Comments

  • Tao follows Nature
    I'm not sure if you are referring to the Tao as literally the quantum vacuum or as a metaphor. I think taking it literally is mixing up metaphysics and physics.T Clark

    It's about what the Tao idea turns out to match in physics.
  • Tao follows Nature
    This is something I've thought about a lot - the idea of returning. This is how I think of it now - The Tao gives rise to the 10,000 things, which then returns to the Tao. That means that this process is taking place continuously and continually. The Tao didn't give rise to the multiplicity of the world once, it does it over and over. It's always doing it. I haven't heard that interpretation elsewhere, so I don't know if others would agree with it.T Clark

    I agree.

    The Permanent Quantum 'Vacuum' Tao rearranges into the temporaries which may persist somewhat until they unarrange and perish, the Tao ever remaining as itself, before, during, and after, as the temporaries are not new substance but directly the Tao quantum fields.


    And fear not lest Existence closing your
    Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
    The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour’d
    Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.


    We are as beings of the everlasting light dream,
    As products time and time again by its means—
    Of the eternal return, as baubles blown and burst,
    Though frames of time that quench life’s thirst.

    Some time it needed to learn Everything for,
    And now well knows how these bubbles to pour,
    Of existence, in some like universe,
    As those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.

    Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
    That the likes of us will become the past,
    Space wondering whither whence we went
    After the last of us her life has spent?

    The Eternal Saki has formed trillions of baubles
    Like ours, for e’er—the comings and passings
    Of which it ever emits to immerse
    In the universal bubbles blown and burst.

    So fear not that a debit close your
    Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
    The Eternal Source from its pot has pour’d
    Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

    What though the sky with its blue canopy
    Doth close us in so that we can not see,  
    In the eterne Cupbearer’s wine methinks
    There float a myriad bubbles like to me.

    So, as thus thou lives on yester’s credit line,
    In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
    As of its bowl our cup of brew is mixed
    Into the state of being that’s called ‘mine’.

    Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
    The Eternal ‘IS’ has ever been alive,
    For that which hath no onset cannot die,
    Nor a point from which to have any guide.
    (But of what it is constrained to do.)
  • A Thomistic Argument For God's Existence From Composition
    20. Intelligence is having the ability to apprehend the form of things (and not its copies!).
    21. The purely simple and actual being apprehends the forms of things. (19)
    22. Therefore, the purely simple and actual being must be an intelligence.
    23. To know the forms of every composed being is what it means to be omniscient.
    24. Therefore, the purely simple and actual being is omniscient.
    25. To cause the existence of a thing in correspondence to its form from knowledge (intelligence) requires a will.
    26. Therefore, the purely simple and actual being must have a will.
    Bob Ross

    No 'mind' or 'will', for that would be a composite system that has memory, foresees, plans, designs, implements forms, etc.

    Rather, it is energetic, and so stillness is impossible, and higher and higher forms come forth from the elementary 'particles', unto our complex minds that have doing - this at the opposite end of the spectrum, but not as the simplest. Higher being lies in the future.

    The Ground-Of-Determination', G.O.D., underlies all, but it isn't a God Being.
  • A Thomistic Argument For God's Existence From Composition
    1. Composed beings are made up of parts.
    2. A composed being exists contingently upon its parts in their specific arrangement.
    3. A part of a composed being is either composed or uncomposed.
    4. A part that is a composed being does not, in turn, exist in-itself but, rather, exists contingently upon its parts and their specific arrangement.
    5. An infinite series of composed beings (viz., of parts which are also, in turn, composed) would not have the power to exist on their own.
    6. Therefore, an infinite series of composed beings is impossible.
    7. Therefore, a series of composed beings must have, ultimately, uncomposed parts as its first cause. (6 & 3)
    8. An uncomposed being (such as an uncomposed part) is purely simple, since it lacks any parts.
    9. Two beings can only exist separately if they are distinguishable in their parts.
    10. Two purely simple beings do not have any different parts (since they have none).
    11. Therefore, only one purely simple being can exist.
    12. The purely simple being would have to be purely actual—devoid of any passive potency—because passive potency requires a being to have parts which can be affected by an other.
    13. No composed being could be purely actual, because a composed being always has parts which, as parts, must have passive potency.
    14. Therefore, there can only be one purely actual being which is also purely simple. (11 & 12 & 13)
    15. The purely actual being is changeless (immutable), because it lacks any passive potency which could be actualized.
    16. The purely actual being is eternal, because it is changeless and beyond time (as time’s subsistence of existence).
    17. The effect must be some way in the cause.
    18. The physical parts of a composed being cannot exist in something which is purely simple and actual; for, then, it would not be without parts.
    19. Therefore, the forms of the composed beings must exist in the purely simple and actual being.
    Bob Ross

