Comments

  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    tree of life3017amen

    One tree of life for all creatures? That seems to be well known.

    designer universe3017amen

    That could be a thread that doesn't just ask a question but promotes a position.

    Fundy3017amen

    joke: Fundy - Fundamentals - Fun with da mentals.
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    atheism versus fundamentalism3017amen

    These are too easy targets, since each dishonestly claims truth for sure, 100%. To reclaim integrity, both would have to reduce to being agnostic.

    Perhaps just do a thread on the probability for 'God' or against, since that's all people have to work with who don't want to sit on a fence.

    logical strategic arguments3017amen

    Yes, this is what I mean, in depth and having some meat.
  • Omar Khayyam
    Making Game

    We are but chessmen, destined, it is plain,
    That great chess player, Heaven, to entertain;
    It moves us on life’s chess-board to and fro,
    And then in death’s dark box shuts up again.
    — Whinefield

    Whinefield was one of the more literal translators, although for his quatrain above there was more of a puppet motif in the original Arabic.

    There is a chalice made with wit profound,
    With tokens of the Maker’s favor crowned;
    Yet the world’s Potter takes his masterpiece,
    And dashes it to pieces on the ground!
    — Whinefield

    We have that destiny/time/fate, as Person-like, dressed in the usual mythic scapegoat form of ‘Allah’/‘God’/‘Potter’, although as then believed, creates from clay us puppet playthings for His entertainment on some Great Soap Opera Channel in the sky of Heaven.

    ‘God’, knowing all, has to write the scripts, obviating any notion of surprise, and then back into dust He dashes us precious stage actors, even though so much depth of design went into making us as chalices filled by Him with the living wine.

    Even if we dismiss the paradoxical ‘God Person’ idea as merely hoped for and completely unestablished (and His need for binge viewing of his own plays), the rest of the dilemma still presents itself, for in the real universe, there’s Birth/Death, perhaps since Energy, never still, ever transforms, spreads, and moves on, though not all at once, thankfully, for its doings and undoings are not precipitous but take Time in the slow unwinding of events and of the universe, yet still possibly in the mold of whatever will be will be.

    We will soon have a look at Energy’s decay in its quality progressing as constrained by patient Time.

    The wings of time are checkered black and white,
    As fluttering round the day flies the night.
    Like chess pieces we gamely fight for life,
    Until into the box we return, quite!
    — Austin

    FitzGerald suppressed his great quatrain below, it appearing only in the first edition:

    But leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
    The Quarrel of the Universe let be:
    And, in some corner of the Hubbub couch’d,
    Make Game of that which makes as much of Thee.

    rvjeifaaa2d0blv6.jpg
    (Sullivan colorized)
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    G’day, Bible Study Class

    We’ve located the Garden of Eden. It is now underwater, unfortunately, at the head of the Persian Gulf, near Bahrain. It was into this gulf that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers spilled their waters in antiquity. Nearby, the Karun River, which bears a similar name to the Bible’s Gihon River, flows southeast through Iran towards the Gulf. We discovered all this by using Google Earth.

    We have also located the Ark of the Covenant. It is in a secret chamber deep within the Temple Mount, underneath the present-day Dome of the Rock. It was hidden there by Jeremiah immediately before the Neo-Babylonian destruction of the Temple in 586 B.C. We are leaving it there since there may have been five more commandments than previously thought, and so we may have broken some of them.

    Tonight’s homework is to have a wild evening sitting around reading the Dead Sea Scrolls while drinking wine. Be prepared to act them out. See you tomorrow.
  • Would only an evil god blame his own creations for the taint therein -- of his poor craftsmanship?
    The 30 Commandments From the 3 Tablets

    1. Thou shalt have no strange gods or singing idols before Me, for I wilt be jealous of them. All of thous wert created and put on Earth solely to worship Me. I need it; I am insecure. I ever was what I am and so I just don’t get the scheme of it.

    2. Thou shalt not ever take the surname of thy Lord God Dammit in vain—damn all you swearers.

    3. Remember thou to keep holy the Sabbath Day, and thus not even lift up a finger or do wholly the laundry. Do not even press an elevator button.

