Comments

  • A first cause is logically necessary
    I think the idea that you are reaching for is not first cause but brute fact.SophistiCat

    That's good. Even if we reason that there is no alternative to the Existent having to ever be, with no creation of it, it's still a brute fact with some understanding to why it has to be brute.

    All of our local seeming causes and effects from what the Existent forms are really just the continuing one big effect of the Existent. For the convenience of calculations and localizing to an event of interest, we place artificial boundaries to bound our local notion of a cause and effect.

    The Permanent Existent formed our temporary universe, and so it could form more universes.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    It's not just "religious thinkers" who extend their inquiring minds beyond the limited scope of space-time. Many non-religious scientists are also not willing to be bound by physical restraints and provable postulations, when their imagination can make quantum leaps into the Great Unknowable beyond the Big Bang beginning. String Theory, Big Bounce, Multiverse, Many Worlds, Bubble Universes, etc. Can those conjectures be dismissed as "religious non-sense", simply because they are literally "super-natural" (outside of knowable Nature) and "hyper-physical" (meta-physical) and "infinite" (external to space-time)?Gnomon

    Yes, nonsense, and worse nonsense if they aren't referring to something physical.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    Was that of your own making or taken from somewhere?Philosophim

    It's the beginning and end of my longer poem about the First Cause being the quantum fields.

    Deriving the Narrative Uni-Versed Poem
    Of Our Poetic Universe of the Cosmos


    All the temporary complexities
    From the Eterne must someday fade away,
    Namely, our universe with its grandness
    Dispersing its greatness into blandness.

    In between, the Basis writes a story
    That gets lived by the transients within,
    As us and all the stars, moons, and planets—
    In our book from the Babel Library.

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

    Change, change, change… constant change, as fast as it
    Can happen, the speed of light being foremost
    The speed of causality, over 13 billion years,
    From the simple on up to the more complex.

    Reveal
    The ‘vacuum’ has to e’er jitter and sing,
    This base existent forced as something,
    Given the nonexistence of a ‘Nothing’;
    If it tries to be zero, it cannot.

    At the indefinite quantum level,
    Zero must be fuzzy, not definite;
    So it can’t be zero, but has to be
    As that which is ever up to something.

    What’s continuous means a field, naught else,
    That waves; ‘Stillness’ is impossible.
    A field has a changing value everywhere,
    For the ‘vacuum’ e’er has to fluctuate.

    The fields overlap and can interact;
    So, there is one overall field as All.
    It’s the basis of all that is possible—
    From another forced default, of motion.

    From field points moving in their one degree
    Quantum field waverings have to result
    From their dragging e’er on one another.
    Points are the bits that form letters’ strokes.

    As sums of harmonic oscillators,
    Fields can only form their elementaries
    At stable quanta energy levels;
    Other excitation levels don’t persist.

    Since the quantum fields are everywhere,
    The elementaries as kinks can move
    To anyplace in the realms of the fields;
    As in a rope, only the quanta move.

    At each level of organization
    Of temporaries in the universe
    New capabilities become available,
    And so they take on a life of their own
    In addition to what gives rise to them.

    The great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
    As the strands of quantum fields’ webs of waves
    That weave the warp, weft, and woof, uni-versed,
    Into being’s fabric of Earth’s living braids.

    Quantum fields are the fundamental strokes
    Whose excitations at harmonics cloaks
    The field quanta with stability
    To persist and obtain mobility.

    As letters of the Cosmic alphabet,
    The elementary particles beget,
    Combining to words to write the story
    Of the stars, atoms, cells, and life’s glory.

    This is the Poetic Universe.

    The weave of the quantum fields as strokes writes
    The letters of the elemental bytes—
    The alphabet of the standard model,
    Atoms then forming the stars’ words whose mights

    Merge to form molecules, as the phrases,
    On to proteins/cells, as verse sentences,
    In to organisms ‘stanza paragraphs,
    And to the poem stories of the species.

    Of this concordance of literature,
    We’re the Cosmos’ poetic adventure,
    Sentient poems being unified-verses,
    As both the contained and the container.

    We are both essence and form, as poems versed,
    Ever unveiling this life’s deeper thirsts,
    As new riches, through strokes, letters, phonemes,
    Words, phrases, and sentences—uni versed.

    We have rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
    Metric, melody, and beauty’s true pense,
    Revealed through life’s participation,
    From the latent whence into us hence.

    From quantum non-locality entanglement,
    We know that information’s primary
    Over distance, that objects don’t have to
    Be near each other to have relation.

    Everything connected to everything
    Would seem to be a ‘perception’ as an
    All-at-onceness, so a particle
    Might ‘know’ something about what to do.

    Informationally derived meanings
    Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
    In a relational reality,
    Through the semantical life happenings.

