tar

imatfaal, OK, thanks, but I am having a little trouble understanding the % difference between the surface area subtended by the steradian and the surface area subtended by my TARadian unit. From Wiki: "Because the surface area A of a sphere is 4πr2, the definition implies that a sphere measures 4π (≈ 12.56637) steradians. By the same argument, the maximum solid angle that can be subtended at any point is 4π sr." If it takes around 12.56637 sr to subtend the sphere, and exactly 12 tr to subtend the sphere, then the tr is 1.0742 of an sr, or the sr is.9549 of a tr. I sort of like the tr better since they can be fitted together to cover the whole sphere exactly, whereas a circle on a sphere is hard to do anything with, visualizationwise. You can't readily see how many are going to fit around the sphere, or how to handle that funny shape inbetween you get when you touch 3 or 4 cones together. In any case the division you get, the shape you get when you carve the lines (radii) of a spherical rhombic dodecahedron to the center, can not be called a steradian, as it is neither conical in shape, nor circular at the subtend point, nor does it subtend a unit area of the surface of the sphere. It must have another name. Regards, TAR you could cut up a globe into those diamond shapes and lay them all out where you can see them at once you can't do that so easily with circles

Thank you MD65536, That's it! Regards, TAR Do the wedges have a name? A pyramid with a rounded base? Or is there some name for the curvature being 1/12th of a sphere?

A few days ago I solved a challenge I had made myself, and think the division is neat, with a lot of nice symmetries and such, but several searches on the web and I have not found its name, or a breakdown of it, to study the angles and descriptions and such. So I am presenting it here, in the hopes that someone will recognize it, and point me to a link with its description. Its made of clay and was done by eye with pen and steak knife, so its not exact, but it works. What is this division called? Regards, TAR

imatfaal, Consider it swept. I was only joking around anyway, considering that between my over 80 dad and the over sixty me, we only had enough T between us to count for 3/4 of 2 full male votes. Perhaps if there was a priliminary T count prior the vote, they went by percentage of average male T amoungst the participants to set the weight of a vote, and the actual tally was 73.016% and they rounded down. Regards, TAR2 any way you slice it, they either had a partial man in there somewhere or they did not word their findings correctly besides I refuse to man the barracades for anything...unless they disparage my right to wear lacey underwear...(did I say that out loud?)

Maybe one was bisexual and they couldn't in fairness to men count the vote as a full man vote, and only gave it half weight as to not be called into question later by someone with imatfaal's need for mathematical accuracy. Or perhaps they all said it worked and they could only come up with 36.5 fully male amoung them, counting all the halfs. That would be 27 half votes given to the 27 bisexuals in the group and 23 full votes given to the 23 who had their gender figured out as male. After all, they were testing moisturizing lotion. Something only 75% of the 6 people in my profile picture might have any interest in.

SwansonT, I had brought up my objections in another thread. It was decided I didn't understand the math, so had not right to question Krauss' take. It's pertinence to this discussion is the existence of the Sun, Earth and Life and humans and consciousness, and the thought that what scientists in this locale will or will not know about the beginnings of the universe, in 600 billion years, matters. It with a great amount of examples points to a universe that operates in some large measure in defiance of the second law...at least on the timescales we have to operate on, and at the size scales that we exist on. It is interesting to me that qualitative views would be non-scientific to you, when the topic of conversation is what will happen to the universe in 600 billion years. Like you could take the required measurements and report back your findings. Besides, the mere qualitative notion of caring about what happens to the universe in 600 billion years, proves undeniably that consciousness exists in this universe and is projected to continue to exist in 600 billion years, in the bodies that would be the scientists of that future time. Which means, at the very least, that Larwence Krauss, TAR, SwansonT and anyone reading this, and considering what might happen to the universe in 600 billion years, is alive, conscious, and capable of, at least for the moment, laughing louding in the face of entropy, and taking pride in the knowledge of the place that we hold, that will possibly be unavailable for conscious minds to hold in 600 billion years. This threads title is already vindicated, by the fact that we are clever, we are natural, and we are evident. The current challenge is to describe the scientific measurement we can make to describe order and usefulness and entity "cleverness", in opposition to disorder, emptiness, and lack of structure, or pattern. If these things, complete order and complete disorder are outliers on a normal distribution bell curve, it would not surprise me. If the shape of a typhoon and the shape of a galaxy bear some resemblance to each other, it might be a significant pattern to understand, both from the inside and the outside. And neither a galaxy or a typhoon lets the second law of thermodynamics deny its existence. Regards, TAR

