not because I determine an infinite good person’s gender, but just the opposite. Who can define infinity? Infinity would be any and all genders, and possibly more than one person, similar to the ancient Greek pantheon of gods and the Christian Trinity. Anything other than “he” sounds like I am narrowing it down to something specific, when really, we must leave it open.

The math nerds among us are familiar with infinity as a quantity, but there is more to it.

Let’s do a thought experiment to give us just a hint of how impossible it is to comprehend infinity.

Walk around your house. That will take less than a minute.

Walk around a mall. That might take ten minutes.

Walk the 96 mile Wonderland Trail around Mt. Rainier near Seattle. At a typical hiking speed of 2 mph, it would take you about four days.

Assume bridges cross the oceans and you could walk around the world in three years.

Now let’s fly in a rocket at 25,000mph around the sun following Earth’s orbit, which is about half a billion miles. That would also take about 3 years. To fly around Saturn’s orbit would take about 15 years.

To rocket around our Milky Way galaxy would take well over 1 trillion years. To fly around it at the speed of light would still take over 300,000 years or 3000 lifetimes.

The smallest estimates of the size of the known universe is 100 billion light years. That would require 300 billion years of flying at light-speed. Even for astronauts with immortality, that is a long long trip.

Starting with our walk around the house, we expanded to flying around the universe and the change in scale is enormous. It is like comparing an atom to the whole world. However, if we could shrink the entire universe to the size of an atom, infinity is still much much larger than the universe.

If we sent our immortal astronaut on a trip around infinity, she would never come back because she would never finish. In fact, she would never be more than barely beginning.

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Below is a reeeeeeally tall graphic trying to illustrate big to bigger to much much bigger, but of course, I can’t show infinity!

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The previous illustrations tried to give a sense of infinity as a quantity—a number impossibly bigger than our most expansive imagination. However, in practical terms, infinity means endless power, knowledge, time, space, creativity, and anything and everything else. If you were infinite, you could make, do, know, and be anything. You could do miracles, not just small ones like walk on water, but big ones like instantly create a galaxy out of empty space. You could snap your fingers and your thoughts would come into existence. Welcome to infinity!

As an abstract number, infinity is already difficult to deal with, but what about a Being who is infinite in an infinite number of ways? What would it be like to be omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omni-omni?!

We have already seen that we cannot prove infinity. We can never return from such a quest!

An infinite being could stare you in the face, you could look eye to eye, and she could tell you she is infinite, yet you could never prove it. She would need to offer you evidence based on faith, hope, and love, then you would need to decide whether or not to accept it.

That does not mean infinity is impossible. It is just unprovable.

However, we live in a universe that points us to infinity. We see this in how it operates, and even in the fact that it exists and we exist in it.

Study the diagram below, then read further for explanation.

The universe had no beginning

The universe (this includes any multiverses) had a beginning or not. If it had no start, then it has been here forever and therefore infinite. It is smart enough and powerful enough to be immortal and self-existent.

How did it get that way? We don’t know. It doesn’t matter for this discussion. We just need to accept that it always was this way.

Science currently suggests the universe had a beginning with the Big Bang, but that conclusion might be reversed. Either way, we are considering possibilities, and the possibility of a self-eternal universe leads directly to infinity.

The universe began itself

If we say that the universe did have a beginning, then we need to ask if it began itself. Either it did or it didn’t.

If the universe created itself then it is infinite. That is because something out of nothing is infinity. This is shown through a simple mathematical exercise, then a mental one.

Use the calculator on your phone and type 1 divided by 100. You get .01. That is the equivalent of a penny.

Now type 1 divided by 10. You get .1, or a dime.

Now type 1 divided by 1. You get 1, or a whole dollar. Notice that we are always keeping 1 as the first number and the second number is getting smaller by one decimal place.

Now type 1 divided by .1. You get 10, which is $10.

Now type 1 divided by .01. You get 100, which is $100. Notice that the answer gets bigger as the number by which we are dividing gets smaller.

Keep dividing 1 by smaller and smaller numbers. 1 divided by .000001 gives you 1 million (1,000,000). Divide 1 by the smallest number your calculator will take and you will get the biggest answer.

Now for the grand finale! Type 1 divided 0. You should get a message similar to, “Can’t divide by 0”, or “undefined”, or “error”. You just discovered infinity on your calculator!

Something out of nothing is infinity.

