• Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    … quarks …

    They gyrate, spinning their charms, twirling
    In the universal dance of stunning motion,
    The polarity sometimes reversed,
    Whirling, their bottoms up and tops down.

    And then there are Eden’s many colors,
    In this flower garden filled with flavors,
    Such as red bottom beauties, blue tops,
    And magenta undulations unstopped.

    The Near Decline of Physics Due to its Undressed Terms:

    PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/dot-8.5x11-jpg-300-dpi.pdf
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    Eternity in A Grain of Sand in the Hubble Deep Field

    The Hubble trained on night’s darkest pinpoint
    For eleven days, collecting flashpoints;
    “Foolish,” some claimed, “a resource waste so weird.”
    Over ten thousand galaxies appeared!

  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    What great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
    The strands of the quantum fields’ types of waves
    That weave the warp, weft, and woof of our ‘verse
    Into being’s fabric of living braids?

    More zero-sum null physics…

    PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/looking-for-the-needle-in-the-haystack-8.75x11.25-300-dpi.pdf
    (Prelude to Ellman)

    PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/everything-solved-ellman-8.75x11.25-300-dpi.pdf
    (Ellman)
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    Does this universal exist intrinsically to everyThing? Or does this universal exist in the background ubiquitously, such that everything within it self organizes by integrating information?Pop

    Since we are the Cosmos…

    Think not that I am existent as ‘I’, 
    Or talk the talk and walk the walk of ‘I’,
    For all’s of the ‘IS’; the Cosmos is I;
    Where then, and what, who, and whence is this ‘I’?

    (What should I do? No can do; the Cosmos does you.)
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    memorized informationPop

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

    Who you are is your repertoire—your brain;
    What you are now is the mind’s ‘eye’ of it,
    Which ‘I’ e’er but obtains from who you are.
    Aye, aye: the self generates what ‘I’ witness.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    That information integrates on its own is a bit of a mind bender initially.Pop

    Subconscious trains of thoughts via for attention, and among these alternatives the brain constructs scenarios of consequences and then collapses them into the best result.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    I think that the mystery of consciousness should not be dismissed too quickly.
    — Jack Cummins

    I agree. I usually take 20 minutes. :razz:
    Tom Storm

    Consciousness is that annoying time between naps.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    The clue is that information integrates on its own And deep down, we identify with / as the thing that integrates the information.Pop

    Consciousness is

    Intrinsic—my own, as independent;

    Compositional—structured with many phenomenological distinctions;

    Informational—particular and specific;

    Integrated/Whole—unified and irreducible;

    Exclusive—definite content, no more no less.


    Subjective Features:

    Referral—the ‘projection’ of neural states with no perceiving of neural firings/states.

    Mental Unity—experienced as a unified field, whereas sources are all over the brain.

    Qualia—the subjectively experienced felt qualities of sensory consciousness, the most perplexing gap between subjective experience and the brain.

    Continuous—seamless stitching of ongoing changing contents.

    Mental causation?—How can consciousness—an intangible, unobservable, and fully subjective entity—cause material neurons to direct behaviors that change the world?

    Physics describes but the extrinsic causes,
    While consciousness exists just for itself,
    As the intrinsic, compositional,
    Informational, whole, and exclusive—

    As the distinctions toward survival,
    Though causing nothing except in itself,
    As in ne’er doing but only as being,
    Leaving intelligence for the doing.

    The posterior cortex holds correlates,
    For this is the only brain region that
    Can’t be removed for one to still retain
    Consciousness, it having feedback in it;

    Thusly, it forms an irreducible Whole,
    And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
    A process fundamental in nature,
    Or’s the brain’s private symbolic language.

    The Whole can also be well spoken of
    To communicate with others, as well as
    Globally informing other brain states,
    So nonconscious parts can use what’s been made.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    In a sense, we are an expression of the universe.Pop

    We developed brains that can take in the holistic overall view (in parallel mode) while also being able to linearly recognize the fine details and the relationships between objects. As such, so goes the universe, since we are formed in its image. So then this gives us a clue to the nature of the universe.

