That's true. But the experience of light has the same subjective aspect as color too. As any visual artist will tell you at far greater length.

I didn't say that light does exist. You said that light exists and color doesn't. I said that light doesn't exist just as much or as little as color. As that is difficult for you to understand, I will put it the other war around. Color exists just as much or as little as light does. That means the same thing.

As you directly misrepresented what I wrote twice, it doesn't seem possible that your belief is of merit in this case.

I didn't say that. I said that the justification for radical Islamic terrorism is based on a Christian doctrine. That's the second time you tried to put words in my mouth on this topic.

I don't see how it dodges anything. I explained it was possible, impossible to know, and not actually the point. The real point, which is that Christians invented the doctrine used to justify terrorism, does not rely on whether Mohammed directly learned it from Christians, but as that was the belief of 99% when I first stated it, I researched it and wrote up what can be known on that.

Colours don't exist, but light does. — TimeLine

If you are going to cast aspersion on others' thought, You should be aware that you are subject to your own criticism. Light does not exist any less or more than color. Possibly you are believing that electromagnetic radiation has a more specific reference in material reality, whereas color refers to something you perhaps regard as experience. But if you are thinking that, then there is also a scientific definition of color, as specific ranges and combinations of the electromagnetic spectrum, which is just as substantive.

I did not claim that, I discussed whether he learned it, and I said the answer is impossible to know. That does not change the fact that Christians invented the doctrine first, and that it was widely known. Syria was part of the Byzantine empire, so latin and greek were widely spoken there. For example St. Paul knew latin and greek.

Did Mohammed directly coopt Augustinian Doctrine into Islam?

At the time of Mohammed's birth, Syria had become a prosperous province of the Byzantine empire. Mohammed was taken to Syria as a child, so he first encountered the glowing promises of eternal life there somewhere around the age of 10 (~580AD). By that time Syria had perhaps a quarter million Christians in about a hundred different ecclesiastical systems, so it's really impossible to know what he specifically encountered there, except for one meeting with a heretical Christian hermit who named him the new living God. Details have been recast by generations of both Christians and Muslims in accordance with their own beliefs, so now there are half a dozen legends that describe the specific facts in rather incompatible manners. What we do know is that Mohammed was not a scholar himself, and was never taught Latin or Greek, or even how to read and write. So he would have learned whatever he did about Christianity from derivative sources in sermons and personal accounts by the Christians of the time.

Do you know if Augustine had been translated into Arabic at this time, or if Mohammed read Greek? — Wayfarer

I thought I had answered that when I revised that post from the last set of questions. Please let me know how I was unclear.

All the time. I keep trying to find people who can prove my worries right, but it's been a frustrating search in the USA. Mostly people here either just ape the same insulting profanities that were showered on them in their childhood, or repeat the verbal equivalent of kitsch, or make snide remarks as if even pretending to be friendly, like you, eventually followed by a vast outburst of misdirected rage. They invariably think they are being original, even though much of the same remarks have been repeatedly made for thousands of years by far less fortunate people, mostly with much less formal education yet far better grammatical skills, Outside teachers and doctors, they moreover almost invariably exhibit less manners than a dog. The rare exception is first-generation immigrants, who more native Americans frequently despise, not even overtly. Fortunately, they have other qualities that they themselves boast as virtues in their favor, especially selfishness, greed, disrespect for life other than their own, lack of empathy, infidelity in marriage, unsuccessfully repressed aggression, scorn for the industry of knowledge, and abuse of authority, that in total enable them to survive. Thank you for the conversation.

I find Kant much simpler than Hegel.

I presume this is from 'the City of God'? — Wayfarer

Yes

Hume, Kant, Frege, Hegel, Heidegger, and a number of modern epistemologists like Kripke

In modern philosophy, truth is defined by formal logic on propositions (statements). There are three main basic kinds of it, which I hear attempt to express in way compatible with the thinking of the formal logicians Russell, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Strawson, Putnam, Searle, Kripke, Popper, Kuhn, and Davidson.