    We note the simpler and simpler, unto the suspected simplest; such as a quantum fields, figured as so by an estimated guess that proves to work: various waves put through a Fourier transform grants the quanta of the elementary 'particles'.

    All forms, as temporaries, including composed beings, are inherent in the permanent purely simple and actual being as transient arrangements of it.

    Good so far!
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    My senses can deceive me, so if I cannot trust my senses, I might as well conclude that outside reality doesn't exist; It's just me and you; but if my senses cannot be always trusted then your existence must also might be an illusion.A Realist

    The senses take something in; therefore, there is something to take in. The sense are as spy outposts upon reality.

    Where does Reality come from? At bottom, the Eternal has no 'come from'.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    ultimate truth?Corvus

    Probably it is the Theory of Everything - The Basis of All. I'd say it is the quantum 'vacuum'.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    we are stardustArcane Sandwich



    My Rubaiyat style quatrains therein:

    Oh peri, jasmine of midnight’s garden,
    We bask in our moon-glowed, vapored haven,
    Bathing in the orb’s silver light again,
    Here in this otherworldly forest glen.

    Omar, the moon’s ring binds us truly here,
    Wherein from the strict world we disappear—
    They to wonder hence whither whence we went:
    Love, kisses, and selves bonded to endear.

    Oh, the deep clarity of this still night—
    Our being mirrors the stars and moonlight.
    It sinks into us, though short-lived by day,
    Impermanent; what’s its way; what’s its sway?

    Colored stars pierce the veil of formless night,
    Gemming Heaven’s gloried, crown-jeweled might;
    In the depths of the deep we live, anon:
    We’re all alone here to weather the plight.

    We sleep the sleep that only lovers know,
    As front to back, under the blankets’ throw,
    While meteors criss-cross the darkling skies—
    Our floating selves through love and wine aglow.

    The Spirit breathes life with its holy might;
    Spring blossoms replace winter’s snowy white;
    Cloudy vapors coalesce into drops;
    The airs the lovers with fragrance invite.

    The morn springs us o’er oblivion’s brink,
    The stars overcome, sunk in the day’s drink.
    We race our paths, past Allah’s golden dome,
    Unto the green-grassed river-bank to sink.

    Spring kisses the earth, leaving flowers there,
    Like those whose perfume first scented virgin air,
    As again, the fragrant glen, in Heaven's prayer,
    Hails Earth’s anniversary with flowers fair.

    Slake love’s thirst for life’s earthly endeavor
    Near a stream where wildflowers grow forever.
    Flowers influence our feelings—deep they roam:
    Flora’s fairest flowers compose Heaven’s poem.

    Aft the cloud’s eyes water the soil that dried,
    The sun’s warm breath wakes up the seeds inside;
    Hence, all the plants, trees, and flowers revive,
    And over mead, stream, and wayside preside.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Other than "Unknown" perhaps?jorndoe

    continued…

    There’s no ‘come from’ for the Eternalness;
    It can’t be made or broken: it’s partless;
    So, it has the least lightness of being.
    With no design point, what can it bless?

    The Permanent is constrained, as simplest,
    Continuous, as wave-fields, shown by test
    To be sinusoidal and harmonic,
    Which grants elementary quanta.

    The ‘vacuum’ has to e’er jitter and sing,
    This Base Existent forced as something,
    Due to the nonexistence of ‘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.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    You folks wanna talk about Roko's Basilisk?Arcane Sandwich

    It's an AI creature that has quickly accomplished what would have taken a jillion years of evolution, plus turning out even better since it is a machine?
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Is there an answer that does not admit questions (even in principle)?jorndoe

    What’s Fundamental has to be partless,
    Lest its parts be more-so and it be less;
    It’s ever, ne’er still, else naught could happen;
    The quantum ‘vacuum’ weaves the universe’s dress.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?

