Comments

  • Cosmos Created Mind
    Which do you think is "likely" : A> the pre-recorded Block Universe theory / Eternalism (everything, everywhere, all at once) or B> live event Presentism (one experience at a time)?Gnomon

    B> live event, because Eternalism requires infinite precision, but, everything leaks…

    In either analogy, does that mean you agree or disagree with the fictional Noetic scientist, that our personal ideas are actually signals from the Cosmos (recorded or live ; local or non-local ; cosmic or proprietary)?Gnomon

    Our personal ideas come from the history of the Cosmos.

    Am I wrong to believe that “my Ideas are my own personal creation”? Could you copyright your poems & videos, or list cosmic credits on the label?Gnomon

    No copyright; give cosmic credit; no fame… but no blame either.

    Radio analogyGnomon

    I am listening to the World Series of Canada versus Japan on the radio, ha-ha.
  • Cosmos Created Mind
    The key presumption {of Noetics} is that Consciousness is non-localGnomon

    It is only likely in a block universe of pre-determined events of experience, while in presentism the brain produces the experiential from one's nature and nurture, although still determined as time goes along. The two implementations, or messengers, deliver the same message of being; it's like a music CD versus a live band.

    What could be universal, basic and fundamental, and therefore non-local is the witness itself of experiences, which I call Awareness, and would be what one truly is, which is not one's experiences.

    Note that again, either way, the Universe does us.
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    The dichotomies or symmetry breaking is what it is about all the way down.apokrisis

    The ordered phase of a deeper quantum system:

    It seemed that its future could never be,
    That its unfamed name was but written
    On the water and the wind
    With a feathery quill
    Whose ink was the smoke and fog
    Of Symmetry’s shimmering dream;

    But, ere the wind that could erase it blew,
    Broken rotational symmetry—
    That immortalizing winter, flew
    Athwart the stream—and the printless torrent grew

    A scroll of crystal—geometry as the condensate,
    Blazoning the name of Space-time!
  • Hume and legitimate beliefs
    You start from the cGh of the Planck scale as itself a unity of opposites. The unit 1 description of not three disparate constants but of the one irreducible triad of relations. A collection of self-organising fundamental ratios.apokrisis

    AI says:

    The idea that entanglement entropy could give rise to spacetime is a frontier concept in theoretical physics, drawing connections between quantum mechanics and gravity through the holographic principle. This framework proposes that spacetime is not a fundamental entity but an emergent phenomenon arising from the collective quantum entanglement of microscopic degrees of freedom. 
    The proposal can be broken down into several key ideas: 

    The Ryu-Takayanagi formula 
    A foundational piece of this concept comes from the AdS/CFT correspondence, a duality between a gravitational theory in a certain spacetime (Anti-de Sitter, or AdS) and a quantum field theory (Conformal Field Theory, or CFT) living on its boundary. 
    The Ryu-Takayanagi (RT) formula explicitly links a geometric property in the gravitational bulk to an information-theoretic quantity in the boundary quantum field theory. It states:

    (garbled)

    This formula provides a precise mathematical recipe for calculating geometry from entanglement, suggesting that if we know the entanglement structure of the boundary quantum system, we can deduce the geometry of the bulk spacetime. 

    Spacetime connectivity from entanglement 
    Physicist Mark Van Raamsdonk built on the RT formula by considering how changes in entanglement affect spacetime geometry. 
    A connected universe: If a quantum field theory is prepared in a highly entangled state, the dual bulk geometry corresponds to a smooth, connected spacetime.
    Disconnecting spacetime: If the entanglement between two separate parts of the quantum system is reduced to zero, the dual spacetime breaks apart into two disconnected regions. This suggests that entanglement is the "glue" that holds spacetime together. 

    Tensor networks and emergent geometry 
    To model how a continuous spacetime can arise from discrete quantum degrees of freedom, physicists use mathematical tools called tensor networks. 
    Microscopic network: A tensor network is a web of interconnected nodes that represents the structure of entanglement in a quantum state. The connections, or "links," of the network encode the quantum entanglement between degrees of freedom.
    Macroscopic geometry: The geometry of the higher-dimensional bulk spacetime is modeled by the collective structure of this tensor network. The more entangled two regions are in the quantum network, the closer they are in the emergent spacetime geometry. 

