Sam Harris's The End of Faith — Wayfarer

‘The God Delusion’, and ‘god is Not Great’ were well written, too.

Round 2

God came out quick, now claiming the writ
That He guided the Earth safe through its orbit
Around the the now centered sun in space,
For by now the Earth’s motion around the sun
Was known to be true to nearly everyone.

Newton demolished this notion
With his laws of motion.
God thus no longer ruled Nature’s course,
For the world was free to run its course.

From Isaac: Laws and Revelations:
There is a mote in space known as Earth,
A pale blue dot of fluff orbiting a hearth.
Due but to Newton’s laws of motion there’s none:
No Godly hand guiding it safe around the sun.

The vanishing had now really begun.
The heavens and the Earth were one.

Stars and galaxies went on and on puffing
And we became the center of nothing.
God was losing his definition in stone,
As his sworn traits disappeared one by one.

So, He’s retreated to higher ground, that is,
Outside of space, time, and all that exists.

So, as an individual making these decisions- internally, what goes through your mind that makes you actually do these activities? — schopenhauer1

The will ruminates, sometimes, or not, collapsing scenarios of consequences, often going all the way to the nerve spindles to 'actionize' without committing, and then either performs an action or doesn't. The subjective areas referred to don't do anything; they are subjects, but 'mind', if not meaning consciousness, is brain, and does plenty. This is not to say that the brain/will doesn't take in previous quaila from memory and use it somehow as an input. Consciousness is blind to decisions made previously by brain networks; however, I'day say that other brain areas might then check in on the product in consciousness if that's how the other areas get alerted.

If determinism is true, then what would be the use of consciousness? — Noah Te Stroete

The same as whatever use it has.

Can you give an example in "real time" how this would look in your daily life activities and decisions? — schopenhauer1

Sleep 10 hours, breakfast, check computer stuff, play expert bridge tournament, lunch, play, go places, later, write books and make videos, then play, hang out. That's what the Cosmos does.

So you both believe that consciousness is an epiphenomen? — Noah Te Stroete

The brain uses it for something, else it wouldn't have evolved.

Ah the whole causal chain. So what is it that makes you do any particular activity in your daily life? I mean this as a subjective experiencer of someone who is doing the activity. — schopenhauer1

That which my will/brain has come to be of the instant. Causes/decisions precede the subjective awareness of them.

Can you explain? — schopenhauer1

Cosmos to Bang to three atomic elements plus quarks/electrons to protons to stars to more atomic elements to supernovae to the rest of the atomic elements to molecules to solar systems to … bacteria to cells to oxygen atmosphere to life to oxygen breathing creatures to extinctions opening up the field to the evolution of mammals to brains to consciousness…to you doing something from all of your inputs so far…including, genetic, social, familial, and more.

What makes you do any particular activity throughout your daily life? — schopenhauer1

The Cosmos.

Gorgeous though! — Nmann

OK, not Sullivan. Maybe Elihu Vedder, one of the earliest illustrators, using chalk, I think. I have a 5x8 size book of it. It was also the basis of a limited edition of only two that were very expensive, called the 'Great Omar'. I happened to have retrieved the one that went down on the Titanic:


I added a bit of yellow to the b/w.

The second copy was destroyed in WWII, but the jewels were used for a third one which now sits in the British Museum.

Stranger than fiction. And lately I'm led to vote for something having to be eternal, over 'Nothing' doing anything, either way, almost, such as with a capability (for a near-Nothing like the quantum-foam) being the eternal source or as having everything already existent, eternally, due to the eternal having no point for anything specific or particular to be designed into it.

I started off thinking it was, but it isn't. Nevertheless the old saying - you can't prove a negative - still stands. It's just that other things also can't be proven, for similar reasons. :up: — Pattern-chaser

Well, then, self-contradiction still remains for disproving.