    Stardust

    All That Underlies Our Lives is Now Known.
    In the stars our atoms are slowly grown,
    From the quantum field elementaries—
    Omar’s knot of how human fate is sewn.

    Colored stars pierce the veil of formless night,
    Gemming Heaven’s gloried, crown-jeweled might;
    In the depths of the deep we live, anon:
    We’re all alone here to weather the plight.

    Stars generate the lower elements;
    Supernovae generate the higher ones.
    Atoms form the molecules that lead to
    Life’s complexity, from simplicity.

    Starlight is the origin of our being,
    The source of matter, energy; everything.
    Permanent, reassuring, unquenchable;
    It’s our radiant soul, a self-winding mainspring.

    All from stardust begins and ends in thee.
    The mighty wrecks of the elements are strewn
    Across the universe like chaff from the harvest,
    Much of the Cosmos still a vast wasteland.

    Born of stardust and nourished by sunlight,
    I fill my cup with wonders of delight.
    Life is a treasure, a radiant gem,
    A vision that I’ll never see again.

    We’re constructed from the stuff of stars’ grand,
    Through life’s history recorded in strands
    Of DNA, both recent and older,
    The parts conducting, to play as a band.

    Time and stardust made us Earth’s living guest,
    While quick death sifted the rest from the best.
    Those three, our birthright, form our epitaph:
    RIP; time expired, death came, dust is left.

    All that we are we owe to time, death, and stars.
    Truly, from the stars cometh our help.
    Within a star’s heart, matter transforms itself
    And gives off energy—this is why the stars shine!

    I own a solar system way out there,
    One whose planets contain diamonds, silver,
    And much in gold; so now I’m rich; it’s all
    Mine because I chose a favorite star.

    We’re the flesh to the backbones of the stars,
    Those ghosts of the suns that no longer are—
    They having transformed their energy’s ways
    To base atoms, more from supernovae.

    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.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    things cannot be Poetry all the way downArcane Sandwich

    Reality/Language analogy:

    Possibility papers the covariant quantum fields
    that ink the elementaries of the standard model
    that stroke the alphabet letters of the atoms
    that word the dictionary molecules
    that phrase the biotype DNA cells
    that verb the subjects
    that sentence the creatures
    that paragraph the species
    that story the ongoing tree of life
    that books the literature of the unified-verse
    that libraries the Cosmos.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    @Arcane Sandwich

    Good Tree of Life film.

    I put my story into invideo AI generative mode:

  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    And here is the Hegelian versionArcane Sandwich

    I like that song, as well as 'Pancho and Lefty'. Wish there were more like those two.

    Now, finally, we uncover The Poetic Universe:

    At last, I met the ultimate Poet, the Elfin Queen, who told, “There is a relationship structure that arises not only from the manifold and the complicated interactions of the imagined building blocks of matter, but also one that is substantially more inherent and holistic.”

    She continued, “So, then, the weaves, warps, and woofs of the quantum bits as strokes makes for the letters of the elementals, as the alphabet of the standard model, forming the words as the atoms that go on to form the molecules as the phrases, on into cells as verse-sentences, up to the stanza-paragraphs of the organisms, and unto the poem-stories of the species, via the unity of life’s conscious literature as the unified verse in which we live out our poems.”

    I’m left with a feeling that’s no mere spell,
    But a fact in Heaven that’s fancy in Hell,
    Of elemental affinity’s flame,
    Deeper than thought, much older than speech can tell.

    I had discovered The Poetic Universe.

    I headed back home, this taking a few months, never stepping into the same universe twice, or even once.

    Funny thing, I thought, they didn’t use poems in what they told me, but, then again, they are as living poetic forms themselves.

    My Poetic Report:

    We are both essence and form, as poems versed,
    Ever unveiling our live’s deeper thirsts,
    As new riches, from 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.

    The weave of the quantum fields as strokes writes
    The letters of the elemental bytes—
    The alphabet of the standard model,
    Forming the words as the atoms whose mights

    Merge to form molecules, as phrases,
    Onto proteins and cells, as sentences,
    Up to paragraphs of organisms,
    And unto the stories of the species.

    In this concordance of literature,
    We are the Cosmos’ book of adventure,
    As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
    Being both the contained and the container.

