There is nothing wrong in not having read Gurdjieff. What IS wrong...is to pretend that you know something about the teaching of a man whose works you have never read.

See my above post.

Now that we are clear, in my opinion it seems, from the works I have read, the teachings sound very similar in substance to Christian monastic life.

Should have read; a follower of Gurdjieff's work. Stocco researched Gurdjieff works.

Quite the opposite. In fact...Gurdjieff called his method the "Fourth Way", in order to emphasize that it wasn't geared for the "monastics"...but for those who were fully immersed in the SECULAR world...with all its "traps and delusions".

Tell me that you want to "investigate" Gurdjieff...and I'll send you a nice introductory guide -- totally free of charge.

Okay so Gurdjieff teaches man does not have an immortal soul. This seems to be common knowledge regarding Gurdjieff's teachings and from what I understand man has to do work to obtain a soul.

Of course the above is not part of Christian monastic life.

Gurdjieff has been bandied about this thread many times. I started to read about Gurdgieff and works from his followers, ex followers, and people like Stocco who researched Gurdjieff's teachings out of curiosity.

Gurdjieff was raised a Christian, Russian Orthodox and influenced by monastics. According to William Patrick Patterson, a student of Lord John Pentland, Henry John Sinclair, a pupil of Ouspensky, Gurdjieff is a Christian.

Also, Gurdjieff's funeral services were held in the Russian Orthodox Church and his burial performed according to that church's prescriptions.

Supposedly, he taught the prayer of the heart, which is also a very much Orthodox Christian tradition.

I'll buy that the emphasis was upon those in the secular world and not monastics. In fact, I strongly believe my Church made an error in separating the monastic teachings, as esoteric teachings, as unobtainable to the people in the secular world.

I'll pm about your generous offer.

Gurdjieff taught that man does NOT possess an "eternal soul" from the outset...but that he can DEVELOP an "eternal soul", if he is willing to put forth the necessary "effort" to acquire one. And this "effort" had nothing to do with "faith", and "praying". Now...does this sound like "monastic Russian Orthodox Christianity" to you?

That is why I said a repackaging, I did not mean everything verbatim. The idea itself about developing an eternal soul is definitely not monastic either.

Didn't I read somewhere that you're anti-emoticons? :coffee:

Yes. Is that not obvious?
It's difficult to tell whether you understand or not.

Is the position and velocity predetermined? Not absolutely. Both are predetermined within a range.

Do you recall this statement I made in #1025?

The pot calling the kettle black.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_po...e_kettle_black

That does not answer my question. Have you been keeping up?

It's a "Yes" or "No" question. Would an honest answer embarrass you?

Unless you are prepared to deny the atheistic evolutionary tenet that the origin of the universe can be understood and explained solely by natural laws of physics, then your atheistic naturalism is D.O.A., according to the laws of logic. You need to get past these latter laws before you spout your sci-fi nonsense, using the former. Your goose is cooked in any cooking vessel you choose. You have chosen to imprison your worldview within this universe. Good luck in trying to break out of your self-made prison. :coffee:

Have I actually missed anything?

Honesty coming from you would be a breath of fresh air. Go for it. Just remember: My sniffer can detect BS even when it 10 miles downwind of me.
:popcorn:

A whole universe.

Just as I thought: Not much since it's one of your own invention, undoubtedly.

I use them occasionally myself...because English is a second language for me...and sometimes people can't tell when I am kidding, or being sarcastic.

I asked if I understood you correctly, because I did not want to distort your meaning.

Why would it be obvious to people who have no interest in physics? Why would they know about Hiesenberg?

What about superposition? Randomness is baked into quantum physics. If there is randomness can anything be predetermined?

There appear to be two explanations for the origin of the universe. One is that a supreme being created it in whatever way supreme beings create something out of nothing. The other is that the universe spontaneously came into existence.

The argument against the later is that the universe could not exist and not exist at the same time. However, in the case of the supreme being theory, it appears exactly the case that at one moment the universe did not exist, and in the next moment it did. But, there is no more sense in the argument that in the case of the supreme being theory, there was never a time when the universe both existed and didn't exist. Even using the Bible, there was a sequential process by which we apparently went from nothing to something based on the action of the supreme being. This is exactly the process by which the so-called naturalists might claim the universe spontaneously coming into being. In both cases, at one moment there was nothing and the next there was a universe. But in neither case is the law of noncontradiction violated.

In other words, there was never a time when the universe both existed and didn't exist under either explanation. In fact, the sole difference is that one theory leaves out the intervention of a supreme being to go from the nothing state to the physical state. If the law of non-contradiction is being violated by the latter explanation, it is logically violated by the former explanation. And if there never was a nothing state, problem solved for those "naturalists." The ineloquent Vigor's question was, how would you describe the physical place in which God existed before the universe came into existence? If, in fact, it was nothingness - a concept as inconceivable to humans as infinity - logic would dictate that nothing existed, including the supreme being. And if it was "somethingness" then the universe by logic already existed in some form.