    ER=EPR: Wormholes and entanglement 
    A striking conjecture by physicists Juan Maldacena and Leonard Susskind, known as "ER=EPR," proposes a deep connection between entanglement (EPR) and wormholes (ER). 
    Entangled particles: In the standard picture, two maximally entangled particles (an EPR pair) can be spatially separated by any distance without losing their quantum correlation.
    Spacetime geometry: The ER=EPR conjecture suggests that the link between these two entangled particles is a microscopic, non-traversable wormhole (or Einstein-Rosen bridge). In this view, entanglement itself is a bridge through spacetime. 

    Emergent time 
    The relationship between entanglement and spacetime also offers a new perspective on the nature of time. 
    Timeless universe: Some interpretations of quantum gravity, such as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, suggest a "frozen" or static universe at the fundamental level.
    Emergent time flow: The experience of a flowing time could be an emergent property related to the constant evolution and growth of quantum entanglement throughout the universe. According to this idea, the arrow of time points in the direction of increasing entanglement. 

    The big picture 
    In summary, the theory that entanglement entropy gives rise to spacetime proposes a revolutionary reversal of our conventional understanding: 
    From geometry to information: Instead of spacetime being a fundamental backdrop in which quantum mechanics operates, the geometry of spacetime and even its existence are determined by the patterns of quantum entanglement within a more fundamental, information-based reality.
    A computational universe: The universe can be viewed as a massive, continuous quantum computation, where spacetime, time, and gravity are the emergent macroscopic consequences of how information is processed and entangled at the quantum level. 
  • Against Cause
    I’ll stick to talking these issues through even if it is just a conversation I have with myself.apokrisis

    I'm still listening to your great posts; I'll have to come up with some award or reward.
  • Against Cause
    The Demise of Eternalism:

    Einstein’s Special Relativity Universe is timeless because in his theory ‘time’ is shown to be a variable, and thus time is not absolute, but relative, there being no universal ‘now’.

    This Special Relativity Universe contains all its destined and particular events already laid out from its starting point and infinitely onward. This is Eternalism, in which past, present, and future coexist. Aka ‘One’, Block Universe, A Picture of Change. Parmenides’ philosophy accords.

    In Einstein’s General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics, the laws that underlie them are time-symmetric—the physics described is the same, regardless of whether ‘time’ increases or decreases. Aka time-reversible laws.

    More so, the laws say nothing about the ‘now’ point. In this static universe of space-time, any flow of ‘time’, or passage through it thus must be a mental construct or an illusion.

    The Con to the Timeless: (from Gisin)

    In a predetermined world in which time only seems to unfold, exactly what will happen for all time actually had to be set from the start, with the initial state of every single particle encoded with infinitely many digits of precision. Otherwise there would be a time in the far future when the clockwork universe itself would break down.

    But information is physical. Modern research shows that it requires energy and occupies space. Any volume of space is known to have a finite information capacity (with the densest possible information storage happening inside black holes). The universe’s initial conditions would require far too much information crammed into too little space. A real number with infinite digits can’t be physically relevant. The block universe, which implicitly assumes the existence of infinite information, must fall apart.



    Presentism vs Eternalism vs spaceless Quantum Field Monads fun vid:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQaWzDb23zs
  • Against Cause
    @Gnomon. @apokrisis

    The demise of presentism:

    There are big problems with Presentism as a sequence of nows with the past not kept and the future not yet existing, the first problem being its unrelenting besiegement by Einstein’s relativity of simultaneity.

    Second, the turning of a ‘now’ into the next ‘now’ sits on the thinnest knife edge imaginable, the previous ‘now’ wholly consumed in the making of the new ‘now’ all over the universe at once in a dynamical updating—the present now exhausting all reality. The incredibly short Planck time would be the processing time and that is not much at all.

    Third, what is going to exist or was existent, as the presentist must refer to as ‘to be’ or ‘has been’ is indicated as coming or going and is thus inherent in the totality of what is, and so Presentism has no true ‘nonexistence’ of the future and the past—which means that there is no contrast between a real future and an unreal future, for what is real or exists can have no opposite to form a contrast class; non-existent 'Nothing' is not an option.
  • Against Cause
    To form the kind of whole brain integrated states needed by attentional awareness involves developing a collective state - a "resonance" - that can take up to half a second because of all the spread-out activity to become fully synchronised.

