mitchellmckain

I on the other hand, find evil to be the most boring thing of all. Sure it gets the adrenalin of outrage and fear pumping, and perhaps this is a kind of drug addition. But evil practices meaningless destruction tearing life down into a monotonous nothingness. It is the opposite of the creativity of life, which is truly what makes life interesting. With a little creativity we can sit down and invent facinating universes like Harry Potter and Star Trek which revitalizes our whole culture and industry and in general increases our zest for life. Evil on the other hand for the sake of a cheap thrill would go out and murder the potential creators of such universes. So make no mistake, storybook evil to make the Harry Potter books more exciting has nothing to do with real evil which is really the epitome of boring. Our passion to stop evil is only a defensive reaction to the more immediate feeling that all life has been degraded.

How should I have known what ethnic group you belong to? I thought you two were the same person because you reacted so similarly. But that you are of the same culture makes sense of this too. It also explains some of the reactions we have to each other's posts as some kind of cultural dissonance. Speaking sensibly is an ideal we of the west aim for, and your distaste for it triggers my own sense of you being wierd, and this is typical of a clash between cultures. So we live and begin to learn. Hmmmm.... No, CaptainRon has a point here, though it is difficult for us to see. I believe He is pointing to a different kind of religious peace than we have in the west and such would certainly make sense in a place like India. At least, I begin to see some kind of self-consistency in it. In the west we respect the right of others to their belief and the freedom to speak these beliefs, but we have several difficulties. To deal with the potential disruption cause by inter-religious bickering we selectively ban this "freedom of speech" somewhat in the work place and in schools. And when it comes to people like Nazis, who have only a message of hate, we feel a bit conflicted in deciding how to handle them. Certainly if you invite someone over to dinner then knowing their belief you would attempt not to give offense even if it meant being quiet about things that you believe. Otherwise what result could you expect, except that your guest would storm out of your house offended. We do not concieve of the public arena in this manner. In the west, our highest ideal is truth rather than harmony, and we see the public arena as the place for debate not politeness. And by our rather difficult ideal, we defend the right of these Nazi extremists to speak their point of view in public even though many of us are strongly tempted to shoot them as well. I have never been to India, so I can only guess, but the words of our friends here make me suspect that India is somewhat different. I guess it is possible that the public arena in India is the same as welcoming a guest at your home. I am not agreeing with it, for I think it has problems of its own. I wonder if this supression of feelings in this manner does not lead to the kind of explosive violence that we have seen in India. And what if a man believes himself to be God? In the west, we can respect his right to believe so as long as he respects our right to disagree. Inviting such a person over to your house and trying to avoid giving offense may be too much of a burden for most people of the west to bear. In light of the above, I think I begin to understand. I think what you object to is a western tradition that we have from ancient Greece called rhetoric. Where we try to convince the jury or bystanders that our point of view is the reasonable one. There is little relationship between this rhetoric and the kind of politeness which you seem to see as appropriate for the public arena. The funny thing is that the internet forum has become an even more exaggerated version of the western ideal of the public arena as the place for debate and rhetoric. In any case, it seems that although I am not consciously engaging in debate, my manner of expression still gives you the impression of rhetoric. You could also call it, delight in my own cleverness, which has become so inseperable from my effort to express myself and be understood that I am not sure it is even possible for me to do otherwise. So perhaps what you wish to say is something like, "let's forget the rhetoric and cleverness, and try to understand each others religious point of view in the interest of communication." Communication is a respected ideal in the west even if its tradition is newer and weaker than that of debate. But I don't think this can work unless one is careful to include phrases like, "I think that" or "I believe" in ones statement of belief. It may seem redundant to you, but in the west, a statement of belief as if it were a matter of fact is generally taken as a challenge to a debate. No doubt we will still find each others way of expressing ourselves a bit grating but perhaps awareness of the reality will help us to achieve some degree of toleration. I hope this helps.

Now I have heard this before from adherents of Islam, but when I questioned further it became clear that they believed that God is only responsible for the possibility of evil and suffering, but that evil itself is something only attributable to humans and the Djinn. Even your last statement implies the same belief in human free will as what is truly responsible for evil. Am I understanding correctly?

But why do you not consider Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism and Sikhism to be major religions? These all have more adherents than Judaism. Is it because you wanted to call Judaism the oldest when Hinduism is 500 to 2000 years older? I have lumped Taoism, Confusionism and Chinese traditional religion under the name Taoism because before the cutural revolution, Taoism was one of the strongest institutions in China, but then its temples and clergy were destroyed and its distinctiveness was lost. But the writings and teachings of Taoism remain influential and respected throughout the world. I, in fact, think that the oldest religions in the world are the shamanistic religions, that venerate nature and human ancestors, because it is so widespread including Chinese and Korean traditional religion, Shinto, Native American, African and Austrailan relgious belief, as well as the older pagan religions of Europe that were wiped out (and partially absorbed) by Christianity.