    This is a realm of happenings, not things,
    For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
    What remains through time are processes—
    Relations between different systems.

    Syntactical information exchange,
    Without breaking of the holistic range,
    Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
    Within her requisite of ongoing change.

    So there’s form before gloried substance,
    Relationality before the chance
    Of material impressions rising,
    Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.

    All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
    Of basic superpositional traces
    Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
    Probable clouds of distributed paces.

    What remains unchanged over time are All’s
    Properties that find expression, as laws,
    Of the conservation of energy,
    Momentum, and electric charge—unpaused.

    A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
    Which by showing unapprehended proof
    Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
    It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.

    A poem is both the thought and the presence,
    An object born from one’s profoundest sense,
    An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
    It’s both the existence and the essence.

    Poetry makes clear what’s just barely heard,
    For it translates soul-language into words,
    Whereas, music plays right on the heartstrings;
    Merged, they create song; heart and soul converge.

    Poems are renderings of the soul’s spirit,
    The highest power of language and wit.
    The reader then translates back to spirit;
    If the soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!

    Oh, those imaginings of what can’t be!
    Such as Nought, Stillness, and Permanence,
    As well as Apart, Beginning, and End,
    The Unfixed Will, Blame, Fame, and Theity.

    When the universe ends—sparse photons left,
    All splendor, life, and objects will have gone
    The way that all temporaries must go,
    To oblivion—oh, grand complexities!

    Only the Eternal Basis remains
    As potential for all possible books
    In Everything’s Babel Repository
    To author another universe’s story.
  • Higher dimensions beyond 4th?
    Any thoughts?TiredThinker

    More directly…

    There are ten degrees of freedom:
    length, width, and depth, for three,
    through your life and death;

    Then, 4D, where there’s timeless movement
    Back and forth along
    Your world-line from a fetus to a corpse—
    A tube-like smear of your life as a whole.

    5th, all your probable futures;
    6th, jump directly to any of them,
    7th, all possible Big Bang timelines,
    From starts to endings—an infinity;
    8th, all time-lines of other universes,
    9th, jump to a different universe’s timeline,

    10th, the IS of all possible realities without any delineation between those realities.
    It is an infinity of infinities: Everything.

    Is it a coincidence that string theory has 10 dimensions?
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    Yes! Isn't that neat? Opposed to multiverse theory being something we entertain for fun, it becomes something we can view as a logically likely reality.Philosophim

    The First Cause ever writes the 'verses…

    All the temporary complexities
    From the Eterne must someday fade away,
    Namely, our universe with its grandness
    Dispersing its greatness into blandness.

    In between, the Basis writes a story
    That gets lived by the transients within,
    As us and all the stars, moons, and planets—
    In our book from the Babel Library.



    When the universe ends—sparse photons left,
    All splendor, life, and objects will have gone
    The way that all temporaries must go,
    To oblivion—oh, grand complexities!

    Only the Eternal Basis remains
    As potential for all possible books
    In Everything’s Babel Repository
    To author another universe’s story.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    That's the best attitude indeedVerdi

    Verdi,
    Veni, vidi, velcro: I came, I saw, I stuck around.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    This doesn't mean we should keep trying to look for prior to that which we discover causality, but logically, there will be a point that has no prior explanation for its existence. And if that is logically the case, what does that mean for the universe's existence? What potentials does that open up? Does this mean multiverse theory is not only plausible, but a logical certainty given enough time?Philosophim

    Yes, a certainty. Besides, if one universe can become, so then can another.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    So, how come the multiplicity has to be temporary, given that it is the Permanent One at heart?

    After all, such as electrons are not something else that is weaker that got quantized; electrons are directly the quanta of their lasting field. Well, either they get annihilated or they wear out eventually perhaps because there can't really be any infinite precision, meaning that everything temporary leaks. The One ever moves, too, this maybe somehow also contributing to the destined demise of its forms.

    Stability decreases on upward: molecules are neither inclined to stay together nor to instantly break apart, stars burn out, cells have to get replaced, the tips of DNA tear off a bit during every division, eventually ripping into the good part, like a fraying shoelace after the protective end has gone away.

    All the temporaries are doomed! The fate of all their epicness is to fade. The great statues crack and crumble; only the pedestal of the One remains intact.

    Heaven’s Great Wheel e’er whirls its energy,
    It having to turn and return, to be,
    Transmuting, as ne’er still—eternally,
    Into life’s temporary pattern-trees.

    Change in the Eterne dooms forms’ permanence;
    But the time required for their constructance
    Restrains for a while the shapes’ destructance;
    Thus they can slowly traverse life’s distance.

    The chain is forged that links a thousand deaths
    To a thousand future-generated breaths—
    When lips ripe as fruit gently part in pain:
    The smile of a corpse is life touched by death.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    But somehow there must be a pillar of the universe.Verdi

    In answering to this pillar, we are bounded by not going backwards in having it to be even more inexplicable, on the one hand, and on the other hand to have it be doable in a simple manner but wishfully somewhat beyond brute force.