    Seeing that the brain is divided into two hemispheres, each with their own characteristic mode of thought, which can communicate with each other, means that we are looking very deeply
    Into the way that reality itself is constructed.

    In other words worth repeating, we are indeed the universe come to life, made in its image—of multiplicity within unity, this scheme reflected in the holistic brain hemisphere operating in a parallel mode and joined to the other hemisphere operating in a sequential detail mode.

    One hemisphere is floodlight of attention illuminating the whole scene at once, but connected to the other brain hemisphere which is a spotlight of attention moving linearly through the scene, they often alternating their cyclic reign, as the yin in the yang and the yang in the yin, making for a rounded life.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    mystery of consciousnessJack Cummins

    Change the brain and consciousness changes too.
    Take drugs and the emotions change as well.
    Damage the brain and the mind’s damaged too.
    Consciousness emerges only from the brain.

    Consciousness is ever a brain process,
    One which can be halted, never-the-less,
    By anesthesia, poison/drugs,
    A blow to the head, a faint, or by sleep.

    In identifying consciousness,
    We often confuse what is floating in
    The stream of consciousness with the water itself;
    Thus we note not the sea in which we ‘see’.

    The brain interprets reality, and puts
    A face on the waves of sound, light, color, touch,
    And a sense on molecules’ smell and taste.
    Consciousness is the brain’s perception of itself.

    Consciousness 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.

    Conscious Awareness, which can but witness,
    Is a safe haven from which to observe
    The drama of our lives playing in our minds,
    Granting us a sobering distance from it.

    Being is to doing as ground is to figure
    As subject is to object, as essence is to existence,
    As Awareness-Consciousness is to mind-brain,
    As the ultimate simplicity is to the composite.

    I can never share a mind directly,
    For there is no access; we are alone.
    Mind melding works only for the Vulcans.
    This loneliness leads us to company.

    The unbearable solitude of consciousness
    Is relieved by literature, social clubs,
    Movies, caring, friendships, discussion, writing,
    And other sharing acts, but, mostly, by love.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    I think the big bang is well established by E=mc2, but otherwise there is so little reliable and cross verifiable information.Pop

    reflectionsJack Cummins

    We are gearing up here to look at another zero-sum theory, that of Roger Ellman …

    — No Source —

    We are now really pretty sure that there
    Was literally nothing to make anything of,
    And yet there is something here, on this day,
    So we do know that there must be a way.

    — Logic / Science—

    Logic does continue to guide us on,
    But, to be complete, we’ll in the middle meet,
    As also starting from the end of science—
    Which confirmations must match the logic.

    — Two is the Limit For Matter —

    There are only two stable matter particles
    In free space—the electron(-) and the proton(+),
    As ever charged, although oppositely,
    Along with their anti-particles, of course.

    — Of Only Two Ways—

    Therefore, as for electrons and protons,
    There are only the two ways to make them,
    As well as the two and only two ways
    To make positrons and anti-protons.

    — The Unstable Neutral Matter Particle—

    Neutrons are not stable in free space,
    For they decay, within a few minutes,
    Into an electron and proton pair,
    So neutrons are not as stable things.

    — The Energy of the One Way—

    There’s but one stable energy particle
    In free space—the photon, uncharged, as neutral,
    It having no anti-particle at all.
    So, there’s only one way to make pure energy.

    — To the Primal Base —

    The base existent can’t be composite,
    And certainly not fancy or complex,
    For then the parts would precede. It has to
    Be a simple continuous function!

    — The Needle in the Haystack —

    What underlies the perfect symmetry
    For the electron, proton, and photon?
    They and all in existence are of waves!
    Waves are ubiquitous in the universe.

    — Good Looking Logic —

    There has to be a primal wave of ‘something,’
    Opposed by a wave of ‘anti-something’,
    These ‘sum-things’ canceling to nothing,
    As with their derivatives and sub-waves.

