The Rock Bottom Flow of Information

(It will move or else you can click on it to get it to move.)

I agree that the idea of a 'spontaneous production of something from nowhere' is interesting with regard to how anything ever came into existence at all. — Jack Cummins

Thus, it ought to be still happening everywhere all the time. Hope not near me, but I'll keep an eye out!

Not knowing the foundation of reality is a real bummer! — Pop

Yes, but we seekers shall not tire of exploration…

Why do we wander around in the dark,
In the middle of the night like this?

Well, if I knew the answer to that one,
I would have been home hours ago.

Do we not tire, e’er walking, looking, lame?

At first, we did, yes, but then beauty came—
The grand moment of wings grown; lifting, new.
The rhythm flies us—our music plays through.

Such we are stirred, so touched by the starlight,
That it seems we’ll ne’er be the same again.

Do we sense the euphony of the spheres?
Can we fathom the theory of everything?


Of we philosophers…

The Seekers Gather in the Forum Tavern

In this lost haunt on the Orion arm
Of the galaxy, safe from the core’s harm,
We philosophers meet in the forum,
The sleuth-hounds unweaving the Cosmic yarn.

We search for the Start of the Universe,
The End, the Before, the After, the Kinds,
The Measures, and All That Lies Between:
The Music of the Spheres’ Magnificat.

Quantum fluctuations e’er wave their sea,
So that Nothing can never come to be.
Here we must walk the Plank mysterious
To the min of Max into the abyss.

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, plus more—supernovae.

Heaven’s stars spread the primeval dust eterne;
Time’s deep seas to evolve the species in turn.
From time, death, and dust we at last became,
And to this, thus, and that we must return.

Time and stardust made us Earth’s living guest,
For quick death sifted the rest from the best.
Those, our birthright, wrote our epitaph, too:
RIP; time expired, death came, dust was left.

Death, evolution’s lone selector,
Stalked the sillier from the wise of yore,
Preserved the more useful from the useless,
And favored the pointed o’er the pointless.

…

From a drop of water one could infer
The existence of Niagara Falls
And even the great Atlantic Ocean.

Sherlock, even as a baby just born
In a dark cave could infer the universe
From a grain of sand between his toes.

“I love this detective school, Sherlock.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary.”

“This class of opium is great, too!”

“High school, Watson.”

This is a first cause, I'm not drawing any conclusions ( god ) from the cause.
Personally I believe ours would be a bubble universe caused in a larger big bang that created many universes, but this is immaterial to the topic at hand. — Pop

Either Or Poem

‘God’s’ image reflects the mottled colors
Painted by human artists upon the air
Where the wormed apple was before the fall
That rotted away truth’s tree of knowledge.

Or

The Eternal has to be everything,
Superimposed, not a certain pathing;
It can’t have inputs, with no beginning;
So, what chose the song our universe sings?

The Permanent is all that there is,
It’s transmutations the temporary fizz.
It can’t have direction, with no inputs,
So, it multi verses, seeming as a Wiz.

The Eternal is as a multiverse,
Potentially, with no information,
As in Bable’s Library of all books,
Being as useless as Nothing’s zero.

The universes might all spring forth, somehow,
Most inert or not going far enough,
With some reaching life after a long time,
Such as ours, precarious as it is.

Or

Forecasting the Cosmos

The Programmer sets the if-then switches,
Like eight-way 3D Rubic Cube intercepts,
After having set the quarks and leptons,
And coding stars to generate atoms.

Then more precise tweaks, to dark energy,
To umpteen decimal places so rare,
And the forming of the DNA code
To blend life’s ingredients, stirring slow.

Darn, the n-body problem is so tough,
For unforeseen side-effects e’er arise,
Among branches of the would-be life-tree,
A zillion variables overlapping.

Damn!

…

Extinctions swept away many a kind;
Chromosomes fused, leaving the chimps behind;
DNA remembered the survivors;
‘Good fortune’ smiled on the Sapiens mind.

Unintelligently programmed, many climbs
Had to be of the off-the-shelf reach’s grimes,
As dickering Rube Goldberg ‘inventions’,
Our nervous systems ruled by ancient times.

Finally, after some fourteen billion years,
Proto-man and then homo Sapiens
Arrived, after seven million more years
Of tinkering with monkey chromosomes.

But yet something worked; here we are!