Well, what a belated response to such an old post since this clearly has nothing to do with anything recent. It is strange since you would have had to go looking for it, ignoring the recent posts. I wonder why? But why do you say this? Do you equate the expression of any opinion contrary to your own to name-calling and thrash matching? I have only disagreed with you and Eternal-Bliss (if you are in fact two different people). What name have I called either of you? I have no problem with other religions. I greatly enjoy them. I love and defend the diversity of mankind. I only have contempt for those who force their religion onto other people, deny religious freedom, or show intolerance of the diversity of mankind. But as much as I love and enjoy the diversity of mankind I am not ecclectic. I have my own religious beliefs, and I am free to express them as much as anyone else. No, but it does help me decide whether I want to understand him or his preachings. Why should I be an expert on this guy who lived 3000 BC? You consider him significant and I do not. Why should I? So the fact that I speak sense offends you? What can I say? Why should I fully understand Hinduism or Islam? I do know enough to see that you represent niether. Your indoctrination into your religion makes you no expert on these religions either, any more than it makes you an expert on Christianity. Your religion simply chops them up into neat little pieces so you can fit them into your religion's ideolgy. Fine. You are welcome to your point of view just as the Bahai and the Moonies are welcome to theirs. But I am not picking a fight by saying that your characterization of my religion is inaccurate anymore than you are picking a fight when you correct my charaterization of your religion. I shall honestly and whole heartedly acknowledge your authority in regards to your religion as long as you recognize my authority in regards to mine. And no I am not claiming to be THE authority on Christianity, but only a greater authority that any member of another religion. I think it is highly improper and intolerant for a member of one religion to claim, to a member of another, expertise in their religion, no matter how much they have studied it, and completely rude when they haven't studied it at all. Show me where I have insulted any group or religion or name-teased and I shall apologize. You and/or Eternal_Bliss are the representative(s) of the Hari Krishnas so you can share your sense of them all you want.

I very much beg to differ. I think we have an almost instinctive recognition of life. We see movement and in the investigation of the cause of this movement we make a great distinction between movement which is caused by life and that which is not. When life is the cause, our search for the cause of movement gets stuck in the complexities of living organisms and their internal workings and in the end there is the sense of something that moves for its own purpose quite apart from the direct influence of the environment. On a superficial level this is described by the term "emergent properties", but I believe that when we did deeper we find a fundamental difference in process.

Precious little can be proven and most of it is in mathematics, and one of those things that can be proven, ironically enough, is that we cannot prove that mathematics itself is consistent (Godel's proof). No we live by faith not by proof. Even the atheist lives by the faith that the sun will come up tomorrow. So you are saying that IF God exists and IF God created us and IF God does not tell us directly that He exists, then God exists even though we do not know it? Which goes to show that the question "Does God exist?" is the wrong question. The question is, when we are talking about God, what exactly are we really talking about? Is it an idea without substance or substance about which we really have no idea? Well first of all I think there is some confusion of the questions of the definition of God and the nature of God, which is an especially important distinction when we are talking about something we know so little about. The definition of God includes the required characteristics for an identification of this being as God, while the nature of God may only be something which we speculate about. Suppose we meet a talking cricket who claims to be God, what questions shall we ask this creature to acertain whether this claim has any truth to it, assuming that the cricket answers our questions truthfully in an absolute sense and not just according to his own knowledge and understanding? This query may help us to isolate what is actually a definition of God. The key question it seems to me is whether the answers to our questions of this cricket leaves us looking elsewhere for God or not. Since we usually think of God in terms of origins, the question of the orgin of God himself is a troubling one. So if we ask the cricket how he came to exist, answers like "he has always existed" that leave us looking no farther will work, while answers like "I don't know" or "I came into being in a cosmic explosion", that just lead to more questions would be a bit troubling. Some questions have to do with how we relate to God. If God is our moral compass then ambivalence and amorality on the part of this cricket would tend to leave us looking for a replacement to say the very least. If God is our explanation of our own being or the universe, then the cricket's denial of responsibility for the existence of the universe or ourselves would have us looking elsewhere. The laws of the universe are something I would seek to conquer with my understanding and power and therefore bears no resemblance to anything I would call God. If an explanation for everything was essential to your definition of God then I can understand your identification, but since I do not look to God for the explanation of everything then this identification does not work for me at all. As for the ultimate judge, I find no merit in this conception either for it seems to me that an autonomous natural law works far better as ultimate judge than a being who must weigh the worth of each of us individually. I cannot believe in hell as an eternal punishment for it makes no sense. Punishment is for behavior modification so an eternal punishment is an obvious failure. But as an inevitable consequence of our choices, hell is not only reasonable, but it is quite visible to me in the way some people think and choose to live their lives. Yes! But created by who?????? Heh he heh.....

