A
AndyT_81
Guest
Hi Serious, all I see here are assertions - all the best
- Status
S
Serious
Guest
Yes, the assertion is that words have meanings.
Not particularly surprising. The best to you, too.
G
Gaber
Guest
Hey! Happy publishing!
J
JDaniel
Guest
Greylorn:
I know. I was trying to re-stimulate you. It was something you either alluded to, or, said, in a long ago dialog between us.
That’s why I don’t have any desire - at least at this point in my life - to write a book. I have to give you credit for your perseverance. Let us know when it’s available.
God bless,
jd
J
JDaniel
Guest
Greylorn:
See, “a room full of giant, lab-coated [creative] geniuses.”
God bless (always typed out),
jd
C
Charlemagne_II
Guest
greylorn
**Objections to ideas like mine are based upon the dogmas which claim, unnecessarily, that the Creator of the Universe must be omniscient and omnipotent. **
O.K. You seem to have an inside track on what God is not.
Then tell us what you think he is.
**Objections to ideas like mine are based upon the dogmas which claim, unnecessarily, that the Creator of the Universe must be omniscient and omnipotent. **
O.K. You seem to have an inside track on what God is not.
Then tell us what you think he is.
G
Gorgias
Guest
Your argument is simply Aristotle’s argument that the physical world is eternal. (Since “first moment of time” implies change from before and after – yet there is no before! After all, if the “first moment of time” is a “moment of time”, it must have a “before” reference point; but it doesn’t; therefore, infinite time.) Yet, without any physical objects with which to provide a reference point, you now have a notion of ‘time’ that fails – no change, no ‘before’, no ‘after’.
So, you’re stuck: by your construction, you’ve got a ‘before’ that must be in time, but fails to have any of the characteristics of time. Yet, your argument requires an infinite sequence of ‘befores’. I think you’re mired in a hopeless loop here.
S
Serious
Guest
Since time is a property of the physical universe, it cannot be defined to the universe. The physical universe simply exists, there is no “space” outside it, there is no “time” before it. To speak of “before” the universe is exactly as nonsensical as to speak of the “place” which is to the north of the North Pole".
G
Gorgias
Guest
Hmm… now you’re really confusing me. First you say:
and then you say:
But, angels aren’t physical or part of the physical universe. Therefore, in their coming into being, per your post, there’s no change, and therefore, no imputation of time.
S
Serious
Guest
I never said that the “physical time” and the “heavenly time” are the same. I allow for the assumption that God created something, among other things those angels. Therefore there must be “some” kind of a time. Of course the real solution is simple. It is all “wishful thinking”, unsubstantiated “blind faith”, and an exercise in “doublethink”.
G
Gaber
Guest
Eternality has no component of duration. Matter doesn’t have to be visible, and may be subbtle, a quality we might call “spiritual.” Time is a peciuliarity of the human brand of awareness only.
G
Gorgias
Guest
Oh. So, you say that time is part of the physical universe, and yet when pushed, you add something new to the mix: you assert without definition that there’s something called ‘heavenly time’. Of course, as you love to say, “you can’t have it both ways”!
G
greylorn
Guest
Thank you for the thought, friend, but I presume therefrom that you’ve not previously published or been published yourself. This is only a happy process for the occasional writer who is both accomplished at the art of writing, and socially competent enough to restrict his ideas to mainstream beliefs. Otherwise it is a nightmare that I would only wish on someone else I hoped to curse. For a writer out-of-mainstream, publishing is like childbirth for a small bodied oriental woman impregnated by an otherwise well-intentioned NFL defensive or offensive tackle, nothing you’d wish upon someone you liked, or someone you didn’t even know. Nonetheless, thank you for your thoughts, which I shall assume are equally well-intentioned.
G
greylorn
Guest
That’s good enough to forgive you for the intentional and acknowledged misquote, friend.Greylorn:
See, “a room full of giant, lab-coated [creative] geniuses.”
God bless (always typed out),
jd
And, IMO, Hynek was not a genius. My impression of him was that he was a regular scientist who knew what he knew, was curious about what he did not know, and absolutely honest about that which he did not understand.
