The slippery slope.

How easy is it to imagine this train of events?

Since corporations can now give contributions to political parties for their campaigns we can see that it would be easy for giant companies to insert their candidate greased with big bucks to run for a particular party.

When all the right politicians are in place it would be easy to start changing the rules ever so slightly towards a more orderly and moral society. Perhaps we might wake up one morning to the news that it is no longer permissible to work on Sunday, or, in other words, everyone deserves a day off, these evil corporations have had their way for far too long, forcing secularization on the public at large like this.

Fundamentalist Christians would be dancing in the streets! The right wing media would be ecstatic, claiming peace throughout the land, one step closer to a right and moral society with good values.

A few more obscure laws and abortion suddenly becomes unconscionable, a disgrace, murder even!

Now, not only Fundamentalists, Catholics would be on board, one more step towards ALL admitting that life is absolutely sacred and holy and ought to be revered at least in principle, above all but God.

The next step is to encourage people to see that we are ALL servants of God. We are all here to do HIS bidding after all and the law of the land really ought to reflect this.

At this point the government has been filled with like-minded individuals and it is suggested that, although the Holy Bible is an inspired book it is not the last inspired word of God, obviously, because it seems to cause so many schisms.

The only thing for it really is to change calling yourself a servant of God to plain Muslim, which means the exact same thing after all.

Those who refuse? Well, there are, shall we say, methods of persuasion and the plain facts of the Quran as written by the last Prophet of God, Muhammed, peace be upon him, isn't there?

What do you say? Could NEVER happen?

Can't 'really' know anything...

I'm arguing my point of view with a good man, a nice man, a man who feels like he knows where it's at.

But he seems to think that he's not just bandying words when he says, "I can't 'really' know anything at all!", then I point out that he is not being truthfull here because he obviously 'knows' that he is right about that. Then he goes on, "Oh no, YOU'RE being disingenuous because now YOU'RE using words in a way to mean what you want."

I admit that words are easy to twist. One of my main objections to philosophy, especially the theistic philosophy of Plato on through Descartes IS that the things they say, the conclusions that they come to don't mean a damned thing although they sound reasonable because they take both sides of the argument.

I think therefore I am, could mean that consciousness is like a first cause kind of thing, that it had to be before space and matter could exist OR it could just mean that the only way you can know that you exist is that you are a thinking being and thinking beings are the only 'things' that can think this.

I'm skeptical of this first view because saying that it is 'correct' seems to imply the supremacy of consciousness much as religion needs to and seems to be tending to confrim religious thinking. Having the second view of this statement seems to deem the statement unnecessary. So what if we are the only things in existence that 'know' we exist? Doesn't mean a damned thing right?

Still, convincing me that you 'can't know anything' seems silly because there doesn't seem to be nowhere to go there but to slyly take that all back then convince me that you know a helluva lot more that you're claiming in that 'first philosophy' of yours, yes?

Then if you start getting into 'first causes' and/or 'quantum physics'.. then you're REALLY calling yourself a total bullshitter, if you TRULY believe that you can't KNOW ANYTHING AT ALL.

What's going on?

I'm very suspicious by nature, so when I started getting those 'Forbidden' ... Access Denied 'things' instead of my favourite blogs, I naturally assumed that someone was out to 'get' me.

It's funny, but these things seem to come in waves, or you happen to change one thing and another thing 'just happens' to be starting at exactly the same time, much like Brian's Big Brain Synchronicity stuff.

If anyone is having a problem with this and can't access their own blog, I've found that searching for blogspot then signing in seems to get you to your own blog.

Has anyone figured this out yet? Perhaps you could comment with 'the' solution?

A.I vs. A.A.

I had a flash of brilliance this morning, but how to put in this blogpost in a way that is intelligible, interesting, makes some kind of point, thought-provoking, commentable and/or funny(at least to me)

As with all my flashes of brilliance, this one is likely just 'new to me', so feel free to say, "Pfft, I considered, and rejected that when I was like seven, you moron!", any response is better than no reponse at all.

It must have been wondering through my brain cells for a month or two, my considering Pliny's, what is it, 'idea?', 'notion?' of how artificial intelligence would boot-strap itself up from 'nothing' to avoid problems of biased thinking.

I can't imagine how a Pliny intelligence would operate though, because one of the prerequisites for intelligence is, as is my understanding, awareness. I mean, how does an intelligence solve a problem or avert a crisis if it is not aware of said problem or crisis?

Seems to me that there'd be a hierarchy of nature regarding this, I'll just make one up off the top of my head, why not.

Material. :- rocks and such, completely dumb, unaware, unintelligent.

Simple life. :- micro-organisms with no awareness at all, perhaps fungi, like yeast, barely living at all.

Plants. :- are aware of sunlight, grow towards the sunlight. Some have rudimentary awareness of insects. Venus fly-trap for example.

