BS remover, is now the most important job we all have. BS creator's are the common enemy.

that we scarcity-addled hyperglandular primates apparently cannot produce for ourselves. — 180 Proof

WE CAN! If the masses would just occupy the common ground between us all. Perhaps we do need something like AGI, to help us make the required transitions, to reach a point, such as your described 'post scarcity.' I don't think we need a vastly reduced population however, or to break up back into small tribal or epicurean groupings first. You are correct imo, that 'something significant,' has to change soon, or else we will all have to suffer a Trumpian style future horror first. Which will prove to be yet another historical waste of time, another blind alley that enough humans, may well be duped enough, to dart down, before enough of us see the actual changes that are needed, and are soooooooo long overdue imo.

Rather wooish of that article to treat the superficial similarity between inflated/stretched matter and biologically grown brains as more than the superficial similarity that it is.

Given the speed of light, the cosmos would make for an awfully slow working brain. — wonderer1

I agree. Very flimsy evidence for a big Boltzmann style brain, imo, at the scale of galactic superclusters.

Me too, for some little whiles. I was lucky enough to do it in informal situations. Pottery class in a summer camp for children with cancer; ESL for adults at night school, practical instruction for tech students in the laboratory. Way more rewarding than the daily slog and paperwork of a classroom! — Vera Mont

Did you not also experience anger that something as pathetic as money, dictated the availability and quality of education for any individual human?
It's akin to how I feel about images of starving children on the TV or charity adverts like, 'we need your money, as these people are dying, for lack of this particular medicine, which human science can make easily.'
When my first response is, 'well f****** give them what they need,' I just hate those counter responses that start 'well, it's more complicated than that ........'
Just 'f****** lies and f****** excuses for unacceptable behaviour.
WE CAN feed everyone and WE CAN well educate everyone, etc, etc, and give all current 8 billion of us a better life, than most of that number are experiencing since they woke up today.
But the big feed pipe is blocked by big lumps of utter bullshit. These blocks need clearing.
That's the common ground we should all be starting together from. To me, that's what's important, not the semantic arguments between members of the masses.
Get 10 democratic socialists in a room and they will over-debate all issues.
Get 10 nefarious b******* in a room and the very quick, very base unison between them, is something the 10 democratic socialists need to learn how to achieve, as quickly and as efficiently, as them.
K.I.S.S.

My bifurcation of rectilinear/curvilinear, an essential motif of my thesis, doesn't take aim at filling scientific hiccups with claims unsupportable by reason. Instead, it aims to assess historical cycles of emphases leaning towards one or the other side of the bifurcation. I do this in order to argue that the new explosion of post-natal gender ID possibilities, curvilinear, characterizes the next phase of free love. — ucarr

Ok, that's all well and good. Your statements are becoming less comparable with mere lazy notions such as 'our universe was created by an eternal mind with intent.' I would now reduce, via cooking, your statements down to something like. I am unable to know the extent of the term biggest or smallest. The scientific method is incapable of knowing either extent. Such can only be known 'relatively.' This means there must be a knowledge beyond science.
You then seem to be posing this as 'food for thought,' and asking 'how do we account for/answer this?
The best we have at present, is the planck scale. The result of 'smaller than the planck scale', seems to be 'black holes.' So, that's where we are imo, ucarr. Amongst many other things, Humans need a lot more data about black holes. I am sure there are many theists who remain hopeful, that evidence of god will be found inside black holes. Perhaps they are one of it's final, possible, places to remain divinely hidden in. Theism absolutely deserves to be reduced to a set of proposals that remain way, way out in the fringes of human credence. I find it very shocking and I think it's a big reason why so many humans feel so disappointed in their own species (to the extent that it helps them become pessimists and doomsters), that theism, theosophism and organised religion still has so many followers amongst us, when the evidence against the existence of such is so overwhelming.

On the other extent, ie, 'biggest.' The universe at the scale of superclusters of galaxies, has such data as:

The biggest single entity that scientists have identified in the universe is a supercluster of galaxies called the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall. It's so wide that light takes about 10 billion years to move across the entire structure. For perspective, the universe is only 13.8 billion years old.

You might enjoy this:
Galaxy patterns and brain patterns


Personally, I remain very sceptical of such 'pattern' conflations, but they are fun conflations.

Thank you. I loved being a teacher and I remain so angry, that a human invention such as money and how it is employed, makes a great concept such as inclusion, be almost impossible to implement effectively. It could work, and it could work well, but not by just a single subject specialist teacher, in a classroom where a team with the skills that match the needs of the pupils in that particular class is required. Either that or automated systems that can become all the specialised assistants a single subject specialist would need, to cater effectively to the mixed ability levels and any special needs of the pupils in front of them.

