Oh, did I miss a smiley face?

Did you mean to say, That's quite a dramatic opinion?

And, yes, in a previous post where I was chatting with Reserve Corp, I did say that. Context matters.—IM

Of course, you will never see the evidence because one would then have to admit that the version they are using is also based on manuscripts that were subject to corruption, scholarship by individuals who had varying degrees of competence, and translations which, by using linguistic studies, try to convey the clearest sense of the original meaning in modern-day language.

Of the hundreds of versions that exist, the CLV adheres most closely to the oldest Greek translations (Codices Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus) cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordant_Version which, by the way, Jerome most likely had access to while translating the Gospels to Latin in the 6th century.

To call it lying and corrupt is to disrespect every scholar that ever chose to dedicate his/her life to Biblical studies. All of them rely on one or more particular versions. Such insults are clearly an example of an ignorance of personal scholarship resulting in boorish behavior. In effect, an attempt to weaponize a viewpoint which, at the very least, should be ignored.—IM

Clever enough to know when to use to, too, and two. I take it you don't know any god jokes.—IM

Humans have no credible evidence for these phenomena.

Actually, Tom, I saw Loki on TV last winter. He was trying to make his own Valhalla, so Thor punished him.

And I've also seen Kirlian photographs. They really bring out the essence of the infinite.—IM

So is pi

Actually, my mind is infinite, so I'm allowed

Actually, '...there is absolutely no absolute truth' is a circular argument, same as putting absolute within quotation marks.

Absolutely

This second post was unintentional (Ghost in the Machine?)—IM

Absolutely

It was also instrumental in discovering the Higg's bosun which accounts for much of that space you're talking about. 'Dark Matter' coming Real Soon Now.


I hadn't heard that the Higgs Boson was related to Dark Matter. Last I heard, "Dark Matter" was hypothetical and nothing more.

I didn't say it was. '...talking about.' Period. Full stop. New sentence, new thought. Until they clean up the math and do some experiments, the jury is out. That's why I put it in quotation marks and jocularly wrote Real Soon Now.

To sum up:
I trained myself off/away from making conclusions about ontological subjects. I'm quite content with reason based on my five senses and the only belief I ascribe to is, 'there are no Absolutes in this universe'.—IM

ReserveCorp 06/05/18cont'd:

It's looking like our discussion might need to be moved to the Science and Philosophy thread.

I will say this as a final entry on the scientific method aspect:

All scientists agree that models are theories subject to correction and adjustment as new evidence comes along. The difference between scientific method and dogma is replication of evidence and methods by others to arrive at the same conclusion. When a theory, say, the discovery of penicillin, bec omes true in all cases and is generally accepted, one could say it is a fact.

This does not happen on a daily basis and as technology becomes ever more sophisticated, completely overturning a Theory requires much study and work and is not done on a whim.

Some people thought the Earth was flat, especially those in Europe during the Dark Ages. The Chinese, Chaldean, Egyptian, and more recently, the Persian cultures all had cosmologies based on several thousand years of observation. The Chaldeans, Sumerians if you like, had a developed 360 degrees spherical world view. The Vikings 'discovered' N. America a thousand years before Columbus. Saint Brendan the Navigator did it in a hide covered skiff in the 5th century.

TBC, the neighbor wants to have coffee...—IM

I am enjoying having a civil discussion about this.

Me too.

Somehow, since we are logical beings, religion has to complement science and vice versa.

The proposed age of the universe was derived by using the scientific method whereby logical experiments were demonstrated to be true in different studies. That's why we enjoy the world today as we do instead of hewing down trees with a stone axe.

It was also instrumental in discovering the Higg's bosun which accounts for much of that space you're talking about. 'Dark Matter' coming Real Soon Now.

That's not to say a theory cannot be replaced when more knowledge/progress/ experimentation proves otherwise.

Some Belief systems defy logic. Materialization is still a bit too Star Trekky for me. But I think we're close to 'beam me up Scotty'.

Yeah, beyond a billion years, who's countin' eh?—IM

In my mind, establishing a metaphysical construct that merges the idea of soul with AI (your program and simulation) calls for conclusions I am not prepared to make at this time.

Instead of accepting AI as an inevitable end point of sentient biological existence, I need to ask:
Will functionalism, the idea that machines can be programmed to replicate the human brain, ever be realized? Have we been watching too many Star Trek movies? Did Data tear up because of bona fide emotions or did the algorithm say, 'in this particular circumstance it's time to turn on the waterworks'?

More interesting to me are the moral implications. What happens when your AI controlled vehicle runs amok and causes an accident? Will you, as the owner, be liable? The manufacturer?
If SIMS become integrated in humanity, how will this affect non-SIMS' viewpoint on life? Oh, it's just a SIM, trash it. SIM armies fighting SIM wars. He who has the most SIMS rules. One guy/woman left on the planet with only SIMS for company?—nice. Or, maybe not.
Robotization has impacted society with a loss of many jobs. Already, machines guided by self-replicating code are producing more machines. What's left for humans to do? Paint, create music, enjoy the good life?