Fish, animals, birds and insects, which show a variety of awarenesses and quite a bit of intelligence, if intelligence is defined as problem solving.

Seems to me that humans would be on the top of the scale here only if we regard problem solving to be the ultimate in awareness.

There's a good case to be made for that actually. We are aware of our limited awareness and build tools, such as microscopes and telescopes to overcome those limitations. We can't reach out with our minds and 'grok' the stars and galaxies of stars, so we build tools to bring the stars into our field of awareness with photos and such.

Two points here. What is Pliny's intelligence without awareness, if that's what he's saying? What is awareness of the spiritual, what is the spiritual and how is it that quite a lot of people seem to be aware of it?

On the first one, it seems to me that, when trying to build artificial intelligence, we need to build an artificial awareness and that is exactly where bias is going to creep in, the intelligence is biased in favour of it's own awareness because it is not aware of anything outside it's own awareness.

On the second one, I think that spirituality is a confused collection of ideas where we try to imagine that we are aware of something that's just not there. (any ideas on that oneblood?)

Just a story.

It was bitter cold out, and I was watching T.V., playin' around on the computer when I felt the freezing draft hit me. Emma's son had been over to give her a couple of gifts for her birthday, a little calender that you rip off the pages/days as they go by and a snowglobe that you put your own picture in.

The draft must have been hitting my leg for a few minutes before I became aware of, then concerned by, it. "Wonder what's goin' on?", I said, mostly to myself, "The front door must be open."

Sure enough the door was half ajar and I cringed to myself at the bitter, bitter cold that was the night 'out there' while feeling that good warm feeling of knowing that the solution to all my problems was 'just that' simple, and I closed it and locked it.

"Josh didn't close the door all the way, I was catching a freezing draft on my leg, it's bloody FREEZING out there!", I told Emma taking another look at her new picture-frame snowglobe thinking, "Wonder which dollar store that came out of?"

The night went on as usual, Emma called through that Fred, my deceased wife's dad had died. Not that Emma 'usually' calls through that Fred died, of course, just that she'll tell me 'things of interest' if and when they pop into her mind, and such. Old Fred was a nice guy and we had a 'history' quite a while back but I'd mostly lost touch with him over the years. He was one of those guys who was always old to me. He was old when I married his daughter, old when she died about ten years later and old when I'd see him on very odd occasions after that.

I thought about Emma's story about how her dad said that when he died he was going to come back as a crow and watch out for her. We'd laughed about that the odd times we'd walked past a couple of crows sitting on the wires.

The night rolled on as usual, "I'd have a drink for the memory of poor old Fred!", I called through to Emma, although it wasn't usual for me to drink to the newly dead Fred, I will respond with something from time to time. Emma wasn't taking the bait, no rum for me 'tonight'.

It was getting late so I settled Emma in for the night, which included picking up the bird from his make-shift perch, a fan, in her room, to put him to bed, and a glass of ice water for her, not from the tap, but from the cooler.

Prettyboy Floyd, insisted on riding on my shoulder to assist me getting the water for Emma but suddenly flew off, round and round the rooms finally settling on his cage and peeking out the door shaping himself in that banana shape that cockatiels get when they stretch their necks to peek.

I closed Emma's door for the night because she likes her thermostat set to "July", when we'd finished marvelling at how the bird gets scared by nothing at all, silly bird.

Off to bed for Prettyboy Floyd, he gets on his perch next to his favourite mirror image, blanket over the top, but I don't close his cage door, I figure bird-brain or not he knows whether he wants to be in there or not as he is not shy about 'telling me' when he wants to be to bed sometimes.

So, I'm laying in the dark, the monitor glowing and the television flickering eerily as it is wont to do and the matress dips slightly, something has climbed on the bed with me.

"Oh, Prettyboy what's wrong with.. ", I started, turning towards what I imagined was going to be the bird and as I swung round from the monitor to face him my hand went around and touched what I still thought was him, except it felt a little too big to be him.

I don't think that you can imagine how surprised I was when I looked down at a cat! When I looked down at a charcoal grey cat with silvery tip ends like something peeking through the mist, in the flickery light of the television.

I scooped him, I'm calling it him here, I scooped him up in the blanket that he was laying on as if he were MY cat, or as if I were his owner and took the 'bag-o'-cat' I'd made and asked Emma if she could guess what I had.

After I'd popped him back outside, we chatted about how strange that was.. now I wonder if his name was Fred?

Learning to love WRATH?

One of the principal reasons that I do not believe in the existence of the God of the Bible is that He is a paradox.

We hear about 'the Wrath of God' perhaps in the same sermon as the 'all-loving God' and this, to me, is not consistent, a conundrum, a paradox, two puzzle pieces which don't fit.

