Chance vs Divinity

[austintorn@aol.com]

Oh boy, another case of having one scheme for the relatively simple and none for the massively complex.

Creation vs Evolution, George Wald

He just stops at 'God', answering nothing but posing a larger question to which he should follow his own logic and say say that no amount of rolls of dice or flipping of coins could make God.

These people are really removed from reality, conflating it with false math. As I showed, there is not one single organism gambling on chances all in an instant row, but many such organisms available as stable platforms in between events.

As for a Deity…

T h e D e i t y

Another God appeared, a mere Deity,
(Meaning no intervention, so He’s not a Theity),
And thusly said, “Forget the Theity solution.
I am the Smart God that seeded Evolution.

It was I that set the whole universal notion
And all of life’s evolution into motion;
That was My elegant and foreseeing way
Of creating the kind of life that would stay.”

“I thought You were all powerful;
Why not just make 20-40 million species
All fully formed, as immutable as Thee,
Along with their usable natural habitats,
For this is how most Gods would do it?
What energy loss could that be to You?
Your infinity could all this in an instant do.”

“I’m not so Great, plus, since Evolution is too stable
For some creationists to scoff at, as a fable,
They have assigned the job to Me, the Creator,
As all of Nature’s natural Instigator,
Because, they must take retreat from the first ID God
Who zooms souls into humans at birth—it’s so odd.
So, now I am not a Theity any more of proof
And thus I must ever remain aloof.

Of course now I have very little to do
And so I am not much needed, true,
For I can’t even muddle with their lives;
They are all stuck now with their wives.

I might really just as well retire,
For I am superfluous and tired.”

“Well, You’re still kind of close to our Universe,
Not completely outside it, maybe, the place the worst,
As I suppose your successor will have to be placed,
Absolutely, totally invisible to the human race.

“At least You made some
Basic primordial substance
And foresaw the billion years
Of combinatorial chance,
Predicting every turn,
Or at least knowing that something neat
Might probably come out of it,
Which was still quite a feat.”

“Thank you, but it was nothing.”

“On the contrary—
I say verily—
You’re the Super Scientist,
An Engineer Par Excellance—
The Ultimate Inventor of All Time—
Much better than than the old God of ID.”

“Yes, I am a Scientist, making all that’s real—
I HAD to be, but it was really no big deal.”

“You’re too modest.”

“It was just some little quarks
And some electrons that I sparked
And some forces that arose
As reality was composed.”

“But look what became of its simplicity—
Through its stages to astounding complexity
Over billions of years of circumstances;
We’ve traced the composites back to simple substances.”

“Well, um, it did really take that long for My intention,
By some coincidence the same as that for evolution;
However, I guess I’m just as surprised as you, frown,
That when some examine substance and get down
To these simple subatomic levels of unadorned things,
That they then take a giant leap back, of all things,
To the composite complexity of Me, the Ultimate.

“Isn’t complexity a much higher product
Of combination upon combination,
And thus not lower than simplicity itself?”

“Yes, it would seem so; that’s a near empty shelf.”

Then I suppose You’re some Great Alien Scientist, odd,
Highly evolved from somewhere else, but not really God.”

“True, and you, Austin, as a scientist,
Should seek what underlies the all,
Not some Great Complexity who oversees it,
For that’s for what the theory calls.”

“Wise thoughts.”

“The best that can’t be bought.”

“Well, whatever on the alien thing of it,
But the creationists are not keen on scientists,
For scientists regard the honest seeking after truth
As as supreme virtue beyond all reproof.

If they ever found out…”

“Yikes, they know not what they have made Me.
As a Scientist Myself, I truly value honesty
And skepticism over the dishonestly faked beliefs,
Those that only seem to bring Rolaid’s relief.”

“The Founding Fathers of America liked You,
Although some of them, as Thomas Jefferson, too,
Were outright non theists, many seeing You as a Deity
Who just started things up,
Never interfering with reality.”

“Funny how President Bush’s America sings,
Straying so oppositely from its humble beginnings.”

“Not to mention that some the world’s peoples, really,
Are squandering their precious time
Worshiping a Theity,
And sacrificing to Him,
Begging, fighting,
And dying for Him,
Even threatening the world
With its destruction.”

“What a waste.”

“Are you real?”