That seems like common sense, but I’m not sure that that would necessarily be metaphysically coherent with the rest of human knowledge. — Noah Te Stroete

What shows through from the brain to consciousness? What can block consciousness? What can alter consciousness?

It remains to be seen. It’s not just up to science, in my view, it’s also up to philosophers to come up with a coherent TOE. — Noah Te Stroete

So far, philosophers have it narrowed done to two: from 'Nothing' versus Eternal/Timeless as being that was never made. Note that they might converge, for, 'never made' as not from anything resembles from 'Nothing'; however, seeming paradoxically, 'Nothing' can never have being, suggesting that existence has no opposite, no alternative, and thus must be. So, the TOE has thus been limited, too.

I haven’t made up my mind on the hard problem. I don’t think there is an easy solution. It’s unknown. — Noah Te Stroete

It may be hard to solve right now, it being so private, but a great penultimate step would be to surround it by localizing it to the brain.

One is The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, it was very vividly Illustrated and in black and white, it was a smaller hardcover. — Nmann

Probably illustrated by Edmund Sullivan, but there could be alternatives, although his was very popular and he illustrated 75 quatrains. See below, and let me. know if that is the one.

It so happens that I colorized it:


I also wrote a sequel, illustrated Omar's Rubaiyat, and more… if you want to see.

Some entertainment for the warriors here… Back to the past:

Round 1

In the Beginning,
God played an active role in the Cosmos,
After creating it, each and every verse,
And especially the life upon the Earth,
Which planet is supposedly
Only a few thousand years old,
Or so it has been told.

God won this round, hands down,
For even those many science clowns
Who were around at the time
Thought that mankind was prime,
Being the special center of creation,
And that the sun and the stars in elation
Revolved around his holy nation,
The Earth fixed, under a dome.

And, furthermore,
That evil spirits caused physical ills,
Along with all of our mental slips,
As aggravated by life’s frills,
Which were all called ‘sins’,
With blame that still came from within.

Even fun was one of sin’s evil cousins,
In the Bible made from old Jewish legends.

Thankfully, those hundreds of odd Gods
Who had come to reign before GOD
Were crushed, as by Jehovah trod.

We are spun of the Eternal Golden Braid,
Those windings of Truth, Love, and Beauty made
From the Goodness of Purity Immortal—
The Theory of Everything’s singular portal.

What is Man but the special chosen species
For which all the plants grow and the waters reach,
For which the Earth turns ‘round, and orbits
A sunny furnace, spreading Love’s energy,
Enabling us to thrive above any and all creation.

It’s ever on forever’s edge that we meet our destiny,
That in our temporary parentheses of Eternity
We would flourish for just this moment, bidden,
As the blossoms of Perfection’s Flower Garden.

A hundred trillion stars and countless shores
Were built to light our universal nights explored;
Forty million other lower species too, the All-Might
Placed about our world, merely for our delight.

Our names are Writ Large on the Heaven’s marquee,
In the supernovae stardust showered from Thee.
From Nothing You came not, but of a naught
Our own universe was made and ever wrought.

A starring role we play in this reality show,
Every atom spinning fine just for us to know,
Our ancestors rising/falling for us to stand upon,
Oh man! They lived and died for our lone promise!

Every shaft of light shines with us in mind;
Thus it beams forth our beginning and our end—
In and of God’s hidden and Heavenly Shrine.
Oh life! We cherish being, that of Yours and mine.

We do so much deserve reward beyond this role—
And so it is that one’s immortal spirit-soul,
That angelic vapour that drives a living being,
Will go forth to glory on, beyond the scene.

However, about three centuries ago,
The realm of natural law was extended, so
The Supernatural Kingdom
Began to shrink away some,
Eventually vanishing from all of existence,
But we get ahead of our own persistence…

From what beastly heart sprung our zest?
Through what searching eye became our sight?
What sounds in the bushes let us hear?
What dark past haunts but helps us be?