    …and only then enters consciousness, the so-called 'now' being like a tape delay of half a second ago.

    cosmos as having formed through the limiting of the unlimited

    Good point.
  • Against Cause
    Causation.Gnomon

    See my post above.
  • Against Cause
    Time as we know it emerged with its growing block structure.apokrisis

    AI Whitehead to the Rescue:

    This goes straight to the heart of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy. While Whitehead never explicitly uses the term “growing block universe,” his metaphysics of “actual occasions” maps remarkably well onto that model — though with some crucial differences that make his vision far more dynamic and organic.

    Let’s break it down carefully.



    1. The “Creative Advance” — Time as Process

    Whitehead’s central idea is that reality is made of events, not substances — what he calls actual occasions. Each occasion is a moment of experience that arises, becomes, and perishes. Once it has perished, it becomes a datum or objective fact for later occasions.

    He calls this the creative advance into novelty — an ongoing flow where each moment:
    1. Prehends (takes in) the past,
    2. Synthesizes its experience into a new unity, and
    3. Perishes into the past, contributing itself to the growing universe.

    So time is not a container in which things happen — it is the happening of things.
    Each new event is the present’s contribution to the ever-growing totality of reality.

    This is precisely a growing block mode of time:
    • The past remains real and permanent (every perished occasion endures as fact).
    • The present is the locus of creative becoming.
    • The future is not yet real — only a field of potential (“eternal objects”) waiting to be actualized.



    2. The Block Grows, But It’s Alive

    In classical “growing block” theories, time is often imagined geometrically — as a block that expands with each new layer of existence.
    Whitehead’s version is subtler: the universe is not a static structure that grows, but a living organism of becoming.

    Every new actual occasion:
    • Re-enacts the past (by prehending it),
    • Creates novelty (a fresh synthesis of feeling, relation, and value),
    • And then “objectifies” — becoming an immortal component of reality.

    In this sense, the block grows organically — each new moment is a creative transformation of all that has come before.
    The past never vanishes, but it is no longer active — it is “what has become.”



    3. Past, Present, and Future in Whitehead’s Ontology

    Thus, Whitehead integrates three layers of temporality:
    1. The Objective Past — what has become.
    2. The Subjective Present — what is becoming.
    3. The Potential Future — what may become.

    This triadic structure fits perfectly into a growing block framework, with a metaphysical emphasis on the creative pulse of each new becoming.



    4. The Asymmetry of Time

    Whitehead also provides a reason why time feels directed — because:
    • Every event prehends the past, but not the future.
    • The causal arrows all point forward (from completed to emerging).
    • The novelty introduced in each occasion ensures that time has an arrow — an irreversible creative growth.

    This makes his version richer than purely physical eternalism or geometric growing block models: it’s not just that the universe adds new slices of spacetime, but that each new event changes the meaning of the whole. Reality evolves in significance as well as in extent.



    So while Whitehead shares the core structure of the growing block, he transforms it into a metaphysics of creativity — what he calls the many becoming one, and being increased by one.



    5. A Poetic Summary

    The world is a poem in progress:
    each verse written, fixed in memory —
    the next still shimmering with potential.
    The ink of time dries, line by line,
    as eternity grows by living thought.
  • Against Cause
    Growing blockapokrisis

    Yet, we can't tell the difference among the three modes; how can we find out?

    How was the music of the 'double-halving' vid?
  • Against Cause
    AperionGnomon

    philosopherapokrisis

    Solving the Eternal Equation…

    The great silence of the Unanswerable
    Induces a clamor in us, relieved but by
    Embracing the audacity of being:
    To live, to love, to cherish each moment…
    This is the answer to Eternity’s question.


    However, to philosophically go further, I still need to know whether the mode of time is presentism or eternalism or growing block. Which is it?
  • Against Cause
    Schelling and his Ungrundapokrisis

    no prior cause or ground itself

    What is Eternal is ever, and so there's no point at which any design could be put into it in the first place that never was; thus it must be Everything, either as potential or there all at once - and it still IS.