SwansonT, My objection, in regards to this thread, is that the statement that the CMB will eventually cool to a point where it will no longer be able to excite the hyperfine hydrogen transition implies that entropy will win. I don't believe this is indicated by the current state of affairs of the local universe, and by implication, the current state of affairs of any part of the universe, when taken locally from there. Larwence Krauss in one of his videos had painted a picture of our galaxy in 600 billion years that had the CMB unpickupable as its wavelengths would be stretched by then to lengths on the scale of solar systems, yet he had local galaxies, still visible, as they are "gravitationally" bound. I thought these two thoughts were inconsistent with each other, and no principle that would separate all matter to such an extent, would overlook our local cluster. He made no attempt to explain why space should continue to expand, except for here. He did not explain why entropy should win on the largest of scale, but continue to lose around here. So I object to his statement that the rest of the universe will disappear and leave only the local cluster behind, to continue to be able to excite its hydrogen electrons with the photons that its hydrogen electrons release. Perhaps being "gravitationally bound" is the cleverness that Mike and I are sensing. The ability to grab form and structure, and pass it along, and retain it and remember it, in a universe that otherwise seems headed toward entropy. In anycase, if entropy is to win, if entropy is to be the victor, it has not done it yet, and it has not done it here. So the score around here, remains life and consciousness 0, entropy 10. Regards, TAR Perhaps disorder cannot happen without forming a pattern, like the hexagons in the heated fluid. And no single snowflake feels responsible for the avalanche. And a hurricane is a definite ordered entity that has emerged from some random collection of air molecules and water molecules heated by the ordered energy of the sun, under the gravitational influence of this large round lump of cooling heavy elements we exist on. Pretty clever arrangement we have here. Works out pretty well for us. We are rather in sync with its patterns. And we fit the place. Survival of the fittest, indeed.

SwansonT, Well, as higher order abstractions go, the CMB to you is leftover heat from the recombination, that permeates the universe, and has no material associated with it. To me there must be a mechanism behind it. A particular photon of it having been released at some point by a particular peice of material, say a hydrogen atom, whose electron fell one quantum's worth and released the thing, causing a wave/particle to go out toward us, 13.8 billion years ago. We are just getting the information it sent, now, and that particular atom, its protons and neutrons, quarks and electrons still exist, and have been doing stuff, repelling and attracting, combining and breaking up, absorbing photons and releasing them for the 13.8 billion years since they sent the photon we are just now receiving in the microwave range, now. You say no material sent it. I say it must have been material that sent it. Material which has no way of disapearing since matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Can just change position and momentum, arrangement and order, as in what entities compose it, and what entities it is a component of. So sure, it is no longer in the arrangement it was in when it sent a pulse at a particular frequency toward us 13.8 billion years ago, and the pulse has stretched, so that it appears to us now, as if the thing was operating in slow motion (cooled) but at the time it was hot there, as it was here, and the material there still exists at the temperature it has reached after 13.8 billion years of material evolution. Could be in a Sun, or a particle of dust, the center of a black hole, or a component of a super nova, much as a particle that was in this area of the big bang, that was also operating in a 3000K average type environment. Any hydrogen atom and its components then, here, was and still is material, Any hydrogen atom and its components there, then, was, and still is, material. Regards, TAR I-try, Or put another way. Can a model be more accurate than the thing it is a model of? Or can a formulae be more clever, than the form that it describes? Regards, TAR

Off topic, but I had a thought reading the stuff about the gravity wave evidence just announced, and the density and gravity wave ratio of .2 and all, we have gleened from study of the quantum fluctuations of the CMB, and its not a good enough thought to start a thread, but interesting enough to have to mention. Since we were part of the big bang, and we can see quantum fluctuations in all directions (except through the center of our galaxy, perhaps we could determine what we looked like, back then, by taking the average between each point in the CMB sphere, and the point 180 degrees opposite. Still a good book, and a good lesson. I bet Doug read it.