“No, I am but a figment of imagination, see,
But some really do like harmless old Me.”

“So, what’s really fundamental?”

“The real fundamentals, just below
What you now call ‘fundamentality’,
Have always existed—the quantum reality.”

“There’s perhaps no time of ‘forever’
At that level for Your ‘always’ ever.”

“True, they just are, and had to be—the possible,
For a state of absolute nothing is indeed impossible.”

[God once became very angry
At His own lack of foresight,
A base emotion of His own invention.
The harshest punishments of all time
Led to all of the gruesome events
Of existence portrayed in the Old Testament,
Rather a waste, for man’s past and future sins
Were soon redeemed in the New Testament
By God’s Son, Jesus, conceived of a virgin.]

[austintorn@aol.com]

In his book “God after Darwin” theologian John Haught made a compelling case that Darwin’s theory far from ruling a God out, gives us insight into an intelligence that pours its creative essence into the universe and gives it free rein to go and make things happen. Rather than pulling puppet strings, this deity voluntarily relinquishes control to its creatures so that new and autonomous things may arise. This enhances creation by bringing forth the unplanned, the unscripted, the random and the other that flows naturally from this act. Haught argues that, in creating the universe, God deliberately relinquishes omnipotence over this realm so as not to interfere with the free will of creation’s beings. The universe is thus invited to participate in its own crafting. This ongoing participatory act of creation is in fact the ultimate expression of God’s love.—Bernard Haisch-Astrophysicist—The God Theory

Haught writes….

“Love by its very nature cannot compel, and so any God whose very essence is love should not be expected to overwhelm the world either with a coercively directed power or an annihilating presence. Indeed an infinite love must in some ways absent or restrain itself, precisely in order to give the world the space in which to become something distinct from the creative love that constitutes it as other. We should anticipate therefore, that any universe rooted in an unbounded love would have some features that appear to us as random and undirected.”

I thought this was quite beautiful so wanted to share it with you Rascal….smiles….


Regards Mikal

Nice idea, but now Haught has God as a person having an emotional system (whose components, I suppose, unless supported by magic, would be less fundamental than the higher system).

Gee (and "gosh'), I wonder where this humanized idea came from?

It's just more subjective nonsense.

The God of the Agnostics

I came next upon a God sitting on a high fence
And waved to Him, saying
“Come down and talk the whence.”

“I can’t; I am stuck here, but Salutations to you.
I am the God of Agnosticism, one neither false nor true.
None of the agnostics know if I exist or not,
So here I must stay put a lot,
Along with the Tooth Fairy,
Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny,
Just in case we all might exist or not,
As a quadzillion-to-one shot.”

“Why can’t agnostics make up their minds?”

“My followers cannot even make or see
Probability judgments about the question of Me.
This is the limitation of agnosticism,
Perhaps the error of no consideration
Of the likelihood of that for which evidence seeable
Is not even the least bit conceivable.”

“It is a fallacy; what I call the poverty of agnosticism,
Because, although being agnostic is reasonable criticism
For some things, such as whether life exists elsewhere,
It is not appropriate for those things undoable
for which the idea of evidence is not even applicable;
However, actually, we can actually still talk
About the probability of the event,
While even going for a walk.

“The true fallacy, however,
Is that the existence ever
And the nonexistence of You never
Are not even on an even footing to begin with.
The two are not at all equiprobable cases.

“The burden of proof lies with the believers,
For anything that we can conceive of
Can be claimed to exist, as that we love,
Such as ghosts, spirits, and such forth.
Are we then to straddle a fence that has no worth?

“And, never seen. So, then, at the end of the day,
Probability creeps into the beliefs of the agnostic way,
For in practice they end up in the lurch,
Not going ‘half the time’ to Church,
But mostly deciding not to go at all.”

“Yes, they still decide that which is ‘undecidable’,
For the fence is very uncomfortable
And so, then, the superposition
Decoheres into the inclination
Of non belief—until right here
The Extraordinary’s evidence appears.”

He came down off the fence,
For he couldn’t exist and not exist at the same time.
I continued on through the undulating hills.

(We can refer to the fence sitters as non theists,
In order to get away from labels like ‘agnostic’
Which might imply that the probability of thinking
God, or not, is on some kind of equal footing;
Plus, that the fence sitters don’t really stay
On the uncomfortable fence but usually…

Go one way or the other way
In life’s practice of the everyday,
Although some might go to church
On alternating Sundays.

