Tanx for the link, but anyone messing with eternal gods... Dunno. Could be interesting though.

As you can see from the language in Verse 4, the Tao came before any God. Before anything was named. Before the quantum vacuum. — T Clark

So it's the ground for gods even? What the fuck? And from where did that ground came? What was the reason for that ground? I think he is fucking with the gods here. The human gods were always kind of funny! The other gods laugh about him. Humans...

He didn't. — T Clark

It looks as if though. Maybe the two are the same in disguise.

People have reasons, not the universe. — T Clark

I mean, why the universe exists?

In fact, I think there is precious little than can be so demonstrated, and even that is always dependent on context and auxilliary hypotheses or assumptions, which are themselves not demonstrable — Janus

There you go! All reasons are told in stories. All stories are human. So different stories have different ibjective reasons. Science has physical non-intelligent material causes as reason, religion has intelligent reason for the material basics of the universe. Both are equally true and objective stories. The creation stories of science can be checked but don't provide a reason, theist stories provide a reason, but can be checked more difficultly, if at all.

How did he know about the quantum vacuum already back then?

They are both the absolute ground of being. — T Clark

Yes! I think though that if you know the reason for that ground, which only can be given in a theist context, the ground gets an extra dimension, and all the reasons we invent, like maybe the morals, an extra depth.

Ah!  It was written about 2,500 years ago in China by Lao Tzu.

How did he know the quantum vacuum?

Yes. It just does. Again - that's enough for me. — T Clark

Are you not curious for the why?

Tao is a whirling emptiness (ch'ung),
Yet (erh) in use (yung) is inexhaustible (ying).
Fathomless (yuan),
It seems to be the ancestor (tsung) of ten thousand beings.
It blunts the sharp,
Unties the entangled,
Harmonizes the bright,
Mixes the dust.
Dark (chan),
It seems perhaps to exist (ts'un).
I do not know whose child it is,
It is an image (hsiang) of what precedes God (Ti). — T Clark

I take mine from it then, as it seems to advocate. I love these lines! Until the last three lines I see it like the the most beautiful way I have seen the quantum vacuum described! All propagators, momenta, and energies, hidden variables, etc. shrink into insignificance wrt to it! For me, it's a kind of revelation. :up:

How long ago written? By who?

Because it does. — T Clark

The universe exists because it exists?

The ten thousand things, or ten thousand beings, refers to the multiplicity of the world. All the individual things that exist once we cut the Tao into pieces. — T Clark

Ah, alright. I again saw the connection with the vacuum and the bang coming out of it. The "ancestor" of all. The resemblance getting scary!

The quantum and the Tao, so often exploited...

It seems to be the ancestor (tsung) of ten thousand beings — T Clark

Now it truly gets scary...

Again, that's not how I see it. The quantum vacuum, virtual particles, that's physics. The Tao is metaphysics. It's one useful way of seeing how things are, not the only way. — T Clark

Yes. I just noticed the striking similarities. I don't think there is any real reference to the physical world.

I'm not a follower of any religion. I don't see things the way you do. For me, the reason for existence is a human question that only has human answers. — T Clark

Of course, we can invent a multitude of reasons and purposes for human existence. You can, like Richard Dawkins does, say that the reason of all life is to propagate genes or memes (in the case of people). Which can be turned into the opposite as well. We could say love is the reason, or making art. Doing science, or sport or dance. Etcetera. But these don't offer a reason why existence exists in the first place. No science can't answer that. It's easy to live without such reason and just accept existence as a fact without a reason. That's what you do. But I like to know why the universe is there. And science can't offer a reason. The so-called hard problem of consciousness melts away in the light of gods.

Reason is a tricky subject-people hundreds of years ago thought the sun revolved around the earth ( — Paulm12

Relativity made it possible again to view it both ways. The Earth rotates around the Sun, but the Sun can just as well be seen rotating the Earth (as well as the entire universe when the Earth rotates around itaxis).

I have answered that question to my own satisfaction, although probably not yours. There is no reason for existence. There is never an answer to the question "Why?" Only "How?" — T Clark

In the light of gods, reason can be given. Science merely describes creation while informing us about eternal heaven and the eternal life in it.

