A haunting problem is that God created a vast universe and yet appears unable to stop evil. Is the necessity of human free will really enough for such an oversight? Perhaps I could make a very tentative analogy that God might try to stop evil by learning from evil. However I mean this in a totally non-human way that is beyond our child-like comprehension. For all we know God could be trillions of years old. From a theoretical physics standpoint there must be a purely physical side of God where He created mountains and so forth if we were to believe in God. So it's possible from a galactically abstract point of view that God very rarely tolerates human evil similar to His toleration of natural evil like earthquakes. So if God is infinite then it would seem like God could eavesdrop on evil souls in the afterlife in order to warn others. That is to say evil people can sometimes appear strong but in an extremely deceptive and cowardly way by cheating. There might an element of a society being metaphysically nice that we're a tiny bit limited in certain cognitive features. Evil worldviews might make evil individuals slightly more focused for partial aspects of their mental awareness simply because evil is referenced in psychopathic megalomania. For example certain evil individuals might be able to easily sacrifice their life for a cause simply because they're metaphorically intoxicated. Sacrificing your life for a good cause requires absolute trust in your mission. Unfortunately evil people can also trust themselves because they've been deluded by the hedonism of their evil. So we might have to present an infinite God in a humble though very powerful way.

WW1 Battle in the Mud - Passchendaele

Perhaps there are certain metaphysical paradoxes that might contribute to why God doesn't stop evil directly. For example those in harsh circumstances might feel that God forced them into a life of misery such that God can superficially appear unable to redeem Himself relative to our finite mindset. Then there are historical crimes where it would seem very difficult that a God could fully resolve them. Morally we can never blame modern generations for atrocities carried out by long-dead generations. Even when a few elderly people in a country that committed war crimes are still alive, we must nonetheless remember that the overwhelming majority of the country can be good people. For example there are so many brave and self-sacrificing Ukrainians defending against Russia that it'd be very disproprotionate to blame them for allowing tiny fascist militias or tolerating corrupt individuals. That is to say in spite of Russia's cynical allegations against Ukraine we can easily see that Ukraine has far more good people than bad or evil people. There are endless examples of countries that committed evil in ancient times and so I won't give specific examples in the following assessment. The way certain countries have a chequered history can present challenges for theism. It seems hard to understand how God could send entire populations to hell because they participated in collective evil towards other countries. That is to say many countries might stop believing in God if He were to punish people as a collective unit including their citizenry. Then they'd probably commit even more evil if they rejected God. The challenge is that innocent as many of them may be their passiveness may have contributed to crimes against innocent citizens in foreign countries. So collectivism could prove very tricky when it comes to divine judgement. While we don't blame present-day people we still expect God to somehow punish ancient generations. So the whole concept of historical guilt is slightly contradictory when it comes to Earthly culpability versus afterlife culpability. Needless to say the only time ancient war crimes might make modern people guilty is if they somehow express pride at whatever crimes were committed. Here the culpability isn't too high and very indirect simply because it's wrong more in the sense of insulting or threatening behaviour. So it's not like a neo-Nazi should be blamed in the same way as an actual WW2 Nazi. Perhaps one way to solve the problem is to view God as an extremely benevolent being rather than an infinitely omnibenevolent. God Himself sometimes seemed to use religions in ancient times to coerce people to believe in Him. Obviously we can all agree with secular notions today. Although we can still understand that sometimes there were very rough edges in how religions used to demand far more of people without free speech and in how colonised people were forced into making religious conversions. Anyway my point is that evil can appear self-consistent in a really dishonest way. For instance it'd be pointless and futile if I committed evil simply to avenge the Aztecs who were horrendously mistreated by those who believed in monotheism. Yet from a coldly logical point of view it can appear absurd in how our modern societies arose. This is why you might need to pressure yourself into faith even though I wholeheartedly agree that others can't pressure you into faith or remove your free speech. In today's society we're confronted not only by tense historical clashes but also by economic limitations. To some extent God gets away with sending plagues simply because He's deemed infinite. Yet society is kind of playing God by allowing a small bit of evil through millionaire capitalism in order to prevent even worse economic mismanagement. Anyway one important lesson is that good people cannot be naive when it comes to the level of evil in the world. Sometimes it's tempting to think that evil people must be victims because if we use our empathy we would find their worldview very depressing. This means we are sometimes tempted to underestimate evil like how many victims of genocide could never anticipate the horror of what would unfold. A problem is that our theory of mind is limited in understanding the motivations and well-being of evil individuals. People who subscribe to evil can simply appear incomprehensible to good people which limits our ability to pre-empt them. To support evil people is to some extent to support natural evil which only emphasises how absurdly megalomanical such a position is. After all why enjoy watching violence when you can just look at a tsunami!

