• PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    the program for our evolving worldGnomon

    The program doesn't do well; there were five near extinctions, with a sixth on the horizon.
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    How might a necessary-fundamental-eternal-capability begin to develop a system of mind? — Possibility

    It wouldn't have a little mind from which to intend to develop a larger system of mind.
    PoeticUniverse
    The notion that the observer in the mind is a little homunculus is a Materialistic concept, requiring an infinite regression of observers. In order to understand the relation between Brains and Minds, you must realize that Brain and Mind are composed of the same substance : Information (the power to enform). If you find this difficult to imagine, just remember what the spoon-bending bald kid, in The Matrix, said to Neo, "there is no spoon". You and the spoon are one. It's all Information, all the way down. :cool:


    Information :
    . . . Claude Shannon quantified Information not as useful ideas, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful order (1) and meaningless disorder (0); between knowledge (1) and ignorance (0). So, that meaningful mind-stuff exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing effects on reality while having no sensory physical properties. We know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world.
    . . . For humans, Information has the semantic quality of aboutness , that we interpret as meaning. In computer science though, Information is treated as meaningless, which makes its mathematical value more certain. It becomes meaningful only when a sentient Self interprets it as such.
    . . . When spelled with an “I”, Information is a noun, referring to data & things. When spelled with an “E”, Enformation is a verb, referring to energy and processes.
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    The program doesn't do well; there were five near extinctions, with a sixth on the horizon.PoeticUniverse
    Conventional programmers aim for specified goals. But Evolutionary Programming intends to explore possibilities. My assumption is that the Cosmic Programmer created an ongoing experiment to explore what's possible within certain limitations (natural laws). In that case, temporary failures are merely stepping stones to the next iteration . . . the process goes on.

    Evolutionary Programming : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    the process goes onGnomon

    Reality/Language analogy:

    Capability is the energy/gravity
    that papers the covariant quantum fields
    that ink the particles of the standard model
    that stroke the alphabet letters of the atoms
    (as coded in stars)
    that word the dictionary molecules
    that phrase the biotype DNA cells
    that verb the subjects
    that sentence the creatures
    that paragraph the species
    that story the ongoing tree of life
    that books the literature of the unified-verse
    that libraries the Cosmos.

    (something to work on)
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    It’s disappointing, I must say.Possibility

    aspects of realityGnomon

    To the Quantum Depths of the Poetic Universe

    From quantum non-locality and entanglement, we know that information is more primary than distance, and that things don’t have to have the appearance of being near each other to be connected and cause an effect.

    Everything connected to everything would seem to be a ‘perception’ as far as one could be had by that network. The all-at-once connections, as like in a hologram, would seem to provide for for the direction of what goes on in the overall information process. I am thus thinking like a yogi and a guru, the entire cosmos situated within me.

    Quantum non-locality seems to imply that every region of space is in instant and constant contact with every other, perhaps even in time as well, and so the holistic universe is governed by the property of the solitary whole—and so that could be the underlying guidance principle. An individual particle might ‘know’ something about what to do, acting according to all the others.

    Thus both our consciousness and the holistic universe, each having a singular nature, would be the clue. Maybe they are of the same basis of fundamental consciousness, but separate as two manifestations, each controlling a different realm, such as internal and external, our internal consciousness giving us ‘future’, and the external consciousness granting ‘future’ to the universe. I don't know which has the tougher job.

    Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.

    Quantum entanglement suggests that each particle has the entire 3-D or 4-D map of the universe, the information ever updated, the universe being as a single entity. While this may not be consciousness at the level we have, it may help the universe accomplish something of the movements of particles and fields in their energy, mass, and momentum, in some global way that ever goes forward overall.

    This may not seem to be saying a whole lot, in depth, but since the quantum realm is beneath everything then one would surmise that thee quantum realm must have all to do with everything that goes on.

