I leave all absolutes — fresco

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

independent 'things'. — fresco

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

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

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

'how can thinking think about itself ?' — fresco

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

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

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

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

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

(Click.)
The OK Club’s Swimming Pool

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(to be continued)

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

Or (as like the block universe):

All events exist always.

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

With love alone
Satan can be undone — TheMadFool

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


— The Voices in the Sky —

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

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

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

A 2 minute video of the above:

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

Stoic.

I am stoic. It’s helped me — Goinbroknstyle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

primary and ultimate scale — schopenhauer1

I suppose that primary and ultimate mean the same here.

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

The emergent scales are not primary.

And why? — schopenhauer1

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

At what scale does the universe subsist? — schopenhauer1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Perhaps those who practice evil create their own hell — uncanni

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

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

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

So two things about God is here at stake: (a) his justness (b) his omniscience. — Daniel C

How long of temple-incense, mosque-lamp tell?
How long of Heaven’s rewards or pains of Hell?
See, from all time ‘What is to be, will be!’
The Lord of Fate did on the Tablet spell!

The light of Heav’n did the Earth illumine,
When He shaped human nature’s acumen.
Temptations He then placed everywhere,
But He’ll punish us for being human!

The Christian God is vengeful, demands of,
And tortures us with threats of Hellish shove.
Well, if I were a God and ruled above,
You could remove all my powers but love.

Eternal pain in hell and eternal joy in heaven — TheMadFool

I fear not death, Heaven, or even Hell,
For death is only life’s natural knell,
And Heaven and Hell are within myself;
The one thing I fear is not living well!

The sky, a vault, spans our worn lives below;
Jihun a course from our strained eyes aflow;
Hell is a spark struck by our vain distress;
Heaven but an instant when content we know.

The world is but a belt of fading years,
The Oxus but the trace of running tears,
And Hell is but the spark of futile toil,
And Paradise a flash of fleeting cheers.

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.

We don't have freewill — TheMadFool

Philosophy here and elsewhere though the ages doomed free will (beyond no coercion and no random) by showing that it couldn't even be defined, leaving but the supporters just to say they have it. Science now confirms it via the tracking of brain processes.

brain functioning terms — fresco

Well, yes, as more and more the brain correlations to qualia are getting tracked.

I know it to be true. — PhilCF

What more did you find out about God's nature through the divine experiences?

You think there is some disembodied human making the scales subsist? — schopenhauer1

No, they are just natural, although that is exceptional in a Totality that can't have anything outside of it, such as an absolute clock or yardstick, forcing everything to be relative and relational to everything.

I expect, therefore, that the laws of nature reflect a fundamental fact about the universe and everything it contains. The aspect that I want to focus on is that the laws of nature are UNIVERSAL i.e. there can be no exception. — TheMadFool

UNIVERSAL NATURAL LAW,
AND THEN ITS VIOLATIONS

Don’t try to fool Mother Nature;
You will always be caught,
So don't even give it a thought.

The violation of universal natural law
Is the cause of our problems, all,
Of everything that becomes rife
That plagues individual and national life,
These stresses only leading to more strife,
From lowlifes leaving their wife, for the wildlife
Of nightlife, to cutting someone with a knife.

So stem problems of national health,
Crime, the economy, education, wealth,
And the black environmental sins,
All of them having their origin
In a widespread law violation
By some portion of the population.

Universal Natural Law is very terse
In governing the entire universe,
It being the orderly principles
That regulate physical events/processes.

Science defines the universal law of nature,
A precise description of how nature matures.

Universal law pervades everything,
Of all that is in passage and being,
From the motion of particles
To the evolution of life’s articles—
Operating at every scale:
The subatomic, atomic,
Molecular, biological, geological,
Astrophysical, and cosmological.

The universe is structured, hence,
In these many layers of existence
As worlds within worlds,
Distinguished and not only furled
By vastly different time and distance scales,
But that every level has its own set of details;
For example, an electron/nucleus system
Is not analogous to that of a planet/sun.

The more superficial macroscopic levels of nature
Can be seen as fragmented expressions, for sure,
That are manifested from the more unified laws
Governing deeper levels with their scrimshaws—
The reflections of the dazzling symmetries
Of what once were inaccessible mysteries.

The outer ‘becomes’ are based on inner ones,
The only fountainhead of all the rhythms.
And the converse is not true.

Nature’s governance is maximally efficient,
For it is frugal, as not a spendthrift—
It following The Principle of Least Action
In all of its action and protraction.

This is why a ray of light refracts
When going from air to water’s tract,
Minimizing the time
And saving every dime.