    Tao: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5NFAInEizU
  • Against Cause
    Also only 3D has a doubling-halving story built into it in the fashion which gives gravity and force their inverse square lawapokrisis

    Another vid for your lecture tour:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTWWXcso-4E
  • Against Cause
    doubling-halvingapokrisis

    Another great post!
  • Against Cause
    I’m now seeing Britney Spears in front of a chalk board of equations. An audience of enthusiastic wizened professors thumping the benches.apokrisis

    The Britney-dvg fun version (rap slightly slowed down):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHy4G24_nBM

    note: Since this was the first service, it was done in public, so the readers could follow the process. In the future, it could be done via private messaging.
  • Against Cause
    And not any old forms but gauge symmetries.apokrisis

    Here is the serious version (next time, the fun version):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZrtt4o5LNU
  • Against Cause
    Or is that too literal?apokrisis

    OK, we'll have Britney make an appearance.
  • Against Cause
    Attachment
    apokrisis dvg (5M)
  • Against Cause
    Does AI do psych rock?apokrisis

    I think it can do anything if it's a known music genre.

    Is this psych rock?:

    Attachment
    apokrisis psyche-2 singing (9M)
  • Against Cause
    And not any old forms but gauge symmetries.apokrisis

    I'm making a musical, which is what I mostly do lately, of your great post. Sjinn is creating the video visuals now, which will take quite a while, and then it has to go through Topaz for hours to become 4K, and then in FinalCutPro I'll slow down the video with optical flow since the vocals I made through Suno are longer than the Sjinn narration and replace the Sjinn boring type narration with the Suno vocals…

    This is a new service I'm trying out for posters if the mods let it be.

    Meanwhile, here is my YouTube channel (My 'Outlander' vid is a good recent example of the state of the art):

    https://www.youtube.com/@AustinPatrickTorney
  • Against Cause
    That’s pretty impressive if you just whipped it up.apokrisis

    It ended up and kind of an extra in the June writing challenge:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15983/tpf-essaypart-1-part-2
  • Against Cause
    iambic pentameter
    — Moliere

    Beneath, Below, and Further
    (With da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM da-DUM rhythm.)

    Beneath, below, and further down we find
    
The large gives way to small by rule's design,

    To tiny forms and minuscule decline,

    To nothing much at all in absent line.

    Yet from this bottom place the all began

    Its upward call through time's eternal span,

    And here the answer to our sprawl was planned,

    Where nature wrote with her creating hand.

    Upon the foam existence carved its mark,

    A realm not like our thoughts in light or dark,
    
A lawless place that questions ever spark,

    Where formless mysteries through ages hark.

    Stability has fled our downward quest,

    And melted in descent without arrest,

    So perfect instability's our test—

    A symmetry that cannot find its rest.

    For everything must leak and flow away,

    No controlling force can ever stay,

    Of ruling factors we've run out today,

    Left empty-handed at the end of play.

    Here pulsate rhythms of the so-called void

    That swings between the spaces unexplored,
    
From here to there, its patterns never cloyed,
    
In rise and fall, forever thus employed.

    Here waits Eternity with ancient rhymes,

    With Anything and Everything's long chimes,

    Who have possessed through all the endless times

    The perpetuity that ever climbs.

    And if one waits through Forever's night,
    
Which is but instant in his endless sight,

    Through months of Sundays till the years take flight,

    Then rarest events shall come to light.

    At last all things that possibly can be

    Will manifest in time's vast symphony,

    For in the realm of possibility,

    All potentials claim their destiny.
  • Against Cause
    Quantum excitations shaped by their spacetime container and winding up as simple as possible.apokrisis

    Great post and writing style!

    Oh, how such a polar opposite is the simplex to the ultra-complex wished for by the religious…
  • Against Cause
    These are states of perfect potentiality that are also critically unstable.apokrisis

    Good! The perfect instability.