1 is something. “Out of” means divide. 0 is nothing. 1 divided by 0 is infinity.

This is not a word game. Making the bottom number of a fraction smaller and smaller while keeping the top number the same can be put on a graph. The line will gradually curve upwards to a vertical line as it approaches what is called its asymptote. If the curve could actually touch the asymptote, then we could reach infinity. However, the curve gets closer and closer, but never touches. Infinity is there, but always out of our reach.

Let’s get back to our point that the universe created itself out of nothing, not out of a pre-existing quantum fluctuation or anything else. Nothing. Literally, nothing. No energy. No time. No space. No consciousness. Nothing.

For something to snap itself into existence is quite the miracle—an infinite miracle. (There is no other word for it. Creation is a miracle.) Therefore, such an entity is capable of anything and can create more and more and more.

Deity began the universe

If the universe had a beginning and it did not create itself, then an external entity created it. This entity we typically call, deity or God or divinity. Of course, this Being is infinite who can create something out of nothing and do anything anytime.

No created thing can create itself

By definition, this is obvious. Created things cannot create something out of nothing. They can transform existing matter or energy, but they cannot create something new.

They are dependent on an outside source

Properties due to sub-items due to endless sub-items

Not only were all things started by infinity, but all things continue by infinity. Nothing has self-existence and self-immortality, otherwise that thing would be infinite. Infinity must keep things operating according to patterns it has deemed good.

It is a very popular misconception that everything operates due to its internal properties. For example, a human is human because of human DNA and a dog is a dog because of canine DNA. The DNA is only the blueprint, not the power to build the human, but let’s roll with it.

The DNA works because of its sub-items (properties) which are amino acids. Amino acids work the way they do because of the atoms of which they are made. The atoms work because of the protons, neutron, and electrons in it. Those particles work because of their sub-atomic particles and so on and so forth. We do not know how many levels of subdividing there are, but let’s assume it continues endlessly.

Therefore, just to make a human walk, talk, and think requires an infinite process of infinite parts. Therefore, everything is a continuous process of infinity.

Innermost sub-items have no sub-items to store properties

Now let’s say the levels of sub-items are finite and have an end. (We currently cannot split fermions and bosons.) Where does the deepest level of sub-items store their properties? In other words, what makes the boson do boson things? What makes a boson always look like a boson? It does not have boson DNA.

Infinity not only had to create the boson in the first place, but it needs to keep it created and operating consistently. The boson cannot do it itself. The boson IS, but not because the boson makes itself do boson things.

No built-in guarantee of existence in the next moment

Just because we are able to scientifically describe something as being the same yesterday and today, and thus our predictions for tomorrow come true, does not mean that thing is guaranteed to exist tomorrow. Just because we observe an atom spin for hour after hour does not mean it was guaranteed to exist in the past or continue to exist in the future.

On every level, we tend to think that what happened “had to be.” From human events to natural processes to physical laws we think it is all under control of our current understanding of the pattern of behavior.

However, infinity can do what it wants. It changed nothing into something long ago. Therefore, it can rewrite the laws of existence and/or remake what currently exists at any time. All the power is in infinity.

Where is the property of existence stored?

We say an apple is red because of the properties of its DNA, molecules, atoms, etc... More fundamentally, before any of those properties can come into play, the apple (and all of its sub-items) must have the property of existence. No apple, no red!

So where is the property of existence stored? Where does any thing from sub-atomic particles to galactic clusters store their property of existence?

Of course, the answer is nowhere. Infinity keeps everything existing and working.

Where is the property for obedience stored?

We say an atom obeys the law of physics. Does it? It has no built-in properties to exist, so how does it have the built-in property to do something repeatedly and consistently and precisely? Just because a proton always does proton things does not necessarily mean it has its own built-in ability. The better explanation is that infinity is doing something consistently and uniquely, so we name it.

For example, a puppet does puppet things, but is it because the puppet does it itself or because the puppet master is pulling the strings? The properties and powers of the puppet to talk, jump, and dance are in the puppeteer, not in the puppet itself.

Another example is a stop sign. It represents the laws of physics, which means it represents our expression of our understanding of natural law. Our understanding does not make the universe work no more than a stop sign makes a car stop. Even if the stop sign is written in the language of nature, instead of English, that “law” of physics is still no more than a description of a pattern of behavior or expected behavior.