From this maximal economy of nature,
All classical behavior can be scriptured.

Entropy is a count of quantum states
Accessible to a macroscopic system’s estate,
This available number ever increasing;
The nature of life is to grow, ever reaching.

The path of least action’s welcome
Is just the macroscopic outcome
Of the simultaneous superposition
Of multiple coexisting paths’ auctions
At the microscopic level,
The outcome ever of the least income.
The law to which all must succumb.

All is rooted in the verses
Of the Constitution of the Universe.

Life takes advantage and cause
Of the universal natural laws,
Even such as in merely walking,
Which is an immensely complex undertaking.

We employ technology
In all of its variety.

Everything that we fail to accomplish
Is but due to the total failure
To apply universal natural law effectively,
This being the source of all difficulty.

In the absence of knowledge of a lever,
The simple task of moving a boulder
Becomes complex and arduous to the shoulder.

Not learning gravity has caused non-mild
Injuries to many a young child;
The old uses of radiation caused cancer tumults;
The use of DDT had many adverse results.

Smoking cigarettes, heavy drinking, being out late,
And other addictive obsessions surely violate
Universal natural law, at whatever rate,
Resulting in negative consequences,
While psychological violations dispense
Stress directly in a sequence immense.

While fulfillment of desire can bring happiness,
It also raises the scope and standardness
Of future desires, making the duress
Of frustration an inevitable process.

Over time this causes psychological stress,
Which in turn impairs creativity’s success,
Stalling future desires
By watering their fires
And also leads to problems of health,
These then causing further stealth
And violations of universal natural law—

Resulting in the nonsense
Of a life out of balance—
Leading to aggression, anxiety,
Impulsive violent behavior, hostility
And substance abuse—
A vicious cycle of refuse
That, among other effects,
Fills up the prisons to correct.

truism (about God) — PhilCF

Supposition. It misleads to claim as fact what can't be shown as true. 'Faith' is an honest word.

dumb and limited because we blinded by ego — PhilCF

WISDOM
(wise-dom)

Is the superior judgment, understanding,
And application that is based
On both knowledge and experience,
Far surpassing erudition; a quality of being wise.
The antonym is “folly”.

It goes so deep that one may even
Easily ignore one’s own (conditioned) thoughts
Which arise that are unknowable beliefs
Falsely identified as truth and fact
(A second level view: beliefs about beliefs, sort of).

One who has it may be be called a Wiz
(No relation to the magic of a wizard).
Learning feeds it.

Some run into the walls of life,
Time and time again, ever bashed and injured,
But never ever learning.

“Wishes” seen but only through one’s own eyes.
“Say” that they ought not to,
That they shouldn’t; but,
Wisdom notes that they still do, the reality—
That they can’t, they don’t, and they won’t.

Such is the human condition for some
That may be immune to learning,
The curse that prevents the will
From becoming wider and having more choices.

Yet, the ultimate vision remains available
For the rest and one day the “some”
May be swept up into its sum.

But that is scale relative to us. What is the scale of anything without anything relative to it. Is there absolute scale? — schopenhauer1

The lower end of the scale as the Planck size is absolute. A practical high end for stuff is the size just above which would collapse into a black hole.

Wisdom is the bridge by which you reach the truth. — PhilCF

Intelligence is nothing more than
making connections to form networks
of firing neurons and such within one’s mind
which represent the world before us
in some reproducible pattern
as we are taught early on the outcome
of our actions through physical experience;

wisdom is building upon that experience
to make further connections
which allow us to predict outcomes
we’ve yet to experience,

and genius is the extent to which we can take
such connections to the pinnacle
of that which doesn't even have a clear connection
grounded in the real world,

but is somehow being represented
by that which we've touched
and predicted to form the mountain
from which we stand to finally get a glimpse of it.

Sub-atomic particles are impossibly small, the universe as a whole is impossibly large, — schopenhauer1

The smallest is the Plank size, the largest is the size of the universe, and the mid-point is about the size of a cell or a mote of dust.

"static present" — Janus

Probably this is referring to the block universe eternalism mode of time.

This is a paradox because how is it that the laws of nature, universal in scope produces humans whose interactions, necessarily derived from the universal laws of nature, have exceptions? — TheMadFool

It could be that at certain, stable or semi-stable levels of nature's compositions, such as atoms, molecules, cells, etc., these higher and higher level events gain emergent properties, making some of the lower levels not as relevant in the higher level's specific realm of law but still necessary.