    Our poem is both the thought and the presence,
    An object born from the profoundest sense,
    An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
    We’re both the existence and the essence.

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

    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.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Our Father, the Absolute First
    created himself from the primordial darkness.
    Guarani Creation Myth

    A self-made man!

    She continued, “There are no objects that are identical with themselves over time, and so the temporal sequence remains open. Nature is a possibility 'gestalt’, with the world forming anew each moment, from the deeper, enfolded realm, which is a unity in the sense of an indivisible 'potentiality’ which can realize itself in many possible ways, it not being a strict sum of the partial states.”

    ’Twas that time of morn when the exiled rise,
    Thrown to time’s Earthly bondage through the skies,
    Being for an hour their own Heavenly selves,
    Their full glory unhidden by disguise.

    “It still appears to us, though, that the world consists of parts that have continued from 'a moment ago’, and thus retain their identity in time; yet, matter really only appears secondarily, as a congealed potentiality.”

    These forest fairies, dryads, nymphs, and fauns,
    Ever flash their nude blossoms on the lawns.
    They beckon me along, for though the air
    I pass thoughts of love, verses, and songs.

    “In a stable configuration of matter, such as in the inanimate, all the quantum uncertainties are effectively statistically averaged out, this thus ever being deterministic; but in the case of the statically unstable but dynamically stable configurations the 'lively’ features of the underlying quantum structure have a chance to surface to the macroscopic level.”

    And so they tell more, “Physical phenomena are made of information processors that generate overlappings of correlated multi–dimensional wave fields which are propagating through time, as fields of possibility, whose intensity is a measure of the probability of an object-like realization.”

    The life of her face is in her deep blue eyes,
    Soft-lipped mouth, and the ears that pointed rise,
    As the moon and stars reflect in a pool,
    Which look as for a lifetime pours surprise.

    “So, there is form before substance, relationality before a materiality that is of a secondary arising and importance, its information being primary. Impressions of realizations are left in our world by the gestalt that lives’ in the multidimensional spaces of quantum superpositional possibility.”

    I dive into her eyes, her soulful gate,
    And worship before her heart’s flaming grate,
    Midst flowers in the gardens of her dreams,
    Then whirl back up through her eyes as her mate.

    “There are no point masses then, but only smudged particles, such as we know of in the space-filling representations of the distribution of electrons in the shells of atoms—called a 'cloud’."

    “What remains unchanged over time are certain properties that find expression in the laws of conservation of energy, momentum, electrical charge, etc., these necessarily being closer to the basis of all.”

  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Hmmm...Arcane Sandwich



    Fortunately, I was a poet myself, and so I could gain entrance to the elfin dell, as a human, having to first pass through the neophytes, resisting their temptations and spells; however, the sensual can often take a back seat to the intellectual, although the ecstasy can be similar.

    I had been there once before, bringing my epic poem, 'Flora Symbolica’, unto them, and writing up the results in 'Elfin Legends’, and so they had bid me to return one day on a quest. Theirs was more of an ethereal world, whereas mine was often clunky, except when I dreamt at night, and it was time for me to wander again, to ask about and better understand the quantum guidance principle, especially learning from those closer to nature and the heavens, they being the elven mixture of spirit–angel beings and humans, and thus aware of the causal nexus.

    I flew to England, to the special forest Fairy Kingdom, near Gallienne’s old haunts, and waited for the funnel to open up into the tunnel, and then I came out into their realm and walked on for a full day, seeing no one straight out yet, just sideward waverings, but noting many new colors heretofore unknown, as there were more waves and frequencies here.

    Here the blesséd and haunted old forest, Whereat the base of an oak I rest, While all about lay wondrous deep coverts, And a green-turfed path that leads o’er a crest.

    They all knew what I was after, as evidenced in the first encounter.

    “To pass and learn of the connectedness of all things, you must kiss me, after which I’ll give you your first clue.”

    The kiss vibrated deep within my being, and I felt it to my core, and then she related, “All of life’s entities embrace one another, including cells, organisms, species, and biotope”.

    I was on my way again the next morning, the hours having flown by, as when Einstein had sat next to a pretty girl and had noted the much quicker passage of time, over the slower passage of his instant of touching a hot stove.

