Radical Islam isn't getting as far as it used to; drones take out the suspected night and day.

I always imagined a newspaper headline of 'Obama takes out Osama!'.

Abbottabad
(About a Bad)

The specter fled to Abottabad,
Having done a whole lotta bad,
His courier’s bin laden with what OBL had,
It being their way or no way—how sad.

No phone, internet, or even any trash
Was the giveaway to what the mansion hath,
And even in the nearby counter-terrorism’s path,
The Jihad of Evil courting the goodly wrath.

SEALs swept into the heart of the storm
Coptering into the hilltop’s guarding swarm,
In a foreign land, the tempest ID’d by the CIA,
And so the leader and his men live no more today.

A shot to the head and he was dead,
And to evil the end, as to all in his stead,
Whether clerics or just plain terror led.

The backup Chinook replaced the fallen stealth,
Perhaps too new of a aircraft to sustain its health.

Osama rules nothing now, as he’s not to be,
Rotting at the bottom of the Arabian sea.

It's when I contemplate evil, which I consider entirely human-made, that I'm left asking more and more questions. I never consider this issue from the standpoint of original sin or any other kind of origin of evil; I'm personally not concerned with origin in this case. — uncanni

Original Sin doesn't work out so well, anyway, as a blame, for 'God' would be fully responsible for creating a human nature that has His intended capabilities in it, for evil, good, and whatnot.

So, evil would have to be some necessity for us from 'God'/All. The 'freedom' given to humans would then have to be totally free of consequences from Him.

To sum it up: we just invented God that is like us: emotional, vengeful etc. , just because our limited imagination couldn't do better than that. Frankly, I think it's pitiful. — enqramot

We suspect as much, but this thread's OP ignores that kind of literal, Biblical 'God', since it is disproved by contradictions and science.

I think we should focus on practical matters and things that we are able to grasp. And accept, that some things remain unexplicable. At least for now. — enqramot

Still, it gets one to thinking about alternatives and what can and cannot coincide, philosophically, beyond the Person-Hood Mind aspect that gets abandoned, such as deriving Existence to be here all at once, as ever/eternal, and what that would further imply, as I've hinted earlier, such as it having to be an everything of no information content, as not anything in particular, for it seems to have no inputs of cause that can go into it, due to its no beginning, and so the effects would be as random.

Whence evil? — uncanni

Evil and all the kinds of ugliness of humans needs to be of the All/'God', for how could there be something independent and separate? Dismay follows. There are no longer many gods; so, we can't stick the evil onto just a few of them, as was done in the poly past.

Elohim — A Gnostic Agnostic

And also the children of God (El).

and this is how knowledge of good and evil is attained. — A Gnostic Agnostic

That seems like a jump, but I'll be darned, for all along I thought "good and evil" became of "God and Devil", or vice versa, rather than of reproductive organs.

Anagramming is the REAL Key to All

Hidden in the word ‘Evolution’ which as an anagram…
is the meaning
Outlive On
which means literally metaphorically to outlive the others,
in order to survive and live on, and
Vile No Out
Vile On Out
which symbolically means that we can go either way, vile or not, and
Live On Out
which the wise old ancients took to mean to live well and look alive, and
Evil No Out
Evil On Out
which the symbolic Bible reveals to have a mixture of good and ‘bad’ is best, and
Novel I Out
which is the story of evolution read to us by the fossils, and
Ovule In To
Love In Out
which means for man and woman to know each other
in the Biblical way to procreate and recreate, and, finally
Love I Unto
which proves beyond all doubt that
evolution = love.

In total, then, all the above really proves the great insight that…
letters can be rearranged.

It's in the vertebral column. No, wait, that's a design flaw. — S

Nor in the eye, for which design we'd flunk our engineering course.

There's a book I haven't had the time to read: Just six numbers by astronomer Martin Rees. — TheMadFool

THE MEADOWS OF HEAVEN

We as the highest consciousness ever known
And of the most versatile form that’s been shown
Reside as consequent beings in this Earthly realm,
Possibly the most fortuitous creatures
That the universe has ever wrought.

In fact,
We are this universe come to life—
Necessarily from a long line
Of ‘fortunate accidents’.

It had to be this way, for any universe
In which we could emerge
Would have to be appropriate for us
Or we wouldn’t be here to discuss it.

Looking back
We already know ahead of time
That we will discover
The many ‘happenings’
That made us possible.

All this we know and expect
Because we are here.

Perhaps in some other ‘wheres’,
Junkyard universes litter the omniscape,
For they flunked, failed, and miscarried—
A quadrillion trillion universes broken down
For every one that worked to any extent at all.