In my experience, the most difficult thing for a scientist to do is to admit a mistake. I am not, never was a scientist. Over time I learned that a technician, however skilled, must make his scientist bosses look good if he expects to be successful, which of course I was not.
After my conversation with Hynek I came away with far more respect for him as a person, for his courage in bucking the establishment, and following the rules of evidence no matter how unfashionable that choice. I have very little respect for the theoretical scientists of our day, including Hawking, who has caved in to the idiot plumber, Leonard Susskind.
I like it that you type out your “God bless,” rather than making it an automatic component of your signature. Next, you might improve upon that standard conversational exit by including more subtle and more personal touches to the blessing, E.g:
God bless— if He’s having a good day, or,
God bless— along with the other nitwits who desperately need His help, or, for atheists—
God bless— You may not believe in God’s blessing, but it’s better than some things which you probably do believe in, such as leprosy, vascular necrosis, or hemorrhoids.
G
greylorn
Guest
Good question. I’ve tried to address it in earlier (years ago) posts to CAF but only succeeded in annoying other posters, I concluded that this was because they had no context in which to interpret the information I tried to provide or the ideas based thereon.greylorn
**Objections to ideas like mine are based upon the dogmas which claim, unnecessarily, that the Creator of the Universe must be omniscient and omnipotent. **
O.K. You seem to have an inside track on what God is not.
Then tell us what you think he is.
I learned from this and changed the book I was working on so as to try to drum up some curiosity about the questions before offering any answers. In the meantime, I’m been trying to do the same on CAF, with no luck until now. You are the first to ask the question in what seems to me to be at least a quasi-honest manner. The ever so slightly snarky
“smiley” suggests a subjective agenda, however.Of course, you are prepared to cut my replies into shreds— exactly as I’d have done back when I was a Catholic. I’d expect nothing less, and the time may not be far away when you and others will have the opportunity to do exactly that, because I’m in the final proofing stages of a book which addresses your question to the best of my ability. I hope that you will do me the favor of reading it and posing every objection that comes to mind.
It is titled, Digital Universe-- Analog Soul, and its intention is to reconcile hard science and theology in a way that has not (as best I know) been previously attempted.
I shall honor your question with an answer, with the forewarning that you will not understand it and will certainly reject it, despite the plain language in which it is expressed.
That is not intended as an insult in any way. It is the consequence of how human minds work, as the book explains. In it I burn 7, maybe 8 chapters trying to work up enough curiosity for a reader to acknowledge the value of the question you asked, and to provide a context for the answer.
I don’t have the space on CAF to do that, or the time, so you’ll get the raw answer. That is why I do not expect you to do anything with it except to object, even if you understand it. That is highly unlikely, given the absence of other information. Had someone told me these ideas back when I was a questioning young Catholic, I would certainly have rejected them out of hand.
My God-concept is different from the usual, so to avoid semantic confusion I’ve given the Creator of the universe a different name-- Geon. The stuff of which Geon is composed has always existed, but Geon was not always in an effective form. Such a form resulted from a collision between the stuff from which Geon is composed and the stuff which physics recognizes as dark energy.
This collision was the real “Big Bang.” It did not create matter. It created entities which possessed the potential for self-awareness, you, me, and Geon at the same time.
Long (in whatever terms the notion of “long” might be understood in the absence of time), Geon acquired self-awareness. Geon is not a singular entity— I use the term to reference the composite of entities (at least two, but for obvious reasons i would prefer three) required to derive consciousness within the context of an empty (meaning unformed, unstructured) space essentially devoid of information.
That’s the basics, and about the best I can do in 250 words or less, which is why I wrote a darned book. As promised, it is unlikely that you or any other CAF philosopher is going to make much sense of this. Writing it down in this post will probably cost me every potential CAF reader I might have had. But I promise that in the context of the book, and its background material, all of this garbage will make much better sense. Enough, at least, to encourage you and others to come up with seriously challenging questions.
Of course I do not expect that CAF will allow questions about this material unless they come from someone other than myself, so you can close down this entire line of inquiry by writing nothing.
