Logos meaning

Meaning

Word, Collection Of Statements, [The Science Of] Natural Law

Etymology

From the verb λεγω (lego), to speak intelligently.

Related names

• Via λεγω (lego): Legion, Philologus

The name Logos relates to the idea that the world runs on rules, rather than the whims of competing deities. This makes the universe lawful and predictable instead of chaotic and merciless. Mastery of the world at large is not obtained by buttering up the right deity with sacrifices and homages, but rather by learning the rules that make nature work, and then playing it like a harp. A man who can't predict the actions of his deity is a slave to that deity but the man who masters the rules of nature is free to do whatever he wants.

Logos is the name of the rules upon which the universe runs: natural law — hence words like "logic" and "logarithm" and the -logy part of scientific disciplines like technology, biology, archeology, cosmology, epistemology and so on. These natural rules are many, but they are also one. In fact, all natural law derives from a state of perfect unity, namely the singularity from which everything that exists Big Bangs ever forward. The key here is that the oneness of this singularity was never compromised. As the universe expanded, symmetries "broke" but the underlying oneness was never violated: the grand unified force became (a) gravity and (b) the strongelectroweak force that nevertheless perfectly complemented each other (a + b = One). Then the strongelectroweak force split into (c) the strong force and (d) electroweak force, and the electroweak force became (e) electromagnetism and (f) the weak force. But these four fundamental forces are not the remaining shards of some ruined vessel, but rather four harmonic voices of a perfectly singular choir (a + c + e + f = One).

If we were to compress the universe back to its singularity (something like this is routinely done in large hardon colliders in physics labs), these different forces would merrily align and blend together without any bit of them getting violated. It's all part of how everything works: like an umbrella that may be folded out and folded back in again and back out again and back in again: it's what it is designed to do, and when it is done, nothing snaps or gets bent out of shape or rumpled or ruined. The singularity is still what defines the universe today.

Likewise, all the laws of nature may be summed up by one singular existential definition from which everything else derives. For many decades, scientists have looked for this definition they call Grand Unified Theory, but to no avail. Had they read the gospel of Matthew, they would have known that all natural law can be compressed first into the Ten Commandments, which in turn compress into a dual set: (1) love YHWH with all your heart, soul and mind, and (2) your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40). And these two can be compressed even further into the singular: do to others what you would have them do to you (Matthew 7:12). This last one describes the singularity, it defines awareness, identity, desire, intent, otherness and Theory of Mind (and also explains how the Logos is not merely a dataset but rather a living, intelligent and social entity). This singular rule sums up the Logos, and explains existence: if there are no others to treat, this rule demands that others be created so as to be treated, and that explains existence. It also explains how the Father and the Son can be identical (how the same entity can be called "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace", even a "a child born to us" and "a son given to us", upon whose shoulders the government will rest: Isaiah 9:6, see John 1:1). It even explains how freedom is the most fundamental property of the universe, and why it is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1; see our article on ελευθερια, eleutheria, freedom-by-law).

Obviously, all this has nothing to do with religion and everything with science.

The Oneness of the universe is what governs all elements and all events in the universe today. This is why what goes up must come down, and things like energy, electrical charge, baryon number, angular momentum and so on are always preserved (these are the preservation laws). The Logos describes all goings on in the universe, but all goings on go on because of the Oneness that underlies all of it. This is why it is said that One is the Father of the Logos (compare Deuteronomy 6:4 to John 1:1). And because the Logos governs all of reality and preserves its perpetual state of Oneness, when this same Logos is wholly known by a single human (and this either in singular form, or the size of a national library or something in between; it's not the details but the oneness and thus the completeness that counts: Matthew 17:20) and governs this human entirely, this person becomes a self-similar mini-version of reality at large, and thus becomes as much One as the entire universe is (Ephesians 4:1-6, John 17:20-23), namely perfect with great joy (Jude 1:24, Matthew 5:48). This is why it is said that we humans are given to partake in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), which is unity (Acts 1:14, Romans 15:6, 1 Corinthians 1:10, 2 Corinthians 13:11, Philippians 1:27, 1 Peter 3:8).