    — The Low Probability Event? —

    These primal waves ever jiggle about,
    They as their wave envelopes and sub-waves.
    In some rare ‘moment’ they begin to build,
    Forming a giant neutron—it’s the Cosmic Egg.

    — No Infinite Density! —

    10^85 waves and envelopes build up,
    With 10^85 anti-waves and anti-envelopes,
    And then the two cosine functions cut off,
    Having reached a bandwidth limitation.

    — The Birth of the Universe —

    The whole shebang of the cosmic egg ‘bangs’,
    It being near as large as the cosmos will be,
    Although 10^9 annihilations still occur,
    Leaving 2x10^76 particles as the Universe.

    — All That Unfolds —

    All that follows, unto today and beyond,
    Is the continual unfolding of
    That one big effect of the one big event
    Of the beginning of our universe.

    — Determinism —

    Yes, all is as the ongoing continuation
    Of the one and only effect, making
    What we think of local cause and effect
    To be but of artificial boundaries.

    — The Particles —

    Wave oscillations are the realest existents,
    With but such as mass-energy-charge effects
    Being secondary, which are still real,
    Since from the realest, but not primary.

    — Now We Get it! —

    The electrons/positrons are the wave envelopes,
    The protons/anti-protons are the waves,
    And a photon is of both opposing waves,
    Being 180 degrees out of phase.

    — Wave Properties —

    Wave length makes for mass and its extension,
    While the wave frequency makes for energy,
    And the wave amplitude makes for charge.
    The wave is both the ‘what’ and its effects.

    — The Impossible Particles —

    No wonder there can be no
    Stable neutral matter particles
    And no stable charged energy particle;
    There are no ways to make them.

    — The Golden Braid —

    The universe was a change in form,
    But the primal essence carries on,
    In the wave oscillations of the
    Electron, proton, and the photon.

    — The End of the Line —

    Well, if the waves are the primal ‘what’,
    Then the waves cannot come from another ‘what’,
    But only from like math of an equation,
    For that is all that is left, with nothing.

    — Eternity’s Waiting Room —

    The potential eternity of nothing
    Could not complete, without a happenstance,
    But there was also the potential
    Of near infinite opportunity.
  • To Theists
    Religion, it seems to me, is all about that reinforcement through repetition. Of course one learns at first, and then repeats. And that's mainly it. Literate and intelligent people indeed grow away from the repetition. And most religions - all, near as I can tell - have nothing more to offer.tim wood

    Most religious preachers proclaim about 'God' as if 'God' were truth and fact, even repeatedly. This is intellectual dishonesty.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    Still working on Not Anything… have to explore these alternate avenues for completeness…

    The nonexistence of Nothing must then be
    Neutral and symmetrical, totally,
    While existence within nonexistence
    Must be polar—as asymmetrical.

    Matter/anti are each half of ‘at large’,
    Being polar and opposite in charge,
    While photons represent all of the cosmos,
    Being neutral, as both plus and minus.

    Why three space dimensions, plus one of time?
    There must be three dimensions because
    The singularity/nothingness demands
    Existential closure—to nonexistence…

    Which demands the compositional parity
    Of positive and negative, as charge,
    Which in turn demands that space be cubic:
    Dimensionality inevitable!

    The three space dimensions are compositional,
    So the nullification of existence
    At totality must be carried out
    Via electric charge polarity,
    An aspect of time, along with motion.

    It could be that boundless 3D space bounds
    A 4D finite hypervolume hypercube.
    This arrangement is all extent (distance),
    But, inside, one distance converts to time,
    By the speed of light, as spacetime distance.

    Hypervolume (distance^4) =
    c(distance/time) * spacetime(distance^3 * time)

    So, time is but internal to spacetime,
    Being just a difference of space(s).

    So, there is no time, then, externally,
    And, internally, everything happens,
    In the boundless ‘eternity’ within,

    Happening over and over again,
    
As well as many times, too, everywhere,
    In the boundless ‘infinity’ within.

