A note on the $86 million I didn't win tonight.

Providence dictates that I win the lottery at some point--probably sooner than later. I guess I'll just have to wait for the $102 million on Friday night. Providence, you confound me. I would have settled for the $86,000,000.

I don't want to talk about the Braves' first game. It was a bit rough. I actually feel like it was good for Smoltz to get knocked around a bit for his first start since june of 2001. Hopefully it will take the edge off a bit for his next start, in Atlanta, on Sunday--where I'll be.

Peter Jennings has lung cancer. He too will die. So it goes. I always liked Peter Jennings, even though he leaked a tear or two after Bill Clinton's farewell address. I watched his coverage of 9/11 from the moment he came on the air until he finally went off at some point 18 or so hours later, and will likely always associate the event with his presence. Always seemed liked a good guy, even if he is part of the evil propagandizing globalist news media new world order illuminati mason skull and bones conspiracy designed to prepare the earth for the return of the Atlantians, whose nice city of Atlantis sunk into the ocean oh so long ago. Ever listen to Coast to Coast AM? Good stuff.

Let me try and clear up the free will thing, which I kind of glossed over and left hanging at the end of the last intelligent-sounding post...

I used the example of the window that never breaks. The window will never break, but it is, of course, still breakable. Classic philosophy 1000 stuff, perhaps meant to convince cowering freshman to go running back to church, hysterically crying to their preacher about the devil-thoughts being dangled in front of their eyes at college. But what do I mean by the example? Maybe it's a bad example for what I'm trying to say, and then again, maybe examples are just an excuse to avoid getting at the heart of what I'm trying to say. So I'll just be as clear as possible.

When people talk about the will, it seems to me that they far too often talk about it as something external to them. Christians, in the religious "Christ is the forgiver of my sins" sense, believe that free will is a gift from God, something given to humans, and is perhaps what gives us our greatest resemblance to him. A lot of the philosophers I've read seem to make a similar mistake--when talking about free will it is often discussed as something that exists outside of the human condition, as a trait or characteristic but not as a necessary factor of being human.

Let's play under someone else's rules for a minute... If there is a God, in the Creator sense, it is mistaken to think of him/her/it as "having" a will. If such a being exists, it would have to be simply WILL. When God says in the Bible "I am who am," I think he makes a mistake. (Cocky son of a gun, eh?) He is making a statement of ontological significance, talking about his being. God can't be a who at all...if God is uncreated himself, his essence would have to be simply the will. If he were anything more than the WILL at the beginning, something had to have pre-dated his existence that decided what his traits would be. He's not a who, if he exists at all, all you could say about him is that he is the will. And haven't a bunch of somebody's said a bunch of times in bunches of ways better than me that the most egotistical thing we can do as humans is create god in our image? Suggesting that god has traits or characteristics like we do does just that...calling him the will does not.

Okay, if I have explained the above to a reasonable degree, hopefully the rest won't be so hard.

Now, instead of thinking of yourself as your physical and mental characteristics, your personality and pants-size, what if you thought about yourself as simply the will. What defines you as you at your core is "willing". This is not to say that your personality and pants-size don't also represent you in some very real sense, but rather they are what is external to the actual you--instead of your will being considered that which is external, perceived as some sort of gift, it is the essential.

If you accept that premise, it seems to me that the rest is gravy. My finite circle of infinity is the result of my will, my existence. It is who I am, in it "I am who am." It cannot possibly be contrary to my will...it is my will. (Look! I'm doing it too! Calling it "my" will. This sort of thing can be hard to escape.) Not "my" will, but me. I am inseperable from my will. I can't say it any better than that right now, which is frustrating.

Maybe that has cleared some of the window thing up. I think it does. If not, just forget about the window example completely and go based on what I said above here. I'm getting back to all possible worlds soon, I think.

By the way, I'm a sucker for knowing who has been reading this thing. Just a hello to let me know who is reading, even if you have nothing to actually say about the post. I would greatly appreciate it.

Goodnight all.