The Absolute Simplicity

【POV: Yuria】

The Debate Club room was forever steeped in a very specific odor. Not the pungent sweat of the sports clubs, but the smell of pure intellectual arrogance.

A whiteboard spanned the length of the northern wall, covered in messy webs of logic that mirrored our Obsidian graph. Underneath, some plaster busts of Socrates and Nietzsche were slumped over like a bunch of winos after a philosophical bender. Even Plato hadn't been spared; Mari had offhandedly doodled a pair of VR goggles onto him with a marker—to let him stay in his virtual cave for good, I guess.

I kicked back in the squeaky President's chair. 「I've dug up something juicy for this afternoon.」

「Divine Simplicity.」 I tossed the phrase into the air. 「Basically, it claims that God is absolute simplicity. No parts, no composition, no division. He is the One, the Absolute, where Essence is synonymous with Existence.」

I peeked at Mari. She paused for a moment, finger stopping mid-scroll. Likely just finishing a scroll, usually she was quite the firebrand.

「Care to counter?」 My tone dripping with bait.

Riku pushed up his glasses. 「Sounds illogical. If "It" is simplified to that extreme, how could it generate such a complex clusterfuck? We're living in a universe with billions of layers of bullshit, from quarks to cat memes.」 He spread his arms wide. 「How can you give what you don't have? If there's no complexity in your nature, where are you pulling the complexity from to build a world?」

「Valid point. However...」 I kicked off the desk, spinning my chair to face Riku directly. 「What if you flip the perspective? The complexity of matter might not be "abundance", but a manifestation of "imperfection".」

I grabbed a miniature Socrates and raised it. 「Matter is divided, shackled by space and time. It needs components because it's inherently incomplete. But God? He needs nothing. That simplicity is absolute perfection.」

「Hold on.」 Tetsuya chimed in. He'd been sitting quietly until now, finally deciding to speak up. 「Clarify your current theological stance, Yuria.」

「You're a Pantheist. If we go by that, this Divine Simplicity doesn't make a lick of sense...」 Tetsuya muttered while scrolling rapidly through his phone, probably checking his sources.

My blood started to boil before he could even finish. I slammed the table and snapped upright, shooting him a lethal glare.

「Tetsuya, are you freaking kidding me? Since when does a debate topic have to match my personal faith? This is a Debate Club, not my private church!」

Tetsuya jumped. 「Right... My bad.」

I gave a dismissive huff and dropped back into my seat. Was the topic so uninspiring that even Tetsuya was phoning in his rebuttals? 「Those classical theologians were obsessed with this "One" and "Indivisible" stuff, like they wanted God to be completely detached from this filthy material world. Go on, Riku.」 I continue nonetheless.

「Define complexity first.」 Mari finally deigned to look up. 「Infinity is complex, isn't it? But in a sense, it obeys fewer laws than the number two.」

She held up two fingers in a V-sign, but her face was grave. 「Because when you do math with Infinity, you just get Infinity. Addition, subtraction, multiplication... It swallows every rule. Terrifyingly simple, yet it contains every bit of complexity there is.」

「Dead wrong!」 Riku bolted upright, pointing right at her. A cold glint flashed off his smart glasses. 「Infinity isn't a number!」 His voice sounded as if someone had just told him he could download more RAM online. 「Don't try to pull addition and subtraction on it. It's a concept, not a value you can use to compare "rules" with the number two!」

Mari blinked and nodded once, not even flinching at his outburst. 「Yeah, fair. Then let's rephrase: the simplicity of Infinity lies in the fact that it transcends conventional rules, rather than lacking them.」

Riku let out a sharp exhale and shoved his glasses higher. 「Fine. If Mari wants to play the "what is complexity" game, then we're diving headfirst into the war between Reductionism and Holism.」 He hit the table—thump. 「If we're doing this for real, put the theology away. We're talking systems. In or out?」

Now that's a lot more exciting than some old-school preaching. 「Hell yes, let's do it!」 I agreed instantly.

Even Tetsuya gave a low nod, and Mari wore that cryptic smile. I could see the spark in every pair of eyes—a pure hunger to see exactly where their egos would fall in this upcoming mental cage match.

〈Mari's Note for Mortals〉

The real game has finally begun! Let's cut the small talk and get straight to it:

Divine Simplicity is exactly as Yuria described it, but to go into more detail: anything that has "parts" depends on those parts to exist (like a table needing its four legs and a surface). But since the Lord is the Primal Cause, He cannot be composed of anything else.

Simply put: If the Lord were made of something, then those things would turn out to be more "fundamental" than the Lord Himself—even though He's already defined as the "Ground of Being." Theologians just can't accept that contradiction.

Moving on to Yuria's Pantheism: This theory basically tramples all over Classical Theism (which claims the Lord is outside and superior to this mediocre universe). Pantheism says "Every single damn thing is a part of the Lord." He isn't a supernatural entity sitting on a high throne, but the sum total of all natural laws, matter, and energy in the cosmos: God ≡ Universe.

In plain English: You take a ginormous bag ⇨ you get a pair of divine tongs ⇨ you grab everything in the universe and toss it into that bag ⇨ BOOM, that bag is... the Lord. Yeah, pretty much.

Next: The war between Reductionism and Holism. NOTE: What the club is discussing falls under the category of Ontology (the study of the nature of existence itself; these two also have Epistemological versions, but let's ignore those for now).

Ontological Reductionism is the view that everything can be explained by its constituent parts. If you know the position of every single water molecule in the ocean ⇨ you can predict the behavior of the entire ocean (like currents and all that stuff).

Ontological Holism is the total opposite. It argues that the very act of synthesis creates "emergent" properties that cannot be described if you just chop everything into tiny pieces. Take that same ocean: breaking it down into molecules doesn't explain the "wetness" of water.

Got it, mortals? If not, feel free to drop a comment!