SwansonT, I would argue that the material from which we are now receiving the CMB has not been within our view for very long at all. If it has been, for longer than say a billion years, then it would be a billion year old bunch of material that we are receiving radiation from, which would disallow it being an area of space, that just became transparent to photons. If the theory of the big bang is correct, which I have no reason to challege, we MUST have just begun to see the areas of space eminating their first photons just recently, within the period of time between the big bang and the time universe material began exchanging photons. I forget what that time period is, but I seem to remember it was a small fraction of 13.8 billion years. So the area of space emitting those CMB stretched photons, represents the boundry of the clearing of universe, from our perspective, or location within the big bang. What energy level those photons are coming into us, at now, that 2.7K figure does not indicate our future, but that area's past, and the distance between our location within the big bang and that location's separation from us, following the inflationary period. If we were to imagine what that area of new universe, in that shell around us sending us the CMB now, looks like now, it would probably be galaxies and strings of galaxies as appear around us here and now. 13.8 billion year old stuff. We will never see that. Not in the visible spectrum. Not from that area of the universe. As it ages, its image will also stretch to one day be seen in wavelengths longer than any likely attenae...but that is just that area of space, there is still all the space and material between it and here that we will have, to recieve photons from. And since much of the stuff nearby is gravitionally bound to us, it is not unlikely that even that far away material has by now reached a similar state of being gravitationly bound to its cosmic environs. And as there is evidence of a great attractor operating in our vicinity, there is probably a great attractor operating in all samples of the universe, even the samples whose early images we are just picking up in the microwave frequencies now, from 13.6 billion years prior their current condition. Acme, Doug's take, with the conceptual level shifts, are lessons I learned by reading Gulliver's Travels. I hardly find that surprising or strange. Rather required I would think, to be a point of focus, as we are, on a particular size and time scale, within and of a universe that operates as well on much tinier scales, and much larger, than we do. Regards, TAR We still need to describe what maximum entropy should look like, to provide the toward 10 tail of Mike's bell curve.

Acme, I am not resisting reading it. Just not requiring myself to read it, inorder to hold similar insights. I already noted that there are other books on my shelf that I am requiring myself to read, eventually, and just do not have Hofstadler on my shelf, or on my priority list. I may very well eventually read him, so it is not resistance. However there is the important consideration, that inorder to discuss the ideas that you hold, having read his arguments, it is a requirement that I read those particular arguments to have a mutual basis upon which to proceed. I conceed this, while at the same time suggest that true things will remain true, and can be noticed in other ways, by other routes that do not require reading the book, to get to. As to the OP. Mike has allowed that we can proceed without the word cleverness, and still be talking about something of the sort. "Strange" loops, indicate to me that there is a surprising and unexpected quality to the universe that we are not yet aware of, that we will find, if we do the math. What if I already "felt" the thing, embraced it, consider it real and present, and included it in my feeling of self. My cleverness a result of being in and of the thing, and thusly not a stranger to me. Evidence of cleverness in the universe being twice indicated, once in me recognizing it, and twice in it being able to result in me and others of like kind. SwansonT, My reluctance to accept the eventual arrival of the time that the CMB will be strecthed to wavelengths too long to matter, is based on the fact that the CMB is from material that emitted its first photons at the very beginning of space and time, an thusly must have been NOT getting ANY photons to us, yesterday(or yestermillionyears). But there is material that has been getting photons to us for 13.6 billion years and thusly there is material that has been getting photons to us for every time period between "for 13.6 billion years, and since yesterday. It is this material, all of it that will continue to provide us with photons that will have the ability to urge an electron from one energy level to another. It is not a one way street, where photons will only be created as an electrons fall, because we have an unlimited supply of photons coming continually in, from all the material that there is, that urge the electron up again to a state where it has the energy to release a photon. Plus, in regards to this thread, there is something that allows for the accumulation of energy, within certain spaces and collections of material. In this, in a way, certain entities "remember" the rest of the universe, that have provided them with its photons. Regards, TAR