    The fallback can be the multi-verse but no one can show that yet.

    We see in photosynthesis that the electrons find the most efficient path among all the possible paths in superposition, that path winning out.

    Perhaps, since the Eternal Existent with no beginning can't have any input going into it as a design, the default is every path possible, as like a giant wave function superposed, and what paths keep going the furthest with a high novelty return reach the winners' circle… whereat, as a pedestal, not a pillar, the winning potential paths somehow get activated by some criteria into Big Bangs.

    Or else, who cares, since we can't get blamed for not knowing how all became. I'd really rather just make art compositions, write books, and have romance.
  • Philosphical Poems
    Seasonings

    Nature springs from winter’s tomb,
    The bloom already in the seed,
    The trees within the acorns.
    Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
    Spring showers make the summer flower.

    Summer wakes from spring’s dying kiss,
    Blooming when the rose does,
    Sunning after the spring’s running.
    Summer reigns upon the land,
    Eventually fading in the night.

    Autumn falls as summer leaves,
    Harvesting its sum of days,
    Seconding the rose of spring.

    The smile meets the tear—
    Fall’s embers last through December.

    Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
    The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
    Snow crystals barring all that grows.

    Winter is life cooled over;
    Melting snows feed spring waters.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    rokns-9.81-full-p9-dft-65fw-3840px-30fps-apple-devices-4k.2021-07-12-12_57_28.gif

    (One of the maiden Goddesses of Parmenides' 'On Nature')
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    With all beautiful stuff in itVerdi

    great-living-art-scenes37_36.gif

    We, of the endless forms most beautiful,
    Are stunned that our glass to the brim is full,
    Life’s wine coursing through us, as magical,
    On this lovely, rolling sphere so bountiful.

    Life’s a web, of whos, whys, whats, and hows,
    Stretched as time between eternal boughs.
    Gossamer threads bear the beads that glisten,
    Each moment a sequence of instant nows.

    Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
    Sensation savors what is presently known;
    Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
    The delight is such that none could produce alone.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    Perfect, I'll likely do the same then.Manuel

    You will go crazy reading about all their 'likes' and 'unlikes' portrayed in umpteen ways.

    All multiplicity has to be like the One and that's that.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Somehow, this robs the universe of meaning, whatever that means, and however full of meaning it is!Verdi

    A great meaning would be restrictive, but, more noteably, it would have to come from a God-Mind that is way too complex to be Fundamental, and so there is no overall meaning to the existence of the universe, plus, regardless, the universe comes and goes, so its beginning didn't ultimately mean anything, although we had to study it to see if it did.

    What meaning can we get out of the Mandatory Eternal Existent that cannot not be, beyond that it makes 'God' unnecessary? Well, it's not like it had a choice, so beingness is not its message, yet, as a local meaning our wills drive us to survive and be, which was no picnic in the old days.

    Living can finally be rewarding in these modern times in places where it isn't still barbaric or greatly stressing, so all I can come up with is that experiencing life happily is close to being the only benefit to come out of the whole meaningless shebang.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Great one! Still the question remains where the least, comes from. Maybe it came from, or lies on another great, even in an eternal succession, but even then. Where TF did that came from? In my hunger for knowledge, I just can't understand.Verdi

    The religious thinkers face the haunt of the regress that dooms their notion once they propose the lesser from the greater. They likely see the universe and its complexity to be too astounding to just be so from the lesser, and so they must question it, 'answering' it with something all the more astounding, but don't question that since they've granted immunity to its prosecution by merely just declaring it to be supernatural and hyperphysical, and, to protect it even more add infinite scope to its Mind such that it couldn't even be any more astonishing and then readily accept that in place of the now infinitesimal scope of the universe in comparison that they wouldn't accept in the first place.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    The FTL Inflation Theory (from almost nothing to everything in an immeasurable fraction of time) is either super-natural or magical, or both. For my own worldview, I prefer to move any postulated preternatural events outside of the natural space-time margins. Since we have no empirical evidence for anything that is not subject to the limitations of space-time, outside the known anything is possible. But to imagine such lawless behavior within the bounds of reality is un-realistic.Gnomon

    Yes, and it is greatly failing now that we didn't find a lot of B-mode polarization to indicate gravity waves for that kind of inflation.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.Gnomon

    Well, some think zero is the greatest number if it's actually the sum of all the positives and negatives. Infinity, being everything, like the Library of Babel, in a way has the same information content as no library at all: zero.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    change is an illusionTheMadFool

    Yes, as in a DVD playing.