Regardless, the rejection of the form of the universe as being consistent with the seven day story in the Bible is where the problem occurs with the literalists. To the literalists, "origin" means the Genesis story. God, existing in whatever place he existed, decided to create something where there was ostensibly nothing. To the so-called naturalists, in some way the universe came into existence and the current form of the universe can be explained back to milliseconds after it may have come into existence, but certainly for them the Genesis story is no better than metaphorical. The only explantation that the literalists can give for a physical universe that has not been in existence and behaving according to physical laws is that, he's God and he can do what he wants, whether it is creating fossils that appear to be millions of years old based on what we know physical laws to be or separating continents like he was pushing furniture across the room or having stars that can be seen because their light has travelled for millions of years to earth. And the challenge for the physicists is to explain the difference between that millisecond after origin and the real time zero. But the rejection of a Genesis story does not in fact violate the law of non-contradiction as long as you start at the infinitesimally small amount of time after origin. Billions of years ago, the supreme being brought the universe into existence (or not), there was a big bang and we went from there to the present in an explainable way.

The theological issues create very little impedance to the physicist because there is no physical way to prove the universe was created 6,000 years ago. In fact, there are clear physical ways to explain a universe that is billions of years old. What they can't do is dismiss some supreme being intervention at the very beginning of time. And to that they can say, so what? However you can conceive of something coming from nothing, great. But don't miss the point. If there was never nothing, there was always a universe.

You write very well. Would never have guessed Americana is your 2nd language. ;)

Have I misjudged my audience? You appear to know about it.
Define the term.
Is it?
Good question. If you are willing to accept "within a range" then I would say yes.

Atomic nuclei decay "at random," meaning that the moment of a particular nuclei's decay cannot be known. Yet in a large sample we can accurately predict how many nuclei will decay over a given time. Google "half-life."

If I were to do that for the sake of argument only would you be willing to answer some questions?

Where your thesis fails is that with the "spontaneous existence" of the universe, it caused itself to exist. This is clearly a violation of the law of noncontradiction. Conversely, with the theistic model of creationism, the Eternal, Self-Existing Creator is outside the universe; therefore, the cause of the universe is external to itself. This being the case, there is no violation of the law of noncontradiction; for a transcendent, intelligent, self-existing, eternal being who has always existed (redundancy intentional) can choose to create or not create a reality external to himself. Unlike, the "spontaneous existence" model, in the theistic model the external reality did not have to exist "before" it existed, i.e. it did not have to create or cause itself. It did not have to exist and not exist at the same instant of time. Since God always exists, God at any moment can call something that is external to himself into existence that was not.

For what purpose? To jump on your merry-go-round? But we all know that as an atheist you must believe that the natural laws of physics can explain the origin of the universe.. You believe this, and we all know it. Now...you have to tell me how the implications to that, i.e. the universe caused itself into existence, does not violate the law of noncontradiction. How can a thing exist and not exist at the same time and in the same sense? How can a universe not exist and at the same time must exist in order to bring itself into existence?

Because I know about it, does not mean everyone knows about it.

Superposition: existing into states at the same time both particle and wave, i.e. Schrodinger's cat.

Within in a range, is great. Sort of like HalvOnHorseracing joke about deer hunting statisticians. They got the deer on average.

I'll add an addendum to my Science series.
You mean wave-particle duality?
The joke may be funny but in real life no statistician would say that based on only two data points.

What part of "the universe always existed" don't you understand?

Yes, if you prefer, wave-particle duality.

The point of the funny joke is it is in the range. The range is not good enough for certainty.

Predicting how many will decay is vastly different than knowing the moment of a particular nuclei's decay

What about it?
The point of quantum mechanics is that there is no such thing as certainty. Plus the two points in the joke are not a range but are two certain points. Quantum mechanics makes a distinction.
I already said that.

What about it? Randomness question.

No you did not say what I said.

You stated:
Are you saying, by your above quoted statements, an average(I don't care how many points are used) qualifies as having certainty?

No.

Obviously you know that there are questions that you cannot answer even if we accept your hypothesis.

Good night.

Then you still have problems with the laws of logic, which I explained to you and Vig several times. If the universe is eternal and self-existent then this is the very essence of the universe. This is what the universe IS. But yet, what we see is the universe going in and out of existence. What is pure existence cannot have potentiality to change. Since the universe has potentiality to change, it cannot be said with certainty that it doesn't also have potentiality to cease to exist; therefore, it cannot be said with certainty that the universe is a self-existing, eternal entity. In fact, since the the universe is filled with change, it cannot be said with certainty either that this universe wasn't acted upon by a force or entity external to itself that is the ultimate cause for all this change that we constantly witness. The Change that we witness every day must be logically accounted for; yet there is no way to account for this other than resort to the absurd conclusion of infinite regression -- a non-answer if there ever was one.