• Tautological truths within formal systems, such as mathematical equations. These are established by syntactic consistency with core axioms. The core axioms themselves describe the formal systems, and so truths at this level are necessarily true, in accordance with first-order formal logic. These systems can be extended to create propositional logic, which defines rules of deduction and inference without introducing meaningfulness and causality.
• Empirical truths, which are determined via ratification by observation of material states and events, as long as the propositions describing material states and events are logically coherent. If the observation verifies the proposition, then the RESULT of the observation is factually true, but the proposition itself without empirical ratification remains a proposition that is neither true nor false, and is simply a statement. The specific and exact nature of truth itself depends not on facts, but on the epistemological factors relating the proposition to the material world in different metaphysical systems, most predominantly in the theories that define the relation of subject and predicate to objects, states, and events in the physical world. These theories add semantics (the meanings of words) to the syntactic relationships described in first-order logic.
• Causal truths, which again first must be consistent within first-order formal logic, and secondly must not contain any causal fallacies as defined in second-order formal logic. These are the most complicated forms of truth, and the basis of science. They are the most complicated because causal relationships cannot ever be proven necessarily true. They can only be proven not to be false. That distinction remains one of the least understood aspects of truth in the current world, because causality is so often claimed yet logical errors in statements of causal truth are so frequent. The metaphysical factors of causality are better understood if they are known to exist, but only a small number of people even know that there are metaphysical factors involved. Those who do know the metaphysical factors understand that the relation of the subject and predicate's in the cause, to the subject and predicate of the result, is an abstraction that can be very complex.

While these are the *basic* forms of truth, the truth of many statements rely on combining two or more these forms together. For example, most commonly believe they know that the sun will rise tomorrow. This is based on empirical observations of many prior days where the sun did rise, leading to the simple second-order deduction that it will rise again tomorrow. Logically, one cannot know whether the belief is true that the sun will rise tomorrow until after the event has occurred. But in most cases, when sufficient empirical validation of many prior similar events has occurred, it is loosely assumed true that the same future event will occur again in the same circumstance. This 'axiom of probabilistic certainty'  is the foundation of prediction in much scientific theory.

Beyond that, there are some other very specific forms of truth in philosophy. For example, there are 'self-generating' truths in linguistics, such as promises, statements of intent, contracts, and some statements of belief, which all become existent by their own statement. One should be aware these kinds of truth have limitations. For example, after making promises, it becomes true that promises were made, but the truth of the promise itself remains an indirect proposition, and still must be determined within the rules for the three basic forms of truth described above.

If you step back a bit, religion has three rather separate components: personal belief, doctrine, and ritual. Most people have problems with orthodox doctrines, and quite a few have little tolerance for ritual in the haste of the modern world. So 'spirituality' became a way to legitimize personal beliefs without the other two components.

I had maintained from the get go that the US did not have the capacity to solve the problems of the Middle East. It wasn't that we lacked force; that we had (and still have). It was that we did not have the competence to sort out the internal conflicts and contradictions of Iraq or anybody else. We were not alone in this--I don't know who else had (has) both the competence and the ready force necessary. Certainly not Europe. — Bitter Crank

I think you hit the nail on the head there )

Personally though I don't think military force can solve the problem. I think it is a problem with education. Most of the recruited terrorists in the Middle East have trouble with reading and writing.

Another good one, more recently, is 'brief history of time' by hawking. Maybe it is because I liked science fiction as a child, so I never thought the unintuitive could not be real, and had no trouble accepting the concepts.

Cantor I didn't discover until a few years ago, and I do have to admit it all seemed trite to me. It's difficult for me to understand how other people find it confusing.

No, whaty I was trying to say, it just seemed so straightforward to me, I didn't think anyone would have trouble understanding it, but what I have since learned is that it was just because H is a good author, and I had read the book. Similarly with Gamow on Quantum theory.

No, I was interested in the theory, so I read this book by Hofstadter. It wasn't very difficult so I kind of assumed no one else had a problem understanding it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach

But what I have since realized is that H. is a very good author, but it does take some time to read, far more than most people read books at all these days, so maybe its not so surprising the topic remains so obscure to so many.If you do like to read, well it is very easy to read, and well illustrated too, and although some of the ideas are a bit off the wall, everyone who does read it finds there are parts of it that do make a rather lasting impression. It's true not everyone can read it. At first there was quite a bit of controversy about it, and it wasn't published in the USA for quite a while. This was to the amusement of my family who thought it insane, but when it was published, it was an instant bestseller.

Also, on the topic of quantum theory, I read the following in the same year:

https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Tompkins-Paperback-Canto-Classics/dp/1107604680

Its very entertaining and I would recommend it to anyone genuinely interested in the topic.