    4. Humor thy father and thy mother—never tell them where you’ve been!

    5. Thou shalt not kill, like I do, except outlaws and in-laws.

    6. Thou shalt not admit adultery. Me, I only had sex once. Do not think of people naked, as like the way I made them.

    7. Thou shalt not steal, except for office supplies and sundries from restaurants.

    8. Thou shalt not bare falsies.

    9. Covet Heavenly bodies and make love to thy neighbor.

    10. Ever covet thy own ass—tie it to a tree, like Moses did.

    11. Do one to others before they can do one to you.

    12. I work in mysterious (crazy and insane) ways.

    13. Don’t try to walk on water except during a very cold winter.

    14. Fun is sin’s evil twin outside of the Sin-a-God.

    15. You can have free will, but only if it matches My will.

    16. Do not lie in court; let your lawyer do it for you!

    17. Thou shalt only one spouse—this is called monotony! More than one spouse is called spice.

    18. You are ever at fault for the sins of your ancestors. Luckily, I have no ancestors, nor any earliest memory.

    19. Tell Me how darn great I am—or be tortured and burned in Hell forever.

    20. I think I goofed—I made you in My own image!

    21. Heaven is a wild place—you can do whatever you want!

    22. You may commit horrible sins if you repent them.

    23. I fully expect children not to touch something when I tell them not to.

    24. I shall murder all mankind again anytime that I choose, but, not by flood, for I’ve promised not to, but by Earthquake!

    25. Preferential treatment is given to those who beg, grovel, and ask for favors to get ahead of others.

    26. I use My higher level intelligence to throw tantrums and have emotional outbursts!

    27. We have had the last supper—no more free meals.

    28. I crap on the just and the unjust alike.

    29. If someone kisses your ass, then turn the other cheek.

    30. I am in your heart—in your mind—and in your end.
  • Omar Khayyam
    Edward FitzGerald and Omar Khayam — Synergy, Revelation, Investigation, Beauty, and Depth

    Omar had the deep and grand ideas, but it was FitzGerald as a kindred soul and poet who dressed them in such fine clothes, attracting the world to them forever. The synergy of FitzOmar takes us far and away from the mundane, everyday, low-life, blah-blah, sit-com type renderings into the glorious reaches of deeper thinking about the Big Questions, as well as the good philosophical basic tenet of enjoying life, which I skip over herein, as pretty much known to be obvious.

    FitzGerald’s transmogrification of Omar is near unbelievable in its excellence, one of those rare poetic products that could go on for hundreds of years without equal. Shelley was close, in his poem, ‘Adonais’, as well as was Thomas Gray, earlier, in ‘An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard’.

    FitzGerald even discarded some quatrains because they were merely quite masterful instead of meeting the perfectly superb standard he had set for himself.

    All things, roll on “impotently”, by Omar. We are, as Shakespeare noted, but actors in a play, strutting and posturing. When were we ever responsible for how we were or are at given moment?

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

    What benefit to life then? I suggest it is Experience, which can be mostly a joy—with Omar’s love, drink, food, friends, adventure, romance, and feeling right up there, although transient, but ever of the glorious Now, and generally free of Shame and Blame, being in the Paradise of right here, plus we being just as organic as anything else in nature, and no more important, “willy-nilly blowing”.

    “Round which we Phantom Figures come and go” is about the noumena that our phenomena arise from as a kind of holographic phantasmagorial realm of the “Magic Shadow-show”. What lies behind is difficult to get at, but there has been some progress, at least as to the brain networks.

    “The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour’d/Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour” because, well, in short, it has to, all things happening over and over again for all Eternity. It’s deja vu all over again.

    “Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,/He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold” and the like is that, if one plays along with the myth, it is like that He thought of, planned, designed, and implemented humans and their nature, with an inherent wide-ranging spectrum of capacity for and from Good to Bad; but, in this myth-take ‘God’ bears no responsibility for His recipe expressing itself in just the way He all-knowingly wanted it to. Why His surprise and disappointment? Brave Omar knocks ‘god’ without fear.