From a physics point of view? Physics is based on objective observation and measurable quantites. What is their about spirits which are objectively observable or measurable? Nothing. There for physics cannot say a single thing about them. The question is whether anything exists which is not objectively observable. Well do you believe that love exists? And I am not talking about some attempt to explain it away with psychological/biological gobbledigook. To believe in love requires faith, and there is nothing objectively observable about love of this sort. Is this a proof? Of course not. It is faith. Particles are very simple forms of energy described by mathematical equations in which there is no room for any memory of where they have been. In fact according to quantum mechanics, since these particles are interchangeable, they do probabilisically interchange. In other words, trying to identify particles which came from a particular source is meaningless because in short order it is shared out among all other particles in percentages. The information stored in DNA includes nothing of what is learned by individual creatures - none of the experiences which are the content of our memories. The information stored in DNA is gathered in a time scale whose moments are generations and the only information it stores are the genetic variations that have managed to survive long enough to reproduce. So to justify such beliefs as you are talking about, you must as I said before, believe in the existence of things which are not objectively observable or measurable (as I do). To believe that memories are passed on, means that you must believe in something which contains these memories that continues to exist after the death of the body and mind - that which is commonly refered to as the spirit. But where do spirits come from? Are they objects created elsewhere or are they created by the process of life itself. If they are created elsewhere then are they lying in wait to posess infants which are born (pretty creepy if you ask me) or are the stuffed into the infants like inanimate objects by some higher being? If they are created elsewhere then is there an infinite supply or is there a danger of running out, or they manufactured as needed to meet the needs of a growing population? Since this idea of being created elsewhere generates more questions than it answers then the idea that they are created by the process of life itself seems much more reasonable (and less creepy) to me, and any "phenomenon of reincarnation" is simply the transfer or sharing of past memories between spirits of those departed and those still alive. Well I guess it is a matter of taste I suppose. Perhaps some people prefer to believe that their child is an old soul simply rediscovering the things of life, trying once more to do it right, while others like myself prefer to believe that their child is something absolutely new in the world with a completely unexplored range of infinite possibilities.

Not ultimately really, but only because our science of life, biology, is an observational science like astronomy rather than a theoretical one. But the new "science of Chaos" has the potential for changing this, for I believe it provides a mathematical model for the basic process from which all life is derived, providing the basis for a theoretical definition of life. But one of the conceptual changes that we will have to accept is that life is far more of a quantitative thing than previously thought. In other words some things are much more alive than others. Weather patterns have the basic features of this life process, it is only that the measure of this life is exceedingly low. Likewise, viruses have the same features which although the measure of their life is immensely greater than that of weather patterns, it is still fairly low.

No. The temperature and pressure is not high enough but that doesn't matter because its mostly iron and nickel at the center anyway. Nickel would require temperatures and pressures much much higher than the center of the sun to fuse and iron would require a supernova. The only planet which comes close is Jupiter, which is still 13 times too small to fuse deuterium, and 70 times to small to be a full star. But at least Jupiter does have compressed metalic hydrogen at its center. At a 1000 times the mass of Jupiter our sun is massive enough to be a fairly hot star compared to most, yet small enough not to burn out too quickly like the really hot stars. Yep. The dream of alchemy has been realized. We can turn lead into gold. But it is so expensive to do so that it is not worth the effort. Yes running a nuclear reactor is like balancing a pencil on its point (on the moon) for the reaction will tend to die down or speed up so you have to watch it in order to adjust the control rods to keep the reation steady. The control rods are materials that either slow down the reaction by absorbing neutrons or speed up the reaction by multiplying neutrons.

The basic idea of fusion comes from how the sun works, which is to push the hydrogen nuclei together with enough compressive force that they will form a larger nucleus with a lower total mass energy so that the extra mass energy is converted to radiation. In the case of atomic nuclei you can say that the nucleus is less than the sum of its parts, as strange as that may seem. The mass energy per nucleon of the atomic nuclei decreases as you go down the periodic chart (up in atomic number) until you reach iron which is the lowest mass energy per nucleon and then this energy per nucleon of the nuclei begins to slowly increase again. So the stars produce energy by the process of fusion, compressing smaller atoms into larger atom and eventually to iron atoms and our fission bombs and nuclear plants produce energy by the process of fission, breaking down atoms much larger than iron atoms. The existence of uranium atoms on the earth is why we believe that our matter is a product of supernova explosions, for stars only make atoms of the atomic number of iron or less. In the hydrogen bomb, however, we don't have the compressive power of the sun's gravity readily available and we use a few "shortcuts" to make it easier. Deuterium and Tritium, which are unstable isotopes of Hydrogen (with one or two neutrons in the nucleus along with the single proton) are used instead of hydrogen to make the to make the fusion reaction much easier to reach. The reaction is triggerd by a regular fission nuclear bomb using uranium 238 mirrors to reflect the neutrons from that explosion onto the hydrogen isotopes so that the resuting pressure and extra neutrons causes the hydrogen isotopes to fuse into the larger atomic nucleii (mostly Helium), converting the left over mass energy into an enormous amount of radiation. The resulting fusion explosion is powerful enough to fission the uranium 238 mirrors as well adding even more power to the explosion.

I am well aware of this tactic by newer religions to change their name and fragment into smaller groups, in order to avoid previous bad impressions. However in this case you are only avoiding the rather good impressions I have from visiting (over ten years ago) a rather small group here in Utah with their own broadcasting station. What you call yourself is irrelevant. The system of beliefs is still distinctive. And while I would absolutely love sharing one of your vegitarian dinners with you, our theological convictions are likely to remain at odds with each other. Yes I looked up Krishna. He did not sound even remotely similar to either Jesus or Siddhartha, with his thousands of wives -- more like a petty tyrant of pre-history with delusions of godhood. No offense intended. Those are just my frank impressions, to explain why I am not interested in a theology that tries to cast Jesus in the same mold. Furthermore Krishna sounds like just the opposite of Siddhartha as well. Perhaps since you believe in reincarnation, you see the same person changing and learning over time, but I do not.