I appreciate your kind words Athena.
When I started at the classroom face, my enthusiasm was at 100%. I was a showman and over the years of my teaching career, I had so many fantastic connections with individual pupils that have left me with a conviction, that my career did make a positive difference for many pupils. But I much more remember the failures, than the successes. I have kept and still read, individual letters I got from parents and pupils about how I helped, but they reduced in number, as the years went by, because I became more and more fatigued and challenged, as I got older and they kept piling on the pressure.
In Scotland, they brought in such initiatives as 'Higher still,' 'Curriculum for excellence' and 'inclusion.'
The best of these was 'Inclusion,' but it was also the hardest to deal with, as they did not resource it, nor did they bring in the extra expertise required in the classroom. I was a great fan of inclusion but I could not achieve it's goals with the resources and support I was given.

I remember one year where I had a mixed ability standard grade class of 20 kids in front of me.
One pupil was partial hearing, so I had to wear a special mike, that connected to an earpiece the child wore. I had to remember when to switch it on or off, during a lesson. If it was on when a staff member came into speak to me, during a lesson, then the pupil would pick up the private chat. If I had it on, when sitting beside another pupil, helping them understand a bit of the lesson they were struggling with, then the partial hearing pupil would pick up the conversation and have to indicate to me, that this was disturbing their concentration.
Another pupil had to have all their printed material on blue paper and I had to remember to set my whiteboard projections in the way, that allowed that pupil to see the material projected on the whiteboard, effectively.
Another pupil was a 'selective mute,' and she would only talk/respond/communicate to me or anyone else, when she chose or felt able to. So I could rarely confirm if she understood the lesson or what I wanted her to do next.
In that same class, I had two dyslexic kids, a pupil with Asperger Syndrome and a pupil with Motor Neurone Disease who had a walking frame and a bad speech impediment.
This was not the only challenging class I had on my timetable. My lesson prep time went through the roof. I was exhausted all the time. I did not ever get a proper lunchtime, as I had pupils up every day at lunch, as I was trying to give some of those who were falling behind in class, a little extra help. The work I had to do after I left the school for the day, was ridiculous. I had a classroom assistant for two periods out of the three that I took that mixed ability class. A lovely person, but not a subject specialist, and not particularly trained to help significantly with special need pupils.
All my efforts meant that those mixed ability classes produced good results and I got a lot of praise from senior management but the cost was eventually my own total burn out. As the years went by I could not keep up that level of effort, so my class results began to drop off. I knew I was a spent force and it was time to go.

Ucarr, ucarr, ucarr :halo: This OP, for me now just reduces, under cooking, to another 'god of the gaps' proposal.

I cite your above quote as authority for claiming mystically real things as being extant things as opposed to being speculations. — ucarr

All of the 'evidence' you lay out in very pretty prose like sentences, are of anecdotal interest only.
Only someone who already assign's brainspace and a significant level of credence to the existence of the supernatural, would be attracted by all of the nice looking shinies you offer in your almost poetically packaged prose. Do you not think that this whole op, could be reduced to.
"Any gap, science is currently unable to fill with an empirically provable natural explanation, is defibrillation, for the existence of god/a supernatural with intent."

I know that my sentence above does not demonstrate as interesting a command of English as you can demonstrate, and it does not contain any supportive anecdotal examples, but it is imo, a lot shorter and makes the same base proposal you are making.

Read more. — Vera Mont

Right back at you! and watch more docs on old tribes!

Yes, if that home is built on a sinkhole — Vera Mont

Do people deliberately do that? :roll:

That also applies to the globe. If you wanted to preserve some remnant of nature, humans would have to be limited ion what land they can occupy and exploit. — Vera Mont

They would still have such as freedom of travel.

Why? Won't they all have internet access, once the economy and governance is technology based? — Vera Mont

Yes, I was referring to older tribal systems.

Who says? Tribal systems are organized in a great variety of ways, most of them far more egalitarian than what we now, with a bitter laugh, call democracies. — Vera Mont

I say. Most tribal systems are similar and there is not a 'great variety' in the ways they operated. There is some variety yes, but not 'great variety.'

Many small tribes on a big planet beats all hell out of one ginormous tribe on a small planet. — Vera Mont

Do many individual bricks, beat the hell out of a wall or a home? Do many individual quarks and electrons, beat the hell out of atoms? Does a universe beat the hell out of one big multi-verse?

For example, if we have natural explanations for lightning and rain now, that doesn't mean the theist's explanations that God created the universe and life are incorrect. — GRWelsh

Which atheists claim it does? I am also an atheist and I don't claim that the fact that lightening is a natural phenomena and not a product of angry gods, proves gods do not exist, it just provides further evidence against god posits. You are claiming that atheism and atheists are making claims, neither is making.

