Therefore using same logic, Spinoza's view that God = nature and nature = God is imperfect as well. — SpaceDweller

Is anything in this world perfect? My religious up-bringing repeatedly pointed to the imperfection of humans, and human logic. But then, it pointed to a leather-bound book, and declared that it was "perfect" as a revelation from God.

Yet, after the age of reason I concluded, via my imperfect logic, that the man-made book was so obviously imperfect, that I couldn't believe a word it said. Since the only thing Perfect is ALL (1) or NOTHING (0) only death will make my life perfect. In the meantime, I simply deal with uncertainty, and make-do with good-enough for pragmatic purposes. :smile:

PS___I accept that Nature is G*D, in the sense that the First Cause created the world out of H/er own substance : Information (the creative power to enform). So, the space-time creation is imperfect and evolving; but the Enfernal (eternal-- infinite) Creator must be perfect, in the sense of Whole, Complete, ALL.


PanEnDeism :
Panendeism (all in god) is an ontological position that explores the interrelationship between God (The Cosmic Mind) and the known attributes of the universe. Combining aspects of Panentheism and Deism, Panendeism proposes an idea of God that both embodies the universe and is transcendent of its observable physical properties.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html

The 'theoretical' Philosophy has no theory in concluding "deemed to be God" because 'deeming' doesn't make 'God'. — PoeticUniverse

As a philosophical hypothesis, I would use the term "inferred". In my Enformationism thesis I provide the factual basis and the reasoning. "To Deem" is to have an opinion. But "to infer" is to have good reasons. Of course, all inferences, scientific or philosophical, are uncertain. To "infer" a Big Bang from astronomical evidence doesn't "make" a universe from nothing. But, so far, nobody has come up with a better solution to the perennial philosophical "why" questions. So, G*D is my "theory", and I'm sticking to it. :joke:

To Infer : deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements

Theory : an idea used to account for a situation or justify a course of action.

What is the main purpose of philosophy? :
Philosophy overall aims to question assumptions we make about our lives and really dig in to the details of why we think what we think and how we choose to act. It can get complicated at times, but it can also help a person to see more clearly that there are other ways of looking at the world than is our habit.
https://study.com/academy/lesson/philosophy-definition-purpose.html

The sticky part #1 is that humans ARE natural beings as well. Just as much as a bird. So how does a building or a computer differ from a nest? They're are both built by natural beings. — Artemis

True, but trivial. Everything in the world is "natural". But only one species of natural beings has gone beyond the limitations of Natural Laws, to become a law unto themselves. Humans can now break, or bend, the laws of Nature to their own Will (culture). Admittedly, sometimes this "super-natural" power works to their own detriment (pollution) , but the law-bending also results in undeniable benefits to humanity (air-conditioning).

Ask yourself if you'd rather live like a cave-man (i.e. like an animal), or like a modern house-man ; or woman. The cave-dwellers used cold dark caverns and rough animal skins to shield them from adverse weather conditions. But, modern home-dwellers have air-conditioning to make the indoor weather more suitable to their preferences. That power to rule over Nature, makes humans more like gods than animals. As a species, humans have not yet created a Garden of Eden, but they are working on it. :joke:

PS___The technological progress of humanimals may seem to be offset by a lack of moral progress. However, from a long-term perspective, the ethical treatment of animals & fellow humans has evolved in a positive direction, as illustrated by Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, i.e. Human Nature .

If you want to join us you're more than welcome. :wink: — Raul

I might be interested in an open-ended Discussion, but not a Yes-or-No Debate. :smile:

Why are they natural, but human buildings are unnatural? — TiredOfYall

Bird's nests are Natural, because they are "designed" by evolution. Buildings are Cultural because humans take control of plodding erratic Evolution, in order to speed it up, and turn it to their own purposes. :smile:

Nature vs Culture :
What makes culture distinct, according to Ortner, is that it has the power to transcend the natural and manipulate it for its own purpose.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-relationship-between-nature-culture-diana-szpotowicz

One cannot even hope to have an 'explanation' that itself would need all the more explanation, to the nth degree, even, plus as a regress. — PoeticUniverse

That may be true of empirical Science. But not of theoretical Philosophy. Yet, the best they could come up with is a mysterious hypothetical First Cause that at least terminates the regression of Evolution at a Question Mark (Singularity ; God ; Logos, ?) instead of a never-ending tower-of-turtles ellipsis (multiverse ; many worlds) . . . . .

Philosophers have been "explaining" the same general questions to each generation for eons. Ironically, even empirical scientists get mired in eternal regress whenever they try to explain general questions, such as a Theory of Everything. :joke:

TOE or GOD ? :
A theory of everything (TOE or ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, theory of the world or master theory is a hypothetical, singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all physical aspects of the universe. Finding a theory of everything is one of the major unsolved problems in physics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything

First Cause vs Infinite Regress :
A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe or some totality of objects.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument

A Deistic profession of Faith :
The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness.
( Albert Einstein - The Merging of Spirit and Science)
https://www.spaceandmotion.com/albert-einstein-god-religion-theology.htm

Given all the discoveries and insights we collected, I think it's rather God or infinity (That is God or I don't know): — SpaceDweller

That was indeed my choice, many years ago, when I decided that my Back-to-the-Bible religion was no longer believable. However, I had no answer to more general philosophical questions, such as "why are we here?", or "Did something come from nothing". So, for years, I labeled myself an Agnostic (I simply don't know).

But now, after many more years of philosophical investigation, I call myself a Deist. That allows me to say I believe that some kind of God (creative principle) was necessary to account for the existence of our contingent temporary world. But, I still don't know anything directly about the First Cause, except what I can infer from studying the non-random Effects of Creation. That way, I can have my Creator and Science too. :smile:

PS__But, sadly, no hope for salvation from an imperfect creation. So, I just make the best of a sometimes difficult situation.