In some of these forlorn universes
Perhaps the material was inert
And so it just sat there, doing nothing, forever.

In others, maybe gravity was insufficient
Or had no natural place to collect particles
And so it thinned out endlessly,
Spreading coldly toward infinity.

In yet others again,
Even those in the same ballpark as ours,
Perhaps the portions weren’t quite right.
Although they may have formed a few elements,
They went no further than that for a zillion years.

It would also be that all the possibilities-probabilities
That are of so many imbalances must ever trace back
To the near balance of matter and antimatter,
This start no longer seen as improbable.

In our universe the dark chest of wonders
Of Possibility and Probability opened up
In just the just right way:

Naked quarks spewed forth,
Among other things,
And boiled and brewed
In one of the steamiest broths
Ever cooked up.

They somehow simmered and combined
Into the ordinary matter
Of protons and neutrons.

Then quite independently,
By some unknown means,
Dark matter-energy arose as well,
In just the right mix, and, luckily too
Some very long filaments,
Called cosmic strings,
Formed and survived long enough
To be useful as collection agents,
Which were merely imperfections,
As in an unevenly freezing pond—
A kind of a cooling flaw.

None of these happenings were connected,
Except by Potential’s destiny,
So, ‘fortunately’,
The cosmic strings attracted,
By their gravity,
Both dark and ordinary matter,
Which in turn
Attracted even more of the same.

These pearls of embryonic galaxies arose
And were strung along these cosmic necklaces,
As can still be noted today.

So it was
That some almost incidental irregularities,
Frozen out as cosmic anchors,
Were latched onto by matter, both light and dark,
The proportionate portions of which were favorable,
The dark matter dwarfing our ordinary matter
For some reason of a happy ‘circumstance’.

‘Fortuitously’, as well,
Anti-matter, if there ever was any,
Did not fully cancel out the uncle-matter.

The universe could not foresee any of this
In and of itself’s fundamental substance(s),
For if it could have
Then we’d only have the larger problem
Of how the foreseer could have been foreseen,
Ad infinitum…

So it could have been like the ‘trying out’
Of all possibilities in superposition…
A brute force happening
Of every path gone down.

We know much of the rest of the story
Of how the stars and their supernovae
Created the light and heavy elements
Which combined into molecules,
Which ‘auspiciously’
Became able to replicate themselves, as DNA,
And progress to make cells, tissues, and life.

And then there was the luck of oxygen,
A mere waste product of photosynthesis
By bacteria, and later, plants,
That could fill the lungs
As well as build an ozone layer of protection
From the harmful rays of outer space.

Luck on top of luck, good fortune,
And then prosperity…
‘Stumbled along’ the right path.

Of course all this took many billions of years—
And it is of course this long ‘yardstick’
That baffles the mind and sticks in the throat,
But demonstrates the long time lag needed
To produce even the tiniest of advances.

It bears all the hallmarks
Of ‘randomness’ at work,
Although probable
If Potential had it all ‘worked out’.

Dinosaurs roamed the Earth
For over two hundred million years—
Imagine the length of that time.

They were supreme and invincible—
The kings of all the Earth ‘forever’,
On land, sea, and even in the air—
Heading towards forevermore and beyond,
But…

Dame Fortune once again intervened
When the asteroids or some such catastrophe
Finished off the dinosaurs,
As well as 90% of the existing species.

This ‘random’ event left a vacuum
In which newer species could thrive.

Proto-man gave way to near-man
And thence to us, eventually,
When two ‘monkey’ chromosomes fused together,
Making ‘us’ incompatible with the chimps,
And so our ancestors then
Truly descended from the trees!

‘You’ were once a lucky shrew, darting all about,
But then attached to a favorable evolutionary line…
Every single one of your forbears on both sides
Being attractive enough to locate a loving mate,
And they fortunately had the good health to celebrate!

We came to need no specialized niches,
Since we could adapt to any terrain,
Having brains that could learn much more
After birth than instinct could bestow before.

Our higher consciousness
Was the crowning glory—
We had won the human race—
The be all and end all; the grand prize
Of the universal lottery.

So there is nothing more,
Aside from our own progress
To be and learn.
This is it!
That’s all there is.

DNA remembers every step of our evolution—
And you can see this in ‘fast’ motion
When embryos form simply in the liquid womb,
Replicate, and then grow cells
That diversify into a human being
After going through some nonhuman stages.

Thus four billion years compresses into
The nine months of pregnancy.