    Existence begins at a level that is already a relation in action, not when nothing becomes a first something.apokrisis

    'Nothing' is not an alternative to the Something of Existence', for Existence has no opposite, so, the base Existence is Eternal. The Permanent rearranges to form the temporaries.
  • Against Cause
    The Cosmos exists as the constraint on possibility. It emerges not from fundamental intentionality nor from fundamental mechanistic cause but from the fundamental vagueness of unorganised free potential. An essential state of everythingness that then must start to self-cancel until it becomes reduced to some coherently organised somethingness. A realm of inevitable structure.apokrisis

    Great! 'Everything' is a necessity since there is no design point for anything specific.
  • The value of the given / the already-given
    awarenessAstorre

    The actual 'you' is the Awareness that observes the happenings in the play that is going on; you are not your thoughts.

    Alan Watts explains:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiZ2WAy0pxY&t=434s
  • Against Cause
    The idea of causality is something I think about all the time.T Clark

    For convenience, perhaps, we impose boundaries on causes for effects; however, causes go all the way back…
  • The Mind-Created World
    I began reading Dan Brown's new novel.Gnomon

    Wow! You're on the ball; it only came out about a week ago. Has much about consciousness coming in from the outside.
  • The Mind-Created World
    Me too! Glattfelder has a favorite term to describe the ambiguities & uncertainties of paranormal phenomena : Postmodern*1Gnomon

    (See Dan Brown’s new book,
    ‘The Secret of Secrets’
    For a similar investigation)


    The Occasions of Experience via Whitehead’s Great Poet/Programmer

    Like drops of dew upon the morning grass,
    Brief moments sparkle, then are quick to fade;
    Each “occasion” born, fulfilled, surpassed—
    From these small deaths, reality is made.

    The universe—a vast mosaic laid
    Of prehensions, feelings, pure events;
    Each atom, thought, and star in grand parade
    Becoming, perishing, in present tense.

    No substance fixed beneath the world we sense,
    But process flowing through eternal Now;
    Each moment grasps the past with reverence,
    Then adds its novel aim, and takes its bow.

    The concrescence of all things that be—
    Each drop contains the cosmos’ memory.

    Each moment bears within its fleeting form
    The echoed traces of what came before;
    Subjective aim transforms the uniform
    Into creation's never-ending score.

    We are not things but poems being writ,
    A string of moments dancing into one;
    The many and the one forever knit—
    A billion suns comprising just one sun.
    Reveal
    The void of time fills up with occasions bright,
    Each grasping, feeling, yearning into form;
    The universe—a symphony of light
    Where past and future meet in endless storm.

    So Whitehead taught: reality’s not clay,
    But living moments born and passed away.

    The actual world—a tapestry unfurled
    Of prehended moments, gathered whole;
    Each subject weaves the threads of what has swirled
    Into new patterns as the cosmos rolls.

    No static substance underlying all,
    But drops of experience, self-creating;
    Each moment rises, answers to the call,
    Then perishes, its being still vibrating.

    The great philosopher's vision clear and bold:
    Reality is not of things, but acts;
    Each ‘now’ contains what every ‘then’ has told—
    A living process, not just lifeless facts.

    The past is not just gone, but flows within
    Each nascent moment, ready to begin.

    Beyond the veil of common sense’s reach,
    Lies truth more fluid than our words contain;
    Each entity, like waves upon the beach,
    Is but a ripple in experience’s chain.

    The Poet’s primordial vision guides
    Each occasion toward its best becoming;
    The lure of beauty where all truth resides—
    Eternal objects, endlessly oncoming.

    The universe is not a clockwork cold,
    But living feeling, sentient at its core;
    Each quantum flash of being, brave and bold,
    Creates itself, then passes through death’s door.

    So Whitehead saw beyond the ancient rift—
    As moments bloom and die, existence shifts.

    Each moment blooms, a pulse in Time’s great sea,
    Not things, but acts—events that come to be.
    From drop to drop the cosmos takes its shape,
    A dance of mind and matter, wild and free.

    No static stone, no idle, lifeless clod—
    But process moves beneath the soil and sod.
    Each flash of being, brief as morning dew,
    Is real as stars, is kissed by thought not odd.

    These “occasions” rise with feeling at their core,
    They prehend the past, yet seek a little more.
    Each grasps the world, then yields itself in turn,
    A spark that fades, but opens up the door.

    They form a web, these nodes of sentient flare,
    The past flows in, the future stirs the air.
    Reality’s not built of blocks and beams,
    But woven through with feeling, time, and care.