Still can't have 'The Mind' as First and Fundamental even as a Potential that thinks as much as an Actual; complexity can't be just sitting around already complete. — PoeticUniverse

So you say. And that's a true statement . . . in the physical Real World. But, the metaphysical Ideal Realm may not be bound by the physical rules of thermodynamics. Scientists have long been perplexed by the existence of "Natural Laws" in a dynamic world scrambled by fundamental Randomness. For Plato's Forms, actual complexity is not "just sitting around already complete". Instead, a Metaphysical Form is merely the Potential Design for a future thing, that must then be Actualized, sometimes by a prolonged complex process of evolution, into a Physical Thing.

For example, if randomness is just a tool for creating novel opportunities, then maybe that tool is "wielded" so-to-speak by the organizing law of Natural Selection. Together, the random-number-generator and the non-random-fitness-selector form a progressive evolutionary program for optimizing a design. But that program would not exist without a Programmer, who has the mental potential to imagine a future reality, and to make it actual. In the First Cause scenario, the computer -- our complexifying physical universe -- is merely the execution of a simple Genetic Algorithm.

So, maybe you can't make sense of a Primal Mind, but a designing mind is essential to an evolutionary program. The mind doesn't have to do the work though, it merely sets the criteria for Selection (Natural Laws). Then, the Programmer starts the machine to grind-out solutions to the Cosmic Question. Anyway, to me, the notion that our world began as an idea in the Mind of G*D is more poetic than the null hypothesis of an accidental world, existing for no reason. That would be a meaningless irrational coincidence. Moreover, the magical theory of a world-from-nothing makes no sense without a magician. :joke:


Evolutionary Programming :
Special computer algorithms inspired by biological Natural Selection. It is similar to Genetic Programming in that it relies on internal competition between random alternative solutions to weed-out inferior results, and to pass-on superior answers to the next generation of algorithms. By means of such optimizing feedback loops, evolution is able to make progress toward the best possible solution – limited only by local restraints – to the original programmer’s goal or purpose. In Enformationism theory the Prime Programmer is portrayed as a creative deity, who uses bottom-up mechanisms, rather than top-down miracles, to produce a world with both freedom & determinism, order & meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_programming
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

Evolutionary Design :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna

Genetic algorithm :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm

Coincidence vs Creation :
Laws of Nature’s God
http://bothandblog.enformationism.info/page51.html

PS__Even in the scientific metaphor of the world as a dumb machine, someone . . . some Mind has to design the mechanism, and to turn it on. Machines don't just appear out of nowhere.

Aquinas makes an unwarranted leap here to a Being having Mind because he wants 'God'. — PoeticUniverse

Yes. As a Catholic theologian, his philosophical definition had to resemble the official Bible-God, which is described both as an eternal principle (similar to Brahman or Tao), and as a humanoid person, with some un-god-like human attributes, such as a fragile ego, and a quick temper (like Zeus). Nevertheless, I find his rational philosophical God to be closer to my own than the typical bible-thumper's hell-fire War-Lord of the World. But, I actually go back to Aristotle's non-religious ideal principles for my god-model.

BEING (being qua being) would not "have" a mind or brain, but would be The Mind, in the sense of containing & processing all of the information necessary to create a space-time world from scratch (i.e. physical world from meta-physical design -- an idea & a plan). Philosophical god-models are usually abstract & potential, as opposed to the Religious deities that are concrete & actual.

Brahman :
In Hinduism, Brahman connotes the highest universal principle, the ultimate reality in the universe.

Tao or Dao is a Chinese word signifying the "way", "path", "route", "road" or sometimes more loosely "doctrine", "principle" or "holistic beliefs". Wikipedia

That's better; I hope Aquinas is listening. It's not only simple as a necessity for its forming of the lightweight elementaries but also because its needs to be partless and continuous to be Absolute as Fundamental. It would not be able to think, plan, and create via a System of Mind as the ultimate simplicity; however, so it is that the lesser leads to the greater, not as Aquinas' view that is the reverse and would lead to an infinite regress of greaters making lessers. — PoeticUniverse

In my worldview, the First Cause (Creator) must be eternal (timeless) and simple (in the sense of atomic Holism). However, in order to produce the space-time world --- that we know & love, and grumble about --- the Cosmic Cause must have the infinite Potential to subdivide the whole into subordinate parts, while remaining more than the sum of the parts. And the power to create beings that not only have living bodies, but also thinking & planning minds. Consequently, a physical deity would not suffice. Only a metaphysical BEING could be "partless and continuous" (no elementary particles). In order to be Eternal and Necessary and Creative, that First Cause would have to comply with Aristotle's metaphor of a Seed of Potential. The seed is not a tree, but it contains coded information (DNA) that can be transformed into a full-grown tree.

Potential vs Actual :
This connects the matter/form distinction to another key Aristotelian distinction, that between potentiality (dunamis) and actuality (entelecheia) or activity (energeia).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/#ActuPote

'Is', not 'was'. It's enough to know that it's the simplest possible, it being the closest to Null that could be. It's extremely far from Full, for as Full it could not rearrange. — PoeticUniverse

My hypothetical G*D "is" and always was. It's simple, in the sense of an undivided Whole, but in order to create, must have the power & potential to produce a physical world, not from Material, but from Ideas (Information). Since G*D per se is no-physical-thing, it is "Null" in terms of actual things. However, it must also be All-metaphysical-things in the sense of creative Potential. Hence, "Full" of unformed possibilities.

G*D—God Damn! To boldly jump to it having Mind is a leap much more than a tiny quantum jump. — PoeticUniverse

Yes! Absolutely. If the First Cause did not have the Power to conceive a world,, how could human minds emerge from the rough & tumble of mindless Evolution. The conceptual leap is from a humanoid god-concept to an abstract philosophical principle :Mind qua Mind = intellect, consciousness, thought

The Philosophical Principle : being qua being.

Conceive : 2. form or devise (a plan or idea) in the mind.

What is a first principle in philosophy? :
A first principle is a foundational proposition or assumption that stands alone. We cannot deduce first principles from any other proposition or assumption.

Being Qua Being :
Metaphysics is the study of "being qua being", or the study of attributes that belong to things merely insofar as they exist, e.g. existence, unity, sameness and difference.