What makes things behave?

Aside from human choice, everything is under control of infinite power. Even power itself is an enigma. We can describe what it does and various forms it can take, but exactly what is it? We can’t isolate it in a test tube and dissect it.

Power IS and power WORKS because it is the expression of infinity in our universe, in our slice of reality.

Where does infinity come from?

In colloquial terms, we can say infinity came from nothing, but infinity clearly has power over nothing. If infinity came from nothing, then nothing made infinity, but that would mean nothing was not really nothing. It was almost nothing, in other words it was something, because it had at least one ability—to make infinity.

I think this forever unexplainable mystery is why the infinity symbol is a sideways 8. You can keep looping around it endlessly. Its beginning is its end and its end is its beginning. It is own source.

Infinity came from infinity.

When you are done eating Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstopper then you will have it all figured out!

The exercise of infinite power means there can always be something that we cannot explain. In fact, there can be things we will never be able to understand. (That is a good thing, because discovery never stops!) Creating something out of nothing is just the first example. Anytime a new level of existence is created, infinite power is required. That creation, or miracle, will never be understood by finite beings.

When I use the word “miracle” I do not use it in the small sense. For example, showing a flashlight to a caveman is a small miracle to the caveman. Given time and education, the caveman can understand how a flashlight works. But the act of creation of a whole new dimension of being is a big miracle. We will never be able to comprehend or replicate it.

I see at least four miraculous leaps of existence: nothing to law to something to life to mind.

1) Before things exist, there need to be laws governing that existence. There need to be established patterns of helpful, harmful, allowed, disallowed behavior. There needs to be a conceptul framework that defines the existence of one thing and how it is similar or different to other things. The first miraculous leap is nothing to law. (How can there be law without mind? See #4)

2) With a framework of consistent laws in place, now things can be brought into existence and operated in harmony with each other. Creation can now work forever without destroying itself. The second miraculous leap is law to something.

3) Time, space, matter, and energy is good, but there is still not that undefined quality that we all experience and value, and of which science is incapable of fully defining—life. We know death is the cessation of life even though the physical parts continue to exist. Plants and animals have another level of existence beyond that of dirt, even though they are made of dirt. The third miraculous leap is something to life.

4) Now we come to the level of consciousness, intelligence, spiritual choice, appreciation of beauty, formation of morality, meaningful investigation into meaning itself. Seated in the brain, but so much more, is the human mind/spirit/soul. A body born of molecules in the shape of a man or woman acquires personhood. How is that?! Where does that come from?! Why do we ask questions, make discoveries, and share experiences that no other species is even aware of?! The fourth miraculous leap is life to mind.

Miracle layered upon miracle! Expression of infinity layered upon expression of infinity. What is this wonder in which we all exist and which we experience every moment of our lives?! I understand only a tiny bit of infinity, but rejoice in experiencing it every day!

When I was boy, my dad would take us to the highway overpass near our home. Month after month, year after year, we would look east to downtown Chicago and watch the Sears Tower slowly rise above the skyline. I knew it was bigger than all the other buildings, but from ten miles away it was small to me.

After it was completed, we took the train downtown so we could go inside it. Just before we entered, I looked up. It was scary and a bit dizzying at the same time. The clouds floated by, but to me it looked the tower was about to fall! What seemed small and interesting from a distance was enormous and terrifying up close!

I think this is how many people treat the subject of infinity, deity, God, etc.... To keep from being overwhelmed, the topic is kept at a distance and out of mind as much as possible. And I can’t say that I blame them. Can you imagine being crushed by Infinity?!

Throughout history, religion has wielded the biggest of all weapons to gain control of the hearts and minds and money of the people. The more power religious leaders gain the more they wield it with arbitrary control and sometimes outright cruelty. As Lord Acton famously said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

If finite beings are abusive with absolute power, who wants to face Infinity with absolute power? We can defrock, depose, and even execute political and religious dictators, but what can be done about Deity?

If Infinity is not perfectly, continually, endlessly good, then we are toast, the goose is cooked, the game is over, we lose—badly.

Let’s turn our attention to the second word in Infinite Good Person.

What is good?

If Wikipedia is correct, “Every language has a word expressing good in the sense of ‘having the right or desirable quality’ and bad in the sense of ‘undesirable'".

What do we ultimately desire? An eternity of desirable experiences.

