[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:01:05] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, from now on I only want to do movie episodes and if you have a problem with that maybe ask yourself, do I really want to piss off a guy with a Jewish space laser?

[00:01:30] Would you fine tune those space lasers for like wart removal and stuff? Just asking, just ask the council and elders how precise the elders of Zion. Can we do stalker next time? Why don't you just start a movie podcast? Just go ahead I give you special dispensation.

[00:01:49] Just as a side gig? Side hustle? Yeah. Yeah, yeah because I have the time to do that. So as much as we joke about anti-Semitism, I'm so perplexed as to why people find a need to blame Jews for shit like that.

[00:02:07] It's actually like puzzling, it's like a weird kind of indoctrination from early on that the people to blame would be Jews. I just don't get it. You don't think where there's smoke there's fire? You know, I mean it's one thing to own most of the major media companies.

[00:02:28] But to use that to start forest fires. I know, like we were kind of pissed off frankly. Like we lashed out a little bit with that one. It only hurts the Jews. Can you imagine how many Southern California neurotic Jews are complaining about the lungs?

[00:02:45] Their lungs are burning! That's the thing that made me not believe this. That and the fact that it's Jewish space lasers. But like why Southern California? Why would they do it to California? I know, you don't want to piss off your big Hollywood studios that you secretly run.

[00:03:02] The only less plausible place would be Florida I guess. Which would probably take... I'm not going to speak yellow Florida. I live there. But I'm just saying if I had to pick an area of a country to space...

[00:03:19] If we need target practice a little bit with our Jewish space lasers. That's what we should do. Okay, fair enough. Jewish space lasers to give like bristles, like just en masse would be great. And you just feed all the Jewish babies into a computer database and then boom!

[00:03:36] No more rabbis fucking it up and having to gender reassign Jews. Yeah, no, it's actually a powerful feeling to know we have access to this if we need it. Is Elon Musk in any way associated with this stuff? Yeah. No.

[00:03:57] And in fact, like that could end up being a problem. So like his Mars space fleet goes up against the Jewish space laser. I don't know. It's like Godzilla versus... Mothra? Mothra? Yeah, whatever. Who did Godzilla fight? A bunch of monsters. But there was like a famous monster.

[00:04:20] Ghidorah, Mothra, I don't know. The Incredible Hulk. Andre the Giant. It's an evening episode, people, in case you can't tell. So today we're going to talk about a Ted Chang story. We were trying to figure out like a couple days ago, right? What to talk about.

[00:04:43] And you said you wanted to do a short story. Ted Chang maybe. And yeah, so this is what we're doing. I get in moods, you know. So when we do academic stuff, an article, we do a movie. Like I feel like we have to rotate.

[00:04:56] But I was really in the mood for a short story this time. And it had to, in my mind, it was Borges or Chang. And you suggested this great, great story. Yes. So hell is the absence of God.

[00:05:09] This is from his first collection, The Story of Your Life. It's an anthology which I strongly recommend. Every story is good. He only writes like 10 stories in his whole life, but they're all great. So he has like two books in like what, 20 years? Yeah. 30 years.

[00:05:26] I think almost all, if not all the stories were collected from other areas. So yeah, he just has these two anthologies, exhalation and this. He's the Dr. Dre of publishing shorts. Exactly. But it is a good yeah, he publishes them in in magazines, right?

[00:05:44] And then collects them into anthologies. That's that's such a good racket. You got to pull a frankfurt's on bullshit where you could just, you know, turn an article into a book that becomes popular. Bestseller, yeah. Which is what it seems like Jonathan Bynes is doing with his short

[00:06:02] article in Nautilus. Ah, nice transition. So yeah, we needed an opening segment and we figured we hadn't done conceptual analysis on consciousness in a while. And somebody just asked us on Twitter to do more conceptual analysis. So here you go.

[00:06:20] It's Jonathan Bynes, who is a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, but publishing in Nautilus, which is like a science, like a good science blog or whatever, magazine, I guess. Yeah. It's science and technology and other stuff. It's just, you know, it's like literati shit.

[00:06:43] We're big fans of this. Clearly we know a lot about it. But actually second article I've read from them. But for whatever reason, like we were considering two articles to do and they were both from Nautilus just randomly. Yeah. So this was your you you selected this one.

[00:06:59] I did. Does that mean I have to describe it? No, you have to describe it. OK, it's called the hard problem of breakfast. And it's a funny riff. And I strongly recommend that people read this. If you know anything about like debates over consciousness

[00:07:15] and the hard problem of consciousness, it's a funny riff on that. But it's called the hard problem of breakfast. How does it emerge from bacon and eggs? And essentially, I'll just read the first part and you'll get the sense of what it what this article is doing.

[00:07:33] Over the past century, scientists have unlocked many of the most profound secrets of bacon, eggs, oatmeal and avocado toasts, advancing our understanding of the day's most important meal and ushering in a golden age of innovation. Yet there remains one problem that has proven

[00:07:50] frustratingly resistant to our efforts at resolution, what is often referred to as the hard problem of breakfast. So substitute consciousness there for that, you know, the one problem that has proven frustratingly resistant at our efforts at resolution.

[00:08:07] The stubborn fact remains that no matter how deeply we probe into the nature of bacon, eggs, oatmeal and avocado toast to say nothing of shakshuka, grits, bear claws or dim sum or the interactions between these fundamental building blocks and say orange juice or coffee in the morning paper.

[00:08:27] We simply have no convincing theory to explain how such disparate, seemingly inert components give rise to the phenomenon we subjectively experience as breakfast. And there's a bunch of footnotes in this that are fake footnotes. I love that. Yeah. So it's really well done. It's a very funny parody.

[00:08:50] It goes through like the various like functional accounts, a limitivist accounts. I like the limitivists. I'll read that. The failure of science to find coherent answers have led some scholars to theorize that breakfast may not exist at all. Rather, they suggest that our experience of breakfast

[00:09:08] may be no more than a persistent illusion that, in fact, nothing truly exists beyond the bacon eggs, toast, hashbrowns, coffee and perhaps a fruit cup. Our brains falsely attribute the quality of breakfast to these items, perhaps encouraging us to eat them and thereby nourish ourselves. The evolutionary psychologist.

[00:09:26] That's my paper. This is the best. The evolutionary psychologist, Danika Saunders, has recently proposed in a series of papers that our ancestors who developed the ability to breakfast may have enjoyed a survival advantage over their non-breakfasting peers, such as being better able to outrun Wolverines.

[00:09:46] That's the gist of it. And they go into like kind of reductionist thing, trying to locate breakfast within the egg or the... Everywhere you look, it's not there. Right? This is exactly. So let me just ask you a question to get the conversation started with this.

[00:10:04] I first thought when I just skimmed through this, is this a reductio ad absurdum of people who argue that consciousness is this extra hard problem that is resistant to solutions? And because there are people who believe this, that consciousness is just like, you know, all these components.

[00:10:23] And we're just deciding to make a mystery of it. So is this to the, you know, the extent that this is actually like a serious contribution to the hard problem? Is it just trying to say, that's all bullshit. It's only a hard problem if you make it one.

[00:10:41] Actually, it's just, you know, these components. Right. That's that's how I read it as well. So like the hard problem so called by, I guess by Chalmers. That this is this is just a straight up comedic reductio by saying like,

[00:11:00] yeah, you know, like that's no harder than trying to figure out what makes breakfast because if you actually take a peer into what is what breakfast is, you'll find that there's nothing that can explain it as well. It's not a very good reductio.

[00:11:14] You know, I don't think it's serving that function. So then if it's not and I agree, but then why isn't it? Yeah, see, this is why I feared a lapse into real philosophy. So the hard problem of consciousness.

[00:11:31] We've spoken a little bit about it, like the just the nature of subjective experience for in Thomas Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? We've talked I think about the Mary experiment thought experiment. We talked about zombies.