1. This Permanent Thing would be local everywhere, as it is before and after our universe and during. Further, as it's the only thing, its rearrangements are it too; even we are it. — PoeticUniverse

I agree. That's why I define my personal First Cause simply as BEING : essential existence. Aquinas defined his God as the Necessary Being, without whom nothing (no beings) would exist. It's the "only thing" that exists absolutely. So simple unitary existence must be the beginning point of all theories of how & why the space-time world exists. Some postulate that space-time/matter-energy is eternal, but the Big Bang cosmology --- including the Big Freeze finale --- put a damper on such speculations. And physical Nature has never been shown to create something from nothing.

So, if we accept the logic of First Cause or Necessary Being, we can assume, without fear of contradiction, that some universal creative agency existed prior to the beginning of Space-Time. That said & set though, the "hard problem" is to determine what that hypothetical "permanent thing" was, in a more definitive sense. Reductionists & Materialists prefer to imagine that it was more-of-the-same forever : turtles-all-the-way-down. But Holists & Idealists lean toward Meta-physical & Essential answers to ultimate questions. Unfortunately, neither side can prove their pet theory, empirically or logically. So, it comes down to a matter of opinion and preference. For my money though, the eternally un-changing Ideality answers make more sense, than anything resembling our temporal and ever-changing impermanent Reality.

Ironically, most religious god-models are based on imperfect impermanent human features. That's why I prefer philosophical non-physical god-theories, such as those of Aristotle & Aquinas. :nerd:


Does modern cosmology prove the existence of God? :
The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that exists has a cause, and what caused the Universe? It's got to be God.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/modern-cosmology-god/

Kalam Cosmological Argument :
1. whatever begins to exist has a cause,
2. the Universe began to exist,
3. and therefore the Universe has a cause to its existence.

G*D :
An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a supernatural deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D. This eternal deity is not imagined in a physical human body, but in a meta-physical mathematical form, equivalent to Logos. Other names : ALL, BEING, Creator, Enformer, MIND, Nature, Reason, Source, Programmer. The eternal Whole of which all temporal things are a part is not to be feared or worshiped, but appreciated like Nature.
I refer to the logically necessary and philosophically essential First & Final Cause as G*D, rather than merely "X" the Unknown, partly out of respect. That’s because the ancients were not stupid, to infer purposeful agencies, but merely shooting in the dark. We now understand the "How" of Nature much better, but not the "Why". That inscrutable agent of Entention is what I mean by G*D.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

OFF TOPIC :
My internet connection is slow & erratic today. Anybody else notice the slow responses? A Google search didn't find any experts blaming it on the current Solar Storm. But, since Something doesn't come from Nothing, that will be my assumption until I find some other deity to pin it on. :joke:

A couple of years ago, I posted a review of The Feeling of Life Itself on my blog. I am generally interested in his ideas, but I can't say that I'm "passionate". FWIW, here's the link :
The Feeling of Consciousness
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page18.html

I also wonder what is meant by 'nothing' because it does not appear to us but, perhaps, there is more to 'nothing' than what it appears because as it cannot be observed it may be hard to know how or in what way to describe it, and, perhaps, it is something rather than nothing. — Jack Cummins

That appears to be the reasoning of some Cosmologists, who propose that Something (matter-energy) emerged from No-thing (which was nothing-but formless Aristotelian Potential). Thus, they can assume that some-Thing has always existed, which simply recycles its stuff from one world to another in the tower-of-turtles we call "Multiverse" or "Many Worlds". Since those other invisible & intangible worlds are separated from our material world by an abyss-of-ignorance (space-time boundary), we can't "observe" them, so can only imagine them. That same something-from-nothing reasoning allows hard-nosed scientists to rationalize an invisible intangible Field, from which particular somethings (e.g. elementary particles) emerge at random, for no particular reason.

However, the same Hyperbolic Logic is also used for arguments in favor of various super-natural (or hyper-natural) world-makers. Some imagine humanoid deities, or aliens, as living in parallel universes. But even those imaginary godlets don't have to create new worlds from scratch, since the Potential for un-realized worlds has always existed. Hence, we are forced to conclude that something must have always existed, even if its not a thing in our local Reality. In that manner, we can always extend the tower-of-turtles one step further back closer to infinity. Yet, such asymptotic "what-if" reasoning gets us no closer to complete final understanding. So, that may be why Aristotle avoided speculating on a Real Creator, and merely postulated an Ideal First Cause, or Prime Mover. In that case, philosophers can still argue hypotheticals, as-if those ideals were real, without violating common sense.

That's also why my "G*D" conjecture is not portrayed as Real in any real-world sense. He/she/it only exists in eternal Potential -- like an infinite field of possibilities. And the only function of such a postulate is to extend our reasoning one step beyond the inexplicable Big Bang magical moment. :chin:

Platonic Form :
Form answers the question, "What is that?" Plato was going a step further and asking what Form itself is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_forms

Implies that for God in order to create something out of nothing needs matter to do so. — SpaceDweller

That would be true if the First Cause or Prime Mover created something new from pre-existing raw material as human creators do. Humans are able to create imaginary Utopias without getting their hands dirty with material stuff. But they don't know how to create worlds from scratch, even in theory. So, in order to explain the sudden appearance of our space-time world, from behind a veil of ignorance, we must assume that the Cause was super-human in some meaningful sense.

So the best something-from-nothing theory I'm aware of postulates an immaterial Cause, who can conjure-up Actual enformed matter from raw Information (Potential). Einstein showed mathematically (E=MC^2) that it could be done, in theory. And scientists have transformed matter into energy (atomic bomb), but the reverse, making matter from energy, seems possible, yet remains elusive. Moreover, it cannot, even in theory, be done from scratch (no prexisting material), Therefore, the First Cause must be assumed to have creative powers beyond current human abilities.

