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  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    What caused the Big Bang to exist as the point of origin for our space-time cosmos? That Something from Nothing hypothesis — Gnomon

    There cannot be a 'Nothing' for one, and two, if someone still wants a 'Nothing' that changes into a Something, as a event in time, this cannot be, either, for 'Nothing' has no time, no anything, and again, 'it' doesn't have an it. Those ex nihlilo believers don't get it or 'it'.

    So, yes we can show that the Basis of All has to be eternal, as permanent. Logically, what is never made can't have parts; it is unmakable and unbreakable, and thus very tiny. All the temporaries are made of it, as arrangements of it, and it is such as the quantum fields. Empirically, we see that the basis is minuscule, as well as the elementaries that it produces.

    So, what makes nothingness go Boom? — Gnomon

    No 'Nothingness'! What goes Boom is the stuff-effect from the cause before the Bang, but not from the Great Pool Player, for complexities, like us, come later, not earlier, and so cannot be the Basis.

    Can't ever have something greater being responsible for the lesser, etc.

    ''God' is a stance from us having fathers; Can't have Fathers of fathers all the way down.

    Read Stenger and Dawkings and 180 Proof and Poetic Universe!

    PS: 'Nothing' cannot even be meant.
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
    "Why is there something... rather than nothing...” Good question. — DasGegenmittel

    ‘Nothing’ Cannot Obtain; the Simple Fundamental Something is Ever Something is and a lack of anything isn’t.

    To be Fundamental, the Something cannot have parts, else the parts would be more Fundamental, and so there cannot be an infinite regress of lesser and lesser parts. Composites cannot be Fundamental. ‘God’ is out; impossible. Neither can be a lasting template of the lesser ever having to come from the greater, ad infinitum. The logic herein matches the cascade from the least to the greater that’s seen in our universe, along with the ubiquitous waves found in nature.

    There cannot be a sequence in time from a lack of anything to Something because ‘Nothing’ has no time, nor anything; thus the Something cannot appear spontaneously, as if there was ‘Nothing’ and then there became Something, and besides, ‘Nothing’ cannot have being.

    Thus the Fundamental Simplest Partless Something has to be ever, as Eternal; it has no alternative. It is also Continuous because there cannot be any spacers of ‘Nothing’ in it and it is also Eternal because it cannot be made of parts that it can’t have and because it cannot broken into parts because there aren’t any. It is ungenerated and deathless. It was there before the Big Bang and exists ever after. The Bang was from the Something. A ‘Beginning’ and ‘End’ to the Something is impossible. This shows the multiverse.

    Why isn’t the Something Still, never doing anything? If the Something has Stillness, then naught would happen. Scientifically, the uncertainty principle indicates that ‘Stillness’ is impossible. The Something is ever in motion; it is energetic. We don’t need all the proof when we have the truth.

    From what can it form entities? It can only form entities of itself, as that’s all there is. In short, its motion as fluctuations makes for a wave nature that allows the elementary forms to be quanta of its excitations at stable rungs that grant some persistence.

    See Quantum Field Theory (QFT). We know that the elementaries of a type are identical and so that also tells us that they are directly quanta forms, plus that they can be annihilated shows us that they are secondary. Why are the elementaries so minuscule? The Something as the simplest is lightweight and then so must be the elementaries.

    Can the metaphysical creep back in as a hyperphysical substance to be the Something? No, the elementaries are physical and they are the quanta of the Something and so the Something is physical. What the elementaries go on to form is also physical. There can’t be anything esoteric about matter and forces.

    What of the fluctuations of the Something that don’t reach a quantum energy level? They are the so-called virtual particles that ever come and go. Can the virtuals ever persist more? If there was inflation, it would drive them apart quicker than they could annihilate.

    What is the Something? It has to be the quantum ‘vacuum’ fields, for the proposed absolutes of time, space, and particles making fields have fallen by the wayside.

    Are there things? The quantum ‘vacuum’ is the only thing; all else are temporary events. A tree is a long event; the sun is a longer one; a proton’s life is very long; photons don’t decay on their own. Events come and go.

    So, we and all the temporaries that the Permanent Something forms are consigned to oblivion? Yes, even the universe, but the Permanent ever remains and all is of its fields.

    Well, there’s no ‘Separation’ at heart, but we and all as field forms must fade, the universe unwinding like a spring, no matter our grand complexities that outdo in scale that of the Simplest. We always knew that the Theory of Everything (TOE) would be boring in Nature’s frugal simplicity. What if a universe just doesn’t work? Some will, like ours does, although ours is not near to the best or near to the worst. It’s just OK.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    The program is a set of ideas, from the mind of the programmer, that govern the process of Evolution from a Singularity, to a quark-gluon Plasma, then to atoms & molecules & elements of matter, then on to vast systems of stars, and eventually to living & thinking lumps of matter on a single Blue Planet. — Gnomon

    Theistic Evolution?

    Actually, Poseidon causes plate tectonics, and Ra initiates nuclear fusion in the sun.

    Just joking, for yet no one today, except Pat Robertson types, appeals to these Gods to explain earthquakes or solar fusion; yet, it is proposed that a higher realm called God directs these things, as well as all nature and especially the mind of the brain (via a soul). These thoughts are from the mythic ages, and are somewhat still here today.

    Some would go to the extremes of throwing all of science out the window as ‘dogma’; yet, their computers, devices, and appliances run pretty well on this ‘dogma’.

    Let us, then, deal with the case that evolution indeed happens and that God directs it, for that must become the fallback ID position. For starters, evolution is not goal-oriented, so we can discard the (biological teleological) argument for the existence of God, which claims that postulating God is necessary to account for purposiveness in nature. Evolution is a blind watchmaker.

    To review and elaborate more, though, theistic evolution is the theological view that God creates new species through evolution. The advocates like to reserve a special place for humans, separate from the animals, but this is not a scientifically justifiable stance, given the many evolutionary predecessors of human beings. So, animals are ‘brutalized’ and humans humanized to make the alleged gap as big as possible: humans are characterized as the only creatures with reason, empathy, a rich emotional life, altruism, culture, identity, and language. Yet all these characteristics have been observed to a greater or lesser extent in the animals, especially in other primates. The history of the universe has thus been an unfolding of purely naturalistic processes.

    The ‘God hypothesis’ provides no additional explanatory value. It is but a refuge of ignorance. One who feels the need to postulate a divine cause is left with the question of what caused God to exist!

    Reveal
    Perhaps God does not need a cause, they say; but then why think that the universe/stuff needs one? So, it adds nothing.

    Evolution is an immensely slow, wasteful, pitiless, and cruel process, hardly the most elegant process of creation open to a goal-oriented, omnipotent, intelligent, and benevolent God. If humanity is the final goal of creation, whence the 3,500,000,000! years since the origin of life, or the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang? What is the point of this immense amount of time if human beings and their world are the pinnacle of the Almighty’s creation?

    Does God cause mutations to direct evolution? Well, they sure seem all over the place, plus a lot are bad and many are neutral.

    The vast majority of mutations are selectively neutral or negative with regard to the evolution and survival of homo sapiens, and, thus, their evolution is wasteful if measured against the goal of producing human beings. Such a wasteful process is hardly consonant with a goal-oriented, omnipotent, and omniscient God.

    The case against theistic evolution continues…

    The honorable Graybeard presiding, Austin P. Torney continuing as lawyer for the prosecution (since his name contains the letters “attorney”)…

    I call the recent family tree to the witness stand; but, wait, oh my God, there are some others, too, many of them extinct!

    The testimony: There is no progressive trend in evolution toward the development of human beings; evolution can be seen as a huge tree with many branching points, not a direct line to humans; we are just a not-yet-extinct part of one of the very many branches of the enormous tree of life.

    I now call upon the extinct.

    Testimony: What was the point of all these extinct animals, if the goal of creation is man and his surrounding nature? To what purpose were the dinosaurs? What was the point of the trilobites? These groups of animals did not even contribute to the origin of humans.

    The development of life has been interrupted by innumerable extinctions, some with so many different plant and animal species dying out in the same time period that they have been called mass extinctions.

    Judge Graybeard, having worked for ten minutes straight now, calls a recess for a long lunch…

    The trial resumes.

    We see evolution differently then, Austin, as the process of evolution seems most intent on the continuation of ‘life forms’, though I will agree that it does not seem to have a vested interest in which forms are successful in relation to which others.

    True, no vested interest, those who were in a position to ‘adapt’ and survive, were not necessarily ‘nice’ (could even be ‘mean’).

    Still, I tend to wonder why all species of my experience offer a great struggle to survive, when the alternative of doing nothing is by far the easier choice?

    Survival is the brain’s objective, thus often even thinking its way into the afterlife.

    Break time. …

    The theistic evolution trial resumes…

    Judge Graybeard looks half-asleep, but seems to be listening with one ear.

    God is outside of time and takes a long time to fiddle with evolution.