From the point of view of the Christian, only one religion needs to be true for their beliefs to be valid. And in fact, this is exactly what they teach -- that Christianity is the one, true religion. — GRWelsh

This offers no new insight. The odds of the Christian faith being the only true one, out of thousands of other, equally valid theistic proposals, remains probabilistically, very low indeed, despite the conviction of Christians.

Many theists find religious arguments, explanations and apologetics to be quite compelling. — GRWelsh

Many flat Earthers believe the Earth is flat. In 1 and 2 you tried to use fallacy as an argument and then in 3, you attempt an ad populum fallacy yourself.

No theist is likely to grant that God has diminished in any way. — GRWelsh

How about deconstructing theists?

Going back to point 1, less supernatural explanations may be offered to explain things as our understanding of the world improves and we replace them with natural explanations, but that that doesn't mean God is rendered smaller or lesser in any way that is relevant to a Christian's beliefs — GRWelsh

Yes it does, as they are then forced to alter their already bad apologetics, that they have previously used.

At this point I became bored, making the effort to respond to an atheist, playing a devil's advocate role for theists. I am not against trying to steelman the opposition, but only if the arguments used are valuable. So, I will leave it there.

Do you agree that any excessively rich and powerful individual can be, identified and scrutinised, whenever a popular focus, lands on them? There have been many examples of rich and powerful horrors being brought down, almost overnight. even some who were hitherto, complete unknowns to the majority of the global population.

If you do, then I think this reveals one way, that what you are asking about, could be 'progressed toward,' or actually achieved.
We could legislate, that if you become rich and powerful, then your day to day life will become far more open to the 'monitoring' of the checks and balances system that I would advocate for.
I can offer many details on how such a system would function, if you want me to.
I think anyone who holds a position of trusted authority should come into the domain of 'checks and balances.' I think anyone who is excessively wealthy must be scrutinised by that domain. That is my version of 'big brother is watching you.' Big brother would become a label for the mass of the population of the planet. This is the way a good 'big brother,' was always supposed to be, in a human family. A guy who helped protect the family from nefarious b*******.

What do you mean by "learned in a shallow and narrow scope"? — Vera Mont

Limited land boundary. Limited knowledge base. Living under a hierarchical authority system, often with a single leader at the top. A small tribe on a big planet.

There is no reason tribes have to compete instead of cooperating. There have been alliances and federations since long before history, and intertribal trade and social gatherings to exchange information and mates go back to Neanderthal clan structure. Cooperation doesn't require homogenization. — Vera Mont

I broadly agree. It's a pity that many decided that competitive conquest of the neighbours was a more efficient solution, than trying to negotiate and cooperate with them. All the ideas that you mentioned, 'alliance,' 'federation,' 'trade,' 'cooperation,' 'social gathering,' sound good to me. We should keep and nurture all of those and get rid of as many aspect as possible, related to 'autocracy,' 'dictatorship,' 'survival of the fittest,' 'war,' etc. I am quite happy to go with a global united people, made up of smaller sub-groups of separate flavours of human.

You and I live in the same universe. They don't. — Vera Mont

Yeah but they don't live in a different universe, or even on a different planet, or for many, even a different country, city or town. So, we have to get through to them.

Good quotes. But we can always find quotes to support one view or another. JFK said:
We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win
Here are some more I got by searching for: "positive quotes about the future of the human race."

Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1925 in Practical Idealism predicted: "The man of the future will be of mixed race. Today's races and classes will gradually disappear owing to the vanishing of space, time, and prejudice."
H. G. Wells said: "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."
Stephen Hawking said: "I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be space and that it represents an important life insurance for our future survival, as it could prevent the disappearance of humanity by colonizing other planets."

Mr Fisher also proposed:
Capitalists maintain their power not through violence or force, but by creating a pervasive sense that the Capitalist system is all there is. They maintain this view by dominating most social and cultural institutions. Fisher proposes that within a capitalist framework there is no space to conceive of alternative forms of social structures, adding that younger generations are not even concerned with recognizing alternatives.
I think he was completely wrong in suggesting this situation cannot be changed. His own personal struggles, resulted in his own suicide. My statements here are only based on my brief searches on Mr Fisher, who I had not heard of prior to reading your post. So, I fully admit that my comments here are not in any way based on an in-depth knowledge of Mr Fishers work.

how do you propose to get the "nefarious few" to relinquish "control over a divided and ill-informed global mass of people" who are, for the most part, "money tricked" — 180 Proof

Via the needs, demands, and the protestations of the many, and via the political representatives and the political systems, a better informed populous will vote for, in the future.
Information systems like the internet can be used for the good, as well as the bad. Just like a bad idea can be spread across the internet like wildfire, so can a good idea. With all new tech, humans tend to take it down many blind and quite destructive alleys, but we eventually find ways to use it for the better. Even the threat of m.a.d from nuclear weapons, has been somewhat useful.