So then hail and good fortune,
Fine fellows and ladies,
And welcome all of you
To the Meadows of Heaven—
The highest point of all being,
Although we are surely
Still in our infancy.

The path “chosen” by Potential ends here,
With our consciousness.

There were many pockets of universes,
And it is was this very one
That could sing our verses.

The further design
And the role of mankind
Is now in our hands.

We were borne here upon the shoulders
Of so many who have long since come and gone,
All of them advancing the cause,
Over eons of wiles—so here we are.

Hail and good fortune, fine fellows and ladies;
Welcome, all of you, to the Meadows of Heaven;
We are the luckiest sons and daughters of being—
Mediums in a rare universe well done.

Celebrate; live; be,
For everyone dies,
But not everyone lives.



Now thou art in Heaven…

I assumed that Everything was God; I thought we came to that conclusion--at least, I had. — uncanni

Yes, since what 'is', as ever, is all there is, and so, as @rlcauler says better, it has to transmute into forms of itself, heresy or not, and so this is what logically has to be, as the new common ground of 'God' or 'IS'.

A nun wonders, about a philosopher of old,

“I have read in your flowing ancient tome
That a man’s mind is God in human form
Though it does admit this idea is rough
And might not with normal logic conform.
 
“So, like you and me, mind and God unite
Just as the sun is connected to light.

“What’s here now has to be as that long before,
Not new out of the blue, for there is no more;
So we and all are akin to what is,
Ne’er less—we're united beyond the door.”

"Oh, thou, that olden wise man, come here fast,
For you're alive in that keep of the past."

The Ancient soon arrives, full of energy.
‘Hail to the All, philosophical clergy.
I’ve read your poems’ presents to the forum.
I a-rose from death, from fumes down the stems.’

The young nun now caught in the light that shined,
Stilled her racing heart and then searched her mind
For questions fit for resurrected Guides
To ask the Apparition by her side.
 
She hoped that in some miraculous ways
Her monk was included in the man's gaze
But fearing that she might be all alone
She would address the man in trembling tone.

“I’m seeing,” said her monk, “his spectral form.
He’s moving, by Something, out of his norm.
We’ve stirred him from the underground city—
Of unity in multiplicity.”
 
"Great spirit, I have lately read your words
And have some questions you might find absurd
My abiding wish is to understand
And beg your patience with my learning bland."

The spirit then turned as the world stood hushed,
Regarded the nun with her young face flushed,
‘Your quest and your love are both holy pure
And deserve answers you are seeking for.
 
‘All must at last to itself return One,
When each age of long existence is done.
Matter exists by reconstitution
And existence works by revolution.
 
‘The One splits and breaks to diversity,
So becoming the All that you can see.
Humanity, twixt their birth and their death,
Is the turning point of His Holy Breath.
 
‘All matter is chains of numbers composed,
Built into each entity’s science code.
That’s how Life keeps order within the change,
As One to All simply builds and erodes.
 
‘This is the message so plain and so clear
That you two this day are given to hear.'

…

…

Relations among basic events, or ‘ontological atoms’, can be the basis from which substantival spacetime emerges, in a similar way to how things emerge from spacetime events.

Change of space-time would require an extra dimension not included in space-time. This, in turn, would imply that space-time is a thing with an emergent relational property that should be measured by the extra dimension or ‘meta-time’. There is no physical reason to introduce such an ontology. And if someone is willing to pay the price to do it, an infinite regress follows immediately, since the 5D ‘super space-time’ might change requiring more extra dimensions ontological inflation would turn the price unaffordable.

The representation of spacetime appears, therefore, as the large number limit of an ontology of basic timeless and spaceless events that can be identified only at a more basic ontological level.

Composition leads to a hierarchy of events, with basic events on the lower level and increasing complexity towards higher levels. Reality seems to be organized into levels, each one differentiated by qualitative, emerging properties. Higher levels have processes and things with some properties belonging to lower levels in addition to specific ones.

At some point of this hierarchy of events, things can be introduced as classes abstracted from large number of events (see Romero 2013a for formal definitions). A thing-based ontology allows a simplification in the description of the higher levels of organisation of what is, essentially, an event ontology. Spacetime is then an emerging thing from the collection of all events.

Event substantialism regarding spacetime does not preclude relationism at a more basic level. Relations among basic events, or ‘ontological atoms’, can be the basis from which substantival spacetime emerges, in a similar way to how things emerge from spacetime events.