    The Cosmos contains its own history,
    As well as its own ‘infinite’ spacetime.
    Everything and every-time, both boundless,
    Doth go round and round, perpetually.

    Eternal causes cannot happen,
    And so these must be equation-replaced:
    The zero-sum balance that provides for the
    Conservation laws ultimately precise.

    That's All, folks!
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    Existents are not infinitely old:
    The tale of their making is ever told;
    They’re not unbreakable/unmakeable;
    They are ‘sum-thing’—zero-sum formable.

    Existents ever back to ‘no-thing’ trace,
    Such as this universe, now in a race,
    Even accelerating, from ‘no-thing’,
    From the fuel that can never stop giving.

    The null balance continues, remains, then,
    As the reason things can’t be so frozen
    That they don’t react, nor so fleeting
    That all remains as chaos everlasting.

    Confirmation abounds: as space and time,
    Charge polarity, matter and its anti,
    Kinetic/potential—stuff/gravity,
    Smallest and largest, and reason and rhyme.

    As per the explosive Big Bang Theory,
    Our own ‘verse appeared, nearly instantly,
    Going from not there to here, inflating—
    A low probability happening.

    As for ‘no-thing’, we knew it all along,
    Philosophically, logically—as strong,
    And now, factly—the triad that we love,
    For there’s ‘no-thing’ to make anything of.

    What meaning, then, of every- from ‘no-thing’?
    Well, there was no option, no deciding—
    Information’s content’s in the same row,
    For both ‘no-thing’ and everything: zero.

  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    All these explanations would fit the data on hand.Pop

    Investigating the zero-sum balance some more…

    To comprehend the Cosmos, one must, hence,
    Find the why and how of its existence,
    For, incomplete answers will never dress—
    Invariably wrong, by incompleteness.

    Forever Stuff could not have been always,
    For then there is no reason for its plays,
    Its total amount, and its certain stance:
    Stuff had to be created, in balance.

    No thing can be eternal, never made,
    As there’s no reason for the forms’ cascade;
    Yet, there is ‘no-thing’ source to make it from;
    So, the default ‘lawless’ is where it’s done.

    The no-place of no laws is the first cause,
    Requiring nothing but the same ‘because’.
    Forever and always anything goes,
    This being the final answer to the TOEs.

  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    a pulsating universePop

    Some kind of rhythm/balance sustaining…

    Our existence, necessarily, is finite,
    Centered between the Largest and the
    The smallest, mid-point perched, as between the
    The extremes of dispersion/compaction.

    (The exact middle of the large and small is about the size of a piece of dust.)
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    whatever that may be.Pop

    Is Existence a zero-balance tree
    Of opposites?: matter and its anti,
    The weak vs. strong force, charge polarity—
    All from ‘nothing’, to form reality?

    The universe weighs nothing at all: zero,
    Plus it is electrically neutral.
    The positive kinetic energy of ‘stuff’
    Cancels the negative potential energy of gravity.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    think about nothingPop

    'Eternal' not coming from anything…
    Seems the same as saying it's ‘from nothing’.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    and if zero sum turns out to be true, we still have some time to fill :smile:Pop

    I am good at doing nothing and thinking about nothing…

    ‘ZERO’ KEEPS REARING ITS HEAD

    So called ‘empty’ space is vital,
    For that’s where there’s the recital
    That forms and plays the tunes of reality—

    This grand cosmic symphony,
    As existence fluctuates with the non,
    Those causeless waverings of undulation.

    It was once thought that the shove
    Of this total energy was of
    The order of 10**120 orders of
    Magnitude above.

    Well if that were so near
    then we couldn’t even be here;

    It was the worst calculation
    In all of scientification;
    So we weighed the universe,
    Summing all of its constituent verses.

    The universe weighs nothing at all!

