[MD] Case's Answer to Marsha: Part 1

[Case]

Part One:
Or 
What the hell is going on here?

Several years James Burke hosted a PBS series called Connections where he
showed how various advance in technology had lead to deep and racial changes
in culture. For example he claimed that the printing press was more
responsible for the Reformation than theology because it allowed ideas to
travel farther and faster than ever before in history.

You and I are used to seeing knowledge accelerate, doubling and quadrupling
in our lifetimes and we expect this. That's just the way it is. So I think
it is hard for many to imagine a time when knowledge and wisdom did not
change and time stood still. People lived the same lives their parents did
for generation after generation. While it is fashionable to pay homage to
their use of myth and metaphor, we tend to be a bit smug about the
quaintness of their conceptions. 

In many parts of the world ancient people, faced to making sense of the
natural world, appealed to the supernatural. They figured, there must be
something out there messing with us this way, what can we do to suck up?
Radiating out of the Middle East and India there are pantheons of gods and
goddess doing what they do. 

I think the best example of this comes from the Book of Job. It is one of
the oldest books in the Bible. This is the Case short form summary: 

Satan is out walking to and fro upon the earth. He comes into the court of
heaven one day. 

God asks him, "What up, down there?" 
Satan says, "Not much?" 
God says, "So how has my servant Job doing?"
Satan says, "Oh, he fine his praises you all the time. But that's only
because you are nice to him. If you were to fuck with him he would curse
your name."
God says, "No way!"
Satan says, "Betcha, he would."
God says, "You're on!"

Next thing you know Job is having a party downstairs when some servants come
in and tell him all his flocks are dead, and his family has been killed.

Job is like, "Oh shit!"

But he does not curse the Lord. When Satan comes back, God says, "See I told
you."

Satan say, "Yeah but that's only because you only let be fuck with his
stuff, not him personally. If I could hassle him, he would curse you."

God says, "No way!"
Satan say, "Betcha!"
God says, "You're on!"

So for the rest of the book Job is sitting in an ash heap, covered in boils
pissing and moaning about his fate. He is all like, "Why me? What the hell
did I do? I don't deserve this kind of shit!"

His friends come by to cheer him up and they offer all kinds of reasons why
a merciful, just God this would let this happen to his servant. 

Bad Karma. 
Vanity.
This was God's way of sparing Job from something worse.
On and on they drone and to each argument Job says, "That's bullshit!"

Finally God steps in. Job says, "God, why did to let Satan mess with me this
way?"

God answers, "Who are you to ask me what I can and can not do? I am God. I
don't need a reason. Shit happens. Deal with it."

Now you are no doubt saying to yourself what has this got to do with Taoism
or the MoQ? The short answer is that religion, science and philosophy are
all responses to God's answer to Job.

Shit happens, that is Dynamic Quality.

End of Part One.