No amout of looking hypnotically into the distance and repeating, "We cannot fully understand the mind of God." or somesuch can possibly mesh the ideas that God is all-loving and God can be wrathful for me.

There's certainly no getting away from God's Wrath in the Old Testament, the foundation documents for Him.

I recall broaching this subject with a nice elderly Jehova's Witness that used to come by of a Wednesday morning. "Why is it that God seems to change from the Old Testament 'full of Wrath' to the New Testament 'full of Love', then at the last chapter, back to 'full of Wrath' again?"

I forget the word for word response, although it must have been some classic Orwellian double-speak, double-think, 'We cannot know the mind of God' stuff. What else could it have been?

But what kind of rebuttal or apology can we expect from anyone on this logical, defining argument against the God of the Bible, that He cannot possibly be all-loving and wrathful?

Seems to me that 'you'd' have to back into it and spill a cartload of bullshit on it right away and THEN 'speak to it' as if it had already been defeated, thus:-

"Well, of course, you WOULD say this kind of thing, being that you have obviously turned away from God, accepted 'the god of this World' as your leader, allowing you to continue sinning in your lustful, cheating, stealing, perjurous ways!"

This may be preceded with, "You seem like a very insightful and intelligent person but.."

I think that perhaps this kind of 'treatment' is to demonstrate how the apologist 'can be' both loving (patronizing actually) and wrathful(disdainful actually) at the same time, 'proving', in a way that the anger/love thing is at least possible? (Just throwing that out there.)

This paradoxical idea that a being can be all-loving yet wrathful(all-wrathful?) is so obviously bullshit that one cannot even begin to demonstrate it, not for the historical lack of trying on Jews, Christians and Muslims parts, without coming across as batshit insane!

Biblically, "I LOVE you! And if I don't feel the love coming back to me in the required way(which you may or may not know), I'll have my 'people' exterminate your 'people'!"

Do you feel compelled to look off into the 'distance of your mind' and say something like, "One cannot know the mind of God."?

Well, do ya... punk?

Rum powered rant!

Thought I had a few things. Oh yea, I think that it's funny how atheists imagine that life's only reason is to produce more life, and that devout Catholics/pro-lifers seem to want to take that reason 'beyond' reason while denying the reasonableness of that reasoning.

Ummm.. a good apologist is a wordsmith. "Why is material reality any less dogmatic than religious dogma?"

We say, "You're just making shite up!", and they reply, "Isn't what you think you know just 'made up shite' too?"

Well, of course language is a 'made up' thing and we need to express material reality in language, and the good apologist knows that there's no getting around this, so he(or she) is going to use this against us. "Material reality plus(plus spirituality) is shite you say? Well material reality is a cartload of shite, isn't it?"

Well, no. There is a consensus among us that material reality is 'real' to even have the conversation!

"Ahh, but among the majority of people there is a consensus that spirituality is real too!"

But the majority of people, seems to me, are looking for an 'Easy button' when it comes to questions like, "Why are we here?", or, "Why am I here?", or, "Why is here, here?", so they would tend to jump on the "Easy button" bandwagon rather than go on the "Hamster-wheel" of infinite regress that atheists get dragged onto by well meaning(?) or, at least, well versed apologists.

If atheists are those willing to go against the religious flow and theists are those wafting the flow along, the apologist would be those fighting turbulence and blockage caused by atheists and even non-theists.

I think that the flow needs impetus and that impetus comes from the desire to live forever. But that can't be the end of it surely? "Jesus saves, thank you very much, see you in the next life, have a good one!"

No, it can't be that because that wouldn't take up a half-hour class for one school semester in grade school for everyone, never mind four years of college for the theology inclined!

No, what I think is going on is the same kind of force that drives bubbles and crashes in economies, swings of public opinion to the left or right in politics and that kind of thing.

While everyone is claiming to WANT a stable predictable economy and a 'central' government, economies and governments just don't work like that. Same with religion. It isn't WORKING if it's not stirring up crises, dragons to slay, enemies to crush, reasons to be victorious.

Much like the weather, which we wouldn't notice if it weren't changing all the time, we wouldn't notice the economy(or care about it) if it were stable and we wouldn't notice(or care) who is in government if there weren't constant crises(real or imagined), we wouldn't notice religion unless there were the controversy and the demonizing and the hate-mongering and the unsolvable, immovable lines drawn in the sand which, if you're not on my side then you are just some sub-human-monkey's-uncle-that's-all.

They don't want us to stop and think, "What is this drivel that they want us to care about now?", no. They want to keep juggling them three balls constantly, politics, economy and religion, 'cos there's nothing else.

"They're trying to steal Christmas from us!"
I suppose when it's down to that, atheists are supposed to say, "Dear Lord help us!", and then they can say, "I knew that you believed all the time, I knew it!"