Harmony neither acts nor reasons, it is the lowest possible energy state of the complete system, thus making it more efficient and creative. Without harmony, ethics have no demonstrable meaning.

Could be. I can't do anything with info on quantum mechanics because the fundamentals of it are word salad to me. — Mongrel

Its contextual meaning quanta express greater context dependence than we're used to observing and, for example, a particle's position and momentum, spin and charge, etc. all effect one another more. However, quantum mechanics are currently formulated in six dimensions using classical causal mathematics which limits their expression to those of discrete integrals. We just don't have the analog logic yet to formulate how nature expresses both integrals and differentials.

According to quantum mechanics the passage of time is discrete and can never be shorter than 10^-27s and if there is such a thing as a present moment it can't get any shorter than that and supersymmetry implies this could be the actual moment of the Big Bang.

My own view is that we perceive everything as changing because both a fated unchanging universe and an utterly random one are not only physically impossible, but humanly inconceivable. Certainly we can all imagine higher spatial dimensions might exist or that our universe could be static and fated in some sort of abstract sense, but only a few mathematicians can even begin to conceptualize what the simplest four dimensional objects might actually look like, while the random remains unimaginable by definition. The arrow of time we perceive can also be attributed to the fact that the human mind doesn't work backwards. Thus, the simple observation that a context without significant content, and any content without a greater context, are a contradiction in terms provides a simple explanation for the passage of time.

It also means that nature abhorring a vacuum is just as good an explanation as any other for why crap seems to randomly fall from the sky, yet, inexorably roll downhill. Rather than an utterly random universe, as quantum mechanics suggests, or an unchanging fated mono-block universe, as Relativity strongly implies, a context without any content and vice versa being an impossible contradiction means space without time and the random without the orderly are unimaginable contradictions just like having an up without a down or a front without a back.

I used to use coffeecup (free version) which was difficult at first but not impossible. Of what's on your list, Joomla looks good, but I've no experience and most of them I've never heard of. — unenlightened

For those you need the whole pitcher of beer.

Ticky Tacky would be my choice.

In a previous conversation you said that emotions are differential and logic is integral. Where does intuition fit into that model? — MonfortS26

Intuition is where the two meet in harmony as we occupy the lowest possible energy state of the system where our humble efficiency can produce outrageous creative output. However, in a universal recursion of the law of identity even what we call intuition or reason would exchange identities in extreme contexts with the result that the mind and brain can be considered more fundamentally a creative engine that only incidentally happens to also resemble a computer. This would also explain why the theoretical capacity of the brain is over a petabyte of information, yet, human memory is notoriously fallible. It can also be viewed as merely the initial creative impetus of the Big Bang still expanding.

If existence is a burden and you just keep coming back then its hell and there's nothing anyone can do to help.

Americans are, perhaps, more individualistic, more inclined to a git-er-done attitude and self-reliance (improvise-adapt-overcome), anti-intellectual, and really like to shoot bad guys and blow shit up. — Brainglitch

LOL, you mean more violent. We have the worst social record in every regard in the developed world, but it certainly makes for better drama and plenty of it. For a long time Hollywood made more realistic movies and even pseudo documentaries such as "All The President's Men" that depicted real life people fighting the good fight, but those days are over now that money is doing all the driving. Movies like "Silkwood" are simply depressing reminders that its impossible to fight the system.

The original superman comic book provides unique insight into the matter. For a long time superman could not fly, but could leap over a tall building in a single bound and in the comics he was more likely to fight an evil slumlord than any super villain. This was during the depression and early forties when those with money were equated with the bad guys and the entire country was steadily acquiring a more skeptical view of things like the supernatural. After the war money flowed like water into the US due to both Europe and Japan's infrastructure being decimated and superman changed into what we are more familiar with today. That is, all abstract philosophical talk and little substance with the comic book addressing few if any real concerns and the characters becoming little more than abstract caricatures.

Notably, Stan Lee brought a little more to the genre in the sixties when he started introducing more adult themes, but even those seldom had anything to do with the specifics of current political realities and the lives of everyday people. In other words, comic books became more of a mythology than a reflection of reality which can also be seen in the evolution of movies into more of a form of escapism. Today psychologists have noted that every seven years or so the movie industry switches from science fiction to supernatural themes and back again and their delusional clients follow the trend.