Acme, True insights are had regularly, more than once, because they are fitting and appropriate. In my estimation scientific method relies heavily on this. Peer review would require a second mind to have an obtainable, real, true insight, similar to the first, for real true reasons. And it has not been the case, that one can have a true insight, that cannot be had by another, and certainly if it is a true insight, insight haver B can have it independently from insight haver A. In other words, Hofstadler's having a true insight, does not prevent me from having it, independently. If the insights are true, they can be reproduced and obtained independantly, and your requirement that I read his arguments, to talk about them, cuts out the most important middleman, that being reality itself, which is available to me through the insights of all I have read, all I have witnessed and all I have mused about. Thus the odds of having a false insight more than once are low, but the odds of having a true insight, more than once, is exceedingly high. SwansonT, The argument that the CMB will oneday stretch out to a wavelength too long to nudge a electron to a higher energy level, ignores too very important considerations. One, that day has nothing what-so-ever to do with us, and two, it ignores all the photons that are currently on their way to this locale, that CAN bump an electron to a higher energy level. It bothers me that the general expansion of the universe is considered as "one thing" that has this inevideble demise, while at the same time, it is considered that "local" galaxies that are gravitationlly bound, are not subject to this expansion. What overall principle would allow the rest of the universe to escape our view, but keep Andromeda forever within it? Seems a condradiction worthy of a better explaination, than to consider that the CMB will one day no longer matter. Regards, TAR Mike, I think your picture of gravel is not an 8. While the butterfly may be 2, you are not leaving enough room on the high side of the bell curve for exceedingly unordered stuff. My guess would be that Earthbound stuff is already normal or on the lower end of the scale. Conceptually we have to leave room for outliers on the high side of the curve that are examples of extreme disorder. Not likely we will find such on a walk, on our good Earth, within the reach of the ordered energy being pumped in this direction by our Sun, within our Suns gravitational embrace. Regards, TAR There is a cement and rebarb wall holding up a railroad overhead, on a road I use sometimes, between where I live, and where I work. It is crumbling a bit, and does not look quite so permanent as it did the first day, I used it as an example of stable things, made up of mostly empty space and an occasional spinning atom and magnetic and gravitational and subatomic fields. Regardless of the seemingly fleeting attributes of the walls constituents, it has been holding the trains from falling on the road for the twenty five years I have been watching it. Its been doing this since before I first saw it, and will likely still be doing it next year.

Acme, Thanks. Very cool indeed. Strange Loops may find its way into my library, but I am content going right to the source...that is, what is true will remain true, and if his argument is true one can come to the same insights, and make a similar argument, in another way. That seems a fine thing about true things, that they are true, in another way, as well. If something is not true in more than one way...well then it isn't true. It's got to fit, with everything else that is true. Swansont, Well entropy, being entropy, requires an exchange. What do you think of the thought that Mike and I are pusuing about the hydrogen atom and its levels of energy. That it, the atom is attempting to come to rest, or lose all its energy by emitting a photon that occurs when an electron falls to a lower energy level...but is thwarted in its efforts by some other atom's effort to do the same thing. Our current thought about attraction, and clumping and attractive forces being antithetical to a leveling out of energy, in that the more atoms you have in close proximity, the more likely it is that you as an atom, will not be able to get your electrons to a ground state. Regards, TAR That, coupled with the fact that any point in space is surrounded by the entire rest of the universe, and has been, since the beginning, requires that there always has been a continual stream of photons coming in, from all three dimensional compass points, since the universe became transparent, and the depth of field, the sources, the other atom's photons that are available has continued to increase, since. And the boundry between universe that is transparent to photons and universe that we have not yet received the first photon from, is expanding from this point, at the speed of light. Any point in the universe has been recieving photons from "local" atoms for 13.6 billion years, from some distant atoms, just recently has the inflow begun. Does not seem to me, our poor hydrogen atom has any chance of getting its electrons to a ground state, any time soon.