Oh Man! What a piece of work—the mind;
What noble deeds done and undone in kind.
What coding updates programmed all upon—
In the layers of brains the mind is made upon.

What is this sapiens mammal animal?
Still made from slime but of a higher call!

the din — 180 Proof

An Estimate for no ‘God’

1a. All that we observe proceeds from the simplest realm of tiny events/things/processes to the larger composite to the more and complex, where we exist, which cascade may continue into the future, where/when we can expect beings higher than ourselves to become.

1b. The unlikely polar opposite of (1a) is an ultra complex system of mind of a ‘God’ being First as Fundamental; however systems have parts, this totally going against the fundamental arts.

2. (1) gets worse, for ‘God’ being, given that there can be no input for any specific direction going into the necessary Fundamental Eternal Capability—the basis of all, this bedrock having to be causeless, with random effects, due to no information being able to come in to what has no beginning. It thus appears that it could be everything possible, although not anything in particular, which is also the way it shows, in its constant transmutation at every instant, this all according to what we call the laws of nature.

3. So, (2) indicates that there is no ultimate meaning, not that a built-in meaning would be great, for it would be quite restrictive, but at least, as ‘liberating’, there’s anything and everything possible that could have become from the basic eternal state of not anything in particular—our present Earthly life path being one that is being lived now by us after 13.57 billion years, much of which progression can be accounted for by science.

4. On top of the preceding unlikelihoods, and given that obviously that no Designer made everything instantly, but is curiously constrained to doing exactly what nature could do on its own (and why so slowly!), it is unlikely that all eventualities could have been foreseen by a Deity in starting a universe suitable for life. It seems more like we were fine-tuned to the Earth.

5a. It’s still that the religious might then suppose a ‘God’ Deity who is like a scientist who throws a bunch of stuff together that is balanced and energetically reactive enough, but not too much so that it races along too fast, etc., to make for something livable coming out of it, but, again, really, what is a fully formed person-like being doing sitting around beforehand, this also being all the more of a quandary that ever enlarges the question by ‘begging’ rather than answering it.

5b. But, if it is supposed that life has to come from a Larger Life, then a regress ensues, making this not to be a good template, for it cannot be used on ‘God’ and so has to be thrown out of the stain-glass window. As for a Deity trying to put workable stuff together, this is much like the idea of a multiverse. We continue to estimate no ‘God’.

6. Existence/capability has no alternative, given that nonexistence has no being as a source and that there is indeed something, and as such the existence of something/capability is mandatory, there not being any choice to it. It’s a given; no magic required. Still, it could operate almost as what is called ‘God’, except that it’s not a Mind.

7a. We see that the One continually transitions/transmutes, never being able to remain as anything particular, which matches its nature supposed due to no information coming into it in the first place that never was, for the One Fundamental Eterne has to be ungenerated and deathless if it is so. But how can there be a finite absolute One with an impossible None outside it?

7b. Or all could be relative if there are no absolutes, for Totality can’t have anything outside it. So then Totality must be relative to itself.

7c. Of course, either way, the capability remains, as necessity, with no alternative, without needing any cause for it to be. It is the Ground of Determination — G.O.D. It has no opposite and so it is not remarkable.

8. Aside from the trivial definition of free will being that without coercion the will is free to operate, and the useless definition of the harmful random will equaling ‘freedom’, the deeper notion of ‘free’ as being original and free of the brain will is of a currency never being able to be stated and cashed in on, leaving ‘determined’ to continue to be the opposite of ‘undetermined’. This stands against a ‘God’.

While eternalism can’t yet be told apart from presentism, the message from both is of a transient ‘now’, whether pre-determined or determined as it goes along. All hope then, is crushed, both for us and the Great Wheel itself having any potency. This is the great humility; all hubris is gone.

It is enough, then, that we have the benefit of experiencing and living life well, sometimes, much more so given this modern age, although still with sweat, tears, and aversive substrates of emotions that those of the future might consider to be barbaric. The early days of humankind were horrendous.

10. It doesn’t seem like a God’s world, and so fundamentalist literalist Biblical ‘reasons’ cannot apply here, about a ‘fall’, for those already went away. The pride of being special and deserving of reward and avoiding punishment is still a nice wish, though, for us electro-chemical-bio organisms who appear be be as organic as anything else that grows in nature. Hope grants comfort.

