{"id":7064,"date":"2012-03-26T09:12:38","date_gmt":"2012-03-26T09:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=7064"},"modified":"2012-03-26T09:20:40","modified_gmt":"2012-03-26T09:20:40","slug":"quantity-and-quality-the-angelic-hosts-at-badr-and-or-armageddon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=7064","title":{"rendered":"Quantity and Quality: angelic hosts at Badr and \/ or Armageddon"},"content":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron<\/strong> — on a mostly overlooked possible asymmetry ]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Michael Peck<\/strong> posted a piece at the game site Kotaku <\/em>yesterday, titled The Immense Pleasure of Huge War Games<\/a>, and his opening quote startled me \u2013 it’s not one I’d heard before. Here’s Peck’s first para:<\/p>\n

“Quantity has a quality all its own,” said Josef Stalin, as he relentlessly flung waves of Soviet tanks and troops against Hitler’s elite but outnumbered panzers. Comrade Stalin might not have believed in a deity, but even a Communist warlord would surely have agreed with Napoleon’s dictum that God is on the side of the bigger battalions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That interests me deeply, because I regard the relationship between quantity and quality<\/a> as one phrasing of the knot at the heart of consciousness — the “hard problem” as science terms it — equivalent to the question of how our subjectivity and objective reality mutually arise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

And so to Napoleon’s dictum that God is on the side of the bigger battalions — I imagine he means real, flesh and blood battalions — which “even a Communist warlord would surely have agreed with”. <\/p>\n

Not so the Qur’an, which reminded the Prophet <\/strong>of the battle of Badr (Quran 8.9-10): <\/p>\n

Remember ye implored the assistance of your Lord, and He answered you: “I will assist you with a thousand of the angels, ranks on ranks.” Allah made it but a message of hope, and an assurance to your hearts: (in any case) there is no help except from Allah: and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Durer<\/strong>‘s angels of the Apocalypse, likewise, are militant angels, though like ourselves (Ephesians 6.12) they:<\/p>\n

wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high (celestial) places.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*<\/p>\n

And so I would ask you: is there even the possibility of a higher asymmetry<\/strong> at work here — or are we speaking only of a matter of brute force versus high morale?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[ by Charles Cameron — on a mostly overlooked possible asymmetry ] Michael Peck posted a piece at the game site Kotaku yesterday, titled The Immense Pleasure of Huge War Games, and his opening quote startled me \u2013 it’s not one I’d heard before. Here’s Peck’s first para: “Quantity has a quality all its own,” […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[622,384,730,526,497,529,665,499,676,1,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apocalyptic","category-art","category-asymmetric","category-charles-cameron","category-christianity","category-games","category-hard-problem-in-consciousness","category-islamic-world","category-scriptures","category-uncategorized","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7064"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7080,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7064\/revisions\/7080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}