God never revealed himself to ancient people in a traditional, prophetic way. The irony of Russel Crowe's character that sadly got enslaved is that he himself initially fought for an army which brutally conquered people:
Gladiator - Initial Battle Scene

If we were to take a militant approach to pantheism that you were God you'd be forced to conclude that other people must also be a God of themselves in an almost polytheistic way. So if you were to meet Christians in the afterlife you could just as easily say that they were Jesus in a symbolic way. I'm not trying to sound treacherous but we must be helpful towards the elderly. As such we don't want to ask too much of Jesus if He were in a frail condition after 1000s of years in heaven! Christianity exists not only now but also for 1000s of years well into the future. Thus we need to try our best to visualise heaven in order to make it a reality in the afterlife.

Michael Collins Speech

The separation of powers is vital when we think of how America tolerated poverty while utopic versions of communism became hellish. Although religious people don't seem to apply the same standard to their beliefs in an afterlife. To believe that God tortures bad people in hell is to risk imbueing Him with dangerously temperamental qualities. It's of course possible that torturing evil people in hell for short periods could be justified but we must consider the metaphysical practicalities of such a belief system. Another problem is that bad people can become evil from a very young age such that they're not fully capable of changing their ways. While I don't accept this as a reason for a full exoneration in a human court system due to the immediate problem of reoffending there are nonetheless unexpected consequences when we apply such justice in an afterlife. God to some extent created a limited world with tonnes of poverty and hardship such that rigid systems of divine judgement could exaggerate aspects of personal responsibility. Perhaps punishing evil people with absurdist afterlifes would be more ethical and prove to be an indirect version of punishment.

I often find myself bewildered by the clash of science and religion. To some extent I'd struggle to give up science even if I knew there was a God simply because science is guaranteed to be logical. Yet I can't give up my belief in God either because it's a concept that gives meaning to life and death. For example even if I knew Jesus wasn't the creator of the physical world I'd still pray to Him as God simply because I agreed with His message. Yet I can't help but notice certain contradictions about Jesus. If we took literally His claim that He was in contact with the creator of the physical world then we'd be forced to conclude that Jesus could hardly be said to be human at all. Sometimes people use phrases like the "universe" symbolically such that we don't fully see what's being implied. For example we could say infinite without really being able to visualise it in any way. Let's imagine instead of universe we said planet which is a subsystem of the universe. So if we said Jesus was in contact with the "presence" of Jupiter or the Sun and believed Him we'd be forced to conclude by their sheer size that He wasn't human and rather a ghostly spirit. Perhaps one way to resolve the dilemma is that there are layers to God and the world. Perhaps God has different orders of magnitude when it comes to comprehension. So we could say that an infinitesimal amount of the creator of the physical world endorsed Jesus in His human form. For example ancient Rome was as strong as America or Russia in relative historical terms. So Jesus managed to convert an empire of that scale without ever requiring a Cold War and the threat of nuclear mutually assured destruction!!!

Is it ever possible that God could send well-intentioned people to hell much like our concept of natural evil? For instance evil is contradictory and so evil people can accidentally attack other evil people as we see in the history of ancient warfare. Is it logical that God could ever send people to hell in the form of a sacrifice in the afterlife similar to how good people are asked to make a sacrifice in Earthly life? Even when we look at prehistory it's clear that God must have tolerated rival stone age groups that committed evil towards each other. Yet there's still no way that such pre-humans could reach heaven given their crimes in spite of their lack of self-awareness. Were neanderthals living in a reality close to a "Call of Duty" free-for-all?!