Interesting. I know a great deal of the story of Siddhartha Gautama and none of those things you mention are a part of it. He was born to Śuddhodana and Māyādevī (King Sudhodhana's wife), there was the prophecy at his birth that he would either be a great king or a great holy man. I think perhaps that these other things you have claimed are a distortion by your organization (Hare Krishna?) in order to make him fit into your organation's peculiar syncretism of the ideas which you have borrowed from world religions, to make both him and Jesus incarnations of your god, Krishna or Vishnu or whatever. But I prefer to listen to what both of these men (Siddhartha and Jesus) really had to say rather put words into or take words out of their mouths in order to fit them into some manufactured ideology.

No the topic was the question, "does God exist?" What was particularly peculiar in this thread was that it was introduced in the science section rather than under religion and philosophy. But I already addressed that in my first post in this thread. The problem is that God is a subject of religious rather than scientific thought and religion is neccessarily highly subjective. So with Eternal_Bliss we have his Hindu-influenced thoughts about God and with me we have my Open Theist-evolutionary creationist-Christian-pragmatic-existentialist-mystic-physics-influenced thoughts about God. You presume much to assume that anyone is following their religion blindly. In fact, I would go so far as to say that such a presumption falls most easily from the mouth of someone who is following their own religion or philosophy blindly. I, for example, was not born Christian. I was a child of the sixties generation, people who believed in no religion, marriage or government, but in free sex and the dictates of reason. In some sense a religious discussion between people of different religious beliefs is impossible without in some manner "bad mouthing other points of view", that is why it is banned from polite conversation and public venues. It is why in the west we have this separation between the religious and the secular. Therefore to carry on such a religious discussion between people of different religious beliefs, we must have two minds, the subjective religious mind and the objective "secular" mind. So with one mind we can express our religious point of view and with the other mind we can draw back to the secular acceptance of opposing points of view. See. this is a good example of what I was saying. Eternal_Bliss is offended by the words attributed to Jesus saying "I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me", just as I am offended by the ideas of the reincarnation and maya. In Eternal_Bliss' mind those words of Jesus could only be the product of fraud just as in my mind the ideas of reincarnation and maya sound like the ideas of demons. In all likelihood, our ideas of the truth, no matter how much we think they are right, are actually all wrong, which is why it is very important that no one be able to impose their ideas on someone else, for imposing the wrong ideas on other people would very wrong indeed, wouldn't it?

This sounds like the words of someone looking for a convert rather than a discussion. If this is your outreach program then you are right I am not an easy mark for you to achieve your numerical goal. Indeed, I am not a blank slate on which you can write, I am a scientist, philosopher and theologian with a masters from a theological seminary and a masters in physics, which just means that I have studied a lot of ideas from a lot of different people and I have been thinking about these things a lot. Do I understand everything? Of course not. Discussion provides the opportunity for learning new things, but with someone like me it is a back and forth exchange. If you require a blank slate, there is always your children, but the challenge here is to see if you can make your ideas understood to people who already have a different way of thinking. There is always a question of context. Are your ideas too alien to be of any meaning to me or is some of what you say applicable in a different context. It is the idea of discussion that instead of just talking at people we talk back and forth. Everyone is the speaker and everyone is the audience. Besides there is always the chance that participants in a discussion like this will have ideas that are uniquely their own. I think that the possible ideas are infinite. So no matter what I may have already studied there is always the chance of meeting someone who does not simply parrot what they have read or been taught. Prison (suffering) or illusion (maya), it does not really matter, the point is that the world is viewed as something to escape from, and that still sounds like a denial of its beauty and value, which lessens what one can learn from it. You seem to believe in many paths as the Buddhists do, but if so each must find the one path that works for him. I can only speak of the path which I can see and understand. Look Christianity too has its own forms of denial and a huge blind spot when it comes to seeing the value of the natural world. It is so focused on the question of good and evil in human thought and behavior that it completely ignores the natural world, leaving the door open for its abuse and destruction. It has taken time for the Western world to realize the cliff which it is quickly approaching, when the earth will only recover after the human race is extinct. I see that you are disturbed by my subtle comparison of the way that Hinduism views the world and the way that I think Lucifer and his demons view the world. But I did not really mean imply that Hinduism is demonic. I meant only exactly and no more than what I said, that I cannot see it that way. I absolutely believe in religious freedom and I rejoice and embrace diversity in human thought and practice. For me even the shades of gray are too restrictive, I need the whole spectrum. Shades of gray still imply an absolute standard of good and bad by which you can judge all things, but in a full color spectrum you can see that some things are just different and neither better nor worse.

You are mistaken I did not call anyone extremist, I was replying to someone else who was calling people extremists. Bizzarre irrational justification for a bizzare irrational thing to say. Changing the topic from providing weapons to being a merciless killer? Well well. God is a merciless killer -- so are we all. So are most living organisms on the planet. A few humans simply like to delude themselves that they are otherwise. Why do you kill? Because the micro-organisms dare to invade your body? Because these creatures are just too insignificant to notice? So I take it you do not believe in capital punishment? No human being is irredemable according to you, is that it? I read it. I was not to impressed by the understanding of physics in it. But I do like Taoism. My father is even a Taoist. So although I am a Christian myself there is a definite influence of this kind of mysticism on my thinking. Jees, I wouldn't see much point in believing this even if it were "true". Yes I am a pragmatist as well as a Christian mystic - I'm existentialist too. I don't think we can accomplish our purpose in this life by denial and seeking escape. True understanding comes from complete participation and full appreciation of the value of everything and everyone around you and giving of yourself without reservation. I cannot believe in this idea of the world as a prison. It is only a prison to Lucifer and his demons, only these evil spirts are doomed to coming back again and again as parasites to new hosts. They hate this world and wish to escape it. No the world is a womb and that is a very big difference, for you leave the womb not to go back but to go forward, becoming something completely new and experiencing a bigger a wider existence, which you are only ready to experience after achieving the growth, that is your purpose in the womb. After leaving it there is no going back. If you are premature there is only the doctor who can save you.

