If what you describe as "evil" is required to prevent extinction, then it IS something that we ought to do. So by definition, it is NOT evil. — ZhouBoTong

Kind of like a natural evil of necessity; thus, we survived not in spite of our evil and. violence but because of it. Even our cooperation was for a better hunt and kill.

Holy Spirit — Relativist

Bless your soul with tongues of fire; Holy Spirit burn;
Leave no trace of man’s desire; Holy Spirit turn.
Oh, man, why detest thy constitution;
Doth thou think Nature has a lot to learn?

So Nature got it wrong, the pious say,
In man’s constitution, erring its essay,
Granting so many ways to go astray.
Well, then, Who, do they say, penned this world’s play?

The universe might exist supernaturally, beyond any sense of causation (or time). — 3017amen

This is the other meaning of 'eternal', as timeless and causeless, with no definition/information being able to go into it.

Why the heck do we exist here on Earth?
What mysterious origin gave birth?
What purpose the madness amid the mirth?
Why the heck would a Person be the first?

The invisibility disorder spreads;
“Might be’s” and “maybe’s” clog the fora threads,
Naturally, from meaning’s search in heads,
Ever trying to raise ‘God’ from the dead.

God’s not an ‘answer’ but begs the question,
(fill in the rest?)

the three entities — Jacob-B

‘God’, Divine Human, and Spirit, to boot,
All structured on wishes—what a hoot!
Angels added, too, and Devils haunting.
All as supposed, so, their doings are moot.

problem of evil — TheMadFool

Oh, where is the Loving One, the All-Might?
Why just the power of what natures does?
What benevolence makes for living in fright?
Where’s the Knowing of His Is and ne’er was?

is God immoral? — LNH

Maybe this, maybe that, of a ‘God’,
On and on, of worn ideas long trod,
Trying to show nature’s not what it does,
Spouting this and that—dust into the sod.

finalisation remains out of the question — Daniel C

‘God’ can’t be shown such that all would believe—
It’s all idle chatter that hopes conceive,
A blah, blah of what can’t even be preached,
Honestly, without a shred to retrieve.

According to the Book, Adam and Eve were punished with mortality and other ugly stuff after they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. — TheMadFool

What really happened…

Deciphered From Dead Sea Scroll: از کجا نمادهای فلور

With flora mystical and magical,
Eden’s botanical garden was blest,
So Eve, taking more than just the Apple,
Plucked off the loveliest of the best.

Thus it’s to Eve that we must give our thanks,
For Earth’s variety of fruits and plants,
For when she was out of Paradise thrown,
She stole all the flowers we’ve ever known.

Therewith, through sensuous beauty and grace,
Eve with Adam brought forth the human race,
But our world would never have come to be,
Had not God allowed them His mystery.

When they were banished from His bosom,
Eve saw more than just the Apple Blossom,
And took, on her way through Eden’s bowers,
Many wondrous plants and fruitful flowers.

Mighty God, upon seeing this great theft,
At first was angered, but soon smiled and wept,
For human nature was made in His name—
So He had no one but Himself to blame!

Yet still He made ready His thunderbolt,
As His Old Testament wrath cast its vote
To end this experiment gone so wrong—
But then He felt the joy of life’s new song.

Eve had all the plants that she could carry;
God in His wisdom grew uncontrary.
Out of Eden she waved the flowered wands,
The seeds spilling upon the barren lands.

God held the lightning bolt already lit,
No longer knowing what to do with it,
So He threw it into the heart of Hell,
Forming of it a place where all was well.

Thus the world from molten fire had birth,
As Hell faded and was turned into Earth.
This He gave to Adam and Eve, with love,
For them and theirs to make a Heaven of.

From His bolt grew the Hawthorn and Bluebell,
And He be damned, for Eve stole these as well!
So He laughed and pretended not to see,
Retreating into eternity.

‘So be it,’ He said, when time was young,
‘That such is the life My design has wrung,
For in their souls some part of Me has sprung—
So let them enjoy all the songs I’ve sung.

‘Life was much too easy in Paradise,
And lacked therefore of any real meaning,
For without the lows there can be no highs—
All that remains is a dull flat feeling!

