That matter became life, without divine assistance, and evolved into the many beings of earth, is almost infinitely improbable, and one need look no further for miracles. — Bitter Crank

I do not. — Bitter Crank

These two statements seem to be contradictory. You also seem to agree with my basic position, that life itself is suffused with miracles and the supernatural - at least the active principle of life is.

What does "nature" mean? — Agustino

...asked the philosopher.

...asked the philosopher. — Wayfarer

I think it is a very important question because it is in that word that the obfuscation lies - that which gives us the idea that we understand what miracles are.

Hence Augustine’s question!

Hence Augustine’s question! — Wayfarer

Which question are you referring to?

Sorry - hence Augustine’s saying - ‘Miracles are not contrary to nature, they’re contrary to what we know about nature’.

Sceptics rule them out; believers rule them in; philiosophers keep an open mind.

Yeah, and that 'acting' hasn't changed in the slightest, which is why I am against the notion that there is any real progress. — Coldlight

True - I would say that in terms of the collective, there is virtually no progress in the long run. In the short term, we do sometimes see progress from one historical era to another, but that progress does not last, and is ultimately erased. We also see regress - it is like a pendulum swinging back and forth around the same point of equilibrium.

But I do think that progress is possible for individuals. It is possible for an individual to make progress and become outstanding. That way is always open, but it is not historical.

I agree with mysteries and miracles being always within life. After recognising that fact, it is more about working with one's own unconscious mind. Specific language use can also help with that, but generally things like dreams, visions, intuition have the possibility of uncovering what was unseen for us before. The experience is very individual, which is why it requires individual effort and insight. — Coldlight

I agree with you, this is an individual journey that no one else can make for you. Exploring the unconscious, bringing the light of consciousness into that realm is absolutely necessary in order to achieve spiritual growth. As Jung said, the roots of the tree must reach to the depths of hell for the trunk to reach to the heavens. It is not possible to grow spiritually without undoing the mechanism - and it is a mechanism, that's what the unconscious is - that we are subject to.

To use a Freudian framework, it might be that that's where the unconscious mind was directed, and so that became the centre of the spiritual. — Coldlight

I would say that the unconscious is created by ourselves, through the act of repression. When something gets repressed, it gets thrown under the rug of consciousness. But the repression is never complete, that is why what was thrown in the depths of consciousness reemerges in various forms, and uncannily makes itself felt, whether it is through dreams, visions, or otherwise. Man tries to escape from his darkness by repressing it and pretending it does not exist, but this is no escape, it merely makes the process more hidden, and lodges it deeper within oneself.

Anything can get repressed into the unconscious - it is a spiritual process in nature. But once something is repressed into the unconscious, it ceases to be spiritual, and becomes a mechanism. Doing over and over the same thing, without knowing that you are doing it - that is the unconscious. It is actually the same as being a robot - really a mechanism. The unconscious is what usually pulls people's strings, and they think they are free.

To me, unconscious and spiritual are closely linked. — Coldlight

To a certain extent I agree with this, but I would say that the unconscious and the spiritual are not the same thing. If I may say so, the unconscious is the mechanisation of the spiritual, when the spiritual turns into a mere shadow of its former self, and loses its life & vitality.

To relate it to the important movements in history, it could well be the case that the collective unconscious worked in that well and was directed by the spiritual. — Coldlight

Yes, I agree with this. Historical movements are either consciously driven, in which case the ones responsible for it are aware of what they are doing (at least to some extent) and are consciously looking to influence and guide the collective unconscious or in an era of darkness, it is completely unconsciously driven, such that even the leaders know not what they are doing (like today). For example, take the Nazi's - the reason they were so successful is because they tapped into the collective unconscious of the Germans and permitted free expression to it - and they did so consciously. What the Germans were afraid to express, because it was not nice, because it wasn't good & decent, etc. the Nazi's awakened and gave it permission, encouraged it, to make itself felt. Any world-historical movement must be in line with the unconscious because it requires the mass movement and action of vast numbers of people. And remember, the unconscious drives most people without their knowledge. So it is virtually impossible to get masses to act by appealing merely to their consciousness - to reach into their depths, one must appeal to what they have repressed, to what they keep hidden, to their own repressed spirituality. Then the masses are literarily transformed into puppets.