Therefore, good is what works for eternity. Good is what contributes to eternity without any subtraction. Good is creation without any destruction, positive without any negative.

Don’t confuse this definition with reality. Our reality right now is a mix of good and evil, and our understanding and experience of both good and evil are not perfect or complete. The definition of good is perfect good and the definition of evil is perfect evil. If you mix even a tiny bit of evil into good, then it ceases to be good. Reality is a mix of two opposite perfections.

How do we determine if something is good or bad, desirable or undesirable? An authority might tell us or we decide by looking at the consequences. For example, mommy said don’t play in the street. It is bad to touch a hot stove because we get burned. It is good to go to sleep on time because we need to go to work the next morning.

Other situations can start with the best of intentions, then turn bad. A British prison offered computer classes to help rehabilitate the prisoners. One convict used the time and knowledge to hack the prison’s network.

Some things take even longer to develop. A few mothers put sweet drinks in their baby’s bottle to keep them quiet, but the later years of cavities and hyper behavior prove it to have been a mistake.

Hat makers in the 1800’s discovered that mercury made more workable leather. Over time “mad hatters” were those who suffered from the side effects.

In the early 1900’s glow-in-the-dark radium watch dials were useful to the military. Young women were hired to paint them. Gradually, they fell ill, lost their teeth, had bones rot in their face, and had other harmful side effects. It took a consumer group’s investigation to discover the dangerous radiation.

It works the other way, too. There are many stories of people with car trouble, or who were laid off, or stuck in traffic at just the right time to keep them from the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11. Likewise, there are many stories of people who were kept from buying or using their tickets to get on board the Titanic’s first and only voyage.

Only time will tell of the true cost/benefit ratio of government programs, manufacturing processes, and cultural traditions. Immediate gratification vs building for durability happens on both the personal and societal levels. What first appears good can turn out bad and vice versa.

How can we truly know? We only fully know by going to the end of eternity and looking back on history.

But eternity is an infinite, endless timeline! And we are now familiar with our inability to comprehend infinity.

Nonetheless, good is what works for eternity or makes eternity work. If a behavior feels good now, but in the long run hurts me or you, then it is bad. It may appear good for a million years, and so gets adopted by many. Then its insidious, cancerous side effect breaks through and we realize that what we thought was long term good was only a very subtle deception that got even more people hooked.

Whether the universe breaks down after a million years or a trillion years, it is still not good. It is evil. Clearly, what is not good is bad, but let’s break down the three kinds of good and evil.

Primary choice

It all starts with choice. Without choice there is no independent selection. Animals have programmed preferences for eating and sleeping and so forth, but we are intelligent beings with decision making powers that we can use to create or destroy.

We can choose to something desirable or undesirable for ourselves or for someone else. That choice can be rational or irrational, selfish or unselfish, a reaction to something that affected us or a totally new and unrelated decision.

For example, you decide to call me a name. I can choose to call you a name, continue whatever we were arguing about, or just walk away and go play baseball or watch TV. Maybe I started the whole thing by criticizing your cooking and set off a chain reaction, but each decision becomes its own choice in and of itself and can send the chain reaction down any number of forks in the road, or get off the road altogether.

In any case, there is no chain reaction without first making a choice, just as there are no ripples unless someone decides to drop a rock in the water.

Secondary effects

It is difficult to talk about a choice without mentioning at least some of its consequences, because it is results that we are after. As examined in earlier chapters, I don’t choose to eat broccoli over ice cream for mere choice sake. I eat it because I believe it is healthy for me, or because I love its flavor, or I am tired of ice cream and hope for a pleasant change. Faith, hope, and love inspire me to choose something I think is better and more desirable than other options.

Also included in secondary effects are physical processes. I choose to leave camp without dowsing my campfire and it starts a forest fire. Trees burn, animals flee, habitat is destroyed, firefighters get injured or die. One little decision can cause months, years, or lifetimes of consequences.

That one forest fire might be large enough to break the flow of moisture from ocean to inland. The local climate warms and dries which potentially leads to other localities experiencing shifts in weather which influences them to more extremes. Entire species may go extinct because of the changes. Populations may migrate which may start wars which then add to environmental destruction. All of this can result from one decision hundreds of years ago.

What I have described is the problem of natural evil. Plants and animals do not make choices. Why do they suffer and die? Why do they experience undesirable pain and loss? There had to be a primary choice sometime somewhere that started the avalanche, and clearly there are ongoing choices adding to the whole downhill slide.