So the neurons of a highly intuitive person would be more out of sync than a less intuitive person? — MonfortS26

More specifically, they would be capable of expressing both greater harmony and entropy or chaos. This jives with other evidence that, for example, people with better memories tend to save their brain power for when it is more useful which tends to make them less creative. For better or worse depending on the individual and their circumstances, one expresses greater dissonance and efficiency and the other greater harmony and creativity.

If life is absurd, has no meaning, then why bother to valorize at all? What possible significance could it have. I think, even if valorization can not be shown to have a logical basis, it is still an inescapable function of life that we cannot not value our experiences in life..this is what I meant when I asked why we shouldn't trust what we have constructed...it seems to work. — Cavacava

The absurdities in life are unlimited and, so too, am I infinite absurd! I think, therefore I must be conscious!

What I didn't understand was "If universals are our own construction, then don't we trust what we have built"--maybe I'm missing some context for that comment or something. — Terrapin Station

Allan Watts used the common Asian metaphor of "God is playing peek-a-boo". Its not a question of trust when even the concept of trust is just another construct.

Harvard could not care less about anyone's objections in this matter because their reputation is at stake and they are a FOR PROFIT organization dedicated to making money. The very idea that a for profit organization can support freedom of speech is a contradiction in terms in the US where republicans constantly complain that the mass media should be censored and are now complaining that facebook is censoring them. You get the justice you can afford in this country and words only mean whatever they tell you they mean.

Seems to me there are two arguments here:

1.) God does not exist, and therefore life is absurd.

2.) Life is absurd without god, therefore god exists.

The first argument is a reaction to the apparent non existence of a deity, while the second is a proof for a deity.

Absurdity here is meaning not only the metaphor of the actor without a stage, but also the complete uncanniness, or peculiarity, of existence as a whole if god does not exist.

Or is this just an appeal to emotions and ignorance? — darthbarracuda

You are attempting the equivalent of dividing by zero by zero because you have neither a definition for God or the absurd. A philosophy composed of word salad does not make for a healthy diet.

Quantum mechanics are by all observations random, meaning, they cannot be defined and can just as easily be described as acausal. These are merely labels and if you want to insist that quantum mechanics describes bullshit its just as valid as far as I'm concerned because words only have demonstrable meaning according to their function in specific contexts. Just because zero, for example, is not a real number and is treated differently with division by zero being considered nonsense doesn't mean we cannot use zero in our mathematics or that zero is an unscientific concept. Actually, the Chinese were originally reluctant to adopt the use of zero in their mathematics for exactly that reason considering it merely a joke with the symbol for zero essentially translating as "Everything I say is a joke!" The only evidence required for the use of the concept of the acausal in science is statistical and, since Bell's Theorem, there is a mountain of evidence to support its use.

Of course, academics are so filled with hubris that they resist the idea and find nothing humorous about their work. That's a cultural problem that, of course, they will investigate thoroughly all in good time now that the first quantifiable theory of humor has established that it revolves around anything low entropy.

Thanks to the evidence of things like quantum mechanics causality can be considered to be derived from the acausal and a sort of nonsensical "synergistic-normalization" applies to everything. What that means is science can adopt Functionalist approaches that extend its reach by examining what we do not and cannot know for more of what we can know on the assumption that yin-yang dynamics are demonstrable which should even be something that statistics can eventually establish as an empirical fact. In other words, even what is meaningful and meaningless can be subject to scientific scrutiny and, for example, it is now possible to earn your degree in comedy because the first theory of humor has already established that what we consider funny is low in entropy.

Intuition is contextual or metaphoric reasoning that our cells themselves can perform without having a clue as to what they are doing because they are merely looking for what's missing from this picture. Our neurons, for example, naturally occupy the lowest possible energy state of the complete system whenever they aren't busy with other things. In physics a common example is two pendulums hung on the same wall which will both vibrate the wall compelling one another to eventually swing in unison, thus, occupying the lowest possible energy state of the system and forming a self-organizing system. An example in our brain is when we relax on a couch only to be startled by some damned fool.

