My password came to me seemingly straight out of….well, somewhere. [yep, I do indeed wager non-local] Probably have missed many good topics to opine on, but so-called “On Point” has replaced Radio Open Source in this locale, and nothing is up to speed yet on this PC (or re connection) so that I can quickly download ROS podcasts and hear them later.

What seems rational to some seems off-point to others. Even my old posts seem sort of off on their own quest in Idaho at times up there! That “critical thinking” spot the other day on ATC seemed rational to me, “morphic fields” still seems rational, and…in the yrs that have passed…the set of all writers who question “physicalism.” [believers in morphic fields as far as I can see do not reject the thesis that a given stage of a species may reach the point where it is ready to receive blueprints-from-the-field that morph it into another]

Have been thinking about the “split” between soul and spirit (as per, say, Lurrianc Kaballah; see kheper.net), and some things have developed which cause me to doubt the absoluteness of this disjunction…while I still cannot deny the distinction. I know this is a wild digression…and sorry, above para too [unless maybe one wanted to bring "the shadow" into the topic], but I’ve been thinking about carrying over these thoughts to the “Varieties of Faith and Reason, take 2″ thread.

Can’t believe this is really gonna go up after all the time gone by, but I’ll give it a try!

Logical deadends concerning causation have always confronted us, as we ponder or try to resolve: what could be the cause of the first cause; how may any agent be identified, in itself, as causal, rather than as merely accompanying causation; indeed, how may any essential thing be identified as a thing in itself, free of ambiguously varied, relativistic perspectives.

Such deadends are hardly solved or illuminated merely by substituting a regressive word symbol, such as “mediator of causation” for causation. One hardly resolves the fundamental riddle of existence merely by “postulating” something like a Higgs Boson, not as agent of cause, but as mediator among agents for cause.

Perhaps, Existence, not God, may be the trickster. If there may be multiple other beginnings, universes, or dimensions, then perhaps something about Being’ness exists that is more than, in addition to, or beyond physics.

Should God be conceptualized as “Proto” or “Meta” Identity (Identity arising with, but not solely from, physics)? If God is proto-identity, perhaps God may struggle much as we do, in order to appreciate the trick of existence, while never quite comprehending it.

While we do not resolve the riddle, we do adopt strategies for appreciating and dealing with it. That is, we invent names for unknowable, invisible, imaginary friends and solutions. Indeed, we have mathematics for imaginary numbers.

When we wish to engage as if all events can be explored in respect of empirical causation, we may, for sake of discussion, refer to something like massless, mediating Higgs Bosons in relation to fields of matter.

When we wish inspiration in respect of needs for inculcating common, empathetic appreciation and mores, we may, for the sake of a reference for bringing us together, invoke the name of God (or, “Standing Wave Of Information And Will”).

Either way, thinking thereby to “explain” existence is only useful pretense. Perhaps, modern civilization should inculcate skills and arts for maintaining and shifting between both pretenses, as needed. Perhaps, the way away from madness is in empathetic appreciation of purposefulness, rather than in expectation of ultimate solutions.

Some such appreciation may be behind common notions that “God is love.” If we could just get fascists to appreciate more than anal orderliness …

(Indivisibility And Invisibility: Church Of The Giant Flying Invisible Random Higgs Machine vs. Church Of The Giant Flying Invisible Spaghetti Monster; aka, FSM)

Perhaps, within what is represented to us as our universe, there may be a smallest, massless, indivisible particle for mediating or facilitating exchanges of energy and information, without itself being changed or acquiring mass, energy, or information.

To what smallest size would such a particle be constrained, for it to respect the fundamental design by which our universe has come to be represented? Even if there may be such a theoretical particle, should a mortal expect to be able, by some relative means, to track, compare, or mathematically represent it?

If such a particle can reasonably be conceptualized as massless, may it also reasonably be conceptualized as sizeless? If massless, sizeless, indivisible, and non-reactive, then is it “invisible”?

Some physicists relate to such concerns under a label, referring to a massless particle by which energy transfers may be mediated as a hypothetical “Higgs Boson,” or “God particle.” (Next, will there be a “Boson of Higg’s Boson,” or “Spawn Of Boson”?)

Should such a “particle” be meant to represent a mathematical placeholder, whereby God may indulge inclinations for imaginatively mediating, manifesting, and balancing informational representations and relationships?

