Postscript to the Undeniably Judaic Postscript

e.g., the Problematically Christian Appendix

H. Alan Tansson ~ otherwise the Author

When I began this project that some might consider rather ‘silly,’ I set myself a “paper completion date,” which is another way of telling yourself it would go on forever if you don’t call a halt rather randomly.

That date was rather arbitrary at the time, for I’d merely said ‘by Christmas,’ because that is a rough period in the calendar. When I had added the “Undeniably Judaic Postscript” (which was early on into the project) and saw that it meant to be a sort of the devil’s “giving up the ghost” and a kind of “rebirth”, so I decided that Christmas had a good ring to it. As the date approached, however, and it became even more apparent that ‘Ol Scratch was going to claim his old seat and ‘birthright’ as a first-born angel, I realized I was getting into some problematic territory.

For the devil would appear to be a rather benevolent anti-Christ assisting in all the dirty work in cleaning up this human mess we are in an advanced state of making. This is an ‘anti-Christ’ who is “anti” because he’s on the other side of God”…. though our story ends with God telling him he can’t take him back, repentant or not. Yet he says “they are in this together” which implies he actually is at his left hand because that is the one used for dirty work and so not to shake hands with or swear on the Bible by.

Now I don’t think that anyone is in a good position to suggest such a new type of anti-Christ, and certainly not one that is the repentant angel of evil, the devil. That I was born into a Jewish household and raised rather conservatively, is just what you’d expect from a naive well-wisher, a cliche bar mitzvah boy that just wants to do good and totally messes things up. However, this was not written by a Pollyanna. It was written because I know beyond any doubt that we are going to need some heavy-duty help. We are making for ourselves a deep pile, rapidly laying up the tumulus from which perhaps a few survivors will excavate querulously, trying to understand why.

I believe, along with Dr. Yuval Harari who writes about mankind’s future (rather than the Dr. Yuval Harari that writes about Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah) that humanity, in its technological hubris, shall begin fashioning artificial intelligence at a biological level…believing in the efficiency of “life for the smart.” And that super-race of cyborgs will evolve far faster than those of us, who as children dreamed of playing out Hollywood films in their realization of some naive perfection. Such human intelligences will proclaim themselves powerful gods, and we shall in fact lose much if not all of what we have so long struggled for, and become their pets and slaves.

So let me merely say, that on this Christmas Eve, of 2022, that a problematic helper to the aforesaid “Son of God” might be conceived of to help out the others of us who must deal with the human hubris of science on its own terms. For long before now we have bequeathed ourselves a new form of devil in our image. It is alright that the old one step down from the throne so many of our ancestors built for him. He has made many a golem of us, believing the Tree of Knowledge was simply a pretense to God’s power and that we should all eat and become as the gods. His eyes have been opened and he has said he is ready to come back, and God of our old myth will welcome him back, and shall give him back legs and arms to help us redeem ourselves.

I write this as the keeper of the office of a church named after St. Michael, and I have no problem admitting that it was on the Feast of St. Michael at this old Episcopal church that I thought it would be a fine thing to do in the serpent in our mind that Christians (and Jews and Moslems) associate with sin and evil. I know evil to be a very real thing. I do not judge it statistically, nor relativistically. Evil is substantial. Just as the serpent in our mind has every reason to be there. For I am fool enough to think that what others have put their fingers on anthropomorphically, may well be structures of the deep real. It is Jungian, but even Jung didn’t go far enough.

And that is why I thought up this rather silly idea, to say outright that the singularity scientists seek so sincerely might be anthropomorphically described. To say it out loud: that this might allow us to overcome the evil –anthropomorphically or structurally latent within us— TO TRULY CONFRONT what makes people suffer so, in order to live with it. For on our horizon is horror enough. We shall need all the help we can find, even if that be a reformed Satan and some of his hosts. But I should hope especially for the conversion of C.S.Lewis’ wise old Screwtape in this regard.

The very greatest and most admirable people throughout history have been those able to deal with suffering, and we can hope for the strength and wisdom not to imitate them but to transform ourselves with them. Let us only pray.

I cannot apologize beyond what I allude to in the text for this problem of my apparent apostasy. I had no idea when I began how it would spin out, and let myself follow the pragmatic advice of James’ Radical Empiricist method… to shut off the mind and let the experiment surf over the chaos and simply speak. It is the way of Gnostic balances, a prerogative of the arts, and theatre especially…for in this myth we out-do the Christian phrase ‘for he gave his only-begotten son to die for our sins.’ In my redaction of the myth, God himself demonstrates the ultimate in humility. Not only does he listen to his rebellious angel, but he takes up the devil’s challenge. This is far from a weak God, but the most forgiving and compassionate one. It is not a devil’s bargain at all, for he is God enough to accept his own imperfections and have the capacity to grow, including that capacity to forgive and celebrate his prodigal first-born angel. Let us understand this as a structural archetype if you will… it requires that one accept something as strange as a block-time-space that can modulate, twist and has potential to transform its manifold form. Don’t ask me for an equation..I’ve given you a foot to stand on.

But all this is highly problematic for the Jew in me to swallow. For God to change, for God to grow. No orthodox in any religion could accept I’m afraid. To accept and humbly bow to unfathomability and accept that as a principle?

In the Jewish case, to give up the Shema, or the credo of “ONE” I found I must face up to my “Flux Logic of One,” and from here it was the hubris of ONE that suffered most. All through my childhood I vowed I would come to respect my good neighbors but never ‘put Christ on my throne.’ And I feel that I have not. I have simply created a story that I can put my faith to. Ki mi’tzion tezeh Torah. I only don’t know how Scholem Asch really felt about his Judaism, or Franz Werfel for that matter. For most, I am sure I shall be treated as apostate…even if I try claiming that I understand Judaism better for having grown up to write this mythic postscript. For I also believe I understand the roots of evil as well, and this has been an object of prayer since my earliest days. For to understand its root system, its rhizomatics, should be a help in shutting it down, in turning around Screwtape and his thousand nephews himself. And it was in reading Plato that I got the courage to take him on—both Screwtape and Plato together. For in considering Plato’s struggle with Job, leaving Socrates running from the arguments of Theophrastus and Glaucon, I knew we finally had tools to do it better.

It is of course an entirely different problem to face up to the scientists of my generation, to be happy to say I’ve grown up to understand science through the eyes of so many others–through the conversations and quotes and hotlinks to the heartfelt qualms of so many mental giants (and some midgets) across the rhizome of academica.edu. Especially the conundrums of QM. Lucky for me, though we post these pieces for comments and the shards discovered by as many others on this dig, I am not really writing for the peers of my own generation. I’m no longer afraid of how many will run to their weapons cabinets for ordnance and the right words suitable to wipe ideas like mine from the academic battlefield. Who cares anymore? They shall die off quite soon, too. There is a younger set that must deal with science, and come to believe in whatever this myth allows them to grapple with.

I only hope it shall allow many more grappling hooks and space enough to grab ahold of everything rushing towards them to be grasped. They must learn Xtreme sports of thinking, the prayers of a new scholarship. So good luck and Godspeed around the cycles. May the hope be reborn.

Christmas morning, 2022, amended for Substack Christmas 2025