This definition of life is typical of Biology as an observational rather than theoretical science much like Astronomy which simply looks at what is out there, classifies them, and tries to understand them. The problem is that there no way to identify what features are merely indicental characteristics of life on this planet only. But chaotic dynamics provides the mathematical foundations for a more theoretical definition of life as a particular kind of cyclical process which forms a kind of feedback loop that reinforces its own structure. It has been observed that such processes have the capacity to react to changes in the environment in a phenomena that resembles choosing called bifurcation which can lead to increasing diversity and complexity. The problem is that instead of making a sharp line between what is alive and what is not, instead it suggests more of a quantitative continuum from the less alive to the more alive. As a result, it should be of no surprise that according to this more theoretical definition viruses are definitely alive even though the quantitative measure of this life would be very low indeed. Its dependence on other life forms, although more extreme than most other life forms, is not unique, since in fact most life forms depend critically on the existence of other life forms.

No I don't. But I have heard enough. It may be a little harsh to call them lies, unless he claims what he says to be any sort of science. Clearly he is grasping at any chink he sees in the logic of science in his search for the possibility of the truth of his spirituality. Frankly I cannot even imagine what he thinks he has even proven by this 30,000 year argument -- well maybe I do: I guess it is some sorth of old earth creationism or non-biblical younger earth creationism.

In software development, I can see how that is possible. I am a programmer myself with no degree in Computer Science. And those classes I did take from the CS department have little to do with my programing abilities. However, physics is something completely different. In any case, I only expressed doubt and suggested he run these so called "lies" past me. Physics is a complex subject which even throws the physicists for a loop now and then. And there are also physicists who depart from the physics community to create fantastic theories which are so disconnected from the traditions of physics that they are practically meaningless (at least, more philosophy than science).

Now that is a clever bit of rhetoric. Say that everyone should have the right to believe in whatever they want, but anyone who believes something different is a liar. You say that you study physics and therefore you have the credentials to pass judgement on someone with a degree in physics? I have a masters in physics. Are you willing to run these so called lies past me for a second opinion?

Why do you say that? What did I say that sounds fustrated. Is there any basis to your judgement of me? As living beings we have the innate capacity to become more than we are. That is our infinite potential. But because we are finite beings with finite knowledge we are blind to our own possibilities and blind to the full consequences of our choices. God is the parent of all life. God raises life up to realize its greater potentialities. As an infinite being with infinite knowlege, God has the knowledge that we lack. So, I am saying that you need God to realize your potential. I did not say that. There is a difference between physical existence and spiritual existence. I explained the difference. If you disagree with my explanation please explain why. God is infinite, and we are finite. Therefore God is not simply higher but categorically different. Having knowledge and intellegence are not limitations. Not having intellegence or not having knowledge would be a limitation. If God has such limitations then these limitations would require an explanation. But if God is without limit then there are no limitations to explain. If the world is nothing but illusion, then your active participation in it is a willful escape from reality. So, if you truly believe this, then why do you humor your delusions? Why do you participate in nonsense? No I do not argue any such thing. God does not require any connection with us. I simply argued that God created us for a purpose. I believe that purpose is for a relationship with us. I do not know any such thing. As a physicist I know that we represent light as a mathematical construct called a wave function. And we have mathematical equations that describe how these wave functions change with time in perfect agreement with all of our measurements and objective observations. Describing light as a particle or a wave are just techniques used to visualize the nature of light in different limited circumstances. Clearly light is neither of these visualizations, because the behavior is inconsistent with them in different circumstances. The physical description of light as the wave function is perfectly consistent and is defined completely within the space-time structure of the physical universe. What you are refering to is the a result of the Minkowsky structure of space-time. Everything massless has a velocity with a magnitude of about 2.997x10^8 m/s relative to all things with mass no matter what the velocity of that thing with mass is. All things with mass have velocities with magnitudes less than 2.997x10^8 m/s relative to all other things with mass. These facts are all a part of the mathematical relationships between everything which is objectively observable and measurable. Yes I am quite aware of the holographic model. In fact this is one of the significant pieces of evidence that brain is nothing like a computer or a machine that controls our actions. Cases of brain damage has shown that although specific areas of the brain are normally assigned specific functions, these functions can be reassigned to different locations of the brain when there is damage. Thus in most of the brain, it is, in fact, only the total amount of damage which contributes to impairment. This is entirely consistent with the idea that the human mind is a living organism in the information flows within the brain, which is adaptable to changes in its evironment (the brain). I am exceeding the maximum number of quotes so from here it is the old fashioned way. "The outcome may possibly be that it's our brain that is the point of contact between our God and us. The holographic model can also explain a lot of unexplained 'paranormal' phenomenon. " But it is clear that God is not objectively observable or measureable - not physical as you say. Therefore to understand the contact between physical beings and God, you must explain how there can be connection between the physical (consisting of this mathematical description of everything measurable and objectively observable) and things which are not physical. "But still talking about God, he is not definable atleast as of now when we lack proper knowledge of this universe." Now that is an odd thing for you to say. If God is outside the space and time which is part of the structure of this universe, then how will "proper knowledge of this universe" provide a means to define God? "As about the theory of 'Was God an Astronaut' it is very much evident after researching on the facts mentioned in the book that Gods mentioned in Old Testament, Mahabharata and Epic of Gilgamesh were indeed Alien species." But no such thing is evident to me. What is evident to me is that contact with alien beings lacks the evidence consistent with physical phenomena and eludes objective observation and measurement just as paranormal and religious experiences do, which means they all lack that which is characteristic of everything in the physical description of reality. Giving different names to spiritual beings (calling them alien species) and finding reasons to ridicule the religious texts of other peoples is a typical behavior found in religious groups. "All the three books mentioned above talk of irrefutably similar stories and even similar characters, and all of them talk of interacting with Heavenly Gods who came down in flying chariots and gave them weapons to defeat others. God would never do that. Even in Mahabharata, the Pandavas are given a weapon called the Brahmastra by the heavenly Gods. Brahmastra was an ancient Nuclear Weapon. " Well I certainly agree that God would not do any such thing. However since I see no such claim as this in the Old testament, I reject your argument in this regard. "Anyway I wont argue on this because it depends on the belief of the people." Good. I think that is a productive attitude. I never presumed that you acknowledged any authority in the Old Testament and I have not made a single reference to it contents, other than the mention of angels, which was only an example anyway.