By such sleight of label, do physicists thereby confuse themselves and/or engage pretense in order to replace a concept of an invisible God with a concept of an invisible Boson within an invisible Field?

Somehow, is it pretended less ludicrous (or more rational) to believe in a “Giant Flying Invisible Random Higgs Machine” (consisting of countless, uncaring, non-empathetic, mediating particles), as opposed to a “Giant Flying Invisible Spaghetti God?” See http://www.venganza.org/2006/07/27/what-the-hell-is-this.htm .

SERIOUS NOTE ON A LUDICROUSLY HIGH HORSE:

Why is this of concern? Here is why:

The notion of a Giant Flying Invisible Random Higgs Machine tends to be used as a dark sucking excuse for pretending belief in an un-basis for un-morality — except, that is, to give Sisyphus material means by which to keep pushing his rock.

For giving aid and comfort, the notion of a Giant Flying Invisible Spaghetti God tends to be used as sarcasm, to discredit any notion alternative to a Giant Flying Invisible Random Higgs Machine (as if one were less ludicrous than the other).

Why consider it “rational” to suppose a particle may have capacity to mediate information without itself being changed, but not consider it rational to suppose God could have the same capacity?

A notion of a mediating, Panentheistic God is at least useful for inculcating an empathetic appreciation, both for Sisyphus and for God.

Why should God care? Perhaps, God recognizes that Sisyphus is God’s own product of imagination — a product of God’s thought, which itself thinks, or represents a “thought that thinks.” In Sisyphus, God sees God’s own reflection (like a ripple in a lake). Perhaps, God’s inclination for empathy, like information, is no more limited in time than is God’s self.

Why should civilization care? Because, a god-notion can usually be useful for inculcating a sense of enlightened empathy or caring. Can traditions for sustaining society or civilization be sustained without inculcating a common basis for caring? Without a god-notion, can alternative bases be found for setting parameters for limiting mores?

Non-limited Mores:

Insofar as many Liberals believe in science for the purpose of renouncing God, they might be expected to respect science’s regard for balancing equations, such as for the conserving of information, or of matter and energy. They might be expected to appreciate that there is no free lunch.

But, Liberalism seems more adapted to mental disorder or addiction to vice than to rationality. Increasingly, it becomes evident that “Liberalism” is a willingly adopted label among those who believe in license for vice, with no apprehension of limits, as if no limits need be respected in order to balance civilizing mores.

The longer liberals remain licensed to run amok — unconstrained by any inculcation of meaningfully limiting, common mores — the greater the eventual tribute that must be paid the piper.

No longer is it feasible merely to ship incorrigibles to their own island. Rather, adults must reassert moral supervision. Civilization depends upon it

An interesting, intuitable aspect about a hologram (or holograph) seems to pertain to a capacity, when a part is burned or cut off, for retaining information in the remainder in at least some form by which information about the missing part can be retranslated or regenerated.

If so, information is not lost merely because a form for storing it has been divided. Instead, the information that otherwise would be lost will be retained, perhaps some in the remainder, perhaps some in a now more encompassing or polarized hologram.

Of course, this assumes a timely process (or processor) with significant presence (or skill) enough to sense, appreciate, translate, and restore the information.

In a way, everything that is “physically” represented is a hologram, or analog, for preserving, representing, and absorbing various levels of translatable information. Physically, every representable thing is a hologram; informationally, every representable thing is an analog.

No representable thing can exist that does not have holographic capacities. No thing can be subdivided to the point where holographic information is necessarily lost to its wider system. Information may become more difficult for some beings to access. But, that does not mean that no systemic being ever could access it.

FINEST SUBDIVISION:

Perhaps, the finest subdivision is limited less by physics than by informational imagination. Perhaps, the finest subdivision pertains more to the simplest nit or limit for expressing holographic information, rather than to the smallest bit of matter.

If so, an important question is begged: Of what feature(s) would a simplest, “discrete” nit of information consist?

Consider: Is there any simplest number in which the infinity of all possible numbers and mathematics would not be represented? Perhaps, all possible numbers and mathematics are implicated in the conceptualization of any number, including the non-number, zero. If so, every number, and zero, constitutes a hologram in respect of all numbers.

