Religion's Cultured Despisers Considered

 I looked up TANSF and got Temporary Assistance for Needy Families- a government program.  TANSF is an acronym for those that attack people of faith with ridicule suggesting ad hominems, and muddy analogies? Richard Dawkins has made a few of those.  He wrote a book titled 'The God Delusion. That idea has, to use a Dawkinsism "infected the minds" of a generation. 

 I withdrew from being a group member in a couple of science fiction groups here because they were completely intolerant of spirit. They were died in the monkey believers in Darwinism-only and believe the question of spirit and God was settled once and for all by Clarence Darrow and defended by Aldous Huxley. Yet theology and philosophy have depth that fundamentalists of science only and Biblical literalism only aren't aware. Some things are slow to change. One could labor as did Freidrich Schleiermacher in his: 'On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers' published in 1799 and write to modern despisers of faith.

Scientists tend not to think about God and spiritual matters in a serious way and so remain less than neophytes in understanding the Bible unlike some philosophers and theologians that research science matters routinely. In my opinion Socrates' idea about knowing that he knows nothing was a reasonable distrust of the certainty of meaning of knowledge including science that is operatively, pragmatically useful yet perhaps ultimately superficial and of course temporal. Nothing that happens in the Universe is of consequence for humanity from a Christian perspective except the matter of salvation. The Apostle Paul said that he knows nothing except Jesus Christ crucified. 1 Corinthians 2:2, Paul states, "For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

The nature of space-time may be wrong though it seems correct. The Hindu philosophy that reality is an illusion – Maya in the Advaita Vedanta (Nondualist) is comparable to the ideas of Bishop Berkeley and Ideaism as well as contemporary quantum mechanics with the Higgs Field.

It's a bit off topic yet interesting enough. I tend to regard Moses as the author of the Pentateuch as well as the inventor of the aleph beth- he was particularly well situated to make an alpha bet for the Jewish tribe instead of using hieroglyphs to write down ecclesiastical data. yet Moses said "Deuteronomy 18:15-18 states that God would raise up a prophet from among the Israelites, similar to Moses, whom the people should listen to in all things, as they were to listen to Moses." One could take that as a reference to David who collected all of the scripture and put it into the Pentateuch form. Plainly there has been redaction of the Pentateuch. Yet for Genesis there is no question that it has two beginnings; Austin Gentry opined of it that " Genesis 1 focuses on the broader, cosmological creation of the universe and the earth, while Genesis 2 zooms in on the creation of humanity and the Garden of Eden." It is obvious that there are two starts of Genesis and neither was omitted by the collator of the work.

The GR paradigm of space-time is challenged by more recent cosmology theories. and certainly the the book of Genesis appears to have two narratives or beginnings that aren’t inconsistent with the concept that Adam and Eve were interpolated into an already created Universe after they disobeyed God and ate from the tree of knowledge learning the difference between good and evil unlike animals. The great initial lifespans of the patriarchs reduce in a paradigm suggestive of some kind of transfer from a timeless realm into one with time. That could be explained by innumerable scientific and metaphysical theories without one ever knowing the correct answer. Alternatively atheist evolutionary biologists would interpret the paradigm literally and say it's wrong in the same way that a 1920s Biblical fundamentalist would take it literally and say it's right.

Free Will in Relation to Consciousness and Subconsciousness

Will is contingent upon consciousness. If one has consciousness one may choose to act or not. Some say conscious decisions to act are not made by consciousness, instead they believe conditioning subconsciously determines conscious decisions.

The will exists in the sub conscious and it is free. Otherwise there would be a lower level, more primary set of instructions controlling the sub conscious and a superfluous deceived consciousness.

Consciousness exists supported by the subconscious. It is not possible for human consciousness to keep all of their experience, memories, judgments and history active in conscious thoughts. Instead there is an innate middle ground of intellect that retrieves data from the subconscious in accord with conscious thought and the lesser intelligent yet active and closer related to emotion will.

Will exist as a modified reflection of conscious thought that needn’t be mentally, internally expressed in order to be present and act. It can retrieve subconscious information for consciousness and may also join with conscious thought and be directed by it. An aware mind freely chooses to act. Thought is in harmony with the will and subconscious usually, yet on some occasions they may not. An example may be a conscious choice to act peacefully while the will is to punch an offender as memory informs the mind of dire consequences of taking the latter course

I have heard a song or thought of something I can’t recall like the title of that song, and directed my subconscious to find it. Some time later the right idea appears in my conscious thought.

A human mind is a continuum of conscious, will and sub-consciousness that each have intelligence. Will and subconscious work for the conscious mind. It is a trinity that works.

https://www.udio.com/songs/u9qu6CYDEWTyZih3sjGd1P

Humans May Have Evolved From Rats; Adam and Eve Were Spliced In

 Humans May Have Evolved From Rats Named Purgatoriuos 65 Million Years BC

I had a concentration in history in college and learned a lot from the past. I wouldn’t suggest people can’t learn from the past- 

Agriculture developed when hunting and gathering couldn’t sustain concentrated populations in towns. The transition period was 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Hunter-gathering was the way of economics before that going back to when people started eating meat as the human line may have evolved from rodents circa 65 million years BC (Adam and Eve were spliced in to an existing human line).

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/our-earliest-primate-ancestors-rapidly-spread-after-dinosaur-extinction

When people sustained with agriculture could sustain civil organizations with rulers organized wars began. Raiders had something established to attack and civil wars could occur as well for regime change. Organized wars started during the late Neolithic Age too.

https://www.history.com/news/when-did-humans-start-waging-wars

An excavation of Cohokia in St. Louis showed that the preceding ruling dynasty members were ceremonially killed when a new ruling family took over. So it’s an American tradition too.

Metaphysics; What It Is

Metaphysics is an activity. It can use many kinds of tools. It is bigger and smaller, simultaneously, than a bread box while being for-itself.

Free Will; A Binary Question

To be or not to be; that is an example of a binary absolute.In logic and programming there are disjuncts. A logic gate tests for a condition to be on or off. Schrodinger’s cat could live in a state compatible with life and death simultaneously, in theory, until collapse of the wave-function, however that super-position status doesn’t work for all mortal philosophical questions. Either/Or, Neither,/Nor are disjuncts of a sort. One shouldn’t expect philosophy to invariably provide weak, vague, uncertain answers and represent them as Truth because political correctness suggests that constructing ideas that will appeal somewhat to everyone returns the most demographic support.

Free will seems to be a question that cannot support affirmative and negative conditions on the same level, or on all possible dimensions.

It is also the case that people want to defend what they believe and sometimes strongly when they don’t realize they are wrong and are duty bound by themselves to defend their wrong, godless atheist opinions.

Marxism; Good Revolution Organizer for a Bad Economic System

Marxism is a practical idea for organizing revolutionaries that are from underdeveloped countries with concentrated wealth. The masses are led to class consciousness as oppressed, exploited people and brought to revolution with the belief they will share equally the wealth of the ruling class when they are deposed. That idea of upward mobility supports the revolutionary esprit. With victory the economic revolution following becomes a challenge to make productive. Alec Nove wrote a book named ‘An Economic History of the Soviet Union’ decades ago that examines some of the problems for Lenin and Stalin.

Marx had good sociological understanding of wealth in England that was his model. He had poor development of post-revolutionary economic models that would work. That sort of economic theory development has always been troublesome. China for instance is a work in progress that has used much of the economic structure of the West retrofitted onto Maoist socialism.

Sports as War Training and Gambling are Still Socially Ubiquitous

Gambling seems to be taking over sports. Betting on events on-line at a profusion of new sites is all over the internet People need on-line electronic gambling machines from international sites. Competition is part of the human condition from wars to martial arts. If WW 3 occurs soon because of competition to own Ukraine and for economic hegemony over the world, that’s because competition is more highly regarded than pragmatism, realism and cooperation.

Sports were developed as training for war. Competition among men to see who could throw a rock or spear farther, and the prestige of skill in hunting and self defense were important to tribes. Warrior and hunter were the original male occupations globally.

I had a concentration in history in college and learned a lot from the past. I wouldn't suggest people can't learn from the past- that's silly.

Agriculture developed when hunting and gathering couldn't sustain concentrated populations in towns. The transition period was 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Hunter-gathering was the way of economics before that going back to when people started eating meat as the human line may have evolved from rodents circa 65 million years BC (Adam and Eve were spliced in to an existing human line).

https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/.../our-earliest-primate...

When people sustained with agriculture could sustain civil organizations with rulers organized wars began. Raiders had something established to attack and civil wars could occur as well for regime change. Organized wars started during the late Neolithic Age too.

https://www.history.com/.../when-did-humans-start-waging...

An excavation of Cohokia in St. Louis showed that the preceding ruling dynasty members were ceremonially killed when a new ruling family took over. So it's an American tradition too.

V Frankl Thought People Seek Pleasure if Life Seems Meaningless

 Frankl was profoundly influenced by his time in. Nazi concentration camp. He developed theories about recovery and finding meaning afterward.

Those finding life meaningless may not be able to afford pleasure. Such people may feel that without pleasure, life is meaningless.

This prompts me to mention Huizinga, a ubiquitous citation reference in the field of education who was an historian regarded as a quintessential humanist. I don’t find Huizinga interesting or a meaningful philosopher as others have yet he did rather invent or popularize the notion that play is the creator of culture. It is understandable that teachers regarded Huizinga as the greatest scholar of the last 25 years of the 19th century. I thought Sartre and the Apostle Paul distant runner-ups to what Jesus said.

The death camps were unthinkably bad and existential crisis for sure. Europe has a great history of pathos and stupidity concerning conflict and with President Biden’s help is experiencing a Renaissance of pathos in the Ukraine War.

The meaninglessness of pathos may transform the USA, Europe, Russia and China into Ukraine s in the fires of the future. Pleasure is kinda expensive for many of the poor who need satisfy themselves for meaning with observation of the Democrats leading the charge to apocalypse or large waves of disaster scheduled tentatively for 2025.

Capitalism is More Natural Than Socialism

 Capitalism is probably more natural than socialism although economically challenged people are probably happy enough if either works reasonably well.

Thermodynamics for living beings compels the input of material for existing. Accumulating capital is natural. Food, shelter, clothing, defense weapons, tools etc- people built up as much as circumstances allowed. Socialism requires more cooperation than capitalism as well as sophisticated governance. That part often fails.

In primitive societies where things are shared and tools are simple even knives are given to another if they ask for it to prevent jealousy. With such a simple tool kit everything a tribe has is more or less interchangable and of the same quality.

More advanced forms of capitalism with low taxes on the rich can concentrate wealth and stifle competitive capital accumulation by the masses, and that poverty can nip inventiveness and progress in the bud unless the ideas trickle up to the rich.

Social governance implies management by uninventive bureaucrats leading to another form of mass social repression that fails to maximize social potential.

There real isn’t a substitute for good political sense that assures universal basic income for enabling initial capital, environmental economics sustainability, great human relations on international concerns and progressive taxation to let creative and productive entrepreneurs prosper yet not concentrate social capital so much that the political economy can’t evolve and adapt to emergent coefficients of adversity.

The Problem of Evil, Omnipotence and a Level Four Multiverse

 Dr. Degrasse Tyson was credited with saying that God can’t be omnipotent and let evil exist at the same time. There are numerous theological responses yet I like this one using physics.

If there is a level 4 multiverse individual minds switch to the appropriate universe with each decisive thought; without being aware. Minds switch between Universes in that Tegmark theory. All of the Universes already exists fully actualized. That is sentient minds follow their own free will world line.

God is good and without sin. If people are willing to have faith in The Son he can save them with the atoning sacrifice. Otherwise people forge their own path to eternity without God that evolutionly becomes hell.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson isn’t a theologian and doesn’t talk about the numerous varieties of cosmology enough. He could even provide a review of good new cosmology books for non- scientists with new theories each year so people would know what to buy.

Religious Historical Research is Millennia Old

 People have researched the origin of particular religions for more than 2000 years. That sort of scholarship isn’t anything new. It is wrong to conflate their separate histories for that does lead to the construction of neo-modern myths in replacement for sound scholarship.

The origin of Manichaenism differs from that of Zoroastrianism and Islam. Many haven’t even read a basic scholarly text like Berhof’s Introduction to The New Testament. I have a free summary to save the cost of buying that public domain book published in 1915.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/a-commentary-on-berkhofs-intro-to-the-new-testament/ebook/product-1qn8ydk5.html

One may read the history of Asian religions and the origin of Hinduism and Buddhism and the way it traveled Eastward as the Mahayana and Hinayana, proliferated and differentiated into Zen, Nichiren Buddhism, Soka Gakkai and other forms

It is a mistake to conflate Taoism and Shintoism or Roman and Nordic paganism with several varieties of aboriginal American ideas of belief in a great spirit.