Acme, Nice link. The self-organisation one. Thanks. Jives nicely with with many of the thoughts I have had on human sensing and modeling of the world, (and concurrent learning/prediction/action) over the past several years, surrounding my personal "investigation" of the meaning behind language. I get a little turned off though when the idea of self-organisation is used explicitly or implicatingly to counter the requirement for an "external" organizing principle. Seems too politically or anti-religion inspired, to be scientifically feasible. I do believe that an extraordinary amount of the influences acting upon any system are macro ones. They certainly match the internal micro influences and in such a dwarfing and overnumbering way, that to exclude the superior from consideration, is foolhardy. I had started a thread a while back on "organizing principles" and got no takers. Sounds too much like I am proposing God or something, I suppose. Same reluctance to talk about such things reasonably, surrounds the idea of intentionality, as if to admit intentionality exists is some sort of problem. I can, with 100% certainty say that I intentionlly do, those things that I intentionlly do. Following from that statement is the equal certainty that intentionality exists in the universe. And since it is not just me that has it and does it, it is an objectively true, real thing that this universe has...that is, intentionality. If one is capable of self-organising and has a history of like organisms proceeding him and cooexisting with him, there is PLENTY of reason to believe that, at least in the case of humans, intentionality is real. To find this self-organisation so many places and in so many ways, at so many different levels, with plenty of math and examples to back it up, in so many "unintentional" places...begs one to consider, either we have magically aquired intentionality and are the only ones with it, or it has, does and will exist a little bit, everywhere, naturally as a thing that can and does emerge, anytime an entity self-organises...intentionally. Mike, I do not relegate this intentionality or cleverness, or self-catalyzing dynamics in the far-from-equilibrium areas, to a black-box. I think its quite out in the open and pervasive. Perhaps even ubiquitious. From my personal anti-religion perspective, I quite discount anybodies ability to "know the secret of the black-box". I think it quite evident and available to all. Not the kind of thing one can covet or have in a unique and unavailable to others, kind of way. Still, modeling the mechanisms that are freely available to the quark and the quasar and every body inbetween is just as much a study of the cleverness of the universe, as it is effort to show that the universe has none...so I am with you, in considering it a safe bet that there is evidence of cleverness in nature and its processes. (and the creationists still have holes in their heads) So work on the metrics, by which we can best measure that quantum boundry crossing thing that we so appreciate about the place, so we can love it, without fear that others will think we are making up non-existing things, or projecting ourselves onto the universe and expecting some anthropomorphic God to have created us. Regards, TAR P.S. If I fall silent over the weekend, its 'cause I am traveling with my wife to Va. Tech to visit my daughter who just recently passed her prelims and is now an official doctoral candidate in Chemistry and has been selected for a fellowship next year. I am so very proud, I had to share. (she is the one between my Dad and my other daughter)

Acme, My math capabilities seem to have passed me by sometime in that 12 to 24 year old range, when ones math skills are said to be at their peak. Its a language I find a bit perplexing in that you can't understand it unless you can conceive of the notion, and if you can conceive of the notion, writing it down in arbitrary symbols that stand for this or that does not seem to aid the notion for me, but to restrict it and simplify it and abbreviate it, until its unrecognizable to me, as the notion. I from time to time would argue with my calculus professors over limits and the size of integrals required for a particular job because I was always looking for math to tell me something I did not already know, and not require me to already know a thing and then describe it in the function. Was rather disappointed to find out, that after taking all sorts of measurements and making all sorts of estimates and arbitrary approximations and running a bunch of equations together, that if you did it right, you could come up with a close approximation of the volume of a standardardly curvy three dimensional thing. Seemed easier to just build the shell of the thing, fill it with water and then pour the water into liter beakers and see how much it could hold. A system and solution that would be more efficient and accurate especially when the objects curves and dips an crevices were not standard. So I am a little like Mike. The Maths are fine, they do the job, but they are not required to have an notion, they are more an after the fact, detailed description of something you already know, that you put in terms someone else who knows the language, will understand. To communicate your notion, not to discover anything. That, combined with the fact that I have books already started and not finished, and the fact that your author seems on the sentimental side to me as well, leads me to pass on the need to read his mathematical basis for believing in something that is already apparent to me. (in general) I am of the opinion that the truth will remain the truth, whether I know about or not, and whether someone has an equation for it or not. Equations tend to be simplifications that don't really tell you anything about the intricacies and reasons of a thing. An equation is more of a model of the thing than the thing, and you might be able to manipulate the model in a certain way, that works in the model, but would not work in the thing. So you might be able to put a metric to skewedness in a solidly, backed by proven statistical methods, probability theory, and chaos theory manner, but in the end it is still talking about that about the universe, that operates in Mike's "toward progressive change" in the feedback loop way he has had the notion with which he started the thread. I can do without the God requirement, and the sentimentality as well, and require that Mike provide us with the metrics that he is measuring things in, so that we understand what he is talking about, that we can try out ourselves and place similar things viewed from similar starting points, on the same scale from the same perspective on the same graph, but I am already confident that we will find reasons and explanations for the emergence of Suns and stars and life and snowflakes and great attractors and such, without magic and Gods, because all those things are here, as are we, modeling and sensing the stuff, so there MUST be an explanation, and the God of the Bible is not it, and magic pixies did not do it. We had to have pulled ourselves up, by our own bootstraps, its only the mechanisms we need to notice and embrace, and describe to each other. Regards, TAR

We cross posted. I don't think I aided in the smelling salt department.