11. God’s operations, curiously restricted to be the same as nature’s has us not being able to tell them apart from nature’s, but which is more likely, the natural or the supernatural? Earth is just where it ought to be, in the Goldilocks zone, and not impossibly flourishing out near Neptune.

12. And why must there be a truly distinct transcendent, immaterial, intangible, super realm when it would still have to give and take energy in the physical material language, talking its talk and walking its walk? Dubious, plus the speculation of an invisible realm goes nowhere toward it being so, it tending toward making excuses for what really ought to be seen everywhere.

13. So, we can sit on a fence and go to church half the time or estimate the probability either way, but note that there can be no blame for not knowing what can’t be shown for sure. It’s all in what it does for you.

Let us have wine, lovers, song, and laughter—
Water, chastity, prayer the day after.
Such we’ll alternate the rest of our days—
Thus, on the average, we’ll make Hereafter!

You don't own the Bible, the Bible owns you if you want to sell yourself to it — Gregory

The post had a wrong link; here is the right one to the Bible I produced:

https://austintorney.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/bibnew-small-11.25-jpg-150-dpi.pdf

I argued it is as good of an ultimate explanation as any. — Down The Rabbit Hole

Better, since also QFT works…

'From Nothing' reduces to 'Something Forever' because a spontaneous production of something from nowhere, no place, and no when, etc. requires a capability—and that is something, not a nothing.

So now what do we do about it? What are the implications, if any?

Christian bible — Gregory

My Bible:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11248/how-do-we-think-about-the-bible-from-a-philosophical-point-of-view/latest/comment

“Hell is other people” — Angelo

Realize through philosophy that they have a fixed will (at the moment) and so they have to do what they do.

Is something coming from nothing any more absurd than something existing forever? — Down The Rabbit Hole

Not that absurd, since one has to be correct.

The Universe seems to have a zero-sum balance but for the tiny quantum uncertainty, so, 'Nothing' is always up to something, making 'it' not an extant Nothing.

Something existing forever, having no antecedent/precursor, needs to be unmakable and unbreakable, being only of itself, and thus it has no parts. Systems need not apply. Quantum fields suffice for now.

Thanks for the link. It is such a difficult thing to express, isnt it? I think you have done well. Just one little quibble. You also focus on entropy, when in fact we are an integrated self ordering system. Perhaps a work that expresses the strong anthropic principle might be in the offing? — Pop

On 'Good Fortune', 'Luck', etc.:

https://austintorney.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/moh-8.5x11-jpg-300-dpi.pdf

dissipative systems — Pop

Energy is a beauty and a brilliance,
Flashing up in its destructance,
For everything isn’t here to stay its “best”;
It’s merely here to die in its sublimeness.

Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds,
Yet ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,

Ever becoming of its glorious excursions,
Bearing the change that patient time restrains,
While feasting upon the glorious decayed remains
In its progressive march through losses for gains.
…

https://austintorney.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/atlb-8.5x11-jpg-300-dpi.pdf

I am inclined to contemplate the mysterious — Jack Cummins

I’ll follow every single avenue,
Whether it’s brightly lit or a dark alley,
Exploring one-ways, no-ways, and dead-ends
Until I find where the truth is hiding.

Since we all became of this universe,
Should we not ask who we are, whence we came?
Insight clefts night’s skirt with its radiance—
The Theory of Everything shines through!

As far as speaking in tongues — Jack Cummins

Probably so that the Devil cannot understand what's being said.

And I hereby bid 'Amen' to my old friend Amen.

If there are no lifeforms similar to us in the universe, we can still wonder if there have ever been some in a past age, or whether there will be in some distant future galaxy. — Jack Cummins

Yes, and I think for certain, for the Cosmos is so extravagant in its amount of stuff that here and there the right condition will obtain.

The Impossible Recipe

Explaining the Cosmos is as easy as pie:
It’s an endless extravagance beyond the sky,
Which shows that matter’s very readily made—
Underlying energy raising the shades.

This All sounds rather like an ultimate free lunch,
For the basis is already made, with no punch,
It ever being around, as is, never a ‘was’—
Everywhere, in great abundance quite unheard of.

There’s even more of it than can be imagined—
Of lavish big spenders, there in amounts unbounded:
Bubbles of universes within pockets more,
Across all the times and spaces beyond our shore!

What is the birthing source of this tremendous weight?
There is nothing from which to make the causeless cake!
Its nature is undirected, uncooked, unbaked?
There can’t be a choice to that ne’er born and awaked!