It is one reason why scientism in a way is a blessing in disguise. To go back to the Biblical analogy, the Tree of Knowledge leads to death, and the ones who have Knowledge will be prevented by the Cherubim with the flaming sword from reaching the Tree of Life. And this is for their own sake, for if they reached it, all chaos would break loose.

I generally dislike that spiritual, mystical, and supernatural are often portrayed as some sort of medieval magic, and then dismissed right away. — Coldlight

Hence the dismissal of the spiritual is a form of protection in an age lacking wisdom.

Sorry - hence Augustine’s saying. — Wayfarer

It is Augustine's saying that is the obfuscation. He is hiding the obfuscation in the word "nature", which remains undefined, and almost impossible to clearly articulate.

I'd like to follow Hume down his rabbit hole a bit. Elsewhere, in his sceptical discussion of causation, he notes that the laws of nature are derived from past experience of regularities, and, though he doesn't put it this way, descriptive rather than prescriptive. He concludes that there can be nothing in the laws of nature that dictate the future; this is the problem of induction that I like to summarise as 'you can't get a will be from a has been'.

Accordingly, in looking at the past, one is looking at nature, and in noticing regularities one is calling them laws. So in noticing irregularities in the past one says, either there is a regularity that we haven't penetrated yet because it is complicated, or else that there is no regularity, and we have randomness.

As to the future, there is nothing that can possibly be a violation of the laws of nature because there is no law (derived from the past) that can tell us that the future will be like the past.

And as to the past, there is nothing that can possibly be a violation of nature, because if there is a violation, then that is not the law as the regularity is not regular.

None of which is to deny that weird shit might have happened, and weird shit might happen in the future. So it's not, as it turns out very helpful, because in ruling out miracles, nothing whatsoever is ruled out.

In order to be saying something more than 'I don't want to use that word', one has to give 'miracle' a meaning such that it is not ruled out a priori, but is the kind of thing that there could be as a logical possibility, but that there isn't (or is) as a matter of fact.

However, one can take another view, and find another definition. Let us say instead, that the laws of nature describe the orderly succession of events, such that the present is conditioned by the past. Now if the laws of nature are complete, and the succession is entirely orderly, then if, the big bang then I write this post. That is, initial conditions + physics determine history.

But that is an old-fashioned notion, because randomness seems to be built in. And randomness in radioactive decay, for example, seems to be unconditioned by the past.

But there is a logical possibility, I think, of something that is unconditioned by the past and non-random, and that would be a reasonable definition of a miracle, I think. It is difficult, because if it is not conditioned by the past, it would appear to be random - I'm not entirely sure if there is a way of telling, and if there is in principle no way of our distinguishing the non-random unconditioned event from the random event, then there is no way of answering the question of whether there are miracles or not. Nevertheless, I think the definition gets close to what folks want to mean by a miracle, and if it still leaves it open as to whether they happen or not, that is in accordance with the fact that fairly sensible people can disagree about it.

I think, finally, that if there is any criterion for distinguishing the random from the miraculous, it must lie in the meaning/significance of the event. But that is a can of worms for another day, or another poster.

You also seem to agree with my basic position, that life itself is suffused with miracles and the supernatural - at least the active principle of life is. — Agustino

When you talk about miracles and the supernatural, aren't you references the actions of God? I am not. Chemicals, physics, and time produced life, and in time, intelligent beings, and at some point, just a few seconds ago in geologic time, God.

A theist could say that God brought all things into being through physical and chemical processes, and that the principle of life is the hand of God at work. If that's what you mean, fine; but that's not what I am saying. I am saying there was no directive hand, and that the processes of chemistry and physics could have ended up producing only rock.

The cosmos is a cold, frightful place, and we have found it a comfort to suppose that God is here (if not throughout an expanding universe). I believe God is our creation, brought into being to explain that which is intolerable to leave unexplained. That we are here is one of those things that requires a good explanation, and God does the trick for many. "In the beginning..."

I am quite sure that your use of the words "miracle" and "supernatural" does not signify the same thing that my use of the same words signifies.

This isn't criticism, just clarification.