"God never, never sends, never will send anyone to hell unjustly. No one will ever be in hell who does not deserve to be there. And this fact that they deserve to be there will be open and plain in all the universe in that day."
https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/does-god-predestine-people-to-hell

"Around 6,200 years ago, a group of at least 41 men, women, and children were brutally murdered before being dumped in a mass grave in what is now eastern Croatia."
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/dna-study-ancient-massacre-victims-raises-more-questions-answers

Perhaps God could never endorse a lesser evil in case God were to become biased and divide all of His other followers. So perhaps any lesser evil being pursued is done at their own risk of hell where hell could be truly self-sacrificing to deflect blame away from God:
300 Spartan Vs Immortals Scene

Could a belief in eternal hell lead to complacency against evil people in this life? For example if people believe that God will not only confine evil people but actually torture evil people then we might leave all of the justice in the world to the afterlife. Sometimes I get the impression that gun control in America is ignored because it's such a Christian country that they simply believe that mass shooters will pay the price in hell. It's an unfortunate aspect of our finite psychology that we simply can't fully empathise with collective evil. As a lone individual I can't truly recognise just how evil the Holocaust was because while I do feel lots of saddness I can't feel the unending saddness that such a tragedy deserves. Yet if we didn't view the Nazis as being tortured in hell then we'd be compelled to dedicate much more of our time grieving for the victims. Although this might still come at a high cost in that viewing life as unfair could backfire and lead to helplessness, indignation and apathy towards morality and victimhood. Sometimes there are no easy solutions to the logical difficulties inherent in the concept of hell. Moreover when we view the people that died fighting the Nazis as rising to eternal heaven does that also risk an element of ungratefulness towards their self-sacrifice here on Earth?

A trouble with telling evil people that they're going to hell is that it runs the risk that they'll become demons long before they die and reach the afterlife. In other words a belief in hell creates logical problems in that people who suspect that they'll be sent to hell could try to pre-empt it and rebel by committing even more evil. For example when we look at some of the most Christian countries like Germany and Russia we find that Christianity can sometimes backfire. The Nazis countered the threat of hell by ceasing to surrender until Berlin was captured. Russia has had a troubled history with Stalin and now with Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Putin doesn't seem to fear God at all by committing so many war crimes. Yet both of these countries were often wedded to God. Perhaps we need to tailor the concept of hell for a more liberal audience. The problem with telling evil people that they'll go to oblivion after death is that while this is technically acceptable under atheism, it's not quite in accordance with the metaphysical worldview of many evil individuals. That is to say evil individuals might pervert their religious beliefs rather than reject their belief in God by deluding themselves into thinking God will tolerate their crimes. In other words evil people could rebel against both hell and the threat of oblivion through endless crime or an attempt to hyperfocus after their death. Yet there are also problems with saying that evil people will go to heaven in that it could make good people reject God. Maybe we're just going to have to accept that the afterlife is a mystery or present hell in a more rehabilitative manner.

"Good deeds are a natural result of your faith and salvation. So in essence, they are one. Faith and good deeds go hand in hand, and you need both to get to heaven. If you are genuinely practicing your faith and striving to stay in God's grace, you'll find yourself naturally doing good things."
https://catholicsbible.com/how-do-catholics-get-to-heaven/

One possible way to think of the theory of divine judgement is that God can reject you and that you can reject God. As such using faith alone as a criterion for entry might remove free will on behalf of the deceased soul. If the "residents" of heaven still have a small amount of free without their earthly body then perhaps the people who are judged still have a residual level of free will to atone for a lack of prior faith. Yet I don't think that faith during your earthly life would be irrelevant either. For example if you go to an opera concert on a one-off basis you can enjoy some of the complex musical patterns for a little while before becoming exhausted. Although if you're an opera fan who goes to concerts every week then it makes sense that your superior experience would allow you to better understand the classical rhythms and get more pleasure in each individual concert. Likewise if you'd more faith in your ordinary life it might give you more stamina to appreciate and prolong heaven once you were to reach the afterlife. What one forgets about reincarnation is that is that you might still get to go to heaven again after you die in your next earthly life.