Across what ink black rivers did we have to swim?
To what ends at length did we search for food?
In what deep entangled forest were we bred?
Of what stars did we shine in their stead?

Oh Man! What a piece of work—the mind;
What noble deeds done and undone in kind.
What Rube Goldberg inventions heaped upon—
In the layers of brains the mind is made upon.

What is this sapiens mammal animal,
But of some slime and of brutish law!
So, let’s ‘neglect’ this state of affairing,
On the grounds that it is unappealing.

What is Man but the only bloom for which all
The 13.7 billions years of evolution and love
Have occurred, in a predetermined swirling yeast,
To form and flower such a vainglorious beast.

That is the philosopher’s excuse. With that line of thinking, no one would change for the better. — Noah Te Stroete

They've already achieved better than all the hating described above.

people don't truly wanna know themselves — Sheik Yerbouti

There is a meta solution. One needn't regret or feel pain for what had to happen in actuality, this thus obviating "if's", "should have's", etc.

How can we trust our sense when they have already deceived us in the past and we will know more about this deception as science will progress. — Sheik Yerbouti

'Deception' is not bad when the result is a more useful face painted on reality than a truer one. My red truck is anything but true red, for nature paints with a reflective color scheme. We don't see more than the visible spectrum out of the whole and wider e/m spectrum perhaps because it would be clutter; however, our instruments 'see' it and tell us of it.

Colours are infinite yet we are unable to imagine any new colour. — Sheik Yerbouti

Yet all our colors are made from the three primaries, no less, if not color-blind. There are three types of proteins in the eye that rotate according to the amount of the respective primary color received.

At the end of the day, there is no physical or real supernatural God for us to follow. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I consider 'God' as highly unlikely, as the lowest form of a 'maybe' that must be accorded. Due to the 'maybe', even if 'God' thought to be a one in a zillion chance, it is dishonest to say/teach/preach that either 'God' or 'no God' is a sure thing of fact and truth.

One can deeper dent into Christians by granting the generious 'maybe' and then challenging their honesty of teaching 'maybe' as a 'truth', as well as noting that further structures built or layered upon don't have an established foundation and so they have effectively now become twice removed, as kind of double and triple 'maybes'. The perceived structure of churches, rules, and a holy book attracts followers, yet, truly, at the end of the day, there is no knowing or showing, but just the wishes and hopes called 'faith' for those so inclined. Church attendance is dropping, as the older believers die off, with the younger generation getting smarter, I suppose.

how we are able to prove — Sheik Yerbouti

How could we ever know the composition of a star? It’s not like we could go there to collect a sample.

“Impossible,” it was thought.

Then starlight shadows were found that spelled out a complete list of the ingredients—a quantum mechanical bar code of its elements.

rectifying yourself isn't a part of knowing in my opinion. I think knowing is related only to knowledge rather than actions of someone — Sheik Yerbouti

OK, never mind that one. When something keeps on working, then we gain knowledge and trust that it is something known and repeatable. I trust/know that a new morning will come on.

'Knowing' is sometimes more than just 'believing', as in 'doing' or 'not doing': I know that I shouldn't keep doing that harmful thing, but I keep on doing it; so, how can I really say I know it?

You took the lazy way out of thinking so why are you even here? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

It can be seen that I am here to note that 'God' is presumed to exist here, with then a request of logic and reason to focus on His 'serving'. To portray 'God' as already being truth and fact is misleading.

Do logic and reason say that God is our servant? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Not applicable. 'God' hasn't been established. Same for all else layered upon.

Basically, summing up a development, the first part of which is omitted here for brevity:

Then+What is History—what has occurred,
While When+What will become Progress.
Then+Where begets Memory—remembrance,
While When+Where induces Wishes, as hopes.

Progress+Wishes combines into Vision;
Progress+History grants Change-in-Structure;
Memory+History makes for Learning;
Memory+History births Change-of-Outlook.