Being simply means that which is. If God has no being then there is no God. Therefore your words are double talk. I also believe that God exists outside time and space, for He created time and space. But that just means that he is not confined by the mathematical relationships which bind everything in this universe together. So God is - which is to say that He has being - is a being, which is not bound by these space and time relationships. Of course He can be compared to other being for there all types of relational comparisons. God is more powerful. God knows more. God created everything else, and everything else was created by Him. I don't think that God is a finite being. I don't think that God has any inherent rational limits except those which He himself creates. But this too is a basis of comparison. "Where" is a question that only has meaning in a system of spatial relationships, so if God is outside the system of spatial relationships to which we belong then this question has no meaning. But it is a mistake to think of God as completely outside time and space unless He has no interaction with the phsical universe, and to me it is clear that He does interact. But since His interaction is not limited by spatial relationships, we say that God is everywhere. This is the traditional paradox of God's transcendance (out there) and immanence (within us and everywhere). So, this question only makes sense within the system of spatial relationships of our physical universe and the answer is well known: We are in the outer reaches of the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies, in the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy, on the third planet of the star we call Sol. That is because this is not a question which religion asks. This is more properly a topic of metaphysics: the study of the nature of reality. Everything in this universe is a form of energy. In fact, the whole universe is one single complex form of energy. This form is highly mathematical. Every bit of this energy of the universe has a quantity, position and many quantifiable properties that change in time according to definite mathematical rules. Everything in the world that we see including our own bodies are a part of this form and bound by these mathematical rules. For example, one of these rules is gravity, and if you step off the roof of a twenty story building you will accelerate towards the ground in a mathematical precise and relentless fashion, with a mathematically calculable collison when you reach the ground. But these mathematical rules, position and quantity are not absolute. This mathematically defined form of the universe does have limits. As physics studied the fundamental structures of energy of which everything is composed - the elementary particles, it discovered something called the uncertainty principle. These particles have irreducable uncertainties in their mathematical properties. Even the quantity of their energy is uncertain during short periods of time according to dE x dt ~ 6.626x10^27 Js. This is an extremely small uncertainty but it is definitely there and it is definitely irreducible. There are events which force the uncertainties of particle's measurable quantities to collapse into a definite measure, which in physics is refered to as measurement events or wave collapse. And it has been proven that the results of these events have no cause within the range of phenomena that is an acceptable subject of study in physics. This either means that these results have no cause at all or that the physical world view constructed from what is measurable and objectively observable is not complete. For the non-physicist it comes as no great surprise that there is more to the world than what can be measured, but for the physicists it was quite a shock. In any case this does suggest that there is being which is outside this mathematical construction which we call the physical universe, and by abstract extention there is no reason we cannot think of this being as consisting of forms of energy which are simply not a part of the mathematical relationships of our physical universe. I envision a "sea" of relatively formless energy "in" which such things as our universe "floats" but without (and this is the hard part) spatial or temporal relationships. Other beings that would be found there are any of those things which we think exist but which we call "spiritual" since they do not seem to be objectively observable. I am familiar with the content of this book and I have come to no such conclusions. God may be intellectually inaccessible to human reason and beyond our definitons and manipulations, but God created this universe as a womb of life. God created life as something which He could have an intimate relationship with as nuturer, cultivator, shepherd, teacher and parent. If we have no access to God, nevertheless God has access to us, and He is a giver of gifts which we can receive if we open to receive them. For as living beings we are finite with infinite potentiality as the perfect mirror image of God's infinite actuality, and thus we were made for an eternal relationship with Him. And so I must fervently disagree with your idea of our purpose because our purpose is eternal and any achievement we make with His aid whether you call it salvation, sanctification, enlightenment, or moksha, it is only one step on a neverending path. -------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------- On the first thing you say, we can agree. Relationship and control are mutually exclusive concepts. If God desired control He would have designed us as He did the angels to be and do exactly no more and no less that what we were designed to be and do. But the human mind is simply our true physical being which resides within our bodies and which dies when the body dies. It is our spirit, created by the exercise of freewill in the choices we make, which exists outside the time and space of the physical universe and which continues to exist eternally. Our freewill lies at the heart of the process which distinguishes living organisms from inanimate objects. Life and freewill are quantitative, which means that not all living things are equally alive, and even human beings can be more alive or less so, although in this sense it is more commonly called consciousness even though it is really the same thing. And that is where our freewill has a catch, because not all choices are equal. Many choices may simply be a matter of our own uniqueness but some are choices which decide whether we attain a greater life (and consciousness) or whether we spiral down into a death of habit and stagnation. I am a physicist, but I do not belong to this cult which thinks that science has all the answers and solutions to the human condition. Science is about only what is objectively observable, but life is more that that. This cult in the forms of nazism and communism nearly destroyed the world, so I surely hope that most people are wise enough to avoid going down that dead end again. If you really want to look to the future and avoid the failures of the past then I would suggest that instead of dismissing and condemning the opinions of others that you instead attempt to love and appreciate people of every culture and religion and learn what they have to teach you first. Proof is a trap and a delusion. Proof only exists in a very few areas of knowledge like mathematics. And irony of ironies, one of the few things that you can prove, is that you cannot prove that mathematics is consistent. Certainty is a crutch for small children. There are too many things in life which are too important in which the uncertainty is irreducible. Love is one of these things. Love only exists because you believe in it, not the other way around. Therefore to grow up we must leave the crutch of certainty behind and learn to make leaps of faith, which simply means that we must make our own choices in regards to some of these uncertainties in life and live according to our choices. These extremists are just people like you. They have failed to love and appreciate people of other cultures and religions. They are so wrapped up in their own point of view that they cannot learn from anyone else, they can only destroy them. If you think that the solution is to eliminate the different ways that people think then you are exactly like them, and it is you who are stuck in the past and cannot create a future. Unity is not uniformity. Unity can only be achieved if everyone embraces the beauty of diversity.

