The Top 40

And some people believe in the literal truth of this drivel.

According to the book we are all supposed to use as the fount of truth, night and day were created three days before the Sun - and plants were created before the Sun, too.

The inaccuracies start in the third paragraph. FFS...

Elemental components of reason being established - the 'Givens' from which the logic of the Bible is built.

Differentiation, and then using the tool of logic is necessary to create order from disorder. Though the quantitative tool of math is not being used, the distinctions can still be made qualitatively.

People of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about.

Look up allegory, metaphor, symbolism, parable and maybe you can transcend "logic"

Tripletap, that's exactly what I'm saying. The Holy Bible, that Great Light, has been the rule and guide of my faith and practice for decades.

Fear and faith cannot occupy my mind at the same time, and I am not running scared.

Fear is the bodies' Klaxon to tell you to be careful (Fear is a necessary emotion, as is hate, and discrimination). Its warning 'sound' should be heeded and the threat identified, but should not cause you to be un-manned and panic (Fear taking control of your actions).

A fine example of fear taking control and harming you is "Instinctive Drowning Response" where the body 'takes the helm' from 'you' in its attempt to save itself. Being that the 'swimming' procedure' is learned and not instinctual (autonomic firmware reflex), you will drown.

Sometimes, the Klaxon needs to be 'toggled off' so that you can focus on the best alternative via the higher reasoning of the soul (uhh... you). I guess the best way to consciously 'toggle off' the emotion called 'fear' is using a simple thought litany such as this one:

"Keep calm and carry on"

www(DOT)youtube(Dot)com/watch?v=FrHkKXFRbCI

If an idea embodies moral truth and beauty is it any less powerful and real than if it was empirically true? People who interpret the Bible literally are missing out on its most profound truths. God created light, and I really don't give a damn how He did it.

FletcherChristian, Your friends just called me, don't make me take the bus.

God divides light from darkness. It's just that some people prefer the dark.

The Book of Revelation, The Apocalypse (not the movie, fool). Allegorical though it may be, the events predicted are already unfolding. I am not wearing a tin foil hat nor do I rant about conspiracies and, um, "coincidences". Check out the world around you. Hear the rumbling of hooves just over the horizon? Smell smoke yet?

You look but do not see, ye of little faith. There will be much wailing, rending of garments and gnashing of teeth, especially among the hope & changers.

Divine Intervention.

Bring it.

Light is so ubiquitous we don't stop to see that it is miraculous, even in only that slice which we can see. The spectrum of light being not enough to amuse the accidental universe, light was made relative to time, although this was not revealed to Jews until Albert saw the light. But I'm sure it is all inevitable, like gravity and anti-gravity, Brahms and Beethoven.

james wilson - Yup. Light is the foundation of the Universe and its speed sets one of the scales on which it operates. A very profound truth indeed. How was that discovered? Well, certainly not by reading a badly translated book written in the Bronze Age.

Science has been described very simply. It is the process of asking questions of the Universe (which is probably semantically equal to asking questions of God) in an organised fashion and then... listening to the answers. Whether you like the answers or not.

reasons.org

"What is Light? Is it simply a linear series of self propagating electromagnetic fields? But that’s so limiting – that is simply a physical manifestation of one aspect of light. There are so many more aspects of “light” – there is physical light, there is moral light, there is light of understanding and truth – “Light” is not a thing, it is an idea. Any particular manifestation is just one specific, focused subset of the infinite kinds of light, but to say “Light” is to call upon an Idea which includes all possible manifestations of Light. Thus the Idea is far more encompassing and powerful then any possible measurable manifestation. Furthermore, the Idea must exist before any physical form of the Idea can manifest. A fundamental idea which has the power to manifest physically is what was expressed by the Greek philosophers as “Logos”, memorialized in this English translation:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God.”"

Sourced from Belmont Club comment by WWS, 9/4/2010.
Excellent comments here Gerard. Just beautiful. My sense of Genesis is that it is the Bible's Metaphysics and I am mindful of the commerce that took place between "Bronze Age" Israel and the occupying Greeks.

John Hinds - Light is indeed a self-propagating electromagnetic wave. The metaphysical meanings which you attach to the word should probably (IMHO) be denoted by some other word, possibly even a neologism.

One thing that science is supposed to have (all too often it doesn't, because it's to someone's advantage to confuse some issue) is precise meanings for words.

A somewhat similar case is the word "energy" which has a very precise meaning in scientific terminology but which is grossly misused by various sorts of mystics, charlatans and quacks. Example: WTF does the phrase "subtle energy" mean?

No Scott M, "reason.com"

One who attaches feathers to arrows is the more or less precise meaning of Fletcher. Discovery of that meaning is a subtle delight. The Word, the Cosmos, words in general, have their meanings assigned to them and change over time. "Subtle energy" might just mean it can't be nailed down sort of like one can't grab a hand full of water but can cup one's hands and catch it - without grasping. We might be better served by acceptance of the notion that uncertainty is the natural order the beauty of which is that we have the freedom to make it up as we go along. You can believe what you will and in the end, (of your life) the sum of your belief is what you will take with you. Or, to put it another way, what we do in life echos through eternity. I think one difference between you and me, Fletcher, is that you would own while I want to yield.