    I learned more as I meandered through the labyrinth of the forest.

    She said, “Hold me tight and love me, and I will unveil some of the poetic structure afterward.

    Well, two days went by, and she revealed more of my quest, “Living conscious creatures are as a poem, they ever revealing further dimensions and expressing new properties at every level of organization, via strokes, letters, phonemes, words, phrases, and verse-sentences, in and of a uni-verse of rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, metric, and melody. This relates to the quantum All."

    I was hungry for the continuation of life’s quantum poem, and hoped I’d be able to move on more quickly, but her allure was testing my resolve; however, she told me something very soon after we’d rubbed our cheeks together, “Meanings in life are not just discovered or gleaned by mere observation but by understanding through participation, these informationally derived meanings combined to make sense in a non-reductive process, as in the relational reality of life happening at our semantical level of syntactical information exchange, with no breaking of any of the holistic connections, all this as the epic whole of the book of nature.”

    It was so still you could hear a nut fall, And the musical strain of mystic call, In soft tones flowered upon the silence, As floating on the surface of the All.

    “There is the particle and there is the wave—either one forced on us by our observations, being jointly known as the 'wavicle’, all three states of which are truly not the actual reality.”

    She continued, “The actual reality is quantum field.”

    After two weeks with her, I had to survive the passage through the land of skulls and roses.

    Finally, I emerged, unscathed, into the Land of Spring, and found out about more about growth.

    (could be continued)
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Reality is greater than the Ultimate Truth about it, it surpasses it, it transcends it, because it is an Absolute of a very different kind, one that exists entirely outside the Ultimate Truth about it.Arcane Sandwich

    The temporary complexity is way more interesting and lively than the simple Permanent underlying.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    I never said that the Hegelian Absolute Spirit was First or Fundamental, all I said is that it is Ultimate and that it is a Truth about something else: Reality itself.Arcane Sandwich

    Ah, but 'Ultimate' is the same idea, but, if not, then the Spirit is of a highly evolved Alien Being and that is OK as not First and such.

    Hope It can improve the Earth, but, it's not an Alive Being.

    The Spirit turns out to be the quantum field as Everything connected.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Hegel's concept of the Absolute SpiritArcane Sandwich

    Idealism for Hegel meant that the finite world is a reflection of mind, which alone is truly real. He held that limited being (that which comes to be and passes away) presupposes infinite unlimited being, within which the finite is a dependent element. - Britannica

    Hegel identifies the Permanent and the temporary, but a spirit as mind cannot be First and Fundamental because it is a system of complexity.

    Or Brahman was bored and dreamed up a Soap Opera channel as life on Earth that does stupid things.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    I raise youArcane Sandwich

    This should keep you busy and not worrying any more about the ultimate truth…

  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    but you lose the rhyming structureArcane Sandwich

    10 syllable lines, mostly, rhyming:

    I sit to sing my song under a star
    To the rhythm of my old guitar,
    For the man whose life is a bitter cup,
    With a song may yet his heart lift up,
    As the lonely bird on the leafless tree,
    That sings beneath the gloaming star so free.

    I extended the Rubaiyat, with such as:

    The universe’s mantle binds us worn—
    Tears feeding the river on which we’re borne.
    Hell’s but an ember of our senseless fears;
    Heaven’s the rose-breath of opening morn.



    AI poem extension:

    Rose Breath

    In a garden of the old oak’s shade,
    Whispers of time in the twilight fade;
    Stars shimmer tales of a million days,
    Life’s tender notes in a glowing haze.

    A cup of wisdom from a poet’s hand,
    The soul finds peace in a foreign land
    Petals that fall tell tales untold,
    Hearts intertwine as dreams unfold.

    Wherever you roam let your spirit soar,
    Through peaks and valleys seeking more,
    In every dawn and every night,
    Infinite wonder in endless flight.

    Moon’s gentle glow like a soothing balm
    Serenades sweet in the evening calm;
    Paths unknown call the brave to stride,
    Wisdom and wonder as their guide.

    Whispers in winds through ancient trees,
    Echoing journeys across seven seas;
    Footprints fade but memories grow,
    In the heart’s garden forever aglow.

    In the universe’s wrap we’re torn,
    Rivers fed by tears we’ve born;
    Embers reflect our deepest fears,
    Morning’s breath calms and clears.