Well., As I said, I was describing the philosophical derivation of socialism in western empiricism, not its history

I think you are talking to someone else. That's nothing at all to do with what I wrote, which is the philosophical derivation of socialism in the tradition of Western empiricism, not its historical forms.

well that was 50 years ago, before the Internet, so I don't know how to find them. I would have thought the Wikipedia would state them.

Well, As I said above, it is not Islamic. It is Christian doctrine that has distorted Islam.

I do remember there is a scientific definition of life, which distinguishes it from other growing things, such as crystals, but it was something I read when I was nine years old and I can't really remember the details, beyond that it contained about 5 axioms or so.

There is actually very little support for human law in Islamic theology. The Maturidi school, the second largest school of Sunni theology, is the only sect of Islam that posits the existence of a form of natural law. Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (Uzbekistan, 853–944) stated that the human mind could know of the existence of God and the major forms of 'good' and 'evil' without the help of revelation. Al-Maturidi gives the example of stealing, which is known to be evil by reason alone due to man's working hard for his property. Killing, fornication, and drinking alcohol were all 'evils' the human mind could know of, according to al-Maturidi.

The concept of Istislah in Islamic law superficially appears to be natural law. However, whereas natural law deems good what is self-evidently good, according as it tends towards the fulfilment of the person, istislah calls good whatever is connected to one of five "basic goods". Al-Ghazali (Iraq and Syria, 1058–1111) abstracted these "basic goods" from the legal precepts in the Qur'an and Sunnah as religion, life, reason, lineage and property (some add also honor). Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya (Syria, 1292–1350) also posited that humans can discern between 'great sins' and good deeds without divine guidance. Major sins, such as alcohol and murder, can be understood as wrong by process of reason.

However, in Sunni theology, the Maturidi school remains smaller and less powerful than the Ash'aris school. The Ash'aris state that the unaided human mind is unable to determine if something is good or evil, lawful or unlawful, moral or immoral, without the direct aid of divine revelation.

Thus, although there are some who argue for an ability to understand law, rather than simply submit to it, it still remains a minority in Islam altogether.

In my last comment, I summarized the idea of divine law taking precedence over human law, therefore justifying terrorism. In much of Islam that remains true, but there does exist some ideas in Islam through which consolidation could be possible.

The Maturidi school, the second largest school of Sunni theology, appears to posit the existence of a form of human law. Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (Uzbekistan, 853–944) stated that the human mind could know of the existence of God and the major forms of 'good' and 'evil' without the help of revelation. Al-Maturidi gives the example of stealing, which is known to be evil by reason alone due to man's working hard for his property. Killing, fornication, and drinking alcohol were all 'evils' the human mind could know of according to al-Maturidi.

The concept of Istislah in Islamic law superficially appears to be human law without divine guidance. However, whereas natural law deems good what is self-evidently good, according as it tends towards the fulfilment of the person, istislah calls good whatever is connected to one of five "basic goods". Al-Ghazali (Iraq and Syria, 1058–1111) abstracted these "basic goods" from the legal precepts in the Qur'an and Sunnah as religion, life, reason, lineage and property (some add also honor).
Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya (Syria, 1292–1350) also posited that humans can discern between 'great sins' and good deeds without divine guidance. Major sins, such as alcohol and murder, can be understood as wrong by process of reason.

However, in Sunni theology, the Maturidi school remains smaller and less powerful than the Ash'aris school. The Ash'aris state that the unaided human mind is unable to determine if something is good or evil, lawful or unlawful, moral or immoral, without the direct aid of divine revelation. So although there are some who argue for an ability to understand law, rather than simply submit to it, it still remains a minority in Islam altogether.

Since that time, most Islamic culture still places little value in property ownership. In the lands around Israel, the Arab tribes never even created land deeds, and so when Israel started building settlements onto their grazing land, had no legal recourse to defend their land that Western cultures could recognize. This lack of concern for material wealth has continued somewhat to the current day. For example, when Westerners learned of the elaborate palaces of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, it was frequently claimed that he was extorting wealth to the detriment of his population. In turn, the Arabs find Western infatuation with material possessions difficult to understand, and most would far rather live in peace than put in war in order to force them to have rights that they don't really care about that much.

Recently there has been much political discourse in understanding how Islam thinks. From Islam's perspective, what God gives he takes away. We are but a brief speck of light. From dust to dust we travel, sparkling a brief time, during which we simply make the most of what we have--hoping the bombs fall somewhere else, over which the majority have no control. Of course, there are a few military maniacs who can easily exploit the general ignorance. And the ignorance persists much as it was a thousand years ago, there being no reason to seek more, when all is in the hands of a distant and detached but all-powerful God. And that is how most Islam thinks.