In between,
Perhaps they go on wild picnics with their sweetie
And drink wine and do all that ‘bad’ stuff
That we can’t say here while waiting for some
Extraordinary evidence to appear.

I will soon have a talk with old Jehovah Yahweh’s Thee.
He’s not so terrible as many have made Him up to be,
But then again He’s not so great either—He’s quite off,
Just another poor middle manager
Caught up in the layoffs.

I spoke to the Deity
The God who doesn’t ever interfere
In the running of the universe.
The Pope doesn’t know it here,
But a Deity is what he’s
Leaning toward when he says, then,
That evolution is acceptable now
For Catholics to believe in (no mind).
The Deity Guy was actually
Kind of a great scientist.

I already met with
The Creationist’s ID God(s),
Who, while still a Designer,
Is, well, not so cool at all, either,
For He gets back to what
The Fundamentalists believe,
And neither, they would say,
Did evolution happen,
Or, if it did ever function,
God constantly stepped in
To rectify its direction.

I haven’t really begun
To scratch the surface of all the Gods,
Though, for so many lie now beneath the sod.

I’m only interested
In the person-type Gods
Of monotheism,
And I’m hardly even
Getting through those variant theisms
That fight amongst themselves
Over Jesus’ divinity,
Or if there is a Hell,
Or a Devil and some Angels about thee,
And over so many more
And other major differences, totally.

Then there are the multiple Gods,
Now up in the millions,
And also the many
Gods-who-are-not-persons,
Plus the TAO, the Consciousness
And some way-out Ones.

There are also hundreds of long gone, ‘sure thing’ Gods,
Which I needn’t get into, except to wonder, and say:
Is that how the future will look at our Gods of today.

I can also skip the many weird offshoots that persist,
Like those saying that the self is not allowed to exist,
Even calling it the ‘ego’ to make it seem so much worse;
I don’t have time for these and other cult-level verse.)

[SteveA]

He just stops at 'God', answering nothing but posing a larger question to which he should follow his own logic and say say that no amount of rolls of dice or flipping of coins could make God.

I think the issue is one of what those dice are. What properties are being selected from and how is that selection being made etc.?

I don't think complexity evolves from simplicity but that the complexity needs to already exist and from there we can squint our eyes and make it look simple.

(For example - space appears empty, but there are properties we experience that allow space to appear to possess a large expanse - you can't really separate the two and when we try to determine what properties "empty" space has, wow, there's an energetic influence involved)

If all the dice could roll were numbers 1 to 6, then you'll never see a 7. It takes properties that those individually do not possess to get anything more (the ability to see more than a single die involved already implies the existence of this).

And if they rolled "randomly", then how are the resulted connected together in any non-random ways and stops them from continually rolling (or at least slowing)?

Notice that something perceived as random can also be something that is not random, but its influences have just not been noticed yet.

the Smart God that seeded Evolution

Why should a "smart" one have to rely upon evolution? ... unless that was the intent, though I don't understand how a really top-of-the-food-chance version (basically anything we could describe as something with a specific form) could even "do" evolution as it seems a paradox to become anything else/more/different etc. if it's already 'all'.

I think the top-level version would actually do nothing at all except be or allow everything. Time selects a subset of this and is individual and can allow growth etc.

But then again, there's really nothing saying any of it has to be logical either, though in that case I don't think discussions are going to provide any further insight.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Why should a "smart" one have to rely upon evolution? —Steve

Yes, and it is asked in the essay.

If I were God I sure wouldn't just let evolution alone go off on its own, it possibly turning to crap…

Anyway, time to deal with "God" as known and "revealed"…

The God of the Old Testament

Of all my rotten luck, The God of the Old Testament
Appeared and proclaimed, “I am Yahweh, never absent,
For, those schooled from infancy in My strange ways
Have become desensitized to MY horrific side
And so they continue to keep Me very much alive
Through their thoughts; so, Fire away at Me;
I no longer bite that hard, you see.”

“You’re too easy of a target to attack for free—
So it would be rather unfair of me.”

“True, and I won’t deny it—
It’s all there in the Testament.
I was the most unpleasant character
That anyone ever made up in literary fiction.