Change-in-Structure + Vision = Planning,
Change-in-Structure + Learning = Creating,
Change-of-Outlook + Vision = Growth;
Change-of-Outlook + Learning = Direction.

Finally, Planning, Growth, Creating,
And Direction make for being’s Who.

This seems to be true in cases of choices that involve small movements, but I don’t think it has been established through experiments that this is true in complex tasks such as holding a conversation or writing a paragraph. — Noah Te Stroete

Oh, especially in speaking do we often not realize some of our insights until we hear ourselves speak them.

But neither this mobility nor this choice nor
consequently this consciousness involves as a necessary
condition the presence of a nervous system — Pantagruel

My will has decided that it has to look into Henri Bergson due to his being a legend.

For now, we do have a good nervous system that is really a useful extension of the will/brain. For example, the brain can 'actionize' without having to commit to an action.

Subconscious trains of thought vie for attention,
Dueling choirs competing for first place
As actions in the will’s ’I’—to produce
Future, for this is the task of a thought.

The will/brain mediates thoughts versus outcomes,
And is distributed all over the body,
From the nerve spindles to the spine to the brain—
A way to actionize without moving.


As for a 'vital impulse' or a guidance principle, that could be so, and this idea is coming close to the meaning of a 'Poetic Universe'.

Our two brain hemispheres seem to reflect
The nature of the universe itself,
As the grouping order versus and with
The whole of the symmetry order.

(That is, a holistic, parallel view, as well as a detailed, sequential view.)

Note that the sun is not the same sun as it was a trillionth of a second ago, although to us a semblance of the ‘sun’ remains and the sun seems to be a continuous object. There are, strictly speaking, no objects that are identical with themselves over time, and so the temporal sequence probably remains open.

Nature is then no longer seen as clockwork, but only as a ‘possibility gestalt’, the whole world occurring anew each moment; however, the deeper reality from which the world arises, in each case, acts as a unity in the sense of an indivisible ‘potentiality’, which can perhaps realize itself in many possible ways, it not being a strict sum of the partial states.

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

So…

We are both essence and form, like poems versed,
Ever unveiling this life’s deeper thirsts,
As new riches, from strokes, letters, phonemes,
Words, phrases, and sentences—uni-versed!

There is rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
Metric, melody, and beauty’s true pense,
Revealed through life’s participation,
From the latent whence into us hence.

Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.

Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
Due to the requisite of ongoing change.

(no stillness, but ever a continuous transitioning,
with nothing particular ever lasting,
the same as we's expect from an eternal,
for as thus it has point for any design,
much less any specific one, leaving it to
have to be a kind of everything, either all at once,
in a superposition of eternalism,
or the little by little of presentism,
but never lasting as anything particular)

So there’s form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.

All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
Probable clouds of distributed paces.
(such as of an electron cloud)

What remains unchanged over time are All’s
Properties that find expression, as laws,
Of the conservation of energy,
Momentum, and electric charge—unpaused.

The weave of the discrete bits as strokes writes
The letters of the elemental bytes—
The alphabet of the standard model,
Forming the words as the atoms whose mights

Merge to form molecules, as phrases,
Onto proteins and cells, as sentences,
Up to paragraphs of organisms,
And unto the stories of the species.

Via this concordance of literature,
We’ve become Cosmos’ conscious adventure,
As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
Being both the contained and the container.

Our poem is both the thought and the presence,
An object born from the profoundest sense,
An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
We’re both the existence and the essence.

(A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
Which by showing unapprehended proof
Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.)

(Poems are renderings of the soul’s spirit,
The highest power of language and wit.
The reader then translates back to spirit;
If the soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!)

Welcome to the Poetic Universe!

I don't mind being a passenger as long as the driver always goes where I want. — Pantagruel

Good one. You are wise and adaptive. Some have better and more fortunate wills than others.