Residual influence

Here is the third level of evil and the one most often forgotten. We reduce evil to only natural consequences, then expect Infinity to clean it up instantly. However, primary choice on the spiritual plane must also be fixed so that pain and death on the physical level does not start over again.

For example, we have the classic story of the atheist shaking his fist at the sky and daring God to prove himself with a lightning strike. Well, what if deity did such a thing? How would the atheist be benefitted by being killed? What would onlookers think? Would they be moved to fear, to respect, to trust, to love? Residual influence would shape the town and possibly nations long after the atheist is dead.

We see residual influence play a powerful role in society when a black person is killed by a white police officer. Fighting will persist and policies will be made long after the court system determines whether or not the incident was justified or unjustified and how much the punishments should be.

Infinity could snap its fingers and turn this planet into an immortal paradise, but who should get a place in it and who should not? Should everyone just be automatically granted amnesty and forgiveness or should there be some kind of punishment, retribution, or reparations made first? Just because deity forgives do the victims also need to forgive to gain entrance?

Residual influence is perhaps the trickiest and longest lasting evil to be solved because it is the most hidden. It could break out at any time, even among a perfect society, if people start thinking that deity dealt too harsh or too lenient with past criminals. Evil would start all over again, even in perfect people in a perfect place.

Evil is such a tricky, deceptive thing to deal with, because it is not really a thing. If it was, force could annihilate it, but it is an influence that spreads among thinking, feeling people.

It is an anti-good. It is a destructive use of good power to ruin creation and creativity. It cannot survive on its own, because after it has destroyed all good, then it must stop because nothing—literally, nothing—is left.

So that raises another question. How do you stop evil without destroying all good? How do you end that which ends? Using evil to destroy evil is like the proverbial fighting fire with fire. It doesn’t work. It only makes things worse. If I want your selfishness to stop so I can enjoy my selfishness, then the evil of selfishness continues and spreads.

Residual influence also works positively. We are inspired by creative, giving people. We live for those who died for us. Yet, it is the residual influence of evil that is most critical for us to understand as we seek a solution to the great problem of evil and the fulfillment of our paradise instinct.

We are people. We are beings of faith, hope, and love. We look to people like us for motivation and leadership. We can use, but can’t relate to machines and artificial entities. Therefore, we look now at the six types of people who could be deity.

I will use “God” and “gods” here because that is the generic term used to describe a personal deity and does not refer to any particular religion. The possibility of a machine, mind-in-the-sky, or other non-personal entity ruling the universe is a separate topic.

We make a table of possibilities by combining the options of quantity and quality. God has either limited, finite power or he has unlimited, infinite power. God’s quality of character is all good, all evil, or some mixture in between. This gives us six options.

Each of these options has an appeal to different audiences, as attested to by the variety we see in movies and literature. My goal is to determine which option can fulfill my paradise instinct.

Finite

Whether evil, mixed, or good, this set of options has a human appeal because it is like us. We are finite beings struggling against forces greater than ourselves. We like stories where the common man or the ordinary woman overcomes great odds and grows in the process.

However, our concern at this point is not winning a battle or two. We want to win the whole war over death and suffering. This requires eternal paradise which requires infinity. So our three finite options immediately fall short, but let’s briefly consider them to help us visualize and cement them in our minds so we are better able to discuss them.

Finite: Evil

Examples in this category are easy to find: Hitler. Nero. Stalin. The devil. Any number of despotic dictators. Demented arch-villains in the movies. All of these are examples of finite beings dedicated to evil. Nobody could endure an eternity under them, but of course, they are incapable of making eternity. They live in the universe as subjects to its laws, then they die. Obviously, this option is nowhere close to a workable, or even desirable, solution.

Finite: Mixed

We could put every human on the planet in this category. We can also put our fictional super heroes like Batman, Superman, and the Avengers in this category. But just because the American people defeated Hitler or the Avengers saved the planet from an invasion from outer space does not mean any or all of these people are anywhere close to providing us with an eternally good universe. In fiction, things are getting better (until the next movie!) but in reality things are getting worse. Putting all the finite beings in the world together will not give us infinity, and good intentions mixed with selfish, shortsighted thoughts and actions does not bring perfection. Cross this option off the list.