That's why, to this day, the Big Bang Theory sounds more like Magic than Thermodynamic Science. So, maybe our explanation for creation should at least consider the possibility of an invisible Magician of some kind. Perhaps the ancient notion of a super-human god might still make sense, in view of our inability to imagine something-from-nothing, without cheating to define "nothing" in terms of something physical. :confused:

Can we manufacture matter? :
So yes, humans can manufacture matter. We can turn light into subatomic particles, but even the best scientists can't create something out of nothing.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/can-we-manufacture-matter.htm

The physicists' references are to the 'vacuum', whose zero-point rest energy is not zero. This Permanent thing is the source of all; 'god' is not required. — PoeticUniverse

The all-encompassing Vacuum, with un-bounded creative energy, that is capable of creating a world from "nothing", sounds like a modern version of an ancient non-anthro-morphic monotheistic God-Theory, such as the Hindu Brahman. That's also the god-model of Western Deism. :smile:

Brahman : the "creative principle which lies realized in the whole world". . . . . the cause of all changes
Note -- Energy is assumed to be the cause of all physical changes in matter, yet is not a material substance itself.

We know God can be described and has properties, since nothing also excludes things such virtual particles and the laws physics which are not physical things therefore I guess nothing also means absence of God. — SpaceDweller

That's the problem with Krauss' theory of a "Universe From Nothing". His so-called "nothing" paradigm omits the metaphysical Bible-God, but retains such metaphysical "non-things" as Space-Time & Natural Laws & Quantum Fields. Those are all imaginary human ideas about the world, not empirical things in the world. So, he is attributing miraculous creative properties to those immaterial concepts, even as he dismisses the god-theory as a discredited ancient paradigm. However, I suspect that -- as a scientist -- he doesn't believe in philosophical Metaphysics. So, no problem. :joke:


PS___Ironically, Krauss is aware of an anomaly in the Cosmic Microwave Background, that seems to contradict the Copernican principle that there's nothing special about Earth relative to the whole cosmos. That recent discovery was labelled "The Axis of Evil" because the "plane" of the CMB, seems to align, for no apparent reason, with the "ecliptic" of our solar system. That astronomical fact does not fit into the conventional atheistic belief system of most cosmologists. Hence -- Evil. :sad:

Copernican Mediocrity :
“The "Axis of Evil" is a name given to an anomaly in astronomical observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The anomaly appears to give the plane of the Solar System and hence the location of Earth a greater significance than might be expected by chance – a result which has been claimed to be evidence of a departure from the Copernican principle. . . . "   

"But when you look at CMB map, you also see that the structure that is observed, is in fact, in a weird way, correlated with the plane of the earth around the sun. Is this Copernicus coming back to haunt us? That's crazy. We're looking out at the whole universe. There's no way there should be a correlation of structure with our motion of the earth around the sun – the plane of the earth around the sun – the ecliptic. That would say we are truly the center of the universe.”
___Lawrence Krauss     Cosmologist

No but thanks, It appears not easy to verify credibility of your sources :meh: — SpaceDweller

Ironically, we now have access to a zillion libraries of information on the internet. But there's also a lot of "fake facts" mixed in. And, in the Trump era, even academics & experts are distrusted. So, ultimately, your own common sense & philosophical skepticism may have to make the judgment of trustworthiness.

I have personally consulted only a fraction of available sources, though. And, my understanding could be misconstrued. So, don't take my word for it. Test if for yourself. Just don't cherry-pick your sources to fit your preconceptions. Pilate's retort to Jesus still applies : "what is Truth". That's an open-ended philosophical question, not a final scientific consensus. :sad:

PS__This is not a situation where you can just "trust your gut", because you're looking for facts, not feelings.

Reality doesn't need an observer at all. — LaRochelle

Actually, as you indicated later, "reality" is an observation. It's an inference from a variety of independent observations, that there is some objective & stable something (ding an sich) which exists even when the subjective observer is not observing. For a weak example, you can close your eyes, and still confirm that a tree is still there by touching it --- or by asking another person to confirm your observation. If you don't believe your own senses, you can always ask someone else : "Is it really there?"

Unfortunately for your dependence on sensory feedback, some philosophers have imagined a "demon" who could cause you to "see" an illusion. Or, as Berkeley postulated, God is always observing, and sustaining H/er creation, even when no human is watching. That possibility supports the notion that physical Reality is actually a metaphysical Idea in the Mind of God. :smile:


Observation :
1. the action or process of observing something or someone carefully or in order to gain information.
2. a remark, statement, or comment based on something one has seen, heard, or noticed.

↪Gnomon
Since we're now discussing God, I'm currently reading Yuval Noah Harari's book Sapiens and he writes that despite the claims, monotheism is a syncretic religion and borrows a page or two from polytheism (saints) and dualist religions like Zoroastrianism (the evil god Angra Manyu aka Satan). — TheMadFool

Yes. Insightful book. And Harari is just one of many modern Jews, who acknowledge the assimilated, rather than revealed, regional & mythical foundations of Judaism, and ultimately of Christianity. :smile:

I see, what you're referring to are "traditions" . . . but to say that Elohim and Yahweh are 2 different Gods or to say that they are deities is incorrect. — SpaceDweller

Yes. Like most cultural traditions, the origins of Yahweh myths fade away into pre-history. Some refer toYahweh as a storm god, similar to Greek Zeus, but others trace his beginnings as an iron-working volcano deity, similar to Hephaestus & Vulcan. But,after the emergence of civilizations, in most middle-eastern traditions, those "minor deities" were not assumed to be omnipotent, but merely specialists in certain phases of natural functions, and served as members of a Pantheon (god family or race).

Prior to the rise of city-states though, and communication between regions, each minor deity was typically the tribal-god of small groups, and were often pictured as war-lords. So, their natural functions were more general --- although the dry environment of desert people would emphasize the vital importance of rain, while mountain-people would find other functions more important. Yet, early multicultural middle-eastern empires began to pattern their gods after their emperors, who typically had officers from disparate regions. Thus, began the myths of remote emperor-gods, whose children, or appointees, ruled over local domains of their own.