    Often, though, big paradoxes mightily arrive when something is made up, and Omar is ever up to the task.

    When “You shall be You no more” and “And naked on the Air of Heaven ride”, and the like, it is perhaps that there not really a redundant soul ever living on, made of some invisible angelic vapour that duplicates and preserves you as your brain neuron network (which readily maintains what is already you just fine), in some essence of an already evolutionarily expensively formed brain.

    FitzOmar’s ‘quicksilver’ is either as the above or as wine coursing through, it getting mention in the series below.

    Would you that spangle of Existence spend
    About The Secret--quick about it, Friend!
    A Hair perhaps divides the False from True--
    And upon what, prithee, may life depend?

    A Hair perhaps divides the False and True;
    Yes; and a single Alif were the clue--
    Could you but find it--to the Treasure-house,
    And peradventure to The Master too;

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

    A moment guessed--then back behind the Fold
    Immerst of Darkness round the Drama roll'd
    Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,
    He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.

    Omar cites the limits to Knowing Everything as moving one toward a carpe diem centering in the now. He writes “…evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went”, “…But not the Master-knot of Human Fate”, and so forth.

    Not being able to know is the same dilemma facing his Impotent Great Wheel that has to do what it does.

    And so Omar unveils his basic human philosophy for our human condition, the central tenet being the primacy of the ‘Now’—over “Unborn To-morrow and dead Yesterday”.

    The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
    Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
    Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

    While the above probably refers to predestination by Allah, as made more explicit in other quatrains, it can also relate these days to more scientifically modern views as to how each moment arises in Time, in the Now, and then completely passes away, wholly replaced right then and there by the next Now, which process, or even ‘processing’, can’t be stopped, as like the deterministic chain “That none can slip, nor break, nor over-reach”.

    What you did long ago is done, dead, and gone, obviating any real shame and blame, but one must as well give up any fame, crediting it to Fate. Plus, indeed, can anyone really be held responsible for who/what they’ve come to be at any given moment from nature and nurture?

    While Omar rails against a predestination by ‘God’, it is for other, godless, reasons that determinism might still be much the way events have to be, but for some possible quantum level randomness (which damages the will, anyway, harming it, not helping it at all), as much as we somehow wish to think that our will can be free of itself or that we or any part of physical Nature can do the same to somehow be self-made entities as a mini first cause.

    Omar reveals that an ultimate basis without Origin, such as his causeless Great Wheel (standing in for the Eternal Basis), cannot even know its own reason for existence, and is powerless over its state, with no choice given to it for its being, it having to do just what it does and naught else, much as we may also have to admit to.

    “It rolls impotently on as Thou or I”, for it just ‘IS’, ever and eternal, without a beginning or end, and what never begins cannot have a certain direction, design, meaning, or purpose put to it in the first place that never was.

    Thanks to you both, FitzGerald and Omar, for the fun, as well as for attending to the serious task of pointing out the dubious and the deep.
  • Why time as a fourth dimension should've been obvious
    lost me there.TheMadFool

    I received your SOS; you are lost somewhere in time, around 1912. Alert: Do not board the Titanic!
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    God knows ( :smile: ) how many!Pattern-chaser

    So, to preserve integrity, both atheists and theists would have to become agnostic, meaning simply "I can't know for sure."

    Please come to our agnostic church; we show the way, maybe!

    or

    There is no God, maybe.

    Impacts are lessened.
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    I think we can safely state that we have found no evidence at all concerning the existence of God, and we know of no way in which such evidence might be obtained. We could teach that, for what it's worth, couldn't we?Pattern-chaser

    We could, but the believers might suggest that God and His realm are invisible, along with that God operates just as nature does, such that they can't be told apart, along with Genesis being just metaphorical, etc.
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    we're guessing, without basis in logic or fact.Pattern-chaser

    Yes, as there is no "for sure". Both churches and anti-churches can be called on their dishonesty of claiming truth. Pastor Lou, at the Vineyard Church in Hopewell Junction,NY, was once an atheist, then was eventually reborn as a theist. He made the same truth-claiming mistake twice!
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    You have failed to offer evidence (of a suitable standard) against God's existence. I have already freely asserted that I know of no evidence for God's existence.Pattern-chaser

    Each are "maybe's" and neither can be honestly be taught as true.