    The prosecution answers and continues: It has been suggested that God’s mindset is very slow compared to the ‘speedy’ time of the operation of the universe, and thus I submit that slow God would not have been alert or responsive enough to direct evolution through mutation.

    The defense objected, stating that they would have to check with their client on this, the judge asking how long would this would take, noting that it took over 200 years for a response to Haiti’s pact with the Devil.

    Oh, about a million years. OK, we’ll reconvene…

    Wait! We can’t wait that long… So I’ll allow the claim that God says that he directs mutations. Let the record show both opinions.

    Thank you, judge, for our theory can adapt to any and all turns of events.

    The trial droned on…

    Testimony: Why would God create complete ecosystems only to have them virtually annihilated, so that entirely different ecosystems would temporarily emerge in their place, only to meet the same fate, over and over again? Had the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago missed the Earth, it’s likely that our little branch on the tree of life would never have developed, since it was the end of dinosaur dominance made it possible for our small mammal ancestors to flourish; how are such chance contingencies in the history of life compatible with the alleged providence of a Creator?

    Graybeard, the judge, was fully awake now and was carving something out of a large block of wood.

    Worse still, consider the vast amount of suffering needed to secure our existence through natural selection; the environment “selects” those organisms best adapted to it not the most even-tempered ones.

    Consequently, numerous predatory creatures have evolved which regularly inflict suffering on prey and host animals. The screw-worm fly (Cochliomyia hominivorax), for instance, lays its eggs in the wounds or eyes of mammals (including humans), causing any wounds to widen when the eggs hatch and the larva eat the surrounding tissue. This attracts more congeners, further widening the wounds. Untreated, such parasitism often leads to a gruesome death. Or consider the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS); is a great evolutionary success one which creates immense suffering among human beings?

    It was now getting near 3 PM, the judge announcing, “That’s it for today; let’s meet again sometime after my vacation. …

    The mind is like a man in a rowboat.

    A few days ago there were 50-foot waves on the north shore of Oahu. Some ants looking like people surfed on them or at least the wave remnants, enjoying the ecstasy, and then were ground up into the sand—the agony; a guy in a rowboat fished them out.

    I can see a tree with my physical eye because that tree is embodied in matter, but, to conceptualize that tree my mind goes into universal concepts of meaning which have never taken embodiment in matter, for they do not require physical presence before my eye. So, you see, concepts are not acts of a bodily organ such as the brain or they would exist in matter; conceptual thought is an immaterial power which we use to form concepts of meaning. Utilizing that power does not require any physical sense or organs.

    Judge: immaterial, since the brain is an organ.
    …

    The theistic evolution case resumes:

    Attorney: I’d like to address the tree.

    Judge: Proceed.

    Attorney: Hello tree.

    Judge: Ha-ha.

    Attorney: The tree, as out there, is a bunch of waves, the photons carrying the ‘visuals’, the air-vibrations passing on the ‘sounds’, the molecules transmitting ‘odour’ by their shapes, etc. I use quotes to show that these transformations are fully made later on by the brain; if there is no brain around, then there are just the waves emanating.

    While our senses are absolutely in direct contact with the waves/particles that are out there, we don’t have awareness at that level, plus, the direct jumble of waves all interfering with each other might not reveal anything much right off the bat. So, the brain proceeds to process the information with its many modules and subsystems through higher and higher levels, finding edges, intensity, color, and distance for vision, detecting molecules shapes for smell, interpreting air waves as sound, etc., as often much more detailed elsewhere, until the tree is seen, smelled, heard, and so forth as the final perception of the tree with its qualities within the head.

    There is no dividing line where the brain says “I can do no more” and hands it off to some nonphysical realm, for it has already done it all. This includes the brain’s memory coming along and knowing what a tree is as a whole and its parts, associations arising, such as the old tree house or that leaves have chlorophyll and fall in the autumn, etc., and then more associations upon those associations.

    The brain is the lifeboat navigating and re-cognizing the waves of reality, painting a useful face upon the waters. All is ever in the brain as a representation, the tree never being directly known as matter, not even in the first place.

    Judge: OK, back to evolution.

    Testimony: Immense suffering, like wasteful “trial and error,” is not incidental, but is inherent to the process of evolution. And it does not sit well with the notion that evolution has been set up or directed by a loving God. The theistic retort that “God moves in mysterious ways” goes well beyond the evidence from evolutionary biology, not to mention that it is a kind of excuse for very poor, sometimes seemingly near insane, ways of accomplishing things.

    There is a far simpler and elegant explanation for that evidence: there is no divine will to grope at in the dark, just the indifferent, pitiless, and naturalistic forces of evolution. Since evolution is a slow, wasteful, and brutal process, prima facie it is not the way in which a goal-oriented, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving God would choose to create the world. Thus a naturalistic explanation for the origin of all species, including homo sapiens, is more plausible than a theistic one.

    Judge: nap time.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Lao Tse's Tao — Gnomon

    On the Eternal Tao and Its Manifestations

    The Foundation

    Let us realize that what is Eternal
    Stands as the bedrock of all that appears,
    The permanent presence beneath every change,
    Unchanging through all of time’s gathering years.

    What truly exists cannot fade or dissolve,
    Cannot be created or suffer decay;
    The Eternal simply and perfectly Is,
    While temporary forms drift like clouds away.

    The Manifestation

    Through endless transmutation’s flowing dance,
    The Eternal dons ten thousand changing forms,
    Like one great ocean lifting countless waves,
    Or single sky spawning infinite storms.

    Each temporal thing that rises from its depths
    Bears witness to that which forever stays,
    A momentary expression of the whole,
    A fleeting actor in eternal plays.

    The Paradox

    How strange that what seems most solid and real—
    The mountains, the stars, our own flesh and bone—
    Are but the ripples on timeless seas,
    While the unchanging source remains unknown.

    Yet in each mote of cosmic dust there dwells
    The fullness of that which can never die,
    As every drop contains the entire sea,
    And each moment holds eternity’s sky.

    The Understanding

    The wise ones tell us: look beneath the flux
    Of birth and death, of pleasure and of pain,
    To find that which has never come or gone,
    The deathless presence that does e’er remain.

    For though all forms must shift and change and flow,
    Their essence rests in that which cannot move,
    The changeless witness to all changing things,
    The ground of being that all forms must prove.

    The Perspective

    From highest heaven to the deepest seas,
    From quantum foam to galactic expanse,
    All manifestation’s endless pageantry
    Emerges from the Eternal’s timeless dance.

    What seems to perish never truly dies,
    What seems to birth was never truly born;
    Forms merely shift like waves upon the deep,
    While that which Is continues without morn.

    The Recognition

    To know this truth is not to turn away
    From life’s rich play of shadow and of light,
    But to perceive within each passing show
    The presence of the Infinite’s delight.

    For in the dance of atom and of star,
    Of thought and feeling, birth and final breath,
    We glimpse the face of that which always Is,
    Beyond all bounds of life and time and death.

    The Living

    Thus may we walk through time’s swift-flowing stream,
    Aware of both the wave and water’s truth:
    The forms that pass, the presence that remains,
    The aged wisdom and eternal youth.

    Each moment precious in its swift-winged flight,
    Yet held within that which can never fade;
    Each change a window to unchanging light,
    Each temporal thing of timeless essence made.

    The Synthesis

    Let us then cherish every passing day,
    While resting in the truth that cannot pass;
    Dance with the waves while knowing we are sea,
    Be both the changing leaves and changeless mass.

    For this is wisdom’s deepest, sweetest song:
    That in the heart of all that seems to flee,
    There dwells that which has never left its place—
    The one still point of all eternity.

    The Resolution

    The Eternal remains forever what it is,
    Though dressed in time’s kaleidoscopic show;
    The permanent wears impermanence like robes,
    Through which its timeless radiance may flow.

    And we who walk in bodies made of time
    Carry within the spark of timeless fire,
    Both wave and ocean, both the dance and still,
    Both changing form and changeless heart’s desire.
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
    Part 8



    Then Nobody unveiled his massive screen,
    Eight feet of iPhone glory to be seen;
    Through centuries of horsemen did they gaze,
    To cavemen’s walks where time had never been.

    It was time to show the movie again, but larger, so Nobody powered up his 8 foot diagonal iphone. The video showed someone in the 1800’s riding a horse, then someone riding a horse in the previous century, and so on back for tens of thousands of years, then hundreds of thousands of years of cavemen walking.

    Profpat to ledgers sought his swift escape,
    While Fredrick made his calculator gape
    At zero’s void; and Lincoln scribed address
    On envelope’s wrong side—historic shape.

    Profpat, bored, tried to sneak out the window to go do some exciting accounting. Fredrick tried dividing by zero on his calculator. Abraham Lincoln wrote a historic address on the wrong side of an envelope.

    Reveal
    Gray counted spots upon the ceiling high,
    As Austin drifted into dreamland’s sigh;
    Kirk fled to Turkey, Rascal slipped away
    To Heaven’s realm, the seventh slice of sky.