    It is still that the apparent atoms and molecules make the happenings, via physical-chemical reactions; however, this observation cannot be equated to an ‘explanation’, for we must wonder what underlies the chemical mattering and reacting that seems to have some unity of direction to it.

    Well, I’d finished with the yogis and the gurus, and the seers and the oracles only know of the future; so, I surmised, to uncover the deepness of the present, for nature and the conscious animates, I must seek out the Grand Poet in her Uni-Verse, in order to fully apprehend the ethereal phantasms of the entangled and enchanted forest of nature, hopefully bringing them into the light.

    Fortunately, I was a poet myself, and so I could gain entrance to the elfin dell, as a human, having to first pass through the neophytes, trying to resist their temptations and spells; however, the sensual can indeed take a back seat to the intellectual, although the ecstasy can be similar.

    I had been to FairyLande once before, bringing my epic poem, ‘Flora Symbolica’, unto them, and writing up the results in ‘Elfin Legends’, and so they had bid me to return one day when I had a meaningful quest.

    Theirs was more of an ethereal world, whereas mine was often clunky, except when I dreamt at night, and so it was time for me to wander again, to ask about and better understand the quantum guidance principle, especially learning this from those closer to nature and the heavens, they being the elven mixture of spirit–angel-beings and humans, and quite aware of the causal nexus.

    I flew to England, to the special place, near Gallienne’s old haunts, and waited for the funnel to open up into a tunnel, and then through it I came out into their realm and walked on for a full day, seeing no one straight out yet, just a few sideward waverings, but noting many new colors hereto–fore unknown, as here there were more waves and frequencies.

    Here the blesséd and haunted old forest,
    Whereat the base of an oak I rest,
    While all about lay wondrous deep coverts,
    And a green-turfed path that leads o’er a crest.

    They all knew what I was after, as evidenced in the first encounter with one of them.

    “To pass and learn of the connectedness of all things, you must kiss me, after which I’ll give you your first clue.”

    The kiss vibrated deep within my being, and I felt it to my core, and then she related, “All of life’s entities embrace one another, including cells, organisms, species, and biotope”.

    Slumbering in the orient sunbeam,
    I soft awoke, as dewdrops all agleam,
    Refreshed by the delight of a daydream,
    Then rose as mist, carried on the day-beam.

    I was on my way again the next morning, the hours having flown by, as when Einstein had sat next to a pretty girl and had noted the much quicker passage of time, over the slower passage when touching a hot stove.

    I learned more as I meandered through the labyrinth of the forest.

    She said, “Hold me, and I will unveil some of the poetic structure afterward.”

    Well, two days went by, someeehow, and she revealed more of my quest, “Living conscious creatures are as a poem, they ever revealing further dimensions and expressing new properties at every level of organization, via strokes, letters, phonemes, words, phrases, and sentences, in and of a [uni]verse of rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, metric, and melody. This will relate to the quantum All.”

    I was hungry for the continuation of life’s quantum poem, and hoped I’d be able to move on more quickly, but her allure was testing my resolve; however, she told me something very soon after we’d rubbed our cheeks together, “Meanings in life are not just discovered or gleaned by mere observation but by understanding through participation, these informationally derived meanings combined to make sense in a non-reductive process, as in the relational reality of life happening at our semantical level of syntactical information exchange, with no breaking of any of the holistic connections, all this as the epic whole of the book of nature.”

    It was so still you could hear a nut fall,
    And the musical strain of mystic call,
    In soft tones flowered upon the silence,
    As floating on the surface of the All.

    “There is the particle and there is the wave—either one forced on us by our observations, being jointly known as the ‘wavicle’, all three states of which are truly not the actual reality.”

    Of man and angel, one yet neither, they came,
    To dwell forever, in shadow worlds, between
    Form and substance, they, all elfin creatures
    And all who float or fly as came from Paradise.

    After two weeks with her, I had to survive the passage through the land of skulls and roses.

    Finally, I emerged, unscathed, into the Land of Spring, and found out about growth.