There can’t be turtles on turtles all the way down;
The buck has to stop somewhere in this town.
‘Nothing’ is unproductive—can’t even be meant;
All ever needed is, with nothing on it spent!

Yes, none from nothing, yet something is here, true;
But, really, you can’t have your cake and Edith, too!
And yet I’ve still all of my wedding cake, I do—
It’s just changed form; what ever IS can never go.

Since there’s no point at which to impart direction
The essence would have no limited, specific,
Certain, designed, created, crafted, thought out meaning!
Thus the Great IS is anything and everything!

This All is as useless as Babel’s Library
Of all possible books in all variety!
Yes, and even in our own small aisle we see
Any and every manner of diversity.

The information content of Everything
Would be the same as that of Nothing!
Zero. The bake’s ingredients vary widely,
And so express themselves accordingly.

What’s Everything, detailed? Length, width, depth, 4D—
Your world-line; 5th, all your probable futures;
6th, jump to any; 7th, all Big Bang starts to ends;
8th, all universes’ lines; 9th, jump to any;
10th, the IS of all possible realities.

Your elucidation is quite a piece of cake!
Yo, it exceeds, as well, and so it takes the cake.
Everything ever must be, because ‘nothing’ can’t?
Yes, it’s that existence has no opposite, Kant!

So, we’re here at the mouth of the horn of plenty,
For a free breakfast, lunch, and a dinner party;
Yet many starving are fed up with being unfed.
Alas, for now I have to say, Let Them Eat Cake!

I think that we can also ask whether there will ever be nothing? In other words, will the universe, and beyond, cease to exist at all in some remote, distant age. — Jack Cummins

In The End the Cosmos will be so spread out that any given photon will not be able to 'see' another one!

I just happen to have a great description of this in one of my greatest illustrated poetic productions:

After the Stars Have Gone—The Final, Silent Dark

A glance into the far flung future of the expansion of the universe.

PDF:

https://theomarkhayyamclubofamerica.files.wordpress.com/2021/06/atshg-8.5x11-jpg-longer-150-dpi.pdf

The Summary of Some Disproofs of God
(Some from Victor Stenger)

THE NATURAL Where shall we find, or not, the Supernatural—God? We would find it doing super things that are beyond the natural. If we look everywhere and only find the natural, then the disproof of God lives.

BELIEFS IN THE UNKNOWN ARE UNGROUNDED BELIEFS UPHELD. A belief is that construct that states we consider something as true. But considering and knowing are two different words. One implies holding something up as true, while the other stands on the ground as being true. Indeed, that is the ‘hold up’, for a belief hangs in the air, because it is upheld by the owner of the belief.

THE ETERNAL UNCAUSED MOVER It could not be a Mind, for it would be an already defined and very complex composite system. In any system, the parts must precede. Thus, no God.

MASS AND MATTER ARE CREATED FROM ENERGY! The universe appeared from a state of zero energy, this being, of course, within the unavoidable and tiny quantum uncertainty. So, no miracle occurred.

THERE IS NO TIME-ZERO IMPRINT OF THE VERY HAND OF GOD! An expanding universe could have started in total chaos and still formed some localized order consistent with the 2nd law. At the Planck time, the disorder was complete; it was maximal. Thus the universe began with no structure. None. In fact it was chaos! There was no initial design built in to the universe at its beginning! There was no imprint left by a Creator.

BIBLICAL REVELATION IS UNREVEALING. Biblical prophecy is either vague, wrong, coincidence, a matter of ordinary prediction, or it can be more-simply explained as written after the fact. Humankind’s holy books are what one would expect if they were products of human culture.

IN THE ‘BEGINNING’… THERE WAS NO CAUSE! Physical events at the atomic and subatomic level are observed to have no evident cause. That realm is causeless.

QUANTUM CONSCIOUSNESS. Einstein did away with the aether, shattering the doctrine that we all move about inside a universal, cosmic fluid whose excitations connect us simultaneously to one another and to the rest of the universe. Second, Einstein and other physicists proved that matter and light were composed of particles, wiping away the notion of universal continuity.

ENLIGHTENMENT DEISM. In 1982 a definitive series of ‘EPR experiments’ with this configuration was carried out by Alain Aspect. The results agreed perfectly with conventional quantum mechanics and thus ruled out any subquantum theory with local hidden variables.