    Graybeard counted the spots on the ceiling and connected the dots into a pleasing image. Austin fell asleep. Mkirk–Patrick went to Turkey before it could be devoured by Hungary. Rascal slipped off into the 7th dimension for a while (the Heavenly realm). MJA said that boredom is not really equal to excitement after all.

    “The present age,” said Nobody with pride,
    “Holds wonders that no past could provide;
    Our DNA we’ll shape to speed our growth,
    As evolution’s gates swing open wide.

    “The trip wasn’t all that interesting at first,” said Nobody, “as we now live in the most amazing of all time. Soon, we may be able to alter our own DNA and further speed evolution on its way.”

    The Bang still echoes in our listening ears,
    As human race springs forth through coming years;
    Just one percent along perfection’s path,
    While science daily new horizons clears.

    “We have just heard the Big Bang and have sprung off of the starting line… The human race is on. We are perhaps 1% of the way along to perfection. The possibilities for the finish line are endless, for scientific revelations are entering the fast lane almost daily.”

    This royal crown of moments precious-bright
    Shines through us all with possibilities’ light;
    The universe spreads forth its free repast
    (How will you count that, Profpat, in your night?)

    “Life now is really a royal diadem of momentous gems shining through us all. We live in the best of times, as the universe is truly ours to experience. It is the ultimate free lunch (how do you account for that, Profpat?).”

    To ToeQuest give, where Everything unfolds,
    All denominations welcome in our holds—
    Though fifties, hundreds bring the sweetest joy!”
    Then back through time the final scene unrolls:

    “Please contribute to ToeQuest, for that’s where Everything is happening. We accept all denominations, but we prefer fifties and hundreds.”

    Through stars dispersing into cosmic dust,
    Through matter’s dance and gravity’s sweet thrust,
    Till all resolved to words both bright and clear:
    The ‘Beginning’ showed where all endings must.

    Nobody sped up the video of the past and soon everything went back into the stars and then the stars dispersed into dust which went back to form the words “The Beginning“, as the film ended.

    When hoopla died and watchdogs lost their chase,
    (Those crack-pot theorists proved too wild to trace),
    Fed-Up delivered parcels to the few—
    A note, some pictures, tickets wrapped in lace.

    The hoopla over the CMBR trip had died down and the watchdogs had quickly and luckily lost interest, feeling that the ToeQuesters were a bunch of crackpots (crack and pot at the same time?).

    ToeQuesters in the know soon received a certified package from Fed-Up (Fed-Ex and UPS had merged), containing a note, some pictures, an airline ticket to Los Angeles, and a DVD. The note read:

    “Dear friends,” the vanishing ink seemed to say,
    “Read quickly ere these words should fade away;
    The jokes were meant to fool the CIA,
    Those acronyms that snoop both night and day.

    Dear Everyone Involved With My CMBR Trip,

    This note is written in disappearing ink (an old check writing trick used by Profpat), so please read immediately.
    First of all, the topic of our TOE discovery is very serious, so there are no jokes herein; those were just to throw off the CIA and all the other acronyms. I couldn’t reveal everything at our last meeting since there were too many government snoops about.

    Your mix of silly questions served us well,
    Though which were which, I truly cannot tell;
    The movies that you watched with patient eyes
    Were false—a shield ‘gainst those who’d make us sell.

    I thank you all for mixing in some silly questions with the serious ones, although I’m not sure which were which, and for sitting through the home movies, which I must now tell you were fake.

    Dark matter hunters dig through endless night,
    Six Empire States below Dakota’s height,
    To find one WIMP within their golden mine—
    While we hold secrets of far greater might.

    Just look at the cutthroat competition over discovering and explaining dark matter, even among reputable scientists. Many are spending millions and using deep mine shafts to avoid cosmic rays in order to try and detect one little measly weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP), the most promising efforts of which are occurring in the defunct Homestake gold mine in South Dakota, which is deeper than six Empire State Buildings, in which they have built a haystack and are looking for a needle in it.

    A small potatoe (blame Dan Quayle’s pen
    For extra ‘e’ that graced his ink back then)
    Is nothing to the cosmic truth we found—
    The TOE itself, stripped bare of prefix when

    The cosmic background whispered secrets deep,
    Far greater than these small fries we might keep;
    For in the CMBR’s ancient glow
    Lie truths that make mere spelling errors sleep.

    Let politicians fumble with their words
    While we decode the song of cosmic birds;
    Our discovery makes spelling quarrels fade
    Like morning mist when deeper truth occurs.

    The universe cares not for how we spell,
    When radiation has such tales to tell;
    These small potatoes (spelled however bright)
    Pale before the cosmic TOE’s great swell.

    This is a small potatoe (and small fries) to what we have discovered about the CMBR, the toe itself without the prefix pota-. You can thank Dan Quail for the spelling, not my trip.

    The government has searched my history,
    But found that I am Nobody, you see;
    No past, no present, future all unknown—
    A ghost whose very absence sets me free.

    So, anyway, the attention is off of us for now, and we have a clear channel; however, the government did a routine background check on me and discovered that I don’t exist, for I am Nobody. My past has no history and my future is a mystery. Nor do I have a presence in the present. They are as hot on my case as they would be for illegal aliens and so they have given me a past imperfect and so have made my future tense.

    Upon a mountain summit, far from sight,
    Where tents and microwaves make welcome light,
    We’ll gather soon to share the truth at last,
    The real film of our cosmic oversight.

    Therefore, I have taken refuge in a certain uncharted mountain top retreat, where we will gather in a month or so to discuss the contents of the true CMBR home movie tape that I’ve sent you all with your plane tickets.

    Use real names as you journey toward our goal,
    For ToeQuest handles might reveal our role;
    Remember ‘Nowhere Man’ upon the screen—
    Their surveillance could take its fearsome toll.

    Do not use your ToeQuest nickname while traveling, but employ your real name, if you can remember it, so that the spies will not catch on. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the TV series, ‘Nowhere Man’, the greatest show ever made, but there are organizations out there, government and otherwise, that have super surveillance equipment, hence our remote and unknown meeting spot, which by the way, is still intact (it was a TOE research center back in the 70’s), with the addition of a few more tents and a CMBR-powered microwave oven.

    Our funding flows from Profpat’s clever scheme:
    Each government account provides a stream
    Of pennies, day by day, to fund our needs—
    Accounting’s thrill exceeds his wildest dream!

    All incidental, intentional, and exceptional expenses will be reimbursed, because Profpat happened to take note of many government account numbers and passwords. He will be taking a penny (and any fractions thereof) out of each government account on a daily basis to fund our endeavors. This should not arouse any bankers unless a pretty woman is nearby. Who would have ever thought that accounting could be so useful and exciting!

    His vanishing ink tricks deserve their tale:
    When clients brought their pens, they’d surely fail;
    For VOID appeared in time upon their checks,
    Like Ocean’s team, our craft shall yet prevail.

    That reminds me of a Profpat story: Upon receiving a useless check made with his vanishing ink, a big client insisted that Profpat write a new check with their own pen that they had brought along to outwit the Prof’s trickery; however, Prof saw them arriving and quickly wrote VOID on on blank with latent ink, an ink which would materialize on the check within a short while. Our team is starting to rival the one in the ‘Ocean’s 13’ movie and Brad Pitt has joined us to get away from his marriages.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Could you re-word? — Gnomon

    How is it that a Great Programmer is sitting around? Wouldn't he need a zillion times more explaining than humans getting explained through him?
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    explain how Life & Mind could emerge from material processes, without divine intervention — Gnomon

    Isn't it then a larger question of how the Divine Life & Mind could be so without a regress to HIGHER and GREATER, etc? We only see the polar opposite of the smaller and smaller as a basis.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    a "poet of the world" who persuasively guides creation rather than coercively controlling it. — Gnomon

    Musicals celebrating the world of the Great Poet Artist:



    For some without subtitles:

    The Trio of Understanding

    Like orchestras that weave their music bright,
    From strings of past and present and delight,
    In future notes that hover just ahead—
    Our minds compose their symphonies of sight.

    The senses drink the moment’s flowing wine,
    While memory’s cellars store each vintage fine,
    And fancy spreads its wings to catch the breeze
    Of possibilities that might combine.

    Reveal
    What echoes linger in the chambers deep,
    Where yesterday’s sweet songs still softly sleep?
    What present bells ring clear in morning air?
    What future chimes does hope in waiting keep?

    The now flows swift between what was and might,
    Like rivers fed by streams of past delight,
    While dreams cast forward like the morning sun
    To paint tomorrow’s canvas burning bright.

    Three sisters weave the tapestry of mind:
    One reads the patterns time has left behind,
    One threads the needle of the present hour,
    One spins the gold of what we hope to find.

    In wisdom’s garden, three flowers grow:
    The pressed rose of the past we used to know,
    The blooming lily of the present day,
    The budding promise of tomorrow's show.