G
Gaber
Guest
Yes, they are well intentioned. I’ve had small articles published, all of which have faded into obscurity. I don’t think even I have access to them any more! My own views, a little different from yours, I’m sure, are not very well taken to, despite being representational, I trust, of something that’s been around for ages and devolved into religion, sometimes even over a short period of time. Like one generation. But such is life. All that is to say that I have no doubt that your lurid descripion of you publishing experience is somewhat understated. But thanks for the effort.
G
Gaber
Guest
Relative to this, you might enjoy my post #575 on language in the mistitled thread Powerful Evidence for Design This link might work:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?p=9253109#post9253109
G
greylorn
Guest
Gaber,Yes, they are well intentioned. I’ve had small articles published, all of which have faded into obscurity. I don’t think even I have access to them any more! My own views, a little different from yours, I’m sure, are not very well taken to, despite being representational, I trust, of something that’s been around for ages and devolved into religion, sometimes even over a short period of time. Like one generation. But such is life. All that is to say that I have no doubt that your lurid descripion of you publishing experience is somewhat understated. But thanks for the effort.
You are right about the understatement.
Perhaps you will allow me to read betwixt the lines of your reply and offer this:
I got it that your ideas are different from mine. And I do not know what they are. Getting them from your mind to mine is your job. I’m not going to offer to read a bunch of stuff you’ve written until you’ve established some credibility. With me, this would only take two sentences that resonate. They’d need to be good sentences. In the meantime…
Any writer’s first step is to get published, even if it’s just a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. (I started there.) Next step is to release attachment to the words you’ve written, and focus upon the questions that you address: Did your words convey the ideas you tried to present? To which audience? To which demographic? Who says?
Then, if you believe that your ideas are worth presenting, present them again. If that does not work, change your venue. I wrote five non-fiction manuscripts before switching to fiction, producing a book that became a best-seller in Brazil and Holland, in Portuguese and Dutch translations. It only sold a million or so copies in the states, The effort was a complete failure, and I’m still writing.
Whatever, be true to your ideas, and be willing to change them in the face of new evidence. (Done that more times than I have fingers to count with.) When “changing your mind” becomes the same as “correcting an error,” you are on the right track.
There’s a good old country poker playing song by Kenny Rogers, The Gambler, that includes the refrain, “Don’t count your winnings until the game is done.”
G
greylorn
Guest
Gaber,
I checked the link and quickly lost interest when you began blaming the language. That’s silly.
I’ve maintained my own vehicles since I was 16 years old, and in the beginning made do with tools scrounged from my dad’s basement. Doing a valve job with a pair of crescent wrenches, an old screwdriver, and a paint scraper is doing it the hard way. Yet, the job got done. Now in my dotage I have a fine set of standard and specialized tools which make the job much easier. So what?
I wrote my first successful book on a typewriter. It worked and got the job done. The printer used an old linotype to set the book text. Now I use a computer and word processor, and my printer uses exotic software. The linotype operator did a much better job than the goofball with fancy software who I’m about to fire. So what? Only the content is important.
The modern texts that you will find in The Great Books collection were written with an ordinary pen. The older, classic books were written with quills on parchment, with ink made by squishing insects. These books were written in a variety of languages— Greek, Latin, French, German, etc. Don’t whine about deficiencies of your language. That is a dreadful excuse for failure.
I’ve only studied a few languages, but have found none better than English for general purpose expression. Of course, for ideas in physics, mathematics must be included. This is true for all languages. If you value your ideas but do not feel that they can be expressed in English, then quit whining and learn German, Russian (very powerful language), or Chinese (a weak language, but depending upon your age, it could be helpful to speak Mandarin a decade hence when the Chinese own us.)
Bottom line, if you have ideas that you believe in, write them down and try to get them published. That is a difficult process which weeds out the vast glut of pinheads who smoked some weed or ate some mushrooms and awakened knowing the secrets of the universe.
If you need some encouragement to stick with it, there’s a program on the NFL channel which is titled something like, Hey Rookie-- Welcome to the NFL.
So far, I’m unimpressed by a post that contains no ideas but lots of whining about why there are no ideas. Nonetheless, good luck in putting your ideas into a language of your choice, which is not limited to English. .
- Status