[00:11:43] The idea is that you can explain all of the physical features of the brain and the nervous system, and you still have this additional question, this explanatory gap about what causes the subjective experience. Like there's doesn't seem to be anything in the science, in the physical

[00:12:00] description that gives you where Qualia come from, the feeling of what it is to be Tamler Summers or whatever. And to see red or to see red. But I think that it fails as a reductio in that the author says this

[00:12:17] is at the end of the second paragraph that you read seemingly under components give rise to the phenomenon we subjectively experience as breakfast, but then goes on more to talk about the category and the concept of breakfast and having concepts that are fuzzy is not controversial. Right.

[00:12:33] So there is no necessary and sufficient condition for breakfast. Is it is it the time of day? No, because you can have breakfast later in the day. Like, you know, people, does it require pancakes? Well, obviously not. And so I think you could say this of tables.

[00:12:47] You could say this of, you know, damn near anything sandwiches. Exactly. And so it's not it's it's nobody believes, though, that when you say that you had breakfast explicitly outlining all of the things that you

[00:13:03] age and when you ate them and under what conditions you're in, but that wouldn't be an exhaustive account of your breakfast. Yes. Right. So you could just take a straight forward. It seems stupid to talk about this seriously, but you could take

[00:13:14] a straightforward reductionist approach to breakfast and that would satisfy everybody. Yeah. It's like, what do you mean by you had breakfast? Well, I had cereal and milk and I had a glass of orange juice and a banana. It's like, yeah, but what makes that breakfast?

[00:13:31] You'd be like, just the that's what I fucking call it. Whereas if you say like, you know, like the subjective experience of pain is like these, I don't know, C fibers or whatever they say, firing or whatever. That doesn't seem to explain it in the same way.

[00:13:49] That's right. That's right. But I think that the as you point out, the more fun parts of this are, are the analogues to the scholarly, like clearly this guy is familiar with the scholarly literature, literature on consciousness because,

[00:14:05] you know, like Dan Dennett sort of just saying, well, you thought you had consciousness, but you're just wrong. So it's not a problem after all. You've evolved to think that you have evolved. That's my favorite. To outrun Wolverines is the best.

[00:14:19] And the worst part is like, I've done something like that in like previous work. So like, I'm not making fun of those people or if I am, I'm also making fun of myself. We wanted to do that thing where we would make fun of an earlier paper.

[00:14:31] That's the paper I want to make. That's the paper. Yeah. I've and I decided I'm just too sensitive. There's also a quantum mechanics one that's pretty funny. Yeah. As as it has become increasingly clear that breakfast secret will not be discovered among the large scale tofu scramblers

[00:14:48] and sausage McMuffins of our ordinary experience. Scientists have turned their attention to the smallest scale. It's fundamentally quantum nature where Newton once conceived of a fixed breakfast, an apple say occupying a definite location in space and time.

[00:15:04] Today we must consider our morning meal not as an objective fact, but rather as a kind of cloud of commestible potentiality, a statistical superposition of all possible breakfast that mysteriously collapses into bacon and eggs or in everything bagel only upon the order of a diner. Quote unquote.

[00:15:25] How this collapse occurs in the exact nature of this proposed diner remains frustratingly opaque. It's good stuff. It's good. I think that so this obviously isn't published in a philosophy journal, but you know, I think it used to be more common that serious

[00:15:46] scholars would take a moment like would take some time and write just completely fake articles under sometimes a pseudonym. I think we've even talked about some of them before. He has one like it's like this. Does he? Yeah. The psychologist

[00:16:02] who Alan Kazan, who was actually Matt Nock former guest Matt Nock's advisor, wrote a hilarious methodological piece under a thinly veiled pseudonym about a group measure of penile two-mesance. So he had an elaborate device that looked like a like a party hookah

[00:16:25] where everybody like attached their dick to it. And this was like in like the early 80s. It's published with diagrams. It's like a mobile device to measure penile two-mesance in groups of men because he didn't answer it. Do they get hard together?

[00:16:40] Wait, so was it like an Alan Sokol thing or was it just clearly a joke from the get? It was clearly a joke. It was clearly a joke. Yeah. So it's you know, instead of Alan Kazan, it was something

[00:16:52] crazed and we need some more whimsy in the fucking scholarly fields. Like we need to not take ourselves as seriously as like so much of my consumption nowadays of psychology, I guess less of a philosophy

[00:17:08] because I don't read it as much is like people just like getting serious and like being nitpicky. And this is all fine. That's how science should proceed. But like I want to know that you could just chill out for a fucking minute and not. Right.

[00:17:24] Like it's fun to write those things. It really is. Just to take possibly seriously one part of this, if you if I have spring rolls for breakfast that we had from last night or so. No, like I don't even want to say for breakfast.

[00:17:40] Let's say I wake up at the morning and for whatever reason, I just have spring rolls and somebody asks me is that breakfast? It's like no, it's not breakfast, obviously, because we just had them last night and they were left over.

[00:17:52] And so I just had them this morning because I was hungry and hung over. So I can't even believe I'm going to I'm presenting this question. But like, could you say that that's like consciousness where? Yeah, we can't totally specify why that's not breakfast exactly or like what

[00:18:12] the difference is or but is that just the deal with consciousness in light that we can't fully specify what exactly is going on? It's just a bunch of these different things melding together in a certain way that makes it breakfast or doesn't make it breakfast.

[00:18:32] I don't know. Yeah, I don't like I don't think so. I think that that it is a fundamentally different problem now. Like the way that sort of hardcore mysterious that they that that people

[00:18:43] endorse to when they refer to this hard problem that it is so unlike other problems. I'm kind of on board with it because there is a there is there uncontroversial ways in which I can say

[00:18:57] I'm going to have breakfast and I do this, this, this and I actually had breakfast and everybody agrees that's that was breakfast. The claim for consciousness is, you know, we like we put all this together and there's still this additional thing

[00:19:12] that seems to be there that we have not explained by any of its components. At all. At all. Yeah. At all right. Like we're not. Yeah. But your question, what I thought you were going to ask

[00:19:24] was suppose that you were hung over, you woke up like prenoon and you ate spring rolls from last night and I say you had spring rolls for breakfast and you say no, I didn't have breakfast. I just ate spring rolls. Who would be right about that?

[00:19:41] And here's where I think there might be an interesting question about what are the conditions for when we might call something breakfast? And and I think that in this case, intentions are the essence of the category. So like whatever you were trying to do.

[00:20:03] Yeah. Just is if you were trying to have breakfast, you just did have breakfast, even if it was at three in the afternoon and it was a mimosa. If you woke up and you were like, you know what? I want a mimosa for breakfast.

[00:20:17] I woke up late, then you had breakfast. Yeah, I'm with you on this. First of all, I've never seen you so excited, like to try to specify like their insufficient conditions for breakfast. But I think you're totally right.

[00:20:29] And in fact, if you said you had spring rolls for breakfast, I would say, I guess I did, unless that wasn't my intention, like unless I was just doing that to get something in my stomach. But then I was having coffee and like something else.

[00:20:43] Or even if I wasn't having coffee, but that just wasn't my intention. I think it does. And then yes, absolutely. Like you have a really rough night. You wake up like at noon. You finally drag yourself to some diner that serves breakfast all day.

[00:20:58] And you order something that you could get for lunch, but also for breakfast, if it's breakfast for you. Yeah. Right. There are there are categories of food that could go either way. Like that might appear on both a breakfast menu and on a lunch menu.

[00:21:11] And there it might start getting tricky. Yeah. But you know, this is this reminds me of back when Paul Bloom used to do actual research. Yeah. He was when he wasn't just pumping out best sellers. Yeah. From just shooting from the hip. Contrarian.

[00:21:29] He did these studies on how children learn the meaning of words. And he basically proposed an essentialist theory for cultural artifacts. So he said, like there are there are natural kinds, whatever that is. Like what you know, what makes a zebra zebra is like zebra DNA.

[00:21:45] But what makes a table a table? Suppose that archaeologists found this thing. It looks like it's shaped like a table. It was in the living space of the people. You know, like it was found amongst other living artifacts.

[00:22:01] And you put it in a museum and you say, oh, look, this is a table from whatever 2000 years ago. If you then find out that from, say, like some artwork that you excavated on the wall, they use that thing as a chair. And that thing is a chair.