    This too since we found that
    Our universal space was B flat—
    Not just via the 60 degree angles of a small triangle,

    And not only by using stars,
    Nor rays that went from here to Mars
    To Venus and back,

    But all the way back to a degree of the CMBR,
    Which represented 100,000 light years,
    For which we measured the curvature:
    The rays didn’t converge or diverge.

    The ultimate of this geometry
    Is that being flat is the beautiful symmetry
    That leads to yet another beauty: zero.
    The ever returning, conquering hero.



    There was no place special in time
    Nor properties of reason and rhyme.

    Our beloved quantum fluctuations
    Left their imprint all over creation—
    The signature of their emanations
    Written in the CMBR’s variations—

    A magnifying glass upon their revelations,
    As well as in the capitals of matter congregations
    Of galaxies, nebulae, and other condensations.

    What underwrote this glorious expansion
    From such a humble state to a big time mansion?
    It’s called inflation.

    Perhaps there are many such bubbles blown—
    All but one of these pocket universes unknown.

    Where did all this energy come from
    To amount to this astronomical sum?
    It comes from the gravitational field.

    Our universe did not begin with this yield
    Already stored in the gravitational field;
    But, rather, the gravitational field can supply
    The energy because its energy found
    Can become negative without bound.

    As more and more positive energy materializes
    The forms of ever growing region sizes,
    Filled with a high energy scalar field, arise,

    As more and more negative energy materializes
    In the form of expanding regions wielded
    That are filled with a gravitational field.

    There is nothing known that can place a border
    On the amount of inflation that can occur
    While the total energy remains exactly zero…
    Why does this ‘zero’ ever become the hero?
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    Once this ball starts rolling it is difficult to stop.Pop

    Look deeper into the evident zero-sum balance of the Universe/Cosmos?
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    If the quest is ended - What now? :lol:Pop

  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    Because we have no access to absolutes, we must develop a relativistic understanding. :up: How fortunate this coincides with the minimum condition necessary for a state of integrated information ( consciousness ) - the relating of one thing to another,.Pop

    In his new book, 'Helgoland…', about Quantum Theory, Carlo Rovelli notes that All is Relational, that no entity exists independently of anything else, so that there are no intrinsic properties at all, but only 'properties' in relation to something else, which is essentially what Nagarjuna means by 'emptiness' in Buddhism.

    Everything is 'quantum entangled' with everything, the 'things' more properly described as interactions and events.

    Further, there are no fundamental substances, absolutes, no outside of Everything or bird's-eye view, no eternal basis, no 'God', etc. that is, there is no foundation of any kind to what goes on. 'Impermanance' goes all the way through…

    This realization of Impermanence', 'No Absolutes' and 'Emptiness' is 'Nirvana'.

    The quest is ended.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    How long did the "Vault of Everything" take to make?Pop

    Well, some of it was a long time ago, in the cruder days of video, but it probably took a month.

    I think your animated work is the strongestPop

    What if the characters in book images could come alive and move and talk…?

    I told someone looking at an illustrated book that this could be done, asking her to focus more closely.

    She said, "they're not moving."

    I picked up the book and moved it back and forth through the air.

    "See, they're moving now."

    "Ha-ha, but they're not talking."

    "Put your ear really close to the page and you will hear them."

    "I think I heard something."

  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    informationPop

    The Final Answer to Everything

    Wild theories?

    Nobody Nowhere, at first, shows that Absolutes cannot be, and then this presentation morphs into Gavin Giorbran’s showing of the confluence of grouping order versus symmetry order.

    p0p92j73e8nnuhsk.jpeg

    fkqgas4vlq7hs540.jpeg

    PDF: https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/finalanswer-11x8.5-150-dpi.pdf
  • How do we understand the idea of the 'self'?
    multiple personalitiesJack Cummins

    Not me, nor I.

    3hhy6bl28f62exs7.jpeg
  • How do we understand the idea of the 'self'?
    I often wonder about the idea of 'self'Jack Cummins

    The self at large is the brain's repertoire of information. Like the will, it is fluid and dynamic, it changing all the time. It is what is drawn upon subconsciously by the experiential self of the moment.