‘There’s no Devil to blame for their great zest—
This mix of good and bad makes them best!
The human nature that makes them survive,
Also lets them feel very much alive.

‘That same beastful soul that makes them glad
Does also make them seem a little bad.
If only I could strip the wrong from right,
But I cannot have the day without the night!’

So it was that with fertile delight Eve
Seeded the lifeless Earth for us to receive.
Though many flowers she had to leave behind,
Most we have from the Mother of Mankind.

… (flower lore and legend descriptions) …

to make God good — TheMadFool

God, alone in His Power, had no fun,
So He made Sapiens out of His One,
Our image reflecting His Love’s Knowing,
As His mirror of Divine Perfection.

Eden’s fresh market carried everything;
The shiny red apples called from the Tree,
“Touch me, take me, eat me”, and soon trouble
Was at hand although it was crispy, sweet.

Eden’s sinful Apple, causing our shit,
Made for harsh apple cider, but when it
Was heated with sulfurous brimstone it
Soon turned smooth, the Hell taken out of it!

I found the Garden in the Amazon’s heart,
Wherein lie massive fields of Lady’s Slippers
And all of the rare flowers of Paradise…
And there I put the apple back on the tree.

TIC-TAC-TOE

Omnibenevolent, Omniscient and Omnipotent — TheMadFool

GXO
XOX
OXD

everything is changing, there is no rest, or what "is". in any absolute sense. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is noted, as nothing particular can last for more than an instant. With no absolute, we no longer have to figure how a permanent unchanging thing can change. So, then there are no things, just events, some of them very long, such as a rock or a proton.

'absolute existence' — fresco

Yet, for Relative Totality, there is neither an Absolute Existence nor an Absolute NonExistence, leaving but a relative in-between, as relative to neither or as relative to both, but what could that mean?

Absolute Totality vs. Relative Totality
None isn’t ‘outside’ nor can be in here,
Nor can Finite One be, with None outside;
Thus, there is no absolute One or None,
Which forces a relative ‘in-between’.

‘One’ as an Absolute Totality Fails Even More
Thus, we can’t step into what isn’t there,
Nor can a One expand into a None,
Nor can there be spacers of None
Within the arena of a One.

every assertion evokes its negation. — fresco

If there isn't anything absolute, then we are relieved of an unmakable, unbreakable eternal substance, and onto to the conclusion that all is temporary, without anything permanent, except change.

Once a virtual particle is created it would have to change because the effects required for it to be created as it is, creates other effects that must destroy it, as a closure that makes for compositional parity. Absolutes wouldn't follow those rules. Quantum fields cannot be zero, for that is a definite state and disallowed, so there is fluctuation/change.

Apparently, neither complete vacuity nor total solidity can be, leaving the indefinitness of the quantum uncertainty type or random outputs without inputs to result from the limit of the unreachable two nonexistent absolutes of None and One. I conclude that relatively the universe exists, but absolutely it doesn't.

Thus, a temporary reality ever becomes and then ever gets erased, somehow, as kind of akin to a faux presentism, given no absolutes. 'Light' is some kind of a clue, since from its viewpoint 'space' shrinks to a point and time does not pass. Somehow, 'light' gets slowed down from its pure all-at-oncesness of no time and its everywhereness of no space to broadcast a temporary reality of a here and a now.

I add, “A quark-gluon plasma comes forth, later, which had to cool off during 380,000 years of opaqueness, which we cannot penetrate yet, but hope to do via its gravity waves, after which time there came light, with photons, protons, and the first few, simple atomic elements, unto stars and supernova making the rest, then molecules, which luckily are neither inclined to form or to stay together after, RNA/DNA, cells, organisms, brains, consciousness…., this ‘life’ seeming as a kind of ‘afterthought. Sorry, I’m getting too far ahead.”


(Click.)

Ruby looks up, as if through the ceiling and up to the stars, remarking, “I’ve come such a long way to be here, with you, but our possibility was there in the beginning, although spread all over.

“The Planck era at 1E-43 seconds was the first hint of us, as a cyclical compactfication or a vacuum fluctuation eruption in an indefinite realm that’s as close to Nothing as can be, but it can’t be a Nothing as such, since that would be a definite, whereas the vacuum as the basic quantum something must be fuzzy, uncaused, and undirected, matching that which we often note in the quantum realm. Apparently, motion can’t cease, for energy cannot be destroyed.”

