Pardon the intrusion, but I just copied this Dilbert cartoon from Steven Pinker's Rationality, and was looking for a place to put it. Just kidding! :joke: — Gnomon

It pictures exactly what's going on here! Right place to put it! No kidding! :razz:

On the off chance that you were suggesting that the brain is inferior to computer memory. So, pre-emptively, I was 'warning' you not to. :chin: — Caldwell

Ah! I get it! I think the brain is infinitely superior to a brain, luckily. But thanks for the concern. :smile:

:rofl:

The undeniable truth!

But one point of quantum mechanics is that nature does not seem to be that continuous. — Heiko

The wavefunction and its evolution are continuous. Except on interaction, where a strange collapse happens. In the light of QFT, there is a continuous distribution of co-existing paths. Collapsing to a smaller bundle when interaction. Hence the difficulty to describe bound states in that "field".

It's actually you who's wrong. Think about it. — frank

I'm wrong.

I've never met anyone who notices the profound philosophical significance of ohm's law. — frank

Nice to meet you! A first encounter. On the philosophical implications of Ohm's law....A theory concerning truth...

It's a good way to start for someone who's trying to grasp the model. — frank

No. It,'s not. Telling lies to a child is not the best way to start teaching. Aren't philosophers interested in the truth so much?

This was actually one of my introductions to philosophy. I happened to be reading Fear and Trembling while it was on my mind. That book is about potentiality, so my mind was blown — frank

Philosophers are usually naive about physics. The fear and tremble in the face of it... Just joking! And it was once part of it. People like Mach and Boltzmann were still both. Nowadays, the connection has gone. :smile:

Think of voltage as potential. Think of current as a kinetic manifestation. — frank

Again. Here you are wrong. You can think about it that way, but it's inadequate.

If you think of electrons in a conductor as being like water in a pipe, voltage is the pressure it takes to move the electrons. — frank

Here you are wrong. It's the electric potential that constitutes the pressure. The voltage is the difference in potential. It indicates how hard the potential drops over a difference in space.

What if the resistance is infinite? — frank

Then there is no current and you have made a breakthrough in material science.

That's not what I meant though. I mean, voltage can exist without current or resistance.

Hi there! Thanks. In fact, I tapped myself on the back after thinking this. On a moonlit silent night, in a low mist. The right circumstance to contemplate. :smile:

Well, 1/3 is rational and has an infinite decimal expansion. Thinking about it, it is questionable if the idea of the number line is even justified: A line is a spatial object as opposed to a number (i.e. a "count of things"). Writing the "1" somewhere on the line tries to synthesize two very different things and "flaws" the pure space with the pitfalls of "counting". — Heiko

Every rational number has a decimal expansion that's fully predictable. I know that 1/3 contains 3's only behind the comma. Irrationals are unpredictable until infinity. Hence the amount of rational inumbers between two infinitely close rational is infinite. Between two infinitely close points lies infinity. Rational numbers have no place in Nature. The exist in the mind only, as do so-called natural numbers, the integers. But if integers exist in the mind only, don't irrationals too? Yes. But they refer to a real aspect of Nature. Rationals don't. Nature is irrational.

What if there is no resistance?

How can a photon be pure potential energy if it moves and exerts force? Wait, I think you already explained this, but some more depth could be good perhaps.

Can you clarify the distinction between real photons of EM radiation and virtual photons of the electric field? — Enrique