    Another illusion might be that temporary 'things' are things, and separate even, not events of the One as the One. All that goes one is the One as the One's transmutations.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    The vacuum is not empty and so it isn’t a vacuum; I propose it as the One of Parmenides. It is the simplest because the simple elementaries first become, and then form composites later…

    The elementaries are tiny lightweights, which shows that what formed them is also lightweight. Thus, the Basis as the One is simple.

    The One, being energetic, is never still (or all multiplicity would never arise). Thus it has a energy value at every point that fluctuates. The short name for this is a field. The temperature field in one’s home has a degree value at every point. Fields are simple, not mysterious.

    Let us look into the field that forms electrons, since they are familiar to us. Its points tug at each other, ever making for varying lumps in it, similar to those in an ocean, so the field wavers.

    Why do electrons last? Why don’t they just slosh away like lumps in water?

    All electrons are identical in volume, integer energy level, and charge, and so that defines how they have to be, as stable. Any other wanna-be bump in the electron field doesn’t make an electron or a fraction of one, although these may turn out to be the virtuals that collapse in an instant.

    An electron bound in an atom can jump to a higher orbital cloud level if it gets the right amount of energy from a photon, say, as double what it has. This is known as the quantum jump; simple, but we haven’t yet gotten to what a quantum is yet, but that’s the kind of happening that led physicists there, as again no fractional allowed to be lasting. A quantum is a specific energy level that can last in the field that is everywhere, it then being able to move anywhere in the field. It’s sort of like a kink in a rope; it travels but the rope doesn’t.

    Can we derive the math of an electron quantum field to see if that matches it?

    Victor Toth says, We decompose the field into harmonic oscillators, since that’s what the field does, with its moving points, though a Fourier-transform, each point now as a quantum harmonic oscillator whose energy comes in quantized units.

    The lowest energy state is not zero when we sum for all possible values so we get an infinite result.

    When a theory is renormalizable, there’s a mathematically sensible process to discard the unwanted infinities but still account for finite differences, which are responsible for observables. We may sum energies to some finite cutoff value, and use it to compute physically observable values; in the limit of the cutoff going back to infinity, the physical prediction doesn’t change.


    There are 25 types of quantum fields, one for each entry in the Standard Model. The fields overlap and can affect one another, making for one overall quantum field, this complicating the math. The Higgs field even has a much higher rest energy than the other fields.

    Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is the most firm and successful theory in the history of science.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    Since ex nihilo nihi fit, Parmenides rejected becoming; after all becoming implies an initial stage of nonbeing which in Parmenides universe is either nothing or too close it for comfort.TheMadFool

    His One of Necessity has no beginning; it is ever and always. Did the One make our universe that has time in it linearly or did the One make it all at once and then replay it slower so as to be experienced in time? Or did the One always have everything in it, such as our universe, and then plays it slower.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Yes. Do you have a better explanation for a palpable universe from who-knows-what?Gnomon

    The One of Necessity that has to be, per Parmenides, as the simplest base. The least can lead to the great, albeit temporary, as seen in our universe.

    Yes. Do you have a better explanation for a palpable universe from who-knows-what?Multiverse theories, infer that an unknowable eternal universe has always existed, and froths with bubble universes that come & go. A likely story, but based on what "facts & reason"?Gnomon

    Simpler same as the Great Programmer always being present and creating more universes.

    … from Nothing…Gnomon

    'Nothing' cannot even be meant.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    And here is the proof of a bug we foundSpaceDweller

    50000-80000 species of insects known as bugs; here the great programmer coded 0/0.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    Parmenides shocked the philosophic/scientific/religious world way back and it is still reeling, even with his revelation being a poem filled with maidens.

    It was a disaster for the religious to realize that the One of necessity that could not not be there made 'God' unnecessary and irrelevant. Like the proposed 'God' it was there without ever having been created, but in a simple form. Their template that the lesser had to come from the greater, which was ever haunted by regress, had to be thrown out, although they went into denial. It is that the lesser leads to the greater, but temporary, just as we can plainly see in our universe.

    Then science came through to show it as the 'vacuum' that isn't empty and its quantum fields that we can get onto later to show it as the One.

    I selected what I thought were the best translations of Parmenides' 'On Nature' that improved the style but didn't leave out any points, and then illustrated it, and then made a video of it:



    The intro from the Stanford Philosophy seems to be mostly OK but for it referencing two substances. An electron, for example, is still constituted of the One (and only), as a rather stable quantum of it.

    Recall that for Parmenides, it doesn't really make sense to say a thing is not, because if X is not, then how were you just talking about it?frank

    What I do is to put in quotes what cannot be or even be meant, such as 'Nothing'.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    It's hard to address Parmenidesfrank

    I read Parmenidies' important surviving fragment that is often called 'On Nature'.

    Parmenides is a generous monist in that he allows the Unity to have multiplicity when it need not; however, I easily note that the One cannot be still or not anything would have happened.