"Like Islam and Judaism or any other tradition, there is a faith requirement towards God.
However, works are not required for salvation.
The Bible says people are saved by grace through their faith. People are not saved by their works, which would give them reason to have confidence in themselves.
Salvation by faith is only logical. God can do everything we can and more.
What can we do that is good enough to impress him? Our actions aren't going to change his mind.
The Bible also says works are a by-product of faith. If faith exists, then actions follow out of love for God."
https://www.redandblack.com/opinion/faith-not-deeds-gets-you-to-heaven/article_8c869e05-b236-532e-bba5-060f5c798df4.html

We know that green, red and blue are primary colours where other secondary colours can be made by mixing the primary 3. Yet does this mean that the primary colours are fundamental in a conscious sense or only in a physically constructive sense? Should the starkness of white and black be imbued with equal importance as the primary colours? When we think of maths the smaller numbers can have factors of smaller numbers. This is a criterion used to form prime numbers. But is it really fair to say that smaller numbers are more fundamental than larger numbers? Or perhaps we could say that each number is equally important. Perhaps I'm a maths communist! So when it comes to consciousness we don't necessarily need to say that some colours are more intrinsic to our being than others. Maybe each colour is equally non-real!

"Red, green, and blue are the primary colors of light—they can be combined in different proportions to make all other colors. For example, red light and green light added together are seen as yellow light."
https://learn.leighcotnoir.com/artspeak/elements-color/primary-colors/

As day becomes night every colour becomes darker and blurrier even though the fundamental colour of each object is said to remain the same. A non-real reinterpretation of this is that the brightness of the Sun is irrelevant and that the colours change nature. In other words a light green object changes form to become a dark green one at night. An object would not have a constant colour. Here we'd have to imagine every object as being a luminous source rather than being reflective.

"Reverse psychology is a technique involving the assertion of a belief or behavior that is opposite to the one desired, with the expectation that this approach will encourage the subject of the persuasion to do what is actually desired." Wiki

Jesus rejected death with a belief in heaven and in doing so rejected aspects of the physical world. God is often believed to be the creator of the physical world and so Jesus "rebelled" against a segment of God. God is defined as omnipotent and so to defy God is to make yourself superhuman. In some sense to believe in one religion is to disbelieve in other religions. If we view all religions to be equally part of God then it's possible to interpret one religion as a misotheist of the others. Although it's far more likely that people's religious affiliations are indepent rather than an active rejection of other beliefs. In other words people can be Christian out of its own merits rather than out of a dislike of other religions. Anyway my point of the comparison is that to tempt evil people into converting to religion, we could emphasize the countercultural aspects of God such as humility. This would appeal to their anti-authoritarian beliefs. Does God have a capacity for self-hatred?!

"Ironically, as the church tried to modernize, the counterculture had a growing interest in the occult, popularizing books and films that paved the way for “The Exorcist.” The film became a social phenomenon, and suddenly priests were being inundated with people demanding exorcisms."
https://theconversation.com/amp/the-catholic-churchs-views-on-exorcism-have-changed-a-religious-studies-scholar-explains-why-182212

Joan of Arc trial - Simpsons

Marilyn Manson - Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)

Is Christianity a victim of its own success? In other words has it lost some of its rebellious image by becoming such a large religion? Perhaps it's all to easy to "free ride" by relying on the mass attendence of others!

Determinism can be claimed to reduce criminal responsibility but this doesn't let dualism off the hook either. For example if the mind is completely separate from the body then murder would appear to be less culpable. Perhaps the mind of the deceased victim would continue on in a dream world or if they're religious then their soul might continue to heaven. Or if you hit someone then their subconscious would apparently be at fault for activating the pain response rather than the injured body part. Needless to say a problem with this style of argument is it is an appeal to animalism to some extent. For example an animal might not feel as much pain as a human. Yet this isn't a fault of us humans because we're condemned to feel pain through evolution. Humans are sacred under both determinism and libertarian dualism. There can be absurdities in taking any metaphysical system to an extreme. So right wing conservatives concerned by criminal justice need not be deterred by embracing the apparent softness of determinism since dualism can also have faults. If deterministic materialism claims that the human mind descends into oblivion at death then if anything the crime of murder might even be more culpable under this worldview. Nothing is black and white.