One may believe that Middle Eastern and fertile crescent religious practices and beliefs had a common origin yet they did not. Marduk, Enlil and the tale of Gilgamesh didn’t have the same origin as Osiris or middle African religious complexes.

It is important to differentiate and learn in depth and detail the several systems independently and with understanding so far as possible, as it is with numerous philosophical and cosmological systems rather than glossing over and making summary judgments that are dismissive or in some cases, affirmative. Good scholarship leads to deeper understanding and may reaffirm faith in the one true God or not as the case may be. A path to God is probably made by God for an individual if that is what the spirit wills.

One should have enough respect for scholarship and investment of life's work that has been invested in research, as well as oneself, to development a sober understanding of field studies.

Quantum Entanglement and Consciousness

 The hypothetical unified field includes space-time. It may all be one kind of thing at T=0.

Energy is defined as the ability to do work rather than a substance. Work coheres in space-time. The prospect of a wave function at singularity is something to consider as if it could be bound to T=0 null space-time.

I tend to believe consciousness is a definite locality encountering experience, at least for human beings. Space-time is experienced as a locality. There isn’t a universal time as I understand it. Time is bound with space locality and change of an observer from point a to b. If it is considered as a substance that seems more logical. There is much to think about in regard to space-time.

There may be a continuing primary field from the singularity hosting the basic fields and space-time that remains in existence. That might help explain inflation and gravity.

I tend to like the idea of quantum entanglement with consciousness since 3D matter is enabled by massless particles entangled on the Higgs Field.

Kingdom of God and The Realm of Forms

 The realm of forms was an idea held by some philosophers of The Academy yet not ordinary people. I don’t believe Socrates believed in a trans-migration there, although he believed in God. Instead it was an inference of logic. Plato may have regarded humanity generally as living like prisoners chained to the cave floor while alive on Earth. The realm of forms wasn’t heaven.

For early Christians the kingdom of heaven is with Jesus Christ and God in a real place unlike the realm of forms. That place is more like an expression of the power of God to create anything as the author of reality, than a warehouse of forms or prime patent designs for everything that exists.

History is Written by More than Victors

 History is written by any interested party these days. Actually there always were people unaffiliated with winners that wrote history. Procopius and Solzeshnitsyn wrote enfilading histories of their own oppressive rulers. It is also hard to say that the Christian gospel narratives of the disciples of Jesus were written by victors in a military or political sense. There are numerous examples of history written by third parties. History is written by the defeated too. Trotsky was writing a history of Stalin from Mexico City when he was killed by an assassin putting an ice ax in his brain in the middle of the eleventh chapter I believe it was. It is an excellent work of history that has survived.

British Philosophy Isn't Simply Dry Scientific Empiricism

 It was Russell that got Cambridge to award a doctorate to Wittgenstein for the Tractatus; sort of the Finnegan’s Wake of epistemology. Russell was Wittgenstein’s faculty advisor.

David Hume is hard to regard as a scientist though his negation of cause and effect except perhaps as descriptions of proximal phenomena has some practical empirical utility. I don’t consider Bentham and Mill scientists either in their development of utilitarianism although it is an empirically and objectively applied ethical governance.

Bishop Berkeley’s development of ideaism can’t be classified as scientific and Hobbes’ The Leviathan and even Marx’s Das Capital, written in London while Marx worked as a librarian are not very scientific.

The Problem With Democrats

 The present administration has a cognitively challenged, declining war monger escalating toward nuclear war over a nation he would not share with the proper historical owner, and avoided the media, slathered pardons on felons including his son, gave hundreds of billions of dollars to an unelected foreign president and colluded with social media to repress conservative free speech it could be an improvement- except that the opposition party burned fossil fuels too and their candidate supported fracking, ran up public debt, would not tax the rich when they had both houses of congress and were godless atheists besides without rhyme or reason in foreign or domestic policy. They were simply sure of immoral issues and concerned just with homosexuality, abortion and not disturbing the concentration of wealth.