    Without the past to give the present weight,
    Without the now to make tomorrow great,
    Without the dream of what is yet to be—
    Each faculty alone stands incomplete.

    So let them dance, these powers of the soul,
    Let memory and sense make fancy whole,
    For in their triple-braided harmony
    Lives wisdom that transcends each single role.

    The sweetest music needs all strings to play,
    The brightest rainbow needs each colored ray,
    And consciousness requires its triple light
    To illuminate our brief and wondrous way.

    My Thread-bare Penitence a-pieces tore…

    Now Summer’s heat burns fierce upon the plain,
    And wisdoms lost return to me again;
    The Cup that once I vowed to cast aside
    Beckons with ruby depths of sweet disdain.

    The Autumn winds may whisper of regret,
    And Winter’s frost may cause the eyes to wet,
    But when the Vine blooms fresh in Spring once more,
    What sage remembers promises to forget?

    The Tavern calls with sweeter voice than Prayer,
    The Wine-cup glimmers like a jewel rare;
    What use are all these vows of yesterday
    When today’s sun reveals the world so fair?

    The Sages warn of morning’s bitter rue,
    But evening’s pleasures paint the sky anew;
    Let those who will count beads and mumble psalms—
    Tonight the stars are dancing, and the dew.

    The rose’s sweet scent a thorn-prick’s worth…

    For pleasure’s price in pain we gladly pay,
    As night must follow even brightest day;
    The sweetest fruit grows highest on the branch—
    What worth the feast that costs us no dismay?

    The desert sun burns fierce, yet pilgrims still
    Press on to Mecca with unshaken will;
    So too the lover bears love’s burning drought,
    For one cool draught his thirsting heart to fill.

    Each precious thing exacts its proper toll—
    The pearl its dive, the flame its blinded moth;
    What treasure gained without some pain to pay?
    What wisdom earned that did not pierce the soul?

    The nightingale who sings of love’s sweet pain
    Would scorn a garden free of thorny vine;
    For in this world of mingled joy and grief,
    The price we pay makes sweet our hard-won gain.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Alfred North Whitehead — Gnomon

    Whitehead was bald, thus his surname. About 'God', who he said he should. have left out, he says "Blah, blah, blah."

    The Block Universe is a quantum computer, doing everything all at once; then it plays out like a movie.

    Is Whitehead’s deity’s Earth doomed?

    There was a mistake in human nature: it contained a beast, but at least that gave it a zest for life.

    Enrico Fermi had placed tin foil over his instruments in 1938 and so he did not discover nuclear fission, which would have put Germany ahead of the game in WW II. During the war, Germany put Heisenberg in charge of the nuclear effort to produce an atomic bomb. One of the early labs mysteriously caught fire and burned down.

    Heisenberg later travelled to see his old friend and mentor, Neils Bohr, in Nazi-occupied Denmark, and gave Bohr a drawing the German effort. England eventually got Bohr out of Denmark and soon flew him to Los Alamos. Upon showing the drawing to Oppenheimer and others, they concluded that the Germans were on the completely wrong track, which was a great relief.
    …

    Currently… droughts, fires, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, nuclear threats, and exponential global warming…

    So, here we are, facing obliteration. We will have to colonize space in this century. If not, well, if there can be one Earth then there can be another.


    IN THE MEADOWS OF HEAVEN

    We of the highest consciousness ever known
    And the most versatile form that’s been grown
    Reside as consequent beings in this Earthly realm,
    Possibly the most fortuitous creatures
    That the universe has ever wrought.

    Indeed,
    We are this universe come to life—
    Necessarily from a long line
    Of ‘fortunate accidents’.

    Looking back,
    We already know ahead of time
    That we will discover
    The many ‘rare happenings’
    That made us possible.

    Our higher consciousness
    Was the crowning glory;
    We had won the human race—
    The be all and end all; the grand prize
    Of the universal lottery.

    So there is nothing more,
    Aside from our own progress
    To be and learn.

    So then hail and good fortune,
    Fine fellows and ladies,
    And welcome all of you
    To the Meadows of Heaven—
    The highest point of all being,
    Although we are surely
    Still in our infancy.

    The further design
    And the role of mankind
    Is now in our hands.

    We were borne here upon the shoulders
    Of so many who have long since come and gone,
    All of them advancing the cause,
    Over eons of wiles—so here we are.

    Fare thee always well, fine friends,
    For we are some of
    The luckiest sons and daughters of being
    In a rare universe well done.

    Celebrate; live; be,
    For everyone dies,
    But not everyone lives.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Whitehead argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects, and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another. — Gnomon

    And we thought that Ada Lovelace was the first programmer. (Babbage's machine was never built!)

    The giant rocks and large mile stones that the deity had thrown at the Earth had worked out just fine, on the fifth try.

    He then programmed RNA and DNA in the Fortran computer language.

    Molecules, had ‘auspiciously’
    Become able to replicate themselves, as DNA.

    DNA remembers every step of our evolution—
    And you can see this in ‘fast’ motion
    When embryos form simply in the liquid womb,
    Replicate, and then grow cells
    That diversify into a human being
    After going through some nonhuman stages.

    The human embryo actually forms
    Three different types of kidneys,
    One after the other,
    The first two discarded,
    Resembling those of jawless fish
    And reptiles, respectively,
    Before our final kidney appears.

    There is also a fetal coat of hair
    That then greatly diminishes.

    Thus four billion years compresses into
    The nine months of pregnancy.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Whitehead described our enforming⁷ cosmos as a living organism. — Gnomon

    More milestones:

    Whitehead’s deity was still overjoyed, for his cosmic egg was going well enough, although that made him to come First as the Chicken, which answered an age-old important question.

    The Earth’s atmosphere took two billion years to form, first from bacteria that exuded oxygen as a sort of unwanted poison, and then from plants that made oxygen. No creatures were around asking for an atmosphere rich in oxygen to be able to become, but an adaptation happened, another great kilometer-stone; however, life kept on getting wiped out, another goof.

    Before mammals were plentiful on Earth, five near extinctions occurred, the last and worst one being the Permian extinction from asteroids or volcanic eruptions that wiped out the dinosaurs and 95% of all existing species, this making the opening for mammals to evolve much further from merely a shrew-like creature. Extinctions are not indicative of intelligent design, but it made for mammals to be able to come out of the forest and not get stepped on by the dinosaurs, who had been Kings of the Earth for 700,000 years.

    As the third chimp, we potential humans were lucky to evolve our separate way when two of our chromosomes fused, making us incapable of producing offspring by mating with the regular chimps. We have 23 chromosomes and the chimps have 24.

    So, good fortune was needed, as always, in this and many more instances, such as the Earth having to have the right conditions in the first place, out there among the huge waste elsewhere which wasn’t really such a waste after all, it providing so many chances for there to be a workable planet for life such as Earth.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    a Whitehead universe, created with intention rather than accident — Gnomon

    Whitehead’s ageless deity had been floating around in the dark for a very long time after the Big Bang, but, no big deal, for before the Bang he’d been doing about the same for a past Eternity.

    He didn’t have a universe of his own nor even a place to stay because there wasn’t anything yet, which was why he was making a universe, duh. He’d used up a lot of his own energy to make the Bang and was tired and so he had a good rest for 380,000 years.

    He was happy to just have some particles, but now there was light, as a great milestone, so he lit up a smoke and looked around, but it was much too bright, so he made a pair of sunglasses from some quarks.

    In the deity’s universe, the dark chest of wonders
    Of Possibility and Probability opened up
    In just the just right way:

    Naked quarks spewed forth,
    Among other things,
    And boiled and brewed
    In one of the steamiest broths
    Ever cooked up.

    They somehow simmered and combined
    Into the ordinary matter
    Of protons and neutrons.

    Then quite independently,
    By some unknown means,
    Dark matter-energy arose as well,
    In just the right mix, and, luckily, too,
    Some very long filaments,
    Called cosmic strings,
    Formed and survived long enough
    To be useful as collection agents,
    Which were merely imperfections,
    As in an unevenly freezing pond—
    A kind of a cooling flaw.

    None of these happenings were connected,
    Except by Potential’s destiny,
    So, ‘fortunately’,
    The cosmic strings attracted,
    By their gravity,
    Both dark and ordinary matter,
    Which in turn
    Attracted even more of the same.

    These pearls of embryonic galaxies arose
    And were strung along these cosmic necklaces,
    As can still be noted today.

    So it was
    That some almost incidental irregularities,
    Frozen out as cosmic anchors,
    Were latched onto by matter, both light and dark,
    The proportionate portions of which were favorable,
    The dark matter dwarfing our ordinary matter
    For some reason of a happy ‘circumstance’.

    ‘Fortuitously’, as well,
    Anti-matter, if there ever was any,
    Did not fully cancel out the uncle-matter.