The point of this recitation is to say that the rank & role of each deity varied over time. Some. such as
Baal (Lord of rain & dew for Canaanites), and chief deity of his own Chosen People, was for a while one of the tribal gods of Hebrews --- along with the female tree-goddess Asherah ( Astarte, Ishtar). But later, in the kingdom era, the Priests of Yahweh, demoted him to a "false-god" or demon-god, and began a campaign to stamp-out Asherah worship among Jews. So, there was a lot of myth-borrowing among the various tribes & nations of the middle east. For example the Jewish Asherah may have been originally the consort of El (Father of the Elohim family), and the mother-goddess of her people.

Therefore, to say that these mythical figures were deities, depends on the place & time. Their rank & role varied from place to place, and from time to time. And that includes Elohim & Yahweh, who may have been father & son in some myths. But later, in the Jewish traditions, El (proper name) may have inspired the notion of the single abstract formless deity of Monotheism (un-nameable). That name is still reflected in modern Islam as Al-lah. Anything else you want to know? :nerd:

PS___BTW, what does this have to do with "Maleus Scientia"?


Later, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud suggested that Mount Sinai was an erupting volcano in an uncharacteristic monograph, Moses and Mono- theism, and that Yahweh was certainly a volcano-god.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309089214536484?journalCode=jota

The cult of YHWH as god of metallurgy originated among semi-nomadic copper ... This new desert kingdom would leave its mark on the main building at Timna:
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/.premium.MAGAZINE-jewish-god-yahweh-originated-in-canaanite-vulcan-says-new-theory-1.5992072

Asherah is identified as the consort of the Sumerian god Anu, and Ugaritic ʾEl, the oldest deities of their respective pantheons. This role gave her a similarly high rank in the Ugaritic pantheon. Deuteronomy 12 has Yahweh (Jehovah) commanding the destruction of her shrines so as to maintain purity of his worship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah

Hebrew "El" and Islamic "Allah" "
https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Hebrew-word-Elohim-and-the-Arabic-word-Allah-etymologically-related

↪Gnomon
Nice comparison but fundamentally incorrect:
1. It makes the serpent redundant and insufficient.
2. It's not in line with the story of garden of Eden, and not even whole scriptures. — SpaceDweller

Taken as a whole, the Old Testament presents at least two, maybe three or more, different models of deity. Among Hebrews, their tribal-god was merely a member of a god-family, Elohim, similar to the Greek Oympians. In that case, each family member had a specific role in ruling the world. For example, Yahweh was originally a lightning-spear-weilding weather-god, similar to Zeus. But. by the time tribal Hebrews had morphed into the short-term kingdom of national Jews, their minor local deity was promoted to an all-powerful singular universal eternal deity YHWH, who was so fearsome that it was dangerous to even say or write his name.

Ironically, the theologians among the prideful monotheistic priests & scribes were forced to address the philosophical Problem of Evil, which seemed to make the one-and-only deity of The Chosen People responsible, not just for the all-good Garden of Eden, but for for the blood, sweat & tears of the post-garden world. So, apparently they subtly & surreptitiously adopted a concept from polytheistic states, and promoted the snake (god's mouthpiece) in the garden, to a full-time tempter and legalistic adversary, as the anti-god Satan.

Later, as the Jews again morphed from a minor city-state into a world-empire in Roman Christianity, the mono-deity was again split into several personalities : abstract YHWH, personal Jesus, motherly Mary, mystical Holy Spirit, and demonic Satan. Hence, their belief system had come full-circle from Olympian Elohim to Cosmic Lord of Hosts. Therefore, if this condensed overview is close to correct, there was always a need for someone to blame for the imperfections of the divinely-created world. It was only the general deity's specific traits that evolved over the span from Genesis to Revelations. Some people today, imagine that Jesus and Satan were brothers in Heaven, who later became mortal enemies on Earth.

But that's just one of many myths that humans have imagined to explain : A> the contingent existence of the space-time world, and B> the existence of Evil in a world created by a supposedly benevolent ruler of the universe. Hence, an evil-god has always been a Necessary Being for mythology. So it seems that, just as we resolve black & white in the Yin-Yang symbol, we try to resolve the Problem of Evil in the notion of opposed deities in Heaven & Hell, while retaining the concept of One Omniscient, Omnipotent, Eternal Being. :cool:

Yahweh :
In the oldest biblical literature, he is a storm-and-warrior deity who leads the heavenly army against Israel's enemies;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh

YIN_YANG DEITY :


GOOD vs EVIL GODS :

But if we go by evidence, life wasn’t always around and therefore there must be a cold dead universe that existed before it could be appreciated. — Benj96

That's why Bishop Berkeley argued for an outside Observer, who is always watching what goes on in the world. Of course, his "Observer" was not visiting aliens, but the God of Genesis. :smile:

God in the Quad

There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."

Reply:

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."

Note : Here in our poem a quad is essentially the courtyard of a campus, or a quadrangle thereof.

It is like you are the forum's own virtual particle, forever erupting and self-annihilating from the cyber void. Your contributions exist because the PF vacuum expectation value must manifest its daily quota of crackpottery. — apokrisis

Careful!! I'm not sure what you are saying here, but it sounds like putdownery. :cool:

But even as a metaphor, that is quite the wrong kind of causal model for the kind of self-organising immanence I’m talking about. We diverge big time there. — apokrisis

OK. So what's your Causal Model or God Metaphor?

I'm only superficially familiar with the "vague" vocabulary of Peircean or Postmodern Semiotics or Semiology. They are like Greek to me, σας ευχαριστώ. So, my personal model is the relatively simple algorithm of Hegelian dialectic : the world progresses toward the future along a zig-zag path of positive & negative causes, which tend to sum to a Middle Way (Buddha) or Moderation (Aristotle). The evaluation of those Causes is symbolic, hence subject to subjective interpretation. But that wavering path is "self-organizing" in the sense of Synthesis (bring together) of oppositions. See images in the Maleus Scientia thread. :smile:

↪Gnomon
This evil being God’s own Original Sin. — PoeticUniverse
Contradictory statement. — SpaceDweller

That was a poetic expression of the theological "Problem of Evil", not a statement of fact.

