I think subjects as well as arguments can be reasonable as well as unreasonable. For an atheist (is it me or is there unusual much activity abouts gods?) theism is unreasonable. Close to madness even. Is madness reasonable?

Thus such "theists" themselves render God irrelevant. — baker

Well, without them we wouldn't exist. So they give meaning to all life. Their reasons for creating us were selfish but understandable.

A theist who glorifies himself and creates a god in his own image: "God is whatever I say God is".
A self-styled "theist" who doesn't care a straw about God. — baker

There is not one god. There are as many gods as there were, are, and will be creatures in the universe.

Subjects aren't reasonable, arguments are. — T Clark

"The argument" can be very unreasonable though...

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? — apokrisis

It doesn't. It's what we let it do mentally. And then afterwards say that it took the one of least action. In qft reality, it probes all paths, non-locally, zipping from one to another, in accordance with the probability weights of all paths.

This is just wordplay, fun, but just prose and rather disjointed. — universeness

Tòm Storm. His name speaks... The disjoint nature of the prose I use is disjoint because the situation in heaven was rather disjoint...

ooooookkkkkaaaaayyyyyy! Sorry, I can't do any better — universeness

Don't be sorry universeness! Call me mental or disjoint. But isn't the scientific approach, which is an honorable one, using prose also? And rather disjoint too?

This is just wordplay, fun, but just prose and rather disjointed. — universeness

It's what happened in heaven. I was informed in a dream and by forum member Tom Storm, who the gods used to inform me.

Then I take the hat inside out first! Through the atheist mist, it's difficult for the gods to reach us. They try and try and try... Attending us that also the human gods were involved in creation. They played their part in heaven but their endless mind squiblings didn't any good for their collective creation.... Take that ursser!

Just like a recovering junkie, for some, coming back to religion by going through atheistic cold turkey can be tough but worth it in the end. — universeness

Exactly! We could go on ages like this. Why didn't he just call his book: "Genes and memes, why we should thank the gods"...?

The meaning of life is us and the whole universal floral and faunal kingdom, replaying the game of love and hate the faunal and floral gods had been playing eternally already. We're doomed to eternally play for them the game of love and hate...

And yes! Another thread about the gods. I must readjust my story. My dream was no coincidence!

Only the gods give meaning to life. Science, be it Dawkins (The Selfish Gene and Meme), Hawking (God is a mathematician) or me (the altruist gene and meme, realized by love and hate particles to recreate heaven, as described in my upcoming story), the gods are needed. They are no mathematicians (though some Homosapiens gods think they are, which led to considerable trouble in heaven).

In typical Hawking "voice":

"From the outside, you can't see what's in a black hole..."

Yes. The meaning of life is life itself. But then Dawkins is wrong. We don't procreate genes and memes cause they order to, as he implies, but just because to live. But as a physicist I wanna know the reason, the cause of life.

If there were no structure to the “materialist universe,” whatever that’s supposed to mean, nothing would be possible and there could only be chaos (though chaos would have no meaning). — praxis

When the meaning given by universal creatures was all the meaning around, the meaning would be... eeeh... meaningless! If only matter with a non-material element in it existed, what would be the meaning of life?

I don't think gods and their story offer a moral compass, or any of that kind of BS. But they offer the answer to why all is there. Science can't explain. Be it Dawkins or Hawking.

Keep the faith man! Dawkins would have found a way! — universeness

I don't think so. He obediently sticks to the dogma...

Well, I am almost certain that 'The altruistic gene' was one of the titles he thought might have been a better choice.
4m — universeness

The cover wouldn't match the content then.

You think poorly, write poorly, and are simply a face in a crowd of others like you with very big mouths attached to very small minds — Joe Mello

Uncle Joe! Don't stain your philosophy degree! I don't show off with my physics degree uncle! Why doing it with yours,? By the way, exactly because I actually know something about physics, your adagio of comparing dark energy with omnipotence is nonsense. It's no proof of god. It's just a clever stuff the created. Expansion of 3d into 4d ,(approximations, but useful)

I far prefer the profound mystery of not knowing and really not needing to know the absolute truth regarding the source/origin of our Universe. I can live FULLY and HAPPILY without a 'god crutch' — universeness

Well, realizing that the universe is the same as heaven breaths the live into it, about which Hawking asked. The fire in the equations. The gods invented two basic particles. As I already thought. The two massless Weyl particles and 7 gauge fields between them. And the space to live in. They brought it into existence after they got bored with eternally making love and hate and now they lay back watching all creatures in the universe (one for every god) playing the game they used to.

Only those damned homosapiens-gods gave some trouble...

There is dogma in biology also. The central dogma in biology, it's even called! Sounds pretty religious to me...

No. I read the book and when he said that organisms are vessels to secure the procreation of genes (or memes) I just thought, why aren't genes just in our service instead of we in theirs? Altruistic, that is.

The clock measuring time has itself no direction in time. Virtual particles are the incarnation of the ideal clock. They go back and forth in time. In a Feynman diagram they are represented by a circle without legs, a vacuum bubble. This virtual clock is eternally present in spacetime.

You had to show me where he didn’t say what I said he said about Dark Energy, and actually said that it wasn’t a good argument for an omnipotent power, not what his poor philosophical mind says about God when equating God with religion and faith. The point I made was that even with his poor philosophical mind he still logically deduced that Dark Energy displays the characteristics of an omnipotent power. — Joe Mello

Dear uncle Crazy Joe Mello!