    If one doesn't want to sit on a fence, philosophical probabilities can be employed to estimate, based on self-contradiction, the only course available.
  • Why time as a fourth dimension should've been obvious
    Yes. Continue please...TheMadFool

    Presentism does not just amount to the assertion that only present events or entities exist, but also that the present undergoes a dynamical ‘updating’, or exhibits a quality as of a fleeting swoosh, and this additional dynamical aspect is what threatens the substance of the debate between the presentist and an eternalist opponent.

    In other words, what is going to exist or was existent, as the presentist must refer to as to be or has been is indicated as coming or going and is thus inherent in the totality of What IS, and so it has no true ‘nonexistence’, for this as Nothing cannot be. There is no contrast between a real future and an unreal future, for what is real or exists can't have an opposite to form a contrast class.
  • Why time as a fourth dimension should've been obvious
    I guess there were other elements to the puzzle that needed to fall in place before Einstein (1879 to 1955) and Minkowski (1864 to 1909) realized that time was the fourth dimension.TheMadFool

    And, afterward, from them, the preferred mode of time became to be the block universe of eternalism, in which past and future both exist, this opposing our naturally perceived notion of presentism, in which there are only nows passing by, with the future not yet and the past not kept, but, really, we can't tell presentism from eternalism, for their message to us is the same.

    To survive as a theory, presentism needs a respite from Einstein’s seemingly unavoidable besieging relativity of simultaneity, since in presentism it is 'now' everywhere.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    Revelations is certainly later than Genesis, but where did the Revelation author get the basic idea of snakes not being reliable advisors (I don't know, I'm asking).Bitter Crank

    St. John the Divine had a kind of a pipe-dream while in prison. Not all religions accept the Book of Revelation. 666ers so marked couldn't merely be killed right away, as that was too easy on them; they had to be tortured for a long time.
  • What is the difference between actual infinity and potential infinity?
    In symbolic terms it seems the difference between them is just the presence/absence of the curly braces, } and {.TheMadFool

    Actual infinity is not possible; there could always be more. Infinite is not an amount or an extent completed or capped, as extant, as that can't happen.
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    nymphsArtemis

    Darn; I was hoping to meet one!

    Wee can nearly presume that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, but for a Deity who foresaw and designed it all from scratch by throwing the right stuff in the right amounts together, as nature might have arrived at, too, although He seemingly not able to just do it all instantly. He, as a the greatest scientist, would be the ultimate; just look at His world—well, there are some problems, but overall a job well done. I wonder how He happened to be just sitting around, as First and Fundamental, yet fully intact as a system of mind and emotion and personhood.
  • Why are there so many balances in Nature?
    for many of those, if they were not in balance, then there would be instability.jajsfaye

    So here we are.

    Why is Earth for human life near perfect,
    But billions of other worlds so unfit?
    Well if this world wasn’t right for life, then
    We wouldn’t be here to ask about it!
  • Why are there so many balances in Nature?
    deviations from the same center in different balancing directionsrlclauer

    Pretty good analysis, I'd say.
  • Why are there so many balances in Nature?
    no particular reasonsAlan

    The no particulars as no specifics to the Fundamental First that can't have any may well be why balances have to result. Everything leaks, though, it seems, and so some of the balances tilt, I guess.
  • I don't think there's free will
    I have yet to see an example of myself or anyone willingly choose to do something other than what you most want to do at that moment.jajsfaye

    Yes, and somebody suggested that we always want what we will, since it reflects us and our wants, but we cannot will the will to be other than it is at the moment; but of course learning can change the fixed will to a new and wider fixed will.
  • Is god a coward? Why does god fear to show himself?
    So I won't be surprised if one day a Jeff Bezos or a Donald Trump buys gravity or quantum physics. They just need to get the price right.TheMadFool

    Trump wanted to buy Greenland for its resources, much like Alaska was bought, but… a new joke forms… Trump, claiming no global warming, still wanted to corner the market on ice, much as the late 18th capitalists monopolized railroads, steel, and oil, but when Trump went to see Greenland, it was all green and had no more ice!
  • Is god a coward? Why does god fear to show himself?

