Monism vs. Dualism

Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Dualism: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05169a.htm

and on Monism: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10483a.htm

This is a slippery subject because of all the ambiguities. I only want to make one point today.
Well, several:

1. Neither monism nor dualism can be right.
2. Monotheism and dualism don't mix.
   

If you want to say that heaven is one kind of realm, and earth is another kind of realm--or even if you want to say that mind is one kind of thing, and body is another kind of thing--then we have the problem of the coupling between the realms. Anytime there is a connection between realms--something travels from one to the other, something in one influences something in the other--then we must have something that is not distinctly "in" one realm or the other, which means that both realms are part of some bigger realm, which means we have monism. You simply cannot divide the universe down the middle and say, here are two universes that don't mix except that they do because they form one universe instead of being two universes.

On the other hand, if there is only one kind of thing, one original substance of which all things are made, then how can there be any distinctions between anything and anything else? Stuff, meet Stuff. He lives over there next to Stuff.

With this in mind let's take a look at physics--specifically electrons. You cannot carve your initials into an electron to make it different from all other electrons. Quantum mechanics tells us that if you swap or interchange two electrons, the resulting universe is exactly the same...except that the phase is multiplied by -1. Well, never mind that bit. Swap two pairs and the universe is exactly the same as it was before you did any swapping, is my point. So electrons are sort of monistic in the sense that they are all identical. You could say there is only one electron, repeated many times (and going backward in time in the case of positrons). But at the same time, because we have these wonderful things called time and space, these electrons can be distinguished from each other by their locations.

Now that's deep.

2. Monotheism and dualism don't mix very well. If you say that: (1) YHVH is all-powerful, (2) YHVH is good, (3) YHVH created the rest of the universe (i.e. the parts that are not YHVH), (4) YHVH is the only creator, (5) evil exists, (6) YHVH doesn't like evil, (7) YHVH doesn't create what YHVH doesn't like, then I think we have a contradiction.

I thought I had more to say about that but right now I can't express it. I imagined taking a sheet of paper, which represents the universe, and drawing lines down the middle to represent such dualisms as Good vs. Evil and Heaven vs. Earth. I imagined showing that there's no way to do that consistently with all the usual assumptions. But the logic of it now escapes me. I believe that the attempt to mix monotheism and dualism is also called "the problem of evil."

If anybody makes comments on any of this, quite likely they will be talking about something completely different from what I had in mind. That's what I get for writing a few paragraphs instead of a book.