God knows good and evil so he's both of that. — SpaceDweller

I agree. That all-in-one understanding is the core concept of my personal BothAnd philosophy. The Creator is assumed to be Omnipotential, in addition to Omniscient. But not necessarily Omni-benevolent, since that is a matter of opinion for those affected by such super-human powers. Omnipotential includes the possibility of both Good and Evil.

That's why our temporal & relative world evolves along a Hegelian zig-zag path, alternating between extremes of Positive & Negative. But, fortunately for us, those oppositions tend to neutralize each other (Yin_Yang). So most of the time we are able to enjoy the sweet spot in the middle between demonic Bad and angelic Good. That's what we call "life in an imperfect world". Even when it's not ideal, it's not so bad. :joke:

BothAnd Principle :
G*D (All; BEING ; Cosmos ; Logos ; etc.) is the Eternal Necessary Whole of which our world, and ourselves, are Temporary Contingent Parts. Hence G*D is like the Yin/Yang symbol : both black and white.

Example of POSITIVE -- NEGATIVE DIALECTIC


YIN YANG

Gnosticism was declared heresy by the church and stamped out therefore. — TheMadFool

Yes. But it was anathematized presumably, not because un-scriptural, but because It allowed direct contact with God, and bypassed the Church as mediator & translator. Later, the Protestants likewise claimed the right to know the written word of God in vernacular language. And at the same time, gave license to empirical scientists to consult the creation of God directly, Again, making an end run around the Holy Mother Church, with its ancient authorized scriptures, and again violently resisted. From then on, Catholic Mystics (closet Gnostics) tried to fly under-the-radar of the Inquisition, so they could have it both ways : direct divine visions and church sacraments. :halo:

"Unbound = eternal?? . . . ."

It is unbound possibility. So not about an actualised duration. — apokrisis

Agreed.
Potential :
Unrealized or unmanifest creative power. For example the Voltage of an electric battery is its potential for future current flow measured in Amps. Potential is inert until actualized by some trigger. In the Enformationism metaphor, the real world was originally an idea in the Mind of G*D, with the infinite possibilities of Omniscience, that was realized by an act of Will.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html

A vortex is a dissipative structure - the emergence of order in the service of disordering. — apokrisis

Yes. Ironically, in thermodynamics, far-from-equilibrium is not necessarily disorder, but can be self-organizing.

And dissipative structure is the order out of chaos story. — apokrisis

Reductionism tends to focus on the local chaos, and to ignore the stable global order.

Why invent another jargon to describe something that already has so many names? — apokrisis

In my Enformationism thesis, I was repeatedly linking Eternity & Infinity, so for brevity I simply coined a contraction to "Enfernity" to describe the opposite concept from Einstein's "Space-Time".
Enfernity, Enfernal :
A contraction of “Eternity & Infinity” to indicate the irrelevance of those dualistic terms in the holistic state prior to the emergence of space & time from the Big Bang Singularity. Eternity is not a long time, it's the absence of space-time.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

So I would say your thinking goes in the wrong direction here. It re-embraces the mechanical model of reality that an organic conception is intent on rejecting. — apokrisis

I think your thinking is seeing only one side of a two-sided coin. My model is both Mechanical (scientific) and Organic (philosophical). :cool:

Shirking responsibility, The Blamer
Cited humans as the culprits of his err,
And cast them out of Eden, to this day—
This evil being God’s own Original Sin. — PoeticUniverse

Yes. The "problem of evil" remains to this day the primary argument against the omnipotent & loving Bible God. Even so, I still infer, from the off-setting positive & negative values of Good/Evil, that the First Cause, whatever it might be, did not create an idyllic Garden of Eden, but something more like a Science experiment pitting Self-determination against Determinism;; Reason against Randomness ; and Virtue against Violence. The final outcome of this vital & volatile alchemy remains to be determined. But, we-here-now, must choose between the eye-opening Apple of Science, and obfuscated Obedience to Fate. :joke:


Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
’Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.
___Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919)

↪Gnomon
Except I didn't "label" Graveltty because of disagreement with me, but because of contradictory definition of a God. — SpaceDweller

I apologize, if the cartoon was not an accurate portrayal of the disagreement. As I said, I had just copied the Dilbert for future reference, since name-calling is common on this forum. I hadn't followed your dialog, but the "nonsense!" epithet was close-enough for me to use the 'toon as a "cool-down" warning.

FWIW, my own personal definition of "G*D" does not agree with Wiki for "God". But the Wiki def for PanEnDeism is close. And that's OK : there are dozens of variations on a definition of deity. Most ancient images of gods were un-apologetically anthro-morphic. And even modern Catholicism uses icons of humans & animals --- Jesus & Mary & Holy Spirit (e.g. dove) --- to represent different aspects of an otherwise inconceivable deity.

Therefore, on this forum, we need to address the proposed definition that is in question. We are not obligated to agree on a single interpretation, but we should only critique the one under consideration. It's par-for- the-course for one person's imaginary concept to sound like non-sense to another person. However, a philosophical discussion is supposed to accept each postulated opinon as fodder for rational discourse. :smile:

Universals are a class of mind-independent entities,
https://iep.utm.edu/universa/
Note -- "God" is typically assumed to be universal & singular. But "gods" are usually specific & multiple. Yet, my "G*D" may be considered a little bit of both : Pan + En + Deism.

I thought I would have to think about your "erudite" post over the weekend. I'm only vaguely familiar with Semiology. But, I couldn't resist digging into the Piercean vagueness right away. So here goes :

First, I'll have to translate some of that apokrisean semiology into terms that I am more familiar with.

- that the cosmos arose from unbound possibility as the inevitable growth of a rationalising structure

Unbound = eternal?? . . . . rationalizing structure = Logos??

arbitrariness, or vagueness, must always exist in the system as Platonic order exists only to suppress or constrain it . . .

Arbitrary = Random Chance? Order & Constrain = Natural Selection? Natural laws?

been fully locked in at the Big Bang, and the long-run destiny is for it to become a generalised Heat Death

locked-in = natural laws? . . . . Heat Death = born to die?

this story of an eternally cooling~expanding dissipative structure

Dissipation & Entropy seem to be necessary adjuncts to Integration & Energy in the program of Evolution.