A self-existing, eternal universe model runs headlong into the Law of Identity and the Law of Noncontradiction. In this theory, A is A and is also B! And this violates the Law of Identity. For your theory to work, the universe would have to be immutable, which clearly it is not.

What is the relevance then? Remember, the issue is predetermination, so how does your statement about knowing a range fit, concerning the issue?

A correction to my 2024
 

I typed that response in a hurry to HOH and got sloppy. I said in 2024 at one point: It did not have to exist and not exist at the same instant of time. What I really should have said pertaining to the theistic model is that unlike the "spontaneous existence" model the universe did not have to exist at the same time and in the same sense (or in the same respect). And it's right here that accounts for how the theistic model does not violate the law of non-contradiction. In the theistic model, the sense [of causation] differs greatly from the atheistic evolutionary one. For in the theistic model the existence is accounted for by an external cause to the thing being created; whereas in atheistic naturalism, the cause for the existence of the universe is found within itself. The nature of the causes (the senses), therefore, are very different which accounts for why atheistic naturalism is a self-defeating worldview, whereas theistic creationism is not.

Sorry for the confusion my 2024 might have caused.

Well you needed to read the whole post.

First, it wasn't my thesis. It was the thesis presented by others, and not without some real scientific basis. My thesis was that we can get back to nanoseconds after the universe came into existence, but we cannot yet get to a time before that. I don't know what happened. No one does for sure, except in their own mind. My thinking allows for an outside force, although with the assumption the universe evolved as science describes it from that early nanosecond to the present. As long as the science version of the universe from the big bang to the present is seen as correct, it is a matter of speculation how the space and matter occurred, and until science can offer a useful alternative, believe what you want about how the space and matter appeared. What you could not convince any physicist is that the Genesis story is literal. There is (literally) mountains of evidence for the age of the universe, and it is a number many orders of magnitude beyond 6,000 years. And other than Genesis, there is not any physical proof that the age of the earth is only 6,000 years.

But second, the idea of the universe starting from nothing is potentially explained by your explanation that the Creator existed in a universe other than ours. What you have suggested is the existence of a multi-verse of universes. That leads to an interesting picture of the big bang that perhaps our universe was born from the collision of two universes (also known as the big splat theory), or sprouted from a parent universe, or simply popped into existence out of nothing. If you understood the physics and the math (which you won't because you don't research anything that contradicts your thinking), you'd realize that it does not take net matter and energy to create entire universes.

Think of our universe as the surface of a soap bubble, and assume the bubble is expanding. We would live on the skin of this bubble. String theory predicts that there should be other bubbles out there, and these bubbles can collide with other bubbles, or even sprout baby bubbles. Think of a bubble bath. All those bubbles moving around in the tub.

So universes may be created all the time and not necessarily by an external creator. But in any of those three speculations I offered, the law of non-contradiction is not violated, and that includes the spontaneous creation of our universe. In each of those three speculations, at no time did our universe exist before it existed. With no insult meant, you do not understand the theoretical physics, and that led you to the erroneous conclusion that it is impossible to have no universe and then a universe without the intercession of a supreme creator or a violation of the law of non-contradiction.

You can be a naturalist from the point of the big bang forward and not necessarily be an atheist. You can believe that the supreme being started our universe. You just can't be a Genesis-style creationist.

In the end, you have a theory that works for you, but no proof beyond the book. Scientists have a myriad of theories, none of which have been proved correct or incorrect as well. The fact is that even if a scientist believes the creator theory is a low probability, it would be intellectually dishonest to suggest it has no probability. Similarly, even if the creationist believes string theory or the multi-verse theory is a low probability, it would be intellectually dishonest to suggest it has no probability. Same coin, two sides. I get that you can't get past your faith. But if you want to dispute the science, you first need to understand the science as well as the scientists do. Otherwise you are at the same disadvantage as anyone who would go toe to toe with you on Bible verses.

Hence the use of the term joke.

I have a friend who is a chemist. So I send this joke.

Willie was a Chemist,
But Willie is no more,
What Willie thought was H20
Was H2SO4.

The response I get back is, did you ever open a vial of sulfuric acid? Nobody would mistake it for water.

Funny is always relative, but I have empirical evidence my statistician/deer joke kills in the right group.

It doesn't? Can you expand on that because it is my understanding that matter is transformed energy.
I believe that Einstein thought that as well.

So the Jedi could be right! :ThmbUp: