1/18/24

Nothing Cannot Exist- Parmenides

 It is something of a classification or categorical error when one says something like 'the Loch ness monster does not exist'. It does exist as a thought, yet not outside of thought or language. Whatever one says creates something at least as an idea including the Loch Ness monster. The question is how it exists or in what form- perhaps no more than as an idea.

The fallacy of equivocation concerning Parmenides' formulation of the impossibility of change is a valid objection. It should be noted though that if change has always existed then nothing changes because change is a constant. Observational physics seems to support the idea of constant change in a thermodynamic field. Being always exists, non-being doesn't and change is constant so nothing changes. God always exists, at least a seed of the Universe always exists, pre-determined in His thought and continues if emerged as a singularity and expansion.

Language is rarely the material that exists in-the-world. Instead, language refers or points to things/referent objects of the world of mass. Even fictional referent objects exist as fictional referent objects at least...that is what so much of television is about. Does Jason Bourne exist or not? Well there is no real Jason Bourne or Loch Ness Monster in the real world, yet those referent objects exist in language, in books and in thought. In that sense they do exist. One may say that there is no Loch Ness monster materially existing in Loch Ness except as a thought about Nessie swimming in Loch Ness rather than the 'real world'. Thus is the stickiness of language and linguistic philosophy in trying to exceed it's own limits in language. It cannot directly be the material objects it refers to for the time being. Maybe quantum computing and AI will change the reality of that to a limited degree.

Parmenides, Heraclitus and the Milesians saw nature as God or providing the substance for nature in various ways. Less than pantheistic, it was a useful way to understand being while eschewing non-being and atheism. They tended to believe in being as the sole possibility and non-being as impossible; the argument tended to be about how change occurs. Yet if change has existed from eternity then nature could be said not to change because the nature is change. All forms are embedded within precursor forms actualizing in time. Jesus directs those of faith to the right relationship with God and being while the lost discover a hot way to hell. Below absolute zero physicist speculate the temperature is infinitely high- another mystery for most of the faithless.

Christians believe in the eternity of soul- possibly in one direction starting with birth. Once a soul exists it will exist forever, even after physical death. The destination for the saved is different from the lost. Jesus is captain of the soul through eternity- God, rather than the satanic forces of chaos, evil and faithlessness. So if mankind brings a war to fruition that wipes out most of mankind that is a product of the original sin that affects all mankind. I would guess that it was corrected by the thermodynamic fields in which humans are embedded that drives to to input energy as food to exist. Thermodynamic drives in human nature are the cause of conflict as much as anything. People have insecurity in matter and want more than they require for staying alive, being productive and happy and generally don't have a clue about how to change to sustainable environmental economics. Christians have different eschatological hermenutics. I am a post-tribulationist and partial preterist with the belief that this is the age of the increase of the kingdom of God within the hearts of the elect rather than the edge of some kind of neo-theological apocalypse based on bad pre-tribulationism. Plainly human economics, political leadership and ignorant attacks on the faith communities are driving the world to a good chance for a bad end.

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