I think psychedelia began way way before James Joyce. It probably started even way before the first drug induced prophecy, uttered by a wacked out oracle of Delphi.
I am sure substance abuse has played many interesting parts in the science produced by many scientists in the past and the present. Perhaps one of the most interesting groups was the Fundamental Fysiks Group, in the 60's

We adjust, when we learn new truths or more accurate detail. That's what most rational folks do. Gender as a social construct and genetic sex, as a notion that is biologically, not strictly binary, does have a lot of compelling supporting evidence, from many biologists. So, I agree that what has been taken in the past, as 'male' or 'female,' with no biologically sound, intersex gradations in-between, is now very unlikely to be true. Sex is not a strict binary. But the idea that human declared truths often have a 'margin of error,' does not mean that no universal constants, exist. The most accurate measure of the speed of light is
299,792,458 (based on a quick google search.) This must have a margin of error, I agree, in the sense that it's 'level of accuracy,' is not known to the nth decimal place, just like Pi etc. But, what can we do with that? What is your main punchline here? The fact that we don't know the value of the speed of light or the value of Pi to the nth decimal place does not mean that such does not exist, but what gap are you suggesting this creates? and what are you suggesting that gap should be filled with?

And the bigger empires grew the faster they collapsed.
My contention is that civilizations fail because they attempt to eradicate tribalism, in order to subsume the members of the tribes they conquer into a unified whole. It's never worked, so far. People do not want to be relived of their group identity and loyalty. They fight onto the death to liberate their tribe from the domination of a larger, more powerful civilization - even if that civilization is by all of its own standards superior to their own. Children assimilate more easily - which was the original idea behind the residential school system: the benevolent and beautiful white people were going to capture young savages in the wilderness and civilize them. It didn't go according to plan. — Vera Mont

I think the difference is that I advocate unison via consent and not force. Your paragraph above describes a history of conquest and not cooperation through reason. I advocate for unison through argument that cooperation, rather than competition in the better way. Imo, traditional tribalism, learned in a rather shallow and narrow scope, will naturally fade over time, due to the wider scope on offer, with more cooperation.
Those who enjoy their traditional foods, for example, often find that their lives are enhanced when they can access the traditional foods of other tribes as well. I know tastes in food and the way a tribe traditionally treats it's women, are not really comparable but, such differences have always been hard to negotiate but it can be and has been achieved.

Unfortunately, we believe and/or profess very different versions of that "why". — Vera Mont

There is good and bad about that. The bad happens if we cannot find any common ground at all, ever.
The good comes from the fact that opposing positions creates choice and choice is always better than no choice.

I agree with that vision, — Vera Mont

See, common ground! If only I could find as much common ground with MAGA Trump supporters, as I can with you.

let the global union be a federation of self-defined tribes, because that is the level of organization at which human societies have been cohesive and stable for the longest periods. The global government needs do nothing more than arbitrate inter-tribal contention, oversee equitable resource distribution and make pooled knowledge available to all. — Vera Mont

A good comfortable piece of common ground within which useful and fruitful negotiation, action planning and trial projects can be agreed upon and can begin.

You have stated a great deal, but is your OP mainly about the statements made? Is your goal to get readers to consider the validity of the statements you make? or do you want specific responses to such as:

A universe in motion, like ours, contains no final answers or states.
It contains, instead, evolving answers and states. — ucarr

Does this whole OP consolidate into something that has been discussed many times on TPF, such as:
Do objective truths exist?

What for you, for example, does the term 'constant' exemplify, on the scale of the universe?
Do you consider the speed of light in a vacuum, constant, for example?

What could a solution be? It strains my imagination to even think of some.
As the culture goes, so goes its components such as education.
When money dictates the rules and sets the pace, everything becomes a facade, a front.
Our culture is a drug addict, and the drug is money. All other concerns are given lip service or forgotten. — 0 thru 9

This is partly why the exchange I had with @Athena and @Vera Mont took a more political direction.
I advocate for working towards the further dilution of all tribalism, all notions of creed and all notions of national identity and traditional/classical presentations of what constitutes a successful civilisation/society. All historical civilisations have failed. We need to teach why, not just teach the dates and what events occurred on those dates.
I advocate for a united species, no more nations, one planet, global governance with a resource based global economy that has automation at its core and good stewardship of this planet, as one of it's prime directives. The removal of money as a means of exchange and the removal of the money trick and religion, as the main means by which a nefarious few, can gain control over a divided and ill-informed global mass of people.
I further advocate for no more party politics. Vote for a person, not a party, not at a local, national, international or global level.