2k
I'd like to follow Hume down his rabbit hole a bit. Elsewhere, in his sceptical discussion of causation, he notes that the laws of nature are derived from past experience of regularities, and, though he doesn't put it this way, descriptive rather than prescriptive. He concludes that there can be nothing in the laws of nature that dictate the future; this is the problem of induction that I like to summarise as 'you can't get a will be from a has been'.

Accordingly, in looking at the past, one is looking at nature, and in noticing regularities one is calling them laws. So in noticing irregularities in the past one says, either there is a regularity that we haven't penetrated yet because it is complicated, or else that there is no regularity, and we have randomness.

As to the future, there is nothing that can possibly be a violation of the laws of nature because there is no law (derived from the past) that can tell us that the future will be like the past.

And as to the past, there is nothing that can possibly be a violation of nature, because if there is a violation, then that is not the law as the regularity is not regular.

None of which is to deny that weird shit might have happened, and weird shit might happen in the future. So it's not, as it turns out very helpful, because in ruling out miracles, nothing whatsoever is ruled out. — unenlightened

Yes, exactly. This was precisely my point but you have phrased it much more clearly than I was able to, so thank you for that. The problem is precisely that both Hume and St. Augustine (through the quotes posted in this thread) were obfuscating the issue by not properly defining their terms, such as in effect, they weren't saying anything at all.

However, one can take another view, and find another definition. Let us say instead, that the laws of nature describe the orderly succession of events, such that the present is conditioned by the past. Now if the laws of nature are complete, and the succession is entirely orderly, then if, the big bang then I write this post. That is, initial conditions + physics determine history.

But that is an old-fashioned notion, because randomness seems to be built in. And randomness in radioactive decay, for example, seems to be unconditioned by the past. — unenlightened

Yes, I agree. The miraculous and supernatural represent precisely the entrance of the unconditioned as seen within the realm of the conditioned, the realm of time and space. The created world seems to represent the unity of the unconditioned through the forms of space and time. Analogically, as things are at the macro scale, so are they at the micro. And as things are in the past, so are they in the future.

It is difficult, because if it is not conditioned by the past, it would appear to be random - I'm not entirely sure if there is a way of telling, and if there is in principle no way of our distinguishing the non-random unconditioned event from the random event, then there is no way of answering the question of whether there are miracles or not. — unenlightened

Yes - as Blaise Pascal said, there is sufficient light for those who wish to believe, and sufficient darkness for those who wish to disbelieve. I will say this though - the untrained eye is not capable to distinguish with certainty a miracle from a random event. If I say I'm going to flip a coin 20 times and 20 times in a row get tails, and I do it, someone could always claim that it was random if they so wish. The possibility is always there. One requires understanding in order to truly discern this matter.

If I say I'm going to flip a coin 20 times and 20 times in a row get tails, and I do it, someone could always claim that it was random if they so wish. The possibility is always there. One requires understanding in order to truly discern this matter. — Agustino

It's a one in a million chance, give or take. So the circumstances matter. If you were doing that twenty times a day for ten years and getting it wrong every other time, I'd think you got lucky; or if it was a craze that millions of people were doing, then again I'd think you got lucky, in the same way as I'm not surprised when someone wins the lottery. OTOH, if you could do it on a regular basis, I'd think it was conditioned by your skill in flipping, or in some sleight of hand.

For me to want to declare a miracle, not only would these things have to be ruled out, but also there would have to be some other circumstance that made the occurrence morally significant. Turning water into wine down the pub on Saturday night to impress your mates doesn't count as a miracle merely as inexplicable, but doing it at a wedding feast in the moment of crisis does.

Good post. Yes, taking what is commonly understood to be a Humean regularity view of the world*, "laws of nature" do not exist as some independently given ideal to which the world is bound to conform. The world just is regular - or not, as the case may be. Which makes it hard for a Humean to make sense of a miracle.

But even if we take a more hospitable approach by assuming the reality of the laws of nature, we then have to tackle those. What is a law of nature? It can't just be a precise specification of what actually happens, because no matter what happens, it could be specified, and that specification could be said to be a law. Thus, any purported miracle could be accommodated in a law that makes room for that miracle.