Its a mutually beneficial relationship that displays "resilience" where if I bump one clock the wall will help to absorb some of the energy and prevent the clocks from swinging further out of sync and, likewise, during an earthquake the pendulums will swing wildly out of sync helping to absorb some of the energy and, thus, preserve both clocks and the wall holding them up. The same principle is used in skyscrapers to prevent them from swaying too much. Recently mathematicians figured out how to calculate the resilience of any self-organizing system meaning we should soon be able to empirically demonstrate exactly how intuition works and how resilient the intuition of any particular individual happens to be. Which also means it should be possible to calculate just how creative an individual is because the pendulums swinging wildly out of sync can be considered either an expression of random entropy or creativity.

So are logic and emotion simply separate tools for the self to use? — MonfortS26

They are indivisible complimentary-opposites, or yin and yang, that constantly transform into one another in extreme contexts. A small child attached to their favorite toy is a good example of how synergy becomes self-limiting in extreme contexts and how logic and emotions can exchange identities. No matter how hard the child may attempt to nurture and retain their love for their toy, their attachment will inevitably fade and become lost like a drop of water in the ocean as they steadily acquire new thoughts and feelings all synergistically vying for their attention. To some degree, the process works in reverse as well which is why older adults commonly nurture their childhood feelings in order to recapture them. They are context dependent explaining how what we consider humorous in one context becomes abstract logic in another.

How does one go about balancing the needs of the individual vs. the collective? — Nick Sousa

Ah, I forgot to answer this question. My own view is that, currently, the world is ruled by the money and the guns doing most of the talking worth listening to. For example, the US military is equal to the next six or seven largest combined and we pay half the costs for both NATO and the UN all "supposedly" for defense purposes as if we are defending ourselves against the entire world. The sad truth is, we install dictators like Saddam Hussein and supply them with money and outdated weapons if we can't think of a better way to control the region or make more money off them. Its empire baby, and this train ain't stopping until she derails.

That's what Lincoln established in the civil war, that the money and guns are unbeatable, which is only becoming more of a reality as the technology advances. The latest push at the Pentagon is for robotics that can allow the US to police the world with drones, like the Predator, merely being the beginning and the Navy recently declaring they are no longer making manned aircraft and have plans to put 30-40 thousand drones in the oceans that don't even need to be recharged for a year.

Anyway, it means that what we owe society is rapidly becoming more of a question of what society owes us with all the wealth accumulating at the top precisely because the money and guns are doing all the talking worth listening to. As far as I'm concerned, both our presidential candidates should be in jail, the billionaire mayor of NYC who arrested 26 reporters should be in jail, the bankers who caused the economic collapse should be in jail, and so on and so forth and unless society has more to offer than the best justice that money can buy I don't owe them a damned thing and I certainly don't have any money anyway.

The only way I see around the problem is to develop a systems logic that makes this timeless brute force approach outdated which is exactly what I'm writing about in my book. Civilization is currently organizing using the most primitive systems logic and that has to change before we destroy the whole planet. Improving communications just doesn't mean much when brute force is the more effective way to get what you want and need and what humanity requires is better ways to organize than either laze fare capitalism or communism can provide.

Bad grammar, wars have been fought over bad grammar.

Collectivism is a form of morality with Confucius being a classic example and Taoism championed by Lao Tzu providing a more anarchistic perspective on the subject. I'm not that familiar with Confucius myself, but I'm sure you can find any number of good books that contrast the two authors.

Its basic left wing politics which are comparable to the distinction between Jeffersonian democracy and that of Lincoln. Like Jefferson, Lao Tzu supported the peasantry and middle class forming a nation of farmers and tradesmen while, like Lincoln, Confucius argued for a more bureaucratic state, growth and progress. Eventually the superior numbers and guns of the north defeated the south and the same happened in China after roughly two thousand years of conflict between the Taoists and Confucians, but the victory was short lived with the rise of communism. Among communists today this is still a hugely divisive issue and, for example, on secular communes in the west it is common to refer to their politics as the "Stalinists" verses the "Anarchists".

This position is not only absurd, it also suffers from crippling epistemic issues. For example, from the position of being an onboard self model, how is it that you can know a single thing about the external world beyond the model/representation? How do you know there is physical neuronal brain cells causing your experience, when the part of reality those cells inhabit transcends your epistemic access?

And more conceptually, what does it even mean to speak of non-experiential brain cells? The only cells I know are the images/depictions used and described in the biological sciences - we talk about them Write about them, draw them, observe them in a microscope, posit they're existence, use them within our scientific theories and explanations - they're experiential, part of the lived world. So if we aren't talking about those cells, then what are we talking about? — dukkha

Einstein said, 'If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.'