    “There are no objects that are identical with themselves over time, and the temporal sequence remains open. Nature is a ‘possibility gestalt’, with the world forming anew each moment, from the deeper, enfolded realm which is a unity in the sense of an indivisible ‘potentiality’ which can realize itself in many possible ways, it not being a strict sum of the partial states.”

    ‘Twas that time of morn when the exiled rise,
    Thrown to time’s Earthly bondage through the skies,
    Being for an hour their own Heavenly selves,
    Their full glory unhidden by disguise.

    “It still appears to us, though, that the world consists of parts that have continued from ‘a moment ago’, and thus retain their identity in time; yet, matter really only appears secondarily, as a congealed potentiality.”

    These forest fairies, dryads, nymphs, and fauns,
    Ever flash their nude blossoms on the lawns.
    They beckon me along, for though the air
    I pass thoughts of love, verses, and songs.

    “In a stable configuration of matter, such as in the inanimate, all the quantum uncertainties are effectively statistically averaged out, this thus ever being deterministic; but in the case of the statically unstable but dynamically stable configurations, the ‘lively’ features of the underlying quantum structure have a chance to surface to the macroscopic level.”

    Magical things I saw, that often appear
    Elsewhere when one’s eyes close but for a second:
    Wingèd ladies, and flowered butterflies,
    Whose prints are pressed as dust upon the pansies.

    Unicorns and chimeras wandered by,
    With nixies, gremlins, and centaur men;
    Faeries danced, caught by a believing glance,
    As dreamy visions held me sleepy-eyed.

    A flush of youth shot through us, as the chain
    Of light from angel to faerie added my link,
    And my eyes were sparks of bright burning fire,
    Sense extended in a new dimension.

    And so they told me more, “Physical phenomena are made of information processors that generate overlappings of correlated multi–dimensional wave fields which are propagating through time, as fields of possibility, whose intensity is a measure of the probability of an object-like realization.”

    The life of her face is in her deep blue eyes,
    Soft-lipped mouth, and the ears that pointed rise,
    As the moon and stars reflect in a pool,
    Which look as for a lifetime pours surprise.

    “So, there is form before substance, relationality before a materiality that is of secondary importance, its information being primary. Impressions of realizations are left in our world by the gestalt that ‘lives’ in the multidimensional spaces of quantum superpositional possibility.”

    I dive into her eyes, her soulful gate,
    And worship before her heart’s flaming grate,
    Midst flowers in the gardens of her dreams,
    Then whirl back up through her eyes as her mate.

    “There are no point masses then, but only smudged particles, such as we know of in the space-filling representations of the distribution of electrons in the shells of atoms—the ‘cloud’.

    “What remains unchanged over time are certain properties that find expression in the laws of conservation of energy, momentum, electrical charge, etc., these necessarily being closer to the basis of all.”

    At last, I met the ultimate Poet, the Elfin Queen, who reevealed, “There is a relationship structure that arises not only from the manifold and the complicated interactions of the imagined building blocks of matter, but also one that is substantially more inherent and holistic.”

    She continued, “So, then, the weaves of the quantum bits as strokes makes for the letters of the elementals, as the alphabet of the standard model, forming the words as the atoms that go on to form the molecules as the phrases, on into cells as sentences, up to the paragraphs of the organisms, and unto the stories of the species, via the unity of life’s conscious literature as the unified verse in which we live out our poems.”

    I’m left with a feeling that’s no mere spell,
    But a fact in Heaven that’s fancy in Hell,
    Of elemental affinity’s flame,
    Deeper than thought, much older than speech can tell.

    I headed back home, this taking a few months, never stepping into the same universe twice.

    Pictures from my trip:
  • Janus
    15.4k
    You’re dismissing this on the assumption that ‘mind’ is necessarily a complex system, when in fact you have no idea what mind is.Possibility

    If a complex system such as the Universe were to be intentionally planned, then the mind that planned it would need to be at least as complex.
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    11. God’s operations, curiously restricted to be the same as nature’sPoeticUniverse
    That's because the evolutionary program devised by the presumptive Programmer is experienced by us little avatars as Nature, in all its aspects, both good (Enformy) and bad.(Entropy). The values of our program range from Zero (death) to One (life), and everywhere in between. Apparently It's our job as thinking beings to make sense of that disparity, as best we can.