I'm sorry to see you have your periodic episode. Last week godkind finally was able to communicate a message to mankind, by means of a dream I had which will be revealed before to long. Let me tell you: dark energy is just a necessary means they invented after a depressing global event in the heavens. It's just an ingredient invented, not to express their omnipotence but to bring relief for the god beings. I saw the mechanism leading to the accelerated expansion of the universe they created to ease themselves.

They added, especially for you, a short message. They are aware of your awareness of heaven. But you are fooling yourself. They don't like the image you mirror and show mankind. They asked me, because they care about you, to help you and give you some support in the difficult times you experience during your episodes. So, uncle Joe, consider the gods on your side and try not to run too high. My thoughts are with you and the gods care about you! Say hi to dr. Piller and to that nice nurse!

All the best, little EugeneW

The Selfish Gene should have been called The Altruist Gene. Genes just developed in early protein lifeforms. The help us making the right proteins available and create new ones. There is the chicken and egg problem. Proteins are formed in ribosomes. They are a structure made of proteins. What came first? The proteins obviously. They were there before ribosomes and before DNA. Let me use this forum to thank those little wokkels for their serviced they gave us already billions of years! Thank you wokkel genes! With proud we shuffle you on to next generations, to make your services available to new life!

All processes in our world, be they physical or mental, are determined. To think though that they determine us would imply a separation between us and these processes. That we are puppets of processes, laws, or forces of nature, that determine us. Such is not the case. We have free will and the choices we make are free. Even if our choice is predictable it is free. It even has to be predictable to be free. A choice based on randomness, which is very hard to make, is determined by chance, which would make us a puppet of chance. Hidden variables make us determined.

Goodday Agent Smith!

But suppose Baal was asleep? And God took his chance? — EugeneW

What says Witty about these words?

Yes. I mean, where is the empirical evidence for one god, with the name God, only?

And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.

What a bible passage!

But suppose Baal was asleep? And God took his chance?

Ah! A meeting to his signs! It gets nice and confusing now! The reign as a sign. Or the reign being a sign? Or reign just rain and a sign a sain? Language is magic! Seems words speak to you!

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on)

How to climb back? Once in mathematical heaven, one should just leap in good faith?

Bell ! What a lotta rain !

He felt to give a meeting to his shines. — lll

I'm zeroeing in on English, closing on in it. "A meeting to his shines"...? Spraying rain to show his bravura?

"If one could do it..."

Is that a justified premise? There is no empirical evidence. The termites build there fortress, the bees their hive, and the birds their nest. The beaver builds dams, the snails carries his home all along, the lobster uses empty shells. I won't mention homo sapiens, but it seems its modern variant worships technique, for some mystical reason. Modern HS wants to be an OOOO-incarnation of all gods? In that case, an OOOO-god comes in handy!

But for me this does not tell us much about an objective world, just how the a fragment of that world seems to us, based on the constructions of language and perception. — Tom Storm

You assign to much importance to language. As many philosophers do. Language, from mathematical to religious, is just a small part of being. It is handy for talking and writing. To inform or being informed. It doesn't shape reality. It's part of ex/impressing reality. Different languages ex/impress different realities. The chirping of birds, the mathematical story of quantum fields, the story of the poly gods, they all express different realities. The story of one objective reality, progenited by Xenophanes and Plato, gained popularity again during the "enlightenment", as an answer to religious atrocities. A new reality took its place though, while the monogod reality persisted. The both direct descendants of the one god and one reality idea. Which in fact was a sleazy and refined tactic to push one's own reality, about which we are forced to learn about already as young children. By law! Don't send your children to school, to learn about the miracles and wonders of the scientific reality? Want a fine? Want to be separated from your children? Bad parent! A parent should send their children to school! Laymen are ignorant... so the argument goes. The days of the old are with us again.

Colour, as you know is a product of light and our sight process. Things themselves do not have colour — Tom Storm

The plastic bag I see looks pretty orange. It has the color orange. Our brain projects color onto the world. Okay, not into, but onto. The plastic bag beneath the orange is not orange by itself.

Baal! Wittalottareign!

like the name of your deity. Hod brass harmonica ! — lll

:lol:

I noticed too! Hodbless.Sounds funny!

Thanx! Ten years, yes! She's a bit worried though. I spend quite some time on the phone (laptop still dead,needs lapup). While I always said: all those people I see, constantly on their phone... Now I do the same. On philosophy and physics sites, but still... it's just the same.

How do you envision discrete space? Say a discrete 2d one.

Those fresh winds? — lll

Witta luttareign!

. But if space is infinitely divisible, then we have a distance that is finite from one point of view and infinite from another point of view — Gregory

An observer moving relative tò you sees your space contracted,. Space doesn't seem infinite to some.

Science/Medicine has limits, it's fair to say. Dreams could run as long as an hour. If one could make a film of the dream while the subject is sleeping, then that's the proof of dreams. And we can't do that. — L'éléphant

It can be shown though that the mouse has a visual of a checkboard. A 1 hour dream lasts 5 minutes. REM. Seems good enough proof. A dog barking. Ýou talking in your sleep. Proof!

Zeno said that the world can't be infinite yet it's infinitly divisible, — Gregory

Didn't the Eleatic philosophers thought space is undivisible (in the link)?