One last point: Immunology suggests there are 10^24 possible combinations of antibody molecules in the human body that function 'autonomously' to prevent sickness and disease. I juxtapose that with (Stephen Hawking's proposed resolution to the black hole information paradox). This would achieve storage density exactly equal to the Bekenstein bound. Seth Lloyd calculated[7] the computational abilities of an "ultimate laptop" formed by compressing a kilogram of matter into a black hole of radius 1.485 × 10^−27 meters, concluding that it would only last about 10^−19 seconds before evaporating due to Hawking radiation, but that during this brief time it could compute at a rate of about 5 × 10^50 operations per second,

Someday over the rainbow...—IM

And other than rudeness, your contribution is...?

The Book is as the revelators gave it to us.

How? What was the mechanism? Did physical pages of data just appear out of thin air? I ask, because since this is a modern-day example of celestial beings interjecting information into our collective mind, it would be illuminating to understand how this works. Remember, Joseph Smith found plates, Moses claimed the Ten Commandments were written by the finger of God, Ellen G. White went into a trance; mediums speak the communications of spirits, many have had revelations.
Also, I take it, that the billion years of inhaling and the billion years exhaling is a symbolic number, much like 'Creation took seven days.' I mention it because the generally held view held by physicists today is that the last Big Bang happened approx. 14.3 billion years ago and we are still in the expansionary, er, inhaling phase. —IM

I found this part interesting:

The book describes that at the center of the cosmos is the stationary Isle of Paradise—the dwelling place of God—with Paradise being surrounded by "Havona," an eternal universe containing a billion perfect worlds, around which seven incomplete and evolutionary "superuniverses" circle.[71][72]

The word "universe" in the book is used to denote a number of different scales of organization. A "superuniverse" is roughly the size of a galaxy or group of galaxies, and the seven superuniverses along with Paradise-Havona are together designated as the "grand universe." A "local universe" is a portion of a superuniverse, with 100,000 local universes being in each superuniverse.[71] Beyond the seven superuniverses, uninhabited "outer space levels" are described. The term "master universe" refers to what in modern usage would be the total universe—all existing matter and space taken as a whole.

Urantia is said to be located in a remote local universe named "Nebadon," which itself is part of superuniverse number seven, "Orvonton." The physical size of a local universe is not directly stated, but each is said to have up to 10 million inhabited worlds.[71]

Of course, when the book was written (1925-50?), not much work had been done on Black Holes, Hawking's faves. It is today postulated that at the center of every galaxy exists a black hole. Furthermore, at the center of the universe (cosmos) (if such a coordinate can be found) exists a giant black hole, capable of swallowing up entire galaxies.
BTW, Hawking laid out a hypothesis in A Brief History of Time wherein the universe expands, evidenced by the Doppler Effect (which surmises that stars and galaxies are moving away from each other at increasing rates of speed), UNTIL it reaches a point where, like a rubber band, or accordion, the entire system rebounds and moves back upon itself until we have another singularity which leads to another Big Bang.
I point this out to reflect on the idea of an eternal universe.

I also found this interesting:

Jesus is considered the human incarnation of "Michael of Nebadon," one of more than 700,000 "Paradise Sons" of God, or "Creator Sons."

In that the book was channeled to Sadler (maybe Kellog) by 'celestial beings' I appreciate that the celestial perspective requires more manpower for more universes.

Which leads me to a question, ReserveCorp: Was/were Sadler/Kellog et al(the other folks in the original committee), prophets, in your opinion?—IM

for your consideration

In the field of epistemology, Putnam is known for his "brain in a vat" thought experiment (a modernized version of Descartes's evil demon hypothesis). The argument is that one cannot coherently state that one is a disembodied "brain in a vat" placed there by some "mad scientist".[11]
This follows from the causal theory of reference. Words always refer to the kinds of things they were coined to refer to, thus the kinds of things their user, or the user's ancestors, experienced. So, if some person, Mary, were a "brain in a vat", whose every experience is received through wiring and other gadgetry created by the "mad scientist", then Mary's idea of a "brain" would not refer to a "real" brain, since she and her linguistic community have never seen such a thing. Rather, she saw something that looked like a brain, but was actually an image fed to her through the wiring. Similarly, her idea of a "vat" would not refer to a "real" vat. So, if, as a brain in a vat, she were to say "I'm a brain in a vat", she would actually be saying "I'm a brain-image in a vat-image", which is incoherent. On the other hand, if she is not a brain in a vat, then saying that she is a brain in a vat is still incoherent, but now because she actually means the opposite. This is a form of epistemological externalism: knowledge or justification depends on factors outside the mind and is not solely determined internally.[11]
Putnam has clarified that his real target in this argument was never skepticism, but metaphysical realism.[56] Since realism of this kind assumes the existence of a gap between how man conceives the world and the way the world really is, skeptical scenarios such as this one (or Descartes' evil demon) present a formidable challenge. Putnam, by arguing that such a scenario is impossible, attempts to show that this notion of a gap between man's concept of the world and the way it is, is in itself absurd. Man cannot have a "God's eye" view of reality. He is limited to his conceptual schemes. Metaphysical realism is therefore false, according to Putnam.

from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam#Mathematics_and_computer_science

—IM

ReserveCorp 2:17 PM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Urantia_Book

For those of us not familiar with the book.—IM

AGAIN: re-edited to correct url links. Sorry, if they didn't work for you the first time. I'm a work in progress.—IM