Similar to a literary composition, too, like a forum post, with paragraphs doing more than sentences doing more than phrases doing more than words doing more than phonemes doing more than letters of the alphabet… unto a divergence of combinations.

So, then, like a prosaic/poetic universe…

What else is left that can be God? — TheMadFool

Not much, if any, when the supposed invisible supernatural results in the same as the natural would by itself.

The physical mind is as a virtual Emperor receiving advice from his local empire of actual hierarchal experts of their own areas. This empire is what chooses.

I'm trying to play off of your 'university' idea here.

Or these

The pyramid of the will bears nested dancers,
Each an expert in their field of laws and causers—
Through the land’s contours of memory’s sands of what was;
The King doesn’t decide, but his repertoire does.

‘Magic’ has fallen by the wayside, it
As trancendence an intangible writ,
Unable to be distinct from matter,
Having to talk/walk the talk/walk of it.

Conscious qualia reflect the just past,
Decisions and thoughts produced, though quite fast,
The mechanizations not apparent,
Their constancy such that on Earth we’ll last.

Late Afternoon at the OK Club—Part 2—The Great Wheel



Walking out in the Garden for a smoke and some air

After having some early hors d’oeuvres, Ruby and I are playing pool, while drinking one of Martin’s concoctions—a Lime Cordial.

I have to remember from thirty years ago how to play pool: line up the shot but still see the cue ball and the object ball in one field of vision, stroke true and firm, and plan for good position on the next ball, presumedly having all easy shots thereafter until bad luck arrives.

Ruby Yacht’s gears were/are turning, prepared by she having lived a life of wonder, and long inspired by the actualities and philosophies of one of the first great polymaths of old, Omar Khayyam. She is also a scientist.

Ruby begins, after breaking the rack of balls, “There is no ‘Great Wheel’ mentioned, per say, in FitzOmar, although it’s greatly hinted at by ‘It Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.’, but I found five Wheels in your retransmogrified Bodleian Manuscript Rubaiyat:

12
Worries seldom come true, but, if they do,
Thus they had to, so in them you must stew.
Past imperfect points to a future tense,
Yet ever only Nows does the Wheel brew.

41
What ‘IS’ can no more not exist than it
Can rule any of what goes on in it;
Impute not thy blame, shame, or fame to it—
Fate’s Wheel’s as helpless as all within it.

73
Dash quick away the trade of worldly gain,
Unlinking thy chain to the good and bane,
And with wine and kisses soothe ev’ry pain—
Till sky’s whirling Wheel doth your roll restrain.

129
Yon Heaven’s Wheel flings its comet portent,
The plot to end our lives unimportant.
To the lawn, love, for one day we shall be
As the grass that grows about our tent.

154
Fate’s Wheel soft whispers in my ear, “I know
What’s been decreed—just ask and I will show.”
Were mine the hand that made myself revolve,
I should have saved myself from reeling so.

Ruby continues, “So, the ‘Wheel’, ‘Totality’, ‘All’, ‘Fate’, ‘God’, ‘What is’, and the like are all referring to the brief ‘answer’ of the most often asked question of ‘Where did everything come from?”, and secondly, asking, probably, “Where did the ‘All’ itself come from?”

I answer, “Apparently, the Great Wheel doesn’t have any coming from, being ever, with no creation of it, as Parmenides indicates. And, of course, I can’t fathom a never-ending depth of ever lower and tinier causes and effects in an infinite regress, for the effect would never be able to surface, it taking ‘forever’, so, the buck has to stop somewhere, either with quarks or in something not far beneath them, it being suspicious that quarks have a charge of 1/3.”

“Yes, but that no-coming-from is only apparent since we have to accept that the basic Something exists already made without ever having been made; it’s just as paradoxical as it having a Beginning, as of the Something coming from Nothing, but for ‘Nothing’ not being able to be! I am being careful here, and will be, lest I state “maybe’s” as if they are fact and truth, as so often do the religious, which is far from honorable.”

“Well, Ruby, would you like to banish ‘Nothing’ once and for all by tentatively letting its proponents somehow have it to exist, as silly as that seems, for they will only ever keep on touting it as a source.”

“OK, Austin, let us allow for the moment that there was a total lack of anything, impossible as that seems:

1. This state of ‘Nothing’ would still be so; however, oops, there is something…
2. Yet they will answer that the Something came out of or from ‘Nothing’ or was spontaneousness, etc;
3. However, since this capability/possibility/potential
exists, then they didn’t really have an absolute ‘Nothing’
to begin with, as they claimed,
4. And so we are back to that of this capability then being
what is eternal and ever.
5. I rest my case, and thus still accept an Eternal Basis,
either way.