“I was revealed to be jealous and proud of it,
Petty, unjust, controlling, vindictive,
An ethic cleanser, genocidal, infanticidal,
Filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal,
Homophobic, misogynistic, sadomasochistic,
And much more, and a Bully—who gave it
Free will only if it matched My own Will.”

“Peace be with you.
How about the New Testament
To replace and hide Your scent,
As many religions have already
Done through Jesus sent?”

“Yes, that Testament is quite opposite in tone,
But I am still the Father of Jesus sown,
So, the problem of Me can never really go away.
I am what I was, still here unto the present day.”

“Well, so long. You’re the worst role model, yet,
That human mammals have ever dreamed up.
Who would imitate, emulate, or follow You as a ‘leader’?”

“Well, My followers are those numerous slaves
Who excuse my mysterious [insane] ways,
Along with my exclusive desert tribe.”

“Well, You’re the Boss, and, anyway,
Who ever said that a God had to be perfect and good?”

“Everyone that I told—and those who thought I should.”

“Oh well, never mind; whatever pleases.
So, um, Joseph was not
The biological father of Jesus?”

“No, I was.”

“So Jesus didn’t really descend from David?”

“That was on his mother’s side.”

“Well, my ancestors descended from the trees.
Hey, why don’t Catholics get the 72 virgins
That Islam gives for martyrdom for their sins?”

“I told each religious faith a different story.”

“You also gave a bible half-different
To the Mormon founder,
Joseph Smith, finely engraved
On golden plates he discovered?”

“Sure. I thought at the time ‘why not’.”

“You had Islam add different things
To their Koran, as well?”

“Yes of the many more ways to avoid Hell.”

“And You told only the Catholics
That there were umpteen levels of angels
And that bread was your body
And that wine was your blood?”

“Yep, I told just them and a few other selves,
But they made up the Saints themselves.”

“And You presented differing visions
To the Lutherans,
The Episcopals, and the Jewish,
And to many other also-rans?”

“Pretty much, except that a King of England
Founded the Episcopals—the Anglicans, of course,
Since his own religion wouldn’t give him a divorce.”

“And you killed everyone but Noah
And his family in the Great Flood, wet,
Even young children and their pets?”

“Sure, again, why not? Life is cheap.
However, My creation of the rainbow
Says that I’ll never be so cruel again.
What can I say—I goofed. My sin.”

“But You are infallible, and even omniscient
And so You know all of the future meant.”

“My omnipotence of changing my mind got in the way.”

“But your omniscience knew you would… one day.”

“Yeah, I know—it’s a paradox; oh, the strife.
And I can still technically end all life
By means other than a flood.”

“You burned people in Hell, not saved,
When they didn’t follow
The unfree will that you gave?”

“Yes, because I was not a loving God.”

“Well. God, who made You?”
“No problem—either I was Eternal or I made Myself be”

“This is remarkably the same, but for Thee,
As the Universal ingredients would be.”

“Then who would need me—wait,
I don’t want the answer told.”

“Is the Earth only about 4000 years old?”

“Of course not, but I may have let that slip to some
To tease their intelligence apart from being dumb.”

“Do you mind-read
The thoughts of every human,
Using all of your acumen,
And write the earthly script
For each event,
Being so omnipresent?”

“I tried that, at first, but it didn’t work for Me
To put my finger on every atom that be
And micromanage its doings for all of thee.”

“That’s called ‘God’s Will’, by some, even now.
What went wrong? Was it the where and how?”

“It disrupted the atoms’ normal and natural movements.”

“And that’s what caused the storms unfocused,
The lightning bolts, and the plagues of locusts?”

“Yes, so I stopped making such a mess of things.”

“So, the prayers of six million Jews, pleaded,
In the holocaust, went all unheeded?”

“Yes, plus I have better things to do, in time,
My sooth,
Than look after some old experiment of Mine
From my misspent youth.”

“Did you really make Adam and Eve
And all of Earth and Nature, as we believe?”

“Yes, I made Nature,
Including the humans,
In My image.”

“It shows in their rage.”

“Thank you.”

“God, it’s ID deja-vu all over again—
I really have to move on.”

“No, wait. I like your questions.
I’m mellower now, this being My new direction.
Not as many strictly admit to Me anymore.”