I find the idea of radical terrorism being Islamic rather ironic, as the justification for it was actually a Christina doctrine first.

Augustine's Doctrine of Secular Law as a Danger to Faith

In "City of God" (ca. 400AD), Augustine started the process by denying the idea of a mythical golden age, as originally stated by Hesiod (ca. 700BC), because it was contrary to Biblical Eden. The golden age was the basis of theories of rational law (such as Cicero's in 50BC), which use the goal of a new golden age to justify the righteousness of punishment. Then Augustine substituted a personal divine law of salvation in place of the golden goal. Augustine reasoned that no mortal, secular justice could ever be meaningful, by comparison to the far better achievement of all attaining eternal life. That first part much might have been OK by itself, but Augustine then went further to add a second part. He claimed that secular justice is not the virtue it appears to be, but rather results from the first deadly sin, pride, and thus is not safe, and moreover a danger to faith itself. He even went as far to call secular justice a 'weakness, plague, and disease/'.

The resemblance of at least the first half of Augustine's thought to Islamic doctrine might not be a coincidence. The consequences of the second half of this doctrine, in both religions, has been rather similar. In the West, this specific doctrine was a primary force leading to the Dark Ages, and the supremacy of divine law slowly eradicated all secular practices until the reformation. In the Middle East, there was an attempt by some, such as Averroes, to reconstruct secular law, but sectarianism caused the collapse of the Moor civilization and such notions were abandoned, leading to the current situation.

Did Mohammed directly coopt Augustinian Doctrine into Islam?

If one considers the topic without bias, it is not unreasonable to postulate that Mohammed actually picked up the first part of this doctrine from Augustine's doctrine directly, and acknowledging that would go a long way to resolving problems which the second part is still causing. So before discussing the real issue, the possibility of 'direct transmission' is first explored.

With all the Christians killed for public enjoyment in Roman games, one might be sympathetic with Augustine's condemnation of human law. Augustine was certainly well received at the time. He was incredibly popular, and his message indisputably powerful. His ideas spread like wildfire, as new and ever larger armies of evangelists took his message to all corners of the earth, unafraid of suffering or death, due the far greater joy of bringing others to eternal life. This of course included Syria, where St. Paul famously received his conversion.

At the time of Mohammed's birth, Syria had become a prosperous province of the Byzantine empire. Mohammed was taken to Syria as a child, so he first encountered the glowing promises of eternal life there somewhere around the age of 10 (~580AD). By that time Syria had perhaps a quarter million Christians in about a hundred different ecclesiastical systems, so it's really impossible to know what he specifically encountered there, except for one meeting with a heretical Christian hermit who named him the new living God. Details have been recast by generations of both Christians and Muslims in accordance with their own beliefs, so now there are half a dozen legends that describe the specific facts in rather incompatible manners. What we do know is that Mohammed was not a scholar himself, and was never taught Latin or Greek, or even how to read and write. So he would have learned whatever he did about Christianity from derivative sources in sermons and personal accounts by the Christians of the time.

When Mohammed was about 40 years old, he then wrote the 'pulpit rhetoric' equivalent of Augustine's more academically stated conclusions in "City of God," most prominently in a Surah sometimes labeled as 'the citadel,' or 'the fortress.' Most major cities were already walled by then, so the correlation with Augustine's 'City of God' is so obvious, it is rather puzzling why no one else points it out.

In the Middle East, derivative rhetoric persists to this day, and it is on these specific passages in the Qur'an about divine law of salvation superseding secular law that radical Islamic terrorism draws the most, using exactly the same Augustinian concepts which caused the Roman Empire to collapse.

The Christian Precedence for Justifying Terrorism

Whether such a notion was directly inspired by Augustinian thought or not, from the perspective of ideology, it was rather irrefutably Augustinian first. Augustine is a founding father of the Christian church, and this notion was part of his doctrine first, regardless how right or wrong it was then, or is now. It had the same consequences to Rome as it is having in Islam now. No one has ever challenged the power and influence of Augustine's "City of God" in causing the downfall of Rome. No one can challenge that Augustine's opinion of secular law is repeatedly cited in defense of radical Islamic terrorism. Thus I can stand behind the assertion that Radical Islamic Terrorism is caused by Christian doctrine with fair confidence.

