Does it take an intellectual to knock God??

[austintorn@aol.com]

Where truth leads… is where we end up… eventually…

True Colors

We are the smile of being, the ‘joy’ of the Universe’s Creation! In us the Cosmos has come alive and has evolved into our consciousness from primordial matter and energy. We have arrived! We are the Cosmos—life from Stardust!

We live but for one of Eternity’s heartbeats, borrowing Life from Death for just a while. All that we are we owe to Time, Death, and Stars. Truly, from the Stars cometh our help, and much more. The Stars are the creators of matter and energy. Within a Star’s heart, matter transforms itself and gives energy—this is why the Stars shine! Death is the ultimate evaluator and the director of all evolutionary progress. Over eons upon eons, Death selects the wise from the silly; Death chooses the useful from the useless, but, it takes Time. It is this long yardstick that sticks in our throat when we try to contemplate it. For almost Forever, our sleepless spirits have waited to catch light, life, and delight from Heaven’s smile. Finally, we are so lucky and we live. We stand atop the pinnacle of Nature’s tireless toil which has at last brought forth our souls from that black and endless eternal deep. What a joy to Be!

Blake asks, In what far and fiery depths of space burnt the fire of your Spirit? In what distant Stars was born the gleam in your eye? Know it well, for one day Death will ask you “What did you do all of your life?”. But, for now we are alive. Our mind and senses interpret and disperse the one Reality into the colors and sensations of the phenomenal world. We can become either rainbows or ugly stains! Our minds, like Shelley’s prisms of many-colored glass, strain this white Radiance of Eternity into our life—until Death tramples us—and back we go to stardust after relentless time has wasted us away. Yes, our creators of Time, Death, and Stardust must also write our epitaph; they devour us in order to return that life-dream which was lent to us. But, here we are now, and perhaps we come to know that the simpler things in life are still the best: A glass of water from the well in the morning; to love, laugh, and sing with family and friends. And so we live out our lives with honor and love, kindness and generosity—these are our true colors. Life for the sake of life! Good for good’s sake! Enjoying everyone and everything and every season.

Many think that they are more important than they really are, that they deserve some reward of a divine destiny in Heaven where their every whim, wish, and fancy can be fulfilled for all of time, forever and ever. Well, to me, such endless satisfaction and pleasure sounds really rather prideful and wishful, even decadent. The ultimate humility is for us to realize that we are no more than electrochemical organisms, that we, too, are part of the organic nature. Are we quite lucky and fancy organisms? Oh, yes. Are we specially created by a Master? Oh, no. We are the embodiment of the Cosmos and are ever the results of natural laws of Biology, Physics and Chemistry. Death may be forever, but man, with his exaggerated view of self-importance, and, not wishing to see a final end to his glorious life—and I can hardly blame him—desperately grasps for immortality’s promise. For me, I will continue to catch life’s joy and smile and will bathe in the light of its constant sunrise. On my last night on this Earth I will not be haunted by regret when the Sleep of Death comes to take me to Corruption’s dim dwelling place—for I will know that I lived for color and smile.

And what of the Stars? They remain, as Eternity’s Love-lamps, representing our good works and deeds, which even the fathomless night cannot quench. Perhaps one day, at the end of forever, the Stars too will die and grow cold when Time conquers all; but, as long as they live they will shine and radiate the hues that paint the colors of our ashes reborn again on the phoenix wings of Time.

[SB_UK]

Great Lama (U.S. division)

The koan has a point as long as one has a point to make.

Following GB's use of the term 'jesuitical' -
I followed the Jesuits to China.

There's sense underlying proper Eastern Koans and Western Jesuitical constructs -
- however the problem we'll run into is when the apparent nonsense of the koan is sequestered by some power-hungry individual for his own benefit.

It's easy to generate seemingly loaded actual absence of sense.

It's the basis to a large body of Modern Art -
- the capacity for the charlatan to point to meaning which really just is not there
(within their art).

How do we tell the difference betwen the false and true koan {jesuitical thought, art}
- simply appraise the educational level of the individual -

- it's impossible to construct art which points at deeper meaning, if the mind of the individual is not capable of making out deeper meaning.

To be clear -
- this capacity cannot arise any earlier than our mid-30's

- before then
we'll find that they're simply blowing it out their ... ...

... ... keep those commission$

pre-Raphaelite sell-outs

rolling in.