    10. It doesn’t seem like a God’s world, and so fundamentalist literalist Biblical ‘reasons’ cannot apply here,PoeticUniverse
    I must again clarify that I am in agreement with most of your arguments against the obsolete notions of deity based on ancient scriptures. But I am not in agreement with certain atheistic arguments that are based on obsolete science. Prior to the Big Bang theory, it was plausible that the world was self-existent. But now we know that it did not exist before that act of creation. Prior to the Quantum theory, the materialistic belief in fundamental atoms was plausible. But now the foundations of reality fade into virtuality as mathematical fields. So, it no longer seems like the old 19th century materialistic scientific empirical 'reasons" apply here. That's why Enformationism is proposed as an update for both Theistic and Atheistic worldviews.

    For further clarification, I'll try to explain that the Enformationism thesis is not Theistic like Christianity and Islam. It is not Occult & Magical like New Age cults. And it is not Superstitious like Paganism and Shamanism. It is instead an attempt to understand the world in both Physical and Metaphysical aspects, by explaining how Quanta and Qualia are instantiated in the world.

    FWIW, I sometimes refer to myself as an "Agnostic Deist", because my G*D hypothesis is a gap-filler for the enormous abyss of our understanding of Ultimate Reality.
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    If a complex system such as the Universe were to be intentionally planned, then the mind that planned it would need to be at least as complex.Janus
    That complex effects require even more complex causes is true within the space-time universe. But in the hypothetical eternal-state-prior-to-the-Big-Bang all events exist simultaneously (holistically), as in Einstein's Block Universe. Hence, our one-thing-at-a-time-universe seems complex to us because we experience it one-step-at-a-time (now), while all other steps (past/future) are hidden from us. But the presumptive Programmer (The ALL) is all-at-once, hence utterly simple.

    One way to imagine this fantastic scientific scenario is to picture the random static on an infinite TV screen. Since there are no objects visible, all you see is a continuous shade of gray. But each of those countless pixels has the potential to become either black (0) or white (1), or any color in between. So, the cosmic Programmer (or TV Producer) can select any subset of pixels and specify their colors in order to produce a meaningful image. Play those images in succession, and you have the "real" world that we experience one-frame-at-a-time.

    Black or white, all or nothing, one or zero . . . these are examples of the simplest element of reality : either/or. The potential of Eternity/Infinity is a two-sided coin, but both sides are of the same coin : unity.

    Block Universe : https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-debate-over-the-physics-of-time-20160719/
    Eternalism : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    Pictures from my trip:PoeticUniverse
    Were you tripping in the Astral Plane? I enjoyed your little excursions into fairy-tale fantasy. And also your insightful glimpses into some far-out scientific "aspects of reality". Not many people could pull-off both in the same post. :smile:

    Quantum non-locality seems to imply that every region of space is in instant and constant contact with every other, perhaps even in time as well, and so the holistic universe is governed by the property of the solitary whole—and so that could be the underlying guidance principle.PoeticUniverse
    Yes. Materialists won't appreciate this analogy -- due to it's spooky implications -- but "non-locality" is essentially the same thing as Infinity/Eternity, as proposed in Einstein's theory of Block Time (Ultimate Reality). All points in space & time are indeed in contact with each other, because there is no distinction in Unity (wholeness). Yet, we space-time creatures experience Proximate Reality as one point (thing, event) at a time. That's why I have to postulate a "guiding principle" (G*D) to conceive of all possibilities at once, and then to select via Intention a sub-set of infinite what-if maybes (Ideality), transforming them into finite what-is actualities (Reality).