Acme, Well its not just because I am here but because you are too, and the Sun and flowers. There are many examples of things that have a pattern, the ability to reproduce the pattern, and call it its own. I sat with balls of clay, making triangles on them and experimenting until I came up with a dense packing system...that it turns out has been known about for hundreds of years, if not thousands. Still me doing science and discovering something about how the world has to fit together. Love the fact that twelve balls equal in size to a center ball, can all touch it, and fit around it exactly. Often have considered how many attributes of life the Sun has. Often have considered the patterns of the world, thought about objectivity and subjectivity, and the way one type of order is lost, while another is gained, in pyhsics, in cosmology, in politics, business and thought and emotion. It is not, for me, such a waste of time notion as you make it out to be. It fits with many areas of human endeavor and science, and the world. If there were NOT self catylizing systems, systems would not self generate, Suns would not form, snowflakes would not form, the crystals in Mike's pillars of stone would not form, Lucy's forebearers would not have formed. Not if the universe was only headed toward entropy. If it was a one direction thing, it would have started with one completely organized thing that has been unorganizing itself since. This is contrary to 2 and three generations of stars, buiding more and more complex atoms in their furnaces, giving us Carbon with which to work. If we started as hydrogen atoms and are now Acmes and planets and Suns with heliopauses and such, a one way street toward entropy, does not work. Just plain, does not work. Regards, TAR

Acme, While I will admit that it is unlikely any wonderful, unconsidered insight will arise on a talk board, I do not see any harm considering possible "solutions" to unanswered questions, or debate in areas where there is some "disagreement", as to what is required, and what is impossible or unworkable. Mike and I are sort of in a similar boat on this issue. We have seen the requirement that there be an organizing "principle" to counter disorganization, or otherwise we would have by now, only disorganization and no organization, on any level to consider, or more importantly would not ourselves be here to make the consideration. Mike is a man of science. I am more a layman, with only muses and opinion and a little reading here and there to go on. We are both nearer the ends of our lives than the beginnings. We were both once 18 and once 35 and every other age between 0 and our current ages. I have much respect for persons who study the place and report their findings to me. Especially those with more horsepower in the brain department, and the work under their belts, to earn my respect and admiration. Ophiolite's link was about another man of science who did work and made determinations and had evidence about some organizing principles. It makes me feel like my uncertainty about accepting natural selection, without a description of such a thing being a requirement, might have some basis in reality, as a reasonable requirement to hold. Besides, the "insight" does not have to appear here, it has to be had by somebody with credentials and influence in the scientific community, and such a person might just be on the board, and be able to discern the same need and requirement for an "opposite" to entropy, as Mike is proposing. Mike has not put his finger on the exact nature of the requirement, he is just proposing that the requirement seems required. Regards, TAR

Mooeypoo, Dogma. Is that what we are considering religion? Dogma has a restrictive, lack of free thinking taint to it. Under the circumstances its very easy to cast another's beliefs as some form of slavery or brainwashing, that a moral person would be against. Some foolishness or weakness that the other has, that you are better than. identifying some weakness in the other, that makes you feel strong, or morally right. I do this myself all the time, I see other people do it all the time as well. I think it rather natural and true to divide the world into First Person, Second Person, and Third Person. Part of our natural grammar, part of our way of perceiving and talking about the world. But the rub comes when you realize your particular dogma is not considered dogma to you. There came up in another discussion that people tend to frame the exact same thing in a positive light when referring to themselves, a neutral light when referring to second persons and a negative light when considering it in the third person. I am borrowing these examples from a linquist I read recently, probably Steven Pinker, but I don't recall. I am exploring my sexuality. You are loose. She is a slut. After 9-11 I read the Koran twice, once for the jist and once for comprehension, to learn about my enemy, where they got the ideas they got, and why they consider me the devil. Easy for me find the places in the Koran where Mohammed has usurped the power of the universe and called belief in him, the prophet, required to show your belief in Allah. Easy for me to see how Mohammed turned belief in Allah and the "right way" against the money lending, interest charging Jews, and the Christians who erroneously believe that Allah has associates like a son, or is split into three. Easy for me to see the foolishnish in expecting rivers of honey and virgins as a reward for blowing up infidels. Easy for me to know these things, because that is not how the universe operates, and does not coincide with my understanding of and relationship to the greater universe. If there were an Allah, in the general objective figurative sense of the creator of me, and you and everybody else and everything else, he/she/it/them, is not like that, and could not be both "with" everybody, and "against" a selected portion, so the "problem" must be coming from us framing first person as good, second person as neutral and third person as negative. And if we put ourselves in the shoes of the third person, as if it is a first person view, that is good and moral and right. To consider an objective reality that cares and to which ones behavior and intent matters. So on the one hand 100 thousand Muslims circling the Stone in Mecca, reciting the same memorized words as everybody else, in some sort of mass hypnotic trance, is definitely Dogma to TAR. To the people there, its quite a glorious and moving experience, to share the moment and the place with so many others, of like mind. Probably not completely different a occurence as what John Lennon's Imagine, was considering would happen if we had no religion. Regards, TAR2