“I’ll knock Stillness off of the list of what can be, as being a kind of a cousin of ‘Nothing’, which we’ve already banished, along with ultimate Beginnings and Ends, plus Infinity, because it can’t be capped and so it cannot be had all at once or ever, since one can always add to it; it never completes, and that is more toward its meaning, not a meaning that it is a number or an amount. I’ll add ‘random’ as probably requiring a fundamental level or the quantum level, and as dubious otherwise, as it’s mostly evened out at the macroscopic level.”

“So, Austin, to learn the Secrets of what IS and ever WAS, we must again brave the crypt and ghost of cause, as the causeless. The so-called quantum foam seems to be ever and always, remaining even now, and it still has pairs of virtual particles quick appearing and then annihilating and disappearing, as a kind of ‘noise’, during which events time still passes without any useful change overall, as the noise may not often produce something that lasts a bit or more.”

“Indeed, I answer, “The virtuals are ‘somethings’, or ‘sum-things’, as one might call them as of possibility or potential, but have not yet a true, meaningful existence until they become part of an information process and thus are able persist in their effects and go forward somewhat or greatly. This state has always been, and must be, so jot: that this All is ever here to be, since nothing cannot. We philosophers love to fathom the cryptic, where perhaps only the shade of substance slept with arithmetic, although the descriptions in physics are very amenable to math.

“There is a basic lightness of elemental being because anything more would have to be of parts, and thus beyond the fundamental arts. Bits of information need to be separated to operate, maybe, perhaps manifesting by ‘creating’ a Planck sized piece of space. Maybe we experience their separation as space. The bits can have relative relationships, which is a must, there being nothing outside or before the All, such as absolute rulers or clocks. Time evolves as relations form, all of them having to be relative. Mass, energy, and information have been shown to be equivalent.”

“So, then, where the causeless reigns supreme, the spark nursed by embers is the first that the universe remembers, as it fires toward the other members in a processing way. The opposite twins are as virtual pairs that rule the causing call, these positives and negatives constituting most of the All.”

“Yes, I’ve often thought of the many opposite states appearing in nature, such as matter and antimatter, left and right, up and down, the polarity of charge, on/off, and many more, as a near zero-sum equation.”


(Click.)

(to be continued)

mathematical model — fresco

An absolute Totality is complete in itself (not infinite), and so it must be finite and have a boundary, but Zero/'Nothing' cannot be, and thus Zero cannot be outside the boundary; thus, an absolute One of Totality is not possible, either, leaving all to be relative?

Absolute/Fundamental: covariant quantum fields.

All else as relative/emergent/relational, including:
space, time, particles, classical fields, waves, light…

Thanks for this. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

so what scale — schopenhauer1

If there are no absolutes, then there is no scale and the universe is fractal or it just pain has no scale but what is relative to itself.

I leave all absolutes, particularly 'truth', in the hands of religionists. — fresco

What are the implications of no absolutes on our notions of God, free will, meaning, and more?

A truly free choice between two options can only exist if, in my situation of having to make a choice, the impact of the opposing "influences" is equal to each other. — Daniel C

And thus for those the outcome would not matter.

Eve was far from being a perfect being — Daniel C

Because Adam only donated a rib, not wanting her to cost him an arm and a leg.

'visualization' — fresco

Useless to talk about no absolutes and relations, due to too many metaphors but useful for hard reality addressing?

I still have a theory…

I leave all absolutes — fresco

Perhaps the two non-existent absolutes, if true, as None and One, say, as then being boundaries that cannot be reached, indicate that Totality is thus somehow in between as…? Fractionals? Whatever that means!

independent 'things'. — fresco

I read Rovelli. What's thought of as 'things' are events, some of which can be very long.

If we can show that there are no absolutes, then we'll be close to knowing a heck of a lot, with not anything intrinsic being so in relational totality.

I'll take it that since there can't be anything outside of Totality that Totality must be relational.

'how can thinking think about itself ?' — fresco

The brain doesn't know the whyness of its thinking, which is why we often rationalize a reason for what comes to mind. All the brain has to go by is the product/result of its neuronal analysis, and so the brain qualia output serves a purpose.