    He banishes 'Nothing' as what cannot even be meant; thus the mandatory existent as the One again easily ensues, which can't be denied, plus the Fundamental Arts dictate that the One cannot have parts, thus it having to be continuous (no spacers of 'Nothing' allowed in it, anyway).

    Not able to be still, the One is ever energetic; the elementary particles and whatnot can only be as disturbances/excitations/rearrangements of it, for the One is all there is as the only real and lasting thing. It must ever remain as itself and so it can't make anything different than itself. All else as the events of multiplicity are temporary, even our entire universe. The One persists before, after, and during our universe, for it is Permanent. Thus, there is no Big Bang from 'Nothing'.

    The One as partlesss needs be simplest, which we also know because it forms only tiny, simple elementaries at first. Because all the elementaries of a type are identical, we even further know that there has to a One as the structure beneath them responsible for their uniformity. For some reason, there is less and less stability on upwards of the elementaries, although even the elementaries don't last forever but can still be very long events.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Of course, all inferences, scientific or philosophical, are uncertain.Gnomon

    So, we uncertainly infer by "fact and reason" that 'The Mind' just happens to be sitting around as First, as not at all physical but now having hyperphysical magic makes a mediocre physical universe by being able to figure, plan, and implement, although having no parts to engage in its thinking and writing of the code, being singular, with no regress to how it became as a creative system, not at all partless, which gets ignored as begging the question, a Mind that steered evolution into making variant viruses and 50-80 million species of insects on a planet whose life suffers near extinctions from asteroids, volcanoes, wars, ice ages, global warmings, nuclear winters, and more, not to mention a long barbaric history and a trend for the dumb to produce many more offspring than the smart, and so forth as no better than nature could have done by itself and, coincidently, exactly the same as nature could. This is much better than even the tiniest step toward anything more decent and liveable.

    Hail to the Imperfect Mind that made a universe that will fall apart. No wonder a lot of people have a sit-com mentality; they are mirrors of the Mind who thought that imperfect programming could fly.

    I learned as a programmer at IBM that poor programs will often abort, but it's not any great shakes to expect that. Coder, you're fired!

    Did it use a quantum computer? No, for it is non physical, plus that came out way later.

    No more need for investigation; the Blundering Great Programmer wrote how all should go—and that is the Theory of Everything in a nutshell and a nut head. Global warming is now heading toward 2.7 degrees… The Third World War looms. Goodbye, cruel world!

    So, how did 'The Mind' and its information, out of thin air, such as it is, not the best, get programmed? Or do we just have to explain an event such as our universe, but not anything much wider in scope as proposed by the template that Larger ever makes the lesser, and so forth? Let us only use the template once and then instantly throw out its rule.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    But, sadly, no hope for salvation from an imperfect creation.Gnomon

    It fails. Our universe is not perfect, nor it is completely mathematically elegant, for there are superfluous entities in it, along with a lot of waste. Protons and neutrons require only up and down quarks, and not the other four quarks.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    That may be true of empirical Science. But not of theoretical Philosophy. Yet, the best they could come up with is a mysterious hypothetical First Cause that at least terminates the regression of Evolution at a Question Mark (Singularity ; God ; Logos, ?) instead of a never-ending tower-of-turtles ellipsis (multiverse ; many worlds) . . . . .Gnomon

    The 'theoretical' Philosophy has no theory in concluding "deemed to be God" because 'deeming' doesn't make 'God'. They may further think they can eliminate their turtle regress of higher always leading to lower by taking the higher answer all the way to infinite or to the mostest Mind, this leaving no room for another Higher Mind to account for the Perfect Mind that has to thus remain unaccounted for as The First Uncaused Cause. Sagan and Okkam would say to skip this ultimate mystery level that dwarfs evolution's now infinitesimal level in terms of having to be explained. Begging the question, as ever, doesn't answer but just makes for a larger question, in this case it becoming the largest question.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    But, the metaphysical Ideal Realm may not be bound by the physical rules of thermodynamics. Scientists have long been perplexed by the existence of "Natural Laws" in a dynamic world scrambled by fundamental Randomness. For Plato's Forms, actual complexity is not "just sitting around already complete". Instead, a Metaphysical Form is merely the Potential Design for a future thing, that must then be Actualized, sometimes by a prolonged complex process of evolution, into a Physical Thing.Gnomon

    One cannot even hope to have an 'explanation' that itself would need all the more explanation, to the nth degree, even, plus as a regress.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    BEING (being qua being) would not "have" a mind or brain, but would be The Mind, in the sense of containing & processing all of the information necessary to create a space-time world from scratch (i.e. physical world from meta-physical design -- an idea & a plan).Gnomon

    Still can't have 'The Mind' as First and Fundamental even as a Potential that thinks as much as an Actual; complexity can't be just sitting around already complete.

