An Idea

[Mikal]

From the break in symmetry of the Fundamental Substance ..... that something that expanded into your 'nothing' ???

cool bananas ...greg

Sugarbear don't you think nothing might be an initial precondition which holds all possibilities, all potentialities, all undifferentiated opposites in a state outside human experience beyond space and time? Couldn't it be pre-existence holding all possibilities for existence?


Regards Mikal

[Mikal]

I'm sure Mikal will love this one:



The New Bible

Hold that thought Austin....I've not finished my research into my new book "What Darwin Got Wrong."


Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

The Eternal FS Ground-State How,
Being of forever and now,
Is the Way of the TAO
To which we all might bow,
For it is/was one big WOW.

[austintorn@aol.com]

…don't you think nothing might be an initial precondition which holds all possibilities, all potentialities, all undifferentiated opposites in a state outside human experience beyond space and time? Couldn't it be pre-existence holding all possibilities for existence? — Mikal

This could be close, in a way,
Although, but Nothing has zero properties,
Being a total lack of anything,
Even of a potential/capability
To differentiate “itself”;

But, to ignore that and go forth
On this thought of sorts,
One would think that Nothing,
Being the most perfect and simplest state,
If "it" even tried to form or dominate,
Would fluctuate, as does the quantum realm,
Into a state of loose and jiggling change,
From which then all possibilities could happen,
Putting forth all those opposite particle pairs
In all kinds of various ways,
Some stillborn and some not…

Our little bubble of a universe
Obviously, would be one that functioned
To the extent that life could form.

(I’ll give you a B+ for effort;
You must have been reading
Some of Prof's and my posts here.)

[Graybeard]

Sugarbear don't you think nothing might be an initial precondition which holds all possibilities, all potentialities, all undifferentiated opposites in a state outside human experience beyond space and time? Couldn't it be pre-existence holding all possibilities for existence?


Regards Mikal

My own opinion ... is that the Fundamental Substance had only one attribute ... any more than that and it would not have been fundamental. I see that attribute as Symmetry ... and all since as an apparent break in symmetry.

But in an odd way your statement is also correct ... as it contains all possibilities ... and says the same thing

cool bananas ... greg

[Mikal]

Well overall its been a good day...I had to play dead in a pile of sticks and branches...and now Austin has given me a B+...what more can a gal ask for eh???....lol...

Regards Mikal

[Mikal]

(con't)

Nowhere in the Bible can you discover the principles upon which modern democracies and justice systems are founded. Only three of the Ten Commandments are codified into modern law, and those rules—against killing, stealing, and bearing false witness—predate the time of Moses.

The Bible was widely used to justify the practice of slavery prior to the Civil War. Both the Old and New Testaments do not forbid slavery but actually regulate its practice. While Christians in the South held onto their slaves as long as they could, secular humanist Richard Randolph of Virginia began freeing his in 1791.

The Old Testament not only condones slavery, but regulates it (Exod 21:2 and 21:4)

Jesus never disavowed slavery and St. Paul reaffirmed it (Titus 2:9).

Prior to the US Civil War, the Bible was widely used to justify slavery in the United States. You can look it up.

The Bible also contains many examples of killings performed under God’s orders.

As for laws, the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1780 BCE0 represents a significantly historical step in the development of laws of justice, containing not merely 10 but 282 detailed ‘commandments’. These would be much better to display on courthouse steps.

Another good set would be the laws of Solon, to whom we owe much more that to the crude rules of the Hebrews.

Adolph Hitler's Catholicism did not stop him from killing six million Jews and, in fact, may have contributed to his twisted vision.

The Old Testament is filled with atrocities committed in the name of God. These are rarely mentioned in Sunday school, but anyone can pick up a Bible and read them for herself. I will just mention one of the worst:

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. (Numbers 31:17-18 RSV)

Most Christians dismiss this and other biblical carnage as anachronistic and imagine they were eliminated with the coming of Jesus. However, in the New Testament Jesus frequently reaffirms the laws of the prophets, saying he came not to abolish them but to fulfill them. The theist may respond that the above quotation is not a law but merely the report of an event, but the stories of the Bible are supposed to provide guides to proper behavior.

The history of Christendom abounds with violence sanctioned by the Church and thereby defined as divinely inspired ‘good’.

The Koran is as bloodthirsty as the Old Testament. Of course, no one of conscience today would think it moral to kill everyone captured in battle, saving only the virgin girls for their pleasure. Few modern Christians take the commands of the Bible literally. While they claim to appeal to scriptures and the teachings of the great founders and leaders of their faiths, they pick and choose what to follow—guided by some personal inner light. And this is the same inner light that guides nonbelievers.

As George Bernard Shaw said, "No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says. He is always convinced that it says what he means." Christians draw Jesus Christ in their own image. Every time a theologian reinterprets Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed, he further reinforces the point we are trying to make: We humans decide what is good by standards that have not been handed down by God. But if human morals and values do not arise out of divine command, then where do they come from? They come from our common humanity.