    In consciousness, there’s no distance between
    The thing observed and what is observing.
    They are, likely, one and the same, and so
    It is that we seem to have a self.

    The ‘I' of Awareness could be a basic
    Property of existence that can but observe
    The brain quale that’s currently on display,
    Being a subject mostly, not an object.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    The heroics of order overcoming disorder continue on, through record droughts and extreme heat domes…PoeticUniverse

    The print in this experimental post composed of jpgs came out fuzzy.

    Here it is in a PDF:https://austintorn.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/times-blast-8.5x11-300-dpi.pdf
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    The heroics of order overcoming disorder continue on, through record droughts and extreme heat domes…

    7nhjt28aupkxmbp8.jpeg
    8zh294nd7d7hf7cf.jpeg
    vr9m5hu34u2bziyw.jpeg
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    Artistically its an interesting idea.Pop

    Something like 'All of life’s entities embrace one another, including cells, organisms, species, and biotope' could add to the scientific aspect.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    This must be the first scientific poem I have ever seenPop

    Onward and similar… 'To the Quantum Depths of the Poetic Universe':

    From quantum non-locality and entanglement, we know that information is more primary than distance, and that things don’t have to have the appearance of being near each other to be related or to cause an effect.

    Everything connected to everything would seem to be a ‘perception’ as far as one could be had by that network. The all-at-once connections, as like in a hologram, would seem to provide for for the direction of what goes on in the overall information process. I am thinking like a yogi and a guru, the entire cosmos situated within me.

    Quantum non-locality seems to imply that every region of space is in instant and constant contact with every other, perhaps even in time as well, and so the holistic universe is governed by the property of the solitary whole; so that could be the underlying guidance principle. An individual particle might ‘know’ something about what to do, acting according to all the others.

    Thus both our consciousness and the holistic universe, each having a singular nature, is the clue. Maybe they are of the same basis of fundamental consciousness, but separate as two manifestations, each controlling a different realm, such as internal and external, our internal consciousness giving us ‘future’, and the external consciousness granting ‘future’ to the universe. I don't know which has the tougher job.

    Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.

    Quantum entanglement suggests that each particle has the entire 3-D or 4-D map of the universe, the information ever updated, the universe being as a single entity. While this may not be consciousness at the level we have, it may help the universe accomplish something of the movements of particles and fields in their energy, mass, and momentum, in some global way that goes forward overall. This may not seem to be saying a whole lot, in depth, but since the quantum realm is beneath everything then one would surmise that it must have all to do with everything that goes on.

    It is still that the apparent atoms and molecules make the happenings, via physical-chemical reactions; however, this observation cannot be equated to an 'explanation', for we must wonder what underlies the chemical mattering and reacting that seems to have a unity of direction to it.



    more:

    PDF: https://theomarkhayyamclubofamerica.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/quantpoe-8.5x11-jpg-150-dpi.pdf
  • What is the Obsession with disproving God existence?
    I haven't seen you in a while - enjoy your stuff.EricH

    There's a lot lately.

    Uh, oh, 'God' is joining the thread:
    mgu0th03anxo1p3e.gif


    (Click to get it to move as kind of 3D)
  • To Theists
    imaginary gold cointim wood

    The Problems of Traditional Religion

    The Christian concept of reward and punishment
    Handed out by an omnipotent, omniscient God,
    Is derivative of the family experience—
    The child and parent—a conception of our world.


    God in the News

    I picked up some newspapers and magazines:

    A suicide bomber blew up a bus and himself as well,
    Sending many of the unbelievers straight to Hell,
    While assuring himself and 72 friends a place
    In Heaven, a double blessing from his Faith.

    His family, relatives, and friends gathered soon
    To celebrate their wonderful good fortune.

    The bomber’s death was especially lauded as wise,
    Because he had proceeded directly to Paradise,
    Bypassing the possibly troublesome way
    Of the litigation of Judgment Day.