Humans have removed themselves from the evolution only in the classical sense, of indidual organisms competing with one another for survival. This however is a natural stage in the development of life on this planet. Numerous times before, like in the development of multicelular organisms, individuals band together in communities, protecting the weaker members, to initiate a new stage in evolutionary development. The protection of individuals by the community create a new source of variation of the individual and you get a specialization of the roles of the individual in the community which make communal techniques or "technology" possible. Evolution then becomes evolution of the community. NO! Scientists merely describe an observable physical process. Because of the failures of Bell's inequality scientists cannot rule out the involvement of non-observable causes, but because science is restricted to observable causes only, they cannot discuss this possibility either. Endless are the disagreements of Christians about the details of their faith and the interpretations of the Bible. The only consensus among Christians about creation is that God is ultimately responsible for the existence of life and all the living creatures on this planet. Christians inform their interpretations of the Bible by the input of science all the time. For example, it is well know that the composition of the human body is not consistent with the compostion of dust, therefore many Christians interpret the word "dust" to mean matter. Other Christians, understanding the theory of evolution, likewise make this their interpretation of the word, "formed". It is clear that the story in Genesis is not, in any way shape or form, intended to be a scientific text, but a religious text for the purpose of pointing out the role God in our existence. Genesis is obviously not a "Creation for dummies" book telling us how God created everything, but only a story written in praise of God telling us that God created everything. Just because the Bible does not mention God creating the uncountable galaxies that fill the sky above us does not mean that God did not create them, don't you think? Just because the Bible does not mention the Grand Canyon, the elements of the periodic chart, or the earth's magnetic fields, does not mean that God did not create them either. NO! Evolution only describes a process of how the genetic code of a population of living organisms can change over time. Living things have the capacity to learn. They can learn new ways to live, which includes both how they behave and their actual physical structure, for evolution describes a learning process that stores the information of successful biological form in the genetic code. But learning does not occur in a vacuum and the fact that living things learn does not mean that there is no teacher. There is a difference between the theory of evolution and the atheists who uses evolution as their philosophy to explain the origin of living things. The atheists have such good propaganda going that they have convinced half of Christianity that they have science on their side, misleading these Christians to reject the validty of science. The debate between evolutionary atheists and creationists is like the following argument about of the origin of tomatoes in a grocery store. The atheist says that these tomatoes are a product of chance and the natural laws of physics - appearing before us in the store by predictable mathematical laws. The creationist says that their perfect and uniform roundness is clearly a product of design, and so these tomatoes must be designed and manufactured in factory. Both are obviously nonsense. The tomatoes are the product of tomato plants. They were not designed or manufactured. They grew by themselves and we could make a time laped photophy motion picture to prove it. But what that movie fails to show are the farmers who water and nuture the plant to keep it healthy and growing. Ultimately, the tomatoes are in the grocery store because of the farmers who grew them, but the farmers did not design or manifuacture them. The fact of the matter is that design and manufacture are the process of the creation of dead things not the living, and likewise the role of God in the creation of living must be seen in a similar manner as one who nurtures, cares for, prunes, raises, shepherds, and teaches. This is acually a more suitable creation philosophy for Christianity than the magical creation of Young Earth Creationists which is a philosophy more suitable to Deists who believe that God created the world like a giant (dead) clockworks, set in motion and left it to take care of itself. So I believe instead in a God who is intimately invoved in the lives of his creatures guiding their learning and development according to His plan and desire. Because evolution is reality not wishful thinking. In stories and myths you can cook up any god, angels and demons your heart desires, but things in real life are not driven by wishes. The fact that there are secretaries, learning skills like typing and word processing, and coping with unique problems like carpal tunnel syndrome, is an example of evolution. Secretaries will evolve to deal with their unique problems not with biological development which is the old technique used in the classical evolution of the individual (far to slow to be of use to secretaries anyway), but with medical technology which is part of the process of the evolutionary development of the community.