"Diplopia is the simultaneous perception of two images of a single object that may be displaced horizontally or vertically in relation to each other. Also called double vision, it is a loss of visual focus under regular conditions, and is often voluntary." (wiki)

One reaction to the double slit experiment would be to compare it to blurry vision. For example if I focus on my finger and place it midway between my eyes and the phone I'm typing on, then the discrepancies in parallax between my two eyes will result in me seeing two partially superimposed images of the phone. It seems too simple to be true if we were to compare this phenomenon to quantum physics. If I look to a building far away in the distance and think why is my consciousness unable to focus on the buildings beside it too, it's because my peripheral vision is blurry. Yet when I move my central vision I can clearly see that the buildings next to it were always just as vivid if only I had a larger central vision. Another way of interpreting this is that your peripheral vision is in a state of superposition and that your central vision functions to collapse the wavelengths. It'd by like your peripheral vision were a nanosecond ahead of your central vision.

Double Slit Experiment explained! by Jim Al-Khalili
(The double slit exists only in your vision. The Nobel Prize committee can contact me through this website! Just don't ask me for the mathematics of my hypothesis!)

Is science at war with religion? In some sense science is a lot like America. America is a superpower that is limited by their own beliefs in tolerance and freedom. To say you're an American is almost a generic term because it's an individualistic and multiracial society. Likewise science is a metaphysical superpower that has to some extent won a Renaissance-era Cold War against religion when it comes to living in a shared physical world. Nowadays religions argue with science over spiritual interpretations rather than materialistic evidence. However science is limited by their own open-mindedness. Scientists vie with each other about different theories much like the competitive ethos of capitalism. The technology inspired by science is a core part of American capitalism. Yet science doesn't offer its adherents a consistent spiritual outlook and instead lets them make up their own minds from the evidence. Science isn't strictly wedded to materialism when it comes to force fields and quantum physics. Thus science isn't a form of spirituality in and of itself but a multidisciplinary and multi-metaphysical worldview.

Is it possible to change the genetics of future children? According to natural selection this is impossible and only the periphery of our genetics is capable of being changed. These epigenetic changes are said to occur passively and in response to environmental cues like nutrition and climate. Yet there is another way parents could affect the genetic expression of their future children. In acknowledgement that this is likely to be interpreted demonically I will only use euphemisms. Surely our own body is familiar with what the environmental demands are by way of "romance". For example if there's a food shortage then not only will your metabolism be impacted but your romantic attraction will also be towards thinner people. Can children inherit the traits that previous generations found attractive? Sexuality is the means by which children are created but this activates multiple systems in the body like the brain. The nervous system affects the power and proportions of the rest of the body. Consequently any change in the nervous system of future progeny would affect their epigenetics. Saying that epigenetics can only change passively would imply that people should be more attracted to those from the same environment and ethnicity which doesn't always hold true. I'm just going to leave it at that!


T-800 CSM 101 Arrival | Terminator 2: Judgment Day

T-X Arrival | Terminator 3

When we look around are we seeing light or electricity? If what we are seeing is electricity inside the brain then electromagnetic radiation would be colourless in and of itself.

MGMT - Electric Feel

I'd a dream not too long ago where I was explaining to an interviewer about my theories. He was asking me about how we'd know if the light we see is different for each conscious being. I replied that if we moved places and I sat where he is sitting then I wouldn't absorb his consciousness. So consciousness wouldn't be just a spatial phenomenon.