    Thus both our consciousness and the holistic universe, each having a singular nature, would be the clue. Maybe they are of the same basis of fundamental consciousness, but separate as two manifestations, each controlling a different realm,PoeticUniverse
    Subjective Consciousness and Objective Physics are indeed separate manifestations of Ultimate Reality. Subjectively, we experience reality as a sequence of events or as a collection of parts. But Objectively, we can conclude, as Einstein did, that all things are relative, and our personal perspective is only a fraction of absolute reality.

    Lee Smolin has it that qualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is fundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter.PoeticUniverse
    Precisely. Materialists see only the quantitative aspects of reality, and ignore the intrinsic qualitative aspects, because they are too personal and subjective. But physicist Smolin thinks that's "The Trouble With Physics" : turning a blind-eye to qualia. Information is now viewed by some serious scientists as The Fundamental Element of the universe, being intrinsic in both Mind and Matter. Perhaps the primary reason most physicists object to that interpretation of Information is that it seems to open the door to Magic, Miracles, and Myths, due to the non-empirical nature of subjective consciousness. But Enformationism is an attempt to have the Qualia without losing track of the difference between "as-if" and "as-is". That way we can enjoy fiction & fantasy without compromising facts & science.

    It is still that the apparent atoms and molecules make the happenings, via physical-chemical reactions; however, this observation cannot be equated to an ‘explanation’, for we must wonder what underlies the chemical mattering and reacting that seems to have some unity of direction to it.PoeticUniverse
    Yes. We need both imaginative Ideality and no-nonsense Reality to see beyond the particular "happenings" of Physics into the holistic "whys" of Meta-physics.


    I had been to FairyLande once before, bringing my epic poem, ‘Flora Symbolica’, unto them, and writing up the results in ‘Elfin Legends’, and so they had bid me to return one day when I had a meaningful quest.PoeticUniverse
    Have these odes been published in the mundane world?
    Were the Fae Folk dismissing your quest for a reconciliation of Poetry and Science as a meaningless mission?
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    But in the hypothetical eternal-state-prior-to-the-Big-Bang all events exist simultaneously (holistically), as in Einstein's Block Universe.Gnomon

    It is that the eternal state was never made and so it has no input and thus it has every possible path in it, but not one special favored path picked out, at least not yet, if we say this using time, and then the Programmer picks a path that becomes our block universe. How's that? More later.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    Play those images in succession, and you have the "real" world that we experience one-frame-at-a-time.Gnomon

    Each frame is a whole new 3D universe, with the frame duration being the Planck time and thee frame pixel being thee Plank size. The Programmer made the ultimate DVD video.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    Have these odes been published in the mundane world?Gnomon



    The video of Flora Symbolica isn't out there yet.

    Were the Fae Folk dismissing your quest for a reconciliation of Poetry and Science as a meaningless mission?Gnomon

    No, they loved it; since they are angels and humans combined or an intermediate stage, they know more than we do.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    cosmic ProgrammerGnomon

    Specs from his notes:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/339735

    The Eternal has to be everything,
    Superimposed, not a certain pathing;
    It can’t have inputs, with no beginning;
    So, what chose the song our universe sings?
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    If a complex system such as the Universe were to be intentionally planned, then the mind that planned it would need to be at least as complex.Janus

    I didn’t say the Universe was intentionally planned, though.
  • ozymandias11111
    5
    Universe was planned? What is this? Opium of the masses or Opium to the masses? Have you ever seen the traffic, Joe? C'mon which world are you living in?
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    Quantum entanglement suggests that each particle has the entire 3-D or 4-D map of the universe, the information ever updated, the universe being as a single entity. While this may not be consciousness at the level we have, it may help the universe accomplish something of the movements of particles and fields in their energy, mass, and momentum, in some global way that ever goes forward overall.

    This may not seem to be saying a whole lot, in depth, but since the quantum realm is beneath everything then one would surmise that thee quantum realm must have all to do with everything that goes on.
    PoeticUniverse

    Personally, I’m not convinced the entire universe is entangled in a single system at the quantum level - and certainly not that each particle has as much information about the universe as you’re suggesting here.