[00:22:16] Yeah. And so the intentions of the creator are the essence of what it what it means to be an artifact kind. And I think that that's just true for a lot of our concepts, for most of our concepts, actually.

[00:22:32] There are meta ontologists, listeners right now who are just tearing out their hair. Yeah, let's say I'm making only descriptive claims. There's always my aunt. And ontological. You guys are getting at the truth of what a table or a chair is. But I'm just making descriptive claims.

[00:22:53] But definitely you guys and you're all guys are getting at the truth of it. I'm going to confess something. We haven't had a confession, a very bad Yeah. I don't know why. Wow. A number of years ago, I started a Twitter account called Dan Dennett's beard.

[00:23:14] And that's just a picture of Dan Dennett's beard. I think I've seen that. And I used it to tweet out, I think two jokes. Actually, it was me and my girlfriend at the time who was a fluster. I used it to tweet out two jokes.

[00:23:27] And one of them was about the hard problem. And I don't remember what but I remember being very, very proud of it. Then I just let you find it. Is it still there? No, I let the account die. All right.

[00:23:41] When we come back, we'll talk about Ted Chang's story. Hell is the absence of God. Today's episode is brought to you once again by one of our favorite sponsors. Givewell for over 10 years. Givewell.org has helped donors find the charities and projects that save

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[00:32:31] Ted Chang's story, hell is the absence of God in the collection stories of your life and others, which seriously buy. I mean, we'll put a link to it. Maybe there's free ones floating around, but but it's totally worth

[00:32:45] like the price of a Kindle or a paperback for for these stories. Ted Chang is fucking amazing. And this story, I think, is an example, a good example of it. So this story just really briefly before we dive into talking about the story,

[00:33:01] I think it helps to set the stage of what kind of world this is because the supernatural has an active presence in this world. So our protagonist is named Neil Fisk. In the description of his life that we start with, you start getting glimpses

[00:33:17] of how the supernatural exists. So for one, there are these angelic visitations that happen every once in a while. So there are these seven archangels of God. And every once in a while, they just make it to the physical plane. And when they do,

[00:33:36] sometimes people get healed miraculously and sometimes people die and get hurt. And it's you can't predict. It gets stomach cancer, stomach cancer. If you're pregnant when one of these visitations happens, something might happen to your fetus. And another really important thing is that when people die,

[00:33:59] you can actually see whether their soul ascends to heaven or to hell. And when they descend to hell, Cheng describes it as sort of like the ground becomes transparent and you can see you can actually see what hell looks like.

[00:34:16] And it turns out hell isn't that different from from our everyday world. People who go to heaven, you can see them, you can see them rise. But you don't know what's in heaven. You don't get a glimpse of heaven. That's right.

[00:34:29] And there are people who seek out angelic visitations for whatever reason. And to do so, they go to specific geographical locations where visitations are known to happen. So there are particular places in the world where angels seem to appear. And it's not clear why they appear.

[00:34:50] They just sort of show up and then they leave. And they sometimes say like, yeah, God is awesome. Peace. Yeah. See the glory of God or like see the power. But those people are like tornado chasers or something. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:35:03] They go after it because it is like a natural disaster when the angels come. It's like an earthquake or something where there's all this collateral damage and some people will just get like killed by like glass that shatters and like cuts their windpipe or something.

[00:35:19] But also people will be miraculously healed in some ways. And there's no real rhyme or reason to it that is explicit. So we have to give or the people have to give meaning to what happened. That's right.

[00:35:34] And so people who are angel chasing are actually taking a risk. A lot of them are trying to get healed or get a blessing of some sort. And but they're actively taking a risk. It seems as if it's a 50-50 shot. You know, there is a.

[00:35:51] There's a sort of an analog in the Bible. There was in the New Testament, it's described as the pool of Bethesda where people used to go because it was believed that every once in a while, an angel would appear and make the waters move.

[00:36:07] And the otherwise still waters would start to move. And that's when you knew that an angel was making an appearance and you would try to jump into the water as fast as you could to get that angels

[00:36:17] blessing. And it seems also that that was kind of a risky, a risky endeavor. But seems very sort of this is an analog to that. There's some there's other stuff that happens during angelic visitations. But I want to hold off on that as we talk to the story.

[00:36:31] But I think the main thing in terms of world building is this world is just like ours, except for you know that there isn't afterlife. You know there is a God angels actually show up. You can see who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. Yeah.

[00:36:44] And that's a key is there's no atheists in this world because like you can't be the atheists when I mean, you could there. You could be like a like a flatterer. You would be like like an alimnivist about consciousness. These things are happening.

[00:37:00] They're documented like people come and take statistics. They compile statistics about it. Like a lot of the fun of this story is just the way he builds the world. How these things are recorded and what happens. And like they seem to know like which angel it is.

[00:37:15] Yeah, I think this is true of a lot of Ted Chang stories. He takes these almost crazy premises, but then plops you in here. I guess this is like what science fiction and fantasy writers do when they're good.

[00:37:28] You just believe that you're in that world and this is how people are because the people are just like people you would recognize and their reactions are like how you would imagine people to react if this was their world. It's just the rules have changed.

[00:37:43] The rules of life have changed, but people haven't changed. I think that's the key for him. Ted Chang is like, yeah, those human beings in the story are just like human beings that we know it's it really is that the rules have changed.

[00:37:59] But they're all very human responses to just completely different circumstances. Yeah, exactly. So in in this story, it's mainly focused on Neil. So Neil is someone who was born with a genetic deformity, something like with his leg that makes him a little misshapen and also limp.

[00:38:22] And one shorter several inches shorter than the other leg. But he it seems like it's just a normal genetic deformity. It's not something that was caused by God. This is in contrast to another character, Janice, who was in her mother's tummy when there was a visitation.

[00:38:43] And because of that, when she was born, she didn't have legs. She had flipper like a flipper. Right. And so they know that it was that event that caused it because like right after that they had an ultrasound and they showed that the baby had changed. Right.

[00:38:57] Whereas with Neil, it's like, no, this is just a normal thing. Like the normal rules of biology seem to exist, except when there are these visitations. Right. So he grew up with this deformity and kids were mean about it as kids are. And girls never really liked him.

[00:39:16] This is really kind of sad description of once a woman had been dating for several weeks, broke off their relationship, explaining that while she herself didn't consider his leg a defect, whenever they were seen in public together,

[00:39:28] other people assumed there must be something wrong with her for being with him. And surely he could understand how unfair that was to her. I love the little question mark there. It's like she's making him like concede that this is unfair to her, that she's breaking up with.

[00:39:45] So that's what he's had to deal with until he meets his wife, Sarah, who loves him and they have a really nice marriage. And she is devout in a way that he isn't like you can't be an atheist, but you can be non-devout.

[00:39:57] You can just think whatever about God. Right. Say importantly, because hell doesn't seem like such a bad place, Neil feels pretty indifferent about whether he goes to heaven or hell. Yeah. And in fact, really just doesn't care on all he wants is to be with Sarah. Yeah.

[00:40:16] But then in a visitation by the angel, Nathaniel, Sarah is killed as part of just collateral damage. And as she bleeds out, someone sees her soul arise to heaven. And there is this feeling that only the devout go to heaven and Sarah was devout.

[00:40:37] I don't know to what extent that's confirmed, but. Right. It seems like it's a sufficient cause. Yeah. If you truly love God, at least the belief in this world is if you are somebody who actually loves God and devout in that sense, you will go to heaven.

[00:40:56] And so it makes it makes sense that she goes up to heaven, which of course leaves Neil. So now Neil's in this horrible position where the one person he loved, the person who made his life worth living and who he wanted to spend all

[00:41:08] of eternity with would have been happy to spend all of eternity within hell. Now she's in heaven and he has to figure out, well, how do I get to heaven? Because that's all that matters. He's driven by pure love.

