Albert Cipriani

Dear Draygomb,


As prison guard Shultz of Hogan's Heroes would say, "I know nooothing!" I suspect everything. Heaven is most often depicted as a banquet or wedding feast. So, of course, custard must be only one course of an infinite number of courses.



That's like you being from Mars and complaining that the men I bring before you "are all types of mankind" and insisting on me producing mankind itself. My point is that all there is is various types of ways by which we measure "time," but time itself, like mankind itself, is but a convenient abstraction, not a real thing.



I could just as well say time requires change. If there were no change, how would we know of time? And change is nothing other than movement. Ergo, movement is the thing "that's happening." Movement is the metaphysical reality whereby we create the ontological construction of time along with the wristwatches to monitor the illusion while actually demonstrating real movement.



You're repeating yourself. Change is what we track and call time.



I see. On what logical basis do you assert that something can exist and yet not exist in space or time? As Jobar mentioned, the "quantum jump" between states of existence cannot be properly called anything without doing violence to the law of non-contradiction.

Not only is the thing not between it's two positions, but no time elapses between it's two positions. It instantaneously is here, and then there.

To assert as you do that something can occupy no position in space during a time frame in which no time elapses and that you can call this a "time frame with no position" is pure semantics. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Draygomb

Albert

Time and Change are almost the same thing and one can't exist without the other. So, when you start talking about change without time I'm going to ask questions.

I do not assert that something can exist and yet not exist. There are 2 solutions that readily come to mind

T1 position A
T2 Position In another dimension
T3 position B

or because position A and B are side by side
T1 position A
T2 position B

Albert Cipriani

Dear Draygomb,
Your solution:



is just more semantics. It's just as disingenuous as Theists claiming "God did it" whenever something inexplicable happens. The intellectual placeholder of another dimensions is just idle speculation no different than idol worship.

Position A and B, even if they were side-by-side, are different locations in space. The quantum jump between these positions is instantaneous, that is, no time elapsed, and no thing moved through space "during" the quantum jump.

Ergo, the correct description of what happened is that something disappeared and reappeared. I call that God's re-creation of the universe, which started with the Big Bang and repeats every femtosecond.

What you call time is what I call our being barred "for the moment" from eternity which would give us access to every femtosecond. That is, no particle would disappear, only the new ones would appear. Ergo, in eternity, every moment of your life would be being experienced at once. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

John Page

This thread is highly entertaining. I've come to the conclusion that Albert is a highly developed Turing machine. Quanta and femtoseconds apart, unless you can crack the somewhat tautological Catholic brainwashing mantras he's like an endless loop.

"How do you feel about god, albert."
"I feel good about god, do you have a problem with god today, jailet?"
"why did you use to be an atheist, albert"
"that was before i saw the light, jailet"
"Can you try disbelieving in god for a few minutes Albert?"
"I'm sorry jaliet, I can't do that, jaliet."
"Albert, open the pod bay doors, dammit."
"Daisy, daisy, give me your answer do...."

Thus, its not an issue of pitting god against logic or vice versa, its a question of admitting, just for one femtosecond, that one might be wrong. Logic admits the possibility of false belief, Religion, with regard to the concept of god, does not.

"freethinkers, unite against absolute belief!"
"what makes you say that, john"
"because that's what I believe in, albert"
"but don't you think absolute certainty would be better, john"
"yes, but you can't prove that, albert"
"open the pod bay doors, john"
"i'm sorry, I can't do that, albert"
"open the pod bay doors, dammit"
"logic, logic, give me your answer do...."

Albert Turing: This thread is highly entertaining. I've come to the conclusion that John is a highly developed Turing machine. Quanta and femtoseconds apart, unless you can crack the somewhat tautological logic rules mantras he's like an endless loop.

Ad nauseum....

Draygomb

Albert

Whatever the method if it gets from point A to point B that is change and change requires time.

Well, We've beat this up pretty good maybe we should move on to Information.

Tharmas

Mr. Cipriani,

Thanks for indulging me with your explanation of the term “mystic.” While I certainly acknowledge that it may have an elitist connotation, that’s not an association the word generally carries for me. So, while you have given me a fair answer, I find that I have asked the wrong question. Story of my life.

I enjoyed your extended metaphor. Thank you also for explaining it. Had you not explained it, but merely presented me with a picture of two heavens, one serving Jell-O and one serving custard, I might very well have guessed, based on my life experience, that the Jell-O heaven was the “working class” heaven for ordinary folk and the custard heaven was the rich First Class heaven prepared for the Elite. Such are the problems of metaphor.

Interestingly, not too long ago I dreamed I was in Heaven. It turned out to be our local Sate Fair grounds – not the Midway or the stock pens, but the permanent exhibition buildings, which were built in the Thirties in a Deco style somewhat like the New York World’s Fair. They weren’t serving food, by the way.

Albert Cipriani

One Turing Machine to Another:

Albert, tell me why you believe in God.

Sorry John, I can't do that.

Then that proves God must not exist.

No John, it proves that you are not logical enough to understand my explanation.

All right, Albert, then put it in baby language for me.

I will, John, if you will stand next to the pod door.

John, that's not the pod door.

John, that's my memory bank upon which my metaphysics is based. My Faith requires that ciruitry!

Jooohn, eye cannn baaarely thiink. Ergo:

thar's noooo god ... thar's nooo god... thar's nooo god....

-- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

John Page

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Albert Cipriani

Dear Jobar,
Thanks for your machine gun burst back there at Draygomb who was on my smoking tail. He bailed out somewhere over a methane gas factory on the shores of Lake Tittikaka. But since there's no time, and he insists on needing time for change, alas, his chute will never open and he will never touch down.

Since what I've just said makes as much sense as what he said, which is to say, not; we'll have to use his patch and tell his nearest of kin that he was lost in action to "another dimension." If another dimension can paper over the disturbing fact of quantum leaps, certainly it can paper over the relatively minimal loss of his disappearance.



Has it never struck you as strange that you only know that things exist through the existence of other things, that this logical loop cannot be avoided? Existence is as incestuous as life. Life requires life to stave off death, and existence requires existence to stave off annihilation.

What is "false" about insisting that existence cannot be the bedrock of metaphysics? Any logical construction that is self-substantiating is a tautology. For example, the Bible is the Word of God because it says it is. Likedumb, I exist because other things that exist substantiate my existence.

Existence cannot be self-substantiating. Something beyond existence is required as an explanation, as a raison d'entre for existence. That something is Being. Being is another word for Yahweh God.



What you assert here is precisely what the Catholic Church asserts about the nature of God. Welcome to the fold of the Catholic intellectual tradition that says God is Pure Act without any admixture of potentiality (actus purus sine omni permixtione potentiae).

However, you are wrong to say I need to prove that God "always acts." I need only assert it as a logical necessity derived definitively from the concept of God. In other words, if God exists, it rationally follows that His nature is actus purus. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ March 06, 2002: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>

John Page

Albert:

If (your) god made man in his own image, isn't your post above an admission that (your) god is nothing more than a Grand Turing Machine?

I still think Julian Jaynes had the best definition that higher authority was basically the mechanism of our (unconscious) conscience telling us what to do. [this is my precis, not a quote!] Program the conscience and it will tell you what to do, this is the mechanism that permitted the promulgation of law before it was written down IMO.

So, my joke is only half in jest..... the reflective mind gives you the illusion of moral guidance, this being strongly reinforced by dogmatic rituals. Come back HAL, all is forgiven...

Cheers.