THE LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE ARE NATURAL A principle of point-of-view invariance is equivalent to the principle of covariance when applied to space-time. These laws automatically appear in any model that does not single out a special moment in time, position in space, and direction in space. Back at the Planck time of the big bang, the universe had no distinguishable place, direction, or time: it had no structure; thus, the conservation laws apply.

OUR VALUES/LAWS/MORALS DO NOT COME FROM GOD AND/OR RELIGION. There are common ideals that arose during the gradual evolution of human societies, as they become more civilized, developed rational thinking processes, and discovered how to live together in greater harmony. Human and societal behaviors look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.

THERE WAS NO FINE-TUNING OF THE UNIVERSE. For fine-tuning, only ‘dimensionless’ numbers that do not depend on the system of units are meaningful. The Fine Structure ‘Constant, ‘a’, is not even a constant. There can still be long-lived stars if we vary the parameters and certainly the universe is not fine-tuned for this characteristic. The 7.65 million electron-volts needed for Carbon to form actually hinges on the radioactive state of a carbon nucleus formed out of three helium nuclei, which has over a 20% range to work with without being too high. The vacuum energy of the universe is not fine-tuned, for the large value of N1 is simply an artifact of the use of small masses in making the comparison. The Expansion Rate of the Universe in not fine-tuned since the universe appeared from an earlier state of zero energy; thus, energy conservation would require the exact expansion rate that is observed. Same for the Mass Density of the Universe. Looks the same as if there were no God.

THE VILE ARGUMENT FROM EVIL becomes that we rely on our own human instincts, these taking precedence over confusing divine commands, for these commands offend both our common sense and our reason. Observations of human and animal suffering look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.
Many disproofs of the supernatural;

The Book of Revelation — Jack Cummins

PDF:

https://austintorney.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/book-of-revelation-150-dpi.pdf

A Person/Being cannot be Fundamental, for the parts would have to be more so.

Nor could even a particle be fundamental, as it is an excitation quantum of a field.

No 'God'.

Science vs. 'God': The Big Bout PDF:

https://austintorney.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/fthc-8.5x11-jpg-150-dpi.pdf

The question may be why does one thing happen rather than anything else. — Jack Cummins

(Plus the Why of Existence)

In our specific and particular path of History there are no what-ifs of it could have been otherwise, since the happening are already a fate accomplished, but this "particular path" hints at a larger scheme…

Existence has to be, given no alternative/opposite of nonexistence/Nothing. The Eternal Basis that then has to be can't just give rise only to our particular path because what has no Beginning, as Eternal, could not have been designed beforehand or outside of itself and thus cannot be something particular such as only the history of our universe; so, the Eternal Basis must then give rise to everything—every possible path. There can't be any special time, place, or arrangement.

In those other paths that go further to become similar to ours lies your 'otherwise'.

contradiction — TheMadFool

‘God’ cannot be found anywhere because ‘God’ can’t be Fundamental.

Yet, an Eternal Basis has to be, for 'Nothing' cannot be, much less 'be' a source of anything, demonstrating that the existence of the Eternal Basis has no alternative, in that existence can have opposite. What is Eternal, then, has to be ungenerated and deathless, unmakeable and unbreakable. Also note that there can be no design point for the Eternal Basis, given no Beginning.

For certain, 'God' cannot be so, as Fundamental, since a Being who thinks, plans, designs, and implements requires a System of Mind; however, systems violate the Fundamental Arts in that they must contain parts—and parts have to be more fundamental than the system. 'God' is a contradiction and thereby disproved.

Not even a proton can be fundamental, for quarks are its composite parts, but a quantum field could be, as continuous waves oscillating.

So long, ‘God’; we hardly knew ‘ye’, because ‘Ye’ were never.

Look to the future for higher human/alien beings, for that's where greater complexity lies. Look not to the past of the simpler and simpler—that is the wrong direction—the wrongest even.

I'm not sure about all I said above. — TheMadFool

Yogi Berra: "I never said all the things I said."

some type of exchange ought be taking place. — Cheshire

Yes, and it should have read 'can' instead of 'cannot' or 'either' instead of 'neither'.

So, substance dualism is dead.

