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Gnomon

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The non-biblical reason for wearing clothing has more to do with climate than with gender. In the jungles of Africa, clothing is optional for those wi...
September 14, 2020 at 18:18
Yes. Both Theists and Atheists are reasonable in the sense that they each have reasons to support their pro or con conclusion. The problem is that Ath...
September 14, 2020 at 17:47
That "eternal basis" and "permanent something" is the cosmic principle of BEING, that I also call G*D, as a sop to traditional feelings. Yes. I don't ...
September 13, 2020 at 22:04
That "chosen" purpose may work for you as an individual, but most people who ask such questions are assuming there must be a higher, more universal Pu...
September 13, 2020 at 21:54
History affirms that "belief in god is an evolutionary stable strategy". Cultural evolution, that is. So, faith in gods must provide something that is...
September 09, 2020 at 02:46
He specifically mentioned Intellectuals and Philosophers, and didn't mention Introversion. If he's not a navel-gazing introvert, then maybe an outward...
September 08, 2020 at 17:06
The recent book by Susan Cain addresses that very question. Ironically, she is a lawyer, who gets paid to stand in front of strangers and talk. Innate...
September 08, 2020 at 17:01
One sense of the verb "to prove" is "to probe, investigate, analyze". So it doesn't necessarily imply that absolute Truth has been revealed. In Scienc...
September 08, 2020 at 16:49
Social awkwardness seems to be typical of Intellectuals, and especially Philosophers. Throughout history philosophers (e.g. Socrates) were noted for e...
September 08, 2020 at 16:36
The hyper-critical Cynics were the Punk Rockers of their day : act like an animal, "don't give a sh*t about anything". Theirs was an extreme opposite ...
September 07, 2020 at 18:15
It took me many years to deprogram my youthful propagandizing to fear death without God's seal of approval. Other than the nagging question of losing ...
September 07, 2020 at 17:38
What comes next is unknowable, but different religions & cultures have imagined a variety of sequels to our "brief candle", some good, some bad : the ...
September 06, 2020 at 18:08
I don't know that there is any authoritative answer to your interesting question. But in my own imagination, I can speculate. First, there is a signif...
September 06, 2020 at 17:39
As you suggest, the mind perceives that physical objects can be broken-down into smaller pieces, and then it conceives (in imagination) that metaphysi...
September 06, 2020 at 02:45
Maybe you are questioning how the human mind can analyze seemingly unbroken processes of change into smaller bits. Plato proposed the metaphor of "car...
September 05, 2020 at 17:57
Actually, my view is BothAnd. Our world is both a Holistic System that works as a unit, and a swarm of Holons that work independently. The "holistic v...
September 04, 2020 at 19:54
Whenever humans conceive of a continual progression as a series of steps, they implicitly digitize a whole system. For example, as someone pointed out...
September 04, 2020 at 01:03
Your question sounds like Zeno's Paradox. He assumed that the "gap" traversed between any two steps in a race (movement in space & time) is infinitely...
September 03, 2020 at 17:16
In my hypothesis, that intermediate "duration" between energy peaks and valleys is not Time, but Timelessness ( a state that cannot be measured in Pla...
September 02, 2020 at 17:14
Your example of color change reminds me of physical Phase Transition. The perceived shift in color is caused by a change in wavelength, and the gap "t...
September 01, 2020 at 18:25
MIne too! But when has that ever stopped us from philosophizing? :smile:
August 31, 2020 at 16:27
That is one way to imagine the hypothetical fundamental non-entity I call "G*D". It's like a continuous unbounded unlimited Field of Potential (BEING)...
August 30, 2020 at 17:59
That is indeed the nature of Wholes in the real world. But my notion of the hypothetical super-natural creator of Reality (Nature) is just the reverse...
August 30, 2020 at 17:31
That's also how I view my meta-physical, non-anthro-morphic G*D : as a unique singular Whole, not a vast collection of parts. Dawkins seems to be a re...
August 29, 2020 at 18:00
That's merely a superficial observation of a mystery, not a theory of "how it works". Scientists know a lot about Phase Change, but still can't say fo...