Let me try to clarify. Photons have the strange quality not to move in time. They are light-like (obviously!) in the sense that they move in space only. There is no frame of reference in which the don't move in space with the light speed. They experience no 'proper" time, no "eigen"time (self, own, in German ). Defined as the ticking of the clock when space coordinates are constant I.e. when the object in question is at rest (in space), which for a photon is the case always. All particles move at the speed of light through spacetime. With a component project able to time and a component project able to space. If a particle like the photon moves through space only, the projection onto time is zero, as all four components of the velocity four-vector are perpendicular with each other. From whatever perspective, inertial frame, you look, the projection on time will always be zero for the photon. Why? Because this lays at the bottom of relativity. The invariance of the speed of light, in space. So it's speed through time is zero. Hence I made the remark that all interactions mediated by a photon are in a sense instantaneous as the time for photons is absent. You can compare it with an infinite speed of light in the Newtonian concept of an absolute space and time, where they are defined separately and not relative with each other, as, how else, in relativity. It's space that prevents everything from happening at once, and time from everything being everywhere at once. I recently realized that photons carry the potential to change the kinetic energy of massive charged matter particles. Also that of massless matter particles. The difference between force-mediating particles and matter particles is that matter particles carry kinetic energy only and mediating particles carry potential only. You can't assign kinetic energy to mediating particles. The are just mediating *this is one of the reasons I consider the massive vector bosons in the weak interaction as non-basic, similar to the non-basic, residual force in the old conception of the strong nuclear force, mediated by massive pions, but I won't bother you with that...Oops...already done! The equivalence of mass and energy can be seen from this, as I recently realized, but then you have to consider, like I do, that quarks and leptons are systems of three massless superstrongly interacting particles). So the EM field carries potential energy only. A static electric potential field (there you go!) Is comprised of a so-calked condensate of virtual photons. Which means you can add or substract as many as you like without changing the virtual field, in contrast to an EM wave, in which only real photons are present. It,'s often claimed that virtual particles are just that. Virtual. But what virtual really means is that they are off-shell: not obeying the relationship $E^2=p^2 + m^2$, where c=1. Virtual particles can have zero energy and a momentum at the same time! How strange. This is due to the uncertainty relations of Heisenberg. As you probably can imagine. The classical picture of a a particle doesn't apply at the micro level, as you know. There are only fields of simultaneously existing particle trajectories, and in the hidden variables approach you can envision this by the particle continuously flipping from one to another trajectory in a true and determined way. You could even consider the hidden variables as the essence of space, furnishing a relation between space and QM, and thus between gravity and QM, but this is a non-accepted view, or better, a non-considered one. Virtual fields can be considered as fluctuating quantum fields, like real fields can be seen as fluctuations thereof. Represented in the "popular" view as particle pairs in and out of existence and as just a particle moving. But in reality the consist out of infinite of these popular views. As extended fields.

A description of my thought-train. In one undivided piece. Didn't bother to divide it up. Hope it cleared things up!

Now you start to talk nonsense, fine, wikipedia definition of God is same as God described in the bible: — SpaceDweller

Nonsense from your POV. Calling something nonsense is usually done when the sense of the competing POV (mine) is in contradiction with the POV it contradicts. I merely use the vocabulary of infinite potentiality (be it moral, physical, or semantic) and make a kin of reductio ad absurdum to reveal the shortcomings the POV. That's all it is: a point of view. It's not mine though.

Just because you can start punching people on the streets, doesn't mean you would actually do it because you know how that would end. — SpaceDweller

Indeed. There is even a law against it. Wars are waged far away, and a simple street fight is punished with a fine or an imprisonment.

Omnipotence is not God's only property.
Since God is also omniscient he knows doing so is self destructing.
Since God is also omnibenevolent he knows doing so is not good. — SpaceDweller

Gods are just as potent as human beings. In every realm. That's what is meant with that they created us in their image. But their potentials have an energy that exceeds that of people by far.

Therefore if God makes him self omni-helplessness then that God is contradictory to itself, that is contradictory to it's omnibenevolent nature, which is no longer a God that we speak of. — SpaceDweller

God is omni-contradictory because He is omnisapient. His omnibenevolency stands apart from is but his omni-contradictiveness acounts for Him being omni-malevolent.

experience-rs are consciousness, probably, to your mind(I prefer spirit as the word for who is, or what is experiencing the human from its perspective). — Varde

Ah! Experienes! And theyare consciousness. To my mind. They are spirits. The core of us, somehow? Experiencing human qualities. Does this mean you can be in an animal form?