Well that is interesting. I should say it is obvious *to me* because I learned Gödel's theories when I was 15. What I am discovering as an adult is that most people were not granted such a good education.

Thank you for pointing that out. My problem is I thought about these things too long by myself, and it is not always obvious to me what other people know about facts that are transparently obvious to me. As your observe, it is transparently obvious that an axiomatic system cannot be complete and coherent simultaneously.

It is also transparently obvious to me how the Vedic thought I mentioned before is the same as quantum theory. This is because it is obvious to me that it is impossible to know the position and velocity of a subatomic particle simultaneously. Further it is obvious to me that a temperature of absolute zero is only hypothetical, hence that all objects are continually in randomized motion, even if quantized. And thus it is obvious to me that it is impossible to know where a subatomic particle is at any one point in time. It is only possible to know where it was, or how fast it is moving. Thus the Vedic philosophers were correct in thinking that matter is actually made of tiny compartments of space, inside any of which there may or may not be solidity, but it is impossible to know. What they did was anticipate, by pure thought, the results of experiments producing paradoxes which are now quaintly referred to as Schrodinger's cat and Maxwell's demon. And so I cited this as an example of how our own limited understanding shapes the limit of what we can know.

Similarly one can consider the rather jaded question of whether light is an energy wave or a particle. In some cases light behaves with quantum behavior, so it must be a particle, they say. But if you shine a light source with total emission energy of less than one photon through two close yet parallel slits, it still draws an extremely faint diffraction pattern, again with a total energy of less than one photon. How can that be, they ponder?

But it is because in our perception of gross matter, it has to be either a wave or particle. We can't natively conceive of something which is partly both, but the experiments say that the nature of photons is partly like a wave, and partly like a particle. So we have to try and imagine something that we cannot physically perceive. We have to make a cognitive leap and say there exists something which is 'in between' a wave and particle, or 'changes state between' the two.

But in reality, it is neither. It is light, that is how light is, and our attempts to define it as either a wave or a particle are introducing the paradox, generated by own limited comprehension of reality.

I wrote quite a lot today, excuse me I am going to have to rest quite a long time now.

Yes, necessarily so, because if you don't understand everything, you can't know that everything is understandable.

You were the one who said you understand everything, and as an axiomatic system is consistent only if incomplete, according to the best of current thought on the topic, you must have a solution to it we don't know. So I request your paper on it a second time, and excuse me but I have less entertaining things to do.

That's your second problem. You didn't understand the grammar of one of my posts either. rofl.

I look forward to your disproof of Gödel's second incompleteness theorem. Please do send me the link to your paper )

According to you, I can't know any no more than you do, because you understand everything perfectly. So whatever I say you will say is wrong, probably including this statement.

well, that depends how much of reality you want to comprehend, doesn't it.

that goes back to my first statement. Although we can improve our comprehension by effort, reality is ultimately beyond perfect comprehension. I do remember having some problem understanding imaginary numbers, and I still don't enjoy doing maths with them.

Dualism is nothing at all to do with the functionality of models of the material world. It is about how the abstractions we apply to our perception of material states and events might themselves be independent of material reality.

The problem you are having is very common. You don't like the answer so you ignore it. I gave you my answer. I put quite a bit of time into editing it for you. I would say you are welcome, but apparently you don't care, so further discussion is pointless.

So I already know the next question, which is "why is it necessary to continue to keep God in USA's social contract?" And the reason, I have tried to explain, is that without God, the right to liberty and to pursue happiness are gradually destroyed, because all that is left within natural law is a Randian system of survival of the fittest. And the rich just get richer, and the poor just get poorer, until the entire system falls apart. Which is exactly what is happening. Empirically.

NO Chany, the point of federalism is that there are not fixed interpretations in all peoples' minds as to what should constitute human law. So the original idea was that the federal government imposes no authority to the states in such cases, and as long as the decisions of the states do not diminish the natural rights of any one person in any way, people are then free to move where they feel happiest and make the laws for themselves.

And it was not construed in terms of limitations, but rather as an enforcement of 'positive law'--- as to all people having the right to freedom of choice in speech, religion, and political preference within those bounds. This was because it was believed that people would naturally choose to act for the greater good. But with the grown of atheistic selfishness, the system no longer works, and people instead quarrel about their selfish desires, rather than look to a benign future with faith and hope. That is to say, they regard the rights selfishly, rather than thinking of the desire of God for all His children to live peacefully and without struggle. That is why you think life is less important than liberty.