The first word of the Bible, namely בראשית (bresheet), is commonly translated with "in the beginning", but, as we point out in our article on the noun βατραχος (batrachos), meaning frog, it could very easily pass for a diminutive of ראש (rosh), head, and thus mean "in any little head [God created the heavens and the earth]", suggesting the author was talking about the awakening of consciousness in a human baby rather than the universal Big Bang. Jewish Scriptures always emphasize the global Republic (whose citizens are all free, autonomous and sovereign) rather than the localized and centralized empire of the Greek and Latin translations. The many "little heads" in which God created the heavens and the earth would be contrasted by the initial Big Head, which is the Logos (1 John 4:19), just as much as the Great Light of Day One is contrasted by the many agents of light of Day Four (Daniel 12:3).

God is One and the universe is One, and although God is obviously not the same as the universe, there is only one One, which means that although God is not the same as the universe, the Oneness of God and the Oneness of the universe are indeed the same Oneness. There is only one One (Isaiah 45:7).

As noted above, in the olden days, folks commonly surmised that the universe ran on the whims of wily deities, which invariably disagreed with each other and which had to be appeased in elaborate rituals but could never really be counted on. The earth-shattering breakthrough came when an enlightened few began to realize that reality is not the effect of many unpredictable forces, but rather one unified set of rules, which could be known and counted on, and whose next move could be precisely predicted by those who had learned the rules. We moderns are intimately familiar with the concept of science but to the ancients, the notion of science was wildly idiotic and irresponsible and certainly prone to provoke the wrath of several neglected deities. The battle has been long and hard (and is not over yet). But long story short: the Bible is not about religion but about information technology: consciousness, language, script and ultimately science and the divine nature of unity (Genesis 4:26, 1 Kings 4:33).

In the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth embodies the Logos (the term "Word in the flesh" is a fancy way of saying: the "Logos captured in human language inside human brains"). Certain enthusiasts like to believe that the Gospels (even all books of the Bible) are historical and descriptive of events that "really happened", but that's not correct because time is subject to Logos and Logos not to time. Time is a function of the universe, not the other way around. Said otherwise: the universe did not begin at a point in time but time began at a point in the universe. The bubble of the universe is bigger than the bubble of time. The bubble of the Logos is even bigger than the bubble of the universe.

In the age in which the Bible was written, people had no idea about a law behind reality, and had to be patiently explained that this law can be known (Exodus 33:13, Psalm 119:33, John 14:14-15), that it works always the same for everybody (Romans 2:11, Ephesians 6:9, Colossians 3:11, Galatians 3:28), and that these laws cannot be broken because the inviolability of these natural laws is the very principle that makes it all work (Matthew 5:18). That means that "supernatural" does not exist, and anything that can happen within nature or can be observed within nature is always natural and never supernatural. Jesus came to show the way, as the song goes: his "miracles" showed that certain things may seem miraculous to the unfamiliar but can be done when one knows how to do it. Whoever learns how to do it, can do it, every time anywhere. This is why Jesus said that his followers would do what he did, and even greater things (John 14:12). The one thing neither Jesus nor his followers would ever do is pursue the supernatural (magic: not paying for one's energy bill and trying to get away with that; theft that ultimately corrodes and finally ruins reality: 2 Thessalonians 2:3).

Back then, there were no dictionaries, no encyclopedias, no newspapers and no scientific journals (even no number notation or mathematics). In those days, scientific truths (which are things that everybody agrees on; science is the pursuit of agreement) were presented in anecdotal form. That means that the Bible is not historic but algorithmic: it describes events that happen in natural reality regardless of when. That means that the Bible is not true because it really happened (once upon a very specific time) but because it really happens (anywhere where the conditions are similar).

