Quite pretty if you get past the cold.

Snowing!

I was so excited about the dry cold the past few days, because it has let me ride my bike around without the mess of the mud roostertail. However, its snowing again today, leading me to conclude that my bike is the herald of rain and snow. It seems like every time I want to ride, stuff falls from the sky to inconvenience me. If it wasn't so darn pretty I think that might get annoyed.

Eating out.

Today I had lunch at Athan's Cafe, a Greek Cafe that combined a minimalist design and delicious but cheap food. I loved the place, and it inspired me to eat out at new places, instead of the usual pizza joints that seem to get a disproportionate amount of my business. To make the process easier, I happened to just wander across MenuPages - A restaurant guide for major US cities with reviews and menus available online. I will definitely be using this to explore new restaurants every time I eat out from now on.

Mere Christianity, Chapter 10

In this chapter, Lewis describes Christianity as the next step in evolution - that Christians have a new kind of life, passed on through baptism, belief, and Mass, the way physical human life is passed on through sex, pregnancy, and birth. Apparently, this superbiological entity (SBE) is not a metaphor. He states:

"This is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts - That we are His fingers and Muscles, the cells of His body. ... It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution - a biological or superbiological fact."

I was completely surprised to read this passage. I have to admit, I had always figured that when most people said that they were 'in the body of Christ' or 'had the spirit of Christ in them,' I understood it as they were thinking about Him or copying Him. If it is meant literally, that people believe that they are controlled by Christ the way I control my fingers, then that is a radical proposition.

If taken seriously, it raises some big questions:
1. If such things are possible, then how do we know that Christ is the only one?
2. Could there not me more, made of say, trees, animals, or natural elements?
3. Can these things overlap or recurse, meaning one organism can be part of multiple SBEs, or the individual parts of a SBE themselves be SBEs?
4. Doesn't this legitimize a Gaian perspective, where all life on earth is part of a similar entity as well?
5. Doesn't this blur the line with some forms of pantheism, because God is now present or acting directly in the physical realm?
6. How can there be free will if Christ drives your actions?
7. Does this justify 'religious darwinism,' or injustice to people 'not part of Christ' because they are 'less evolved'?

Mere Christianity, Chapter 9

In this chapter, Lewis talks about the importance and reasoning behind the death and rebirth of Jesus. He writes:

"What did he come to do? Well, to teach, of course; but as soon as you look into the New Testament or any other Christian writing you will find that they are constantly talking about something different - about His death and His coming to life again. It is obvious that Christians think the chief point of the story lies there. They think the main thing He came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed."

This really makes me uncomfortable. If an all powerful God came to earth "to teach, of course," why wouldn't the most important thing be the instructions he gave? By focusing on his death and rebirth, aren't we ignoring and undermining the stated purpose of his visit? He must have had something that he really wanted us to get right; and I am disturbed that his followers could be so brazen as to contradict him on the fundamental purpose of His visit.

If he came to earth primarily to suffer and be killed, then why would he bother to teach at all? Couldn't he just come down, announce his divinity to the Jews and Romans, work some miracles to prove it, and let them kill him? Surely, that would make a vivid and undeniable impression on the entire Jewish and Roman population. Instead, he spent years teaching, often riling crowds with his instructions and then fleeing to keep from being killed by a mob. Why would he run if being killed was his purpose?

It is a natural response to assert that he didn't allow himself to be killed because he 'wasn't done getting his message across.' There are two problems with this argument.

First, how do you know he had finished getting his message across before he was killed? He did come back and keep teaching, after all. That wouldn't be necessary if he had finished what he wanted to do. On the other hand, if you accept that He might have been killed before he had finished his primary purpose for coming to earth, wouldn't that strongly imply that his death was an accident, and that he returned to finish his real job?

In either case, you fundamentally lose something in this argument. Either his actions are inconsistent with his purpose, or his death was an accident, and not deserving of the attention that it has subsequently received.