~source Telly last night~

... ... was considered an establishment figure who swapped artistic innovation for commercial gain.

Religion isn't our problem -
much more widespread
-> man <- and his love for money.

... ... swapped artistic innovation for commercial gain.

{Artisitic innovation, creativity, the process underlying mental growth, building the mind}
is killed by money.

The religious prophets did not have money.

Any who wish to make the world a better place will not succeed if they continue to insist on religion being the problem here -
since that will only succeed in further polarizing (worsening the problem) communities in fear of continuing aggression.

The problem lies with man.
Education solves the problem.

Various factors - including political, religious and economic factors prevent proper education.

political
The Great 'fire-wall' of China.

religious
Creationism over Natural Science.

economic
Can't afford access to information through needing to work to pay off ridiculously overpaid people in local Government and at the BBC.
Both are mandatory payments in the UK -
mandatory payments should not support any salary which exceeds the minimum wage.

~*~

Religion really IS NOT the problem -
- one of the more persistent secondary consequences of the problem it surely is
though NOT the problem.

- the urge to criticize (and not to solve a problem with due understanding for the sensibilities of all parties concerned) however is.

[austintorn@aol.com]

It is unavoidable to first, indirectly, 'knock' religion, as truth comes out, and then, more directly, when asked, the truth is explained and shown, the falsehoods necessarily receding… reformulating into a smaller space for God to act… until… there is no space left but that of a dice roller… and, even then it can be shown that what is without cause is all that that must imply: that the Great Designer Himself could never have been DESIGNED, this thought experiment confirmed by the indeterminate chaos of the quantum realm.

[austintorn@aol.com]

For the SuperWeight Championship
Of the Universe: God vs. Science

The Shrinking Unto the Vanishing

Round 1

In the Beginning, God played an active role in the Universe after creating it, and upon the Earth, which is supposedly only a few thousand years old.

God won this round, hands down, for even the little science there was at the time thought that man was the special center of creation and that the sun and the stars revolved around the Earth. God and evil spirits caused physical ills and mental ills called ‘sins’. Even fun was sin’s evil cousin. The Bible was constituted out of old Jewish legends: The numerous many hundreds of gods that had come to reign before were defeated by Jehovah.

However, three centuries ago, the realm of natural law was extended and the Kingdom of the Supernatural began to shrink away, eventually vanishing from all of existence, but we get ahead of ourselves…

God made Adam fully formed, without a navel;
Now, an asterisk on page one of the
Philippine Catholic bible says no,
Don’t take it literally—it’s just not so.


Round 2

God came out still claiming that He guided the Earth safe through its orbit around the the center sun in space, for by now Earth’s motion around the sun was known to be so.

Newton demolished this notion with his laws of motion. God no longer ruled Nature. The world was free to run its course.

Isaac: Revelations

There is a mote in space known as Earth,
A pale blue dot of fluff orbiting a hearth,
Due but to Newton’s laws of motion, there’s
No Godly hand guiding it safe around the sun.

The vanishing had begun. The heavens and the Earth were one. Stars and galaxies went on and on. We became the center of nothing.

God was losing his definition in stone,
As his sworn traits disappeared one by one.
There’s a retreat to higher ground, that is,
Outside of space, time, and all existence.


Round 3

God claimed to appear to us only in spiritual ideas and thoughts within our minds, making Him responsible for the good and bad in human behavior. This metaphor was found to be unnecessary for the source of human character and behavior. Some still clung to the life-line ropes of His intervention, yet a few claimed that He did not involve Himself in daily operations.

God no longer intercedes in causes,
Except in the nebulous cures they claim,
Like improved hearing, or made one safe from harm,
But He never heals amputees, or appears.

For the latest is that he must stay hidden,
Even if the miracles of his son
Were very much out in the open to see—
Better that no one know of him clearly.

So there is faith—blind trust in the unknown.
Believe or be tortured—or has this, too,
The Word of God, become inoperable?
Only the supernatural realm remains.


Round 4

God still wished to intervene in the natural world, saving lives here and there, but striking planes from the sky, sometimes, ever adjusting the smooth operations of natural law, expressing His inscrutable purpose.

Yet, scientific knowledge, cosmology, fundamental physics, chemistry, biology, anthropology and psychology began totally undermine religious views on every front. God was losing His strength to be. Science loomed large and ponderous.