    Stars whisper secrets in twilight’s glow,
    Lost in the flow where the wild winds blow,
    Chasing shadows through life’s maze,
    Dreams linger in the golden haze.

    Heaven’s rose-breath in dawn’s embrace,
    Hearts beating in a timeless chase;
    From the dark we find our light;
    Rise together into the night.

    Chains of fate we choose to break,
    Every dawn a new path we’ll take;
    Through the trials we’ll learn to fly,
    In the chorus of the sky

    Dancing light with wings that twinkle,
    Softly laughing in the air,
    Whisper secrets, oh so simple,
    Magic dust beyond compare.

    In the woods where silence lingers,
    Shadows play their gentle part;
    Fairies weave with nimble fingers,
    Threading dreams into your heart.

    Oh the fairies sing at twilight,
    Spinning tales among the trees,
    Mischief makers gleaming starlight,
    Mystery carried on the breeze.

    Tiny footprints on the clover,
    Silent steps on moonlit ground,
    Search for treasures under cover,
    Hidden gems yet to be found.

    Through the glades and past the flowers
    Catch a glimpse and they are gone,
    Fleeting moments, magic showers;
    Morning breaks and they move on.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    What Hernández is saying here is that the act of singing is an act of freedom.Arcane Sandwich

    Here I set myself to singing
    To the rhythm of the guitar,
    For when a man is kept awake
    By an extraordinary sorrow,
    Like a solitary bird,
    He finds solace in song.

    A cheerful AI song I made, extended from Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat poem, regarding the bird,

    Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
    The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
    The Bird of Time has but a little way
    To fly—and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.



    Omar had the gist of the Permanent:

    Whose secret Presence through Creation’s veins
    Running Quicksilver-like eludes your pains;
    Taking all shapes from Máh to Máhi and
    They change and perish all—but He remains;

    which I would update as:

    Quantum field Presence, through transient veins,
    Running Quicksilver-like, fuels our gains—
    Taking all the temporary shapes as
    They change and perish all—but It remains.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Hmmm... but is it Divine, yes or no?Arcane Sandwich

    No. Having no parts makes for the Permanent to be the ultimate lightweight; so it can't have any being, the doomed fate hat is hoped for by those looking for Divine as what's beneath, which is at the wrong level, as simplex, for the complex. Look to the future for higher beings and more complexity, not to the simpler and simpler past.

    My quatrains sort of follow the Rubaiyat rhyme scheme:

    The verses beat the same, in measured chime.
    Lines one-two set the stage, one-two-four rhyme.
    Verse three’s the pivot around which thought turns;
    Line four delivers the sting, just in time.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Divinity does not have to be about a transcendent anthromorphic 'God'. There is the idea of divinity within as expressed by Walt Whitman. The poets often understood divinity as a source of inspiration. I am sure that William Blake saw it that way.Jack Cummins

    You are the temporary arrangement of the Permanent; so, you are It for a while.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    divine magicArcane Sandwich

    Not Divine, as in a 'God' Being…

    In this lost haunt, on the Orion arm
    Of the Milky Way, safe from the core’s harm,
    We philosophers meet in the tavern,
    As sleuth-hounds, unweaving the Cosmic yarn.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    Hmmm...Arcane Sandwich

    The 'thing-in-itself' can't be made nor can it break, because it can't have any parts, which makes it to be eternal; its Existence has no alternative, no opposite, for 'Nothing' cannot be, since 'it' has no it.
  • How can one know the ultimate truth about reality?
    It is truly "something else" in that sense. And it is, in my belief, identical to what Kant called "the thing-in-itself"Arcane Sandwich

    Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
    Particle spigots making fields went mute;
    Classic fields had no fundamental loot.

    What's left? The quantum vacuum with its quantum fields that rearrange to form the elementary 'particles' as stable quanta!
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    I don't have it, sir. Where can I find one?Corvus

    Amazon has 'Quantum X Upright Water Filter Vacuum'.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    Hmmm...Arcane Sandwich

    Yes, but not Himmm.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    That is indeed one of the things that I have been working on for the past year and a half, more or less. To prove, logically, definitively, that demons, dragons and other fictional entities do not exist. But it's a really difficult thing to prove, because that discussion is about the concept of existence itself.Arcane Sandwich

    There are no mythological creatures yet.