    Fighting continued in Kashmir
    Due to some perceived insults to Muhammad.

    A man was released in Northern Ireland
    After claiming to be a Protestant atheist.

    A child of Christian Scientists died
    Due to the religious refusal of antibiotics.

    Extremists sought nuclear formulas and parts to reduce
    The peril of the unbelievers in the world,
    Those whose ways are not sanctioned by Allah.

    Pope authorizes millions to reach
    Children sexually abused by priests.

    The recently discovered Gospel of Judas
    Suggests he wasn’t really such a bad-ass.

    Some nuclear facilities no longer exist in Syria,
    About whose disappearance both Syria and Israel
    Seem to know nothing.

    Battles rage on over differences in some holy books.

    Iran promises to destroy Israel.

    President Bush led off his latest speech with
    ‘In God we trust.”

    And in a more than 2000 year-old newspaper:

    The Emperor led off his latest speech with
    ‘In Zeus we trust’.

    And finally, in a future newspaper:

    Religious extremists detonate atomic bomb
    In Washington, DC;
    Nuclear retaliation destroys
    Twelve highly populated middle-eastern cities.

    World greatly stunned, begins to widely read
    ‘The End of Faith’, ‘The God Delusion’,
    And ‘god is Not Great’.
  • What is the Obsession with disproving God existence?
    This idea of a magic man who created the world and who commands us is very dangerous.Tom Storm

    I next encountered all the individual Ones,
    The specialized ‘Gods’ of all the Religions.

    They didn’t get along at all, not even for an instant,
    For all they had in common was their intolerance
    Of the others’ greatly erroneous and unjustifiable beliefs
    That clashed with their own, for tolerance as a relief
    Was truly Not an attitude the jealous ‘Gods’ endorsed.

    The followers of each ‘God’ thought that their own
    Irrational embrace of myth trumped the others’ known,
    And so this led to many of the religious groans.

    I watched the ‘Gods’ battling for a while, steadfast,
    In the present, as well as in the distant past,
    Their followers’ beliefs scripting the actions,
    Conflicts leading to dying for untestable propositions
    About where everyone came from and was going to:

    Metaphysical Martyrdoms
    Conflicted with the Divine Book of Revelations.

    Deuteronomy 13:7-11
    Stoned those disbelieving in Yahweh,
    Killing them, while the Koran eliminated some infidels.

    India and Pakistan, different countries domiciled,
    Because the beliefs of Islam could not be reconciled
    With those of Hinduism, were poised at the brink
    Of nuclear war merely because they disagreed, rife,
    Over some supernatural ‘facts’ concerning the afterlife.

    Karmas ran over Dogmas.

    Musharraf suspended Pakistan’s constitution,
    To stamp out the growing Islamic militant coalition.

    Palestine’s Jews and Muslims scuffled on;
    Balkan Orthodox Serbians dueled
    With the Catholic Croatians,
    As well as with the Bosnian
    Albanian Muslims;

    Northern Ireland Protestants
    Warred with Catholics;

    Sudan Muslims discorded
    With the Christians;
    Sri Lankas’s Sinhalese Buddhists
    Went against the Tamil Hindus;

    Caucasus Orthodox Russians
    And Chechen Muslims
    Exterminated each other and their kin;

    Iraq’s Sunnis and Shites massacred each other
    For some very slight dogmatic differences.

    I interrupted their skirmishing and said in haste,
    “What about tolerance and respect for other faiths?”

    They all answered at once and said, in unison’s beef,

    “That’s just political talk. If we tolerated other beliefs,
    That would be akin to recognizing them readily
    As having some credibility, which they certainly do not.
    We are saved and they are all doomed, in peril;
    We can’t have them exerting influence in the world.”

    “So,” I said, trying to make some small talk,
    “I’ve heard that You’ve each written a book
    That makes an exclusive claim as to its infallibility.