If we want to represent events at very small scale, the assumption of compactness must be abandoned. The reason is that any accumulation point implies an infinite energy density, since events have finite (but not arbitrarily small) energy, and energy is an additive property. In other words, spacetime must be discrete at the smallest scale.

Since the quantum of action is given by the Planck constant, it is a reasonable hypothesis to assume that the atomic events occur at the Planck scale. If there are atomic events, their association would give rise to composed events (i.e. processes), and then to the continuum spacetime, which would be a large-scale emergent entity, absent at the more basic ontological level. This is similar to, for instance, considering the mind as a collection of complex processes of the brain, emerging from arrays of ‘mindless’ neurons.

If we were meant to be naked, 'God' would have made us that way, um, which supposedly He did, but now, with our fig clothes, we don't get used to nakedness, and then come to see it as bland, but can ever wonder what's underneath, getting attracted by the jiggles and shape.

I seems that Mother Nature went way overboard to insure offspring, but I'll take it. And to think that even in the early 1900s swimsuits had to cover everything. Men also went nutty over petticoats then and earlier.

We can't know ecstasy and joy and love without knowing depression, fear and frustration. Amen. — uncanni

And:

If we were angels, life would be so just;
Instead, we try, we push, we climb, we lust,
We dance, we dream, we feel, and love with zest;
Yes, all this, thanks to the beast within us!

They're both good, for Heraclitus promotes presentism and Parmenides promotes eternalism.

Heraclitus' fire as the basis of all is akin to energy. His balance of opposites could be seen today as analogous to virtual particle pairs and the other balances in nature.

Do you know about kanneh bosm in the Old Testament? Cannabis!! Humans' very best friend in the flora kingdom. — uncanni

No, I didn't know. No wonder Sodom and Gomorrah turned to stone!

Oh, Olongapo, fleshpot of fertile flora,
Pinatubo reseals your box pandora.
Fiery ash freezes your beauty in time,
A poem in stone, like Sodom and Gomorrah.

We can't know ecstasy and joy and love without knowing depression, fear and frustration. Amen. — uncanni

Similar, and like Keats' notion:

Truth & Beauty

Life’s hardships can be softened by beauty;
Its weaknesses can be strengthened by truth.
As roses blossom like realizations,
Beauty itself blooms from the well of truth.

When a deep truth is known so intensely
That all of its clothing falls away,
Then one has learned the beauty of truth, for
The reality of meaning is beauty.

Life, although anguishing, must be lived fully;
But if we’re alive enough to feel beauty,
Then we’re exposed to its opposite twin
Yes, Beauty’s other side is Melancholy.

When sadness brooded over the morrow,
I visited the deep well of sorrow.
There enshrined, inseparate, Beauty said,
It’s from me that sadness you borrow.

Art and poetry enrich human experience,
But they’re no substitutes for the living of it.
Like the figures on Keats’ urn, should we live life less?
No!—Because what is deathless is also lifeless!

Soft breezes blow, caressing me and you
As we kiss the roses and drink their dew.
Reason and passion soon merge into one,
As truth and beauty make their rendezvous.

A 2 dimensional person can be trapped inside a closed square but, according to how I understand it, a 3 dimensional being can just jump over the sides of the square. In other words impossibility is relative. — TheMadFool

This is good, as a circle perpendicular to the 2D square, like a rainbow.

Here is my 4-sided circle: O.

Sides one and two are the inside and the outside; sides three and four are the perpendicular top side and bottom side.

I also made an infinitely sided polygon circle: O.

What an amazing poem; who wrote it? — uncanni

I wrote it. It's the intro portion of a much longer poem, 'Flora Symbolica', about the lore and legends of the flowers and plants. I'll have to figure where to put the rest of it out—perhaps I'll put it in my 'Omar Khayyam' thread. It's one of my favorite long poems that sustains one subject.

Back to the outputs we go. — schopenhauer1

All that we have left of note is experience, if that's a benefit.

A current book by Rovelli (the Order of Time) underscores Bohr's view with the phrase 'things are just repetitive events.
This proposed 'relativity of existence' seems to me to render most philosophical discussion of 'ontology' to be what Wittgenstein called Geschwätz (idle chatter).
Any thoughts ? — fresco

Long thread, but a clear OP to be directly spoken to.

Strictly speaking, no objects are identical with themselves over time. What remains unchanged over time are certain properties that find expression in the laws of conservation of energy, momentum, electrical charge, etc., these necessarily being closer to the basis of all.

It appears to us, though, that the world consists of parts that have continued from “a moment ago”, and thus still retain their identity in time; yet, matter really only appears secondarily as a congealed potentiality, a congealed gestalt, as it were, a hub of relations.