    There is only the Permanent Existence; its rearrangements into temporaries are still It.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    And from my observations, experiences and reasoning, the only place where God exist is the word God. Nowhere else in the external world I could observe God at all. Therefore my proof God exists in the keyboard of my computer still stands.Corvus

    Yes, all we have is a Ground Of Determination - the Quantum 'vacuum'.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    What could transform the potential for life into life?Corvus

    To the Quantum Depths of the Poetic Universe:

    Lost in the Haystack?

    What great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
    The strands of the quantum fields’ types of waves
    To weave the warp, weft, and woof of our ‘verse
    Into being’s fabric of living braids?


    From quantum non-locality and entanglement, we know that information is more primary than distance, and that things don’t have to have the appearance of being near each other to be related or to cause an effect.

    Everything connected to everything would seem to be a rudimentary 'perception’ as far as one could be had by that network. The all-at-once connections, as like in a hologram, might seem to provide for for the direction of what goes on in the overall information process. I am thinking like a yogi and a guru, the entire cosmos situated within me.

    Quantum non-locality seems to imply that every region of space is in instant and constant contact with every other, perhaps even in time as well, and so the holistic universe is governed by the property of the solitary whole; so that could be the underlying guidance principle. An individual particle might know’ something about what to do, acting according to all the others.

    Thus both our connections and the holistic universe’s, each having a singular nature, might be the clue. Perhaps they are of the same basis of connections’ doings, but separate as two manifestations, each pertaining to a different realm, internal and external, our internal connections giving us 'future’, and the external connections granting 'future’ to the universe. I don’t know which has the tougher job.

    Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.

    Quantum entanglement suggests that each particle has the entire 3-D or 4-D map of the universe, the information ever updated, the universe being as a single entity. While this may not be perception at the level we have, it may help the universe accomplish something of the movements of particles and fields in their energy, mass, and momentum, in some global way that goes forward overall.

    This may not seem to be saying a whole lot, in depth, but since the quantum realm is beneath everything then one would surmise that it must have all to do with everything that goes on.

    It is still that the apparent atoms and molecules make the happenings, via physical-chemical reactions; however, this observation cannot be equated to an 'explanation’, for we must wonder what underlies the chemical mattering and reacting that seems to have a unity of direction to it.

    I had finished with the yogis and the gurus, and the seers and the oracles only know of the future; so, I surmised, to uncover the deepness of the present, for nature and the conscious animates, I must seek out Nature’s Great Poet in her Uni-verse, in order to fully apprehend the ethereal phantasms of the entangled and enchanted branches in the forest of nature, bringing them into the light.

    (Perhaps continued another time.)
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    What could transform the potential for life into life?Corvus

    Time and stardust made us Earth’s living guest,
    When quick death sifted the rest from the best.
    Those three, our birthright, write our epitaph:
    RIP; time expires, death comes, dust is left.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    But after some reflection,
    I understand the Ultimate Something as death. Eventually everything and every life dies by the natural law. Hence we could say Death is the Ultimate Something.

    The Ultimate Something has no opposite? I agree. Death has no opposite. Death is nothing. The opposite of Death is life, but once dead, it is impossible to go back to life, no alternative.
    Corvus

    The Permanent Ultimate Something is not alive, but as we see, the potential for life was there for the Temporaries.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    But in the case of deducing something Permanent and Eternal being, I have no real life experience pertaining to the concept, hence I am not sure what could be the basis for such deduction or inference.Corvus

    ‘Nothing’ cannot even be meant, as per Parmedies’ philosophy; therefore, the Ultimate Something has no opposite, and as such it has no alternative; so, it has to be.

    Fundamental First philosophy indicates that the Ultimate Something cannot have parts, lest the parts be even more fundamental; thus the Ultimate Something must consist only of itself, thus being unmakeable and unbreakable, which tells us that it is Eternal.

    Science shows us a simpler and simpler basis underlying the universe’s present complexity, on down to the elementary ‘particles’ that have wave-field-like properties of a further Something beneath; so, this accords with our philosophy, so far, we now suspecting the wave-field as the prospective Ultimate Something, but we cannot see it directly.