I don't think it's necessary to invent a new material to explain why people think and trees don't in a complex sense. — Cheshire

The distinct and separate substance of substance dualism are not able to exchange energy, for neither one cannot walk the walk and talk the talk of the other.

there has always been something that has existed whether that be god or whatever you wanna call it. — Deus

The Eternal Basis has to be, for 'Nothing' cannot be, much less 'be' a source of anything, as you note, showing that its existence of the Eternal Basis has no alternative, in that existence has no opposite. This, then, seems to be a stable position based on the ultimate default condition, which we both accept. More defaults will come into play, such as that composites can't be Fundamental.

What is Eternal, then, has to be ungenerated and deathless, unmakeable and unbreakable. I would also note that there can be no design point for the Eternal Basis, given no Beginning.

…

For certain, 'God' cannot be so, as Fundamental, not an evolved Alien, for a Being who plans, thinks, designs, and implements requires a System of Mind—and systems violate the Fundamental Art in that they must contain parts that have to be more fundamental than the system. 'God' is a contradiction.

Not even a proton can be fundamental, for quarks are its composite parts, but a quantum field could be, as continuous waves oscillating.

~~ — Banno

Yeah, plus blah, blah… suppositions… invisibility disorder…

I think I'd prefer to have been not been embodied in the first place. — Inyenzi

What, without asking, hither hurried whence?
And, without asking, whither hurried hence!
Another and another Cup to drown
The Memory of this Impertinence!

From birth we can look forward to being host
To woe, and then to giving up the ghost.
Happy are they who quickly burn to toast,
And blessed are they who ne’er came to the roast.

—Omar Khayyam

Thing vs Anti-thing! — TheMadFool

Also:

The weak force promotes changeability; the strong force promotes stability.

Molecules are neither prone to break apart and react with something nor to remain intact.

Energy doesn't change everything all at once not does it take forever to do anything.

One stable positive matter particle in free space—the proton; one stable negative matter particle in free space—the electron. One stable energy particle in free space—the photon. This is a curious symmetry suggesting that there are only those number of ways to make stable particles in free space (and their anti-particles).

The negative potential energy of gravity balances (cancels) the positive kinetic energy of stuff.

Electric charge polarity plus and minus.

'Book of Revelation' — Jack Cummins

THE END OF THE EARTH
(Revelation Revised)

The Asphodel sustains the Dis dwellers,
Where they rest beyond that fatal river—
There the wretched shades drink forgetfulness,
And to oblivion sink without distress.

Charon was withered, wan, and skeletal,
Although eternally grateful for his immortal life
And steady job of ferrying the dead across the river Styx,
In their transition from life to death to forgetfulness.

Fireweed grows from Hell’s sulfurous embers,
As does Purple Loosestrife—dead men’s fingers;
But wildflower air revives the dead—and then
Those happy souls can thrive on Earth again.

As Earth was the only planet he’d come across
With such promising higher life forms,
Charon had grown rather fond of its inhabitants,
Even though he only saw but the worst of them;
But even from that he could extrapolate
To the qualities of the best.

Charon did his job well, professionally,
Although it was ever so dreary,
With the endless darkness of wasted lives
And the grim and gloomy skies all around.

The land always had
That same gray and leaden feel.
He ferried on, though,
For his own life was precious to him.

The soon-to-be really really dead never said much,
For what was there to tell after an empty life
That had often turned to deep regret.

Charon, weathered and worn, rowed them on,
Whose forlorn hopes had been long forgotten—
More amused than enlightened by their ploys—
All too soon be erased in this land of no joys.

Charon did not prompt them for information,
For this was not the thing to do
At the time of their passing,

So he was always most
Courteous and kind to them,
Even to the most evil of the darkest,
Doing his task as well as he could.

It was not that Charon was afraid that
His undersized master of the underworld,
Pluto, might be watching,

But that he had the extreme clarity
To duly serve the task at hand—
A testament to his character.

Charon had been quite alarmed lately—
What with the numbers of the hellish-souls-to-be
Climbing into the millions in such a short time,

But he had been through this kind of rush before
With the doomed and damned of other planets
That had been consumed by their suns
Or had undergone other such catastrophes.

He just used larger boats,
And patiently took his time,
For he had all of Eternity.

Of course,
Charon could and did feel deep sadness,
But he didn’t show it outwardly,
Even when the numbers from Earth
Increased a thousand-fold again.

A few of the now billions of depressed Earthling souls
Had enough energy left to mumble a few words,
And so he was able to glean from them
The latest happenings on Earth.

In 2022, the predicted exponential surge
Of melting ice from global warming
Had quickly inundated all of the coastal cities,
Many of them large centers
Of population and commerce.