The will is ever toward what it wants. Lots of wills about, doing their thing. If only consciousness was a kind of mini first cause, free of the brain, goes the dream of complete freedom, but, then, what would it have to work with?

Some (wills) still crave the impossible conscious freedom that they might even claim an angelic vapor that drives a living being, provides character, and morality via consciousness alone on top of a burdensome, fragile, and evolutionarily expensive organ such as a brain never to be used.

choice — Pantagruel

Consciousness is always blind to the choices made by brain/will networks until they finish and surface, consciousness being as a tourist along for the ride of experience. Experience is still a great thing, a kind of benefit, if you will.

conscious-choice — Pantagruel

The choice is still already accomplished and so it precedes the awareness of it. Probably the brain/will process must fully attend to learning skiing by obtaining constant feedback, often to the near exclusion of all else, making for an intense focus.

Learning makes for a new and wider fixed will of the instant that hopefully achieves better choices. It's a good thing.

what requires a conscious decision is to be aware of the details of the decision — Possibility

Except that there can't be conscious decisions, for the decisions reflected in consciousness have already been made elsewhere. We can't get around this.

There are matters of deterrence and the safety of the community to consider. — Noah Te Stroete

In the courts, ‘coercion vs responsible’ is orthogonal to ‘determined vs undetermined’.

“The universe made me do it,” says the accused,
And the Judge replies, “Well, this does excuse,
But I still have to sentence you to the pen,
Until the universe can’t make you do it again.”
(to protect society)

your decision to simply be aware — Possibility

I have to reveal something shocking: no decisions/choices are made in/by consciousness! It is too late in the brain process. What gets into consciousness are always the results/products of the neural processing that is already over and done with, at least for that instance, and that took time (300-500ms), plus there is also part of that time going into unifying the objects/qualia as well as stitching them to what was there previously (via short term memory) to achieve continuity. The objects in conscious are always a view of the past, and the brain is already on to building the next thought.

Other brain areas may then note the result and add information to better collapse the scenario of consequences into an improved result, etc., but then such as I said happens all over again; however, at no time does consciousness itself use any brain-independent machinery to decide things, for it doesn't have any. The brain/will ever is what thinks and outputs to itself, sometimes kind of like it is perceiving itself.

We, as the brain, aren't privy to the brain analysis that occurs subconsciously, so it might seem to us that all goes on rather instantly, had we not been informed by science.

Free: unconstrained. — Possibility

I'll have to take 'unconstrained' as indicating no coercion, since the will is constrained by its amount of information plus how good the information is.

A 'not determined will' would be a horror, and, indeed, it wouldn't be a will at all as we know it; so, now, its opposite, the 'determined will' doesn't seem so bad, and it even reflects who we have come to be.

The next worst, although it might be true, is a partially indeterminate, 'random' will having its anti-will say sometimes, even perhaps having someone jumping off of a bridge when they normally wouldn't do so. Variety? yes; helpful? no.

Will: the basic faculty by which one decides and initiates action. — Possibility

How about a slight change?

Will: what decides and initiates action.

Since humans cannot perceive infinity? - Why not? Infinity is simple, it means forever, not a difficult concept — gater

'Infinite' refers to a sequence or an extent, 'Eternal' refers to time. Neither one can complete, and so neither one is an actual that can be accomplished.

Einstein's great insight was that time had to give, and so it had to become a variable.

I hereby define — Arne

Yes, we were attending to definitions back there so we could know more about what the 'free' meant, and then attending to the compatibilists' non-coerced free will definition, which is a trivial one, although better than yours, because what seekers really want to know is if there can be an opposite of 'determined' other than 'not determined at all', and also not 'random' since that disrupts the will.

‘and so what?’ — Wayfarer

So, someone made it up—your foundational page one. Then they could say, "no big deal" or "who cares!"

I am afraid you are missing the point of that. It is NOT the business of science to make normative claims. — Pantagruel

As said, we get informed.