    Trump is not unlike the strict Master controller, and many republicans are fundamentalists.
  • Sin, will, and theism
    So it seems we can know that classical theism is falseGregory

    Well, at least that the classical 'God' is unlikely, due to self-contradictions. It's hard to sit on a fence, so we would like to know, but all we have is probability to go on.
  • Is Jesus a human being or is a human being a Jesus?
    1. Jesus is a human being
    2. A human being is Jesus
    TheMadFool

    Well, we could cite what the Romans, the Greek, and the Jewish believed at the time, or the disciples and followers, and was people believed 300 years later when Christianity flourished; however, what people go for, whether in one's own belief's favor now, or not, can't be trusted.
  • Can something exist by itself?
    model regularities3017amen

    Math is very amenable to regularities.

    I suppose math became of numbers of things and then went toward the relations of things. Early on, we may have had words for one, two, and a few, but then maybe '4' and more were invented so would say how many stones or sheep we had.
  • Continuity of Consciousness
    This premise does not rely on a many worlds interpretation, but instead on a 'resonance' across spatially and temporally disconnected spaces. This resonance is a product of, given the 2 assumptions, all possible states being realized an infinite number of times.JosephS

    The 'resonance' wouldn't be there since there is probably no kept history of the universe; however, all eventualities should still repeat, in their turn, even exactly you if the quantum resolution was fine enough. In this way, the universe is kind of its own history.

    There's no 'infinite' amount or extent that can be capped or completed, but potentially the repeats should keep on going, with the universe being finite. Though, as in the expansion of pi goes on forever, it is probably not exhaustive.
  • Omar Khayyam
    (1. 10 q1-9)

    10
    — Other Works —
    کارهای دیگر

    Nizam al-Mulk invited me to Isfahan,
    To opulent palaces, the imperial court.
    I read the rich libraries of the Seljuqs,
    Which offered Euclid and many treasures.

    I worked on the new calendar for Sanjar,
    In an astronomical observatory.
    The Sultan wanted the first day as Spring,
    So I spread the extra days far and wide.

    The Persian New Year of Nowrýz is based
    On an actual astronomical criterion,
    The sun entering the astronomical sign
    Of Aries at the vernal equinox.

    This brilliant method guarantees keeping
    Nowrýz at the vernal equinox forever.

    15 days were added every 62 years,
    The length of a year being 365.241935 days,
    And for every 5000 years,
    The calendar has to be adjusted by one day.

    The years 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28,
    And 33 became leap years of 366 days
    With the average year being 365.2424 days.

    I wrote several treatises:

    Sultan Sanjar had me back to stay at the court.
    I worked the division of a quadrant of a circle,
    And refuted doubt concerning parallels,
    And in algebra related the conic geometry.

    On the deception of knowing
    The two quantities of gold and silver
    In a compound made of the two…

    On music theory, of mathematical relationship
    Among notes, minor, major, and tetrachords.

    Made references to the views of Farabi and Avicenna
    To offer a reclassification of musical scales.

    (1. 10 q10-21)

    A discussion regarding the relationships
    Among time, motion, and God,
    Which ends with an Avicennian discussion
    On incorporeal substances, celestial spheres
    And their relationship to angels.

    The essence of The Necessary is One
    In all aspects and in no case can there
    Be multiplicity except in abstraction,
    In which case its number can reach infinity.

    The essence for which multiplicity
    In abstraction is conceived does not become multiple.
    All of the attributes of the Necessary Being
    Are abstract and none of them contains any existence.

    Good Has to Include Evil as its Opposite:

    If one were to conduct a good versus evil
    ‘Cost-benefit analysis,’
    The good far exceeds the evil.