This is why whatever goes for Adam, goes for every living creature (Eve is the "mother of all living", i.e. the biosphere). The effects of individual sin peter out after four generations or so (Exodus 20:5) but the literary Adam is not a historical figure but rather the most rudimentary algorithmic definition of anything that lives. Everything that lives eats from the Tree, gets expelled, hopes for salvation and dies (Romans 8:22). Whatever goes for Noah, goes for any conscious human being. Whatever goes for Abraham, goes for any monotheist — and no, that word does not describe a religious person but a person who understands that everything is in some way or form connected to everything else, and who makes it their business to figure out the ratios and relationships of things — which is why YHWH is the God of the living and not of the dead (Matthew 22:32). It's also why any human alive today can bring their own sins to Jesus' cross (Romans 6:5-6) without having to travel back in time 2,000 years. Both Christ and the cross are algorithmic, and as much part of present physical reality as is E=mc².

The covenant God made with Abraham, of which Jesus would be the fulfillment, commenced with the command to look up at the stars and count them if possible (Genesis 15:5). That means that Abraham was not only the first monotheist, he was also the first cosmologist. And since all words describe distributions (the word "apple" describes all fruits that have some degree of "appleness", from tiny wrinkly green ones to big red shiny ones), all words describe ratios, which is why words relate to consciousness and consciousness to stars (see Genesis 1:14-15, Daniel 12:3 and thus Nehemiah 4:21). When Pilate presented the battered Jesus to the crowd, he famously said "see the man" (John 19:5), with which he defined Jesus as the man as much as the word "apple" describes all sorts of apples. Jesus embodied the distribution of all men (their consciousnesses), as much as the Logos describes the distribution of all things. This is how Paul could both write that "all things have been created by him and for him, and he is before all things and in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:16-17, also see Romans 11:36) and that in him "are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" (Colossians 2:3).

Theology is not the study of God because God cannot be observed and thus studied (that's the one thing theists and atheists agree on). Instead, theology is the study of the nature of God, which is oneness, which is how all things in the obvious universe relate: "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made" (Romans 1:20). This is why we "examine everything carefully and hold fast to that which works" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). And this is also why we understand that temple building is a technological thing, not a religious thing (Exodus 31:1-11), and that the sole function of religion is to teach stable technology and algorithmic thought to people who are tossed about in the darkness of their natural emotions. Jesus' earthly profession was that of τεκτων (tekton), which means assembler (rather than "carpenter") and comes from the same ancient Indo-European root as our English words technology, textile (i.e. fabric woven on a machine) and text (as text is technology: information technology).

People, especially lazy people, like to believe that spirituality is about feeling good. But no, feelings are always physical. Feelings are always private and selfish, and meditation is not for tricking your brain into releasing endorphins when you did nothing to be rewarded for. Spirituality also has nothing to do with the effects of drugs, because those too are selfish and physical. There is nothing wrong with feeling good but studies have shown that the only thing that makes people feel truly good, and that in a fruitful and lasting way, is other people and particularly serving other people. Spirituality (like love) is always a communal thing. Spirituality is rational and thus verbal or at least communicative. It's about the exchange of information between you and others, about taking in information (sure, which you can spin feelings around) and giving out information, so that you become a node in a network from which you, like everybody else, draw your identify and feelings and purpose. That network is a spirit. We engage with that network via our rationality, our words, and it teaches us how to build things and how to make the world a better and safer place for everybody. There is no greater joy than knowing how to repair someone else's broken world, and that joy is achieved by the scientific knowledge of the Logos.

The name Logos is a noun derived of the Greek verb λεγω (lego), meaning to speak intelligently:

The name Logos means Word, but applies to the "genetic" code of the universe: natural law, which has always existed and has always remained One, and which develops along with the universe at large and which is slowly discovered and formalized by humans who yearn to understand and become One with both the Creator and all other humans.