    Besides, the universe is full of intelligent design, and forms and proceeds just like the natural would: Deuterium bottleneck, 98% hydrogen gas tuned, long Cosmic evolution time, long biological evolution time, species going extinct, humans nearly too, a big asteroid opening up space for mammals to evolve into humans…

    Biological evolution doesn't swing the necessity toward 'God'; it is a design without a designer, for the platforms from which change can lead a way forward are always already stable as a fallback as it roughs, tumbles, and stumbles through slow accumulation onto millions of creature species.

    There is no effective supernatural, hyperphysical, distinct nonphysical realm that can't speak the physical talk; no magic, just the usual pipe dreams of a largest making for the smaller—we note the opposite as the actual progression.

    The temporary universe decays and ends as the failure that its beginning ultimately meant: zip. It probably fades because there can be no infinite precision, no lasting ultimate information put in, and no way to foresee the n-body problem to create something lasting. All its mutable complex glories and triumphs die, but the Simple remains.

    Hail to the transient, those grand complexities to which the Simple pales in comparison!


    The Permanent and Its Temporaries
    &
    Unity in Multiplicity
    &
    The One and the Many
    &
    Change and the Changeless
    &
    Especially
    The Constant Demise of the Mutables


    (Inspired by Shelley and his style, and altering a few verses)

    Weep for the temporaries; they all fade,
    Those transient bubbles blown and burst
    Through their brief lives, of the Permanent made.
    Oh, weep for the ephemeral dispersed,
    Sad hours all, throughout the months and years,
    To mourn their steady loss with flowing tears;
    Teach them o’er the morrows thine own sorrow
    For the yesterdays they could only borrow
    From the One’s everlasting simplicity.
    Oh, weep for the unsteady, born to flee!

    For now, their light echoes and lights the path
    Continued that they added to, onto more
    Evanescences walking Time’s footpath,
    Til Past has been forgotten by Future.
    Oh, limited Mother, their tales best
    Thine by far e’en in their impermanence,
    But Thou can’t save them from their final rest,
    For they are chained to time’s changing tense.
    Thou cannot rekindle their faded breath,
    Those melodies that hid coming death.
    Like the flowers that mock the corpse beneath,
    The Enduring cloaks their extinguished wreath.

    With veiled eyes, newer moments weep despair,
    While spreading forth their own emergences;
    Dream not that the Eternal Deep can their air
    Restore, for the makeshift must progress, spent.
    The universe has to continue its race,
    Unwinding, like a spring, at time’s fixed pace,
    In which star-generations are born and perish,
    Giving their lives for all we can cherish.
    Energy’s Hunger stalks all creatures made,
    Lying ever just ‘round the corner in the shade.

    Death takes both humans and the beetle as one,
    After their lives are spent from rolling some dung.
    Living clouds wane, having outwept their rain;
    The pale inconstants must e’er pass their reign.
    Like mist’s pageantry on an autumnal night,
    As a slowing pomp, all events made light
    Decay: Desires, Adorations, Destinies,
    Glooms, Splendours, Sighs, Hopes, Fears, and Phantasies.
    Pleasure hails, blinded by tears and sorrow:
    “You took from Death all that Life could borrow.”

    Like our shades dance the walls of Plato’s cave,
    We’re 3D shadows of 4D’s enclave…
    It’s like a lamp lights up a paper shade—
    We are as figures thereupon portrayed.
    We are magic lanterns shining here; 
    Our spirits are the lights in there.
    We’re the One’s Candled Magic Shadow-Show,
    In which we Phantom Figures come and go.
    Come, light your lantern and mine with good cheer;
    We’re magic lamps; our spirits dance in here.

    We are phenomena’s projected face,
    Well-painted from noumena’s unseen base.
    From what bright star came the gleam in your eyes? 
    From what distant sun came your smile, light-wise?
    Our minds and senses interpret and dispense
    The base reality into the colors and sensations
    Of the phenomenal world from the noumenal;
    We may become either rainbows or ugly stains!
    Our beginnings and ends are of nowhere,
    So, let’s radiate, since for now we’re here!

    Ending by Shelley himself:

    The One remains, the many change and pass;
    Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
    Life, like a dome of many-colour’d glass,
    Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
    Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
    If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
    Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,
    Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
    The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    I agree. That's why I define my personal First Cause simply as BEING : essential existence.Gnomon

    The 'Essential Existent' is a good label for what has to be. I've also called it the External Existent' or 'G.O.D'—the Ground of Determination.


    Aquinas defined his God as the Necessary Being, without whom nothing (no beings) would exist. It's the "only thing" that exists absolutely.Gnomon

    Aquinas makes an unwarranted leap here to a Being having Mind because he wants 'God'.