[00:41:19] It's a very the description of sort of him being rejected by other people and this woman, Sarah coming along in his life and not caring at all about his physical disability. It seems like they had a really loving relationship and she never pushed her

[00:41:34] religion on him, but she was devout and private. So that's his story. Then there are these two other characters who aren't as central, but who are a part of this. Janus, who is the one with the flippers for legs, at least for the first part of her

[00:41:52] life. So because her deformity was something that was clearly divinely inspired, she always grew up feeling like, OK, well, this means something. Like there's a meaning for this. God does everything for a reason. And the reason is he knew I had the strength to handle

[00:42:12] this and to go around preaching God's goodness in the face of tribulation. And again, this is somebody that you can recognize, somebody who is religious, who was given an obstacle, a natural obstacle to overcome. And she overcomes it easily through her belief and through her faith and through

[00:42:33] her just general temperament. Everybody liked her. Unlike Neil, like she was somebody nobody made fun of. Everybody liked her. She was confident. Can I read that little part? It says in describing Janus as a child, she was fully accepted by her schoolmates.

[00:42:47] When you're as pretty confident and charismatic as she was, children don't even notice that you're in a wheelchair. It was when she was a teenager that she realized that the able-bodied people in her school were not the ones who needed convincing.

[00:42:58] It was more important for her to set an example for other handicapped individuals, whether they had been touched by God or not, no matter where they lived. Janus began speaking before audiences, telling those with disabilities that they had the strength God required of them.

[00:43:11] So she might have lost out in having this physical deformity, but she clearly has some one the genetic lottery when it comes to being pretty and outgoing and charismatic. And so she uses that sort of like to become a motivational speaker. Yes, exactly.

[00:43:26] Now something happens to her midway through the story, which is she is in the presence of another visitation. And in the visitation, her legs are restored to her. And so all of a sudden, the actual rushy L. I love it. Yeah, it's great.

[00:43:45] All of a sudden she has legs. She's very pretty. Like guys are looking at her in that way. But she feels like, wait a minute, like my purpose was to go around helping people who have disabilities and telling them this is an obstacle you can overcome.

[00:44:01] And now I don't know what I'm doing. And when she would go around trying to give speeches now, she was worried and rightly so that that might cause resentment, actually. And then when she kind of switched gears and I really like this,

[00:44:15] she kind of switches gears and is like, well, now I'm a little confused about what my purpose is or why this happened to me, then people reacted angrily, including Neil, saying you're complaining about this, you're complaining that God like miraculously healed you.

[00:44:31] And this is a problem for you. And this sends her into a kind of existentialist quandary of her own. Right? Yeah, yeah. It's it's great because clearly she has spent her whole life building meaning out of this incident that occurred to her.

[00:44:48] And so she has this, you know, a whole narrative about about her purpose in life and and that's taken away. So of course, she feels like that's taken away from her, but she never missed having legs. She was born without legs.

[00:45:03] And so this from her perspective is like, well, maybe this is another test. And so she's like, yeah, that's how I'll communicate it to my next audience. This is also another test and people are like, oh, fucking being healthy is a test for you.

[00:45:15] Like my wife died with shards of glass drowning her in her own blood. Right? Are you freaking kidding me that you're you're complaining about being healthy or so there's a lot of resentment from people who are

[00:45:31] you know, kind of pissed off at what they what seems to be either an unjust or indifferent God because it's so interesting that these angels come and they cure people, but they also just ran seemingly randomly hurt people too. Yeah, yeah, they're like they're just like,

[00:45:49] you don't get the sense that they're coming to heal. They're coming for some reason or another. And there are these side effects that some people get healed and some people don't. And so in that sense, it is just as random as the shit that happens in our world.

[00:46:02] There's a couple of things that that you made me think of when you were talking. One is that Neil explicitly was just kind of neutral about the whole God thing. You know, it's weird to think that you could be in a world where

[00:46:16] the supernatural is so in your face. And it wasn't until he personally had tragedy that he started to question the whole the whole thing. And whereas Janice had been sort of raised in this whole like my life has a purpose.

[00:46:28] So this is like I'll just read this portion where she her family is responding to her being healed. And so Janice's family and friends considered the restoration of her legs a reward for excelling at the task God had zipped her.

[00:46:41] You know, so they're like, yeah, you spent all this time, you know, basically preaching, making the world a better place. And so God came and healed you. But again, she's like, well, he can't have intended for me to just stop doing outreach.

[00:46:53] So she really feels like she has to continue doing this. But like, family is like, no, no, you passed the test. Like, you're good. Yeah. And then there's this character, Ethan, who was kind of in in the middle. No genetic abnormalities, no nothing.

[00:47:10] He was in a kind of seems like middle class to upper middle class family. They were devout, but they weren't, you know, they're just kind of grateful. Like God is rewarding us. We're grateful for God rewarding us with good health and, you know, no real

[00:47:24] psychological problems, but Ethan felt like, wait a minute, like I feel like God has a purpose for me, but it's not clear what it is. And I feel like I need to do something, but I don't know what to do.

[00:47:37] And so his arc, his story is trying to find that out. And all of these characters, Neil Janus and Ethan converge on this pilgrimage. And I guess one thing else that we haven't mentioned about this world is

[00:47:56] no matter who you are or what you've done, there is this idea that at a certain point in a visitation, the heavens open and the rays of heaven comes come out. And if you see the light, it will immediately like kind of burn your face

[00:48:15] and make you like remove your eye sockets. And yeah, it seemed like the description didn't seem damaging. It seemed like your face now looked like it never had eyes to begin with. Like it's just it's like the, you know, the when you take the pants off

[00:48:30] of a Ken or Barbie doll, like it's just smooth. Right. The cheekbones, cheekbones, but the forehead. Yeah, that's right. Did you mention that Ethan was in the same visitation as Janus? No, yeah, nothing happened to him. Right. No.

[00:48:47] And that's what tossed him into like he saw that everybody else who had been a part of this visitation had somehow come out with a purpose like they had made meaning or had discovered meaning and why they were they had been visited

[00:49:02] by Rochelle, but he couldn't figure it out. He couldn't figure out why him. And so he decided that he would look down the list of all of the people who were present and whoever had also some sense of dissatisfaction that they hadn't figured

[00:49:18] out why they had been visited, it must mean that they are each other's purpose. So he finds Janus and, you know, creepily, a little bit creepily tells her like I think we're connected. I think that we're meant to hang out.

[00:49:34] And he's married and it's not supposed to be sexual or anything, but it's also just uncomfortable. But the wife is worried about that. Yeah. Rightly so. Because Janus is hot now with her fresh new legs. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

[00:49:44] There's a part in the book where she says, you know, now one of the downsides of having legs is that she got more attention from men before that it was the only men who gave her attention were people who had amputee fetishes. Yeah. I was like, oh. Yeah.

[00:50:03] But she was fine with that before. And meanwhile, Neil is just like kind of trying everything. He's just going to two different support groups, like support groups of people who feel uplifted by a visitation, even though it caused their loved ones

[00:50:21] harm and people are kind of pissed off about it. Yeah. The angry at God. What was what I laughed at is that the angry at God meetings are every other week, whereas the praise happy meetings are once a month. So like the grumbling people meet more often.

[00:50:38] Yeah. That makes sense. Like outrage sells more than happiness and satisfaction. Right. So he has this real dilemma. He wants to be with his wife. But what we're gathering from the story is that everybody's telling him

[00:50:54] in order to be with your wife, in order to go to heaven, you have to truly love God and how the fuck do you fake that sincerity? You know, you can't. But while Neil avoided the pitfall of blaming God, he never made the jump to loving him.

[00:51:08] Nothing in his upbringing or personality led him to pray to God for strength or relief. The assorted trials he faced growing up were accidental or human in origin. And he relied strictly on human resources to counter them. This is before Sarah died.

[00:51:23] And then afterwards he has this really nice analogy where he says, at this point, for those people who thought Sarah's death might be a wake up call telling him to love God while he still had the chance. He says instead Neil became actively resentful of God.

[00:51:39] Sarah had been the greatest blessing of his life and God had taken her away. Now he was expected to love him for it. For Neil, it was like having a kidnapper demand love as ransom for his wife's

[00:51:50] return. And it's a great metaphor for what people are asking of him. Like he's supposed to love God so that he can be reunited with his wife, even though God is who took his wife in the first place. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:03] One of the things that he's also kind of resentful is apparently in this world, if you die by suicide, you go to hell automatically. And he thinks, man, if only she had gone to hell, then I would just off myself and then we could be together.