Ah yes… education. A definite necessity. But the details… what kind of education? — 0 thru 9

Yeah, I think that's what @Athena has been stating since the beginning of this thread, even in her OP.

The education for democracy is for rule by reason and it opposes authority over the people. It does not support authority over the people and make them dependent on authority as the God of Abraham religions do.

Please, contemplate the serious difference between preparing the young to be as children to the king or preparing them to govern themselves and to eventually participate in governing a nation ruled by reason, not authority over the people. A nation that argues reasoning with logic and not guns. — Athena

Where Athena and I disagree with each other, is along the lines of what I stated and have underlined below:

. I very much agree with Education! Education! Education! I just don't see much value in any emphasis on Greek/Athenian values or on the musings of ancient thinkers such as Plato or Aristotle. I prefer more contemporary musings. — universeness

Much of this thread, is a discussion about how educational curricula should be constructed and what it should focus on, and how critical, national/tribal culture is, to that process.

I know several former caring teachers who were totally burnt out by the system. — 0 thru 9

I am an example of such a teacher, who took early retirement at 55, because I was burnt out because of the education system in Scotland.

In recognition of the possibility, that it was mostly my mind jumps, rather than the contributions of @Vera Mont or @Athena that caused what you considered a thread worthy of maintaining its position as a mainline thread, getting sent to the lounge, where other TPF members have opined, is the place threads go to die. Which at least, has been shown, is not always true.
Perhaps my 'sorry' was more of a recognition of a possibility that 'influenced' @Jamal's action, rather than an aspect of my thought processes that I sometimes regret. I consider my 'butterfly mind,' a great asset in the main.

"Hope springs eternal."
Alexander Pope in An Essay on Man (1732)

Humorous sidenote: Pope is an interesting second name.

There is a Glasgow story about a fight/scuffle, started in a Glasgow 'orange hall,' (orangemen were/are anti-catholic. They are called orangemen, after their main hero 'King Billy' or the dutchman 'William Of Orange.') Anyway, the story goes that an American group visiting Glasgow, entered an orange club and it was explained to them that the club was 'members only.' After some discussion the management said they would 'sign them in.' There were 4 of them. An argument and a scuffle then broke out after the Americans signed the visitors book. Only after they showed their ID/passports, did the 'scuffle' end.
One of the Americans was genuinely called IRA POPE! and that's why he wrote that in the visitors book. :lol: :rofl:
I can explain why I find that story so hilarious, if you don't understand it, but, the more interesting 'cultural' fallout, is perhaps expressed in a question such as, are the implications of names, culturally critical? Are all 'Macs' always Scottish, no matter where the person lives or ended up due to the movement of diaspora? Does a Kelly always belong to the Irish? is 'Ben' always Jewish? Is a Pope always Catholic? Does IRA always for some, stand for the Irish Republican Army and is 'Alexander,' always Macedonian Greek? How come Alexander is still valid for naming a child in the UK or USA, but naming your child Jesus, or even Plato or Aristotle is unlikely to ever be in vogue? :chin: I know some 'cultures' will use such names but most parents wont.

Sorry @Amity,@Jamal et al, my mind does jump a lot, but as I said 'culture is critical,' is imo, a wide casting of a net. At least my mind jumps, helps keep some threads alive and kicking.

Do you dismiss yoga? — ucarr

No, but my unfit old body does, as does my lack of motivation to make my body more physically fit.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool. — Albert Camus

Sounds like a man who experienced a lot of self-contradiction. He probably died quite young in a car accident.

Since you disbelieve God and Satan are enemies, do you also disbelieve there's spiritual warfare permeating human experience? — ucarr

I use the term spiritual, as referring to human breathing and movement and nothing of the transcendent or esoteric.

I'm willing to eliminate further discussion of God in my dialogs with you and 180 Proof. — ucarr

I would never attempt to restrict your freedom to express yourself, no matter how much I might disagree with the focus of your expression. I might be frustrated that I cannot change your mind, but I will defend your freedom of expression as long as you do not incite violence.

You think I want God to banish you to hell in reaction to our exchange of ideas within a debate? I'm a sinner, but I certainly hope I'm not guilty of what you charge me with. — ucarr

No, you keep missing my main message to you. I am as disappointed with your dalliances with theism as you are with my total rejection of theism. All of your uses of theistic terminology such as god, satan, christian, heaven, hell etc have a high cringe factor for me, as they dilute your status as a critical thinker and a skeptic in my eyes. I experience more concern from that, than I do about any threat that I will suffer for eternity is a non-existent christian hell.

Yes, I harbor primal fears; you don't? Some of them are irrational. Are none of your thoughts irrational? — ucarr

Of course I harbour primal fears and of course I experience irrational thought and they have had more power over me in the past than they do now. I have defeated both in the sense that they do not dictate to my critical faculty. My reason overwhelms them.