“How come so many of the gospels were omitted
From the New Catholic Testament,
Like those of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus,
Philip, Bartholomew, and more,
As well as whole books kept from us,
Although You told some other religions to keep them,
Such as the Book of Revelations?”

“Those gospels were embarrassing and wild;
They told about My Son doing magic tricks
And practical jokes on people when He was a child.”

“Oh, we never heard much about his youth.
And didn’t You send the Mormans proof
That Jesus spent an early era
In what was to become America?”

“Probably.”

“What about the trillions of galaxies in the sky?”

“They’re just for show and scenery on high.”

“Where’s all your rantings and ravings
That I’ve heard about?”

“I now take Prozac for My mood swings and bouts.”

“You don’t really exist, do You, as mental,
For how could You have an emotional system—
A composite—and still be absolute and fundamental?”

“No, I don’t exist, for how could I since I am so horrible?
Human mammals made all of Me up
As a very bad example,
As it turned out, from their many fears
In the childhood of their species’ years.
Unfortunately, it caught on to their children’s ears.”

“So, yet You still subsist
In this indefinite locus of wishes?”

“Yes, sort of.
I am sustained here since many children
Have learned to obey and listen
To what is/was told to them,
For this obeying was an
Evolutionarily useful thing,
As many of their obedience
Resulted from warnings of things
That were truly dangerous,
And so the children grew up
To indoctrinate their own children
In all the ‘knowledge’.”

“We’ll have to offer more reason
To those so indoctrinated.
Now farewell to You, the impersonated.”

“See you. Pay no attention to Me as certain,
But to all those blinded by the curtain.”

He soon dozed off into never land.

[Mikal]

Nice idea, but now Haught has God as a person having an emotional system (whose components, I suppose, unless supported by magic, would be less fundamental than the higher system).

Gee (and "gosh'), I wonder where this humanized idea came from?

It's just more subjective nonsense.

The God of the Agnostics

I came next upon a God sitting on a high fence
And waved to Him, saying
“Come down and talk the whence.”

“I can’t; I am stuck here, but Salutations to you.
I am the God of Agnosticism, one neither false nor true.
None of the agnostics know if I exist or not,
So here I must stay put a lot,
Along with the Tooth Fairy,
Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny,
Just in case we all might exist or not,
As a quadzillion-to-one shot.”

“Why can’t agnostics make up their minds?”

“My followers cannot even make or see
Probability judgments about the question of Me.
This is the limitation of agnosticism,
Perhaps the error of no consideration
Of the likelihood of that for which evidence seeable
Is not even the least bit conceivable.”

“It is a fallacy; what I call the poverty of agnosticism,
Because, although being agnostic is reasonable criticism
For some things, such as whether life exists elsewhere,
It is not appropriate for those things undoable
for which the idea of evidence is not even applicable;
However, actually, we can actually still talk
About the probability of the event,
While even going for a walk.

“The true fallacy, however,
Is that the existence ever
And the nonexistence of You never
Are not even on an even footing to begin with.
The two are not at all equiprobable cases.

“The burden of proof lies with the believers,
For anything that we can conceive of
Can be claimed to exist, as that we love,
Such as ghosts, spirits, and such forth.
Are we then to straddle a fence that has no worth?

“And, never seen. So, then, at the end of the day,
Probability creeps into the beliefs of the agnostic way,
For in practice they end up in the lurch,
Not going ‘half the time’ to Church,
But mostly deciding not to go at all.”

“Yes, they still decide that which is ‘undecidable’,
For the fence is very uncomfortable
And so, then, the superposition
Decoheres into the inclination
Of non belief—until right here
The Extraordinary’s evidence appears.”

He came down off the fence,
For he couldn’t exist and not exist at the same time.
I continued on through the undulating hills.

(We can refer to the fence sitters as non theists,
In order to get away from labels like ‘agnostic’
Which might imply that the probability of thinking
God, or not, is on some kind of equal footing;
Plus, that the fence sitters don’t really stay
On the uncomfortable fence but usually…

Go one way or the other way
In life’s practice of the everyday,
Although some might go to church
On alternating Sundays.

In between,
Perhaps they go on wild picnics with their sweetie
And drink wine and do all that ‘bad’ stuff
That we can’t say here while waiting for some
Extraordinary evidence to appear.