What if the Mind isn't a part, but the totality of the First and Fundamental Being? — uncanni

Then we are all made of God-stuff, as the atman in the Brahman.

Or, without God's Mind, we are all made of the base existence.

All that 'is' already is, complete.

Mid Afternoon at the OK Club—Part 1—Old Autumn



Youth and Beauty made agèd Winter mourn
For Summer’s grain—the waving wheat and corn,
For Old Autumn, withered, wan, had passed on,
Leaving the earth a widow, weather worn.


Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.

Winter is life cooled over;
Melting snows feed spring waters.

Scheherazade appears a bit early for our rendezvous, saying, “It’s snowing on the dome over Paradise; come, let’s go in now and see.”

When we return, floating on clouds, we create a film in honor of Old Autumn and the two Jacks, in which also one's older self encounters one’s younger self, and vice-versa:


OLD AUTUMN

The glow-worms, fairy stars come down to ground,
Gleam the shadowy woods through summer’s round;
Then fall’s leaves flutter through the quiet air,
The autumn being the sunset of the year.

The rustling of the trees comes to my ear,
In this, the most mellow time of year.
The harvest brings fulfillment, yearning too,
For autumn is both a smile and a tear.

Each year in October, Jack-in-the-Green
Has a chilled rendezvous with Old Autumn,
Who colors the leaves that Jack made verdant
A season ago. They meet out in the woods,
Although never in the same place, for seasons
Come and go and meet each other as they may.

This year Old Autumn was a little late,
So Jack-in-the-Green sat down on a stump.

Jack pondered his disappearing green youth,
For someday he would have to take Autumn’s place
And perform all of his withering tasks.

A few days later Old Autumn came by;
He gave unto Jack a cheery greeting
And a warm embrace that marked summer’s end.

He gazed fondly at Jack, his younger self,
And saw the vitality that was once his,
And said, “Once I was young; once I was you!”

“I know,” said Jack, “Do you remember how
I refused to believe you, saying ‘no’?”

“Yes,” remembered Old Autumn, “very well,
Like the time I met the Old Man, Winter
On a snowy December day long ago.
He told me that he was my older self—
But I didn’t believe him! Told him off!

“True, I was already feeling my age
But after seeing the old white-haired geezer
I felt young again! Yes, he knew me well.”

“Right,” said Jack, “so I made a little poem:

“When younger, I knew not my elder same,
But when older I told my younger same
That youth must be young; he knew not my name!
It was my younger self who was to blame!”

Swallows twittered in the skies as sprightly
Jack-in-the-Green picked a ripening gourd
And gave it to Old Autumn, who encouraged,
“You won’t have to meet the Old Man until
You take my place, for only I can see him,
After I take down the last of the oak leaves.

“For now, the Old Man sends but his errand boy,
Jack Frost, your twin brother. Hi ho, here he comes!
Aye, young Jack, this is the rarest of days,
For the three of us can be together
But once a year on this bright day / cool night.”

“The Old Man is so lonely, is he not?”
Asked Jack-in-the-Green, “for he sees only you.”

“Yes. Old Man Winter lives cold and alone;
He never sees the fair maidens of spring
Who reinvent the natural world each year.”

There is a chill in the air as Jack Frost arrives
And sings out a greeting: “Hello my brother!
Hello Old Autumn! It’s going to be cold—
Our first frost, but don’t worry too much—
It won’t harm the pumpkins any at all.”

Old Autumn sighed and quick replied: “Good.
Now the rest of the leaves will crack and fall
All the more due to the ice in their veins;

“Yes, they’ll fall like the illusions of youth,
‘Lying carelessly on the granary floor’ and
‘On a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies’, as Keats wrote.”

Composing himself, Old Autumn continued:
“And for those of you who think that ‘warm days
Will never cease’, let us ever remember
Dear Johnny Keats, who died so young, at 25;
However, he lived and saw more than some
Of us might hope to do in a lifetime.”

A shiver ran through Jack-in-the-Green,
Hence he said: “It’s cold; I must go now, for
Summer passed away in his sleep last night;

“Autumn, sweet and plump, carries his offspring.
The year dies in the night; ghostly winter looms;
Lo; the flower is already in the seed.”

“Well done, young Jack-in-the-Green; quick, go,
For soon enough comes your autumn of care
Sobering into age, thence into
The pale white winter of death,

“Though not yet your warm indolent summer
Of contentment lazing into middle-age,
But surely past is our crisp,
Flowering youth-spring of joy!