    The universe-maker could not foresee any of this
    In and of itself’s fundamental substance(s),
    For if it could have
    Then we’d only have the larger problem
    Of how the foreseer could have been foreseen,
    Ad infinitum…

    Or it could have been like the ‘trying out’
    Of all possibilities in superposition…
    A brute force happening
    Of every path gone down.

    Whitehead's deity had to wait three billion more years for a third generation metal-rich sun-star to form along with its planets, another great milestone, granting him great relief. His zillions of previous Bang attempts hadn’t worked out, but he had finally put the right amount of energy into the latest Bang.

    It was his goof that Earth had no oxygen at first….
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    I agree that the slowness & gradualness of physical evolution seem to weigh against the Genesis account of light-speed Creation. — Gnomon

    After about 380,000 years of cosmic time, the universe was cool enough and the electrons slow enough for them to stick to the atomic nuclei, although it wasn’t easy, which is why the universe would evolve only very slowly. In a moment, the universe became transparent.

    Gravity had dominated, pulling matter together into lumps and clumps. Mass, in the form of the dark matter, the dominant mass in the universe that lurked in the background of the Big Bang, formed the seeds of the first galaxies. Some normal matter, as the first few atoms, came along for the ride, thank goodness. The gas cooled and collapsed, crushing down hard and driving temperatures at their cores to extreme values. The first stars were born, and the universe lit up and entered its modern age. At center stage, the world of the quantum was found to play a leading role, for without it, the stars would not shine.

    The weak nuclear force can can change protons into neutrons! But the chances of this are very small. So if we can use tunneling to form a diproton, there is then a small chance that one of the protons will convert into a neutron, forming a stable deuteron before it can fall apart. The chances are very, very small, with only about one in every 10**28 (10 octillion) collisions between protons in the Sun producing deuterium. It’s a highly inefficient process, but it is the first step to creating heavier elements. The universe can only evolve slowly.

    …

    The reactions that create heavier elements allow us to live comfortably on Earth, but they took a lot of time since they are difficult to create. If it were too easy for these reactions to occur, the Sun would burn up its hydrogen fuel much more quickly, and we would not have the stable energy it has provided our planet for hundreds of millions of years.

    The remainder of the atomic elements had to arrive, but they needed more energy, and the stars had to make them. The atomic elements through iron are made directly and the remainder become from supernovae or neutron star collisions or by some minor processes. There are more atomic elements but they are only made in our laboratories.

    From atoms, molecules became, and from molecules cells became, and from cells life became, and from life brains became, and from brains consciousness became. This was all done on Earth, so there is no mystery about where and how it happened. Nature accomplished it. There was once no life or consciousness on Earth and now there is.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Perhaps, his "Great Poet" deity had a sense of humor to allow for hominids who could spin fantastic stories about inflating deuterium balloons, who fall in love and live happily ever after. — Gnomon

    The Great Poet demiurge was getting nervous. It had been dark for near 400,000 cosmic years now and he didn't have a candle to use to work on solving the 2x10**75 particle body problem to foresee all that could happen.

    So, he decided to start small and work on the three-body problem; however, that was unsolvable.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    this natural & artificial habitat may not be as perfect as the Garden of Eden. Which, as you know, was spoiled by the introduction of Reason and FreeWill. — Gnomon

    Far-out!

    In the meanwhile, when the temperature dropped low enough in the first minute after the Big Bang, deuterium started to form. The temperature was low enough that the deuteron bond could not be broken. Right away, the most stable element, helium-4, started to be built up, and the race was on.

    But it was over before it even started. The larger nuclei required more energy, and the temperature was dropping. What’s more, the number of neutrons available for further reactions was too low. In fact, after only a few minutes, all the neutrons created in the Big Bang ended up as helium-4 (with a few in the next heaviest element, lithium). The extra protons that were left over? Well, they were just hydrogen nuclei.

    So, the universe had cooled enough for deuterium to survive the collisions and thus be used as the building blocks for the larger nuclei. Two deuterium nuclei could bind together to form the nucleus of a helium-4 atom. If a deuterium nucleus could snare a single proton, a helium-3 nucleus was formed. With that, we appeared to be on our way to building all the chemical elements. However, with the universe continuing to cool, the further hurdle became apparent.

    Deuterium nuclei are positively charged and therefore repel one another. With the universe cooled, the motions of the deuterium nuclei slowed. They became sluggish. As they approached one another, the electromagnetic force built and forced them apart. They simply couldn’t get close enough for the strong force to reach out and bind them. Free protons were also forced away. After a few minutes in which some helium and lithium nuclei were formed, this nucleosynthesis appeared to be over. The pathway to forging heavier elements in the Big Bang was completely cut off. Cripes!

    That seemed to be the end. Following the first few minutes after the Big Bang, the cosmological nuclear furnace dimmed as the universe continued to expand and cool. Leftover radiation also cooled, with the universe eventually fading into the blackness of a dark age.

    The great slowness of the universe's creation so far here and ever plodding more in the tale, up to taking billions of years for life to come about seems to indicate no Divine involvement, leaving it up to my Great Poet ancestor, I guess.

    I guide thee; I must carry thee;
    I'm illumination beside thee.
    Fear not the proof—
    It’s the beauty of the truth.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    @punos

    Perhaps often in the omniscape a universe is stillborn when everything annihilates away… but Punos has an idea in Gnomon's previous thread about how the annihilations don't quite catch-up.

    I'm pointing out here and elsewhere that there be quite a lot of variation when a Bang blows up or a cyclical universe whams up again and its symmetry breaks.


    Multiverses — Gnomon

    Perhaps in some other ‘wheres’,
    Junkyard universes litter the omniscape,
    For they flunked, failed, and miscarried—
    A quadrillion trillion universes broken down
    For every one that worked to any extent at all.

    In some of these forlorn universes,
    Perhaps the material was inert
    And so it just sat there, doing nothing, forever.

    In others, maybe gravity was insufficient
    Or had no natural place to collect particles
    And so they thinned out endlessly,
    Spreading coldly toward infinity.

    In yet others again,
    Even those in the same ballpark as ours,
    Perhaps the portions weren’t quite right.
    Although they may have formed a few elements,
    They went no further than that for a zillion years.


    Onward…

    Inflation seems to be a necessity in the so that the micro could become the macro and so that the universe could be flat and rather smooth. When inflation ended, its energy was dumped back into the universe, into the particles and radiation that provide the basic building blocks.

    But the temperatures were so hot that the normal, everyday matter couldn’t exist yet. Only the fundamental building blocks existed: the quarks, the electrons, and the superhot photons. This soup was supposedly an equal mixture of matter and antimatter. Electrons were accompanied by their positively charged antimatter siblings, the positrons.

    So, when the universe was about 10–11 seconds old, the end of inflation had flooded the universe with energy, a mix of matter and antimatter in a soup of high-energy radiation. But by this point, the photons in this superhot soup no longer had enough energy to create particles when they collided, so the universe became unbalanced.

    No more electron-positron pairs were created, and no more quark-antiquark pairs were produced. There were still particles in the mix, both matter and antimatter, and these could still collide, be annihilated, and create photons. Very rapidly, all the electrons met up with positrons, and in an instant, they transformed into photons.

    The same is true of the quark-antiquark pairs, rapidly being annihilated and turning into more photons. So once the universe passed this critical cooling point, all the matter had turned into radiation, and there should have been no particles left in the universe. The universe should have had no more matter. Yet it did. Where can we look to show the excess?

    The cosmic microwave background is the leftover radiation from the early times in the universe. This radiation must have come from the particles and antiparticles being annihilated. If we count the number of photons in the cosmic microwave background, there are about ten billion for every one of the pieces of matter, the protons and neutrons found in the nuclei of all atoms.

    This suggests that the universe was already unbalanced before the final annihilations took place—it was not, in fact, a perfectly even mix of matter and antimatter to cancel itself out. For every ten billion positrons in the universe, there must have been ten billion plus one electrons, so that after the final annihilations and creations, we were left with only electrons and photons in the universe. The same must have been true for the quarks and the antiquarks, with unbalanced annihilations and creations leaving only quarks and more photons behind.

    Without this cosmic imperfection, we would not be here to wonder at all. It seems that everything has to leak, that there cannot be infinite precision to infinite decimal places, and perhaps not even to a billion decimal places. This, by the way, rules out the block universe of eternalism, and so I conclude that there is presentism as the mode of time. Neutrinos, too, may provide for a big leak for parity violation as an asymmetry, per some findings that I am not up to date with.

    (more another time on the precarious start of our universe)
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    @Gnomon @180 Proof @Philosophim

    The baby Universe stumbles along, going nowhere fast …

    The elementaries have to form protons, neutrons, and whatnot, these combining into the first few atomic elements, mostly hydrogen, all these having to collect into stars eventually, due to gravity. Universes without gravity don’t go anywhere.

    How come all the atomic elements couldn’t have been formed right away?

    Remember, our universe is just among the average ones that work for life. It just couldn’t form all the elements right away.