[00:52:18] So the three fates converge, right? The three characters converge in this mission to visit one of the sites where there is a frequent angelic visitation. It sounds like they're going to like one of these big festivals out in the desert. Right. Like a Mad Max Fury Road.

[00:52:37] Burning Man, but for angels. That's right. Yeah. So each have their own their own reasons. But Neil's reason is he found a loophole. So the loophole is if you actually catch a glimpse of the heavenly light, you'll go to heaven no matter what or so he believes. Right?

[00:52:58] So this is a way that he can avoid having to truly love God because he doesn't see any way in which he can come to genuinely love God, but still make it to heaven.

[00:53:10] So he buys like a four like a four wheel drive truck and he gets out there to the desert just like these storm chasers with the only goal of once an angel pops up,

[00:53:20] you know, you have a certain amount of time before they'll go back to heaven and the gates of heaven will open and some light will shine through. So people do this crazy sort of chasing the angel to get a glimpse of that light.

[00:53:31] And that's what he decides he's going to do. And meanwhile, both Janice and Ethan for their own reasons are also there. Janice to kind of figure out, well, what is this new miracle boon for me? Like, what does that mean?

[00:53:45] Because it seems like no matter what I tell these people, they're unsatisfied or actively resentful. So what does that mean for me? And Ethan sees that in her. It's kind of ironic because he sees in her somebody who it did seem like it was

[00:54:03] meaningful because she got her legs restored, whereas nothing happened to him. But actually she had her meaning stripped away from from her during that visitation. And so they're kind of akin that way.

[00:54:15] And so both of them are going hoping that an angel visitation will will sort this out. And then an angel visitation comes, Neil chases it and he's killed by the the damage of it. And as he's dying, he thinks he's going to go to hell because, you know,

[00:54:35] yeah, he didn't make it. He didn't catch the light he thought. Yeah. But then the light shines down and he does get a glimpse of it. And it it blinds him in the way that it has blinded other characters.

[00:54:48] And there's this really interesting passage that I'll read right now. He says like a thousand hypodermic needles, the light punctured his flesh and scraped it across his bones. The light unmade his eyes, turning him into not a formally sighted being,

[00:55:03] but a being never intended to possess vision, never in doing so. The light revealed to Neil all the reasons he should love God. He loved him with an utterness beyond what humans can experience for one another. To say it was unconditional was inadequate because even the word unconditional

[00:55:21] required the concept of a condition and such an idea was no longer comprehensible to him. Every phenomenon in the universe was nothing less than an explicit reason to love him. What do you make of that? Like, like, does that convey anything to you?

[00:55:37] So they he had gotten this sort of hint in his conversation with another person who had seen the light named Benny, Benny Vasquez. And he had described from wrong. He had described the feeling of like of being deeply changed.

[00:55:55] But so Neil, when he hears Benny talking about this like transformative experience of having seen the light, he says he was averse to the idea. So he says it sounded like undergoing brainwashing as a cure for depression.

[00:56:08] He couldn't help but think that it would change his personality so drastically that he would cease to be himself. Then he remembered that everyone in heaven had undergone a similar transformation. The saved were just like the Islas, except for they no longer had bodies

[00:56:21] because of course everybody in heaven has seen the light. But I think the key is that the way Benny describes it in that earlier scene sounds too abstract for Neil to even understand it or find any appeal in it.

[00:56:34] It just sounds like, OK, you're just saying these words love and beyond and all of that. And like it sounds like somebody who has like a remotely skeptical bone in his body like me about this stuff for me to buy into this, I won't be me anymore.

[00:56:51] But then when it happens to him, it's described to us the reader in this very abstract way, right? Like this, like to say to say that it was unconditional was inadequate because even the word unconditional required the concept of a condition.

[00:57:09] And such an idea was no longer comprehensible to him. Every phenomenon in the universe was nothing else than a explicit reason to love him. No circumstance could be an obstacle or even an irrelevancy, but only another reason to be grateful of further inducement to love.

[00:57:25] Neil thought of the grief that had driven him to suicidal and directness and pain and terror that Sarah experienced before she died. And still he loved God, not in spite of their suffering, but because of it.

[00:57:34] So it sounds like and like it's really good that you made a connection with the earlier passage, like exactly what he was worried about. Yeah, yeah. He's like it is some like sounds like some serious brainwashing.

[00:57:51] Like he is he there is like nothing left in him of his doubt. He's like, oh, no, like this is that, you know, I have seen the whole purpose of the universe and it's to glorify God. Like he's just there.

[00:58:04] By the way, did you do we mention that Janice also got the light? Yeah. And so also her she has no eyes anymore, both of them, but not Ethan again. Yeah, I'm not. Ethan's never going to know. Right. Janice survives, but he Neil is just bleeding out.

[00:58:22] But as he's bleeding out, he's he's having this overwhelming feeling of like, again, this completely transformative experience that that he's OK with everything. Now he sees everything as love for God. But so we should just read this because it's like came as a shock to me the first

[00:58:43] time I read it. He renounced all his previous anger and ambivalence and desire for answers. He was grateful for all the pain he'd endured, contrite for not previously recognizing it as the gift it was euphoric that he was now being granted this insight into his true purpose.

[00:58:57] He understood how life was an undeserved bounty, how even the most virtuous were not worthy of the glories of the mortal plane. For him, the mystery was solved because he understood that everything in life is love, even pain, especially pain.

[00:59:12] So minutes later when Neil finally bled to death, he was truly worthy of salvation and God sent him to hell anyway. Yeah, I was like, wait, what is it punishment enough to be brainwashed? Is that like it's shock when you read that right?

[00:59:33] Like it's just like, you know, like there's some sound effect. You know, it's like in Fight Club when when all of a sudden he realizes that he's Tyler Durden. Yeah. So yeah, so he goes to hell like and this is like the first time that

[00:59:49] anybody knows about that someone has seen the light and is like this loophole, the supposed loophole that was going to save him. He experienced it. Yeah, even the serial killer. The rapist got to go to heaven because they saw the rapist saw the light,

[01:00:03] but not but not Neil. He goes down to hell. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you by better help. Are you feeling anxious or stressed or maybe angry? Are you having trouble sleeping or trouble in your romantic relationships?

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[01:02:00] I want to talk about just like what all this means, but the description of him in hell is really kind of brutal and bleak. Disturbing. Disturbing, yeah. He's now like it's fine. Like if he was in hell just without Sarah,

[01:02:18] it would be kind of torment for him because he missed her. But it's worse now because he now thinks that God and God's love is responsible for everything good in the world, but he is removed from God. He cannot experience God. So everything is an anguish to him.

[01:02:37] Everything causes him distress. And unlike in the mortal plane, this pain is not a form of God's love, but a consequence of his absence. Neil is experiencing more anguish than was possible when he was alive. But his only response is to love God.

[01:02:52] So he has like Stockholm syndrome in hell. Yeah, he's like the end of 1984. Like I love big brother, right? Yeah. Yeah. So his suffering is worse than everybody else's because he's had this transformative experience, so he is missing

[01:03:09] more than anybody else in hell is missing if he is in fact is the only person who's seen the light and gone to hell. So here is where he is deeply aware that God is absent in everything in hell. Everything Neil sees, hears or touches causes him distress.

[01:03:25] And his worst case scenario before this was just he would go to hell. This is why I didn't want to commit suicide. It's like I would go to hell and then I don't get to see Sarah. But but now he is this is like infinitely worse than that.

[01:03:37] Like it's not just that he misses Sarah. Now everything is a reminder of how God is not with him in hell. Yeah, that's right. And meanwhile, so Janice has lost her eyes. She saw the light. She didn't see Neil descend into hell. The only witness was Ethan. Yeah.

[01:03:59] So Janice goes on with her life now just preaching about God's love because she like Neil has been brainwashed into loving God. Well, brainwashed is like that's your word. I mean, to be clear, that's your word. It was Neil's word for what Benny Vasquez said. Yeah, exactly.