But that is an old-fashioned notion, because randomness seems to be built in. And randomness in radioactive decay, for example, seems to be unconditioned by the past. — unenlightened

It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to establish, just from observations and scientific models, whether there is "ontological" randomness in the world - or what that even means. Quantum mechanics, for example, has both indeterministic and deterministic interpretations.

I think, finally, that if there is any criterion for distinguishing the random from the miraculous, it must lie in the meaning/significance of the event. But that is a can of worms for another day, or another poster. — unenlightened

I think I'll follow you a little down this lane. I don't think that what is commonly thought of as miracles can be objectively, impersonally defined. The popular idea of a miracle is bound up with the idea of a miracle-maker. Hume wisely included God in his definition, though it could be any "miracle man." But man it has to be. Miracles are intentional and meaningful - that's the only way to understand them (quite apart from whether or not one believes in them).

* There is actually quite a broad and contradictory spectrum of views on Hume, for all his seeming clarity, but I don't want to get into exegesis.

So the circumstances matter. — unenlightened

Sure.

OTOH, if you could do it on a regular basis, I'd think it was conditioned by your skill in flipping, or in some sleight of hand. — unenlightened

What if I could, on a regular basis, cure certain forms of cancer just using my mind? Would you call that a miracle?

Turning water into wine down the pub on Saturday night to impress your mates doesn't count as a miracle merely as inexplicable, but doing it at a wedding feast in the moment of crisis does. — unenlightened

Why do you think moral significance is important for something to count as a miracle? Maybe I just walk on water to impress my friends, is that any less miraculous than if I, say, walked on water to save someone from drowning? If so, how come?

The world just is regular - or not, as the case may be. Which makes it hard for a Humean to make sense of a miracle. — SophistiCat

In other words, nothing whatsoever could count as a miracle for Hume. Even if I raised people from the dead, it would be taken as the world being irregular.

But even if we take a more hospitable approach by assuming the reality of the laws of nature, we then have to tackle those. What is a law of nature? It can't just be a precise specification of what actually happens, because no matter what happens, it could be specified, and that specification could be said to be a law. Thus, any purported miracle could be accommodated in a law that makes room for that miracle. — SophistiCat

Exactly, which is one reason why "laws of nature" are an incoherent concept, as I've previously argued.

What if I could, on a regular basis, cure certain forms of cancer just using my mind? Would you call that a miracle? — Agustino

I was thinking about miracle cures myself in the meantime. I think if you could do it on a regular* basis, and the placebo effect couldn't account for it, I would have to take it seriously as either a miracle or some unknown process of telekinesis or something. The problem with such miracles is that what is actually done on a regular basis does not seem to be anything inexplicable. I'd be much more impressed if you could restore lost limbs, but that doesn't happen at Lourdes, or at any faith healer's session I've heard of.

Why do you think moral significance is important for something to count as a miracle? Maybe I just walk on water to impress my friends, is that any less miraculous than if I, say, walked on water to save someone from drowning? If so, how come? — Agustino

I don't have a good explanation for thinking that at the moment; perhaps it's a little miracle.

* 'regular' is an arguable ambiguity here.

Where I think there is something much more interesting than all these 'what ifs' is in subjectivity itself; arguably, the everyday miracle is the (potential) freedom of the human spirit from its own conditioning.

The problem with such miracles is that what is actually done on a regular basis does not seem to be anything inexplicable. — unenlightened

In what sense? Curing illnesses that are for the most part statistically incurable on a regular basis would certainly count as inexplicable, wouldn't it?

Also, what we call "the placebo effect" is also really the power of the mind no? I mean if you have an illness, and you can't get any real medicine, it's certainly preferable to get the placebo over getting nothing, no?

Where I think there is something much more interesting than all these 'what ifs' is in subjectivity itself; arguably, the everyday miracle is the (potential) freedom of the human spirit from its own conditioning. — unenlightened

That is not an everyday miracle, very few people reach the point where they can do that. It is a potential as you say, but not an actuality for most. And I agree about counting that as miraculous.