    Deuterium is a very fragile nucleus, and in the the great heat of the Big Bang it is soon ripped apart. Without forming deuterium, the heavier elements are unable to be forged, a barrier known as the deuterium bottleneck.

    The electrons were moving too fast to join an atomic nucleus to create all the atoms. Instead, the universe was full of plasma, with free electrons jostling with light rays, making it opaque.
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    Are Multiverses and Many Worlds "greater" than our uni-world? — Gnomon

    All are simplex at first; complexity comes later on, via evolution and emergence.

    So, to derive the multiverse, we figure that since one universe formed, our own, then so could another, and more, but only a few may be workable enough to continue on.

    Our universe is not perfect, nor it is completely mathematically elegant, for there are superfluous entities in it, along with a lot of waste. Protons and neutrons require only up and down quarks, and not the other four quarks.

    Our universe is generic, as mediocre, even, somewhere within the range of universes that can achieve life. We cannot be in a universe which didn’t get to life, so here we have to be.

    Our universe took an extremely long time to evolve cosmically, as well as for life to develop biologically; it wasn’t the quickest or the slowest to do so. It kind of limped along. It needs no big explanation, but we will look into it anyway.

    That our universe is somewhere in between perfect and none at all shows that there has to be a multiverse or a metaverse. Again, if there can be one universe then there can be more.

    There are but three main stable particles in free space that show a curious symmetry: two matter particles oppositely charged, the proton(+) and the electron(-), and one energy particle, the photon(neutral charge). It had to be that there were only those ways to make a stable particle in free space (and their antiparticles).

    Our universe's history wasn't of a smooth Sunday walk in the park on a sunny day… (see next time)
  • PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time
    theological — Gnomon

    The notion of 'God' fails right off the bat, for it stems from the idea-template that something Greater is necessary to be for something lesser to be made of it; yet …

    1) We see rather that the lesser simplex leads to the greater complex made of it;

    2) The Greater would have to then come from the GREATER, etc. for the template to have any value, but it's a regress of begging the question.

    All mentions of 'God' fail in this way.
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
    Part 7



    "Beyond the CMBR," Nobody declared,
    "Through DNA's vast matrix on I fared;
    There JOY, forever young, in radiant glow
    Spread golden beams through all the cosmos shared."

    “I continued on to the CMBR,” said Nobody, “but I could see through it and the universal DNA matrix off toward the radiant void and there I saw JOY, forever young, who turned toward the glow of the fair light that from the infinite did show, basked in its golden beams, and spread her radiance to everything that’s so.”

    Then Hillary asked if God was woman-made;
    "Yes, Madam Almost-President," he played.

    “God is a woman?” Hillary asked.
    “Yes, Mrs. President-to-be who is no longer to be.”

    "What ultimate quest remains?" asked RascalPuff,
    "Why squirrels dash beneath our wheels," he said.

    Reveal
    “Now that we know the secrets of the universe, what remains as the ultimate question?” RascalPuff asked.
    “It is, ‘Why do squirrels always run back under your car after they are already in the clear?’”
    “Some things remain unfathomable,” ruminated Puff.

    "The strain of cosmic travel took its toll—
    An upholstery machine did swallow whole
    My form, but I recovered well enough,
    Though exorcists still claim my unpaid soul."

    “How are you feeling? Wasn’t the trip quite a strain on you?” wondered Fredrick.
    “Yes, I fell into an upholstery machine, but I am fully recovered now, but if I don’t pay my exorcist I may get repossessed.”

    "Inflation stretched me thin," Nobody sighed,
    "The road rose up to greet my wounded pride;
    But weight I've lost since then, and gained some wit,
    Though fortune-tellers short and small abide."

    “Also, I entered a period of great inflationary expansion and suffered a small cut on my forehead when the road rose up to meet me, but I have since lost some weight.”

    “Did you hear that the short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large?” asked WiseGuy.
    “I have now. That is sure a puny pun that deserves punitive measures.”

    "Does Nothing dwell out there?”young Fredrick pressed;
    "No, nada, null and zilch," Nobody stressed,
    "While pregnant possibility gives birth
    To all invention, as Austin suggested."

    “Does ‘nothing’ exist out there?” asked Fredrick.
    “No, nada, null, zilch, naught, nix, nil, and zippo. Nothing is unconceivable of existence, while the pregnancy of possibility is the mother of all invention. Austin told me to say that.”

    Of tainted money Profpat dared to speak;
    "All money's tainted," said Nobody with pique,
    "Taint yours and taint mine neither." Then at last
    Came Austin's query of life's purpose deep.
    “Since the government mostly paid for this trip, isn’t the money tainted?” asked Profpat.
    “A lot of money is tainted. Taint yours and it taint mine.”

    "Let life flow through you," Nobody replied,
    Then told of memories from his father's pride:

    “What is the purpose of life?” asked Austin, seriously.
    “To let it flow through you.”

    That first gleam followed by Olympic race,
    Through tube to egg where spirit did reside.

    “What is your first memory of flowing life?” continued Austin.
    “I do remember being a gleam in my father’s eye, my first glint of spirit. And half of me seems to remember shooting down some sort of tube and emerging into some liquid, then some kind of Olympic swimming race and a merging with an oval football kind of thing and an endless floating about for many months.

    Of floating months in darkness then he spoke,
    Till voices cooed and ancient silence broke;
    "There can't be more than water, calm and dark!"
    Such wisdom from his pre-birth self awoke.

    Then, about a month before I was born, I heard some sounds, like ‘Cootchy-cootchy-coo. Who’s in there?’ Then, the day before I was born, a voice told me that there is a whole big world out there, and I thought, no, there can’t be; there is only water and calm and darkness; that’s all there is; there can be nothing more. I guess I was not such a visionary back then.” “

    "Born on my birthday," Nobody declared,
    "Though parties waited till next year," he shared,
    "My first words asked for shades against the light—
    A writer's wit already well-prepared."

    Then, the next day—I remember it well since I was born right on my birthday (but had no party until a year later), I was thrust into the light, and I think my first words were, well, it’s a bit hard to recall them since I was very young when I was born, but, since I am a writer, I did speak my first words early, and I think they were: ‘Does anyone have a pair of sunglasses; it’s awfully bright out here.’”

    Then Lincoln asked why birthdays shift and change;
    "February's confusions to arrange:
    Fat Tuesday, Valentine's, and Presidents
    All mixed in love's and skunks' shared monthly range.

    The pancakes flow on Mardi Gras' wild day,
    Then ashes mark our dustward-trending way;
    Sweet Valentine's breaks Lenten fasts too soon—
    Such paradox does February sway!”

    Abraham Lincoln asked, “Why did they move my birthday?”
    “Well, February is a confusing short month; for example, this year Fat Tuesday is on February 12, which used to be your birthday, before they moved it, and is the big finale of Mardi-Gras, when we’re supposed to eat enough pancakes and sausage to get us through the 40 days of Lent’s fast food (at Wendy’s & McDonalds), I mean fasting, and give up sweets, as of Ash Wednesday, the 13th, a sort of smoke-in day when we remember dust to dust and that we will eventually make ashes of ourselves, then VD on the 14th, I mean Valentine’s Day, when we are supposed to eat a lot of sweets again! What a mixed-up time. Also, Abe, we wanted another three-day weekend, so we combined all of youse guys birthdays into President’s Day. Plus, it is the month of love, as well as skunk mating season, but I repeat myself.”

    Virginia, Austin's mother, sought to learn
    The meaning road signs hold at every turn;
    Nobody shared his wisdom of the way:
    "Four ways to stop your car you must discern:

    The brake, the clutch, emergency's firm grip,
    And dragging foot—all four must make you slip
    To standstill; STOP A-HEAD means just that thing:
    A head blocks passage on your morning trip!

    WATCH CHILDREN warns of romance in the air,
    Get rooms, don't linger 'neath the signpost there;
    And BIKE PATH leads between the yellow lines
    Where cyclists claim the highway's central flair.

    When yellow lights appear, just speed ahead—
    They'll shift to green as physics' laws have said;
    The morons crawl, the idiots race past,
    While jaywalks grant the right to join the dead!”