“Such then, comes the end of summer’s dreams,
The blanching of the grassy banks of streams,
But all fragrances my elves remember
Through their long sleep in the winter embers.

“The blossoms fall, showers of fragrant beauty,
As leaves fade, while the bulbs store up energy.
Nature’s floral dreams grant this destiny,
For these leavings enrich earth’s potpourri.

“Flowers lay their heads to sleep in soft beds,
Blanketed by webs of gossamer threads;
My elfin creatures cast their spectral glow,
As winter stars—floral twins—start to grow.

“Later, when surely all the world is dead,
An elf will stand atop Old Winter’s grave
And say, ‘tis not dead’, and by magic bred
Make Snowdrops flower in the tomb’s heat wave.”

Once I, the author, ventured outside at
Four on a dark frosty October morning.
It was so quiet that I could sense the
Cosmos as it played rhythm to my beating heart.

I saw a preview of the winter stars:
Orion, you are so high in the sky—
There for only the astronomer’s eye,
As all those meteors go flying by.

Then I heard a rustling sound in the leaves
Around me—a skunk perhaps—but no,
It was the sound of many falling leaves.
I knew that it must be him, Old Autumn.

He was out there somewhere. Then I sensed him
Going by, for some of the leaves on the
Tree right in front of me broke loose and
Floated away, hitting some other leaves
On the way down, making that rustling sound.


Soon it started up on the next tree, and
Then the next—and so I could very well
Follow the path of Old Autumn making
His rounds in the misty October morn.

Chrysanthemums drank the mellow day,
Falling petals carried the light away.

The weed-flowers grew, marking autumn’s track,
The blossoms that almost brought the spring back,
But winter’s white death wrap was drawn over,
Smothering the earth’s last warm sweet odour.

The autumn fog enswirled, the mist upcurled;
Into nothingness the wisp slow unfurled.
November flew by, a colorless dearth,
And December, amid death, a festive birth.

Youth and Beauty made agèd Winter mourn
For Summer’s grain—the waving wheat and corn,
For Old Autumn, withered, wan, had passed on,
Leaving the earth a widow, weather worn.

Long since have the winds scattered the leaves
Of the trees to make of them a
Burial shroud for the flowers that died
Grieving at summer’s passing. All is death.

The fall is now nearly lost to memory.
Winter is summer’s ungrateful heir,
Squandering his riches and abusing his gifts.
It’s not Old Man Winter’s fault, but his duty.

Summer lies underground now, forgotten,
Silent and crusty, covered by winter’s
Stern mantle. Only April’s tears can make
His grave green again, in the spring-tide.

As seasons pass, the world comes to our door:
Spring sings through the wingèd troubadour;
Summer calls with the rose, ’midst the wood-lore;
Autumn crows, plump and sweet, through frosty hoar.

Joy and exuberance are spring’s largesse.
Sunlight, warmth, and growth are summer’s bequest.
Autumn brings wealth with the mellow harvest.
Winter’s fruit is peace—its bounty is rest.

Past us is the flower of spring’s soft breath;
Though not ended our summer of promise;
Soon enough will come the autumn of care;
Beheld, at last, the dull white shroud of death!

March, April! spring! We’ll reign as we May there,
Between June and her sister, September,
Then prolong the fall, till November come
December, when we can sweet Remember.

In the whisperings of the after-years
The winds of time slowly dry the tears;
Nor would I take back a single drop, for
From those tears the flowers grew without fears.

In spring we rise from the garden at birth.
Summer blooms long with the roses’ fresh mirth.
Autumn creeps in—we wither on the vine.
Last comes winter, when we return to earth.

See: http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.08981

From Gustavo E. Romero:

I shall offer a view of the topic in which a kind of substantivalism, relationism, and eternalism can coexist on the basis of emergentism, the doctrine that qualitative systemic properties arise from more basic ontological levels devoid of such properties. The mechanisms that enforce emergence are composition and interaction. I hold that there is a level for each of the three ontological positions to be considered as a good option for a description of the way the world is.

–  Spacetime substantivalism: Spacetime is an entity endowed with physical properties. This position is clearly expressed by Einstein (1920). The exact nature of this entity is open to discussion. I shall defend an event substantivalism.

–  Spacetime relationism: Spacetime is not an entity that can exist independently of physical objects. Spacetime, instead, is a system of relations among different ontological items. The nature of these items is also open to discussion. I shall propose that there is a level where a form a relationism provides an adequate framework for current physics and that this is not in contraction with event substantivalism when the latter is applied to a different ontological level.