I propose there are two simultaneous memory vaults: one dimensional-type, regarding universal nature of simulation, and another organic-type regarding cyclic mind. — Varde

Not sure what you mean by cyclic mind. What is the universal principle of simulation? That a reality is simulated to be able to live in the objective correlate of the simulated world? And universal in the sensecthat the reality simulated applies to all realities avaiailable to mankind? Is the organic memory the one as existing in our brain, when looking at it from a materialistic POV? In a sense your view coincides with mine. We both pose two memories I say they are connected in a way that can't separate them. There is a big difference though. You consider the spirit as the I. I consider what I see in the mirror as the I.

Good point but doesn't such wisdom lead to "If God is omnipotent let him make stone so heavy it won't be able to raise it again"? — SpaceDweller

Basically you ask here if, as God is omnipotent, he can make Himself omni-incapable. By definition, He can, leaving Himself paralyzed and incapable of ever doing one more thing. So, and here lies the fallibility, being omnipotent harbors a omni-helplessness. Which has the potential to surface in every situation, lurking in the dark, waiting for its chance Hence the intrinsic potential uselessness of omnipotency.

Arguing with bartricks employing logic is somewhat similar to battling a body of water with a sword. No matter how you cut it, which direction, which angle, and with how much force, the water opens for the edge of the sword, but closes back together once the sword's blade passed through. You can't kill water with a knife; you can't defeat bartrick's propositions with logic to the requirement that bartrick will see or rather, that bartricks will admit he is wrong. — god must be atheist

What a powerful image. The only way to beat him is becoming a body of water yourself. Like an aikido fighter is able to beat his opponent by making use of the fighting energy radiating from him. If the energy flow is reversed, the energy won't harm you but the warrior you stand in front of all the more. Leaving him beaten and confused, wondering what the hell happened. But as we are human all, we sit down beside him, pet him over the back, and give him consolation and an understandable nod. We will offer him a paper handkerchief to wipe away his tears. Telling him we will give him a second chance.

So what shall we do? What must we say? Howcshall we move or proceed? Confined as we are by the computer we sit behind, being able to use language only, complemented by a small amount of visual information, if necessary, we must adopt his language and make a thorough self-critique first, the result of which can subsequently be used to redirect the flow in the polemic.

So what does this imply in practice? It's easy. There are inconsistencies to be found in every language used, be it the language of logic and pure math, the language of the mystic, that of the astrologist, or of the physicist. Denying your formal system is inconsistency-proof, would be to deny reality.

Thanks for the comment. For your information: you can notify me or any other by selecting stuff you wanna quote and press on the black quote sign.That way I get to know you addressed me. I didn't know you reacted but accidentally stumbled on your reaction.

What is experience-rs?

Where-in the memory vault is the experience of the experience-r? Or are there two vaults? — Varde

No, just one.

I suppose it's like RAM and Harddrive, one stores memory away from the computer shell, the other operates within it. — Varde

No, it isn't. As I wrote, computers cannot be compared with the brain. Well, they can, but you will notice that they are different fundamentally.

I have first hand experience of this type of dualistic memory loss, which I outlined in my previous reply. I was forced to say yes to a question I originally intended to say no. — Varde

Dualistic in what sense? Mental and physical? Both belong to the same underlying structure.

I don't think modern day science can be given same significance as knowledge of good and evil. — SpaceDweller

No indeed. It has even greater importance.

[

Science as we know it was born around 16th century and it still develops today. — SpaceDweller

Wrong. It was born in ancient Greece.

Religion (written one) on the other side started 3000 years BC and ended 100 years AD.
Therefore taking completely unrelated time spans into account, one has nothing to do with the other, Religion does not deal with science neither does science deal with religion. — SpaceDweller

Did written religion ended 100 years after the birth of Christ? The original writings, accompanied by the scribs, maybe. We'll never be sure. There are more bibles and holy Khoran books than ever though.

You think there is a secret knowledge that Adam and Eve obtained.

I'm open minded to hear that wisdom — SpaceDweller

Yes. A natural knowledge. Satan ordered, by means of the apple, to divert from it, with all horrible consequence.