    “I don’t understand the new road signs,” stated Virginia, the only woman on ToeQuest, who is actually Austin’s mother. He signed her up so he could try to use her WebTV to get on ToeQuest from Chicago (it didn’t work very well).
    “A 4-WAY-STOP sign means to use the foot brake, then downshift, pull the emergency brake, and drag your foot, as the four ways. STOP A-HEAD says that a head is in the road! WATCH OUT FOR CHILDREN means: Don’t hug, fondle, kiss, touch, or sweet-talk beneath the sign, for you may do the conceivable. So, get a room. BIKE PATH: The official path for bikes is between the two yellow lines in the middle of the road. Also remember that if you speed up when you see a yellow light it will never turn red, since its frequency shifts toward green as you near C, the speed of light! Furthermore, morons always drive slower than you and idiots drive faster than you! Finally, jay walkers have the right of death.”
  • PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?
    Consciousness is in effect a highly-evolved form of Energy (ability to cause change). If that sounds far-fetched, just imagine the Big Bang as a burst of Causation, with no known precedent. Then, after 13billion earth-years of material evolution, first Life and then Mind emerged & evolved on a blue planet in the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy somewhere in the vastness of the space-time bubble we call the Universe. Hence, all known examples of Consciousness are found in terrestrial animated matter with complex brain tissue. — Gnomon

    The truth of essence proves an anti-climax;
    No complex web or intricate syntax,
    But simple beyond all expectation—
    'Tis here, in being, where true wonder acts!
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
    Part 6

    Nobody’s Fake Home Movies of the CMBR Trip

    To view the cosmic films of Nobody’s quest,
    The mighty powers gathered as his guest;
    Three Presidents and agencies galore,
    While YoungerBush shot lame ducks, missed the fest.

    Nobody invited everyone from ToeQuest and the govern–ment over to see some home movies of his trip to the CMBR (because I have some leftover material and went through the joke book again). The CIA, FBI, NSA, DNA, and three former Presidents attended, as well. President YoungerBush would’ve come, but was on vacation for a month, shooting lame ducks and leakers.

    They dined on pasta, anti-pasta too,
    According to their cosmic point of view;
    Some mixed the two in hope of balance fair,
    And promptly burst from what they dared to do.

    Pasta and anti-pasta was served for dinner, depending on one’s universal orientation. A few mixed it, trying to cancel out the effects of eating too much, and then promptly exploded from both ends.

    Reveal
    “The reception’s clear,” Nobody declared,
    “No static mars the footage that I shared.”
    Then Shakespeare rose to pose his ancient quest:
    “To be or not to be?” – Nobody stared.

    “Thanks, everyone, for your support,” said Nobody. “The reception was great; no static or noise. I can take some questions before we start the film that filmed the start.”

    The Bard’s hand rose amid the questioning throng,
    “Your query?” Nobody asked before long;
    “To be or not to be,” came swift reply—
    “Good answer,” proved the riddle right, not wrong.

    For in that ancient doubt lay wisdom deep:
    The choice between the waking and the sleep,
    The dance of being and of nothingness,
    Where questions asked are answers we must keep.

    The questioner and answer fused as one,
    Like stars that both cast light and light outrun;
    In paradox of presence and its void,
    The deepest truth had only just begun.

    When Nothing asks of Something what is true,
    And Something answers Nothing’s point of view,
    The circle closes on itself complete—
    As question, answer, wisdom shine anew.

    “Where found you sustenance?” asked Austin bold,
    “I gathered frozen food from ages old;
    And cooked it in the cosmic microwave,
    While drifting through the universe’s hold.”

    “How did you survive after you left the last Daily Planet restaurant?” asked Austin.
    “I picked up some frozen food in the Ice Age.”
    “But how did you cook it?” persisted Austin, his brain having been temporarily fried, boiled, and sun roasted in New Jersey.
    “Remember, there were microwaves all around.”

    “Your vacuum, sir?” Profpat inquired with care,
    “I bought two units, split my work to share;
    The salesman promised half the labor saved—
    So doubling up seemed only just and fair.”

    “What words,” asked RascalPuff, “could best convey
    Your journey to the cosmos’ earliest day?”
    “Veni, Vidi, Velcro,” came reply,
    “I came, I saw, and I stuck around to stay.”

    “Did you get lost?” young Fredrick dared to ask;
    “Alternative destinations were my task;
    For never lost am I in time or space,
    Though different paths my journey might unmask.”

    “I never get lost, even if I’m told to; I discover alternate destinations.”

    “Did riches flow?” asked Graybeard, seeking more,
    “And might I have your tires from days of yore?”
    “Yes, wealth I found, but faced a cruel choice then:
    ’Tween work and daytime TV’s endless bore.”

    “Did you make enough money to retire, and, if so, can I have your old tires?” inquired Graybeard.
    “Yes, I did, but it’s really a cruel choice: Work or watch daytime TV.”

    “Did Everything make sense?” came Fredrick’s plea;
    “At times I thought so,” Nobody did agree,
    “But consciousness returned to set me straight,
    And mystery resumed its sovereignty.”

    “Did you understand Everything?” asked Fredrick.
    “Often I thought I did, but then I regained consciousness.”

    Then ChickenMan inquired with solemn face
    If cosmic eggs had marked primordial space;
    “Inconceivable!” Nobody declared,
    “Though in your query lies peculiar grace.”

    ChickenMan probed, “Were any chickens harmed during the making of your film? Also, did Mother Earth and Father Time produce the cosmic egg?”
    “Inconceivable, but I like your approach… now let’s see your departure.”

    “What’s reality?” Mkirkpatrick mused;
    “Much ado about nothing,” None refused.
    Then Clinton asked of Hillary’s great run—
    “Blame Macy’s sales,” Nobody’s words diffused.

    “Is your journey responsible for Hillary running for President?” asked Bill Clinton.
    “No, but there was a Presidents’ Day sale at Macy’s and men’s pants were half off.”

    “I’m cured now,” said Bill. “There is no relationship, depending on what the meaning of ‘is’ is. There is really no safe sex from aides. Also, I went to a self-help group for compulsive talkers; it’s called ‘On and On Anon’.”

    The Presidents debated dynasties,
    Of Bushes, Gores, and Chads’ uncertainties;
    “No politics!” cried Nobody at last,
    “Those blood-sucking insects bring no ease!”

    “Why are the two President Clintons always out beating the Bushes?” quizzed ElderBush of Bill.
    “Because Al tried to Gore you and lost to Chad, so I must run for First Gentleman to restore our dynasty over yours. Plus, one handy lady bird is worth two bushes anytime.”
    “Okay Presidents,” interjected Nobody, “no politics, a word that means many blood sucking insects. I’m still taking questions.”

    “The answers simple are,” Nobody taught,
    “Just yes and no and maybe interlock;
    To children all mean yes, but questions still
    Remain the harder part of human thought.”

    Of X-ray vision Graybeard did complain,
    “Now only bones appear!” he cried in pain;
    “Perhaps an airport job?” suggested None,
    “Where such a gift might yet some purpose gain.”

    Profpat posed riddle of two scholars’ fate:
    One versed in arts, one trained to calculate;
    Their paths crossed where french fries perfume the air—
    “Would you like fries?” sealed their unequal state.

    “What did the arts graduate say to the engineering graduate?” asked Profpat.
    “Would you like fries with your order, sir?”

    Two branches of the tree of learning fair,
    Two roads that led to meetings strange and rare;
    One builds the world while one serves up its food,
    In cosmic jest that neither planned to share.

    The engineering mind may draft its schemes,
    While arts explore the meaning of our dreams;
    Yet here they meet where hunger levels all,
    And wisdom’s not quite what it sometimes seems.

    Oh irony of education’s way,
    Where knowledge leads us down its paths astray;
    Some build the restaurants, some work within—
    While both still chase their bread from day to day.

    Of ancestors and trees they spoke at length,
    Of cheese that made the moon’s eternal strength;
    Of holy water boiled free from hell,
    And TV romance tested gravity’s length.

    “Did you meet any of your ancestor’s ancestors?” asked Graybeard.
    “I saw my family tree.”
    “What the heck!” wondered Graybeard out loud.
    “My great-ancestors descended from the trees.”
    “What is the moon made of?” asked Rascal.
    “Swiss cheese.”
    “But it’s all hard and crusty, although it does have holes.”
    “That’s what happens when you leave cheese out.”
    “How do you make holy water?” questioned Profpat.
    “You boil the hell out of it!”
    “What do you think about sex on TV?” wondered Lloyd.
    “It can’t hurt you unless you fall off. Now let’s get serious, folks. We’re all used to the new language features by now and the joke industry that they spawned.”

    In Time’s own garden, Nobody did spy
    The golden lights that danced across the sky;
    Where CARE sat marking shadows as they passed,
    And “now” became both answer and reply.

    “What did you see in the Garden of Time?” asked Mkirkpatrick.
    “There were glimmers and gleams and golden dappled lights like stars hovering and floating slowly about the scene, and a door that invited me into the inner sanctum of the night watchmen’s mainspring. There I found CARE, a gentle old man who sat silently by the sundial in Time’s Sanctuary and slowly marked the hours by the shadows that crept over the face of eternity. I asked him, ‘What time is it?’
    “And he answered to my surprise, ‘Do you mean now?’“
    “Yogi?” I asked.
    “No, Yogi is my distant relative, twice removed, but he kept coming back.”

    The riddle of the present moment stands:
    Eternal reward flows through time’s swift sands;
    Though never passing, always moving on—
    This paradox that no one understands.

