The solution to Zeno's paradox is that time is an interval, thus cannot go to zero, meaning that since velocity is distance/time the distancing will still happen.

What can be honestly attacked in a belief system is the believer's stating of the beliefs as if they are true. If only a belief could make its object be true, but it can't. Will they go to jail for trying to mislead? No, not usually, but their integrity remains damaged and so they can be called on it. Will anger do anything? No, it only backfires. The same for generalizations without specifics.

Using anger to thwart an opposing belief
Does nothing positive to provide a relief
But negatively shows the inability
To directly and completely counter the plea.

happiness — TheMadFool

Life’s object must be mental happiness,
For thoughts are all we can think, feel, or sense.
Aim for this euphoric state of well-being,
For true paradise is a state of mind.

Happiness is a way of life that celebrates
A living aliveness—that then opens gates
To further adventure, friendship, and delights,
To joy, success, triumph, and greater heights.

The redundant free will thread redux lives on…

Now’s pen inscribes, based on what was there,
Its destined words phrasing our sentence here.
Although it may spell to us right or wrong,
Even one letter’s change hasn’t a prayer.

Since outputs always have inputs, so true,
Then what, we wonder, should we try to do?
It’s the other way around, oh, brain stew,
For cause, time, and the universe do you!

Outputs must have inputs, they in turning
Becoming inputs to more ‘fates’ churning.
In that sense, all is writ, on every path,
As in ours, so what must be will e’er spring.

What be: thy output must form from input,
For naught else can stride the moving foot,
And ‘randoms’ recede; naught from nought makes no.
The pen can’t revise its scroll; "we’re" caput!

The unborn future is inherent in the past,
It’s ‘will be’ is real, with no unreal contrast class,
As there’s no opposite to existence—no Nil;
It’s not just that future is going to exist.

The present now undergoes an updating,
In a fleeting swoosh that passes it away,
For the ‘now’ fades, consumed, as future becomes,
Yet, what will become past can’t just non-exist.

Is future connected to the present?
Yes, and in more ways than you’d want it sent,
As the consistencies you might resent:
All future flowers from seeds of the present.

As of now we hold reality’s attention—
This is the time of our present comprehension.
What is past exists only in our memory,
The future only in our imagination.

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
Sensation savors what is presently known;
Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
The delight is such that none could produce alone.

But now, Science has whittled the material world down to intangible particles & invisible fields, and found that -- lo and behold -- the foundation of physics is grounded on immaterial metaphysics. — Gnomon

— Extrinsic Shadow, Intrinsic Light —

Physics, once more direct, is now but an
Immaterial science of math-shadows,
While mysticism, once but a fogged notion,
Claims the direct observation of the Light.

— The Mystical Realm —

It said, in my dreams, “Of ever waking,
It’s hard to convince you, in dream-language,
As when, in wakeful reality,
To tell you of that which is beyond telling.”

Neither Theism Nor Atheism Can Prove

Invisibles can neither be shown nor not,
So, one’s ‘agnostic’ toward the belief or not,
No matter the 'sure things' dishonestly said;
Thus, none can teach the belief as true or not.

So are you suggesting… — ZhouBoTong

Nah, it's just for fun and because you commented. 'Adonais' by Shelley is one of the best I've come across.

So, if 'God' is outside of time, as timeless, He can't change or change events, I suppose.

No, for one cannot be free of the will, for then what would one will with.

Late Afternoon at the OK Club—Part 1—More ‘Now’, plus ‘IS’ & ’Nothing’
 

(Click.)
Bora-Bora Bored in Tahiti

Ruby and I pour each other a glass of wine, and it tastes just as sweet in whatever whenever frame its ‘now’ settles in to.

Now

To future columns we stretch our present row,
By a lifeline of tenuously spun vow…
Oh. how soon the weighted web begins to fail;
The only real time under our feet is now.

Hectic and hurried, we rush to success.
Serenity can’t find us unless
We slow down, see shades, hear tones, feel textures,
Smell scents, and enjoy life’s loving caress.

See them hurrying hither and thither:
Oh, look at the time! I must go whither.
What sense the life that has no time to live?
Wherefore the wind that swirls in a dither?

A moment of eternity in hand,
Caught from a wingéd creature on time’s sand,
Yet put aside to later view in peace.
It flies. Now pursue it through Never-Land!