August 29, 2020 at 17:54
I didn't call Jains "hyper-idealistic", I called them "idealistic". It was not intended as a put-down, but as a description of their uncompromising Dh...
August 29, 2020 at 17:24
The current dominant model of the brain says that it consists of an array of "modules" with specialized functions. But no-one has come up with a plaus...
August 28, 2020 at 17:10
"Hyper-pragmatism" is not pragmatic, it's idealistic. That's one problem with "hyper-idealists", they tend to view pragmatic moderates through a rever...
August 28, 2020 at 16:26
Yes. If you have a need for absolute moral purity, then go for it. But most people are not so angelic. I do my best, but it's never good enough to qua...
August 27, 2020 at 17:08
The OP was asking if, when Consciousness stops during sleep, we are in-effect dead for the duration. But that notion is based on a poor understanding ...
August 26, 2020 at 23:05
I have been losing consciousness nightly for 75 years, and yet my Self is still living. That's because Consciousness is not the same thing as Self or ...
August 26, 2020 at 22:42
Maybe the solution to the babble of languages at CERN is to provide everyone with a Babel-fish. :grin: Babel-fish : https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wik...
August 26, 2020 at 22:20
Yes, the Golden Mean is relative to the mode and range of the values under consideration. I this case, I am relating the Jain morality to my own perso...
August 26, 2020 at 22:06
Apparently, you don't know who Barry Goldwater was. As presidential candidate in 1964, he was the Donald Trump of his day, and had been characterized ...
August 26, 2020 at 17:03
I can quibble with the notion that "every new idea" is extremist. Many are quite moderate, but are rejected due to the polarized & uncompromising atti...
August 25, 2020 at 18:00
I never said that "there are things too idealistic to implement". What I did say was "It's an idealistic idea, but hard to implement in the real world...
August 24, 2020 at 17:35
I'm generally familiar with Plato's ideas, but I'm not a scholar. Where did Plato discuss the topic that you are calling "the One". I did a Google sea...
August 23, 2020 at 17:34
What "ideas" are you referring to? I don't suppose that you think cave-men were making utopian plans for turning their caves into high-rise cities. An...
August 22, 2020 at 17:56
Ideals are great as hypothetical goals to aim for, but they are by definition, not Real, or realistic, in the sense of practical. The Garden of Eden w...
August 22, 2020 at 03:09
I am not religious, but I am also not an Atheist. So, I'm not prejudiced against the idea of life after death. To the contrary, as a child, I was taug...
August 21, 2020 at 17:43
I don't have time to go into detail on Genetic Science, so I'll just mention that in Systems Theory, Reductive complexity (sheer numbers) is distingui...
August 21, 2020 at 00:01
That was a common assumption until the advent of Quantum theory. Ironically, though the theory is based on quantized phenomena, it was eventually stym...
August 20, 2020 at 23:29
Good point! A poster on another thread --- discussing FreeWill not gods --- replied to my reply, first by rejecting my links to "expert" opinions, and...
August 20, 2020 at 22:50
The Buddha came to the same conclusion. So, he showed people-driven-by-desires, how to break free from the tyranny of evolutionary appetites. Self-con...
August 19, 2020 at 23:01
I agree, but you missed the point. I was not equating Science and Atheism. I was simply making allowances for Theist scientists, such as Francis Colli...
August 19, 2020 at 22:40
Those "illusions" are Memes, and the brain/mind is very good at "creating, sustaining, and swapping them". Some Memes are reliable facts, but many are...
August 19, 2020 at 22:14
I asked what alternative "X" you would propose. I may or may not be in the market for "X", but you haven't explicitly said what it is. Except to denig...
August 19, 2020 at 02:40
If you are really interested in navel-gazing, without becoming a Buddhist or Hindu, you might enjoy Robert Wright's book, Why Buddhism Is True. Don't ...
August 19, 2020 at 02:21
Good point! I suspect that most of our behavior is habitual and subconscious. So we exercise our "FreeWill" by attending to the proposed actions, and ...
August 18, 2020 at 23:34
I agree that the Trinity doctrine is a muddled rationale derived from theological attempts to make sense of a few unrelated biblical passages. It may ...
August 18, 2020 at 23:19