I will soon have a talk with old Jehovah Yahweh’s Thee.
He’s not so terrible as many have made Him up to be,
But then again He’s not so great either—He’s quite off,
Just another poor middle manager
Caught up in the layoffs.

I spoke to the Deity
The God who doesn’t ever interfere
In the running of the universe.
The Pope doesn’t know it here,
But a Deity is what he’s
Leaning toward when he says, then,
That evolution is acceptable now
For Catholics to believe in (no mind).
The Deity Guy was actually
Kind of a great scientist.

I already met with
The Creationist’s ID God(s),
Who, while still a Designer,
Is, well, not so cool at all, either,
For He gets back to what
The Fundamentalists believe,
And neither, they would say,
Did evolution happen,
Or, if it did ever function,
God constantly stepped in
To rectify its direction.

I haven’t really begun
To scratch the surface of all the Gods,
Though, for so many lie now beneath the sod.

I’m only interested
In the person-type Gods
Of monotheism,
And I’m hardly even
Getting through those variant theisms
That fight amongst themselves
Over Jesus’ divinity,
Or if there is a Hell,
Or a Devil and some Angels about thee,
And over so many more
And other major differences, totally.

Then there are the multiple Gods,
Now up in the millions,
And also the many
Gods-who-are-not-persons,
Plus the TAO, the Consciousness
And some way-out Ones.

There are also hundreds of long gone, ‘sure thing’ Gods,
Which I needn’t get into, except to wonder, and say:
Is that how the future will look at our Gods of today.

I can also skip the many weird offshoots that persist,
Like those saying that the self is not allowed to exist,
Even calling it the ‘ego’ to make it seem so much worse;
I don’t have time for these and other cult-level verse.)

[/SIZE]

An artist creates on his canvas from a palette of paint—but the creation comes from an emotional stance that holds up an image in his mind!

Regards Mikal

[SteveA]

An artist creates on his canvas from a palette of paint—but the creation comes from an emotional stance that holds up an image in his mind!

Regards Mikal

I think that's how it would have to work, at least from our perspective.

If we tried to look further, at the source of those emotions, I'd have to guess they're derived from just a single dimension of "better or worse" and if time has to remain, then I'd say the "better" direction has to be growth, otherwise there's a big problem

Now what determines the specifics over what is better or worse? That appears something that would at least have to initially begin as something individual - whatever the "seed" for oneself happened to be (it could potentially remain individual as well, as there are many pathways that are infinite).

But if we tried to look beyond that and determine what or why there exists better or worse in the first place, it appears to be a question without any purpose - though it might depend upon the manner in which that question was reached as to whether or not it has a purpose, but if it's simply an exploration, then the reasons motivating that exploration would not appear to apply "past" that, so I think that's the "boundaries of space" for exploration ... which seems like a limit that's perfectly acceptable and from that perspective it appears that any decision involved would be simply purposeless. Even a completely undirected/random change would appear to still lie as a decision within that space, if there was some reason or desire for that.

[Mikal]

Thank you very much for the beautiful post, Mikal. I haven't been actively religious in a long time, and don't really intend to become religious either, but some of those ideas were too beautiful to give up completely ... it's been quite an adventure circling back around through science and finally being able to see better what people were talking about the whole time (I know I have a long way to go to really understand things, but it's beautiful to see the "path", though it leads everywhere - and if it's described as a point, it escapes that definition and if we describe it as anything specific at all, that still fails to describe it, and it's amazing to look back at all the failed attempts to describe it - some of those are beautiful enough to deserve a retelling and there's still more, but no need - the "cup" is full enough and that's beautiful as well - we've progressed to the day where drinks come in 48 oz. cups ... yes, we could do 64 or 10^100 oz, but there's a point where you'd have to grew another set of taste buds if you wanted to appreciate it, and the ones already there work fine. The rest can be left for another day)

Thanks for your great comments,

Steve

You know Steve, I am not religious. I am spiritual experiencing what its like to be human...smiles...

I had a small dose of religion when I was young but I was debating my father at 12 about the pros and cons of religion. I have a strong faith in God and simply feel no need to express that in a church or a religion. In fact the only thing I have to do with religion now is if my sister does community work for her church and she invites me to a function...I like the community part of it....