Let not the certainty of the present be
Held mortgage for the Deed of Futurity,
For tomorrow’s just a gleam from afar
And yesterday’s but a cold ash of thee.


(Ruby)

“Did you vote today, Austin?”

“No, but In my bridge game, I bid one No-Trump and my partner raised to two Clintons.”

“Ha-ha. There is a Rubaiyat of Bridge, you know.”

“I have it. I’ll post it one day.”

Election Day For the Eternal Basis

“What happens, from there being no election,
Of that which hath no point for direction?”
“Everything happens, for it e’er changes,
Revealing all faces of complextion.”

Ruby Yacht nods and says, see this quatrain:”

The sphere upon which mortals come and go,
Has no end nor beginning that we know;
And none there is to tell us in plain truth:
Whence do we come and whither do we go.
—Ahmad Saidi

“Has no end or beginning” seems to be right on target, as eternal/ever, since, given that ‘Nothing’ can’t be productive because it can’t exist to do anything. Therefore, what ‘IS’ must be ungenerated and deathless, as Parmenides indicates.”

She adds, “FitzOmar refers to Nothing four times, mostly as  some ultimate oblivion.”

“And his Nows are ubiquitous, and his 'Great Wheel' is 'What is'.”

There is, of course, also the possibility to consider that Benedict xii made a mistake when he decided to officially declare that the soul as an immortal entity does exist. What do you think? — Daniel C

These things can't be known for sure, nor the underpinnings of it and more as 'God'; therefore, it is dishonest to the max to declare truth. What happened to their honest word, 'faith'?

But I am not convinced that most people in this thread are even understanding what we are getting at...I certainly am not understanding what they are getting at? — ZhouBoTong

The adventurous Zhou was back in the light of day, wondering what the descriptions of 'God' had in common, but there was a paradox with the 'Eternal' being timeless and and 'God' seeming to do things in time, this perhaps making for some bad weather in the thread when it became known.

So, he takes a walk in the woods to clear his head of 'God' and from capital letters beginning verse lines…

BoTong sights an ominous type of cloud,
And shakes, hearing thunderous rhymes so loud,
Just having survived the meters’ melodies
And scans, and the ten syllables allowed.

He runs breathless through meadow and forest,
Fast pursued by the stings of wind and rain;
On and on he pushes, wild without rest,
Searching for haven from the forum’s pain.

The storm chases him till he can go no more;
He stands helpless, backed up against a door,
But falls through it before death can touch him,
Saved by the library admitting him.

He wanders deep, down the poetic path,
Aglow in the soft beauty that it hath.
He sees John Keats kissing Fanny Brawne,
As he spoke more than words but less than song.

And Byron, endowing form with fancy,
While Wordsworth pens his thoughts to Lucy,
And Shelley, plumbing depths of mystery.
He reads them all; they grow his poet-tree.

Deeper still he probes, looking in on it,
And hears Mrs. Browning reading a sonnet.
Poetically, he takes them all in, even
The shadowy Emily Dickenson.

As soon as the lightning storm is past,
Zhou Botong enters the courtyard so vast.

Here the secret garden, half as old as time,
Where poets live and write their words and rhyme,
While the nightingale creates the rose,
By moonlit magic, from their thoughts sublime.

Literary scenes unfold before him,
Such as music approaches and surrounds,
And builds on the vibrance which in one is—
To fill with beautiful visions and sounds.

His quick thoughts rise, mist wafting from the dew,
As living dreams unveil more than he knew.
From poetry’s light the garden grew,
Revealing mysterious wonders new.

There Zhou relaxes, up against a tree,
Savoring the feeling of the poetry,
Where all the flowers used in Shakespeare’s plays
Grow together in a living bouquet.

The reason I created this thread is about that eternal property of things. — elucid

There are no permanent temporary things but just the permanent eternal. What's thought of as a 'thing' is series of events, as a hub of relations, a process.

What is the basis of the semblance, you might ask. Nature is kind of 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. But… who really knows.

Launch yourself into deep space and see if you keep on going?

your simple poem above took me two or three reads before I really understood all 4 lines — ZhouBoTong

I had to first look up the Zhou Botong character on Wiki so that the poem would make a little bit of sense.

Suppose, you are something that exists at time 12 pm. Once it is 12:01 pm, the guy (you), which existed at 12 pm is non-existent now. — elucid

There are no objects that are identical with themselves over time, although it appears to us that the world consists of parts that have continued on from “a moment ago”, and thus still retain their identity in time. There are little deaths of parts as well as little births of parts happening all the time, as atoms coming and going, and more changes.