Even if Christ's death had served to wash out our sins, or even disable death itself, God didn't seem to think that it was as important as the instructions that he was trying to get across to us. So it deeply concerns me that sincere Christians would put anything as more important than that.

My bed under the window.

Verification of claims

Given that this is an election year, I get suspicious of
unsubstantiated claims circulated around about reckless abuses of
government programs, especially controversial ones. The other day I
recieved two, and my first thought was "even if this is true where is
the data? Is this a massive problem or an isolated case?show me the
numbers!"

I wish that there was data available so that we could make an unbiased
judgement.

Bitter Reality

Must still be on Hong Kong time

Today I couldn't stay awake past 7 PM, and woke up at midnight ready
to start my day. Now, I'm wondering how to best get through this
adjustment period so that I can dig into classes normally; and how to
pass the rest of the night if I can't get back to sleep.

On the way to the market

Just before dawn in Boston

Home Safe

I just wanted everyone to know that I'm safely back home in Boston, catching up on my phone messages, email, and planning errands and such that have to be done for the new semester. The flights were long and dull, but I managed to stay awake for most of the 'day' on Boston Time, so I'm hoping that I won't be overly jet lagged next week. Hope you all have enjoyed the emails, and see you around!

Last Day in Hong Kong

Today was my last day in Hong Kong. In 14 hours I'll be on my way to the airport, and about 21 hours after that I'll be home. I'm pretty excited about that prospect, although it has been nice to avoid all the snow of the season, and I'll be going back to another hectic semester. Here is my returning flight information:

HKG -> SFO  = UA 862  (This flight arrives 4 hours and 18 minutes before it leaves. Yay international date line!)
SFO -> BOS  = UA 176  (This flight is remarkably unremarkable)

On the job front, I talked with a person from the Bank of China office in Hong Kong today. He basically said that while there is more English spoken, most of the office works in Cantonese and some Mandarin. He also said that for recruitment, they focus on hiring locals or people with prior experience at one of the major bulge-bracket firms. I've heard this time and time again: apparently, the major firms are both the gatekeepers and the major players. I suppose this is a function of their size and the ups and downs of the market. Regardless, it appears that most of the smaller banks have become accustomed to getting experienced people who have been let go during one of the periodic purges from the larger banks. However, I was told that three of the big-name banks are looking to hire in Hong Kong, and the person I spoke to offered to put me in touch with people if he could. All is not lost, but it seems that the big firms really are the best way to break into the industry. Unsurprisingly, they also have the most regimented recruiting process. This begs the question, what is the best thing to do at this point? How do I cut through the procedural red tape and find something? Is it too late to do in the job market this year? These are things that I will be thinking about on my trip home, and undoubtedly wanting to get everybody's opinion on.

Mere Christianity - A Clarification

It occurred to me that a I wade deeper and deeper into Mere Christianity, it might look like I'm against Christianity itself, that I'm trying to 'disprove' the religion. That's not my purpose, for two reasons: First, I don't want to try to force you to change your beliefs, just as I dislike it when others try to force me to change mine. Second, belief and faith are individual concerns, Let me make this clear - I'm not against Christianity itself. Lots of people are inspired by it and use it to frame their lives and be better people. I'm happy about that.

What am I arguing, then? If I'm arguing anything, I guess I would be arguing for tolerance and open-mindedness when dealing with other peoples religions. I think this is a pretty reasonable thing, and I expect that I would be completely unable to convince those who feel otherwise.  Really, my purpose here is to use Lewis as a launch-pad for starting to think about how I see the world. We may not agree, but thats okay; that variation is what keeps life enjoyable.

Mere Christianity, Chapter 8 - Part C

Lewis explains that one cannot reasonably see Jesus as a great moral teacher if they have a significant understanding of what Jesus said. Jesus claimed to be god himself, from outside the world, and claimed the ability to forgive all grievances despite who was injured. As a result, Lewis says, we must either decide he is a madman for claiming to literally be god, or open ourselves to the possibility that he may actually be god.