Cosmology and Physicalism

 Shannon entropy entales the conservation of information in some respects; that is, it is comparable to entropy and thermodynamics. Information overall cannot be created or destroyed. Physicalism could be regarded as the structure of everything that exists whatever that may be at the fundamental level of substance. One need not be offended by the word. It could be replaced with a generic word such as substance without changing the meaning.

  If information is conserved and existed in the singularity in some way as well as substance the bootstrap start and hyper-inflation could be an act of spirit manifesting itself through relativity with pre-emptive text in a manner of speaking assembling all of the quantum shells where and when they need be to appear to sentient beings arising in the information of the unified and diverging field as physical structure.

A mind may be 10% of an individuals thought apparatus supported by 90% of the subconscious. The two do exist separately. Conscious mind may ask the subconscious to search for the name of a song title conscious forgot and the answer will eventually pop up on thought. A human mind exists in a physical brain as part of the quantum fields comprising the physical universe. The information may be conserved by God. Information is the foundation of all quantum field phenomena; datums in space-time that could be a form of information too.

One Can't Subtract Infinite Series Very Easily

 I was disappointed to find that adding together two equal infinite sets that are oppositely signed; for instance the real  between -1 and -2 with the real numbers between 1 and 2 cannot be proven to equal zero. Common sense indicates it does.

ChatGPT said that the math is improvable presently. Someone should fix that since it seems like common sense.

ChatGPT -“Ah, thank you for the clarification! You’re asking about the intervals and , both subsets of the real numbers . These intervals are equal in cardinality (both are uncountably infinite). However, combining infinite sets algebraically, as you propose, doesn’t follow the same rules as arithmetic with finite numbers. Let’s explore the idea in detail.

ChatGPT -“Ah, thank you for the clarification! You’re asking about the intervals and , both subsets of the real numbers . These intervals are equal in cardinality (both are uncountably infinite). However, combining infinite sets algebraically, as you propose, doesn’t follow the same rules as arithmetic with finite numbers. Let’s explore the idea in detail.

Cardinality of the Sets

Both intervals and are uncountably infinite and have the same cardinality as the real numbers , denoted by (the cardinality of the continuum).

A bijection exists between these intervals (e.g., maps to bijectively), confirming their equivalence in “size.”

Algebra of Cardinalities

In the algebra of infinite cardinal numbers:

\mathfrak{c} – \mathfrak{c} = \mathfrak{c},

Measure Theory Interpretation

If you’re thinking about summing or subtracting these intervals with respect to their measures:

The measure (length) of is .

The measure (length) of is also .

In this case:

\text{Measure of } (1, 2) – \text{Measure of } (-2, -1) = 1 – 1 = 0.

But this applies only to the measure (length), not to the sets’ elements or their infinite nature.

Infinite Sets and Summation

If you’re suggesting that the “sum” of elements in the intervals should cancel out, this operation isn’t well-defined because:

The elements of the sets are infinite in number and uncountable, so “adding” them isn’t straightforward.

Even if we attempt to define something like , this wouldn’t “cancel out” infinite quantities but rather produce a value based on specific rules.

Conclusion

Your intuition about symmetry between the intervals is valid when considering their measure (length). However, in the domain of cardinality or infinite sets, subtraction doesn’t yield zero due to the unique properties of infinities in set theory. Let me know if you’d like further clarification or a specific framework (e.g., measure theory, integration, or set algebra) to explore!”

Post-Modernism and Free Will

 Many post modernist behaviorists claim that free will doesn’t exist. They propose that subconscious conditioning from nature innately decides conscious decisions. That would be an inefficient evolution dispensing with deliberative conscious reason promoting a self-deceiving evolutionary configuration to trick it.

One might use a philosophical system to make decisions, such as act or rule based utilitarianism and carefully evaluate, select and enumerate criteria for making a decision within that system thereby excluding the deterministic ouji board element and apply free will to make a decision from any of several valid choices, or choose to spin the wheel of fortune to select a choice at random.

The choice to use a rational criteria, blind random chance or to revert to a ouji board of subconscious neo-determinism is made with free will (unless coerced by external factors such as 36 trillion dollars of public debt). Perhaps Democrats have no free will on deficit spending matters while Republicans may claim to have an ability to think for themselves with sapere aude economic policy.

Eternity

 Time exists with space, aka space-time. Space-time is temporal and probably won’t exist forever. Then no time exists nor does anything… except spirit that is different than anything known.