The self is thus not so rock solid as it seems.
The moment-to-moment changes differ from Death
Only in degree. In essence, they are identical,
Although at the opposite ends of the spectrum.

Crazy people trust their beliefs enough to jump off of buildings singing "I believe I can fly". — Sunnyside

I jumped off of the Empire State Building one time, and lived to tell about it because, luckily, I was only on the first step when I jumped. Geronimo!

do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. — Serving Zion

Yes, for there can be no 'taking' in what is freely given with no conditions.

So how would or should this play out for a physicalist or someone who thinks that the paranormal or the supernatural - as used as categories, not that they are named well - do not exist? IOW how should they attempt to find counter-evidence? — Coben

Someone, I think, Randi, offered a lot of money to whomever could show something, and though a lot of people tried no one showed anything.

Faith is an example of a belief held without knowledge, faith is often held only by personal experience and hope. — Sunnyside

Trust' is a step up from 'faith', meaning that you have at least seen something happen, such as morning dawning. 'Faith' adds zero to what is wanted.

I just have a general aversion to poetry. — ZhouBoTong

Zhou BoTong, trapped in a cave by a poem,
As by the writing on the wall stranded,
Was martially both right and left handed;
Such he slashed rhythms and rhymes from the stone.

It's a product of the brain and nervous system, — Swan

Consciousness/mind is a brain process, then, a product, with the objects in the mind also a product/result, making the mind to be a reflection of what's already been figured out a split-second ago, all this not allowing for the mind to figure anything on its own, and thus not a soul.

Hammurabi had a code of morality and rules in 1700 BC.

What manner of phenomenon is Sin?
An independent entity, akin
To noxious fumes, which God resolved to clear
By proxy, through his Son in human skin?

Or is it just a property, possessed
By people who have willfully transgressed?
If so, a scapegoat proves of no avail;
The remedy lies in the sinner’s breast.

“I love this detective school, Sherlock.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary.”

“This class of opium is great, too!”

“High school, Watson.”

Sherlock Holmes — TheMadFool

Sherlock, the great logician, even as a baby just born in a dark cave could infer the universe from a grain of sand, and in the next moment derive the existence of Niagara Falls and the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans from a drop of water.

Do you find your stuff on the internet — Sunnyside

No; it's mine.

or just make it up as you go? — Sunnyside

Only sometimes.

Happy to see that you're not from the dark side.

Perhaps one may at first obey out of fear, but later get used to obeying, and even later reflect on what good it does, and then just be morally good about it. Kind of like how some discipline their children.

I just got a letter asking me to pay the toll for the Whitestone Bridge.

'tension' between 'chatter' on the one hand, and 'ineffability', — fresco

'Ineffability' is all there is for believers to push forward with, which doesn't really do anything, no matter how much babbling. Some, then, push back, such as against science. They want what they want, and so they repeat their wishes a zillion times in a zillion ways over and over again. That's human nature.

On and on they say of Who paved the way,
Then even tell the nature of such Theity,
And on and on they presume further upon,
In that support group: ‘On and On Anon’.

Laudable it certainly is, this is one of the most interesting discussions I have ever seen here or elsewhere. — Sunnyside

The reasoning spurred by investigations into 'God' even gives us the outline of The Theory of Everything:

TOE Bound

The philosophical strides leap and bound,
For the causelessness of All must be found,
Along with the unfree will that dooms a Mind;
It’s staggering: All goes round and round!

NDE tunnels of light and such can be explained by neurology, and OBE’s by a condition called sleep paralysis. They can also be induced, resulting in full blown episodes. Neither, then, are proof of a beyond, but of an altered brain state.

It is also the case that people of different religions see different religious figures during NDE’s, an indication that the phenomenon occurs within the mind, not without.

OBE’s are easily induced by drugs. The fact that there are receptor sites in the brain for such artificially produced chemicals means that there are naturally produced chemical in the brain that, under certain circumstances (the stress of an trauma or an accident, for example), can induce any or all of the experiences typically associated with an NDE or OBE. They are then nothing more than wild trips induced by the trauma of almost dying. Lack of oxygen also produces increased activity though disinhibition—mental modes that give rise to consciousness.