Not necessarily assuming,
If definition of God is "omnipotent, omniscient and all benevolent", then there is no reason to assume God would command contrary to that definition. — SpaceDweller

You mean that God is OOB, or that He posseses these three qualities? I assume the last, as assigning these qualities to our own species doesn't make us God. If defined as such he can never command contrary to that definition. Which makes Him non-OOB. How can He escape? If OOB, you expect He could. But how?

Considering garden of Eden, if God could give evil commands then there was no need for the snake to harass man, that same task could have be done by God instead. — SpaceDweller

There would be. The snake could propagate, by means of the apple, the mores to disobey any order given by God. Act contrary all the time, especially in relation to God.

I think the real problem here is something else, that same God which wanted good to Adam and Eve is the same God that wages wars later right?
Therefore you change the definition of God to just "omnipotent and omniscient" excluding "all benevolent" — SpaceDweller

IWrong. Partially. It depends on the war. It's generally Satan who is responsible. Like the Stones musically explain. God will be partially BOO. Because Lucifer's evil devil, satanic play. You could make God interfere in wars, if He's omnipotent, but that destroys the war itself and shows no mercy to those happily waging it.

Even if you're able to somehow prove that theory it still won't fit in because of same question again, what's the role of the devil then?
A God that is not all benevolent would raise many questions impossible to answer. — SpaceDweller

Lucifer's, when God is OOB, is, as I explained, to induce disobedience. Go being not all benevolent, or even all malevolent would raise many questions impossible to answer indeed. But many answerable too. So what's the point here? If God orders bad things to be done, can't He turn them into orders to do good? Yes. He is omnipotent.

I only now saw your comment. You didn't link me. It,'s intriguing indeed!

So:

"Mental(brain memory) and physical(dimensional memory) may exist if the original topic is correct."


Let's analyze. Why do you posit the existence of two memories? The dualistic approach.A physical one and a mental one. Can you explain the difference? Do you postit them for the same reason as I do?

If I'm not aware of good and evil, then do I have to believe building is harder than razing? yes I do because if I do the opposite and raze what will happen? — SpaceDweller