    So simple unitary existence must be the beginning point of all theories of how & why the space-time world exists.Gnomon

    That's better; I hope Aquinas is listening. It's not only simple as a necessity for its forming of the lightweight elementaries but also because its needs to be partless and continuous to be Absolute as Fundamental. It would not be able to think, plan, and create via a System of Mind as the ultimate simplicity; however, so it is that the lesser leads to the greater, not as Aquinas' view that is the reverse and would lead to an infinite regress of greaters making lessers.


    Some postulate that space-time/matter-energy is eternal, but the Big Bang cosmology --- including the Big Freeze finale --- put a damper on such speculations. And physical Nature has never been shown to create something from nothing.Gnomon

    The whole darn universe is temporary. Stability decreases on upward and only photons remain at the end, for they don't decay by themselves.


    the "hard problem" is to determine what that hypothetical "permanent thing" was, in a more definitive sense. For my money though, the eternally un-changing Ideality answers make more sense, than anything resembling our temporal and ever-changing impermanent Reality.Gnomon

    'Is', not 'was'. It's enough to know that it's the simplest possible, it being the closest to Null that could be. It's extremely far from Full, for as Full it could not rearrange.


    G*D : An ambiguous spelling of the common name for a supernatural deity. The Enformationism thesis is based upon an unprovable axiom that our world is an idea in the mind of G*D.Gnomon

    G*D—God Damn! To boldly jump to it having Mind is a leap much more than a tiny quantum jump.

    As for there just being a plain old Big Bang, that would have been any old unbalanced useless happening. Inflation is likely needed just before the Bang to make a universe balanced as well as Big to have a chance; however, since the Essential Existence is always around there are a heck of a lot of chances.

    Minds and their great accomplishments only come about later on, all their temporary glories doomed.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Hence, we are forced to conclude that something must have always existed, even if its not a thing in our local Reality. In that manner, we can always extend the tower-of-turtles one step further back closer to infinity.Gnomon

    1. This Permanent Thing would be local everywhere, as it is before and after our universe and during. Further, as it's the only thing, its rearrangements are it too; even we are it.

    2. The elementaries formed of its initial arrangements are all identical within their types, which again indicates formation, plus it doesn't matter all that much if and when they form and which one gets used to make a composite since any one of them can get used and some will always be around.

    The elementaries can be long lasting events and are near-things since they are identical to themselves over a long time, but presumably they are temporary.

    From here on up to simple atoms to stars to more atoms to molecules, etc., all seems to become more and more temporary.

    3. The elementaries are tiny lightweights, which shows that what formed them is also lightweight.

    4. Thus, the Permanent is simple.

    5.?
  • Bannings
    He seemed to be a nice fellow. I doubt he'd want to join again out of self respect.Shawn

    He might, for he liked it here and was making his way around; he didn't know about the Lounge and its threads, so he wasn't Marco or anyone who had been here many times.
  • Bannings
    I banned him for saying something to signal he was Marco.fdrake

    Except that he was great! Can you get him back or send me his email?
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    The physicists' references are to the 'vacuum', whose zero-point rest energy is not zero. This Permanent thing is the source of all; 'god' is not required.
  • Philosphical Poems
    I just checked under "Bannings", and saw nothing. Where did you hear this?Michael Zwingli

    The Banning thread closed for comments a few months ago.

    Saw it here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/614876

    It's shocking; he was great!
  • Philosphical Poems
    When golden Autumn, wreathed in riped’d corn,
    From purple clusters prest the foamy wine,
    Thy genius did his sallow brows adorn,
    And made the beauties of the season thine.
    Michael Zwingli

    For the whole year:

    austin_s_art_interior_for_kindle-136.jpg

    For the romantic poets (and for Graveltty, whose banning I don't understand, and for all of us temporaries):

    The Permanent and Its Temporaries
    &
    Unity in Multiplicity
    &
    The One and the Many
    &
    Change and the Changeless
    &
    Especially
    The Constant Demise of the Mutables

    (Inspired by Shelley and his style, using few verses)

    Weep for the temporaries; they all fade,
    Those transient bubbles blown and burst
    Through their brief lives, of the Permanent made.
    Oh, weep for the ephemeral dispersed,
    Sad hours all, throughout the months and years,
    To mourn their steady loss with flowing tears;
    Teach them o’er the morrows thine own sorrow
    For the yesterdays they could only borrow
    From the One’s everlasting simplicity.
    Oh, weep for the unsteady, born to flee!

    For now, their light echoes and lights the path
    Continued that they added to, onto more
    Evanescences walking Time’s footpath,
    Til Past has been forgotten by Future.
    Oh, limited Mother, their tales best
    Thine by far e’en in their impermanence,
    But Thou can’t save them from their final rest,
    For they are chained to time’s changing tense.
    Thou cannot rekindle their faded breath,
    Those melodies that hid coming death.
    Like the flowers that mock the corpse beneath,
    The Enduring cloaks their extinguished wreath.