–  Eternalism (also known as Block Universe – BU –): Present, past, and future moments (and hence events) exist. They form a 4-dimensional ‘block’ of spacetime. Events are ordered by relations of earlier than, later than, or simultaneous with, one another. The relations among events are unchanging. Actually, they cannot change since time is one of the dimensions of the block. I have defended this position in Romero (2012 and 2013a). The reader is referred to these papers as well as to Peterson and Silberstein (2011) and references therein for further arguments.

–  Presentism: Only those events that take place in the present are real. This definition requires explanations of the terms ‘present’ and ‘real’. Crisp (2003, 2007) offers elucidations. See also the mentioned paper by Craig (2008), and Mozersky (2011). Presentism has been subject to devastating criticisms since the early attacks by Smart (1964), Putnam (1967), and Stein (1968). See Saunders (2002), Petkov (2006), Wu ̈thrich (2010), Peter- son and Silberstein (2011), Romero (2012, 2015) for up-dated objections. 


Some further objections against presentism:

Most of the arguments against presentism are based on the Special Theory of Relativity; see the references cited in the previous section and the discus- sions in Craig and Smith (2008).

Metaphysical arguments can be found, for instance, in Oaklander (2004) and Mellor (1998). Recently, several arguments based on General Relativity have been displayed against presentism. Romero and P ́erez (2014) have shown that the standard version of this doctrine is incompatible with the existence of black holes. In Romero (2015) I enumerate a number of additional objections based on General Relativity and modern cosmology. Wuthrich (2010) discusses the problems and inconsistence of presentism when faced with Quantum Gravity. Here, I offer a new argument based on the existence of gravitational waves.

The argument goes like this:


P1. There are gravitational waves.

P2. Gravitational waves have non-zero Weyl curvature.

P3. Non-zero Weyl curvature is only possible in 4 or more dimensions.
P4. Presentism is incompatible with a 4 dimensional world.

Then, presentism is false.

The One continually transitions such that it could return to itself, such as in a topological way.

So far, I've made a circle with two sides, and I'm almost done with the third and fourth sides, and it will still be a circle, too. — PoeticUniverse

OK, it's done. How do you think it looks?

forms most beautiful — Darwin

We, of the endless forms most beautiful,
Are stunned that our glass to the brim is full,
Life’s wine coursing through us, as ‘magical’,
On this lovely, rolling sphere so bountiful.

Most of evolution is rather all too slow, even numbingly slow to us… for to be lucky enough to see a new species come about now, but, as you say, it happened and there is one tree of life of all the species (see the newer 'Cosmos' TV series).

The Earth at first wasn't much to speak of, as you indicate, with no plants, no oxygen, and nothing organic, but we can know that between then and now that life arose, so we have evolution surrounded.

For two billion years, bacteria created the atmosphere, by exuding oxygen that was useless to the, as a poison to them, really, and later plants did so, too.

Two chromosomes fused way back, giving 'us' 23 instead of 24; we could not longer mate with our old kind… https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/bioscience/the-origin-of-the-human-species-a-chromosome-fusion/

Or does your reason represent you to have it? — Bartricks

What appears as going on 'now' to us is like a slightly tape-delayed broadcast. Who's going to notice that?

Hm, a square circle isn't nothing, rather it is an object that is both square and circular. — Bartricks

So far, I've made a circle with two sides, and I'm almost done with the third and fourth sides, and it will still be a circle, too.

And because by your definition 'god' is 'all that is' then after the big bang, all of that is still 'god'? — ZhouBoTong

Yes.

Couldn't the lower case 'existence' capture everything you are saying in simple everyday language? — ZhouBoTong

Yes, and that is looking more and more as what 'god' really boils down to, without us making big unwarranted jumps to more. Instead of "I am what I am", "Existence is what it is."

How do we know that all that 'is' is eternal? — ZhouBoTong

Since it cannot be made from the impossible 'Nothing' nor can it make itself, it just 'is', as ever, without beginning or end. If we still really want to have something from nothing, then there had to be some way, some potential or capability, which is something, and so we didn't really have nothing in the first place as we claimed. That's just to doubly close the idea, for 'nothing' cannot even be meant, which is Parmenides' great claim.

Eternalism nor presentism serve the purposes of arguing for free will, so the notion of a growing block universe is what were left with. I can't claim to know how time actually works but since choice requires the future to be undetermined or not exist yet feel free to throw any other ideas that would fit the bill my way. — Pathogen

Yes, a growing block is a combination of presentism and eternalism, with the past being kept and the future not yet existent. Growing block is probably the theory some say is supported by the expansion of the universe. So far, no one really knows the mode of time.