I don't sing and so listening to more music won't turn me into a great singer or musician. Perhaps the brain enjoys music because the more we listen to it the better our music interpretation becomes. With so many songs freely available on the internet it's easy to see when we pick two drastically different songs to listen to that their temporal natures are also different. Musical patterns are chaotic and so the brain often interprets a song a bit chaotically. The brain has to make sense of the random neurons being activated by a song. When I listen to the song below I don't feel a smooth transition of mental imagery as if it were a dramatic movie. For me it evokes a concoction of contrasting vibes and memories. The idealised and relaxed nature of the beats almost makes it feel futuristic in how technology and societal progress will make life easier for future generations. One of the last times I listened to the song intensely was when I was in a city and so it subjectively reminds me of metropolitanism in a way that it likely wouldn't for others. The song also feels very outgoing and meditative over and above what I'm accustomed to. The song's contrast with my ordinary mindset can create a slightly sentimental quality. This tension helps me to decide whether I should flow in my own emotions more often or stay a bit aloof and objective!



Paul Oakenfold - Starry Eyed Surprise

They say never to judge people by appearence yet a divine being would likely be far more accurate in their preception than us. Sometimes people can report feeling creeped out by someone as if it were a sixth sense. We can't tell what someone is like by specific features of their facial appearence and any inference is more holistic in nature. Despite all the psychology articles there isn't any biological factor in particular that means someone is definitely evil. After all speaking in a strange accent isn't creepy when the person is from a foreign country. Moreover in our individualistic culture it's acceptable to be eccentric these days. Eating the legs of frogs isn't a weird pastime for a French person! We need a preponderance of evidence to convict someone for a crime. Although we don't need the same level of scrutiny to decide whether we should passively avoid someone. Unless someone is shown to be deceitful then I'd tend to give them the benefit of the doubt even if they could be dubbed creepy. The only exception might be if I had to be alone with them. Anyway I'd never verbally accuse anyone of a negative trait simply by their first impression. There is far too much room for error in our judgements when we know nothing of their background. Overall with regards to divine judgement my point is that a God with an infinite amount of knowledge and experience could likely tell the emotional state and ethical beliefs of a person just by looking at them.


"Researchers have identified many things — like unpredictable laughter, pale skin, unkempt hair — that people tend to find unsettling in others. But they’ve also realized this: We humans are pretty poor judges of who we should trust, says psychologist Julia Shaw."
https://ideas.ted.com/what-makes-a-person-creepy-and-what-purpose-do-our-creep-detectors-serve-a-psychologist-explains/

"Stranger danger is the idea or warning that all strangers can potentially be dangerous."

The Simpsons - Marger is a Witch Part 1

Talking to yourself or imagining your inner voice as being projected out loud can be a symptom of a mental illness. But such a thought experiment could also serve as a reference for keeping your thoughts clean. After all you wouldn't curse under your breath if you thought everyone could hear you! Purifying your thoughts are often a religious ideal. The random nature of the thoughts that pop into our head might make it difficult to fully achieve though.

The scary thing about reincarnation is not only embodying a new person but also being "adopted" into a new family. In a metaphorical sense you'd be floating away into the unknown:

The Prince of Egypt - River Lullaby

We know the immediate past exists because it takes time to form coherent thoughts and to retrieve memories. Perhaps one difference between Alzheimer's disease and amnesia is that Alzheimic patients might have an even worse recall of the last few seconds such that they can't always speak logically. By contrast an amnesiac patient can often organise their thoughts even if they're not fully self-aware. So we can trust our long-term memories simply because our thought processes on other present-day matters are rational. The past doesn't have to physically exist for it to mentally exist.

Who said the ghost in the machine had to be white!

Tomb of Anck Su Namun

It might be tempting to think that because animals are less self-aware than humans that this must mean their experience of time is less complex. Yet when we think about the amazing sensory adaptations of such creatures it's possible to come up with the opposite conclusion. We could view their experience of life as being so extreme that it actually transcends and overwhelms their conscious awareness. For example the many eyes of a spider might produce such extreme psychedelic imagery that it knocks out the development of consciousness and locks them in a passive state.


BBC Planet Earth - Birds of Paradise mating dance

An animal isn't rational but for the sake of argument let's imagine that a deer had the same IQ as a person. We'll ignore the ethical implications of such an act and focus only on the mind-body problem. The temporal experience and proprioception of such a being would be so bizarre that we'd be left to conclude that their mentality is more complex then their physicality. Their mind would be in a hidden realm so to speak. A deer seems like an ordinary creature but a human-like deer might be uber meditative or appear as mystical as a unicorn!