Finite: Good

So where is this perfect person or persons? And how is this finite person so perfectly good when they have not lived for an eternity to find out what is really good? We cannot afford limited good. We need endless good. But in the end, it does not matter. Even if such a person(s) could be found, we still have the problem of finiteness when we really need infinity. Put all the gurus, philosophers, and holy men together (if it can be done consistently) and we still have only a tower of wisdom that fails to rise out of the atmosphere much less reach across the universe.

Infinite

It becomes clear that only an infinite being can give us eternity, so we need to consider the basic kinds of infinite beings. This is where religious fights begin, but let’s focus on just the basics.

Infinite: Evil

With this option, we are talking about some kind of dastardly deity, a divine devil of unimaginable proportions. Death and torture would be inescapable. Even resurrection would simply be a cruel way of getting us to live again so we could be tortured again. Thankfully, we can write off this option in short order. If an infinitely powerful and totally evil person existed, then we would all be dead and/or continually tortured by now. The fact that there is true, unselfish goodness left in this world proves that an infinitely evil person does not exist.

Infinite: Mixed

Next we come to an infinite, partly good, partly bad being. Mostly, this is what the monotheistic half of the world believes in. Most Christians, Muslims, Jews, and even many secular people view God as an almighty, all loving, and all powerful person, but in some way selfish, egotistical, indifferent, and contradictory. It was this confusing, contradictory view of God that drove me out of religion for years and led me to believe that God was dead.

If God is infinite and selfish, then we are powerless pawns trapped in a miserable illusion of freedom. If we are to work, earn, beg, buy, or suicide bomb ourselves into the “good” side of the afterlife (if there is one), then the definitive textbook on that method I have yet to find.

And there still remains the problem of evil. In this view, deity is partly selfish, therefore partly evil, and therefore evil remains throughout eternity. The problem remains unsolvable because no one tells an infinite being what to do. So if God remains selfish, then we are stuck, permanently. At best, we might be kept alive forever bouncing off the highs and lows, and always living with the meaningless knowledge that we are pets for an infinite weird person. Because there is a lot of superficial evidence for this option, it is believed by a lot of people. Moving forward, we will often need to compare this option to the next one. Multitudes think this option gives us a perfectly good eternity, but it cannot. Good and evil cannot possibly give us perfectly consistent goodness. When the infinite being who sits on the top of the universe is internally conflicted then contradiction is enthroned, logic is overthrown, and truth becomes impossible.

Infinite: Good

Having surveyed all other options, we arrive at an infinite good person. A good person is able to generate positive patterns. An infinite good person can generate them forever. If that infinite good person will give us his predictability, progressiveness, and profitability then we can enjoy a wonderful eternity of faith, hope, and love. Giving us their goodness is the absolutely essential key.

This is the only option with eternal hope, so it is worth pursuing. It is worth the time and effort to dig deep, because we have a good chance to find more than pretty rocks. We can find gold! We don’t have it yet, and we know there are obstacles that must be surmounted, but nothing else gives us hope. And hope is able to do wonderful things.

Logically, by now, the answer should be obvious.

If we want the physical universe fixed and all the life processes working properly forever, then we need an infinite good person.

If we want unending peace and harmony between all peoples; if we want faith, hope, and love to be the only bond between hearts, then we need an infinite good person.

If we want happy-ever-after in the eternal, universal family, then we need an infinite good person.

Who else can be the hub in the center of the wheel to hold us all together rather than flying apart?

Who else can be the great guiding Father and nurturing Mother for a universal family?

Who else can make and fulfill the promise of eternal security?

Who else can wipe away every tear?

Logically, the answer is clear.

Emotionally, are we ready to accept someone else sitting on the throne of the universe instead of our arrogant ambitions, selfish dreams, shortsighted planning, and unreal fantasies? Are we ready to stop shoving our way through life and just walk in trust? Are we ready to give up our imaginary thrones in our imaginary worlds?

Do we need an infinite good person? Who else is able to gently, precisely get inside our heads and untangle one good thought away from the bad thought that wraps around it? Who else can empower us to be the kings and queens we clearly have the potential to be?

Do we need an infinite good person? Is there any other possible solution?

This point is a summary conclusion of the previous points. I make it to answer a very common accusation that all belief in God is the product of manipulation due to human religion. My counter is that religion is usually the product of our innate belief from childhood after being degraded by cynicism as we grow older.

