26 December 2024

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.

Avatar Drones Casing New Jersey Joints?

 If you have ever taken a programming course you might learn of the criterion of writing specific instructions in algorithms to accomplish particular tasks. There are test conditions, loops, etc that can be used to send a robot named X to go somewhere, do something and return. That sort of program would be on the very low end of programming algorithms today. Especially if compared to AI. One will need to get new software for home burglar alarms down the road to guard against sophisticated robot thieves with programming to pick locks, bypass alarms and accomplish particular criminal tasks. Maybe avatar drones are casing the joint of New Jersey for future adverse missions.

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.

President May Change Name of USA's Tallest Mountain to McKinley

 When the Dena’ina tribe arrived in Alaska between 500 and 1000 a d. Some continued southward to become Navaho. Navaho call themselves the Dine’ pronounced de nai, phonetical about the same as that of their northern kin. Neither group anticipated their tribal name would become a political football interchangeably with that of dead the President McKinley during the Obama administration.

The Trump administration could sell naming rights of the tallest Hill in North America on eBay or just change it back to McKinley. Since the next Democrat President will probably revert it to Denali or ‘the Navaho people’ selling the space for five years might be practical.

Athabascan Indians arrived in Alaska about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago yet others passed long before that are lost to history. No one knows today who the actual first people were as their coastal tracks were submerged long ago with sea level rise during the end of the Wisconsin Ice Age. Still, the Tanana Chiefs are an ancient lineage and so McKinley-Denali should be renamed for the with Tanana or Tenados attached to the northern summit.

  There used to be 27 names for the mountain that could easily be found in a Google search. After politically correct purging just two names turn up. One is the name of a race and the other is that of an assassinated President. Mikhail Tal was history’s most exciting chess player. If it can’t be Tenados or Tanana let it at least be Tal.

Workers, Inventors, Producers and Capital Concentration

I dialogued with AI on challenges facing US democracy and why it seems there is a continuum of deoptimal political works by ‘leaders’. Democ...