If you mean that the Tao is the quantum vacuum, that's not how I see it. — T Clark

Tao is a whirling emptiness (ch'ung),
Yet (erh) in use (yung) is inexhaustible (ying).
Fathomless (yuan),
It seems to be the ancestor (tsung) of ten thousand beings.
It blunts the sharp,
Unties the entangled, — T Clark

That's the quantum vacuum! Whirling emptiness: whirling virtual particles. The entangled particles disentangled during inflation. The sharpness blunted: uncertainty relations. Must I continue?

The whole universe coming from it! Inexhaustable.

I'm just talking about regular old normal, impure reason. The kind you and I are involved in here. — T Clark

Sounds reasonable. But how can it be used to find out about the reason for existence?

If the Tao precedes God, it also precedes the quantum vacuum and any higher dimensional structure. — T Clark

Sounds like a poetic description of the quantum vacuum structure preceding the big bang, and which is still around us! Damned,T Clark! A revelation!

Reason, as it is discussed in the opening post, is a process for finding the truth — T Clark

It depends on your frame of reference what reason is used. There is no such thing as pure reason. That's an abstraction applicable for an imaginary world only.

Reason, as it is discussed in the opening post, is a process for finding the truth — T Clark

But the aim is to find the true reason for existence. Causes give no answer, only a description.

The holocaust could even be considered a stimulus for belief, paradoxically as it may sound. The German "philosophy" was a pretty weird mixture of an evolutionary law of the strongest (or fittest) approach, german and nordic mythology, Italian fascism, and even Nietzsche's Übermensch was opportunistically pulled in. Add the fact that tanks were blessed with Christian water, and it is easily seen that the Germans, or at least "die Partei Bonze" could be considered lost souls, and Jews who could forgive the Germans for their banality of evil should be regarded as being humans worthy a firm handshake of Yahweh.

Yes, and sex is genocide, even if one of the little wrigglers is lucky enough to survive. — Relativist

:lol:

Darwin still had a lot to learn.

The queen getting fucked isn't a nice sight. The Royal family is only good for hiding pedophiles. If it were up to me, l would mutilate her.... — Wittgenstein

:lol:

Now we're talking philosophy! Royal philosophy. Pedosophy!

And who knows what Charles fools around behind the scenes. Motherfucker...

The Queen for all l care is an old decrepit whore who deserves to be shot in the head for being a nuisance. — Wittgenstein

Deer mother of god... A fair fuck in the on the back, okay. That's what whores make money with. But a shot in the head?

Yes. In his book on quantum physics, Phillip Ball addressed the paradoxes inherent in the Copenhagen Interpretation. Scientists now accept QM as the foundation*1 of macro reality. However, such concepts as Wave-Particle Duality and Superposition are counter-intuitive, so for pragmatic purposes, they can only trust the numbers : "shut up and calculate". — Gnomon

There is one approach very easily pictured by classical thinking. With an odd non-local twist though, and it explains identical particles and their fermion and boson collective behavior intuitively clear.

[1] The ground of being
[2] The Tao that cannot be spoken
[3] Oneness is the Tao which is invisible and formless.
[4] Nature is Tao. Tao is everlasting.
[5] The absolute principle underlying the universe
[6] That in virtue of which all things happen or exist
[7] The intuitive knowing of life that cannot be grasped full-heartedly as just a concept — T Clark

Sounds like the eternal but still timeless absolute reality of the quantum vacuum, on whose higher dimensional structure time and space emerge in a big inflation.

The reason is the why. What's reasonable for me might be unreasonable for you. Is the universe reasonable? Can we apply the why-question to it (including all life in it)? Can cosmology offer a reason for the existence of the cosmos? Several attempts have been made to paint a self sufficient picture, i.e., the cosmos being it's own cause. Obviously there is circularity at play here, because the question remains what the reason is for a self-causing universe in the first place. I can offer a cosmology in which the ending of a cosmos is the trigger for a next, but the reason is not included, i.e., my cosmology is irrational.

Now, one can eliminate the need for a reason, but that's even more irrational than providing a cause.

How does the Earth actually look like in The Matrix? Where did sentinels come from in the first place? How do the alien machines actual look? Are they themselves maybe a simulated reality? "The Matrix 5: The Next Layer, soon in a theater nearby!"