In my eyes if you are admiring a sunset you are paying gratitude for life to the creator....


Regards Mikal

[SteveA]

Lorrina has her signature "So many paths to the same destination,
would, but I could, experience them all..."

I think it may not matter which path you take, they lead to the same place.

Enjoy yourself, Mikal.
Steve

[austintorn@aol.com]

I don't think complexity evolves from simplicity but that the complexity needs to already exist and from there we can squint our eyes and make it look simple. — Steve

Out of energy’s dispersion and decay of quality
Comes the emergence of growth and complexity.


ALL THAT LIES BETWEEN

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

Like slow fires making their brands, it breeds;
Yet, ever consumes and moves on, as more it feeds,
Then spreads forth anew, this unpurposed dispersion,
An inexorable emergence with little reversion,
Ever becoming of its glorious excursions
Through the change that patient time restrains,
And feasting upon the glorious decayed remains,
In its progressive march through losses for gains.

We have oft described the causeless—
That which was always never the less,
As well as the beginnings of our quest,
And, too, have detailed, in the rarest of glimpses,
The slowing end of all of “forever’s” chances;

So, then, we must now turn our attention keen
To all of the action that’s here in-between—
All that’s going on, and has gone before,
Out to the furthest reaches “ever-more”;
For, everything that ever happens,
Including life and all our questions—
Meaning every single event ever gone on
Of both the animate and the non—
Is but from a single theme played upon.

This, then, is of the simplest analysis of all,
For it heeds mainly just one call—
That of the second law: dispersion,
The means for each and every occasion,
From the closest to the farthest range—
That which makes anything change.

These changes range from the simple,
Such as a bouncing ball resting still
Or ice melting that gives up its chill,
To the more complex, such as digestion,
Growth, death, and even reproduction.

There is excessively subtle change, as well,
Such as the formations of opinions tell
And the creation or rejections of the will.

And, yet, all these kinds of changes, of course,
Still become of one simple, common source,
Which is the underlying collapse into chaos—
The destiny of energy’s unmotivated non purpose.

All that appears to us to be motive and purpose
Is in fact ultimately motiveless, without purpose;
Even aspirations and their achievement’s ways
Have fed on, and come about through, the decay.

The deepest structure of change is but decay;
Although, it’s not the quantity of energy’s say
That causes decay, but the quality, for it strays.

Energy that is localized is potent to effect change,
And, in the course of causing change, it ranges,
Spreading, and becoming chaotically distributed,
Losing its quality but never of its quantity rid.
The key to all this, as we will see,
Is that it goes though stages wee,
And so it doesn’t disperse all at once
As might one’s paycheck before a month.

This harnessed decay results not only for
Civilizations, but for all the events going fore
In the world and the universe beyond,
It accounting for all discernible change,
Of all that ever gets so rearranged;
For, the quality of all this energy kinged
Declines, the universe unwinding, as a spring.

Chaos may temporarily recede,
Quality building up for a need,
As when cathedrals are built, or forms,
And when symphonies are performed;
But, these are but local deceits,
Born of our own conceits;
For, deeper in the world of kinds
The spring inescapably unwinds,
Driving its energy away—
As ALL is being driven by decay.

The quality of energy meant
Is of its dispersal’s extent;
When it is totally precipitate,
It destroys; but when it’s gait
Is geared through chains of events
It can produce civilization’s tenants.

Ultimately, energy naturally,
Spontaneously, and chaotically
Disperses, causing change, irreversibly;
Think of a crowd of atoms jostling,
At first as a vigorous motion happening
In some corner of the atomic crowd;
They hand on their energy, loud,
Inducing close neighbors to jostle, too,
And soon the jostling disperses, too—
The irreversible change but the potion
Of the random, motiveless motions.

And such does hot metal cool, as atoms swirl,
There being so many atoms in the world
Outside it than in the block metal itself;
Entropy’s statisticals average themself.

The illusions of purpose lead us to think
That there are reasons, of some motive link,
Why one change occurs and not another,
And even that there are reasons that cover
Specific changes in locations of energy,
The energy choosing to go there, intentionally,
Such as a purpose for a change in structure,
This being as such as the opening of a flower;
Yet, this should not be confused with energy
Achieving to be there, in that specific bower,
Since, at root, of all the “power”,
Even that of the root of the flower,
That there is, is the degradation by dispersal,
This being mostly non reversible, and universal.