I cannot but flatly reject this dichotomy. There are other ways of explaining or understanding Jesus that can be considered which are equally valid or invalid, depending on your assumptions. Rather than only being a madman or god, he may have also have been an artist, a mortal prophet, a demigod, or even a rival god -it all depends on your frame of reference, your paradigm. If you are a pure athiest with no sense of artistry, then you may not be able to see him as anything but madman. If you fully believe in an active, powerful, loving god, then it seems obvious that it was god on earth. If you're interested in inspiring people, then maybe you would see him as a similar kind of person, like a gandhi with an ego. Finally, if you fell elsewhere on the religious map, you might be inclined to call him a prophet, buddha, demigod, or even a rival of God's.

Probably the best example that would resonate with people today would be if we described Jesus as a talented artist. Just as actors play the parts of powerful symbols in our own time to spread messages or alter people's behavior, so perhaps Jesus took the same approach. He seems to have had one key difference, however. For added impact, rather than confining his message to the stage, where it could be dismissed as merely entertainment, he put it in the middle of the society - blurring the lines between method acting and performance art. If he was for social commentary what Borat is for comedy, then naturally people would get polarized views of him: some would see his performances for what they were but would not understand his artistic intent and call him a blasphemer, while others might genuinely believe that his skilled performances and curious-but-coherent logic were real and him a miracle worker.

But he wouldn't die for that art, would he? If he didn't wink and give away the game, we today could almost see it playing out as it did in the bible. And why should he wink, if he's suddenly being treated with a tremendous amount of respect, with people following him about from place to place? Why would he blink when dragged before a bunch of stuffy politicians who 'didn't get him' and weren't going to do anything to him anyway? Why would he blink in front of the Romans who seemed to be impressed with him, and not particularly happy with the angry politicians? Maybe Jesus-the-artist took his act as far as he thought he could, only to discover that the politicians had more power than he'd thought. By then it was too late, though - the crowd had turned on him, and his 'coming out' would only further anger them. So, given the choice between death-by-crowd and death-by-roman, he stuck with his act, and made such an impression on his fellow actors that they continued the game after he died, and thus made a talented artist the Jesus of the Gospels. 

Mere Christianity, Chapter 8 - Part B

The third argument that Lewis makes in chapter 8 is that God's solution to the mess was to do four things: First, to give us a conscience; Second, to give us myths about death and rebirth; Third, to take 'one particular people and spent several centuries hammering into their heads the sort of God He was;' and fourth to come down and take a walk among those same people for a time.

On each of these points, I have an alternative viewpoint.

Conscience: I would tend to explain conscience as an intuitive awareness of social norms and the 'little in, lot out' nature of society.

Myths: Myths are ways to assign meaning to the world around us and explain the  social norms present in every group of people. Overlap between myths here stems from overlap in what humans don't understand, rather than on some divinely implanted seed. After all, many cultures also share myths about Rip Van Winkle type characters, gnomes, and talking animals. If we death and rebirth as a mythological theme is evidence for Christ, then talking animals, gnomes, and Rip Van Wingle themes each must be divinely implanted as well. 

Chosen People: The god that does the hammering in the old testament consistently violates the norms and principles that are espoused by Jesus in the New Testament.  Though many fine theologians have tried to reconcile the two, the contradiction remains. For example, the old testament God loved and repeatedly helped David, who committed adultery and then had the husband killed while king. That God approved of mass murder as a response to rape of Dinah. Lewis says that god is interested in justice and good behavior. It appears, however, that he taught the jews that he was interested in 'vengeance,' 'favoritism' at least as much.

The fourth point, about God coming down to earth, is pretty long. I'll put that in a separate post.