(to be continued)

The pyramid of the will bears nested dancers,
Each an expert in their field of laws and causers—
Through the land’s contours of memory’s sands of what was;
The King doesn’t decide, but his repertoire does.

Parmenides’ Unity in Multiplicity

Preface
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

‘What Is’ both must be (or exist), and it must be what it is, not only temporally but also spatially. For ‘What Is’ to be (or exist) across times is for it to be ungenerated and deathless; and for it to be what it is across times is for it to be “still” or unchanging. For ‘What Is’ to be (or exist) everywhere is for it to be whole. For it to be what it is at every place internally is for it to be uniform; and to be so everywhere at its extremity is for it to be “perfect” or “complete.”

Taken together, the attributes shown to belong to what must be amount to a set of perfections: everlasting existence, immutability, the internal invariances of wholeness and uniformity, and the invariance at its extremity of being optimally shaped. What Is has thus proven to be not only a necessity but, in many ways, a perfect entity.

Parmenides may be counted a “generous” monist. While he reasons that there is only one entity that must be, he also sees that there are manifold entities that are but need not be (what they are). Parmenides was a generous monist because the existence of what must be does not preclude the existence of all the things that are but need not be.

It seems preferable to understand ‘What Is’ as coterminous but not consubstantial with the perceptible cosmos: it is in exactly the same place where the perceptible cosmos is, but is a separate and distinct “substance.” On this view, ‘What Is’ imperceptibly interpenetrates or runs through all things while yet maintaining its own identity distinct from theirs.


On Nature
Poetic Fragment

The mares that carry me
As far as my spirit might reach
Were escorting me,

When guiding they placed me
On the much-informing road of the Goddess,
Who leads the man who knows through all.

There I was being carried,
Brought by wise mares who were
Straining the chariot,
While maidens were leading the way.

The axle’s nave shrilled like
The bright sound of a pipe, sparkling,
For it was pushed ahead by
Two whirling wheels at either end,
While hastening to escort me.

The Daughters of the Sun—
Having left the House of Night for the Light—
Thrust back with their hands
The veils from their heads.

Here are the Gates of the Paths of Night and Day,
And they are bound together
By a lintel and a stone threshold.

They are high in the sky
Blocked by mighty doors
To which avenging Justice
Holds the alternating keys.

Here the maidens implored with gentle words…
And knowingly persuaded her to push back quickly
From the gates the bolted bar.

And a gaping chasm of the doors
Was produced by the gates' opening
Which had set revolving in the sockets one after
The other the brazen axes fitted with bolts and pins.

Then, straight through them.

The maidens kept the chariot
And horses on the broad way.
The Goddess received me graciously,
Taking my right hand in hers,
And addressed me with the following words of counsel:

“Young man, accompanied by immortal charioteers,
And the mares who carry you to my abode, welcome.

“It is not an ill fate
Which has sent you forth to travel this road,
Though it is far from the beaten path of man,
But Right and Justice.

“It is necessary that you learn all things,
Both the unshaking heart
Of well-rounded, persuasive Truth
As well as the opinions of mortals,
For which there is no true evidence.

“But nevertheless these you shall learn as well:
How it would be right for the things of opinion,
To be provedly things that are altogether throughout.

“Come now, I will tell you—
And preserve my account as you heard it—
What are the only ways of inquiry for reasoning:
The one that IS, and that it cannot NOT BE,
is the Way of Persuasion, for it follows the Truth.

“The other IS NOT,
And that it is necessary that it NOT BE,
This I point out to you is a completely inscrutable path
For you cannot know that which IS NOT,
For this cannot be done, nor can you express it.

“It is necessary to say and to think Being,
For there is Being, but nothing is not.
These things I order you to ponder.
For from this first way of inquiry I hold you back.

“Behold things which, although absent,
Are yet securely present to the mind;
For you cannot cut off What IS
From holding on to What IS;

“Neither by dispersing it in every way,
Everywhere throughout the cosmos,
Nor by gathering it together or unifying it.

“But next from the way on which mortals,
Who know nothing, piece together two-headed;
For helplessness in their breasts
Guides their unsteady mind.

“They are borne along, deaf as well as blind,
Stupefied, hordes without judgment,

For whom to be and not to be are deemed the same and

Not the same; but the path of all turns back to itself.

“For never shall this be forced:
That things that do not exist;
But do you hold back
Your thought from this way of inquiry,
Nor let inured habit force you, upon this road,
To ply an aimless eye and ringing ear and tongue;

But judge with reason
The much contested argument
Which has been given by me.