    I do think plenty of the universe is entangled, though - in a complex variety of quantum systems formed through particle interactions so far. A meteor that lands on earth contains so much information about its trajectory through space and time - some of which we can already piece together based on the information we have about the systems with which it may have interacted along the way. The potential for us to access much more information about the universe through quantum entanglement is an exciting prospect.

    With everything we learn about the universe, we entangle ourselves ever more...
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    So, from our limited perspective, according to this, there is a 50% probability God exists?Coben

    The answer is "yes". Some may argue that the probability is different, provided there is an additional (to me unfounded) belief that the scriptures are inspired by god.
  • deletedusercb
    1.7k
    Actually I think your main problem with your estimate is going to come from the other direction. That a non-believer, if you are one, thinks there's a fifty percent chance God exists, might well be viewed rather positively by many theists. But I think the other team is going to be all over that.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Actually I think your main problem with your estimate is going to come from the other direction. That a non-believer, if you are one, thinks there's a fifty percent chance God exists, might well be viewed rather positively by many theists. But I think the other team is going to be all over that.Coben

    It is mere partizansm. There is no proof god exists; there is no proof god does not exist. I BELIEVE GOD DOES NOT EXIST. But I allow the validity for others to believe god exists.

    There is a deeper problem: whether god exists or not, we don't know what he wants, what he wants of us, what he is like, what he can do, what he will do. Those who claim knowledge are either delusional, or believe the scriptures. The sriptures are not god-inspired; they are mere fantasies of thinkers of older times. The lessons in the scriptures are meant to aid societies to keep social order in the manner the sripture writers intended it.

    There is no proof that the scriptures were inspired by god. There is no proof that the scriptures were not inspired by god. But the plethora of self-contradictions included in the scriptures; their convoluted messages; their focus on only a few select subjects; their limited scope of reason and knowledge base all point at having been written by very enthusiastic dilettantes. Which, if you listen to a theist, is not what god is imagined to be.
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    The video of Flora Symbolica isn't out there yet.PoeticUniverse
    Wow! That was a fantastic trip, and it was drug-free! :up:

    I noticed that all the Fae Folk depicted were in the female form. Is there a Freudian explanation for that, or is it simply Fairy Porn? :love:
  • Gnomon
    3.5k
    Universe was planned?ozymandias11111
    No. It was Programmed. The difference between a blueprint and DNA is that one produces a predestined object, and the other an open-ended system. We are currently living in a living organism, working out its own destiny. And each of us is a microcosm of that Cosmos. The presumptive Programmer is merely observing the process to see how it turns out. :smile:
  • deletedusercb
    1.7k
    It is mere partizansm. There is no proof god exists; there is no proof god does not exist. I BELIEVE GOD DOES NOT EXIST.god must be atheist
    What with your 'name' I figured.
  • Janus
    15.4k
    You’re dismissing this on the assumption that ‘mind’ is necessarily a complex system, when in fact you have no idea what mind is. — Possibility


    If a complex system such as the Universe were to be intentionally planned, then the mind that planned it would need to be at least as complex.
    Janus

    I didn’t say the Universe was intentionally planned, though.Possibility

    It’s all speculation, and there is enough information available and certainly plenty of reasonable speculation that mind, attention and will are more fundamental than the simplest of brain systems - even more fundamental than life itself.Possibility

    When you spoke about "mind, attention and will" being more fundamental than life itself it sounded to me as though you were proposing that the Universe was intentionally planned, but if that is not what you meant to imply then OK.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    What with your 'name' I figured.Coben

    My moniker has different roots.