Mere Christianity, Chapter 8 - Part A

In this chapter, Lewis touches makes three noteworthy arguments on the way that god and the universe work. In this post I will focus on the first and second arguments and my perspectives. I will follow up with the third argument in two separate posts, because that argument itself consists of four parts.

Lewis' first argument is that evil is a by-product of free will - That just as parents give children the freedom to clean their room when they'd like, the they also give them the freedom to leave it a mess, god has given us the freedom to live as we like, but that also carries the possibility of us living badly.

This is a short term argument, that ignores learning and the possibility for growth and change. It is precisely because of the learning and growth that a parent gives this responsibility to the children, and the children do learn and grow, and eventually value it enough to teach to their own children. If a devil exists with superior intelligence to that of humans, it wouldn't have got very far with this before observing that its evilness is self-defeating. It seems incoherent to assume that children will eventually grow up and learn to clean their rooms, and yet expecting a superhuman being capable of manipulating human lives and societies to never observe the results.

Lewis' second argument is that the great sin committed by humanity - the original sin - was humans selfishly wanting to 'be like the gods,' pursuing some sort of individual happiness outside of god, and that this has led to all the hurt in human experience. He explains is as though we are putting the wrong fuel in the car of human society, and as a result the car will continually break down.

This directly contradicts his free will argument. If there is no happiness outside of god, then really there is no free will. People will pursue that which they believe will make them happy. If there is really only one way to achieve happiness, then there is really no choice for humans as to how they should behave. What appears to be free choice is merely confusion. The only difference between ourselves and automata is that the automata would know how to find happiness, whereas we would have to rely on trial and error, suffering punishments at God's hands until we figure it out. 

Hong Kong, Day 5

So, I've been waiting for it to happen the whole vacation, and it finally did. I locked myself out. After calling all my leads this morning, I had grand plans of going and exploring around and visiting some sights, and doing the tourist thing before heading back to the frozen wastelands (I have to admit, i've completely forgotten that it is winter vacation... it is so warm here in Hong Kong!) Anyhow, since I was going to be doing the touristy thing, i thought I would travel without my trusty backpack.

Somehow, without said trusty backpack, my whole planning went strait to hell. I didn't grab my phone or anything, just a camera and pad of paper and left. I got as far as the elevator to go downstairs before realizing that I'd forgotten something, and to the bottom of the stairs before realizing that it was my key. oops. I asked the security guards at the front if they had a spare key (you never know...) and they said they didn't, and that I should call the management company. I thought that I had better call Cora, the person who put everything together for my stay, and see what she thought.

So I went to the library to get her phone number (i'd even forgotten my notebook where I'd written down that kind of important stuff) and fired off a quick email to her while i looked it up. By the time i'd dug through my email to find a response (and typed out a few quick notes as well) she had replied - someone would be over to drop the key off in 5 minutes. Great. I ran back to the apartment, and when i came in the guard was smiling and holding the key out for me. Hallelujah. And that was my very exciting day.

I'm trying to set up another appointment with Bank of China in Hong Kong before I leave, but that looks like its about it for my in- person leads over here. Everything else seems to be phone calls and emails, which I can do much easier back in the states.

Hong Kong, Days 3-4

Since last I wrote, not much has happened. All my nice clothes were in for dry cleaning (I hadn't gotten around to it in shanghai) and so yesterday I didn't feel comfortable going and hunting for jobs in jeans. So, instead I got myself sucked into a novel that took me till midnight to finish.

It was an interesting book, with a Tom Clancy feel and military focus, but located in a post- Iraq Orwellian future, where the Department of Homeland Security is extremely powerful and unaccountable, the economy is failing, and politicians unabashedly help their largest contributors. If you're interested, the author has made the book available for free download, and you can get it here.

Today I'm sending out all the emails and making all the calls that I wasn't comfortable doing yesterday, as my cleaning should be ready in a few hours, in case I need to meet with someone.

Other than that, I'm really looking forward to coming home, I really miss having all my family and friends around.