What about the experience of a tunnel in an NDE? Well, the visual cortex is on the back of the brain where information from the retina is processed. Lack of oxygen, plus drugs generated, can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs ‘stripes’ of neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals may be ‘seen’ as a tunnel.

We normally only see clearly only at about the size of a deck of cards held at arm’s length (Try looking just a little away and the clarity goes way down)—this is the center of the tunnel which is caused by neuronal stripes. I am not really dying to go down the tunnel…

Which Calendar is More Accurate: The Pope’s or Omar Khayyam’s?

Tropical year:                 365.242190 days
Jalil Calendar:               365.24219858156 days (Khayyam)
Gregorian Calendar:     365.2425 days
Justinian Calendar:       365.245 days


Austin's New Calendar



(The new last month of the year is ‘Remember’)

The last truly major revision to the calendar occurred over eight hundred years ago, when Omar Khayyàm realigned the Moslem calendar so that the seasons would arrive at the same time each year. Back then the year started in March, with the spring, the more logical time for a new year to start, I would say, since nature is new in the spring. It took Europe a long time to pick up on the changes. I suppose they got tired of celebrating Christmas in July-type weather or shoveling snow in the summertime.

Omar also revised his philosophic calendar to suit his mental outlook, by advocating that dead yesterday and unborn tomorrow be removed from the calendar; thus, he could truly live for Today. Later on, he refined this theory further by also removing dead and unborn minutes, so that he could live for the moment. My calendar revisions are more along those lines.

So, it’s high time for another major revision to the calendar, one that’s reflective of modern times, for the only improvements made during the last few hundred years have been to skip leap days in years that are evenly divisible by 400, and, more recently, to add a few insignificant leap-seconds every few year or so (”Wow, that seemed like a really long weekend!”).

First of all, I am eliminating the months of January (Bran-new-airy), February (Feb-buries), and March (March!) because, 1) They all contain cold and rotten weather, and 2) They totally lack holidays on which we could get time off with pay from work. It’s a heck of a long wait for a holiday between New Year’s Day and Memorial Day (we used to get Good Friday off, but now even that day has been eliminated, for it’s a religious-ethnic holiday and other religious-ethnic groups could then have proposed other such holidays, and so there’d be no time left for actual work days). Note: don’t worry, Valentine’s Day is being retained and moved elsewhere, as is New Year’s Day.

I am adding a whole new month, called Remember, which comes right after December. That way you will have some extra time to do all of the things that you meant or forgot to do during the year. Just think, there will be not as much need to say “Wait until next year!”.

My revised year starts in the spring, in April, which, as I’ve said, is much more appropriate, since it is a time for renewal and rebirth. By the way, it is easily proved that the year once started in spring by noting the Latin numbers from which the months got their modern names, i.e., 7-sept, 8-oct, 9-nov, 10-dec. We, of course, have now adopted these Latin numeric prefixes into general English, as well, for example, septuagenarian (age 70-80), octagon (8-sided), octave (8 musical degrees), novena (9 days of devotion), decimal (base 10), decimate (to kill one in ten), decathlon, decade, etc.

I also discovered that the old names of July and August were Quintus (Latin 5) and Sextus (Latin 6), but Julius and Augustus Caesar changed the names to suit their own. As for May, June, and April, those were the names of the Caesars’ girlfriends. So, anyway, what all this means is that since December used to be the tenth month (dec), the year obviously once started in March. I am generally readopting this policy, except that, since I’ve eliminated March, my revised year must now start in April, on April’s Fools Day, in fact, which will have to share the honor with New Year’s Day, an appropriate combination considering all of the foolish things that we do on New Year’s Eve.

So, since my year as so far constructed is only ten months long, I must now distribute the excess days that made up the two missing months. I would like to make all the months thirty days long, since people have problems with the current variations. So, I am introducing a new, unnumbered day into the week, called Funday, a day which does not have to be numbered or accounted for in any way whatsoever.

Funday occurs between Sunday and Monday. On Funday you can do as you please. Funday doesn’t even have a numerical date, and so it cannot possibly count against schedules, deadlines, or bills. Weekends, as we all know, have always been too short, but now, with the introduction of Funday, weekends become three days long.

I have, as have many others, already pioneered  the concept that led to Funday: I get up late on Saturday and Sunday to recover energy spent during the work week, and then, by Sunday night, being so well rested, I go to sleep quite late or sometimes not at all and stay up all night reading or doing you know what. Of course, I pay for all of this by being very tired on Monday, but naturally it’s much better to be tired on company time than on your own time, and who ever expects much of Monday anyway.