The energy is always still spreading, thencely,
Even to some temporarily located density—
An illusion of specific change
In some region rearranged,
But, actually, it’s just lingering there, “discovering”,
Until new opportunities arise for “exploring”,
The consequences but of random opportunity,
Beneath which, purpose still vanishes entirely.

Events are the manifestations
Of overriding probability’s instantiations—
Of all of the events of nature, of every sod,
From the bouncing ball to conceptions of gods,
Of even free will, evolution, and all ambition;
For, they’re of our simple idea’s elaborations;
Although, for the latter stated there
And such for that as warfare,
Their intrinsic simplicity
Is buried more deeply.

And yet, though sometimes concealed away,
The spring of all creation is just decay,
The consequence and “instruction”
Of the natural tendency to corruption.

Love or war become as factions
Through the agency of chemical reactions,
All actions being the chains of reactions,
Whether thinking, doing, or rapt in attention,
For all is of chemical reaction.

At its most rudimentary bottom,
Chemical reactions are rearrangement of atoms,
These being species of molecules,
That, with perhaps additions and deletions
Then go on to constitute another one, by fate,
Although, they sometimes only change shape,
But, too, can be consumed and torn apart,
Either as a whole or in part; so cruel,
A source of atoms for another molecule.
Molecules have neither motive nor purpose to act—
Neither an inclination to go on to react
Nor any urge to remain unreacted;
So, then, why do reactions occur, if unacted?

Molecules are but loosely structured
And so they can be easily ruptured,
For reactions may occur if the process energy norm
Is degraded into a more dispersed and chaotic form,
And, so, as they usually are always constantly subject
To the tendency to lose energy as the “abject”
Jostling carries it away to the surroundations,
Reactions being misadventure’s transformations,
It then being that some transient arrangements
May suddenly be “frozen” into “permanences”
As the energy leaps away to other “experiences”.

So, molecules are a stage in which the play goes on—
But not so fast that the forms cannot seize upon;
But, really, why do molecules have such fragility,
For, if their atoms were as tightly bound as nuclei,
Then the universe would have died, being frozen,
Long before the awakening the forms “chosen”,
Or, if molecules were as totally free to react
Every single time they touched a neighbor’s pact
Then all events would have taken place so rapidly
And so very crazily and haphazardly
That the rich attributes of the world we know
Would not have had the time to grow.

Ah, but is it all of the necessitated restraint,
For it ever takes time the scene to paint,
As such as in the unfolding of a leaf—
The endurations for any stepping feat,
As of the emergence of consciousness
And the paused ends of energy’s restlessness:
Is of the controlled consequence of collapse
Rather than one that’s wholly precipitous.

So, now all is known, of our here’s and nows
Within this parentheses of the eternal bough,
As well as the why and how of it all has come,
And of our universe’s end—but, that others become.

(The verse lines, being like molecules, warmed,
Continually broke apart and reformed
About the rhymes which tried to be nonintrusions,
Eventually all flexibly stabilizing to conclusion.)

[SteveA]

So do you think there's a way to avoid randomness, Austin, or is in inevitable?

Could it be that there exist unknowns that are not random or uncaused, but that are simply waiting to be verified? Do you see anything that someone could consider solid to build upon, from your perspective?

Basically, do you think the motivation behind science has a purpose or should we accept that there exist only dice and no purpose behind them, other than whimsical transients?

I admit that I can't suggest anything other than working with what one has and hope for the best (what else can be done?), though I tend to see assumptions of complete randomness as debilitating as would appear to even remove the possibility of alternatives and logic seems to say that views of randomness actually arise from issues of complexity, knowledge and visibility etc. (Which to be honest, is in many ways effectively the same initially as randomness, though there does appear to be some structures which have some solidity and I'd assume we can learn more and build upon that, unless it really was uncaused and without purpose).

In either event, it seems better to me, to assume that more exists and simply be willing to accept that ultimately those assumptions, directions etc. may be incorrect, but in either event, the view seems better when there's some lush scenery to admire (and I know you feel similarly from many of your posts ).

Time may take whatever one tries to hold one to, but it appears time itself doesn't disappear and so if there's a stable point in the figurative storm, that appears to be the eye of it.