Religious knowledge,
Which professes absolute truth,
Fails and fades,
While science, which professes fallibility,
Succeeds and grows stronger.

And then there were the strange myths.

Why is the Old Testament out of use
In many churches, in favor of the new?
Was it divine revelation or not?
Do God’s fits not become a good role model?


Round 5

With God in retreat, it was thought that at least He had instilled a spiritual essence in us called the soul.

What vanity to claim such full self-importance!
To demand so much from the universe…

That you would claim angelic vapor that
Drives a living being, provides character,
Morality, and consciousness, on top of
A burdensome, fragile, and expensive
Organ such as a brain not to be used?

Science collapsed the idea of the elan vital when synthesis of substance began. Life’s chemicals were just chemicals!

Yet, it was still said that God made all, albeit strange and full of problems of unintelligent design, for how else could it have been?

Darwin told us how. Natural selection explained the mysteries of evolution and the variety of life. The continuum extended from animals to us. We were no longer special, differing from chimps by not much. The discovery of genetics later collaborated all.

So, because of evolution’s record,
God’s bible was no longer written in
Plain text for the common man, but now is
Open to some guesses and interpretations.

He just is, the same as the universe
Cannot be, leaving us all on our own,
Just as is the case that’s seen by science;
Now we’re a planned random accident!

The truth of what you are: mammal, organic;
Past narcissism and self-adulation,
To the bioelectrochemical organism
Evolved upon a planet near a star,
In the long and winding mindless way of
Slow time, dust, and selection by death that
Sifts the best from the rest: evolution.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Round 6

More devastating blows landed. Einstein’s theories extended Newton’s laws to the very large universal scales, while quantum mechanics brought us to the reach of the very tiniest of objects. There was no place left. God was nowhere to be seen, having vacated the arena.

OK, so science has found that the universe
Operates just as it would without Him,
That evil spirits don’t lead to bad health,
That brain imbalances can lead to sins.

Devil, Hell, the bible, intercession, etc.,
Are all gone—he is undefinable—
Protected from the knowing—safe, away:
Yet claimable as an unseeable unknowable!


Round 7

Confirmations are everywhere, since scientific laws must match and predict the facts of what really happens. Quantum mechanics, for example, although some of its basis is counter-intuitive, always works out perfectly. We employ and depend on products based on it every day.

Science ever goes on to astronomical heights. The first supernova since 1572 appeared in some small galaxies nearby, called the Magellanic Clouds. Though its radiation to us began a while back, we saw it alight upon us as a ‘now’—the immerse quantities of energy of the star-stuff maelstrom.

An astronomical technician in Chile stepped outside for a smoke, and being observant, spotted it! He, a mere human standing around out in the dark under the starry sky, detected it, for the large telescopes only look at a small section of the sky at a time.

He goes in and tells someone in charge. A large burst of never-detected neutrinos is thus expected.

Astrophysicists called their colleagues deep beneath the Earth’s surface in the United States, Japan, and Europe. They said, “Look in your tanks. You have already made a great discovery.”

They were right. Each of the observatories had detected a few tens of neutrinos at about the same time.

Consider the magnitude of this achievement. They had tested all of of physics! They had predicted the events in a star’s death throes by using theories from nearly every part of physics: special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, nuclear physics, atomic physics and elementary particles. If any of these theories had been in error, the prediction of neutrinos would have failed.

The laws of nature known to us on Earth must be the same hundreds of thousands of light years away and also the same back when that star exploded hundred of thousands of years ago. God had been pushed completely out of the ring.

There was no one miracle of life leaping into any living form. Slightly dead chemicals became definitely alive chemicals, this being nothing spectacular. We even have evidence of ancient algae from 3.5 billion years ago. This was when liquid water was available. It still took more than two billion years for more complicated life to appear. There was no Garden of Eden.

God’s become aloof—he just started the Bang
And let the design gradually evolve
Over thirteen billion years into man,
The endless universe a mere backdrop.

He is the intelligent designer that
Is deducible from not understanding design,
But wait, he is of infinite design—
Now I know that something had to make him!


Round 8

The Knockout

The three-degree blackbody radiation was found, the CMBR. It comes to us from all directions. Nonuniformities in the radiation were found at last, those that formed the galaxies.