[01:04:17] And right, it's it's a weird kind of right. Sincere like he I'm sure he's sincere, but but it was caused in a one quick moment. He's completely transformed. Well, no, so like it's brainwashed for for Neil because he wasn't like that anyway.

[01:04:35] But Janice kind of was leaning in that direction. Yeah, already. And sort of almost like it doesn't seem like brainwashing for her as much because, you know, like this is just kind of filling in some gaps for her. Right.

[01:04:48] I meant really only to say that the same bright magical rays that make you love God that deeply hit Janice. And now it turns out that her sermons are kind of boring because there's

[01:05:00] like a bunch of people with no eyes who've seen the light of God and all they talk about is how great good is. Yeah, how great God is and people it doesn't really help people that much.

[01:05:08] It is not nearly as much as when she talked about the struggle and coping with, you know, and being uplifting for people. Now she's just like God is great. Ethan on the other hand, she had flipper legs. Yeah. And she had something to tell people.

[01:05:22] But now it's like it's like it's just in further progression. Like she has legs. So now like what's her what's her beef exactly? What's her problem? And now it's like she's more useless. Yeah, she's even more useless. Exactly. But she's fine with that.

[01:05:37] That's what's funny is like that doesn't bother her. She doesn't feel the need. Whereas before this, the blinding, she was like, oh, this is this caused her anxiety. Like now I'm not helping people. Now she just thinks, well, that's amazing that people don't need me anymore

[01:05:52] because that's another instance of God's life. Right. Her audiences are shrinking and shrinking in size and she's just not bothered. Ethan on the other hand, this fucked him up a bit. He quits his job and becomes a preacher so he could talk about this

[01:06:05] experience and his experience of seeing Neil descended to hell. Despite having gotten the light and he basically tells people. So he tells people that they can no more expect justice in the afterlife than in the mortal plane, but he doesn't do this to dissuade them from worshiping

[01:06:21] God. On the contrary, he encourages them to do so. What he insists on is that they not love God under a misapprehension, that if they wish to love God, they'd be prepared to do so no matter what his intentions, God is not just God is not kind.

[01:06:34] God is not merciful. And understanding that is essential to true devotion. Yeah. Love God with your eyes wide open, you know, which is kind of ironic given what actual God's love, if you happen to see it, does to you. But like here's the deal with God.

[01:06:51] Like, you know, you need to love God without without having any expectations about God's benevolence, God's yeah. You saying ironic made me just think that that's not like being blinded by that light really is blinding you to all of them injustice in the world.

[01:07:10] What Janice and Neil and Benny can no longer see is pain and suffering and injustice, so it's just not a concern for them. That's what their eyes were giving them. And now they don't have that. Even in fact, when they say like pain,

[01:07:26] all the pain and they even say like in the description of the blinding of Neil, especially pain, like especially pain is evidence of God's love. Yeah, which is very different from, you know, the way that Ethan was raised in this, as you mentioned,

[01:07:41] like upper middle class, it seems like his parents were like, you know, these proponents of prosperity, gospel kind of people where like, if you worship God, you'll have a good life and, you know, you'll have healthy kids and all that stuff. And Ethan is now completely flipped.

[01:07:58] He's like, no, not like don't. If you think any of that stuff, you're going to you're going to get fucked by the reality of what's going on in this universe. The only way to truly love God is to love God as God is and as this world is,

[01:08:13] which with no bullshit. No, God is not just God is not kind. God is just this. And so love him, but know what you're getting into. What I think what got to me the most was this penultimate sentence

[01:08:27] paragraph, Neil evenness on Niels now in hell, Neil even knows that by being beyond God's awareness because hell is the absence of God, that being beyond God's awareness, he is not loved by God in return. This doesn't affect his feelings either because unconditional love asks nothing,

[01:08:46] not even that it be returned. And though it's been many years that he has been in hell beyond the awareness of God, he loves him still. That is the nature of true devotion. That thought that that God, he's not even in God's awareness.

[01:09:00] Like God, the omniscient omnipresent God has set aside a domain that he no longer pays any attention to and he's still there simping for God. Simping for God is the title of exactly. And that's like again, yeah, it has that kind of Stockholm syndrome

[01:09:23] feeling to it where it's except if the kidnappers just never showed their face. Like, and then you're right. The whole point of God is that he's everywhere, but he's not. He's everywhere except hell. And that's what that's what defines him. He doesn't even know I exist.

[01:09:41] Even now as I was reading this last bit, I've changed my mind about what what this story is saying. I just hadn't fully formed my thoughts on on what Chang was trying to say. But this seems like a terrible indictment of religious belief.

[01:10:01] Yeah, so it's almost exactly what I was wanting to ask you. So I did a very brief like in the like 20 minutes before this episode, just kind of what do other people think of this? And there is a school or at least there's this one person who wrote

[01:10:18] a very critical review of this, saying that this is kind of like a sophomoric anti-Christian screed. You know, it's like something you would expect like Richard Dawkins to write if he could write like Ted Chang, you know, just it's just anti religious and maybe specifically anti Christian,

[01:10:41] which focuses on this all encompassing love of God or something. And and then I was reading people who thought anybody who thinks that completely misses the point, this expresses like a deep ambivalence about God. But it's it's not some like attack.

[01:10:59] It's not some new atheist attack on God. And honestly, I was on their side more before we've started talking. Like you, I've started to see the point of someone who might see this as a deeply anti religious, anti Christian message. Although I want to resist that conclusion.

[01:11:20] Yeah, I don't think it's that simple. Like I don't think that I don't think Ted Chang would be capable of writing, you know, some sophomoric and anti religious screed like that. I think there is a lot more to it.

[01:11:34] And here is what I like about this story and how it sets up the problem of faith. For many people, including me growing up, I would think to myself if only there were actual evidence of that God existed and that there was an afterlife.

[01:11:58] Then I would have erased the doubt and meaning that, you know, the doubt and lack of meaning in my life, it would have provided the answers. Chang has built a world where the answers are absolutely clear and people still have the existential angst that we do.

[01:12:16] Showing, I think, very nicely that it wouldn't matter. Like we would still we're still in this human condition. You know, exactly. That's a really beautiful way of putting it like that's it's even with all our questions about, you know, theology and spirituality

[01:12:37] seemingly answered with a kind of clear explicitness. We're still having those same doubts and those same worries. They even know the names of the goddamn angels, you know? Like, yeah, it reminds me of Ecclesiastes. And again, I've just been talking about this, but, you know,

[01:12:56] in Ecclesiastes there's an awareness of this God and there's awareness. But it's all the same problems that, you know, Camus experiencing or Dostoevsky's underground man or Ivan or like it's the same problem. Whether or not you think that there is a God out there or not.

[01:13:15] And whether you have any proof or evidence of God's existence, it's still the same question like, what's my purpose? What's my meaning? What am I supposed to do? And why do we die and why do people suffer for seemingly no reason?

[01:13:27] And why does good people seem to go to hell and and bad people seem to like have good things happen to them and rise? And like, we don't like, yeah. Yeah, there's a point even where where Neil is like, you know, when he's in the

[01:13:42] midst of his dilemma where he wants to be with his wife, but he realizes that heaven requires this true love of God. He's he sort of debates adopting this view that that everybody gets what they deserve, right?

[01:14:03] So he's like, maybe if I just start living and actually believing that. So he knows that his his deformity isn't about or his disability isn't about his sin or his parents in. But maybe if he takes that seriously, maybe

[01:14:16] if he goes around calling himself a sinner, that would explain his suffering. And he's looking for every that passage. Yeah, I had that highlighted too. Neil didn't think his in-laws, his in-laws are the ones that kind of think that his deformity is kind of his own fault.

[01:14:31] But he began to wonder whether he might be better off if he did. Perhaps he thought it would be better to live in a story where the righteous were rewarded and the sinners were punished, even if the criteria for righteousness

[01:14:44] and sinfulness eluded him, then to live in a reality where there was no justice at all, I mean, casting himself in the role of sinner. So it was hardly a comforting lie, but it offered one reward that his own

[01:14:56] ethics couldn't believing it would reunite with him with Sarah. So he's like, I don't believe this, but maybe I would like to live in a story where I did believe it. Yeah, his dilemma is very interesting because

[01:15:12] it seems as if truly the ultimate way to get in God's good graces is to not desire reward and fear punishment. You have to kind of like stop caring about that and love God no matter what. As Ethan says, like don't hope for justice. Like there's.