    With veiled eyes, newer moments weep despair,
    While spreading forth their own emergences;
    Dream not that the Eternal Deep can their air
    Restore, for the makeshift must progress, spent.
    The universe has to continue its race,
    Unwinding, like a spring, at time’s fixed pace,
    In which star-generations are born and perish,
    Giving their lives for all we can cherish.
    Energy’s Hunger stalks all creatures made,
    Lying ever just ‘round the corner in the shade.

    Death takes both humans and the beetle as one,
    After their lives are spent from rolling some dung.
    Living clouds wane, having outwept their rain;
    The pale inconstants must e’er pass their reign.
    Like mist’s pageantry on an autumnal night,
    As a slowing pomp, all events made light
    Decay: Desires, Adorations, Destinies,
    Glooms, Splendours, Sighs, Hopes, Fears, and Phantasies.
    Pleasure hails, blinded by tears and sorrow:
    “You took from Death all that Life could borrow.”

    Like our shades dance the walls of Plato’s cave,
    We’re 3D shadows of 4D’s enclave…
    It’s like a lamp lights up a paper shade—
    We are as figures thereupon portrayed.
    We are magic lanterns shining here; 
    Our spirits are the lights in there.
    We’re the One’s Candled Magic Shadow-Show,
    In which we Phantom Figures come and go.
    Come, light your lantern and mine with good cheer;
    We’re magic lamps; our spirits dance in here.

    We are phenomena’s projected face,
    Well-painted from noumena’s unseen base.
    From what bright star came the gleam in your eyes? 
    From what distant sun came your smile, light-wise?
    Our minds and senses interpret and dispense
    The base reality into the colors and sensations
    Of the phenomenal world from the noumenal;
    We may become either rainbows or ugly stains!
    Our beginnings and ends are of nowhere,
    So, let’s radiate, since for now we’re here!

    Ending by Shelley himself:

    The One remains, the many change and pass;
    Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
    Life, like a dome of many-colour’d glass,
    Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
    Until Death tramples it to fragments.—Die,
    If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
    Follow where all is fled!—Rome’s azure sky,
    Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
    The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
  • Neither science nor logic can disprove God?
    I'm suggesting to use reason rather than faith(or lack of it) to weight risks of 2 choices where each choice has equal chance of probability.SpaceDweller

    The positions don't seem to be equiprobable. 'God' is not even close to having been established; Genesis in being wrong shows divine inspiration to be lacking; a composite, such as Mind or a proton cannot be First and fundamental, for its parts would have to be more so; the universe is full of unintelligent design and its progression is seen to be purely physical, from the simple to the more complex.
  • What is Nirvana
    How it is that Rovelli has quantum fields as exhausting reality as being relational?

    I suppose it is enough the Permanent can only form temporaries.
  • Philosphical Poems
    Thomas Chatterton,Michael Zwingli

    He died at 17 by poison. Keats at 25; Shelley at 29, leaving the great 'Triumph of Life' unfinished; Byron at 35, and more.
  • What is Nirvana
    What is Nirvana?

    In his new book, ‘Helgoland…’, about Quantum Theory, Carlo Rovelli notes that All is Relational, that no entity exists independently of anything else, so that there are no intrinsic properties at all, but only features in relation to something else, which is essentially what Nagarjuna means by ‘emptiness’ in his Buddhism. Further note that the universe and all that comes and goes in it is temporary.


    Relationism and Buddhism
    (Outline from reading Rovelli)

    Quantum fields form and exhaust reality,
    As partless, continuous—there’s no Space!
    Reality maintains itself in place
    As the net of objects interacting.

    Copernicus’ revolution’s complete;
    External entities aren’t required
    To hold the universe; God’s not needed,
    Nor any background; there is no Outside.

    Nor is there the ‘now’ all over the place.
    GR’s relational nature extends
    To Time as well—the ‘flow’ of time is not
    An ultimate aspect of reality.

    All is Relational: no entity
    Exists independently of anything;
    There are no intrinsic properties,
    Just features in relation to what’s else.

    Interactions and events (not things) are
    Quantum entangled with such others else;
    Impermanence pertains all the way through—
    What Nagarjuna means by Emptiness.

    There are no fundamental substances,
    No permanences, no bird’s-eye view
    Of All, no Foundation to Everything,
    Plus no infinite regress ne’er completed.

    The fields are not from anything—causeless!
    Or ‘not from anything’ is of lawless
    ‘Nothing’, which can’t ever form to remain.
    There is no reason, then, to existence.

    Hope’s Necessary ‘God’ vanishes!
    This realization of Impermanence,
    No Absolutes, and Emptiness,
    As all temporary, is Nirvana.

PoeticUniverse

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