    The ratio between the goodness that darkness brings
    To the evil it causes exceeds that of one to a million,

    And in accordance with wisdom in the world,
    There is very little evil
    That is qualitatively or Quantitatively
    Comparable with good.

    In my major philosophical work,
    On Being and Necessity:
    ‘Avoiding a great amount of good
    Due to the necessity of having little evil
    Is itself a great deal of evil.’

    Why is there something rather than nothing?

    Being is better than non-being,
    The very gift of existence is ontologically good
    And the world has been created for a good purpose.

    The question of ‘being’ and ‘necessity’
    Are among the most
    Perplexing philosophical questions.

    First ontological questions are concerned with
    ‘What is.’

    (1. 10 q22-38)

    Second, the question concerning
    ‘What is it?’

    Which pertains to the substance
    Or essence of a thing;

    Third,
    ‘Why is it?’

    This last question seeks
    To determine the cause of a thing.

    On the necessity of contradiction in the world,
    Determinism and subsistence.

    On the relationship between
    Existent beings and existence,
    The accidental relationship between them
    And whether either of them
    Exist by their own necessity.

    On the knowledge of the universal principles
    Of existence the universals of knowledge.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    Without sin, our evolution would end and we would go extinct.Gnostic Christian Bishop

    Yes, and although it's not pretty, we survived not in spite of our violence but because of it!

    Even some of our cooperation became due to its necessity to help in the hunt, whether of animals or enemy tribes.
  • The basics of free will
    But it’s where we ‘determine the best course of action’ that I think we’re falling well short of our potential.Possibility

    Practice, practice, practice, for those with the will, along with some pausing, which allows for more creative solutions to appear, in lieu of reactiveness clobbering their space.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    I agree, but too many philosophers engage in extraneous double speak. They figure the more words one uses, the more important they may look & feel.3017amen

    We can leave 'they' to be 'them'. In my posts of prose or poems, I aim to be concise and precise, trying to fill every vein with ore, putting some meat into them.

    Hey, would that happen to be one interpretation known as original sin ?3017amen

    Original sin is more like an innate tendency in human design rather than useless philosophical babbling due to poor definitions or whatnot.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    unequivocally3017amen

    def: in a way that leaves no doubt

    So, it is still slipping in that it is true for sure.

    It is that for yourself only there is no doubt and it is 100% for sure, as your own experience, which is fine, as then you are not being even close to being mistaken by any listeners as you teaching truth and fact for all.

    Yes, preachers always having to say 'maybe' won't make as many converts.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    And please save us from a bunch of political double speak.3017amen

    Not a useful leading supposition that well promotes continuing communication, but demotes.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    belief3017amen

    Yes, I am suggesting that one admits up front that it is a belief for one's self rather than to proclaim it as as so as a truth for all. It's fine and honest to just say, "I don't know", as you suggested previously.

    Or more specifically, the belief in Jesus is both a Subjective and Objective truth. Is that a true statement?

    Or how about this (phenomenology); I had a religious experience yesterday. Is that a true or false statement?
    3017amen

    No one knows. Saying true or false to unknowable unshowables is not honest.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    I can unequivocally state, but not prove to you3017amen

    Halfway to honesty, but better not to imply that there is no doubt as in that the truth is for sure. A 'maybe' would be best.

    There was a Big Bang. (not honest)

    Maybe there was a Big Bang, because everything is moving outward, but we cannot see anything before 380,000 years because all was opaque.

    Yes, I know, for invisible realms it really gets tougher, as the "maybe's" have even less support than the science example above..
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    The Bible was inspired by God but it's a human construct right?3017amen

    One cannot honestly preach or teach as truth what isn't known for sure, plus the divine inspiration behind Genesis is just plain wrong, as Genesis is even the polar opposite of what was found.

    While true the Saviour is here for redemption purposes subsequent to the fall, it doesn't explain the initial judgement that we were supposedly born into.3017amen

    Same for "Saviour" being truth and fact as being divine.