This proposed 'relativity of existence' seems to me to render most philosophical discussion of 'ontology' to be what Wittgenstein called Geschwätz (idle chatter). — fresco

If there are no absolutes, there isn't anything to philosophically find out. It's all blah, blah, blah.

Ok, in this context, scale is related with a point of view. The point of view of a human has a certain scale to it — schopenhauer1

The view is either a holistic all at once taking in or a close-up linear detailed view. The eye can detect down to a few photons.

(Click.)
The OK Club’s Swimming Pool

Ruby notes, “I also found the below redone Bodleian quatrains of yours entertaining and some pertaining, and, Austin, my dear, for an even more startling ado about ‘Nothing’, it is that there can’t even be any spacers of nothingnesss between things anywhere, nor anything such as ‘Nothing’ outside of the All.”

72
Our being blocks the view of the Ultimate,
Nor to gaze at it can we our selves acquit.
Ee’n the wise can’t step beyond their nature—
All mothers’ sons stand helpless before it.

95
What be: thy output must form from input,
For naught else can stride the moving foot,
And surely naught from nought makes no ‘random’;
The pen can’t revise its scroll; “we’re” caput.

107
How long will they prate of eternity?
Why proclaim as sure an uncertainty?
’Tis yon the cape of man’s ability.
To unlock every door, wine’s the key.

121
Thrust into life, we seek the depths to know
The plots beyond the curtains of the show,
Learning naught but a whisper from the waste:
“We came as water and to dust we blow.”

130
E’en the smoke from ember’s ash fades away,
That warp with the woof and weave burned to clay.
How many beautiful hearts have melted here?
Where in heaven’s cosmic vault wefts their sway?

“If nothing was between things then the things would be adjacent.”

“Right. Possibly all is field, as Einstein thought.”

“So, Ruby, what would be the nature of the Eternal Basis—The Great Wheel?”

“There’s no point for its nature to have been decided, specifically, given no beginning, this perhaps leaving anything and everything, as ‘random’.”

“I like ‘random’ for the ultimate fundamental, because Anton Zeilinger shows in his experiments that “Randomness is the bedrock of reality” to a deep and reliable quality of 3-sigma or more. Quantum Mechanics finds random, as well”

“Which points more toward a potential everything from ‘random’, maybe, rather than all of it fully formed to begin with, although it could apply somehow to the initial conditions of a Block Universe being random, I suppose.”

“Still, would the basis be a superposition of everything all at once or as potentially everything as in the going through of every possible path, eventually, not that it seems to matter a whole lot?”

“Oh, Austin, we don’t know if time’s mode is of Eternalism or Presentism. We’re stuck there on such a seemingly simple thing such as time. One difference that may not matter is whether all is pre-determined, as in Eternalism, or just as well but more slowly determined as Presentism goes along, now by now. You’re right perhaps in that for our purposes here it may not matter.”

“Well, let’s let that mystery sit for now, We still have the indication of ‘random’ for the Fundamental ‘bedrock’, which state of an output without an input is ubiquitous in the sub-atomic quantum realm. What can we gather from what has already and actually gone forth from and via this Great Wheel of All?”

“It operates horrendously slow, except when it begins a universe, with a lot of waste and extravagance, as if it wasn’t able to do anything any other way, it thus matching just what we’d expect of a purely physical nature, given its tiny fundamental components, life not seeming to be of any immediate concern. A Big Bang happened at some arbitrary time and place, with a near forever having passed, and apparently a past-eternal already having done so, as if it’s some rare event coming out of Eternity’s waiting room in which a lot of meaningless time can pass before the right conditions obtain. We surfers of light are of only 4% of the universe’s stuff. Please comment as I go on.”

(to be continued)

All things exist in their entirety prior to the first report of them. — creativesoul

Or (as like the block universe):

All events exist always.

(That is, they can't become, as from non-existence, thus they are ever.)

With love alone
Satan can be undone — TheMadFool

(Good poem, TheMadFool! And the part above even uses a sight rhyme.)


— The Voices in the Sky —

Good and Evil sprang from Wrong and Right,
When from naught twin Genii split day and night.
“Oh, fear not that black’s might can vanquish white;
Darkest night can’t e’en quench the smallest light!”