ELEMENTS REQUISITE TO EVERY LEVEL OF ANY SELF-REPRESENTING SYSTEM:

For any separate thing to exist about which there could be information, what fundamental, systemic elements would be required?

Must not every such a thing, at a minimum, carry a capacity for implicating and analogically preserving transmittable information about a fundamental system, such as a system for balancing changes, relations, and inter-reactions among sub-parts, sub-wholes, positions, motions, and densities?

“I-NESS” — CONTIGUITY OF ONE STANDING WAVE OF INFORMATION AND IDENTITY:

Insofar as waves of informational representations can be imagined, measured, or experienced as discrete atoms, might every atom be a hologram in respect of the total number of atoms within our Universe? Might our universe be a hologram in respect of a total number of universes within Existence? Might our “transcending-enforcer-of-what-we-experience-as-natural-laws-and-basic-inclinations,” aka “God,” be a hologram-analog in respect of a total number of Gods within Proto-God?

EXCHANGING OF INFORMATION:

May what we sense to be a universal loss of heat be a trick upon our choice of sub-holistic perspective, whereby universal heat loss is somehow experienced as being traded for a reorganization or increase in information?

If all information is holographic, how is it that each “discrete” nit of information within the totality — as well as the totality of information itself — is exchanged, rearranged, and possibly increased or accumulated? May such exchanges be represented or facilitated in respect of “holographic contacts among systems of holographic nits of information?”

“Holographic contact” may be conceptualized to occur within measurable significance when a holographic nit (or system of such nits) of information comes within the sphere (or field-wave) of influence of another hologram. Information about the rate, manner, and extent to which each discretely represented or idealized hologram exerts influence over the other will be recorded and continuously updated within an ever-newly-present sphere for encompassing such information. That is, “significant contact” may consist in coming within the sphere of influence of an agent for exchanging information for entropy.

CONSERVATION OF INFORMATION:

Thus, the entirety of all past contacts among holograms is continuously enfolded into a common present (such as, for our universal wave). Thus, information is never lost to our universal system as a whole.

Of course, no mortal-hologram can experience the totality of the “common present” of our universal-hologram. However, may even a mortal hologram or processor of immense skill, from a photograph of a sub-system at an instant in time, be able to reconstruct one and only one accurate solution for representing all the exchanges of information that took place with such system from a finite point in time leading up to the time of such photograph?

Perhaps, no. Perhaps, by some fundamental principle of ambiguity, it is simply beyond the capacity of incomplete, non-holistic sub-hologram-analogs to exactly detail any complete, coherent, consistent, and convertible reconstruction of even a finite system of interacting information.

For all we can know, perhaps even God — in respect of an eternity of continuous change, feedback, and reevaluation — may never know a complete solution or appreciation for the past. Perhaps, Information is not merely preserved, but also so inherently and continuously increasing as not to be amenable to exact reconstruction by any Sentient Being.

May our Wave of Being impose limits upon how much our universe may decrease in heat and increase in information? If so, may there be some sort of phase shift, whereby information is collected or heat is restored? As a bit of matter, nit of information, or sphere of influence becomes so saturated as to be unable to absorb any additional information, may it shift to a “dark” or “dormant” phase? (Might dark material sometimes consist of saints, gazing for eternity at their navels, chanting Ommmm?)

In theory, perhaps information is never lost. In practice, a completely accurate reconstruction of information by mortals may not be possible. Perhaps, this is because mortals are not “really” separate from an interconnecting “I-ness.”

If we are not really separate, we cannot really have an exactly accurate perspective of separateness. Instead, we engage with imaginative and artistically practical re-renderings.

Even so, our level of artistry and practicality seems often to exceed well past significance, into a realm of the sublime and the astonishing — perhaps to the ever-lasting entertainment of “God.”

TRICK OF INHERENT IMAGINATION:

Perhaps, our universe is merely representative of a trick of Existence or of some Imaginative Aspect inherent to existence. If so, size, like physics, may make sense in relation to what we perceive as our universe. But, in relation to Existence itself (if such a concept is not nonsensical), size may be mere illusion.

Thus, on some levels, in discussing abstract information, it may make more sense to discuss it in terms of simplest nits of information (which may be accessed by a sensor), versus smallest bits.