In your above statements, you show your likeness to God. I'm honored by your willingness to share with me your sacred devotion to other humans. — ucarr

I could never be as evil as the christian notion of a god, as a quartet (imo) of vile (multiple/schizophrenic) personalities, as absent father, magical son, 'silly' and ridiculous holy ghost and enforcer satan.

I remain interested in your treatment of a youtube video on any aspect of QM.
My final expression of my opinion of your dalliances with theism is: :roll:

How long do you think it will take the capitalist to realize their is a problem with their formula for wealth? — Athena

Getting them to care, is the problem.

That is not easy, no one pays attention to what I have to say about logos, education, or democracy — Athena

That's just not true. I very much agree with Education! Education! Education! I just don't see much value in any emphasis on Greek/Athenian values or on the musings of ancient thinkers such as Plato or Aristotle. I prefer more contemporary musings.

For me, the word freedom, forms as a list of what I want to be free from. The problems come when one persons sense of freedom clashes with another's. Negotiation and cooperation seem best to me.
I assume 'freedom' presupposes the existence of human 'freewill,' for anyone who employs the word.

God won't stop you from doing what you are empowered to do. The gates of Hell are locked from the inside. Those dwelling therein are there by personal choice firmly established. — ucarr

The hell you speak of is a product of your own primal fear. It only exists in your mind, put there by liars.
You as a human, are far more able to affect your environment and everything in it than any god or devil, as you actually exist.

If you are willing to commit to writing your permanent rejection of the Holy Spirit, I want it understood you choose to do so for reasons quite beyond the issues of a debate. If you do this thing, it should be borne of a deep and abiding belief that the God of Christianity is one you wish permanent and insuperable separation from. This state of ultimate separation from God is the proper definition of Hell. — ucarr

So let it be written, so let it be done ...... with bells on. Now, what was that about your 90% confidence? :lol: Gods have no power, they never have and they never will, because they have no intent or teleology, because they have no existence. Your first quote above is a pure cop out. Even though I easily met your challenge, your irrational fear makes you cling to the hope that your god is biding its time and will deal with me later. Not very 'all mighty' of it. Perhaps it's too busy being entertained, by all the human suffering going on on Earth.

Please do not act under my influence. My job, as a believer, is to nudge you in the opposite direction. I acknowledge I can't persuade you in any significant way. Your final outcome is based upon your nature, your will and your personal choices. — ucarr

I release you from any responsibility or influence ucarr regarding the non-existence of my or any esoteric soul. You are not responsible for the hiddenness/impotence/non-existence of a supernatural mind with an ability to demonstrate its existence.

Your mocking tone signals to me an attitude lacking in seriousness. Good! Mock me forever. Never mock God! You say if Yahweh exists, it is an evil monster. This is exactly what the infernal one wishes you to believe. Satan, who proceeds by deception, reaches his apex of power when he hoodwinks a living soul into believing things are exactly opposite to reality. When a living soul believes Good is Evil and Evil (in this instance: "proof" of God's non-existence via your supposed harmless commitment to disdain God in writing) is Good, damnation triumphs over innocence. Even so, if you willfully cross the line into mockery and permanent rejection of the Holy Spirit, you will not be forgiven this transgression. — ucarr

I don't think you have understood me fully ucarr. I am not being tough or brave here. I do not experience your fear and dread, as I assign 0 credence to the proposals, that for you, power them. Let's say your god and it's friend/enforcer Satan exists, and I go to hell, then I would scream and ask for forgiveness, within seconds of being tortured. But your god does nothing, whilst innocent humans suffer terrible events, here on Earth, every day. So, it would not listen to my pleas, as you have stated, because 'you will not be forgiven this transgression.' If your god exists then it had better not forgive me, no matter how much I beg, under torture, as that would make it a liar and a fake. I am happy to be tortured by the supernatural for eternity, as I have lived my life, standing against all human tyranny. Your god, if it existed would be the biggest tyrant ever. So It would have to face my judgement, not me face it's judgement. Your god, if it exists is a fool, if it does not fear the judgement of all those humans/animals etc who have suffered, due to its incompetent creation.

It's long past time for the human race to stop scapegoating non-existents and take full communal responsibility for all of the inhumanity some humans demonstrate towards other humans and our bad stewardship of this planet. Time to let go of the fairy stories and grow up.

