Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Is God a Taoist? 341MORTAL: You certainly seem partial to eastern Philosophy!GOD: Oh, not at all! Some of m best thoughts have bloomed in your nativeAmerican soil. For example, I never expressed my notion of “duty” moreeloquently that through the thoughts of Walt Whitman:I give nothing as dutiesWhat others give as duties, I give as living impulses.ReflectionsThis witty and sparkling dialogue introduces Raymond Smullyan, a colourful logicianand magician who also happens to be a sort of Taoist, in his own personal way.Smullyan has two further selections to come, equally insightful and delightful . Thedialogue you have just read was taken from The Too is Silen, a collection of writingsillustrating what happens when Western logician meets eastern thought. The result isboth scrutable and inscrutable (as one might expect).There are undoubtedly many religious people who would consider this dialogue tobe the utmost in blasphemy, just as some religious people think it is blasphemy towalk around in a church with his hands in his pockets. We think, on the other hand,that this dialogue is pious -- a powerful religious statement about God, free will, andthe laws o nature, blasphemous only on the most superficial reading. Along the way,Smullyan gets in (through God) many sideswipes at shallow or fuzzy thinking,preconceived categories, pat answers, pompous theories, and moralistic rigidities.Actually we should – according to God’s claim in the dialogue – attribute its messagenot to Smullyan, but to God. It is God speaking through the character of Smullyan, inturn speaking through the character of God, whose message is being given to us.Just as God (or the Tao, or the universe, if you prefer) has many parts all withtheir own free will – you and I being examples – so each one of us has suh inner partswith their own free will (although these parts are less free than we are). This isparticularly clear in the Mortal’s own internal conflict over whether “he” does or doesnot want to sin. There