“I’m the darkest,” boasts the Shadow to the Night.
“No,” gloats Midnight, “compared to me you’re bright.”
“You floodlights!” crows Starless Space, “Stop your fight.
The darkest plight is the lack of Love’s delight!”

Reason moons to Passion, with logic cool,
“Quench thy inner fire, lest it burn us, fool.”
Blazes Venus, “I know What I feel, not Why;
‘Tis better you take heed of me—I Rule!”

A 2 minute video of the above:

The nature of things in themselves is a tough one and leads to alot of existential angst lol. So where do we go from there... — 3017amen

Stoic.

I am stoic. It’s helped me — Goinbroknstyle

Yes, I think some detachment helps one feel better. While some reactions are involuntary, we need not let them grow, sometimes, lest the anxiety deepen, for this would be on us and be hard to get rid of, for emotion can stain the brain. Some would-be annoyances had to happen and so they don't need to get compounded.

This should be interesting. Two enlightened beings, with "direct experience of God", but with different worldviews, meeting on the field of philosophical battle. — Gnomon

I'm already making popcorn to eat while watching this.

I also invited 72 other, various prophets and religious/transcendentalists who have already begun discussion; here's what went on:

I looked in on the Two and Seventy Sects,
And heard but the Karma of the Barking Dogma:
Some Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, and Jews
Wondered what stories they should choose.

Even thought they’d already so many chosen,
They just didn’t want to keep notions so frozen;
So they met to merge the postulations into one,
Thinking that this might be a whole lot of fun.

“In our hypothesis, there is just the only One.”
“Well, our conception is a multitude of many Some.”
“Well, we’ll part way meet: there’s only the Holy One”
“Nah, the odds of that are over three million to one!”

“Buddha of us was one, so of Gods there are none;
A human above all that now’s not seen by the sun!”
“Humph! Holy Jesus of our one God was His son!
He lit mankind’s darkness with light of the Sun!”

“No, Jewish Jesus was not of any nature Divine,
But was just a mere man much ahead of his time.
This you all should know, being there at the time.
Look at our history singing old biblical rhymes.”

“All is not real, so what is this great big fuss?
Retreat back to where it’s all at to slow the rush.”
“Oh God’s universe and creatures are so real
And that is why we’re making this very big deal.”

“In the afterlife, we in Hell or Heaven reside.”
“Not so fast, for in between these realms we lie,
And if you in this testing life don’t do so well,
You’ll have so many subhuman tales to tell.”

Reason arrived: “Possibility reigned way then back
‘Before’; there’s nothing even holy about all that.
‘Tis all made up, those many fabrications made,
So just let it all be, for this is what existence bade.”

…

primary and ultimate scale — schopenhauer1

I suppose that primary and ultimate mean the same here.

Ah I see what you mean now. But why is that the scale at which the universe subsists and not just a scale that we discovered or theorized as humans? — schopenhauer1

The emergent scales are not primary.

And why? — schopenhauer1

That's all that's left, according to Rovelli, below all that's emergent.

At what scale does the universe subsist? — schopenhauer1

Covariant quantum fields in no space and no time. That was easy!

We don't have freewill and you can't offer something that doesn't exist as an explanation for anything, let alone the problem of evil. — TheMadFool

The finding of free will leads to what was ever suspected, that each person's fixed will is true to itself as reflecting what the person has become up the moment, after which learning and experience contribute to a wider and better fixed will, and so forth.

This is monumental, in that it dooms 'God', blame, credit, and punishment, but it fosters compassion for those whose wills are stuck in a bad mode, as well as providing a great insight into the human condition.

In Nature we are always born anew
Death nourishes the journey of rebirth. — uncanni

Sound like an 'eternal return' of at least our atoms continuing on to constitute something.

it can definitely be asked how "freedom of choice" can be a possibility if the outcome of the choice is known in advance. — Daniel C

The Biblical 'God' contradicts Himself away again, as ever.

Perhaps those who practice evil create their own hell — uncanni

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return’d to me,
And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell:”

Heav’n but the Vision of fulfill’d Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.

— FitzOmar (from FitzGerald’s ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam’)