Titles thread: "Obfuscatory Discourse".
— StreetlightX

hehe, what, does that seem a pedantic title to you? — ZhouBoTong

The use of "Obfuscatory" was probably intentional, a kind of joke on the OP.

I once attended a pretentious, cultured art lecture at Vassar College in which they went on and on and raving about the sticking to the 'canon' and especially pointing out the exquisite use of "particulate matter"—which turned out to be 'sand'.

I think there's a new support group for sophisicate babblers, called 'On and on, anon.'.

So you are saying one necessary description of 'god' is that it must be eternal? And "complete' throughout all of eternity? — ZhouBoTong

Yes, as not a smart evolved alien but as Fundamental and First, intact and complete, with no beginning and no end, as eternal, since something exists, obviously, and that Existence has no alternative that can be. Even if we were only philosophically discussing what 'IS', not 'God', those attributes would still apply, and so it's a good starting point. It's like Parmenides’ unity in multiplicity idea sort of.

I won't allow myself to euthanaze and now I'm not even allowed to euphemize??? — Janus

Better to pass them away painlessly and gently.

physical — fishfry

Yes.

The Intro to Rubaiyat II:

euthanaze — Janus

You mean 'kill'?

I think there's probably infinite variation. — uncanni

Or at least all that's possible, which is still a heck of a lot.

perniciousness — fresco

Holy smokes! An obscure word! And just after the pleasant old country mill image. What a shock.

In this thread, I guess we mostly aim only for the plans for a workable 'God' for all, but perhaps the grinding of the axe at the mill toward religious belief's harm ever slips in. I think that 'God' is highly improbable. Live and let live, unless asked for an opinion.

What do you make of infinite-dimensional spaces? An example would be the set of all continuous functions from the real numbers to the real numbers. This set is an infinite-dimensional vector space. — fishfry

I think that math infinities don't count as actual infinities, they just being potential infinities, and that actual infinities are impossible since they can't complete, much as the definition of 'Infinite' hints at, plus that 'infinite' is not really an amount or a number, also because it cannot be capped.

Ten dimensions, or eleven, if we want to allow (0) as a point, seems to cover Everything, and perhaps this is why string theory also has those number of dimensions.

That is probably why eternalism is thought in spatial terms as a "block universe". — Janus

Externally, if one could see it from the outside, which one never can, the block universe is 4 distances with no time or change, as dddd, dimensionally, as a hypercube, the past and the future both real, but, somehow, internally, to us, in space-time, one of the distances converts to what we call 'time', as if the speed of light, d/t, was a fundamental dimensional equivalence ratio; so, then, dddd / d/t = dddt = space-time.

It is to us as if the pages of a 3D flip book of 3D spaces are turning or a 3D DVD is playing. Each 3D image is as of a new 3D space, that is of a new universe going by. Our time, then, is as the differences of these spaces, making time to be a kind of index to these 3D spaces, although we can't use the index to go anywhere but have to always go on to the next 3D space.

Others liken it to the expansion of the universe being the 4D part, somehow.

Presentism looks the same to us, in that a whole new 3D space appears at every 'now', but that the 'now' was just manufactured from the immediate past, totally consuming the just past 'now'.

Einstein's relativity of simultaneity puts a big dent in presentism's claim that it is 'now' everywhere.

In my fun video below, a human in Tahiti asks a djinni to show him 'Eternity':

I will drink and vape to that. Essentially, infinitely and eternally, God is quantum mechanics and so much more. — uncanni

Yes, indeed, hail to the Source. We didn't arrive at 'infinite' though, at least not yet.

THEY are the proverbial ghost in the machine. — Mww

In the otherworld of the haunts of thoughts, the neural activities go on in the dark, which we can't introspectively know, and don't like the idea of, but neurologists poked around and got some correlations and so we've been informed from that, but still not liking it, emotionally, and so we still wished for what sounded good, as free will, but couldn't logically define it deeper.

The ghosts rise from the deep, into our conscious world as qualia, the results from the spooky unknown workings of the machine that is the will, and therein in the conscious mind ever float the mysterious objects in the sea in which we see, and also in our imaginations beyond the present as even more faint and ghostly 90% reduced qualia to the point of just barely appearing in our imaginings, so as not to be confused with the actual qualia of our present reckonings.

We only ever 'see' the insides of our heads, as the mind, those specters already selectively painted in a useful way, as the glimmers, semblances, shadows, and whispers of reality, all toward the aim of us to be able to best continue on.