Everyone who could possibly make it
Had to retreat inland,
Creating the largest mass exodus in history.

As the heat rose to unbearable levels,
Many had begun living in their basements,
As the Earth’s infrastructure
Began its eventual collapse.

Millions eventually headed north
Towards Canada and Siberia,
But had to retreat when the ice caps totally melted
And formed the great Ocean of the North;
Most of them did not make it.

No one but the ignored physicist mathematicians
Had predicted that the end
Could come into sight so quickly.

Then came the dreaded polar shift
That made global warming seem but a small note
Compared to this new and darker symphony.

The Earth was thrashed with storms
The likes of which it had never seen;
Electricity went out completely all over the world,
But for a few nuclear powered areas that didn’t last.

No one could drive very far,
Even on their last tank of gas,
For the roads had melted,

Along with the tires of the vehicles,
And if the vehicles stopped
They’d find themselves mired
In the meltdown of the asphalt.

Food would no longer grow very well,
Even in once lush gardens,
In the amounts that were needed,
And, as the heat rose further,
Into the 140s, plant growth ceased altogether,
Although a new but rare
And expensive form of food pill
Extended life for some of the rich,
For a short while.

Charon had of course,
Seen much of this kind of thing before,
From the many other solar systems
And galaxies on which life had formed.

Earthlings seemed to have
A special charm and hope
Above and beyond the other alien races.

So he rowed and ferried
And deposited them on the far shore,
His job and life forever continuing
In a place with no color,
No joy, and no future—
On the shore of the land
On the edge of oblivion.

Charon had depths of compassion,
But many passengers might
Have thought him stoic,
Although they were mostly
Beyond this capability.

A sign on the opposite shore said:

Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here

Billions more arrived
In the gray land all too soon
And Charon learned that
Either madness or desperation on Earth
Had caused a nuclear winter all over the planet,
Bringing on a deep freeze that few could escape.

Perhaps they were trying
To combat the ultimate heat,
Which would have been
But a cool breeze in Hell.

The polar shift had greatly
Added to the deep freeze.

A few of Charon’s still speaking
But chilled customers
Even expressed a longing
For the legendary warmth of Hades.

Charon, stalwart and reliable, rowed on steadily,
Ever steeling himself to the misery.

Finally the masses slowed and dwindled
To a few dribs and drabs over a few years
And then there was no one for several years.

A lone man appeared on the shore near the ferry dock,
And Charon readily approached the man,
Something he had never done before.

They had a long and hearty talk,
For the man was animated
And not at all like any of the other wretched souls.

“How is it,” inquired Charon,
“That you are full of life and seem to be a good man
But have been sent here?”

“I am not a bad person in any way,” the man replied.
“Actually, I just spent some time in Heaven.

“I found out there that my sweetheart
Was sent here to you, for she was a suicide
And so was destined here;
However, I had promised
To be with her forever,
So I chose this place
Over Heaven out of my love for her.”

“Extraordinary,” exclaimed Charon.
“I knew the Earth had
A few good men and women;
I’ve not seen very many clues
Of that elsewhere in the universe.

"Did you colonize space—
Will your species continue and flourish
After your Earth bids farewell?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied the man,
For too many needless wars intervened
And this greatly delayed our space program.”

“A shame,” said Charon,
But is there any hope left on Earth,
I mean, are there any others still about?”

“I am the last,” the man answered slowly.

The first tear of Charon’s long life
Rolled down his cheek;
Nothing had ever made him cry before:
Nothing had ever made him weep.

(Rewritten from Lord Dunsany’s brief sketch)

'A man is no man if he has no beast inside.' — Jack Cummins

A tale I’ve written, invented, yes, hence
An attempt to unite the Christian pense
With the non-belief, in a middle ground,
Somewhere between mystery and good sense:

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!”

… (flower lore)

'The Book of Revelation' — Jack Cummins

I illustrated it once for a lark. Those with '666' on their foreheads can't be killed right away, for they have to be tortured for six months or so. Typical made-up human notions of a mean 'God'.

A recurring Biblical theme is of 'God' trying to repair or cull the very nature that He Himself perfectly put into Angels and humans in the first place as intended.

"Why and Why not otherwise?" — Cheshire

Because it already happened in a particular way, as per what was going on at the time.

Can't we still suppose?