[01:15:32] But do we have any evidence that that helps either or that it's just a lottery? Yeah, he doesn't make like the most that I could gather is that everybody is fairly certain that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell.

[01:15:50] But I think you're right to point out that like, look, like what if we could see what if there really was an afterlife and now we saw people either go up or go down?

[01:16:01] We would just make up a story about why they must have gone one place or the other. Right. So so it would seem just like, you know, we'd be like, if we saw someone going to heaven, we'd be like, oh, maybe he really did have a good heart.

[01:16:12] Maybe maybe Harvey Weinstein wasn't such a bad guy or whatever. Like and when you see somebody going down, you'd be like, oh, maybe he was like a secret child molester. And when that serial killer goes up, that's so over the top that

[01:16:27] like the victims families are like pissed off about it and like complaining to the press. But but I don't know. Here's why I say that. So did you read the notes his notes on the book on the story? No, no.

[01:16:38] At the end of so he has at the end of all his anthologies, he gives little notes on completely forgot about that. Yeah. This is how the last part of his description, thinking about natural disaster has led to thinking about the problem of innocent suffering.

[01:16:52] An enormous range of advice has been offered from a religious perspective to those who suffer, and it seems clear that no single response can satisfy everyone. What comforts one person inevitably inevitably strikes someone else's outrageous? Consider the book of Job as an example.

[01:17:09] For me, one of the unsatisfying things about the book of Job is that in the end, God rewards Job, leaving aside the question of whether new children can compensate for the loss of the original ones. Why does God restore Job's fortunes at all? Why the happy ending?

[01:17:24] One of the basic messages of the book is that virtue isn't always rewarded. Bad things happen to good people. Job ultimately accepts this demonstrating virtue and is subsequently subsequently rewarded. Doesn't that undercut the message?

[01:17:38] It seems to me that the book of Job lacks the courage of its convictions. If the author were really committed to the idea that virtue isn't always rewarded, shouldn't the book have ended with Job still bereft of everything? Yeah.

[01:17:51] That makes me think that he was trying to paint a picture of some just unjust world where even believing in God is it's maybe helpful, but it doesn't guarantee anything and that Ethan is right. God, this is all just creation. Yeah, he is.

[01:18:12] He is the Ethan is the prophet. He's the preacher of ecclesiastes or whatever. He's the soul voice that's calling a spade, a spade, I think. And I think you're right that again, the trick of this story is you'd

[01:18:30] think in a world where we had those kinds of answers to these deeply supernatural metaphysical questions that it would clarify something. But all of the motivated reasoning and all of the need for a just world that we know that we engage in like the

[01:18:50] the motivation that makes us sort of reassess, you know, well, he must have been a bad person or she must have been a good person. All that still happens in this world. So so they could be completely you could live in this world and believe

[01:19:06] wrongly that good things are rewarded and bad things are punished and have plenty of compelling evidence of such. You could, you know, like because you could just find whatever evidence suits you like a good source psychologist, you could also know. Peacock your way to adjust God.

[01:19:23] Exactly. Peacock your way to heaven. All of the variety of beliefs that we see in this story from from Ethan's parents to Janice's parents to, you know, like Benny, like they all just represent various peoples in this world's response to the

[01:19:42] seeming randomness of evil and good that defaults everybody in the same exact way. Yeah. But there is a question then. So if we don't want this to be an anti-Christian screed and maybe we don't want to think that everybody who experiences what Neil experienced is just

[01:19:59] a brainwashed simp for God, then what are people supposed to be grateful for? Like when when Ethan is preaching to be grateful to God and to be devout and be have devotion, what are people supposed to be grateful for? So I was thinking so because I'm teaching Ecclesiastes,

[01:20:21] I listened to our episode on Ecclesiastes to see if I could get any thoughts, which was a good episode. I'll just say it now. But at one point, like this exact question came up and you were saying,

[01:20:35] like I think in Ecclesiastes, this God isn't supposed to be just in the way that we consider God just or loving in the way that we consider God loving. But he is somebody who created you compared it to Job, actually. Like he's someone that created the world.

[01:20:53] And so like we have whatever we have because of God, the fact that we're even asking these questions is because of God. It's not that God is always doing what's best for us and that like even

[01:21:06] if suffering happens, there's divine purpose in that in some ways where it's, you know, the best of all possible worlds, none of that. But he did create the whole thing. And so that's the thing you can be grateful for. Yeah. And here's the thing.

[01:21:23] Like I think in this story, if you ask the question, do you owe God anything? Do you owe God your devotion? I think the answer will be no, not really because even people who are super devoted don't get into heaven.

[01:21:37] But as you were talking, I was thinking to myself, who in this story actually seems to be living the best life? And I think, at least in my opinion, that Janice, when she was still disabled, was the happiest person in the story.

[01:21:57] And why it's somebody who has lived life with disadvantages, but has nonetheless taken it upon herself to help other people with disadvantages. And she seems actually happy. In fact, when you take, when when you took that away, that meaning,

[01:22:17] it's not just that she got her legs back in this fuck drop. It's that you took that meaning, her ability to have meaning from her circumstances, that's what was stripped of her. And then she becomes unhappy.

[01:22:27] So I think that in this world, like the angel, heaven is a MacGuffin. Like really what what you're what you need to do is live your life on this earth by accepting the injustice and the misfortune and your own suffering,

[01:22:42] knowing that some people have it better than you and others don't and going out of your way to help people, I think that that seems to me like the most healthy response to this particular world. Yes, but there's a complicating factor to that.

[01:22:54] So you're right that she's the happiest person. She seems the most confident and most fulfilled until she gets her legs back. But it's kind of based on a lie that she's helping. She's not helping people like like like Ethan is trying to help people.

[01:23:13] In the end, like open your eyes, like God is not just God is not kind. She is telling them God is just and kind and you can still and so take solace in your seeming misfortune, which only is a seeming misfortune

[01:23:29] that there is something that God is giving you. So in some ways, God Janus represents to me somebody who might be believing something false, but it's actually helping them and helping others way more than the people who are trying to like disillusion other people

[01:23:50] and tell them the hard, cold truth about the universe. Like, but there is an illusion that is at the heart of the way in which her life has meaning in the way in which she's helping other people. Yeah.

[01:24:04] So I agree in one sense, but but there is a like a pragmatic approach that she has that I think is kind of independent of the God part. Like, OK, in this universe, we know the God exists.

[01:24:19] So I'm reading going back to the part where it describes what she was doing before she got her legs back. And it says it was when she was a teenager that she realized that the able

[01:24:31] body people in her school were not the ones who needed, who most needed convincing. It was more important for her to set an example for other handicapped individuals, whether they had been touched by God or not. No matter where they lived, Janice began speaking before audience, telling those

[01:24:44] with disabilities that they had the strength God required of them. Now, I agree with you, there is like a veneer of all theirs. There's there's a lie there that God is the one requiring strength. But she is telling these people who otherwise might believe that they're

[01:24:59] powerless in this world, that they do have power and a lot of people flock to her because of that uplifting message, despite their circumstances. They shouldn't focus on what they don't have, but live this life in.

[01:25:16] I don't know, like, but see a more positive force in this life, I guess. I think so. There's one way to see that as kind of a noble lie, right? God doesn't give a shit about them and they're like, you know, maybe they got

[01:25:30] maybe it was just genetic or maybe it was just collateral damage from Ezekiel on a bender or something. But or, I don't know, is Ezekiel an angel? No, Ezekiel's not an angel. But whatever.

[01:25:44] So or you could think, no, like, God, this is what I was getting at before. It actually is something that God is giving us just by virtue of the fact that we're here at all, because we wouldn't be if there was no God.