Adjunct : "a thing added to something else as a supplementary rather than an essential part."

"Dissipative structures are nonequilibrium thermodynamic systems that generate order spontaneously by exchanging energy with their external environments."
https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/dissipative-structures

"Dissipative systems have a tendency to become more “complicated” while dissipating energy. That is, they develop patterns, structures, or behaviors that they did not have when first formed"
https://gmwgroup.harvard.edu/dissipative-systems

Anthropically, if these higher levels of dissipative structure could happen, they had to happen.

Necessity = esssential to the design or program?

why semiotics is then itself an inevitable organising informational arrangement. . . . negentropy to be dissipated

Semiotics seems to imply that Meaning is inherent to the system of evolution. The question is : meaningful to whom?

"Semiotics is the study of sign processes, which are any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to the sign's interpreter". Wikipedia

Negentropy is what Aristotle called "entelechy" and what I call "enformy" in my Enformationsim thesis.

laws only work because of the way they can gloss over the detail.

By "gloss over" you mean "allow" or "permit" such details as the temporary exceptions to thermodynamics that we call living organisms?

Local spontaneity is built into the model along with the global necessity.

That's what I call "freedom within determinism"

information as the structure of constraints that limit the arbitrary. . . . information vs entropy

That "structure" may be what I call the constructive power of EnFormAction.
Information vs Entropy = Enformy

a metaphysics of order out of chaos - an information theoretic framework. But entropy descriptions are still ones that presume an essential meaningless of reality,

But "order" is the essence of "meaning". So the fact that Reality contains creatures capable of semiotics and extraction of meaning would seem to deny the "essential meaningless of reality"

So there just is no singularity, as there is instead just a vagueness that becomes a somethingness as soon as it starts to become a structure of relations. . . . Apeiron - an unbounded and formless "sea"

The un-formed "vagueness" of the Singularity may be comparable to a seed that doesn't resemble the tree.
What you call "Apeiron" is similar to what I call "Enfernity" : the unbounded realm of Eternity and Infinity, which is an unformed ocean of Possibility. Which I also call BEING, the eternal power to be, the essence of existence. The "seed" contains a tiny bit of Potential (genes, programs) that gradually Becomes (come into being) a Real World.

is a perfect symmetry. Any and everything can be happening. It is also the definition of unchanging

Perfect Symmetry = eternal & infinite, but still, pool of Potential

"Tyger, tyger, burning bright / In the forests of the night, / What immortal hand or eye / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?" ___William Blake

something had to happen

So, that infinite Potential couldn't be bottled-up forever? Something Actual must come out of it. But what Cause triggered that phase change from Voltage to Amperage, from Ideal to Real?

where disorder learns to constrain itself.

That's what Design does : it constrains disorder into order; it organizes (pattern) that which is disorganized (randomness).

same number at there at the Big Bang as they are at the Heat Death.

The evolutionary process comes full-circle from the nothingness of Potential, to fullness of Actual, and back to zero again. From Eternity to Timelessness.

But an even more general metric looks called for.

I propose that the emptiness of Shannon's Information as container, be supplanted by []Enformation[/i] as carrier of content.

Whew! I'm exhausted from writing all those big words. I'll have to take the weekend off to recuperate. :nerd: :yawn:

EnFormAction :
Ententional Causation. A proposed metaphysical law of the universe that causes random interactions between forces and particles to produce novel & stable arrangements of matter & energy. It’s the creative force (aka : Divine Will) of the axiomatic eternal deity that, for unknown reasons, programmed a Singularity to suddenly burst into our reality from an infinite source of possibility. AKA : The creative power of Evolution; the power to enform; Logos; Change.
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html

I really like Wheeler as a bold and holistic thinker. The anthropic principle is also an obviously powerful argument when it comes to the cosmological problem. And I even agree - as Peirce argued - that the cosmos arose from unbound possibility as the inevitable growth of a rationalising structure. Wheeler also got that right with his geometrodynamics. — apokrisis

Wow!! I didn't expect such an expanded & erudite response to my open-ended question. Since my brain is also a "dissipative structure", it may take me a while to digest all that "Piercean vagueness". A lot of it goes right over my pointy little head. So, I'll have to get back to you. :wink:


In theoretical physics, geometrodynamics is an attempt to describe spacetime and associated phenomena completely in terms of geometry. Technically, its goal is to unify the fundamental forces and reformulate general relativity as a configuration space of three-metrics, modulo three-dimensional diffeomorphisms. ___Wikipedia

PS__My own attempt to make sense of Big Bang & space-time may be labeled "geo-info-metro-dynamics". But, at the moment, I'm not sure what that means. :cool:

Now you start to talk nonsense, fine, wikipedia definition of God is same as God described in the bible: — SpaceDweller
Nonsense from your POV. Calling something nonsense is usually done when the sense of the competing POV (mine) is in contradiction with the POV it contradicts. I merely use the vocabulary of infinite potentiality (be it moral, physical, or semantic) and make a kin of reductio ad absurdum to reveal the shortcomings the POV. That's all it is: a point of view. It's not mine though. — GraveItty

Pardon the intrusion, but I just copied this Dilbert cartoon from Steven Pinker's Rationality, and was looking for a place to put it. Just kidding! :joke:

From a historical point of view, these questions have predated any "religions" we think of today, ancient/modern philosophy and certainly modern science. — Xtrix

For me personally, I have only an archaeological interest in popular (of the common people) world religions --- including that of my own culture --- which are specific to a place & time that no longer exists. But I find a lot of commonality in the more elite philosophies of the deep thinkers in each culture. The religions retain their cultural flavor, for sampling in small doses, but even the obsolete worldviews still contain some nutritious meat for thought about perennial questions. :smile:

Even non-Christians know the rather tragic tale, The Fall Of Man. The story goes that Eve was enticed by Satan in serpent form to eat the forbidden fruit - — TheMadFool

As you implied, the Garden of Eden myth seems to be intended as a warning against "evil" Science, which trusts its sensory extensions and rational conclusions more than the absolute Word of God : "apple bad, trust me". That's also why the Bible repeatedly indicates that physical Flesh (including taste & touch) is corrupted, and only the non-physical Spirit is pure & good, and a direct link to God --- so, trust, and don't bother to verify..

