Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

A troublemaker and a villain,
    who goes about with a corrupt mouth,
    who winks maliciously with his eye,
    signals with his feet
    and motions with his fingers,
    who plots evil with deceit in his heart—
    he always stirs up conflict.

• Proverbs 6:11-14

After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me.”
His disciples stared at one another, at a loss to know which of them he meant. One of them, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was reclining next to him. Simon Peter motioned to this disciple and said, “Ask him which one he means.”
Leaning back against Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?”

• John 13:21-25

When this had dawned on him, he went to the house of Mary the mother of John, also called Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying. Peter knocked at the outer entrance, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer the door. When she recognized Peter’s voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, “Peter is at the door!”
“You’re out of your mind,” they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, “It must be his angel.”
But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. Peter motioned with his hand for them to be quiet and described how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell James and the other brothers and sisters about this,” he said, and then he left for another place.

• Acts 12:12-17

“Little is known about Zeno of Elea, other than his paradoxes of motion, which are mentioned by Aristotle. Zeno is thought to have produced more than 40 of these, although only a few survive. In them, he defended the claim of his teacher Parmenides that the changing and varied world we perceive around us is not reality-which is in fact motionless, uniform, and simple. Movement, Zeno believed, is an illusion of the senses. Each of his paradoxes began from the position that he wished to refute-that movement, and hence change, is real–then continued by revealing the contradictory consequences that lead to the rejection of this notion.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

Zeno of Elea (490BC-430BC?) was a Greek philosopher, born in a Grecian colony near Naples, Italy.  The philosophy coming from the small colony was called Eleatics.  Zeno was a student of Parmenides, and according to Plato, might have had a sexual relationship with him – unconfirmed, since the only book Zeno wrote no longer exists, except in quotations in Plato’s book Parmenides.  Zeno is said to have conspired to overthrow the ruler and paid with his life.

The basis of Eleatics is monism, a belief that everything is one indivisible thing, and that thing came from one thing.  If we could expand that view that the “thing” was God, a spirit, then they might not be far off, but what little we know about their morals, it leaves doubt as to Zeno even being a good man.

The paradoxes that Zeno wrote about, and Plato quoted, have been debated ever since and no solution has been accomplished.  His ideas on the physical world have been refuted by modern scientific advancements.

But Zeno added something to monism, that had been proposed by Parmenides.  Zeno did not believe in space, time, and motion.  He felt these aspects to be figments of our imagination.  I suppose that lifting the cup to quench his thirst meant that thirst was also a figment of his imagination.

When you believe that all things are just one indivisible thing and that there is no such thing as time and motion, the idea that he could enter into a conspiracy to assassinate the ruler seems to contradict everything he believes in.  But comparing that to our secular society today, they live in a world of constant contradiction, and it does not bother them.

But I started thinking about a world without motion.  All laws of Physics pertaining to motion have a time element, so not believing in time also is consistent within Zeno’s philosophy.

In the Scriptures above, with no motion, how could troublemakers and villains harm us at all?  But then, how could Simon Peter motion to John to ask who among them would betray Jesus?  Then again, how could anyone betray Jesus without motion being involved?

That got me to thinking that sin would then be non-existent, but alas, we sin so much in thoughts that we would make up for the lack of motion.

But then, there is the comedy of Rhoda and the Apostle Peter.  Rhoda hears knocking.  She answers the door.  It’s Simon Peter.  It is obvious that she closes the door in his face because Simon Peter continues to knock.  And finally, they let him into the room.  If there was no motion, that story would not be in the Bible.  No one would believe it.

Monism is easily refuted by nature itself.  Trees have leaves that change and fall to the ground, replaced by green leaves the next spring.  How is this one thing that is indivisible?  I know, it is excused by a lot of one’s imagination, but if motion did not exist, why do we dream up motion in our thoughts?

This was an interesting mental exercise.  And once I had typed it, the “one thing” had again changed, with a new post written within it.  It boggles my mind that Zeno would imagine himself writing his thoughts down when nothing can change.

But the one thing we can count on that never changes is God, who is the One who created all things.  But then, He set all things into motion.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.