If you are not aware of good and evil, you know what will happen too, when razing down or building up. There are different kinds of building though, and the scientific way is evil. It came into being after Eve bit the Luciferian apple. Lucifer gave her the knowledge not of good and bad, which would be ridiculous, as good is regarded then as a gift of that sneaky fallen angel too. To be counteracted upon by the moral system of the Bible. That moral system won't help you in constructing a house, while the Lucifer-given knowledge of the scientific construction of a house (evolved of mental images of houses of a future in a Luciferian-driven scientifically constructed society, possessing weird structures like connectivity to a 5G global system, electrical structures to create light and give power to all kinds of realty detached structures, possibilities to store huge amounts of material products, including that for a car, animals, food, equipment to make you move your body move in the most strange ways, a television and computer to investigate the external world, garbage containers, guidance structures for water and electricity, spaces to put water in and have fun in (swimming pools), structures to enjoy the kids ((toys), equipment spaces to cook, rooms built for personal hygiene, containing the weirdest stuff imaginable, sleeping rooms to contain stuff of which a difficult choice has to be made between the particulars it contains ("Gucci or Lagerfeld? Fluorid tooth paste or naturally based? Lemon shampoo or seasalt? Green leather shiny boots or black plastic ones? How big a TV shall we choose? What brand of car shall we put in the garage? What medicin shall we buy to put in the medicin closet? What art shall cover the walls? Magritte, with his abstract philosophical view on reality, Mondriaan with his abstract linear formal system, abstract color explosions, hyper-real photographs, being just as abstract, etc. etc. Embedded in a nature depleted society having left Nature long ago, to be replaced by a world that fights that very base of its existence, waiting for total destruction by its own means or Natural disaster. Where Nature is tortured and considered an enemy, or at most ignored. Where Nature is questioned endlessly and knowledge applied for material gain. Where diseases are fought bases on an abstract and detached and distorted image of people and people the.selves are reduced to machines or vessels containing selfish genes and memes with a desire to procreate. Where the universe is looked back upon until a Planck second after creation. Where God is absent and the whole of mankind must conform to the ways of science. Placing other domains of knowledge within fenced terrain. Where people get mental health problems and animals are confined in cages. Where you can't take a walk without noticing its influence, except in the dark of the night, and even then artificial light pollutes or satellites spy above us. And on and on I can go...Blah blah blah, as Iggy Pop sung. Venus in furs). Satan rules suppreme. And his churches are forced stuff for the newly born, the new arrivals. "How glad should they be and rejoyce that Beëlzebub gave them this opportunity", so propagate the grown-ups and wise mainly men. Segregation, division, compartimenalization, integration and differentiation, problem-solving, formal systems, reduction, linearalization, patternization, atomification, mathematicalization, programmation, artification,
ratification, justification, argumentation, objectivication, standardization, metrification, abstraction, discretization, framing and fencing, identification, materialization, creativity, instrumentalist, falsificationism and provability, statistics, knowledge gathering, spacification, determination, moralization, systemization, axiomization, mass-communication, iteration, valuation, information, rule suppreme and are imposed by institutions of the scientific knowledge. The imposed system is guided by abstract law systems, working in a holy concordance and synchronicity with the powers of enslavement. A holy duality forming a holy trinity with the institutionalized bodies of the knowledge-gathering and knowledge-applying structures. Moral is reduced to an abstract notion. Yes. Satan rules suppreme. Good and bad shrink into insignificance, when compared to the new orthodoxy, which considers different views superstitious, non-real, self-deceptive, fairy tales, aberrant, ridiculous, psychotic, wrong, subjective, or irrational. Now there is nothing wrong with that, but people all around the globe are forced to dance scientifically. By means of the fruits hanging scattered in the tree of science, to be picked, normally prematurely, and used in Satan's attempt to impose his wicked game of the scientific approach. People just can be good or bad. That's a fact. Good and bad cannot exist without each other. The biblic Satan (or the one supposed in the Tora or Khoran) the envious fallen angel must have given Eve, besides the sense of bad, the sense of good too. Let us, as her descendants, defend humanity from the True Evil that's done by that Evil Devil playing that self-righteous game of his. What's so important about being good or bad? It's better and more humane to let them both exist than trying to create a world in which the bad is non-existent. So let's all pray. Seems to be the only way to escape the modern, global, science-based panopticon. Let's pray people can
act (or non-act!) in time. The clock is near-twelve, and when the damage is done, there is no turning back, except in some very limited situations. In principle it is so easy,. But in practice, the simple solution is hindered by forces defending the status quo. When we have succeeded in the short time.e left, Paradise can be reclaimed (though in an impoverished form), after having been lost for centuries, the lost having its origins in ancient Greece.

The issue with your post is you right off claimed that it cannot store like a computer does -- which is true. — Caldwell

If it's true, then why that's an issue?

The (human) memory retrieves information, and also compares. The issue with your post is you right off claimed that it cannot store like a computer does -- which is true. The functionalities are different, but human memory stores, retrieves, and compares — Caldwell

I claim indeed right of that it doesn't store like a computer does. It doesn't. In a computer, information is stored in static patterns of spikes ones and zeros, to be operated on by an equally spikes pattern of ones and zeros. On every tick of the computer clock the patterns are forced to change. In the brain nothing the like is going on. Information is stored not in the static form of one's and zeros. The modern conception of information. Connection strengths between neurons can contain virtually all information about the physical world potentially. A pattern of one's and zeros can too, but in contrast, you need an enormous amount of these one's and zeros, including huge amounts of programs to encode for their evolution. The brain contains the information of a huge number of engraved paths. Engraved by strengthening connectiviness between neurons. A memory is a reconstruction of such a connected pattern. Many of the patterns we experienced are projected onto the neuronal network. So indeed memory is stored and a comparison is not made between two different patterns but between a familiar pattern and a more or less different pattern existing as part of the very same pattern. Which makes us note differences on familiarities. We recognize and spot the difference. But I might be wrong or inarticulate. Hence the thread. To find the truth.