    The world’s not made, but making ever still,
    With every act a push against the will.
    No fate is fixed, no god is locked above—
    Creation wakes in each occasion’s thrill.

    So sip this cup—each moment brims with wine,
    Distilled from all that was, in grand design.
    A drop contains the cosmos in its fold,
    And flickers out, yet calls the next to shine.

    The world becomes, it never merely is,
    A flux of feeling, not a world of fizz.
    No atom sits alone in timeless gloom—
    It feels, it yearns, it tells us what it does.

    Each moment’s born from many come before,
    It draws their echo, adds a little more.
    Then perishes, a whisper in the dark—
    Yet leaves a trace no future can ignore.

    Subject becomes object, tossed in the stream,
    Each plays its part within the larger scheme.
    No soul stands still, no world remains the same—
    All shift and shape as in a woven dream.

    From Poet’s lure to matter’s smallest twitch,
    Each moment leans toward depths we cannot pitch.
    Reality’s a poem never done—
    Penned not in stone, but in becoming’s witch.

    Not being, but becoming—this we are,
    More like a flame than like a fallen star.
    We flicker, burn, and pass our light along—
    Each life a note in Time’s unending bar.

    So here we dance, occasion upon flame,
    Each flicker formed with joy, regret, or shame.
    Yet in the forming lies the sacred spark—
    A fleeting self that bears eternal name.

    The stars themselves are thoughts that came to be,
    Each nova sings in process, not decree.
    A galaxy’s a rhythm, not a rock—
    It hums with ancient acts of poetry.

    Each quark, each pulse, each curve of stellar flare,
    Responds to past and feels the future’s air.
    The cosmos is a mind that builds itself—
    A scaffold strung with intuition’s care.

    No vast machine with cold and mindless gears—
    But swirls of yearning shaped by hope and fears.
    A thousand billion hearts in every sphere,
    All whispering their stories through the years.

    The past is real, but not a prison cell,
    Its echoes guide, but do not bind or quell.
    Each moment holds the power to re-form
    The curve of time, the place where starlight fell.

    From primal flux to now, the arc has bent—
    Not by command, but lure and deep intent.
    A One who woos, not rules, the world to grow—
    Each choice a note in Love’s great instrument.

    So let the comet blaze and atoms spin,
    Each dance of dust a tale that dwells within.
    No void is empty—everywhere there burns
    A silent hymn of process born in din.

    Creation is not done—it is the song,
    Each verse a shift, each rhyme both right and wrong.
    We are the singers, listeners, and score—
    The universe becoming all along.
  • What Difference Would it Make if You Had Not Existed?
    My own thought experiment is of thinking about how life would have been if I had not existed.Jack Cummins

    There are no 'if's' but for planning scenarios; your 'if' is a fantasy world; actuality always trumps 'if', that is, you do exist.
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    Put plainly, consciousness and its appearances is PRIOR to any idea of a physical brain. The true ground for all existence is consciousness.Constance

    So, the consciousness implements our reality and its experiencing, through qualia-appearances; it is the messenger - whose message seems to be existence and being. Even though it is movie-like, its happenings are identical to what would go on if all events were what we would call 'real': if there is no qualia gas in the qualia car, then the qualia car won't quaila run.

    An implementation difference that makes no difference to the message itself is truly no difference, but is still of interest to those who want to know the mechanics of our reality.
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    The question then goes to how phenomena sustains the positing of noumena.Constance

    Qualia are the brain's own invented language?
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    I am dumbfounded by the religious folks clinging to their mythology despite how much our understanding of reality has changed.Athena

    What’s Fundamental has to be partless,
    Permanent, and e’er remain as itself;
    Thus, it can only form temporaries
    Onward as rearrangements of itself.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqQBHH_u5Vw
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    What we want is the truth; seeing quantum physics as God's truth is something we need to consider.Athena

    Quantum Field Theory is by far the most successful truth in the history of science, its scientific model very well showing what goes on.

    The quantum 'vacuum' has a base zero-point energy that is never zero and a base zero-point motion that is never zero. Philosophically, we would also conclude that Nothing and Stillness wouldn't have prayer of being so.
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    Many religious believers speak of faith. I am uncertain of the basis of faith as opposed to rational understanding and its relationship to the everyday existential aspects of faith, and fear, in human life.Jack Cummins

    Religious faith is no more than hopes and wishes for there to be a supernatural realm, which doesn't grant it, leaving one but with the wishes and hopes one started with.