Sure, it's good for reviewing what we would do in a similar situation or for enjoying thinking in an alternate fantasy world, but, all that aside there is not really a 'What if'.

What if Germany and/or Japan had won World War II?'

They didn't; there are no real 'what ifs'.

It works because the harmonic oscillators model of quantum fields results in the certain unit quantum energy levels that we observe and thus made the Standard Model from, which works.

What good about quantum fields?

The are continuous and thus non composite, having no parts, thus satisfying the fundamental arts.

Why and how are the quantum fields there already made with not anything to make them of?

They were never made; they are eternal, and the eternal cannot have a beginning.

What if they end?

The eternal cannot end; energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

Why does everything change, not even remaining as anything particular even for an instant?

It is energetic.

What are the eternal quantum fields made of and what are they in particular?

They are 'made' of themselves, being fundamental (so far), but are not particular in the way you think of them having been designed, for the eternal can't have a design point, given no beginning.

All this seems not to then have any built-in direction, purpose, and meaning.

I said that, in effect.

What can I do, as basically novel?

You can't really do anything truly original; the Cosmos does you.

Why do squirrels run back under a car after they're already in the clear?

Some things are truly unfathomable!

Really?

No, they can't tell where the car's sound is coming from, for it reflects from the environment.

Is it possible to create universal criteria that answers the question why?. — Cheshire

Why anything?

It has to be.

How come?

Existence has no alternative?

Why is that?

'Nonexistence', also called 'Nothing', cannot be. 'It' has no properties.

Why all those quote marks?

Because 'Nothing' cannot even be meant.

What if there never was anything?

Not true, for there is something.

OK, but is there an infinite regress of entities made of lessor entities?

No, for a never ending cascade could never complete.

How come?

It would take forever.

What, then, underlies all events?

So far, it is the quantum fields whose excitations give rise to the elemental particles.

Why does that work?

(I accidentally hit the post button; I may continue it…)

it is necessary that there is no God — FreeEmotion

The 'God' of belief has been reduced to doing exactly what nature does.

Jesus and the Buddha are examples for higher ideals — Jack Cummins

Yes, and even just average good humans still put the 'God' of the Bible to shame, which again suggests the making up of the Biblical 'God' as wishful thinking at best.

Alzheimer's, for instance, consists, in part, in plaque deposits in the brain that inhibit thinking as well as memory andwhich can only happen if thoughts-memories are physical systems that physically process thinking & memorizing. — 180 Proof

Good one! :up:

What do you think of this:

On Consciousness

What the meaning to this play we’re befit,
From dirt to dust within the script that’s writ?
The wise in search have thrown themselves to waste;
Experience alone is the benefit.

Physics describes but the extrinsic causes,
While consciousness exists just for itself,
As the intrinsic, compositional,
Informational, whole, and exclusive—

As the distinctions toward survival, 
Though causing nothing except in itself,
As in ne’er doing but only as being,
Leaving intelligence for the doing.

The posterior cortex holds correlates,
For this is the only brain region that
Can’t be removed for one to still retain
Consciousness, it having feedback in it;

Thusly, it forms an irreducible Whole,
And this Whole forms consciousness directly,
A process fundamental in nature,
Or’s the brain’s private symbolic language.

The Whole can also be well spoken of 
To communicate with others, as well as
Globally informing other brain states,
For nonconscious parts know not what’s being made.

dismissive — 180 Proof

Great description! :up:

pre-existents — Nelson E Garcia

These stimuli seem to hover somewhere in between natural existence and nonexistence yet they lean far away from nonexistence and more toward existence since they are apparently something that the senses can take in, with the brain needed to turn them into phenomena as 'existence' in our minds' reality, they only in that sense being named as 'pre-existent'.

I'm not sure what argument you're making, if any. Hazy generalizations don't get us anywhere. — Noble Dust

How Do We Think About The Bible From A Philosophical Point Of View?

The Bible incorporates ideas about the relationship between God and human beings… — Jack Cummins

So then, the Bible's 'creative' and inventive literature gets much worse in its 'making up', beyond the crumbling of its foundation in Genesis, and continues its teriffic decline via its presentation of a God who is not a good role model who could be followed, emulated, imitated, etc., we thus easily outthinking the One who breaks His own 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' directive in the Great Flood, and so much more bad role model behaviors that we have wisely made civil and moral laws against.

Want to see a concise poetic description of, um, His mysterious (cover-up for 'insane') ways? It's good literature.