So, this is what led me to the idea of a Funday on which you could do whatever you want; you don’t even have to visit your relatives. Funday is totally dedicated to fun, and a new law will make it a crime for you to do anything else, although shopping and home chores are allowed if you whistle while you work or sing a happy song. Yes, people are so harried these days that we have to force them to enjoy life.

So, thanks to Funday there will be no more rush-rush or hectic feelings when the work week starts. People need no longer waste short weekends of great weather by doing silly and ridiculous things like going grocery shopping or doing the laundry.

Well, you might say, instead of lengthening the week why not just get people to do all their weekend chores during the week, but, of course, they can’t, since they’re so stressed out and exhausted when they get home from work that they just collapse and can’t even do the simplest thing.

Yes, yes, I know that this is simply a matter of attitude and style, but, believe me, personal changes, even such common sense changes, seem to take huge amounts of effort; whereas, I can simply solve the problem more easily with the introduction of Funday.

But, ten months of thirty numbered days plus five undated Fundays each month equals only 350 days, so there are still fifteen more days that must be dispersed into the new calendar. I am solving this by adding a special summer and winter festival period of seven days each, the winter festival being no more really than a re-establishment of the old Saturnalian pagan festival held in olden times, before the Christians put a damper on it. This winter festival is added between Christmas and New Year’s Day so that we can have a vacation from our vacation of visiting relatives and feasting and pigging out. The summer festival is inserted between July and August, and centers around the true midsummer’s day. Naturally these festivals do not count against anyone’s vacation time.

There are just a few minor alterations left. There is still one day left to be accounted for, and I am inserting it between May and June as Valentines Day. I am removing a day from June, so that the saying “Nothing is so rare as a day in June” will actually be true. In the old calendar, a day in February was 4.2% more rare than a day of June, but, of course, February is gone now. The day removed from June will be called World Day. On this day we should try to get all the world’s peoples to coexist in perfect harmony. This day occurs between June and July. I am moving the Fourth of July holiday to the first Monday in July so that we will have yet another extra long weekend.

Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are to be designated as home/work transition adjustment-recovery periods, during which one need not be present at work, thus reducing the work week to only four days!

Yes, the computer age has arrived and it’s time that we reaped its benefits and gained more leisure time, for this was the promise of the computer age: that computers would free us, so why do I feel like they have become our masters?

Furthermore, the nebulous day called Someday is being removed from the calendar and from everyday conversation, because what it really meant was “Noneday”, as in “Someday we’ll go out to lunch”.

Also, just as a matter of information, note that the days of the week were named after the sun, the moon, and all of the known planets of the time, although some of the days derive their names from French or Latin: Sunday (sun), Monday (moon), Tuesday (Mardi in French, or Mars), Wednesday (Mercredi, or Mercury in French), Thursday (Jeudi in French, or Jupiter), Friday (Vendredi in French for Venus), Saturday (Saturn). However, this still leaves Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune unrepresented, but I’ll probably leave those for my next revision.

My new names for the days of the week are: Onesday, Twosday, Wedsday, Thirstday, Fryday, Satday, Sundae, and Funday, and are for, respectively, self, relationships, marrieds, drinking, frying fish, sitting around, ice cream and fudge, and fun.

Or, we could just forget all of these revisions and go back to Omar’s great idea about having a calendar with only one day on it: Today.

The word "particle" is ambiguous. — TheMadFool

A particle, as a field quantum, is spread out, as kind of a lump.

Definitely causeless, but it may be that something that lacks a cause can, in some sense, also be said to be its own cause. — Bartricks

Either way, where/when does it get its information?

But we - the conscious things - are not physical things. — Bartricks

I, as the conscious thing, am my own cause, or causeless?

There's no delay to consciousness and I doubt you've read the Libet article. — Bartricks

So, the speed of light is infinite and any processing time is infinitely fast? OK. Time to go mental.

Address the argument. — Bartricks

Hello argument!

Less powerfully supported, by powerfully supported nevertheless, is this premise: — Bartricks

Now, really, who's going to notice a slight tape-like delay to consciousness?

But we can be informed by brain-consciousness correlation experiments and neurology…

Therefore we are not physical things. — Bartricks

Shush… they're listening. Too late; here come the white coats; we're all mental!