Christianity is a religion that sees itself as a promise of life, hope, comfort, and love. "Gospel" in English is from Old English gôd, "good," and spell, "tale." This translates Greek Euangélion, "good news" -- whence the term "evangelism." — javi2541997

An inconvenient truth! Hilarious, even! The happy message, the story that relieves! All depression gone in the blink of an eye. No anti-depressants needed. The best medicin to conquer the beast of depression ot keep it at bay! Says the Jehova witness with his foot between the door to push the message in. That's the main problem: the need to push the happy fodder down your throat.

Many people, however, see the promise of Christianity as a threat, not as good news. If you don't join this religion, you are going to Hell, no matter how good a person you may otherwise be. Outside the Church is damnation. Jesus said (John 14:6), "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." — javi2541997

Indeed! Christ had a fully blown Jesus complex. "Accept me, or your ass will be kicked in hell eternally!" He must have had a rough childhood. Do we know about his younger days?

On the other hand…

Just as the boatman sits in his small boat, trusting his frail craft in a stormy sea that is boundless in every direction, rising and falling with the howling, mountainous waves, so in the midst of a world full of suffering and misery the individual man calmly sits, supported by and trusting the principium individuationis, or the way in which the individual knows things as appearance. - Arthur Schopenhaue — javi2541997

Let's just keep that where it is: "On the other hand"...

:starstruck:

Reason, while misusable and in some respects is inadequate for adapting to reality, works better – more reliably, more defeasibly – than all of the alternatives. — 180 Proof

That depends on the question asked. When the great scientists Prof. Dr. Proof is asked what the reason is that there is a material universe he might answer that there is no reason, which is merely an expression of his ignorance, hidden beneath denial. It's a cover-up tactic which is used.

A sperm isn't a person, but a child is. — Michael

We could consider flushing a load of wriggling sperm cells through the toilet an act of ethnic cleansing...

If you believe that they are both fundamental, then they cannot be made up of the same thing(s) otherwise that thing would be the fundemental thing, that grounds all of reality. — Solaris

A medal can have two sides. One fundamental can have two properties. For example, an elementary particle can have charge (content).

If Diogenes masturbated in public in front of strangers then it's correct that he be arrested and charged with some public affray infringement, regardless of any claims he might make about art — universeness

But how does he hurt people by doing that in public? What harm is done, apart maybe from cleaning up eventual sperm shot at public chairs in the doctor's waiting room. It might be entertaining in fact! Especially in a boring waiting room. Or pedagogical even.

That's not the question. — universeness

So the question is:

How can the godless be in the mainstream, happy and live fulfilled productive meaningful lives? — universeness

They obviously can! I nowhere denied that. Like I said, if you are happy in denying them or believe they are fantasies like Santa, Satan, the evil devil, or bat-, super, or the SemiTorus Guy, then you are happy. But as you know I think I found a cosmology, which until now has withstand all critique (even my own!), apart from one detail to be fixed. So, now I know the fundamental makeup, there is only one means to give a reason for that material to exist and return the wonder to life and the universe which science had taken from it.

How can any member of the godless groups make the world a little bit of a better place due to their existence and their efforts and actions whilst utterly rejecting them — universeness

I can't see why that could not be the case.

These gods are utterly powerless. — universeness

But they have the power of creation. Which humans lack (creating matter from nothing).

Atheists prove every day that you don't need them AT ALL to live a good life. — universeness

I don't need them too. Not at all. They just offer closure and return the lost wonder. Universal life is just a temporary divine material version of the eternal heavenly life. And because they made it, we should be careful with nature (heaven kinda looks like the pristine state of nature, untouched by mankind). And yes, there it is: the moral!

I agree with what you’re saying, but I think you’re missing the point. Diogenes wasn’t advocating the behaviour itself, I think he was aiming to increase awareness, to challenge the ignorant and exclusive nature of a ‘civil’ life. This was performance art in an era of low literacy - a living, breathing critique of social behaviour which made it into written folklore. It was an opportunity for philosophical self-reflection, not to advocate a change in the law to enable people to masturbate in public, but to confront the public ‘self’ with the private ‘self’. — Possibility

:clap: :clap: :clap:

I'm not impressed at all by such predictive systems. — universeness

Nor am I about your predictions of a future with transpeople, people who live 300 years, or people who space away to other planets. It's an impressive picture you paint, but a lot of woowoo is involved, and it draws attention away from matters that really matter.

Science can't offer a reason for existence. The magical appearance of something out of complete nothing is reason-devoid and as such an irrational explanation.