Fwd: Safe In Hong Kong (again)

I safely got back to Hong Kong Last night.  What's new and newsy, you ask? Well, I delayed my departure from Shanghai for four days to try to get in touch with people from CICC, Bank of China, and CCX who I would not have gotten together with otherwise. I did go in and interview with two people from Bank of China, and swapped emails with the other two. Simply put, the situation on the mainland looks bleak. All the people who I spoke with deal almost exclusively with local or national clients and listings, and work in offices that work exclusively in Chinese - international deals and businesses are handed off to different groups.

This creates a position where the unique asset that I would bring to the table - Comfort in both Chinese and International environments - is simply not in demand at these companies. The gist of the result, then, was that I need to get to the places where this asset is in demand. From the conversations I had, the place that consistently got recommended was Hong Kong. So, it took a while, but I seem to have an answer for work on the mainland - my skills are not in demand yet.

So, that means that the rest of my time here in Hong Kong is critically important. Working here is not only the 'gateway to China' for many international businesses, but it is also the gateway to the rest of he world for Chinese businesses seeking to do deals abroad.  Good to know.

Since today is Sunday and I can't really hit the job circuit today, i'm going to do some shopping (I want to buy an ethernet cable, some breakfast foods, and a few other things), get some laundry done, and see about going to the other side of the island for an adventure. We'll see how much if this actually happens, or if it goes the way of dancing in Shanghai.

The Limits of Libertarianism - or - How Small can the Government Get?

After that post on how the political parties were structured, I got to wondering about what sorts of philosophies would end up in those empty corners. That, in turn, let me to libertarianism and I got to wondering exactly how far someone could realistically take that logic train.

In business school, we have a tremendous amount of faith in the market, and it seems to work pretty darn well for filling people's needs and finding opportunities to improve, allocating resources, and other such things. Also, a bit of thought shows us that in a government controlled welfare society, people probably wouldn't work really hard at the kind of things that fill needs and exploit opportunities, but instead focus on working the system to get all they can out of the state.

Before I go much further, we need to realize that the US government has parts that fit into each category. Yes, we have a massive free market economy, but we also have a huge federal government that distributes a huge amount of money in a non-market-based way. The white elephant in every elections are the pork barrels and pet projects tucked into the budgets and the bureaucratic way many of the legitimate funds are allocated - this is how I imagine the communist ministries must have worked, with the difference being only of scope of items involved.

The libertarian idea of putting everything in the hands of the market and minimizing the government begs the question of what happens if we dare to apply free market principles to things that we've always assumed must be run central government - for example, national defense.

It seems that if we were to 'privatize' national defense, we would end up with each individual paying directly for the amount of defense that they wish to receive - those who fear invasion paying, those who do not fear invasion not paying. Initially, one would expect some fluctuations as people get used to the idea, but eventually we would expect to see an equilibrium develop, where the amount of funding the military receives would directly correlate to the aggregate perceived need by the population. Unpopular wars would quickly die out, as people stopped funding the war, and wars seen as critically important would find themselves well funded.

Lets take the concept one step further from a 'voluntary donation' funding source and introduce the possibility of different military 'companies' competing for those donations. The heads of the each company must now seek to each provide better 'deal' for the citizens, in the form of more defense at a lower cost to get a larger portion of the citizen's 'wallet share.'

Additionally, this would let militaries fragment and specialize and differentiate - for example, there could be an urban warfare army, and a Star Wars missile defense army. As perceived need for different kinds of warfare evolved, so would peoples contributions to different security companies.

Of course, all this rests on a individuals who are able to value their security, and then are willing to voluntarily pay to protect that value.

Mere Christianity, Chapter 7 - Part 2

In the second part of the chapter, Lewis takes up how bad exists in
the world - either it was a good world gone wrong, or there is an
eternal battle between good and evil that can never be resolved.