Neurologists have already proven that on their most fundamental level of their organization the mind and brain substitute for each other's jobs whenever one is malfunctioning and for greater efficiency and reliability. In other words, there is no clear dividing line between what is the mind and what is the brain because one without the other is a contradiction in terms. I know, it sounds silly to bring up neurological evidence in midst of a pissing contest.

You can look up the evidence for yourself, but all the indications are the mind and brain form the particle-wave duality of quantum mechanics and neurologists are about to go down the rabbit hole tracing all the pattern matching all the way into indeterminacy. Already Roger Penrose's theory has receive two experimental confirmations that quantum microwave induced vibrations are created in the axions or microtubules of the brain. What that means is the metaphysical reality and metaphorical reality are converging within the brain and self-awareness is being aware that you are never who you think you are and wonder remains the beginning of wisdom.

A mirror test is a classic example of self-awareness in action. Infants and a few animals such as dolphins and apes show sudden recognition of the fact they are looking at themselves with the expression on an infant's face being priceless. There is no single type of self-awareness, but many with a mirror giving just one example of how we can become more self-aware. The South African Grey Parrot also displays self-awareness despite its brain being so small, but recent evidence has established birds neurons are more closely packed. All the other neurological evidence indicates the brain operates using pattern matching which means consciousness and self-awareness are emergent phenomena of how many neurons you have. A baby looking in the mirror for the first time and expressing wonder is expressing their own cell's sudden recognition of a new type of pattern matching with unique uses.

Ok, this doesn't sound any more sensible to me (it doesn't help that you claim to have shopped this idea around to the CEO of Google...), but, as I said, I'm out of my element here. Could you provide some links/references to what you're talking about? — Arkady

I didn't shop the idea around, except for the mathematician whose work interested me, all the rest came looking for me the minute I let it be known I was writing a book on the subject. I've even had dozens of people online actively helping me research all the necessary metaphors for what I'm writing over a nine month period. Metaphors are not what most people think they are, but cutting edge Intuitionistic mathematics that the next computer revolution will leverage the same way the current one has calculus and Boolean logic.

You are welcome to look up AI research, fuzzy logic, Intuitionistic mathematics, metaphoric logic, etc. Its all analog logic which every popular computer and software today is moving towards adopting. IBM has been working on putting an AI in a coffee can sized device that draws about a 100 watts and has an intelligence somewhere between that of a cat and a human. You just can't do that with calculus and boolean logic, but require a much more analog approach. Ideally, something along the lines of the human brain which resembles a distributed gain amplifier incorporating Bayesian probabilities vanishing into indeterminacy. The NSA made it clear to the entire semiconducting industry they either move in this direction or peta scale computing will remain a fantasy. Efficiency is the new mantra or the parts get too hot when you just jamb them all together meaning intelligence is itself is a question of efficiency and creativity.

Wuli, I admit that this isn't my field, but this really sounds to me like the ramblings of a person with mental illness. The Tao Te Ching theoretically contains instructions on how to build and AI and construct a TOE? Whaaa... — Arkady

Its mathematical poetry where every word can be treated as a variable with no intrinsic meaning or value. Its not like the authors knew what they were writing, but the mathematics are there just the same. Its a minimalistic expression of a Fractal Dragon equation that would require some 4,430 poems to express in excruciating detail but, thankfully, only 430 are required for a good representation that can be used to formulate a theory in eight dimensions and a singularity. Sort of a mathematical compromise for how to describe an infinite number of dimensions.

That it sounds like mad ramblings comes as no surprise. Taoism is like quantum mechanics in that the minute you think you understand it you are wrong.

So how did you yourself become acquainted with this fact that you cite so often in your posts? — apokrisis

You've written that the government has finally admitted this. You quote some actual words. So where and when did this happen? Tell us the story of how you come to know about this unusual fact. — apokrisis

I've actually conversed with one mathematician whose work was widely publicized as classified by the government. He was soliciting papers of any kind, even from a brain damaged mentally deranged hippie dippy like me, concerning paradoxical logic jokes incorporating a specific variation on the excluded middle and he also expressed a keen interest in Taoism which he had begun to study. Physicists are also familiar with the idea and in the last few decades academia as well as governments have shown intense sudden interest in both the Tao Te Ching and I-Ching.