Of course, in the Garden, those child-like humans had direct sensory experience with God, who walked in the garden, making sounds that frightened the babes-in-the-woods. Today, we are bereft of that intimate contact, and the original words of God, are now -- reportedly -- recorded in man-made books, after passing through the fallible minds of many generations of sinful fleshly humans. Therefore, it follows that the self-reliance of Science may be the product of a Satanic plot. Hence, your label "malus scientia" seems to be appropriate. Unless, human reason is the only remaining reliable Word (Logos) of the Creator. :chin:

So one way to arrive at a constant in a dynamic world is perfect symmetry. — apokrisis

Does that relationship between Symmetry and physical Constants, imply that the Big Bang Singularity was also perfectly symmetrical and unchanging (e.g. eternal), until some perturbation (outside force) broke the symmetry, resulting in our dynamic and evolving world? I ask that strange question because I just wrote a review of a book that reaches Anthropic conclusions from the : "unique “initial conditions” and “fine-tuned constants” that seemed arbitrarily selected to produce a world with living & thinking creatures."
http://bothandblog7.enformationism.info/page10.html

Immanuel Kant, likely for profound reasons, associated space with geometry and time with arithmetic. — TheMadFool

Perhaps, for similar profound reasons, Einstein associated Space with physical Matter (Objects), and Time with metaphysical Energy (Change). Maybe not in so many words, but implicitly in his Relativity theory. :smile:

Geometry seems, in a certain sense, more physical than arithmetic. I'm not as certain about this as I'd like to be. — TheMadFool

In my personal Information thesis, Geometry is indeed more "physical" than abstract math, in the sense that it measures relationships between real things, instead of relationships between abstract concepts. But, it's still the metaphysical (mental) relationship (inter-connection) that makes the meaningful difference (qualia), not the physical object (quanta) itself. :nerd:

But if God created time, then time was not needed for that initial act of creation. We can conclude, then, that there can be creation without time, for otherwise time itself could not have been created. — Bartricks

I'm a late-comer to this thread, and haven't read much of the subsequent discussion following the OP. But I may have something to add, relevant to the quote above. I don't have any direct knowledge of the Creator of our temporal world -- it could have been a tower-of-turtles in a time-bound Multiverse, for all I know. But I think it's more reasonable that the creator of Space-Time & Matter-Energy was independent of such limitations. In other words, whatever caused the hypothetical initial Singularity to explode into space-time must have existed in some sense prior to Space-Time.

So, it seems that the Creator (which I label ambiguously as "G*D") could only have existed as Eternal-Potential, instead of Temporal-Actual. Admittedly, Aristotelian "Potential" does not exist in any physical empirical sense. You can't examine it under a microscope. But as a metaphysical theoretical Platonic "Ideal", it encompasses unlimited infinite Possibilities. In the Real world, only lawful things are possible, By that, I mean, Natural Laws are the boundaries of Nature. In which case, only something not subject to those laws --- not natural ; unbounded --- could create the laws themselves : The Lawmaker.

Therefore, I conclude that the Singularity, and its subsequent Big Bang blowup, was not a physical thing --- subject to limits & laws --- but a program (design ; plan) for world creation, existing as an ethereal idea in the timeless Mind of G*D. And that is what I would call "creation without time". Real world Space-Time --- an ideal mathematical model --- exists only in the presence of Matter-Energy --- the physical elements of the real world. Hence, the Eternal Cause of our Temporal World cannot be Real ; so must be Ideal : existing only in unbound Potential. That is the assumption of PanEnDeism. :cool:



"Turtles all the way down" is an expression of the problem of infinite regress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Aristotelian Potential :
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality[1] are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima. . . . The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to any "possibility" that a thing can be said to have . . . Actuality, in contrast to potentiality, is the motion, change or activity that represents an exercise or fulfillment of a possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentiality_and_actuality

Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas. It holds that only ideas encapsulate the true and essential nature of things, in a way that the physical form cannot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_idealism

Panendeism is an ontological position that explores the interrelationship between God (The Cosmic Mind) and the known attributes of the universe. Combining aspects of Panentheism and Deism, Panendeism proposes an idea of God that both embodies the universe and is transcendent of its observable physical properties. https://panendeism.org/faq-and-questions/
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html

Most of us don't either. — jgill

When I said I don't take irrational & infinite concepts in Mathematics "too seriously", I meant they don't bother me, as they did the ancient Greeks. But, they do intrigue me, in the sense that many scientific & mathematical discoveries have resulted from anomalies that evoked a "huh? that's strange" response.

I'm aware that Pseudo-scientists tend to cut themselves loose from Physical grounding when they explore the open-ended possibilities of ethereal Meta-physical implications. But, although my personal experience is the touchstone for my belief-system, I am painfully aware of how biased misinterpretations of observed "facts" can lead us astray. Anyway, I find the metaphor of the physical world as a manifestation of its mathematical/logical structure to be useful for my personal worldview. :nerd:

All this math stuff exists in the mind only. All math stuff has acounterpart in physical reality — GraveItty

Yes. I typically refer to Mathematics as Meta-Physical, because it is not physically real, but a logical abstraction from Reality. So, since this is a philosophical forum, you'd think Metaphysical topics would be routine. But I get a lot of negative feedback whenever my arguments veer from Empirical Physics into Non-empirical, hence debatable topics. That's why I thought the notion of Irrational and Transcendental mathematics would encounter some friction from those insecure posters with Physics Envy. :smile:

PS___Of course, I understand their uneasiness with fringe ideas and pseudoscience. But, I have learned to deal with the uncertainties of the borderlands. So, I like to discuss edgey ideas, but prefer open-minded Skepticism to encapsulated Cynicism. :smile:

Physics Envy :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_envy