When you talk about miracles and the supernatural, aren't you references the actions of God? I am not. Chemicals, physics, and time produced life, and in time, intelligent beings, and at some point, just a few seconds ago in geologic time, God. — Bitter Crank

A theist could say that God brought all things into being through physical and chemical processes, and that the principle of life is the hand of God at work. If that's what you mean, fine; but that's not what I am saying. I am saying there was no directive hand, and that the processes of chemistry and physics could have ended up producing only rock. — Bitter Crank

This is precisely the problem. The Universe is suffused with creative energies. Chemicals, forces of physics, etc. - merely labels. This is a tremendous creative force at play, regardless of how you call it, whether you speak of it in poetic or scientific terms, etc.

"Miracle: An event that either makes an exception of one or more of the known laws of nature or otherwise is unexplainable." ... The "known" laws of nature. There is the key to deciding an answer to the question of whether miracles exist. To a native american of the early 1800s, witnessing a locomotive would fit the definition. To us, perhaps seeing a particular political candidate winning office might be.

All of our minds consist of a collection of internetworked neurons programmed by the limited experiences in our lives. Learning is nothing more than bringing the unexplainable into one's knowledge, bringing the patterns in our brains closer to reality. Everyone moves from states of unawareness to understanding. As our understanding can never reach a perfect correlation with reality, we must always experience miracles in our lives.

There is a universal example that falls in this category you call a "miracle". That is human consciousness. We all experience it every day, and yet none of us knows why that thing you call yourself is attached specifically to your body. Our consciousness has a definite location and perception in this world. For whatever reason, we lack the capacity to fully understand this relationship of our thoughts to the physical world, and because of that it can never be known. Consciousness is an example of a miracle that everyone that can think experiences.

So the answer to the question of whether there are miracles must be "yes". That is not because we are experiencing something beyond natural law, but because it conflicts with our present understanding of it.

I would say that the unconscious is created by ourselves, through the act of repression. — Agustino

I don't think the unconscious is 'created'. I find that in the same way that our conscious mind works as a mechanism, our unconscious mind works as a mechanism, too. It is there prior to the psychic material being put in there.

This unconscious mind retains psychic symptoms of its own and is, by definition of life, forced to react and adapt to the environment.

Anything can get repressed into the unconscious - it is a spiritual process in nature. But once something is repressed into the unconscious, it ceases to be spiritual, and becomes a mechanism. — Agustino

I think there arises a problem of how much of a spiritual is internal and external. I would say that the spiritual that is within is, at the first stage, dependent on the external circumstances. There is something to be reacted to. At the second stage, it is the question of how the unconscious mechanism grasps it and turns it into the spiritual energy within oneself. This the continuation of why I argue that the unconscious is a mechanism which exists prior to the first psychic material being repressed.

To a certain extent I agree with this, but I would say that the unconscious and the spiritual are not the same thing. If I may say so, the unconscious is the mechanisation of the spiritual, when the spiritual turns into a mere shadow of its former self, and loses its life & vitality. — Agustino

I agree that the spiritual is not the same as the unconscious and also that there is a certain 'mechanisation'. It is open to question as to how much of the raw, pure spirituality can be retained after going through the process of unconscious processing.

As Jung said, the roots of the tree must reach to the depths of hell for the trunk to reach to the heavens. It is not possible to grow spiritually without undoing the mechanism - and it is a mechanism, that's what the unconscious is - that we are subject to. — Agustino

Wouldn't undoing the mechanism lead to the crippling of our ability to experience the spiritual? I find that it is the struggle, the battle that is to be held in the unconscious which can lead to the spiritual growth if taken carefully.

It is a feature of our minds that we can have experiences we call spiritual, mystical, and supernatural. Our mystical mind-bending experiences are cooked up somewhere in what you call "the hidden, incoherent depths of unconsciousness". It's where we live. Imagining God, creating God, striving to fulfill divine commands and follow the paths of Buddha or Christ or... are all profound creative acts. It is human. It is one of the things we do. — Bitter Crank

Do you mean that the spiritual does not exists and that there is only our unconscious processes that we call spiritual? Wouldn't that be completely fooling ourselves into creating a construct that is fundamentally non-existent? I would argue that spiritual, mystical, and supernatural may be founded in the phenomena existing independent of us and our unconscious minds. Our unconscious minds may react to them and interpret them in various way, but the starting point is the spiritual existing outside of our experience as well.