The QM realm has proved to be a fundamentally fuzzy state, virtual pluses and minuses popping out of it; that is, there is no cause, there are no hidden variables. This is not quite a total Nothing, but a near ‘nothing’. Virtual particles may cancel, but they go back into the QM realm. If near ‘nothing’ were exactly zero, then this ‘vacuum’ would not be vague and fuzzy. Thus, an absolute Nothing cannot exist. Its very definition means that it is not to be, that it, it could not even be there at all. There were quantum jitters; there was only possibility forever.

Often, the QM virtual particles spring into existence and vanish quickly, although they can interact and stay real. If not, they have to vanish so quickly that we cannot directly see them. If we could see them, then the QM realm would not be a vacuum, but, if they were not there the vacuum would be exactly Nothing and so it would violate the vague and fuzzy rule.

None of these happenings are invisible, like supernatural claims, for the fuzzy ‘nothing’ has effects that we can compute and measure.

So, there is no cause, no purpose! And no predetermination. Does this make us go into a deep dark funk? No, for it is our glory that we are free to be. Our responsibility is our own doing.

God was dead, gone, and counted out, having never been.

Terrorists still go to war in his name;
It’s all going astray—the design fails;
If I knew where the great designer stays,
I’d question his mysterious(insane) ways.

What is left of the vanishing Phantom?
More features have fallen than I’ve listed,
The extraordinary superstition
Remains only as a shadow of a wish.

[SB_UK]

Where truth leads… is where we end up…

absolutely

eventually…

yes

- which is why we need to work out a mechanism to curtail eventually -

either
---(i)---
explain - and hope that some'll listen -
(the general principle of the religious prophet)

---(ii)---
- or enmesh people in corrupt system$ and then twist
(falls under 'knocking God')
until reasoned rebellion.
(the principle which will work)

~*~

Does it take an intellectual to knock God??

• Yes

- alongside

• An intellectual to throw all that he has at God
  • though to argue nicely

whilst

• the bankers, lawyers and politicians twist the screws on the silent majority.

simultaneously.

How long're people going to stand and watch on as their civil liberties are eroded by politicians and terrorists in cahoots -
- each of these sides with a vested intere$t in maintaining terror.

There's no cause here -
- simply ignorant desire by one competing interest to make as great an unfair gain as possible against another.

Germany versus the Jewish people versus the Palestinians.
------Money------ and ------Power------
as bedmates of the animal within.

Where the promised land awaits (within)
- as soon as the animal within's without
ed.

- simply ignorant desire by one competing interest to make as great an unfair gain as possible against another.

Great Britain began a war over the Falkland Islands -
- that's a true story

No religion involved
there -
just people.

People and their {desire for power, maintenance of power},
a war (or two) in Iraq
{money, desire for more money}
(religion sadly co-incident, collateral damage).

~*~

Eradicate religion and the problem will persist.
Eradicate money and the problem will persist.

However - explain and then eradicate money and the problems which people observe with religion -
- will themselves be lost.

~*~

The religion is a particularly successful basis to community -
people are fighting to retain their community

- the only mechanism to end war on planet Earth is to make our species one community.

This requires political, economic and legal convergence -

one fully distributed government
one open e-currency
one legal system

one wage

~*~

It's too easy to sell books and make much money off the back of the non-existence of a Supernatural God
- 'The God Delusion'

- of course there's no man with a beard in the sky
(though the idea works stunning well if we unravel the metaphor).

Our problem though that refuting the Supernatural God won't affect those who aren't sufficiently free
(for instance) to access the argument.

~*~

Little sad -
- if only the great brain power which appears to be mobilized in refuting God
'd
focus on what academia does best -

- in explaining things -
(and simply)

- because as soon as people understand everything (simply)
- the big picture framework

then God (a definition for)
simply
falls
out
- each for ourselves.

~*~

There exists a very real need for faith in God -
- one people under God -

- our problem is simply that when ignorance (the immature mind) attempts to understand its own innate desire -
- it gives it a name
and
then mistakenly announces to the World that they've the one true God.

The child will continue to make this mistake -
- there's no mechanism for a child to gain a mature mind at age 3 yrs -
- however every chance that a program of proper education will deliver a mature mind when kiddy's old enough -

- mid-30's when in stable duality with A.N. Other
~paraphrase~

- neuroendocrine change which permits duality formation between (for instance) man and woman.

~*~

Tough problem -
- simple solution -

- harness the entertainment industry.