    We make an educated philosophical guess that waves make up the Something, since waves have no parts and also because waves are ubiquitous everywhere we look, because, again, science has confirmed a wave nature.

    Waves are 2D but make for fields in 3D; a field has a value at every point, such as with a temperature field.

    If we can model these quantum fields and then build working devices from the model, then we have the quantum field theory (QFT), and our guess was correct. This has been done and it is the most successful theory in the history of science!

    The modeling, in short, has to do with all kinds of waves moving about being shown to be equivalent to sinusoidal waves, via a Fourier Transform. A property of this situation is that the elementary ‘particles’ will form at stable rungs of quanta energy, such as when an electron in an atom, when receiving energy, can only quantum jump to a multiple of its energy level, showing the quantum discreteness. Good guess!

    The elementaries are directly field quanta; they are not new substance. There is only the Permanent and the Temporary.

    The Temporary can only be made by the arrangements of the Permanent, just as we thought, via logical philosophy, since the permanent must ever remain as Itself. Science confirms the lumps of quanta. Philosophy is not dead.

    This has not shown ‘God’ in the way we think He ought to be, but at least it points to an Ultimate Eternal Something, which could be called ‘the G.O.D.’ (the Ground Of Determination).

    An Eternal Basis has to be so,
    For a lack of anything cannot sow,
    Forcing there to be something permanent,
    As partless, from which composites can grow.

    There can’t be other directions given,
    To that which no start; it is undriven;
    So, it is as Everything possible,
    Either as linear or as all at once.

    (We don’t know the mode of Time.)

    Consider quantum fields of waves atop
    One another: waves are continuous,
    And so qualifiy as Fundamental;
    Quanta lumps make ‘particles’, and us.

    The temp-forms last from unit charge or strength;
    The Basis is coterminal with them.
    The information content of the
    All of Everything
    Is the same as Null!

    There is no meaning.
    There is no place or before to impart
    Direction to what is Eternal.

    Note that there is no other remaining theory:
    Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
    Particle spigots making fields went mute;
    Classic fields had no fundamental loot.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    My belief of its existence is as firm as any other knowledge I have for certain.Corvus

    We can deduce a Permanent Eternal Something that rearranges itself to form the temporaries, its state ever remaining the same, the elementary 'particles' not being new substance, but direct and rather stable lumps of It, so then, poetically:

    Permanent Presence, through transient veins,
    Running Quicksilver-like, fuels our gains—
    Taking all the temporary shapes as
    They change and perish all—but It remains.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    the existence of God is a matter of conjecture and personal faith.

    It is an illogical statement to say God exists. The correct way of saying that statement is, one believes in God.
    Corvus

    Now, that's an honest way of speaking.

    Intellectual Dishonesty:
    The preachers claim ‘perhaps’ as fact and truth.
    Their ingrained beliefs the priests’ duly preach,
    As if notions were truth and fact to teach.
    Oh, cleric, repent; at least say, ‘Have faith’;
    Yet, of unknowns ne’er shown none can e’er reach.

    Unfortunately, for believers, a being cannot be First and Fundamental; look to the more complex future for higher beings, not to the simpler and simpler past.
  • Can the existence of God be proved?
    So you think processes such as cell replication or photosynthesis come to be by pure chance?kindred

    'Pure chance' is not the scientific alternative to Intelligent Design:

  • "Potential" as a cosmological origin
    In conclusion, this is the argument as to why Potential stands as a better reasoning for existence than something coming from nothing.Benj96

    There is potential / possibility in the Permanent Fundamental Something as well, for an eternal First couldn't have any design going into it but for what constrains it; so, in a linear, presentist time, it could amount to anything possible, and in an eternalist block time it could be everything possible in a superposition. We don't know the mode of time, though.
  • "Potential" as a cosmological origin
    Since 'Nothing' is impossible, fundamental Something has no opposite and thus no alternative; so, Fundamental Something has to be. Thus, Fundamental Something is unbreakable, as eternal and permanent, for it cannot have parts, plus the parts would have to be even more fundamental.

    Such, the Permanent can only give rise to the temporary elementaries ('particles') by rearrangements of itself, such as at stable rungs of quanta, the Permanent ever remaining as itself, as the elementaries can 'melt' back into it.

    Of course, the elementaries give rise to further higher level temporaries, such as us.

PoeticUniverse

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