It is now common knowledge that when we are born we must bond with humans within minutes or negative side effects grow that will plague the baby for the rest of its life. People need people because people are people. Brilliant! As infants we are protected and nourished by parents who, in our undeveloped minds, are omnipotent beings. We feel safe, so we spend our time chasing our curious impulses.

This is what leads us to believe in, and hope for, an infinite good person. Of course, as children, we do not think of infinity in the technically precise way. We think of parents and then God(s) above them as bigger, much bigger. We intuit a Being big enough to rule the universe and make everything come out all right in the end. Without words or ability to describe it, our paradise instinct feels its way to a solution.

The problem is that as we grow older and experience the failings of our parents and the evil in the world, we lose our creativity, our imagination, our childlike trust. We fancy ourselves growing smarter, but in reality, we are just growing cynical and addicted to skepticism. We are unable to replace our intuited ideal of an infinite good person with anything else, and so we just settle into being part of the problem.

We reason that since we cannot hold back the tsunami of evil, then we might as well accept reality and float in it. To even consider that an infinite good person would help us is ridiculed as childish. But childlike trust is the key to connecting to Unlimited Power! Only “adults” go it on their own in the face of evil forces of global magnitude. These cynical “adults” overlike the fact that to be childlike in unity with Infinity is to be protected and nourished and free to be curious.

As already introduced, evidence abounds that infinity is alive and well on planet Earth and in galaxy Milky Way and in the universe known and unknown. It lies entirely with us to pursue and nurture that embryonic vision we had in our childhood, before it was cruelly stomped on by “adults,” before we gave in to our cynical tendency to embrace evil. Renew your connection with your curiosity and reconsider the evidence, all the evidence.

The standard thinking goes, If God is infinite, then he is able to eliminate evil. If God is good, then he is willing to eliminate evil. But there is clearly evil in the world. Therefore, God is either unable, unwilling, or both.

On the surface, that argument makes a lot of sense. Infinite good and finite evil is a contradiction that should be easily solved, but isn’t. A large gap remains. Into this gap step a lot of religions with their favorite version of one of the six types of gods.

Before examining the many options offered to us, why don’t we prepare for it like a job interview? Let’s get a list of questions together, make sure they are really good questions, then have them ready to ask all the candidates.

Just because someone claims to be a deity, doesn’t mean they really are one. If the candidate actually does meet the specifications, that doesn’t mean they are a good at the god-job. And if the candidate interviews well, but can’t produce a real, good track record, then we still don't hire them.

This process is the first requirement that any infinite good person should be comfortable with. They should understand our limitations, questions, and fears. They should understand we are beings of faith, hope, and love who give trust and respect only to those who show themselves trustworthy. If they don’t like this process, then they need not apply and we can safely ignore them.

Therefore, before we begin the search for our perfect deity (see Quest to Connect), let’s perfect our list of questions. When each candidate sits at our desk for an interview, we want to be ready and efficient.

Interview questions

1) Did you start the universe perfectly good?

2) Did you have anything to do with the start of evil?

3) Was evil ever a part of your plan?

4) Do you in any way encourage, or partner with, evil?

5) Will you let evil destroy the universe?

6) What evidence can you show that you are infinite?

7) When and how will you give us immortal perfection?

8) How much do you care about us?

9) Will you torture finite evildoers infinitely?

10) Will everyone be rewarded/punished proportionately?

11) When and how will evil end?

12) Will evil rise again in your universe?

13) Was evil worth it?

Did you start the universe perfectly good?

Can’t blame anyone else in the beginning, so there is only one answer consistent with goodness, Yes. If a deity claiming to be good starts with a universe less than good, then that deity is not good and thus off our list. Remember, good is what works forever and there can be no exceptions.

Did you have anything to do with the start of evil?

Our candidate may have started a perfect universe, but if he introduced imperfections into it later then he is off our list. An infinite good person would not design evil into his universe, nor would he introduce it purposely or accidentally, nor would he make a flaw or weakness to be exploited.

Was evil ever a part of your plan?

Our god-job candidate does not get off the hook if he started and then maintained a perfect universe, but then setup someone else to start evil.

Do you in any way encourage, or partner with, evil?

We are satisfied if the root of evil cannot be traced back to deity, however there is one more check we need to make. Is god somehow using evildoers to do his dirty work. A classic example is the devil with a pitchfork being placed in charge of hell. This makes infinite goodness tainted with evil and therefore unacceptable.