One has to decide how much reality one's God has. — Bitter Crank

How does one go about deciding on such a thing? I think there is a tendency of some to attribute almost any external phenomena to the unconscious which can lead to a solipsism of sorts. I don't know if that is your case, but what I would like to get at is the question of why certain phenomena and possible existences are attributed purely to the unconscious independent of the external material?

Supernatural: That which exceeds the powers and capacities of the created world. — Agustino

This perforce is false since the "world" is not created, nor can it be said to have 'powers', and that would involve some sort of volition.

This perforce is false since the "world" is not created — charleton

Big Bang denier?

'powers', and that would involve some sort of volition. — charleton

So water having the power to become ice involves volition? You're so scared of God that even little things which may indicate the possibility threaten you. Why not address this anxiety? If you don't believe in God fine, but at least be emotionally open, and tackle it head on, not by hiding, repressing etc.

Big Bang denier? — Agustino

The Big Bang is not an example of creation.

Why not address this anxiety — Agustino

Why not address your subjective assumptions?

I think I'd prefer to proceed by way of example rather than definition. There is a frame from the comic book Watchmen that I rather like. It's been more than a minute since I've read that so I had to google the quote. https://coolpeppermint.wordpress.com/tag/watchmen/

“Thermodynamic miracles… events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.

Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.

But…if me, my birth, if that’s a thermodynamic miracle… I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world! Yes. Anybody in the world.

But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget… I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another’s vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come…dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly.”

In this sense of the word then I think it quite plausible to believe in miracles. The miraculous is something similar to the wounderous or that which inspires awe.

But I did vote "no", because there are other senses of the word. Rather than what is awe-inspiring miracles are acts of magic. Magic inspires awe, but so do non-magical events. Magic is a very interesting topic, in my opinion. Understanding magic is a way at understanding our collective sense of the world -- I won't marry a Pisces, because people born under that star sign have such and such qualities. I will fight this fight because I feel that fate is on my side tonight. I will work hard because it will pay off in the long run.

These are magical beliefs -- beliefs which have no reason outside of themselves. We can build large scaffolds of justification to hide the tenuous relationship to reality that they have -- look at astrology. But, at bottom, there is no factual reason to the belief. It can be based on any number of things -- feelings, traditions, preternatural knowledge, intuition, and so forth -- but these are all just names for beliefs without a factual basis. They are magic, where the words we repeat become and create the world.

I tried very hard to avoid anything religious in this definition. While the religious and the magical often do have an interconnection of sorts, I don't think that interconnection is necessary. I am an atheist, but I've known believers who were believers not because of magical thinking. I hope to lay all that aside for the purposes of your query.

And I haven't lain out sufficient and necessary conditions, exactly. My hope is that by way of example we can have a better understanding than the usual route wherein counter-examples are easy to come by.

And in this sense of the magical, rather than the wounderous or awe-inspiring, I'd have to say that I do not believe in miracles. I believe that the miraculous, in this particular sense, is the result of psychological phenomena -- mistaken beliefs and desire being the primary culprits of said psychological phenomena.

Miracle: An event that either makes an exception of one or more of the known laws of nature or otherwise is unexplainable. For example, this definition includes things like me telling you I will flip this coin and get tails 20 times in a row, and I get it, and you and others are not capable to reproduce the event within a reasonable timeframe using the same coin. — Agustino

That's not an example. What law (or laws) of nature do you think that that would be an exception to? Why don't you think that that could be explained? There's no law of nature which rules out that possibility. It would just be an unlikely event: a coincide, not a miracle.

Contemporary physics, particularly at the extreme micro- and macro- levels is a much richer source of novelty and strangeness than the impoverished narratives of "miracles" and "the supernatural", which are fuelled largely by superstition and parochialism rather than the more hard-earned aspects of the imaginative life associated with the former, which are borne of a combination of real intellectual work and theoretical courage. So, anything of "miracles" or the "supernatural" that can't be at least potentially distilled into theoretical physics can be confidently flushed from consciousness as superfluous to understanding and most probably detrimental to it. — Baden

Well said.

Wake up to reality. Laws of nature are an incoherent concept, as was adequately proved through the course of this thread already.