    “Anyway, here is the riddle of now:“

    A moment contains eternal reward;
    Both past and future are rolled thereinward.
    Time never passes; it stays as it is;
    Still, it is ceaselessly moving onward.
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
  • On the existence of options in a deterministic world
    The realization of an object from the background — MoK

    BECOMING

    We humans mirror and recapitulate
    All of evolution while growing in our mother’s womb,
    Racing through the stages in which life evolved.

    During this nine months and even beyond that
    We move from mindlessness to shadowy awareness
    To consciousness of the world around us
    Onto consciousness of the self
    And then even to becoming conscious
    Of consciousness itself.

    For the first two and one-half years of life
    The inexplicable holistic world
    Is experienced less and less holistically
    As the child discovers the
    Bounds of discrete objects.

    Reveal
    The holistic right brain remains of course
    For us to take in the overall view,
    While the logical left brain is also there to recognize
    The detailed relationships between objects.

    As such, so goes the universe,
    Since we are formed in its image.
    So then this gives us a clue
    To the nature of the universe.

    Seeing that the brain is
    Divided into two hemispheres,
    Each with their own
    Characteristic mode of thought,
    Which can communicate with each other,
    Means that we are looking very deeply
    Into the way that reality itself is constructed.

    These two complimentary aspects
    To the cosmos are thus absolutely essential,
    One being of the whole:
    The apparently indivisible,
    Continuous fluid entity
    Although discrete at unnoticeable levels,
    The other being the interrelationships of the parts.

    Each interpretation may not appear
    At exactly the same time,
    But the Yin ever gives way to Yang
    And ever then back to Yin, and so on,
    The rounded life of the mind
    Thus continuing to fully roll,
    As the cycle of this symmetry
    Turns and returns;
    If not, one either gets totally lost
    In the details or prematurely halts
    After but an apparent whole.

    The holistic right brain mode is unfocused,
    As we see in some people
    Who are unconcerned with details,
    It always building the scene in parallel
    To form a single entity;
    Whereas, the focused left side of brain
    Isolates a target of interest and tracks it
    And its derivatives sequentially and serially.

    Yet the two sides of the overall brain
    Are connected to each other
    And so the speed of the juggling act
    Can meld them together
    Into a complete balance like that
    Portrayed by the revolving Yin-Yang symbol,
    Each ever receding and giving rise to the other
    Such does the universe go both ways too,
    Its separate parts implicated
    With everything else in the whole.

    During conscious observation
    The ‘hereness’ and ‘nowness’
    Of reality crystalizes and remains,
    We establishing what that reality is to some extent.

    We define and refine the nature of reality
    That leads to the mind’s outlook.

    Counterintuitive? Cyclical?

    Yes but it is the universe in dialog with itself;
    The wave functions and yet the function waves.

    The universe supplies the means of its own creation,
    Its possibilities supplying the avenues
    And the probability and workability
    That carve out the paths leading to success.

    So here we are, then and now,
    The rains of change falling everywhere,
    The streams being carved out,
    The water rising back up to the sky,
    The rain then falling everywhere,
    The streams recarving and meandering
    Toward more meaning and so on.
  • PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?
    Yes. That's the point of my Enformationism ontology. It accepts Plato's conjecture of ideal eternal Form*1, which I also posit as infinite Potential (all power). — Gnomon

    The Eternal knows no point where it begins,
    No gateway through which any design slips in;
    Thus must it be the All-in-All that flows
    As line by line or where all lines are twins.

    What has no start must stretch through every way,
    Through linear paths where moments mark their sway,
    Or simultaneous in timeless dance—
    For how else could the Boundless choose to play?

    When entry points are nowhere to be found,
    All possibilities must there abound:
    As flowing stream, the instant’s flash of light,
    The sequence, or the circle’s endless round.

    Without a threshold where its being starts,
    The Eternal must embrace all cosmic parts—
    As time’s long river flowing ever on,
    Or instant’s unity where difference parts.

    Imagine Form as boundless ocean deep,
    Where all potential does its secrets keep;
    Our measured world, a single droplet drawn
    From depths where countless possibilities sleep.

    This scrutinized reality we know
    Is but one pattern that the Forms bestow—
    A crystal lifted from infinite seas
    Of what could be, what might yet come to flow.

    The abyss of Forms holds every dream untold,
    Each possible shape that matter might unfold;
    While we perceive one manifestation clear,
    The endless pool holds mysteries yet to mold.

    From vastness of the possible sublime,
    We dredge one moment’s substance out of time;
    Yet still beneath our certainties there swirls
    The infinite from which all forms may climb.
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
  • What is faith
    Isn't faith reallying a doubting that accepts the state of doubt with hope? — Gregory

    For those who are honest, faith is a hope and a wish.
  • What is faith
    Could faith be irrational and unjustified beliefs? — Corvus

    Faith is a philosophy with all the questions left out.
  • PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?
    Doesn't the messenger also construct the message? The messenger is the message. — ENOAH

    The messenger carries the message, such as an mp3 player is a messenger implementation that conveys the message of music.
  • Ontology of Time
    if physical fields can be understood as the ground of existence, as physicalists intend, then what of the nature of awareness, consciousness or mind, understood as a qualitative field? — Wayfarer

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

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

    The ‘vacuum’ has to e’er jitter and sing,
    This Base Existent forced as something,
    Due to the nonexistence of ‘Nothing’;
    When 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.

    The fields overlap and some interact;
    So, there is one overall field as All,
    As the basis of all that is possible—
    Of energy’s base motion default.

    From the field points ever fluctuating,
    Quantum field waverings have to result
    From points e’er dragging on one another.
    Points are bits that may form ‘letter strokes’.

    As sums of harmonic oscillators,
    Fields can only form their elementaries
    At stable quanta energy levels;
    Other excitation levels are virtuals.

    Reveal
    From time’s shores toward oblivion’s worlds,
    The quantum ‘vacuum’ fields send forth their whirls,
    The sea parting into base discrete swirls,
    Unto stars and life—ephemerals pearled.

    Quantum fields’ Presence, through transient veins,
    Running Quicksilver-like, fuels our gains—
    Taking all the temporary shapes as
    They change and perish all—but It remains.

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

    At each level of organization
    Of temporaries in the universe,
    New capabilities become available,
    And so they take on a life of their own.

    The quantum vacuum field waves are the strokes
    That write the elementaries’ letters
    As the Cosmic alphabet for wording
    Of the elements and the forces that

    Phrase the molecules’ interactions
    Unto the cells’ sentences that make for
    The lives’ paragraphs of the species that
    Experience the uni-versed story,

    In a book from Babel’s Great Library:
    The epic tales of the temporaries,
    Their glorious triumphs and sad failures,
    Amid complexity’s unwinding spring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
    Which by showing unapprehended proof
    Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
    It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.
  • Ontology of Time
    waves — Metaphysician Undercover

    The two-slit experiment reveals the wave nature of field quanta like electrons and photons.
  • PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?
    The details of how that original distinction-between-something-and-nothing (creation) evolved into objective Brains with subjective Minds, is as yet unknown. — Gnomon

    We wonder about the implementation of mind and consciousness, and, while interesting, that is only about the nature of the messenger, the implementation; however, there is the message that the messenger brings to us.

    The potential for what we have now had to be there in the beginning.
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
  • PROCESS PHILOSOPHY : A metaphysics for our time?
    A lot comes from the notion of the fundamental unit of reality as “actual occasions, events or moments of experience). — prothero

    So they are already there, as fundamental, in the past, present, and future?
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
  • Re-Tuning the Cosmic DNA
  • Ontology of Time
    . . . excitation of the one universal field of subjectivity. — Wayfarer

    Isn't this a religious-like flaw of begging the question or an infinite regress?

    Our consciousness is Hard to understand, so we push it onto a Greater Consciousness as the experiential basis underlying reality, making it really HARD.

    Why presume the ultra complex as First when we can see the simplex as First and the more complex as coming later?
  • Logical Arguments for God Show a Lack of Faith; An Actual Factual Categorical Syllogism
    No. Rather, their faith would lead them to believe there's something wrong with the logical argument.

    @Wayfarer

    Example: William Lane Craig was asked a hypothetical: if he were taken back in time to the first century, and seen Jesus' body crucified, watched it rot for weeks on the cross and eaten as carrion, would he renounce his faith in the resurection. His response: no, he would assume he was being deceived because he "knows" Jesus was resurrected.

    This is what faith looks like.     — Relativist

    Some who cannot change their belief, no matter what, is a problem for cognitive science to delve into, but I would say:

    The belief is an emotional position, and emotions have a direct path into consciousness, sometimes firm and lasting, and at other times less so, bypassing rational logic.

    We can recall back when we didn't practice detachment how some anger would persist, as also it's rather late then to detach.

    The believer who can't be told a darn thing has possibly reached that point due to some brain wires so often firing together that they essentially wire together, and, there is no real logical introspection going on when their answer comes out.

    Same with their teaching or preaching of it as if it is true, as intellectual dishonesty, although they would probably deny that too. It's a sad quirk of human nature, so jail time is not an option.
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