[01:26:00] And so in that sense, like they do have they can summon the strength within them. And that is tied in some way to God, given that God created them. Whether I like that. I'm with the only thing that throws a wrench in this compared to Ecclesiastes is,

[01:26:19] you know, Ecclesiastes makes it very clear who knows what happens after we die, whether we rise or we go right here. There clearly is a heaven and a hell. And it's like, wait, so why then does God seem to reward some?

[01:26:34] You know, we think at least heaven is a reward and hell is not. Could they could be wrong about that? But it does seem like God cares about like how they behave in life or believe. But I don't know.

[01:26:44] I think it's like you were saying earlier about everything else, like the same questions are there, whether these things exist or don't. So you're right. And in Ecclesiastes, there's like, we're not sure what happens after we're dead.

[01:26:57] Here, we're sure that some people go one place and some people go the other place. We're not sure why we have maybe some inclination, but we're not sure why. We're we have a little sense just because we can look in the ground every so often

[01:27:11] and see people in hell of what hell is like. We have no idea what heaven is like. Does that even answer any questions in the end? I don't know. The only question it seems to answer is that that

[01:27:23] God bothered enough to not stop it creating, but to actually do something in the afterlife, but I'm with you that we don't even know in there. But let's take what we do know.

[01:27:34] We know that people who are in hell seem to live a life that's not unlike life on this earth, right? And we know that people who go to heaven, we know because of the people who have seen the light that they are to use again,

[01:27:49] my term brainwash, but but they are completely devoted to loving God. And they are completely devoted not because they acquired this devotion, but because they were changed in an instant when they had the light. Right now. Here's what I wanted to ask you.

[01:28:11] Would you rather let's let's we don't know whether what's going on heaven. But would you rather have like six guys, six guys, six guys or die freezing? Would you rather. That fear that maybe that's a bad thing to happen, that like just being completely a different person

[01:28:35] than who you were because you were changed by this light? Like that's not really you, that fear that Neil had. But you're in heaven or be you still remain you and all of your, you know, thoughts and desires, but be in hell, which is just not torture,

[01:28:51] but the absence of God. I mean, that's the thing that's weird is like Neil never gave it gave a shit about God anyway. So hell is really, I mean, hell doesn't. I don't know if it's like rat. Is it rationalia? Is it just like like the world?

[01:29:06] If there were no even supposition of God, like is it? I don't know what it is, but it doesn't seem for somebody who's not religious and not tempted in that direction, it doesn't seem like it would be

[01:29:21] that different. And you know, for Neil, if I'm Neil answering that question, I want hell if it's Sarah's there any day because I don't know if we both go to heaven. Who knows? Are we going to just be like

[01:29:33] not partial to each other anymore because we love everything equally. Well, that's what it says. Yeah, that that would be the fear that once you have this love that comes from the light, then you might not even care about each other that much.

[01:29:46] You're just so in love with God. And this actually this point about whether you want to remain yourself and stay true to whatever beliefs that you acquired through your own living life and through

[01:30:00] make your own conclusions and go to hell versus be completely devoted to God in heaven. There is there's a passage in the story where they mentioned that fallen angels something like an appearance. I was just going to mention this.

[01:30:15] Yeah. And when the fallen angels are asked about it, they say, look, we made our own decision. We suggest that you do the same. Yeah. Decide for yourself. Decide for yourself. And I think that that is if if Cheng is leaning anywhere, it is to to

[01:30:33] don't don't change who you are just like it's better to be you and make your own decisions than it is to to be sort of completely blinded by the love of God. Yeah. Decide for yourselves.

[01:30:48] I think that's what Ethan, who's not like a heroic character in any way, but that's sort of what he's telling people. He's being a little bit like the fallen angel. He's saying, here's the deal. You'd like actually look at everything that's happening in the world and don't

[01:31:04] just project your desire for meaning and your own individual purpose or your your ulterior motives of getting to heaven. Just decide for yourself. And I think in that message is the implication that if you decide to be devoted to God, that's fine.

[01:31:23] Yeah. As long as you're not doing it in a way that brainwashes you and removes your eyes. Right. Right. Right. If you know and are comfortable with the fact that you will all of a sudden become sort of a robot for God or whatever like that.

[01:31:38] You'll be completely consumed by your love for God. If that's what you want, then just know that that's what you're you might be choosing to. Right. I love that point that you made about like the same questions are still here. Yeah. Even with all your questions answered.

[01:31:53] Yeah. Cool. I'm glad you did. I like because it's true. Like we you know, it's it's like the Nagel point. Exactly. I was about to say it's like the Nagel point like oh, this worse, you know, the universe is so big.

[01:32:07] Well, like how big would it have to be for you to feel like your questions were answered? You know. Yeah. And so you know my thing about like justifying maybe after the fact post talk that it's OK to eat free range

[01:32:24] free range animals if they've been given a life that they wouldn't have already had. That's just like everybody here to the extent that they're going to be grateful for their existence. You know, it's not fair. You know, maybe the the cow gets to get milked

[01:32:43] and gets a good life. Whereas the pig gets slaughtered when the pig is two years old and there's no justice to it. But if if the animals are going to like it, they're going to like it just that they got to be here at all.

[01:32:56] And not because like the pig deserve to die, but the good laying hand deserve to live or the pig that could herd the sheep got to live because, you know, the pig had a random skill of being able to talk to sheep. I mean, I like that.

[01:33:16] My only concern is that lots of people are in the equivalent to factory farms. Yeah. And so you'd have to have like a real real, real good justification. So there might be some anti-natalists in this world. But but yeah, yeah, it doesn't, you know,

[01:33:38] this story doesn't delve too much into the problem of real evil. It is more about the mundane life suffering, the suffering that we all experience a loved one dies, we get in accidents and, you know, it's so. So in that sense, I think there's no crimes.

[01:33:57] There's only the suggestion that they're the only reason we know that anybody does anything bad at all is because of that serial killer who gets to who got who got to see the light while he was bearing his latest victim. Yeah.

[01:34:09] It's funny that I'm so resistant to seeing it as like a criticism of a certain type of, I don't know, Christian faith, even though I, you know, I feel like I'm somewhat critical in that same way.

[01:34:24] I just don't want Cheng to have a story that has an agenda of any kind. But I feel like this story has a bit of an agenda. I mean, it's it's the Odyssey. I think that he's that he really is sort of

[01:34:39] he's not taking such a firm stance that it's bad. Like, I think that he's like, look, I think that you should live your life how you choose and not because, you know, you want to make it to heaven and whatever.

[01:34:50] But but if you do, that's just know that that's the choice that you're making. And so it seems it seems more like a story that raises questions about existence than one that offers an indictment of one way to live.

[01:35:06] Except if it offers an indictment or an endorsement, it's eyes wide open instead of eyes and also these angels. These angels are assholes. Yeah, they just leave this just destructive path and and then they're like, God is great and then they're out of there.

[01:35:26] It's like an Avengers movie, you know, like they fight in the middle of New York City and they destroy it. Like they kill 30 million people, but they whatever they say. But they'll also cure a few people just kind of randomly.

[01:35:37] It's a great like it's world building at its best. It really is. It really is some I hope that someday when when this is out of copyright or whatever people can build on his worlds. I'm sure we'll return to the Ten Chang universe

[01:35:55] at some point in the not too distant future, unless we just die randomly, which could also happen. Isn't it creepy the thought that we're going to die in these recordings or I'll be here. Well, it's the only comfort I have.

[01:36:10] Should we make a deal that if our heart stops, we automatically destroys the hard drives in the service? No, we need like our families need to listen. Our AI, we needed something to train up an AI so that our daughters can talk to me.

[01:36:23] I think exactly like that. But I think we should make a pact and I'm just going to do it live on air right now that if one of us dies, the other has to take his own life too. Because you can't have like just one very bad wizard.

[01:36:39] That's a shitty deal for me, dude. You're like ten times older than me. Like a couple of years older than you, but probably like less healthy. The drinking and meat eating, the free range meat eating. But we're both rowing. It's true.

[01:36:56] You made me buy that rowing machine so that you wouldn't have to prematurely end it. Exactly. All right. All right. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizard. Anybody can have a break. A very good man. Just a very bad wizard.

Episode 206: Angel Chasing (Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God")