I don't expect 180 Proof to react in a manner similar to yours. If I'm right about him likely dodging any definitive statement about him committing to permanent rejection of the Holy Spirit, take note of it. He is your ally in atheism. If you see him deviate from the atheist party line, perhaps with subtlety and guile, let him influence you. He's not niave about the Holy Trinity. — ucarr

There is no atheist party and there are many shades of atheism and atheists. @180 Proof is very capable of stating his own position, in his own way.
You either have the ability to overcome your primal fears or you don't ucarr. If you can't then stick with your Pascals wager. I will still respect your skills to think in interesting ways. Be content that bad atheists like me will suffer for eternity, for my unforgivable crime of rejecting primal fear and irrationality, whilst you will be in heaven, constantly telling a god how wonderful you think it is. Christian heaven has always sounded like hell to me. A place where there are no more questions, has no meaning or purpose to me. Sounds like a new big bang is needed.

My ninety per cent confidence you will not commit to such a written statement is bolstered by your speculation about pan deism. You allow hedge room for a deity within your metaphysical commitments because, as I’ve been speculating, deep down you know you have an immortal soul: — ucarr

:lol: Oh please extend this challenge to me. May my (non-existent) eternal soul be dammed to the worst hell any theistic mind or ucarr mind or Christian god can invent or imagineer. I say that if the Christian Yahweh exists, it is an evil monster, the equivalent of any notion of Satan, who is also a non-existent, incapable of giving me as much as a hang nail.

Here is an old challenge I have been making to devoted theists, since I was around 20 (I am now 59).
Let's see if the Christian god can stop me from finishing this sentence ...... looks like it can't.
Stop living in fear ucarr of non-existent gods. I will sign over my immortal soul right here right now, for free! It does not exist. Shall I give Yahweh some more time? How about you request that it affect me before you respond to this post and then I will tell you if it worked.
As with all theist threats, the best that lot can do, is hope some unfortunate happenstance happens to me or some religious nut job kills me and then claims god was acting through them. :lol:
It would be fascinating to find out what creature a human would become after a hundred years of suffering in any of the hell's described in theism. Its just fairy stories to try to scare children. This god can't even save an innocent child from starving to death!

Let's do it. Shall I start? — ucarr

Yes.

I have watched debates/discussions between theists and atheists online, for many years.
I am very familiar with the nonsense arguments peddled by theists and theosophists.
They are all bogus. I have contributed to many threads on TPF regarding theism and religion.
If you wish to engage me in a direct discussion on an aspect of religious dogma, such as the trinity, then we can do so by PM or on one of the threads already on TPF regarding such.
I have no appetite for ad nauseam repetition and irrational theistic woo woo (which is all that is on offer in the trinity proposal) on this thread, as that would spoil the interesting components of this thread that your style of thinking has offered. Remember the title is does entropy exist, not does the trinity exist.
@180 Proof :100:

Near the end of the video, with four seconds remaining, pause the video so you can study the graphic displayed there. — ucarr

I have encountered this diagram before on youtube. It has been used by such con men as Kent Hovind and his son Eric Hovind. This 'trinity' video and it's content are pure hokum. The diagram is useless and meaningless.

You might find the following interesting. Victor T Toth, is a very respected part time physicist on Quora.
Even maths professors such as @jgill here on TPF rate him well.

Question posed to Victor: Most comments on quantum entanglement on Quora repeat that sending information faster than light is impossible. But how about entanglement seeming to violate locality? Isn't this something that needs to be investigated and theorized about?

Victor's response on Quora:

Of course entanglement violates the concept of locality. That is the whole point of Bell’s famous theorem.

The intriguing thing about quantum physics is that despite this violation of nonlocality, it is not possible to cause an influence to propagate from one location to another faster than light.

Think of nonlocality as variables that govern the behavior of the system as a whole, but not attached to any particular space, time, or object. The conserved energy, momentum, or angular momentum of a quantum system are good examples. If a pair of particles are entangled (or to be precise, if a pair of particles is isolated from the environment so that they are ONLY entangled with each other and not everything else) and you measure, say, the angular momentum of one of them, this allows you to predict the outcome of a similar measurement of the other and vice versa. But it is wrong to think that you caused the other measurement to have a certain value. Rather, these two measurements are governed by the same quantity (the conserved angular momentum of the system as a whole) that has been there all along, everywhere, all at once, to borrow part of the title of that popular film.

And this is how we can have both nonlocality and causality at the same time. Actually for causality we need a bit more: ordinary quantum mechanics does allow faster-than-light or backwards-in-time signaling with a small but nonvanishing probability, but quantum field theory explicitly rules such things out, so the theory is strictly causal, despite being nonlocal.

Epidemics keep getting bigger, too. — Vera Mont

I wanted to answer this with a bit more detail.
Extracted from the data table from the wiki article List of epidemics and pandemics:
1 Black Death 75–200 million deaths 17–54% of estimate global pop.
2 Spanish flu 17–100 million 1–5.4%
3 Plague of Justinian 15–100 million 7–56%
4 HIV/AIDS epidemic 42 million (as of 2023)
5 COVID-19 pandemic 6.9–28.3 million 0.1–0.4%, so far.