The idea which you refer to of there being one true reality is an approach which many, especially thinkers of religious viewpoints adhere to. — Jack Cummins

And don't forget the admirers of science. Science claims to possess the knowledge of that same kind of reality, though it tries to give an image of unity and uniqueness. That idea is a direct descendent out of ancient Greek, though I have the impression that everybody likes his or her reality to be objective. It would be inhuman and detached from reality if you don't. Communication would even be impossible. A psychotic state of mind would surface. The other side of the psychotic spectrum, call it psychopathic or fundamental, is to claim your reality has to hold for everyone (as is currently the case in the world, where science rules suppreme just as fundamentally as the Taliban in Afghanistan, where science, by the way, still has a firm grip too).

You say it better than me but electrical storms remind me seizures/epilepsy. — TheMadFool

That depends. Some visions, thoughts, and dreams can be pretty stormy. Luckily, soft cool summer breezes have their place too.

loss of innocence sounds sensible, however it can't be subject to anger God, for example, before Adam and Eve committed their sin God told them to procreate which involves los of innocence (and discovery of pleasure) — SpaceDweller

I was merely responding to the image thrown up in the post.Lucifer made Eve aware of good and evil. Especially
the evil was loved by that devilish SOAB. But isn't the knowledge of the good a gift of God? What if Eve hadn't bitten the apple? Wouldn't the Bible be superfluous an mankind be reduced to a collection of amoral beings? I meant that if the apple is bitten, and in the place of knowledge of good and bad we get the kinda knowledge as is contained in science, wouldn't that distance us from a more divine kind of knowledge? If we have lost that child-like innocence, that child-like purity of knowledge, to be replaced by a Luciferian kinda knowledge, as I see western scientific knowledge, we are all guilty by birth, after Eve would have eaten it. Different knowledge systems could then free us from our sin.

what's really going on are nerves and synapses switching on/off (bioelectricity). — TheMadFool

That's not what's going on. It's electrical storms going on on the lightning- and fractal-like neural network. This electric storm gives rise to consciousness. Electric charge being a concept not understood intrinsically by modern physics.

We've all reenacted the fatal mistake Adam and Eve made that fateful day in Eden - we've all eaten apples. With each bite, we've taken into our mouths a chunk of apple, munched on it, felt the texture of its flesh, tasted its sweetness, felt its juice bathe the inside of our mouths. In other words, if we view ourselves as a scientific instrument, what we have in our mouths is a specimen/sample of apple - everything that is an apple (chemistry, biology, physics, etc.) is being analyzed by our mouths, then the digestive system. Why is it then that we don't gain knowledge of apples in this process? We should be able to know the chemicals, their structure (I mentioned sweetness), the biological properties of the cells, their architecture, so and so forth; after all we do have a sample in our GI tract? — TheMadFool

We all have reenacted a fatal mistake of eating an apple? Have lost the innocence of not knowing how it tastes? If felt just as innocent after I had smoked my first cigarette, an act unconcieved of in Paradise. I think you lost innocence after you were served the scientific apple. Giving rise to the pretty disturbed picture of an apple, and viewing ourselves as a scientific instrument. What a devastating influence that apple had. Oooh blissful ignorance! Free us from our sins....

Dennett went on record to say that consciousness is an illusion. I find that interesting by the way. It gets my juices flowing, not that I have anything to show for it. — TheMadFool

Of course it's an illusion. In the litteral sense. An illumination inside of matter. He thinks it's an illusion in the sense that it's not real. That it's all matter and we are deceiving ourselves in claiming it to be real. That it's just a necessary aid in a complex structure like the brain with which we interact while engaging in the physical world. How can a dog be unconscious when searching for a lost bone? She can't. He is a materialist though, claiming there is nothing more than matter. And in that sense, consciousness is an illusion. But who says this is true? Luckily, not for me!