    This is how it goes:

    God knows it exists (if he exists -- let's for a minute suppose he does)
    Therefore he needs no faith to believe he exists
    Therefore he has no faith
    A person who has no faith in a god is an atheist
    Ergo, God is an atheist.
  • deletedusercb
    1.7k
    Well, it's be off topic to discuss that, but since faith is a word bandied about only by some theists, I don't think that holds. God might be an afaithist, but God would presumably believe God exists, making him a theist.
  • PoeticUniverse
    1.3k
    It was ProgrammedGnomon

    The Eternal has to be everything,
    Superimposed, not a certain pathing;
    It can’t have inputs, with no beginning;
    So, what chose the song our universe sings?

    The Eternal is as a multiverse,
    Potentially, with no information,
    As in Bable’s Library of all books,
    Being as useless as Nothing’s zero.

    The universes might all spring forth, somehow,
    Most inert or not going far enough,
    With some reaching life after a long time,
    Such as ours, precarious as it is.

    Or, a Programmer sets if-then switches,
    Like eight-way 3D Rubic Cube intercepts,
    After having set the quarks and leptons
    And coding stars to generate atoms.

    Then more precise tweaks, to dark energy,
    To umpteen decimal places so rare,
    And the forming of the DNA code
    To stir life’s ingredients stirring slow.

    Darn, the n-body problem is so tough,
    For unforeseen side-effects e’er arise,
    Among branches of the would-be life-tree,
    A zillion variables overlapping.

    The Programmer sat up at his terminal,
    Brought up his 1,000,000,000 line program,
    And opened the patient for surgery.
    Working swiftly from a red inked printout
    Marked up during a long coffee hour.

    He clamped off the bleeding capillaries,
    Redid most of their interfaces,
    And bloodlessly sealed them shut again,
    Although these were only preparatory
    And minor repairs in auxiliary areas.

    Next, the main arteries had to be incised,
    And therefore it was no longer possible
    To open and unblock the incursions in sequence,

    Since indirect ramifications and side concerns
    Concerns quickly arose and wildly flared,
    As fleeting thoughts, when one thing led to another,

    Thereby requiring immediate attendance,
    Lest, they, in the formless impressionism
    Of the art of computer programming,
    Fade to vague remembrance, and reappear later,
    Always at an inopportune time, as defects known as bugs.

    The phone rang while he was juggling
    These evaporating images and so he had to ignore it;
    But, no matter, for PhoneMail would record the call.

    Twenty minutes later,
    He had sutured the incisions and readied
    A compile and regression test which would
    Either attest to the quality of the operation

    Or reveal its fatal errors and necessitate
    The revitalization of the patient or, at worst,
    Require a restoration to
    Preoperative health from a backup file.



    Finally, after some fourteen billion years,
    Proto-man and then homo Sapiens
    Arrives, after seven million more years
    Of tinkering with monkey chromosomes.

    Extinctions swept away many a kind;
    Chromosomes fused, leaving the chimps behind;
    RNA remembered all survivors;
    ‘Good fortune’ smiled on the Sapiens mind.

    Inintelligently prrogrammed, many climbs
    Were the off-the-shelf reach of nature’s grimes,
    A dickering Rube Goldberg ‘invention’,
    Our nervous system now ruled by ancient times.

    But yet it worked; here we are!

    Oh Man! What a piece of work—the mind;
    What noble deeds done and undone in kind.
    What coding updates programmed all upon—
    In the layers of brains the mind is made upon.

    What is this sapiens mammal animal?
    Still made from slime but of a higher call!
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Well, it's be off topic to discuss that, but since faith is a word bandied about only by some theists, I don't think that holds. God might be an afaithist, but God would presumably believe God exists, making him a theist.Coben

    The proof I provided used plain English words. To claim that theists own some words exclusively is absurd.
  • deletedusercb
    1.7k
    I didn't say that theists own a certain word. Nor do I believe that.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    but since faith is a word bandied about only by some theists,Coben

    Did you say this?

    I got the message from you (especially because it was in a reply to my explanation why god is an atheist if he exists) that I ought not to use the word "faith", because I shouldn't. It is a word bandied about ONLY by some theists.
    Then you said,

    I didn't say that theists own a certain word.Coben

    ????
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