Shrek - A Flying Talking Donkey

So we're all descended from fish and pass through a fish phase in the embryo phase! The first life forms were fish and so that would mean we're all descended from creatures that existed well before the dinosaur era. Who knows then if genetic re-engineering will unleash a human T-rex! Fish don't endure much physical and mental stress and so their timelines could represent a planetary blank slate of time. We could almost interpret these fishy ancestors through the Gaia hypothesis of mother nature.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-13278255
"(The) human face is actually formed of three main sections which rotate and come together in an unborn foetus.
The way this happens only really makes sense when you realise that, strange though it may sound, we are actually descended from fish.
The early human embryo looks very similar to the embryo of any other mammal, bird or amphibian - all of which have evolved from fish."

In an infinite universe there simply isn't enough room for there to be two fundamentally distinct souls! Otherwise we'd need to duel!

God is described as omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent but not necessarily omni-professional. Life isn't the same as a package holiday or a trip on a cruise ship. If we were to die and meet God we can't ask for our money back and seek to switch to a different tour guide! I don't recall signing a contract to have been born into a life with such inclement weather! One reason historical generations were far more religious than our era is that they were less accustomed to capitalism and free trade. The royal hierarchies of feudalism allowed them to conceptualise God as being regal in appearance. By contrast a request to worship contradicts our modern sense of entitlement. The problem is that a loving relationship isn't always the same as a professional or business relationship.

The only thing worse than ethnic charity is no charity at all.

Yes, you essentially are hurting yourself by being unethical in a pantheistic universe. — Shawn

There are different kinds of evil. Angry violence is one kind and the fake love of perverts is another type. Both are very wrong and exploitative for somewhat distinct reasons. Viewing yourself as actually being another person in real time might be vulnerable to megalomania or fetishising. Yet viewing yourself as being existentially cut off from the other person could also be distorted into perhaps aggression or apathy. So no metaphysical point of view is incorruptible.

One could metaphorically interpret perspective to be absent if we consider distant objects to remain the same size when they move even further back. Far away objects block out proportionately less of the background when they blend into it. The size of closer objects would still appear magnified by occulting lots of the background.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Vincent_van_Gogh_-_The_Bedroom_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Let's analyse the photo in the context of philosophical idealism and conscious absorption. The furthest chair in the painting looks slightly smaller than how it'd appear in a photograph. This technique exaggerates perspective and the diminishing of far away objects. Overall it creates an impression of having internalised the visual stimuli. The floor is also inclined at slightly higher angle than expected. The footboard of the bed occults and blocks out a disproportionately larger amount of the headboard and side wall.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/VanGogh-starry_night_ballance1.jpg

Here the dark blue of the night could be reinterpreted as daytime where the stars would be visible through the blue sky. The largest star with the crescent moon is like the Sun. It's easier to feel a sense of unreality at night time where it's too dark to see far into the distance. Yet the way the background is at an equally low acutance to the foreground creates a surreal vibe. I feel like the guy who laughs at his own jokes by being impressed by my own analogies!

Acutance: "the sharpness of a photographic or printed image."

Asians and Europeans have a very similar physique even though the people from either continent are facially very different to each other. Do the millennea of differing climates, geographies and nutritions account for the evolutionary difference? Or could thousands of years worth of differing metaphysical outlooks between western and eastern religions also leave an imprint on our epigenetics?


Racist Father Ted

It took hundreds of years, hundreds of thousands of scientists and millions of reciprocating civilians in different nations to collectively work out a self-consistent materialistic worldview. It also took thousands of years to mentally assimilate an unconscious moral framework from theism. An analogy would be as if our shared reality were sculpted down by the constant prayers of historical people. Did the first people to pray to God thousands of years ago do so for solely religious and ethical reasons or was there also an inherent element of derealisation that further incentivised them to pray? Perhaps with anti-realism there can be many valid conceptions of reality that are nonetheless so alien to our current society that they can't be reconciled together by a single individual. In other words some apparently psychotic beliefs might actually be workable if only they had been developed over multiple generations.