I think it is related to the binary representation of the first number. for example, 24 in binary is 11000. But this binary representation just means (2^4 + 2^3) Now the multiplication becomes (2^5 + 2^4) 56 = (16 + 8) 56 which using the distributive property is just 896 + 448 Since all the non-zero digits in a binary number represent powers of 2, using the binary form of the number in multiplication reduces the multiplication to a sum of products with these powers of 2.

Does God exist? I am a Christian and if this thread had been started in the religion section, I would have said yes God exists and I would have pointed out some classical proofs such as in Aristotle's Metaphysics and Charles Sanders Pierce's "Negelected Argument for the Existence of God". However, this thread was started in the Science section and I am a physicist as well as a Christian. As a scientist I must say that God is not objectively observable and therefore within the framework of a scientific discussion, God does not exist. The sciences test theories by making objective observations. Physics in particular simply describes the mathematical relationships between measurable quantities. Can we set up circumstances where objective observations of God can be made? Is there anything about God which is measurable? Ok, lets step outside of science now and dive into that lost topic of philosophy called metaphysics, which is defined as the study of the nature of reality. So in metaphysics we can ask the question, do things which are not objectively observable exist? Are they real? It is said that God is spirit, and the interesting thing about this, in this discussion, is that everything decribed as a spirit or as spiritual shares this characteristic of not being objectively observable or measurable. I find this contrast quite significant. On the one hand we have things described in physics which must be objectively observable and measurable, and on the other hand we have spiritual things which are apparently not objectively observable or measurable. So this suggest the metaphysical question of whether there could be an aspect of reality which lacks this characteristic of being objectively observable. But this is directly related to scientific question. Is the description of the world by science complete? Interestingly enough this is a question that has been answered in physics without such a answer even being sought. In quantum physics it was found that the best description of behavior of the elementary particles of which everything is composed was a probabalistic one. Einstein and others found this unacceptable and proposed that quantum physics was mere incomplete and that there must be hidden variables of which we are not yet aware which are the cause of these apparently random results of measurement. John Stewart Bell derived and inequality which must be obeyed if the following assumptions were to hold: 1) That the results of a quantum measurement are determined by unknown variables. (determinism) 2) Causality is restricted to the speed of light according to the special and general theories of relativity. (locality) 3) A measurement cannot produce more than one result at a time, fore there is a reality apart from observation. (realism or counterfactual definiteness) The failure of Bell's inequality means that one or more of these premises must fail. The vast majority accepts the failure of #1 in the Copenhagen interpretation. A small group however accepts the failure of #3 in Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation. None of the physics community really accepts the failure of #2, for that would bring almost all of modern physics tumbling down, implying all the logical contradictions of time travel and more. There are a few who play around with the idea of non-locality and David Bohm's interpretation to see if anything fruitful comes of it, but success in invalidating #2 is really unthinkable. Some have explored something called decoherence which promises some advances in the area of measurement theory but it is impossible that it can change the fundamental issues. The fact of the matter is that no matter how stubbornly determinists resist the failure of number 1, numbers 2 and 3 are established features of the physics world view and the physics community will not abandon them even if they have to accept that physics is not a complete description of reality. So putting all three premises together produces a clear message and that message is not the failure of determinism but only the failure of determinism if you insist on thinking that the physical description of reality, which consists only of measurable quantities and the mathematical relationships between them, is a complete description of reality. But God is not an acceptable scientific explanation for anything. God is not observable or measurable in any way and so, as far as science is concerned, unknowable. But that which is unknowable cannot be an explanation for anything. Evolution is a scientific theory and it is a good scientific theory for it describes a process that is observable and has been observed. "Creation science" is religiously motivated rhetoric, because no matter what "scientific" studies are done in its name it searches for evidence to support its theory (as lawyers and salesment do) rather than seeking to test the theory with observations (as scientists do). But Creationism is something else entirely because it talks about a God who is a spirit and therefore outside the ream of scientific discussion, and since the physical world view is not a complete one, the truth of the theory of evolution does not invalidate Creationism. Creationists are simply asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking whether evolution is correct they should be asking whether evolution is the whole story. But Christians can only ask such a question if they give up on the mythology of a world created by magic in seven days and a first man and woman created by necromancy as an animated golem of dust and a reanimation of someones body part.