A considerable literature exists on the natural (biological, cultural, evolutionary) origins of morality. Darwin saw the evolutionary advantage of cooperation and altruism. Modern thinkers have elaborated on this observation, showing in detail how our moral sense can have arisen naturally during the development of modern humanity.

We can even see signs of moral, or proto-moral behavior in animals. Vampire bats share food. Apes and monkeys comfort members of their group who are upset and work together to get food. Dolphins push sick members of a pod to the surface to get air. Whales will put themselves in harm's way to help a wounded member of their group. Elephants try their best to save injured members of their families.

In these examples we glimpse the beginnings of the morality that advanced to higher levels with human evolution. You may call animal morality instinctive, built into the genes of animals by biological evolution. But when we include cultural evolution as well, we have a plausible mechanism for the development of human morality—by Darwinian selection.

It seems likely that this is where we humans have learned our sense of right and wrong. We have taught it to ourselves. Just as God has been found superfluous in the physical and biological sciences, modern research is driving the supernatural out of our understanding of morals and values.

Morals and values come from humanity itself. Human and societal behaviors look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God.

Many people are good. But they are not good because of religion. They are good despite religion...

Religion at least partially accounts for the large cultural differences and mistrust that divide racially similar groups, like Israelis and Palestinians or Indians and Pakistanis, who might otherwise live together in harmony or even as a single people. Not every war in history has been over religion, but religion has done little to ameliorate the conditions that led to war in those cases. We just have to look back half a century and witness the role played by the Catholic Church in aiding Nazi Germany. For example, the German Church opened its genealogical records to the Third Reich so that a person's Jewish ancestry could be traced. Not a single German Catholic, including Adolf Hitler, was excommunicated for committing crimes against humanity. And Hitler often claimed that he was serving God. In Mein Kampf he says, 'Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.'"

I have always wondered about people supporting the myth that Hitler was an atheist. I guess they HAVE to say this, because they have to believe that someone so heinous would have to NOT believe in a god. But I have read several quotes where he says he is a Christian and doing the work of the Lord.

Now you might ask, what about all the undeniable good that is done by religious charitable institutions–helping the poor and caring for the afflicted?...Much of the time and money spent by Christian charities, including that now provided by federal and state governments as part of 'faith-based initiatives,' goes to proselytizing rather than solving the problems they were set up to solve. The money would be put to better use in providing services other than worship services.

I am reminded of an incident from a few months ago when the Pope visited somewhere in Africa, I think. He was questioned about some starving kids and the Pope said that he was more worried about saving these people's souls than feeding their bodies...

So even though science is a valuable tool available to most of humanity, only a tiny few find it a source of inspiration and even fewer a source of comfort. Religion, on the other hand, is supposed to provide comfort for all. However, religions comfort is not all that it is cracked up to be. In a recent study, psychologists found that highly religious Protestants exhibit more symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder that the less religious or nonreligious. The promise of life after death carries with it the dread that the afterworld will be spent somewhere than in the bosom of God.

Other notes: Even in modern times we see world leaders asserting divine authority for their actions, and people falling for it:

President Bush consulted with a “Higher Father” about invading Iraq and also said, [It is] “God’s gift to every human being in the world.”

And then there is Supreme Court Justice Scalia, “Government is the ‘minister of God’, with powers to ‘revenge’” etc.

So, in summary, religion/God was not only not the source of law (but for itself), but an opposite hazard to progress.

Far from providing us meaningful goals, religions prescribe tribal values: amity for our tribe; enmity for other tribes (us vs. them); mind-closing faith; abject worship of authority.

Thank science, for it helps us control our own lives. Divine Right does not.

What a shame that man has profaned God to do his own evil....

Regards Mikal

[austintorn@aol.com]

What a shame that man has profaned God to do his own evil....

Doesn't sound like there's a lot of intelligence at all invested in life…

…although all makes much more sense, naturally, via evolution.

Glad you're reading about what Darwin got [right] and wrong. Science ever improves on what it finds and so then a great theory could become an excellent theory.

I can give an A+ if you give up on Nothing being able to be, and have it, thus, that something had to.

And, yes, it was a fine day to be alive.

[austintorn@aol.com]

The new and expanded 'To the Deep':

http://www.toequest.com/forum/theory...tml#post113108

[Mikal]

Doesn't sound like there's a lot of intelligence at all invested in life…

…although all makes much more sense, naturally, via evolution.

Glad you're reading about what Darwin got [right] and wrong. Science ever improves on what it finds and so then a great theory could become an excellent theory.

I can give an A+ if you give up on Nothing being able to be, and have it, thus, that something had to.

And, yes, it was a fine day to be alive.

Austin I ask you how can there be intelligence when its root is emotional and most of our lives we are conditioned to suppress emotion all for consensual society and conditioned to seek approval?

My book on Darwin is excellent and I'm sorry its two professionals who tackled what he could not have known. As I said previously they are staunch athiests simply attempting to correct the worldview of evolution...as they state it is far more complex than the idea of Natural Selection. They do not bash Darwin, they explain the DNA systems and factors Darwin could not have know about...

Thanks for the offer...lol..but absolutely necessary I use this mind of mine and do my own thinking...


Regards Mikal