REGARDING INFORMATION:

Who, or what, is information “information” to? Can information be informative to anything that cannot react to it, or record a reaction to it, in any physically representative way? May information be received, intuitively, from beyond what circumscribes one’s ordinary, physical sphere of significantly interactive influence?

Could any purely spiritual essence or mind react to information? Is any information ever represented or stored in any purely, non-physically, reactive way?

May “dark” material be “physical,” without being more than minimally reactive to information? May our universal whole somehow be “physical” only to its belovedly deluded and perspectivistic parts, while remaining “spiritual” in itself?

Might physicality be merely a convention, in respect of how information is represented or stored? Could spirituality exist without such convention? Does our universe represent an encompassing, spiritual Mind?

PANENTHEISTIC PREOLIST:

A Pantheist may believe God consists only of our physical universe. But, a Panentheistic Preolist can believe the other side of the coin of our physical, holographic experience is a spiritual, analogical God.

A Panentheistic Preolist (spiritually progressive realist) need not opine whether physicality has always accompanied spirituality, yet may believe it realistic that civilizations should engage, morally, with progressive increases in information and spiritual empathy.

Peace

Jazzman

It’s a shame that he allowed fears (of religious fascism) to co-opt his leftwing philosophy for the false “safety” of the de-facto fascism that currently holds sway on the right. He seems to share the belief with Nick who plauses that beliefs are limited to unverifiable propositions (which would make the proposition that DE is the mechanism for speciation a belief) but leaves the door open to reason and ideation (which are beliefs; one believes his ideas are reasonable where another may believe otherwise.)

Whatever the mechanism, SJG was concerned enough about gaps in the fossil record to propose along with Niles Eldredge (whom I quoted above) the theory (it’s just a theory) of punctuated equilibrium to explain them (Dawkins variable speedism notwithstanding.) I especially agree with penultimate 3 sentences from Nick quoting CH above.

BTW: I did an off the cuff calculation after hearing that 99% of all species that ever lived are now extinct.

Current estimates of extant species: 2-100 million = 1%

Estimates of all species ever living: 2 Million=1% so 100%=200 Million species, 100 Million = 1% 100% =9.9 Billion species

So the estimates of all species ever = 200 Million at the low end to 9.9 Billion at the high end

Age of the Earth 4.5 Billion Years, Life estimated to have begun at 3.5 Billion years.

To achieve the low estimate 1.1 new species had to manifest every 25 years from the beginning to now.

To achieve the high estimate 2.2 new species had to manifest every year from the beginning to now.

I find this statistically improbable especially as there have been 5 great extinctions and most species needed to create themselves anew each time and NO new species has ever been observed to have emerged or are currently emerging.

Peace

So, an hour ago I ordered the Hitchens book (from Powell’s) and then googled it. The search yielded three excerpts from Slate, the first of which is flatly mind-boggling, since it covers so much of what I’ve been thinking and writing here on ROS:

(quote)

There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

I do not think it is arrogant of me to claim that I had already discovered these four objections (as well as noticed the more vulgar and obvious fact that religion is used by those in temporal charge to invest themselves with authority) before my boyish voice had broken. I am morally certain that millions of other people came to very similar conclusions in very much the same way, and I have since met such people in hundreds of places, and in dozens of different countries. Many of them never believed, and many of them abandoned faith after a difficult struggle. Some of them had blinding moments of un-conviction that were every bit as instantaneous, though perhaps less epileptic and apocalyptic (and later more rationally and more morally justified) than Saul of Tarsus on the Damascene road. And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning “punctuated evolution” and the unfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication. (My own annoyance at Professor Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, for their cringe-making proposal that atheists should conceitedly nominate themselves to be called “brights,” is a part of a continuous argument.) We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul. We do not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that without these blandishments and threats we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful. (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way.) We are reconciled to living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true—that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

Most important of all, perhaps, we infidels do not need any machinery of reinforcement.

(unquote)

Wow. Crazy Chris has a lot to offer (and plenty to object to, too, oh yeah). I wonder if he’d appreciate ‘empiricate/plause’. (Probably.)

Click the Slate link and read the rest (if you dare).

http://www.glumbert.com/media/calltoarms

anybody who uses baseball averages to explain evolution..and does so in a way that absolutely clarifies the situation…is more than worth their salt.

and anyone who thinks that the b minor mass is the best thing that mankind has ever done…has some soul.