Will you let evil destroy the universe?

By this point we have determined that the deity sitting across the desk from us has totally clean hands from evil. However, if he is merely watching and not helping us, and if he is going to let evil run rampant, then his once bright shiny universe is going to self-implode and eat itself into oblivion. This makes us wonder if this was the original plan or if the god is unwilling or unable to stop it. Cross this candidate off the list of potentially infinite good persons.

What evidence can you show that you are infinite?

This is what we are really after. We want real evidence in history, science, personal experience, culture, nature, etc... This whole exercise is pointless if there is no real evidence.

When and how will you give us immortal perfection?

Our paradise instinct was a major factor in kicking off this whole line of thought. We want positive faith, hope, and love to continue forever.

How much do you care about us?

Is infinity a warm hearted person or a cold set of laws? Is deity a mere supervisor or a being who can feel our pain and share in our joy? We need god to be a Parent not a mere Police Officer.

We are being asked, directly and indirectly, to commit now and to trust forever. We need to shift our thinking and behavior from mixed to only good. Sure, it makes sense because that is the only way eternity can work, but nonetheless, it is an extraordinary commitment. Our god-job applicant needs to make a similar extraordinary commitment. It’s called, leading by example.

Only unselfishness can inspire unselfishness. Also, we are only finite, when we let go of self we need to know infinity will be there to catch us. When we let go of the familiar, we need to know an infinite good person will hold our hand through the unknown.

Deity doing a good deed here or sharing a bit of wisdom there is not enough. All of him must be committed if he wants all of me.

Will you torture finite evildoers infinitely?

This is such a popular belief, but so inconsistent with goodness, fairness, and justice. If evildoers are artificially kept on life support just so they can feel pain, then deity is sadistic. Moreover, evil now becomes a permanent feature of the universe. Perfect goodness is gone. Is GOOD not good enough in and of itself? Is he so insecure that he must constantly be compared to evil?

Will everyone be rewarded/punished proportionately?

The petty thief is not the same as the Hitlers and Stalins of history. Everyone being punished infinitely makes every person’s punishment the same. We expect the divine court system to be at least as good as human court systems.

Similarly, if everyone is rewarded with only a harp and a cloud to sit on for all eternity, then everyone receives the same boredom, or drug-like ecstasy. We are beings with varied personalities, talents, and ambitions. Some prefer to follow and some prefer to lead, while others prefer to watch. Heaven needs the variety and challenges as earth, just without the negatives.

When and how will evil end?

This is probably the flip of the question about receiving immortality, but equally important. We need to know there is a plan. If we can’t be given a date, then at least what are the conditions? Is there anything we can do help? What is taking so long?

Will evil rise again in your universe?

If evil rises again, then what will keep it from rising again and again and again? Evil will become a permanent feature of the universe and perfect goodness is lost.

Was evil worth it?

Once is enough, or was it more than enough? If the god-job applicant wants to win my vote, then he better have a good reason for allowing evil and all of its painful effects.

Next

Now that we have our interview questions, it is time to research the candidates. Next week, we will examine every major religion and every major type of relition in the world to see what they have to offer. We are looking to be connected to an infinite good person through channels we can understand. We are beings of faith, hope, and love, so that is how the connection must be made.

A very big being stands in front of you and booms down to you, “I am infinite.” How do you prove or disprove him? And what exactly are trying to prove? Infinite size? Infinite power? Infinite knowledge, presence, or other ability? Would your test(s) vary according to the characteristic you are measuring? Is it possible to disprove infinity in some area while at the same time being unable to prove infinity?

What could you do if the being claimed to be infinite in and infinite number of ways?

Coming face to face with an infinite being really doesn’t prove or disprove anything. Yet we argue as if it would. Therefore, if we do not come face to face with Infinity, what difference does that possibly make? We are, and will always be, incapable of measuring the immeasurable.

And because we cannot measure, we can neither prove nor disprove.

Is infinity inevitable, probable, or impossible? Explain

What is good and evil in your own words?

Describe the kind of eternity you would like.

Is it possible to have a good eternity without an infinite good person?

Are there more than 6 god options? Are there other ways of categorizing the question?

Is an IGP truly impossible to prove or disprove?

Do you have improvements to our list of interview questions?

Explain the four miracles.

Have you had a supernatural encounter?