So, no, epidemics / pandemics are not getting 'bigger' compared to historical data.

I would prefer 'wonderful organic, sentient, intelligent, progressive, unique, lifeform,' to 'meat payload.'
As an omnivore, I can eat meat, but not human meat, so the labels we choose to use are more important than your I hope 'tongue in cheek,' use of the label 'meat payload,' suggests. I could do something similar with,
fake/artificial/machine payloads are not - never have been or will be - the point of any 'mission' of discovery. Your mecha based technophilia, seems to trump your biophilia. :sad:

Yes. That's where you seem to feel most at home. — Vera Mont

Lions and Tigers and Bears Oh My! :scream:, but the wicked witch get's her ass melted and her troops switched to Dorothy, and her little dog to!

Pity Frank Baum was rather inconsistent in his own enlightenment:
When Baum lived in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where he was secretary of its Equal Suffrage Club, much of the politics in the Republican Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer dealt with trying to convince the populace to vote for women's suffrage.

and then, we have:

During the period surrounding the 1890 Ghost Dance movement and Wounded Knee Massacre, Baum wrote two editorials asserting that the safety of white settlers depended on the wholesale genocide of American Indians.

Many people have some good positions and some bad ones. I think that about you and you think that about me. But on the majority of issues that would directly affect our fellow humans, I think we have mostly common cause.

I hope you're right, but we have to make way for them, and that's never a tidy process. That's the part all optimists prefer to gloss over. — Vera Mont

See what I mean!

You imagine a 'nefarious' few wielding Wizard-of-Oz style magic tricks that, once they're revealed, the Munchkins will no longer revere. You're putting an inordinate and unwarranted faith in the Munchkins.

You can reach for all the movies you like: they are fiction. This is fact : — Vera Mont

The wizard of Oz and the munchkins are also fiction.
Egypt, Greece, Iran, Italy, Syria, India, China, etc persist. All the cultures/civilisations you mentioned changed. Even the ancient beaker people are still within us. As are the celts/picts/vikings etc, etc and probably some neanderthal, and Cro Magnon contributions. I already stated that there are more humans alive today than at any previous point in history. Despite our savagery towards each other. We have ever been in flux. It's just such a pity that that flux had to be so bloody at times and so more based on the competitive and savage rules of our jungle based Darwinian origins, than on the different stages of our enlightenment.

When it ends, something else takes its place. Whoever pronounces an imminent demise is a villain. SBI. — Vera Mont

A better and wiser augmented 'us,' is what will be the something else that takes our place, imo.

That is not the person I described. The person I described has so far done everything in his considerable power to thwart all attempts at uniting people at all levels, from ethnically mixed and gender unmixed marriage, through trade unions, co-operatives and party coalitions to the United Nations. The one who spends $100, 000, 000 on an airplane that does exactly nothing but waste vast quantities of fuel, until it's ordered to destroy some other airplane. That's the guy who will be in charge of the next big project and the next - with total disregard to what you or I advocate. — Vera Mont

So we agree with what and who we don't advocate. The difference is that you think we cannot defeat the nefarious and I think we can. I think the nefarious prefer you to me.

I believe that our only hope for a happy and stable future is the collapse of this civilization, as so many civilizations have collapsed before and made way for something new. That collapse will leave its survivors better equipped to start again than their predecessors had been, and with the benefit of some lessons learned the hardest possible way. May then... — Vera Mont

There are a few James Bond movies with such plotlines:

The Spy Who Loved Me: Use stolen submarines to provoke a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviets, then rebuild humanity under the ocean.

Moonraker: Fire a nerve agent from space to kill the entire population of earth, then create a new civilisation in space.

Even Deep Space 9 had a go, on the holodeck (things often went wrong on the holodeck), in an episode called 'Our Man Bashir' (No doubt a take off of 'Our Man Flint):


Are you a potential super villain Vera? I don't think we need to start again. We just need to do better.

Have you looked at such as this, as an indication of the range of science/philosophy interaction?

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14660/new-approach-to-quantum-mechanics-the-prescribed-measurement-problem

We are broadly of the same mind regarding Modi and regarding what needs to be pursued to prevent the horrors described in the article you posted and the attempts to silence more rational minds, such as that of Ravish Kumar, in the video doc you posted. I can only hope that more TPF members will post their views on this stuff, on your thread here. I personally think it's very good, if a discussion on a name change, can expand into the much more serious, but related areas of realpolitik and what people face on a daily basis in communities all over the world. Surely philosophy is an integral part of that. If it is not, then philosophy is a sheep, imo.