First, the argument from God. God is all powerful by definition. From this we can conclude that God created time. Why? Because if time exists, then one is subject to it. And so if God did not create time, then God would be subject to something he did not create, which is incompatible with being omnipotent. So, given that God would be subject to time if time exists, something which would be incompatible with his omnipotence were he not to have himself created time, God created time. — Bartricks

While your first conclusion is right, the answer to your "Why?" Is nonsense. If God is omnipotent, he will not be subjected to time, as being omnipotent means escaping the limitations of space and time. He can create something without being subjected to it. Thoughvthis act will be difficult to conceive for us, because we tend to think about creation in spatiotemporal terms: "If He created time then isn't the very act of Him creating it a proof that He is subjected to it?" No. If He is all powerful, He is subjected to nothing. Hence, a creature to have pity with. Being all powerful means being all powerless at the same time, speaking of which. You might question this but think about it. How would you decide something, being all powerful? If He could create an infinite number of universes, which one would He choose? Is the choice to create the universe we life, being seemingly infinite in both space and time, a random one? Like in the string landscape our universe is accidentally the one in which all works out perfectly to be suited for life? If he created this stringy world, with about $10^{500}$ possible universes, still being nothing compared to infinity, this would have to be a random choice, for in His all-powerfulness, being not subjected to the laws of space and time, He won't have a means to contemplate them all, though you might claim that in His all powerfulness He has a way. If so, then what His all powerfulness still means? Nothing at all, and the very concept of being all-powerfull is meaningless. Meaning that you can do anything without actually being able to. Unless being subjected to irrational, anarchic, random whimps. Finding your way in a disoriented state of infinite confusion.

But if God created time, then time was not needed for that initial act of creation. We can conclude, then, that there can be creation without time, for otherwise time itself could not have been created. — Bartricks

Here you show some sense. If He created time, then time was not present before He created it. Indeed. But if He's all powerful, can't He make himself being subjected to time, trying to grasp its meaning? Or does He understand time already before He creates it, in which case He is subjected to it. Being omnipotent includes omnisapience (He has omnipotence, so He can make Himself omnisapient), so He would be perfectly able to understand what life needs to develop, what people need to live. In the act of creating time He must at least have had some knowledge of it. Or can His omnipotence prevent this?

And as time involves an event changing in its temporal properties, we can conclude as well that change does not require time either. For how could God have changed an event's temporal properties if time needed already to be on the scene for him to do so? — Bartricks

Abracadabra! Time involves an event changing in its temporal properties? You mean a relativistic event in spacetime? Or what? How can change not involve time? You ask:

"For how could God have changed an event's temporal properties if time needed already to be on the scene for him to do so?"

How? He is omnipotent! Here you are contradicting yourself.

If God created time - and he did, for he wouldn't be omnipotent otherwise - then neither causation or change essentially require time. It is the other way around: for time to exist, there needs to be causation and change, controlled by God. It is God, not time, that changes an event's temporal properties. — Bartricks

Here you are plainly wrong. The fact that God created time doesn't mean that neither causation or change require time. Physics can be defined without time, by positing a block universe, but then you take away the entropic time that lives on the block universe.

I quit. Must fetch some stuff. Nice thread! But I'll return with a vengeance.

This thread is about time, for goodness sake! — Bartricks

It's about time that you define time.

Oh good grief. I knew someone would start talking about language. Look, take the moral it was designed to convey and focus on the thread's OP. — Bartricks

I didn't say nothing about language. Only that you can't speak it.

This thread is about the nature of time and God's relationship to it. — Bartricks

Then give a good definition of time first. I'm sure God will be "subjected" to it. How else could it be? They created it all. Call it divine time.

We can get it back on topic by, say, focussing on the claim, made by some, that the past is unalterable - the so called 'necessity' of the past. A claim that I deny, of course.
8m — Bartricks

The past is unalterable. Our perception of it can change. An neo-nazi will have a different view on nazi- Germany than a black-red anarchist.

I know the same things, I just don't understand what the French are on about. — Bartricks

You don't know the same things as the French. Ýou don't know the French identity. The French kitchen. The French language. The French history. The French attitude towards nuclear power. The French popular singers of these days. French rap lyrics. French antique. French painters. French folk-music and dance. The political atmosphere. The feeling of walking through La Drome or French kissing beneath the Eifel tower. Or in short, you will feel a stranger upon walking through Paris, no matter how omnipotent you or God is. No matter if God's or your will is free or not. No matter if your visit is determined by faith, or by determining structures.