Lewis takes great pains in the chapter to show how the eternal battle
between good and evil cannot be right, for evil can never be either a
force or a goal of its own. As Lewis puts it: "The badness consists
in pursuing them by the wrong method, or in the wrong way, or too much."

I agreed with this argument, after running through the following
example: That of a killer. The killer uses 'good' things - strength,
willpower, intelligence, to pursue 'good' ends - pleasure,
excitement, money, or whatever. The evil comes from how he chooses to
use that strength to get that excitement - by killing, rather than
say, taking up an extreme sport, which would also use the same means
to achieve similar goals.

The implications of this logic are significant. If badness does not
come from the ends (pleasure, or excitement) or the means (use of
strength or intelligence), then where does it come from? Does it come
from intention? From action? From the result? Each of these answers
is extremely dangerous.

Many leaders of history's worst regimes had good intentions - they
were trying to 'improve' their nations, and the quicker the timetable
the more cruel and violent they became. If badness comes from
intentions, we must be prepared to call all sorts of scary and
distasteful people good. If badness comes from action, then self-
defense and legal sentences are as bad as the original crimes. If the
result is what defines badness, then whatever has the best result is
the right thing to do, and good luck predicting what the results will
be. It looks like a reasonable assertion that the 'badness' of an
action is not located anywhere within the chain of events that caused
or resulted from the action. So, where does 'badness' come from?

If we return to the economic theory of human interactions, the idea
that people will be good as long as the benefits of being good
outweigh the costs, then we begin to see an alternative definition.
Perhaps a 'bad' action is one that serves to decrease the benefits of
good behavior or increase the costs, thus weakening the motivation
for everyone else to continue to behave well, and thereby threatening
the society.

If we accept this precept, then we can say that, in our society,
breaking the rules of the road and murder are bad for precisely the
same reason - each time somebody breaks the rule, following the rules
gets less attractive for everybody else, until nobody follows the
rules and there is chaos. The only difference would be in the speed
in which the society breaks down.

Mere Christianity, Chapter 7 - Part 1

Lewis here addresses the complexity and unexpectedness of Christian
doctrines. He explains that they should be complex, that just as the
most obvious and simple thing - he uses the example of a table -
becomes infinitely complex on a close examination, that Christianity
would likewise appear simple from a distance but be infinitely
complex when observed closely. As for the unexpectedness, he argues
that nothing in nature fits what you'd expect, as evidenced by the
unequal size and distribution of the planets and moons in our solar
system. If reality tends to defy expectation and be notoriously
complex, then, we should take the fact that Christianity is also that
way as a positive sign.

Well, I couldn't disagree more. The complexity of atoms and light
particles reflecting off the table is a very simple way of
understanding what it is and what we see - I challenge anyone to come
up with a coherent physics that is simpler. After all, a major part
of what physics concerns itself with is coming up with simple and
elegant explanations for things we see. The fact that it is
unexpected simply means that it defies our assumptions about the way
the world should be.

Now Lewis has got himself in a pickle. At the beginning of the book,
he said that the fact that we have a sense of how should be, but
things are not that way is evidence of god. But here we have a
similar discrepancy between how things are and how they should be,
and this tells us that the 'how things should be' is wrong. Well, if
we can make bad assumptions about astronomy, then why can't we do the
same about human behavior?

Election thoughts

I ran across this website while surfing the web this evening,
and filled out the survey for kicks. When I got to the end page, I found it surprising how there

were literally no candidates in two whole quadrants of the chart.
This seemed really strange and also very disappointing, because
clearly the full range of possibilities is not being represented here.

If the picture above is at all accurate (and i'll be the first to
admit that it may not be), I, and many other voters like me, am faced
with a dilemma - Do I vote for a president who I disagree with on
social policy, or one that I disagree with on financial policy?
Neither of these seems at all appealing. I'd like to vote for a
candidate that I actually agree with. Where are the libertarian and
statist candidates? Where are the centrists? And even if there was a
candidate, would my vote for them even matter with the 'winner take
all' electoral process?