    “The preachers claim ‘perhaps’ as fact and truth.”

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

    Or say 'maybe' or 'perhaps' or 'I hope' or 'I wish' instead of that it is truth and fact for sure for all. Or 'faith', which even the churches use as an honest word, but, then, of course, go beyond it to claim truth in practice, right and left. Yeah, I know, they want what they want and they want all to do the same, yet there may be children or unsuspecting adults present.
  • Would only an evil god blame his own creations for the taint therein -- of his poor craftsmanship?
    the contempt they feel for those who believeT Clark

    There is but compassion for those who are stuck, those who have to misleadingly teach "maybe's" as truth, as well as anyone who is stuck, such as those ever running into life's wall and getting thrown back into prison or just in general always having to cause trouble. It's not their fault that their will became what it is, compounded by an inability to learn; one is never responsible for how one turned out. Some people are reachable and some aren't. Some teach their belief out of rote or out of fear, who knows. Lately, there is more opposition, such as many more books on the subject, which may impress the fence sitters, although perhaps not the severely indoctrinated.
  • Why are there so many balances in Nature?
    There are now a billion photons for every proton, indicating 10**9 annihilations early on. Somehow the rest of the pairs rapidly moved apart from their partners, going to who knows where. Perhaps this supports the inflation theory.PoeticUniverse

    INFLATION THEORY

    Inflation was so rapid that the particles in pairs
    Of the always temporarily emitted virtuals there
    Were forced to become separated from one another,
    With some then to remain as enduring rather.

    There was no place special in time
    Nor properties of reason and rhyme.


    Our beloved quantum fluctuations
    Left their imprint all over creation—
    The signature of their emanations
    Written in the CMBR’s variations—

    A magnifying glass upon their revelations,
    As well as in the capitals of matter congregations
    Of galaxies, nebulae, and other condensations.

    What underwrote this glorious expansion
    From such a humble state to a big time mansion?


    It’s called inflation.

    Perhaps there are many such bubbles blown—
    All but one of these pocket universes unknown.

    Where did all this energy come from
    To amount to this astronomical sum?


    It comes from the gravitational field.

    Our universe did not begin with this yield
    Already stored in the gravitational field;
    But, rather, the gravitational field can supply
    The energy because its energy found
    Can become negative without bound.

    As more and more positive energy materializes
    The forms of ever growing region sizes,
    Filled with a high energy scalar field, arise,

    As more and more negative energy materializes
    In the form of expanding regions wielded
    That are filled with a gravitational field.

    There is nothing known that can place a border
    On the amount of inflation that can occur
    While the total energy remains exactly zero…
    Why does this “zero” ever become the hero?
  • Would only an evil god blame his own creations for the taint therein -- of his poor craftsmanship?
    The Hand of the Potter Shakes:

    At the crossroads of His human experiment,
    God wondered where the human nature went:
    “Damn! I formulated it so perfectly in the lab,
    So why did it not turn out exceedingly fab?

    “Adam and Eve failed in the blink of an eye,
    So I sent Commandments down from the sky,
    But ever did humans build the golden calves
    Diminishing my needed adoration into halves.

    “So I killed all experiments but Noah’s sake,
    For they were all a big rainbow of My mistake;
    I right the human course yet once again to sail
    Into those waters where it can not ever fail.

    “What’s this, I see that all again has gone amiss;
    I’ll have Jesus preach the other check to kiss.
    Human nature failed for sure; they put him to death;
    I must check my formulas once again to save the rest.

    “I will send more prophets to shake the mixture up;
    Oh, no, this life cast they still crash; I must give up!”
  • Topic title
    Determinism does not entail incorrigibility. You become a different "you" when you learn something. A person can learn from his mistakes; he can learn that there are consequences. He can even learn to think more rationally, or coping skills for anger management.Relativist

    :up:
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    there could be no rational moral justification for such punishment, there could only be practical justification.Janus

    The protection of society would be moral, making the lock-up necessary for other than punishment, although somewhat 'punishing', hoping for learning.

PoeticUniverse

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