For some of my anti-realism thread I work backwards from a terrible panic attack I had in late 2017. I try to interpret it through the realism of other minds rather than the realism of the physical environment. So I must add a caveat that I don't want to unsettle anyone with disorienting analogies. Mental illness is one of those things where if you perfectly described it to someone then they themselves would become mentally ill! I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you! In the same way we can't describe a conscious emotion in scientific terms with 100% accuracy, so too can we not convey the exact sensation of certain forms of anxiety.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Vincent_van_Gogh_-_Landscape_from_Saint-R%C3%A9my_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

One anti-realist interpretation of Gogh's wavy technique is that it creates an illusion of time much like a very short GIF clip or a time-lapse video. For example the wavy low sharpness of many of his landscape paintings could be reinterpreted as motion blurs and light streaks. The more we know about direction the less we know about location as per the uncertainty principle. Thus the passage of time is being prioritised over the accuracy of the present moment. Sometimes we can become desensitised to our local scenery. Then it's only when we come back home after a trip abroad that we notice the novelty of the environment. For example I appreciate the lushness of the green fields of Ireland the most when I'm on a return flight and look out the window before landing. Likewise Gogh forces us to take note of an agrarian sight by applying an extreme art technique to an already extreme and diverse geography of the Netherlands.

"Van Gogh is well known for his brushstokes of thickly laid-on paint. This technique is called Impasto. An artist lays a thick layer of paint on canvas, brushstrokes get more noticeable, adding a special texture to the painting. Vincent liked to use a thick, undiluted flat color with a brush or a palette knife. Sometimes he painted his colored swirls, smearing the paint on canvas with his finger. The works of Van Gogh have a relief, almost three-dimensional surface. They look different, depending on the light source."
https://arthive.com/publications/1934~The_search_of_Vincent_Van_Goghs_style_and_technique

"In urban night photography, light trails add motion and emphasize the feel of a living city." -fstoppers

If we did see someone like Jesus when we died, depending on your religion, then he'd be over 2000 years old. We often use the BC and AD reference points for the current year without always realising that this would literally translate to His current age in heaven. This isn't quite eternal but it'd still be an impressive age for mortals like ourselves to witness.

I heard some right wing pundits claim that the onus is more on Islamic countries to have accepted Syrian refugees. Needless to say we've an equal responsibility to help people irrespective of their religion. Although if we were to go along with such tribalistic logic, we'd realise that most of mid and southern Africa is Christian. This would mean that Christian first-world countries would bear the most responsibility for helping them. Sometimes African poverty is seen as a global issue even though through colonialial, linguistic and religious affiliations Europe bears the most ethnical resemblence to Africa. Some criticise Saudi Arabia for insufficient help towards refugees even though the Christian world has dozens of wealthy countries that could have helped feed more Africans during the famines of previous decades. Besides, sending food charity is significantly cheaper than welcoming refugees for shelter and assimilation into a first-world nation. Indulging in ethnical reasons for charity would indeed be a slippery slope to racism. Yet Jesus would likely hold his own flock much more stictly for inadequate charity to fellow Christians as opposed to relying on Hindus or Buddhists to act first towards African poverty. When we think of how protective Catholics and Protestants were about members of their faith being harmed during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, should they not have been more aggrieved by the larger number of Christians being killed in the Ethiopan famine of the same period?

"In response to those who consider that the humanitarian relief granted by the governments of Gulf countries is insufficient, they have defended themselves by showing that a considerable amount of financial aid is granted to the Syrian refugees through NGOs and donations from the United Nations. Since 2011, these countries have supplied them with 900 million dollars. A few days ago, a Lebanese newspaper revealed that Saudi Arabia had offered to fund the construction of 200 mosques in Germany to allow the new arrivals from Syria to practice their faith within the country."
https://www.lejournalinternational.fr/Syrian-refugees-why-won-t-the-oil-rich-Gulf-States-take-them-in_a3477.html