A ten year cross disciplinary study of the I-Ching concluded it was word perfect for introspective purposes making it ideal for AI and theoretical physics research. One of the few things you can learn online about fuzzy logic is that it is of intense interest in both fields. My own expertise is a mastery of the Tao Te Ching and, theoretically, a complete word perfect set of 430 poems extrapolated from the text can describe both how to build an AI and construct a theory of everything. Thus far, to the best of my knowledge people have only managed to write perhaps 150 or so that are word perfect and complete, but that's because nobody has the philosophy worked out yet and they don't comprehend the logical or mathematical foundations.

Within twenty years computers should be capable of exposing the mathematical foundations and writing the complete set, but that's just all the more reason to keep most of the basic information classified for now. Among other things, the book I'm writing attempts to describe primitive tribal Pragmatic Taoism in a demonstrable, self-consistent, and nontrivial manner making it the first ever that meets modern academic standards as a formal philosophy. Its a multifractal or fractal within a fractal of a Fractal Dragon within a broader Mandelbrot pattern which is what the current theories in physics suggest is required and, hopefully, will produce a systems logic capable of describing anything. Sort of a top down approach to philosophy where first you assemble all of the pieces for any elegant and humble simplicity and allow them to express their own foundations.

I've spoken to the CEO of Google and experts from every field I've mentioned who all expressed interest in my work. Hell, even Ram Das expressed interest in my work. Google's entire website is designed to encourage people to write fuzzy logic poetry and there are other popular websites like it now appearing online with some designed specifically to encourage people to tell jokes.

But you can provide a reference to support your clam about this being a fact? This is something you know because it has been reported somewhere credible you can now point too? — apokrisis

No, the government and even large corporations like Google censor the internet to prevent any such information from becoming widely known. Its not in any of their interests to allow such information to become widely known with Google and IBM's specialties including artificial intelligence and their reliance upon the government for some of their funding and information. Go ahead, try to look up classified information and you'll be lucky if you get someone claiming UFOs are real or information declassified concerning the second world war. Military intelligence is an oxymoron and they'll keep things classified for fifty years if they even suspect it might be important.

According to the National Science Foundation one in five Americans insists the sun revolves around the earth and forty years of studies have finally concluded that the republican party is organized along the lines of a flock of chickens. What both studies indicate is that their behavior can be easily predicted using a simple memory centric networking systems logic along the lines of Three Stooges slapstick and Gonzo the Muppet. This organizing around memories that defy observations explains things like Rwanda where white colonists simply divided the local blacks according to arbitrary features that had nothing to do with their tribal divisions and pitted them against one another economically producing their own home bred form of racism where no distinctions had ever been made before. They are collectively arguing for argument's sake over the definition of stupid and who is the better example because it reinforces their memories of who to attack and who to run from and works as a sort of governor that prevents them from over reacting even more like so many startled chickens. Its now only lowbrow humor, but the simplest possible way they can collectively organize.

Trouble is, that kind of thing's so ripe for parody! Ex: Seem to remember David Carradine, in his roll as 'Grasshopper', saying something dreadfully like that to his enlightened Guru! - Can't beat a Hollywood Bhuda for unconscously hilarious hackneyed platitudes! — Robert Lockhart

I often tell people a Jedi feels the force flow through him when he is regular. It is ripe for parody because it implies an underlying systems logic that can be applied to life, the universe, and everything reconciling even quantum mechanics and Relativity. Essentially, what I colorfully describe as Homogenized Heaven and Hell where crap rolling downhill can transform into poetry in motion because the same more cartoonish yin-yang dynamics apply to both.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVM1nUmDHHc

As sexy as Donna is, yin-yang dynamics demand a somewhat more cartoonish universe. Doctor Doolittle's push-me-pull-you and Tom and Jerry running in circles are popular examples. Its analog logic along the lines of Yogi Berra's "90% of this game is half mental." Stephen Wright and Yoda are also good examples as are the Three Stooges and Gonzo the Muppet. The sexual humor I won't cover here but, suffice it to say cockroach humor like Groucho Marx's, "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know" is popular and often traditional in Asia. Primitive tribes can tell jokes that would make a porn star blush and run the other way.

I'd be interested in any objections to the objections, that hence finds this peculiar argument (deductively) sound. — jorndoe

When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!