Mere Christianity - More on the Belief Graph

Now, if we see the scope of human belief as a 2-dimensional graph,
this opens up a lot of possibilities. Is it possible for adherents of
the same faith to fall in slightly different places on the graph? Are
any points here more or less right than any other?

I think it is clear that different adherents of the same faith could
fall in different places on the graph. An example that comes to mind
might be the the difference between Christians who believe in saints
and those who don't. Those who believe in Saints would see God as
more involved in the world than those who don't recognize any
involvement after Christ's ascension.

Now, does that mean that one group is right, and another is wrong?
For the saints example, I would expect the difference in beliefs to
center around different opinions about the credibility of the saint -
and opinions are not provable at the end of the day. Without proof,
both arguments must be allowed to stand as reasonable.

Now, if we can see how within a religion people can legitimately sit
on different places in the graph based on different opinions, then
why cannot different religions also legitimately sit on the graph as
different opinions or metaphors for the same thing? If we make a
reasonable supposition that different religions could overlap on such
a graph, then wouldn't the difference between the religions
fundamentally be an issue of metaphor choice?

So, I think it seems reasonable to suggest that there is a 'field of
beliefs' that different people can reasonably and legitimately hold,
based on their opinions about how legitimate different manifestations
of divine power appear to them, and the metaphor that they best
choose to articulate those perceptions.

Mere Christianity, Chapter 6*

*Really, Book 2 chapter 1, but keeping track of all the books seems
too confusing.

Lewis first explains that being christian doesn't mean believing
that everything else is totally wrong - he again reverts to a math
problem, showing that while there are many wrong answers, some are
much nearer to being right than others. I find this an encouragingly
fair- minded argument, given his belief that there is some sort of
universal rule that we will be judged against. Its very easy to say
we have done the problem right, and everybody else is wrong, but much
harder to allow for varying amounts of 'partial credit' among people
who you are at odds with - it means looking for the good in people
who you disagree with, trying to find the silver lining in each
heathen cloud.

Lewis next tries to position Christianity within the broad spectrum
of human beliefs along a variety of fundamental questions. The first
division is 'God or no god,' in which Christianity clearly falls in
the 'Gods' category. The second division is on the nature of the god:
Is it beyond 'good' and 'evil,' or definitely 'good'? Christianity
clearly fits the second category.

I find this a tremendously interesting approach. First, I would want
to flesh out his divisions a bit more: what does the 'no gods' part
of his spectrum look like? Is this true atheism, or would agnosticism
fit here as well? Where would my thoughts on the personified laws of
nature god fit? Can god be categorized in other ways than simply
'good' or 'neutral'? His divisions are convenient, but incomplete,
and seem to me to leave out a lot of the juicier parts of human
imagination and history.

For the god/no god division, to me it seems that rather than a simple
either/or, this needs to be some kind of spectrum. Absolute atheism
on one end, an actively participating single god on the other, and a
middle range that could consist of an inactive, apathetic, or
unreachable god, personified natural phenomena, or a combination of
all of the above.

On the second point, on whether god is 'beyond good or evil' or
'purely good.' This dichotomy only makes sense if you accept that
there is only one god. As soon as you allow for the possibility of
multiple gods, then the question becomes meaningless - you can have
gods that are both ways, and worship either as fits you.

I'd rather recast the rang of human thought as a two dimensional
graph: Power of the God and Involvement with humanity. You can have a
highly powerful god who is not involved in the world, or very weak
gods who are constantly involved, and anything in between. In such a
diagram, Christianity would sit in the High Power/ High involvement
corner, while Buddhism might fall in the High Power, Low Involvement
corner, and Ancestor worship might land be described as Low Power/
High involvement. Near the center, we might find the greek and roman
pantheons, deities that were powerful (but not omnipotent) and that
got involved in human life (usually to mess things up.)