“There is still left a single story of a way, that it is.
On this way there are signs exceedingly many—
That being ungenerated it is also imperishable,
Whole and of a single kind and unshaken and complete.

“Nor was it ever nor will it be, since it is now,
All together, one, continuous.

“For what birth will you seek for it?
How and from where did it grow?
I will not permit you to say
Or to think from what is not;
For it is not to be said or thought that is not.

“What necessity would have stirred up
To grow later than earlier, beginning from nothing?

“Thus it must either fully be or not.
Nor will the force of conviction
Ever permit anything to come
To be from what is not, besides it.

“For this reason, Justice permitted it
Neither to come to be nor to perish,
Relaxing her shackles, but holds fast;
But the decision about these matters lies in this:
It is or it is not.

“Therefore, as it is necessary,
The decision has been taken
To leave one way unthinkable and unnamable,
For it is not the true way,
And the other way to be and to be true.

“How could Being be hereafter?
How could it have come into being?

“If it was, it is not,
Nor if it is going to be in the future.

“In this way,
Coming to be has been extinguished
And destruction is unheard of.
Nor is it divided, since it all is alike;

Nor is it any more in any way
Which would keep it from holding together,
Or any less, but it is all full of what is.
Therefore, it is all continuous,
For what is draws near to what is.

“But unchanging in the limits
Of great bonds, it is,
Without start or finish,
Since coming to be and destruction
Were banished far away
And true conviction drove them off.

“Remaining the same and by itself
It lies and so stays there fixed.

“For mighty Necessity holds the bonds of a limit,
Which pens it in all round,
Since it is right for what is to be not incomplete;
For it is not lacking;
If it were, it would lack everything.

“Thinking and the thought that it is are the same.
For not without what is, in which it is expressed,
Will you find thinking.

“For nothing other, besides Being, either is or will be,
Since Destiny fettered it to be whole and immovable;

“Therefore, all that mortals posited convinced
That it is true will be mere name,
Coming into being and perishing, to be and not to be,
And to change place and alter bright color.

“But since there is a furthest limit,
It is complete on all sides,
Like the bulk of a well-rounded ball,
Evenly balanced in every way from the middle;

“For it must be not at all
Greater or smaller here than there.”

“For neither is there non-Being
To prevent it from reaching
Its like, nor is there Being so that it could be
More than Being here and less than Being there
Since it is all inviolable;

“For from every point it is equal to itself,
Staying uniformly in the limits.”

“Here I end my trustworthy account
And thought concerning truth.
From now on learn the beliefs of mortals,
Listening to the deceptive order of my words;…

“For they decided to name two forms,
A unity of which is not necessary—
In which they have gone astray
And they divided form contrariwise
And established characters apart from one another.”

Quantum superposition — elucid

Perhaps it is actually a very fast vibration between two places.

And if any belief is presented as being certainly true in any absolute sense that is intellectually dishonesty. — Janus

We were created to worship God.

More honestly stated:
If there is a God, which we can't show outright to anyone with no possible contesting, then perhaps this maybe God created us, and so it might be that His maybe purpose was so that we could worship this maybe God because perhaps this maybe God wants or needs to be worshiped, and so that is perhaps why we were put on Earth. We are for this notion out of our hopes and wishes that we call 'faith', and if we meant 'truth' we would have said that instead.

It appears, then, that honesty might not be the best policy for attracting believers and worshippers because the claim no longer has the impact that it did by its declaration supposing, but at least it isn't stated as truth for all any longer, and avoids the immediate indoctrination of children and unsuspecting adults, etc. to the ungrounded dogma.

Similar dishonesty: There is no God. This fails, too, since it cannot be shown.

a general problem with religious claims — Janus

The problem is, that although faith and mere belief often get mention in the church bulletin, in practice the belief and all its extensions and layers are taught as true.

They even couldn't help themselves later in the church bulletin, as it went on to proclaim that "We were created to worship God."

So, when the whole realm is not visible, the problem would seem to get worse.

To avoid dishonesty, both theists and atheists would have to admit "I don't know for sure," which is agnostic, or else lose credibility.

You mean if no evidence or argument for the truth of the belief is given? — Janus

One can't honestly claim that something is for sure that can't be shown, no matter the argument, even with indirect evidence noted, too.

For example: There was a Big Bang for sure. This isn't honest because we can't yet see through the darkness that there was up to 380,000 years, although we are trying to detect gravity waves and. have noted the expansion of the universe and the CMB radiation, etc.