- catch the free World
- and then make in-roads into changing the minds of those in countries (with access to information) and who deal in repression -

under the surefire knowledge that if the message is heard
- that people will change.

- that people will change
with the certainty of a chemical reaction.

~*~

Realising ToE is truly an innate desire -
the terms 'enforced moral consistency' and 'trap' are not wholly unfair.

Consider the wealthy scrooge bacteria who really didn't much feel like evolving into night-life lovin' fungal.; girls just wanna' have fun -
after all.

[SB_UK]

It is unavoidable to first, indirectly, 'knock' religion, as truth comes out, and then, more directly, when asked, the truth is explained and shown, the falsehoods necessarily receding… reformulating into a smaller space for God to act… until… there is no space left but that of a dice roller… and, even then it can be shown that what is without cause is all that that must imply: that the Great Designer Himself could never have been DESIGNED, this thought experiment confirmed by the indeterminate chaos of the quantum realm.

Two Gods -
the 'God as man' and 'God as metaphor for process of nature'

- the human need for God is expressed in the immature mind as 'God as man' -
with increasing knowledge man becomes capable of entertaining the idea of 'God as a metaphor for a process of nature'.

Do the most enlightened of religious leaders believe that God is a man?

If so
- then we need to defeat ignorance and self-interest

where these are human characteristics.

Human characteristics which are manintained by greed -
greed for power, money and the other.

~*~

The argument that religious communities and God is to blame neatly shifts the onus off the individual.

The individual -
- all individuals who buy into the current economic system of rich necessitates poor
- is the problem.

- where it is not possible to survive without money (currently)
- making all people alive today as collectively responsible for the problem which we now face.

~*~

Eradicate money (with an explanation why (ToE))
- and all of our problems go away.

~*~

The religious book is filled with a buncha' people stating that it's good to be nice.

Not contraversial -
- not in the least -

- problems arise when the spokesman for God gives voice to the animal within
and
really feels he ought to have a diamond encrusted crown to show off his hi-carat golden fillings to a tee -

money -
- money is the problem.

One wage in One currency makes it all go away -
- unless, of course we'd rather be
(rather than solve)
the problem.

~*~

kill money

[SB_UK]

Two Gods -

The 'God as man' abstraction

->- Rounds 1-8 inclusive (the role of science) ->-

The 'God as metaphor for process of nature' abstraction.

~*~

An enhanced understanding of reality results in the development of a more complex structure of mind
which
permits a second (more abstract) definition of God to be entertained
by
'better' (evolved form) mind of man.

The 'God as man' abstraction

->- Rounds 1-8 inclusive (the role of science) ->-

The 'God as metaphor for process of nature' abstraction.

--- end ---

~*~

The mind itself evolves to better under weight of increased informational content handled {coherence sought} by better minds.

No different to the idea of human catalysed evolution of computer architectures from 32 to 64 bit
- the reason why we had that thought -
is that the evolutionary process is innate

- technological innovation reflects 'under the hood' (under our hood) mechanisms -
dawning awareness of our own functionality -
- of our own understanding of our own functionality

- of our own understanding of our own functionality -
our own functionality which we then use to construct our own God delusion
- from GM foods through Pinocchio to Frankenstein's monster -

- the God delusion is a consequence of a triumph in animal characteristics on a human level -
'cept that that went out of fashion 30,000 years ago -

Instinct
- always the last to know

rewards will not be forthcoming -

- the price of failure to understand the hierarchical stairwell abstraction to complex heaven of evolution -
~this~ reality
- our Tao.

[SB_UK]

Two Gods -

The 'God as man' abstraction

->- Rounds 1-8 inclusive (the role of science) ->-

The 'God as metaphor for process of nature' abstraction.

Shifting the definition of God back an abstraction layer (or two).
~paraphrase~

is all.

~*~

The problem which people appear to be having here is the failure to see that a different choice of words does not necessarily mean dispute.

We will find -
given a level-head

- that people have (since recorded history began)
spent
their time in violent agreement disguised as disagreement for no reason other than the fallibility of words.

[racecar]

Quote:
pre-Raphaelite sell-outs


A Picasso anecdote (jist of anyway)

As a child he could paint like Raphael but it took him a lifetime to paint like a child.


It is harder to unlearn than it is to learn...to see with new eyes and to hear with new ears.