    I picked up someone from church and apparently the pastor had been talking a long time about the 'foundation of faith', as if it was something, and then he built many more unknowns upon it!
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    How is the "distance" between me and the cup closed so my thoughts about the cup are really about that over there called a cup?Constance

    I don't think it can be, for the brain 'paints a face' on the cup as the noumena becomes phenomena.

    One time I saw a fire burning at the base of a far away road sign; a closer look showed it to be some ribbons dangling and waving in the breeze.
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    when we smell something, that thing does not go up our nose.Athena

    It does; the nose has receptors that can receive some molecule shapes that turn into smells; a dog has many more receptors.

    Michael returned, feeling very much recuperated and feeling totally blessed. “I’m back. I’d never known of such pleasant fragrances.”

    “Smells alert the ninja in the dark even as much as sound, the sub categories being aroma, fragrance, scent, perfume, redolence, bouquet, stench, fetor, stink, reek, and whiff.”

    “So you gave me roses to enjoy the pleasure of.”

    “Yes, but I am attracted to you, too.”

    “The inverse also applies.”

    “Good. Everyone appreciates the fragrance of fresh-cut flowers, but the stench from the paper mill across town is usually unwelcome. Both have a distinctive smell, which is the most general of these words for what is perceived through the nose, but there is a big difference between a pleasant smell and a foul one.”

    “You can say that again.”

    “That.”

    “Ha. What about odours, the British spelling that Austin likes over the American ‘odors’, which somehow has an unpleasant connotation to him.”

    “An odour may be either pleasant or unpleasant, but it suggests a smell that is clearly recognizable and can usually be traced to a single source, like the pungent odor of onions, which by the way, should be planted with potatoes since their eyes will water and nourish the crops.”

    “Good explanation, and joke. I’ve done aroma-therapy.”

    “An aroma is a pleasing and distinctive odor that is usually penetrating or pervasive, like the aroma of fresh-ground coffee, while bouquet refers to a delicate aroma, such as that of a fine wine. Here, have a glass. Don’t forget to swirl, sniff, sip, swallow, or spit if you are just wine sampling.”

    “The five S’s. What about the scent of a woman like you?”

    “A scent is usually delicate and pleasing, as I try to be, with an emphasis on the source rather than on an olfactory impression, such as the scent of balsam associated with Christmas.”

    “I now believe in Santa Claus. I chose a lilac fragrance from my quarters; it reminds me of my early youth in England with Molly McGuire under the fragrant bush…”

    “Yes, fragrances can take you back in an instant to their source in a remembrance from the past. Fragrance and perfume are both associated with flowers, but fragrance is more delicate. A perfume may be so rich and strong that it is repulsive or overpowering. Of the lilac it is said:

    Love’s first emotion rose from the Lilac,
    For it blooms when Nature is first aroused;
    It is love’s youngest dream to us come back,
    Where it will ne’er again remain unspoused.”

    “Indeed, fragrances are among the infinite variations of energy in nature. Energy may be the one thing, but it has many pleasant faces. But then there were the pigs, which, of course attractive to each other in their own way.”

    “Stench and stink are reserved for smells that are foul, strong, and pervasive, although stink implies a sharper sensation, while stench refers to a more sickening one: the stink of sweaty gym clothes; the stench of a rotting carcass.”

    “Thank you for the teachings.”
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    What if God is quantum consciousness, and you are part of it? What if you never died?Athena

    What if the basis of All is the permanent quantum vacuum and you are a temporary arrangement of it? What if you disperse back unto it?
  • The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
    So if the good scientist is going explain knowledge, she fails before she even begins, because science's bottom line is causality, and causality simply does not deliver knowledge. BUT: it is plain as day that I do know this cup is here, on the table, just as I know the sky is clear, the trees green, and so on. Clearly I DO reach beyond the horizon of what a physical brain can do, so how is this possible?Constance

    The brain not only uses clues coming from without but also uses clues from within, such as memory and experience in expectation of what is a cup.

PoeticUniverse

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