References please.... — apokrisis

They don't provide references for classified information, however, there are quite a few mathematicians using variations on the excluded middle and fuzzy logic whose work has been classified. Paradoxical logics that use different variations on the excluded middle. These are jokes along the lines of the poetry I write which contain fuzzy logic and can become so complex they go over almost anyone's head or just sound silly. Universities are now routinely having contests to write them. Among other things, their fuzzy logic provides a more efficient, compact, and precise approach for things like air rebreathers and missile guidance systems and it can be illegal to export such technology.

I would post more here, but they just keep erasing my poetry.

Yes, most of the essential equations in physics today can fit on a t-shirt and display what physicists like to call elegant simplicity. Einstein compared Relativity to a Jewel for its symmetry, while Indeterminacy expresses asymmetry because it can be considered paradoxically both symmetrical and asymmetrical. In general, you could say western thinking focuses on beauty to the exclusion of humor with the result that Asian languages have jokes that go right over our heads and use more of their brains than our languages do. We think more mechanically, while they think metaphorically and mechanical perspectives are better for beauty among other things. But it means for science to take the next leap it will have to acquire a better sense of humor that is compatible with all that beauty.

Next generation computers will spit out jokes routinely that go over everyone's heads and the US federal government has finally admitted they have classified a few jokes as "Vital to the National Defense." It requires mathematics that are four times as complex and Contextual philosophies such as the one I am writing. You could say the rise of civilization has so far depended upon digital approaches which are better for error correction and accuracy, but now we are beginning to master analog logic.

Its more argument for argument's sake when the evidence of quantum mechanics says there is no way any length of time can be smaller than 10^-27s. You guys might as well be debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin for all the respect you show for evidence.

That's the kind of "dancing wu li master" nonsense that gives serious systems science such a bad name. — apokrisis

LOL, the theory of everything is coming and the world will never be the same again because mother nature's sense of humor is the only rival to her beauty. The problem is modern western science has focused on her beauty to the exclusion of humor which is why Max Planck begged his colleges to explain the joke.

What it means is infinity is a metaphorical concept that has no clear identity outside of specific contexts which is the kind of thing that quantum mechanics can establish statistically. The Monstrous Moonshine Conjecture will change everything within the next few decades and show just how infinity actually applies observably to the world around us by establishing that some things, for example, are at least 26 dimensional.

A better argument is that infinity is paradoxical which is why nobody has ever managed to prove it actually exists. Quantum mechanics can crush Zeno's paradoxes into indeterminate mush and does so by everything remaining both indivisible and infinitely divisible allowing the law of identity to go completely down the nearest convenient rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference. As a result everything should turn out to be infinitely divisible and indivisible with electrons recently providing the first example. Their particle-like aspect is indivisible and fundamental, while their wave-like is infinity divisible. What a paradoxical infinity should also display is four fold supersymmetry in everything and, I believe, a self-organizing systems logic. The recent proof of the Monstrous Moonshine Conjecture means it is possible to prove that for all practical purposes infinity might as well exist.

The idea that something can come from nothing is a paradox as is claiming that we are a tabula rasa, yet, we have instincts.

The mind and brain are based on pattern matching and the physical evidence is that pattern matching rules the universe including the laws of physics. Unless you can account for the physical evidence your idea has no demonstrable meaning.

Socrates spoke of the memory of God which none can remember in all its glory and what he called the Truth responsible for all the good things. As an agnostic myself I don't need any divine revelation to recognize that the truth is greater than anyone can fully appreciate whether they are atheist or believers. In fact, the demonstrable truth is that militant atheists and the religious have a dysfunctional relationship where they hate each other's guts, but rely upon one another to both thrive and survive.

Some claim modern metaphysics evolved from the ancient Greeks attempting to surreptitiously criticize their religion without being killed for heresy. Their pantheon of Gods had become so large and their mythology so bizarre it may have been part of the reason monotheism later become popular. Metaphysics are the antithesis of mysticism which asserts that first principles are subordinate to divine revelation, hence, the reason why to this day many Christians insist the earth is only six thousand years old. My own pragmatic view is that the two demonstrably form a dysfunctional relationship with metaphysics only being tolerated by the religious for whatever useful technology and knowledge it can produce.

Note, this can explain why both religious totalitarian and atheist communist countries are now largely relegated to the third world, while the US with its strong traditions of separation of church and state and rugged individualism has become the de facto empire of the world.