    “Congratulations to each of You on being published.
    All have made the bestseller list;
    However, I have respectfully shelved all of them
    Next to the ‘Egyptian Book of the Dead’
    And Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’,
    In the contradictory book and bible section.

    “Hey, how about getting modern and making a film?
    I know that a book was a great thing way back,
    But a moving picture is worth 10,000 still pictures
    Which are in turn each worth a thousand words.”

    “Indeed, we will each be divinely inspiring a movie
    That will soon be playing in a theater near you.”

    “Wait, Guys, I take it back,” I said with alarm,
    “Are not all your children doing enough harm
    By fighting over your books and morality plays?

    “Will people now die for another media—the movies?”

    They ignored me and fought on, with their kind,
    Unable to see but through their own ‘right’ minds,
    Doing the opposite of their teachings of love,
    Which they were especially and paradoxically out of.

    Unfortunately, they now represented the largest threat
    That human kind has ever imposed against itself—
    All due to differences regarding some very improbable
    And differing notions about the nature of the universe.
  • What is the Obsession with disproving God existence?
    This idea of a magic man who created the world and who commands us is very dangerous. It leads to fundamentalism in almost every country where there is God belief. People who think they know what God wants are amongst the most dangerous people on earth. That's the point.Tom Storm

    :up:
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    poetryJack Cummins

    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!

    5gt0exxevc4s6pvc.gif

    (All Done Searching for the Answer to Everything)

    Remember that GIFs move if you click on them.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    It does not make any sense to talk about reality without the INFORMATION about it.Pop

    uy7530bhog385kx1.gif

    (Seeking the Ultimate Information of the Library of Everything)

    The Poetic Universe

    It appears to us that the world consists
    Of parts continuing on from a moment ago,
    And thus retain their identity in time;

    Yet, matter likely only appears secondarily
    As a congealed potentiality gestalt.

    The sun is not the same sun as it was
    A trillionth of a second ago that does.
    To us a semblance of the ‘sun’ remains.

    There are no objects that are identical
    With themselves over time, and so perhaps
    The temporal sequence remains open.

    Nature is then no longer seen as clockwork,
    But only as a ‘possibility gestalt’,
    The whole world occurring anew each moment.

    The deeper reality from which the world arises,
    Acts as a unity as an indivisible ‘potentiality’,
    Which can perhaps realize itself in many ways,
    It not being a strict sum of the partial states.

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

    We have 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,
    Within her requisite of ongoing change.

    Thus 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.

    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 ‘it from bits’ as the 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.

    In this concordance of literature,
    We are the Cosmos’ book of adventure,
    As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
    Being both the contained and the container.

    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.
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    information has to be the fundamental stuffPop

    … In the Library of the Cosmos


    Writing the Prosaic Cosmos

    Capability Information is the energy/gravity
    that papers the covariant quantum fields
    that ink the particles of the standard model
    that stroke the alphabet letters of the atoms
    that word the dictionary molecules
    that phrase the biotype DNA cells
    that verb the subjects
    that sentence the creatures
    that paragraph the species
    that story the ongoing tree of life
    that books the literature of the unified-verse
    that libraries the Cosmos.

    Programming the Universe:



    (Shows some pictures I took while on vacation in our developing Universe—
    or else I had the best telescope and microscope.)
  • Can we explain the mystery of existence?
    Have you ever considered whether information is the fundamental stuff?Pop

    Anton Zeilinger, in a famous statement concluded, "Randomness is the bedrock of reality", after proving it in his state of the art laboratory to a degree of 3-sigma or more.

    I concluded it on the cheap by noting that the bedrock can't have any inputs to it, although I still hesitate to admit 'random'… because what is it that makes a Geiger counter not beep in between its 'random' beeps? …

    I once visited the Library of Babel to see if it had any information. It contains every possible book. This entire forum was in there, too.

    PDF: https://theomarkhayyamclubofamerica.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/vault-8.5x11-jpg-150-dpi.pdf

    Video:

PoeticUniverse

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