In my experience, classroom learning works and sticks just fine. The students just need to be open to and ready for it. — Artemis

It's the very structure of the learning process that bothers me. In general, an enclosed space is involved, in which children have to stay a large part of the day. Forced to do so, indirectly, by a government power institute, forced to learn abstract knowledge systems basically. Teaching nowadays is left to power-hungry teachers, who train the students in absorbing abstract ideas, in kinda nature-detached environments, to parrotishly repeat that knowledge without exactly knowing what is done. Schemes of knowledge are inserted in the poor child braines, by performing tasks and inventing solutions. Even language itself is thaught as an abstract entity, involving sentence analysis and categorization. Mathematical schemes of abstract entities are forced upon our young ones by law. Often the child's age and that what is thought are out of sync. Their knowledge gained is tested on the base of grades, that fearsome letters A-F. Their color- and playful reality is turned into a competitive reality of abstract knowledge. Nothing is left to the parents who usually are ignorant about the stuff their children learn, or .only is spent on extra teaching because of the fear they have that their children fail in school and won't have the possibility later to partake in the modern rat-race for material gain. I have witnessed this with my own eyes, trying to put some math and physics knowledge into high school children, the most of which had no intention to really understand, but were interested in the application of the abstract schemes only, to get that so beloved certificate of knowledge. The ones who wanna look outside of the window of the classroom and tend to drift away are considered as anomalies (ADD!) and questioning of the knowledge itself is carefully redirected as to conform to the right path. It's legally arranged to force the parents to send their children to the factories of scientific knowledge. In the name of the child and in the name of science. To be applied in the equally nature-detached reality of Western society, giving rise to strange human beings, spending their time with watching science-fiction movies, while the most beautiful reality of alien creatures can (could!) be found on Earth, on which nature is replaced in fenced territory and non-scientific cultures are redirected to lost-land territories, after most of them were already destroyed long time ago, and are offered pity excuses after having been damaged to the bone. Spending their time in long lines of cars, shopping in huge malls, staring at phones, unknowingly being watched in a huge modern paopticon, in service of the capital. A reality in which some make a 100 billion (!), earning 3 billion on a day, while others stroll around begging for food or looking for shelter. A society where there is a constant threat of total annihilation by the applied knowledge of physics. Be it by thermonuclear escalation or water and fire on the rise. A reality in which the world of advertisement is inescapable and the sky is filled with strange flying machines, containing seat-belled people with earplugs. A reality in which nature is reshape in a huge super LEGO-land. where the feeling of being powerless has taken hold. Where an abstract law tries to regulate our each and every action. Where inflation rules suppreme. Where children can play with a zillion different kinds of toys and stimulated to compete. A reality in which nature is tortured with mechanical devices, also used in maintaining the status quo. Where plans are made to leave this Earth after we have destroyed it (as in the scientifically inadequate Interstellar movie), calling this the inevitability to come: interstellar colonialisation. Like the whole globe was once colonialism with force, without spending a thought about the realities colonialized. A reality in which people sit a large part of the day behind computers, spending their time on philosophical forums and programmed entertainment. In which the training of pets bleaches in the light of the training of our children. But hey, as long as all these billions of people are happy... The world can provide for all. Nature is kind enough. But when we keep on whipping him, he will one day turn against us. The first signs are already there. The end is near...

If I had bought just a hundred of these damned coins 7 years ago!

Now how useful is that? — baker

If you exclude the brain, it's not useful. When you include it, it can explain how we see. Now what we see though. I mean, it can't explain the conscious experience of light. Line that of sound. Sound and vision are not explicable. Their forms and patterns are, by pointing at the neuron correlate. But their experience not. Perceived patterned forms of blue, moving in a 3d space cannot be explained. The experience of them, that is. How can a description of them in a scientific way explain it?