Tocqueville remarked that if the opinions of atheists also encouraged a modest opinion of themselves the result might not be so disastrous. Exception: John Derbyshire, who saw that life is a series of one bubble popping after another.

Fletcher Christian:
John Hinds - Light is indeed a self-propagating electromagnetic wave. The metaphysical meanings which you attach to the word should probably (IMHO) be denoted by some other word, possibly even a neologism.
One thing that science is supposed to have (all too often it doesn't, because it's to someone's advantage to confuse some issue) is precise meanings for words.
A somewhat similar case is the word "energy" which has a very precise meaning in scientific terminology but which is grossly misused by various sorts of mystics, charlatans and quacks. Example: WTF does the phrase "subtle energy" mean?

ME:

One of the glories of words is that we can use the same word in so many ways. The phrase “Let there be light” is fecund and profound in its many manifestations in the human psyche. It would be impossible to create neologisms every time we multiplexed a concept, and it would rob our ideas of their power and breadth. It would dangerously hobble us with “mind forged manacles”.

As for science—when it can, science assigns mathematical expressions and formulations to fundamental concepts; but, in the real world, any precision has to be approximate, if only because values have to be truncated at some point, depending on the experiment or specific usage.

Moreover, with such mathematical forms, any words that we use to discuss, express, utilize to set up experiments, or combine with others for a given usage, immediately take you away from even the (approximate) precision lent by the math.

And even the math itself, by approaching a given phenomenon through different types of mathematical attack, let’s us apprehend/comprehend the phenomenon in different guises, such as the differing mathematics by which we deal with light as a wave or particle. Every time we use a different or new mathematical tool to work with a phenomenon, we change our “view” of the phenomenon.

To coin a phrase, the precision that mathematics lends to science is always at the edge of giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.

Dear Fletcher,
The only thing you believe in is your post-modern faith in your own autonomy and the "facts" that tickle your ears. Reason this: Without a revelation given you from someone who knows the truth, everything you believe is as subjective and "religious" as a Buddhist chant or the ravings of an African animist. Pardon me, but people who live in glass houses should be very careful with pellet guns.

The light in those first verses of Genesis 1 need to be viewed with the light referred to in the first verses of John 1. From the very first God revealed His Son.

It is very worth contemplating why God would replicate Himself. You can even apply logic to this meditation. Logically what was planned in eternity and what has transpired through the ages, is the only way (that I can logically conclude) God can demonstrate his righteousness and glory.

Rather than trying to impose our own paradigms onto God, it is much more interesting when we explore why and how from God's perspective (as much as we humanly can, anyway).

Mr Christian, I will pray to God to enter your mind. Please let us know if you think of him, or not. Don't try too hard to drive the thoughts away. Have a blessed day.

Mr Christian, I will pray to God to enter your mind. Please let us know if you think of him, or not. Don't try too hard to drive the thoughts away. Have a blessed day.

Mr Christian, I will pray to God to enter your mind. Please let us know if you think of him, or not. Don't try too hard to drive the thoughts away. Have a blessed day.

That is a lovely illustration. Thank you for sharing it.

Fletcher, if only you knew the sort of mind that Gagdad Bob possesses, you'd be asking questions instead of presuming to have answers. From his latest essay:

Rosen lays "the groundwork for a relational biology based on functional organization and methodically investigates the theoretical limits of mechanistic systems.... The distinction eventually becomes clear that any such algorithmic mechanisms cannot embody the kinds of unpredictable complexity that are characteristic of an organism. Because the syntax of Newtonian physics can express no such closed loops of entailment,'life' cannot even be described in that model of physics, much less modeled in any complete way. Thus it is that biological organisms are not a mere subset of current physics, but are representative of complexities that require physics to be enlarged."

Or you could just say that life is the rule, not the exception. I don't think you need to completely master the science in order to intuit the consequences. Even in a fully caffeinated state, Rosen is a daunting read. Rather, you may simply suspect -- as I do, and as another reviewer puts it -- that "the present axioms of science are much too limiting to explain anything we really would like to know about the universe," because "we are trying to solve problems in too limited a universe of discourse."

I mean, right? The existing toolbox of the tenured is "only useful for predicting the N+1 [i.e., quantitative] state for some dead (and therefore uninteresting) mechanistic universe." But it's nice to have the prestige of science -- or the science of the future! -- on our side.

The problem is, none of these futurians seem to know of or talk to one another. The reason for this, I think, is that, in order to climb the greased pole of tenure, one must internalize the existing paradigm, whether one is a physicist, biologist, neurologist -- even theologian! In short, academia is is full of conformists and secondhand intellectuals.

Therefore, the nonconformists who resist the indoctrination must either be very stubborn, independent, and creative; or just eccentric crackpots."

Mercy... Do I miss Bob's writings, Joan.

Talk about a cool drink of water. Most refreshing.

I'm too deep into this particular Rabbit-hole visit at the moment as his writings as very disturbing - but in a good way.

Same goes with most of my friends here on the internet. I miss all of you very much.

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