Acme, I wouldn't throw out the bell curve just yet. I have not purchased read and understood any of the Author that Ophiolite gave us, but the Wiki article on him provides us with this. "In 1971, Kauffman proposed the self-organized emergence of collectively autocatalytic sets of polymers, specifically peptides, for the origin of molecular reproduction.[1][2] Reproducing peptide, DNA, and RNA collectively autocatalytic sets have now been made experimentally.[3][4] He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for applying models of Boolean networks to simplified genetic circuits. His hypotheses stating that cell types are attractors of such networks, and that genetic regulatory networks are "critical", have found experimental support." autocatalytic sets are probably somewhat akin to Mike's feedback loops, and far-from-equilibrium dynamics are suggestive of something special happening out in the outlier area near 0 where life hangs out just saying Regards,TAR Current score, by my reckoning: Life 0, Entropy 10.

Later...so my solution to the dilema was to consider it OK to have enemies if their thoughts, intentions and behavior made you an enemy to them. Still OK to attempt to convince them they are wrong about you, and about the world, but the lines being thusly drawn, and in the absence of an ultimate judge, and with only the judgement of yourself, your familiy, your friends and workmates and other team members, and city, county, state, and national fellow citizens, along with other like minded indivuals that might hold similar philosophies to yours located around the world, to go on, the judgement of others, when taken together, amounts to a real judge, with real existence in the world, that one can internalize and hold as a conscience, to go by. Moral peer review if you will. In the absence of the God of the Bible as a real entity, the idea of the God of the Bible, can be commonly held, without the requirement of there actually being God, Devil, heaven and hell. The idea gets the job done, without the actuality. Which makes the idea a real thing with real holders of it, and real behaviors based upon it, and real agreements and common beliefs held, with the idea of God, in the sense of there being an ultimate judge to which you are responsible, being a souce for people to believe that everyone has a God given right, to freedom, the pursuit of happiness, and justice. Without such an ideal, the term "human rights" would have no basis in the real world, that one could build up to from quarks and crystals and chemicals and neural nerve arrangements without the emergence of language, stories, rules of behavior passed from generation to generation, and yes, without religions that came up with the idea of there being a master soul, a heavenly father, creator, sustainer and judge. There is no evidence that such a master soul exists in the real world. Most everybody knows this by now. The idea has been relegated to "another plane of existence", a fellow that is outside this universe, etheral and not physical, or residing on another planet, or consisting of pure thought and spirit and no measurable material or energy. God is no longer considered to drive the chariot of the Sun, or live on a mountain top, or in the clouds. We have not found such a fellow in any of those places, but continue to, in my estimation, hold on to the idea. Not that it IS true, but "as if" it is true. And use each other, as real world examples of judges that will care about our behavior and intent, find it moral or immoral, and remember our behavior and intent long after we are dead and gone. If the idea of a spirit or judge that still exists as something that trancends death was not evident to you and to me we would neither care what Hitchens would think about us, or think it would make any difference to him. We would not continue to debate his ideas, if they only existed in his brain, because his brain is no longer functioning. So they must now exist in ours, and on the pages of his books, symbolized with the characters and words and grammar of the languages they have been translated into. If we live with reverence toward our ancestors, or with reverence toward Plato or Aristotle or Moses or Jesus or Mohammed, Hobbes or Einstein, Newton or Gallileo, Freud or Joan of Arch, or just our departed Grand Father, or Aunt Sally who was a good person and whose judgement we respected and whose will we would have done, and who we still wish to please and not make turn over in their graves, we must be holding a moral model of an abstract, non material, non-scientifically-existent kind. John Cuthber believes he can cobble together this ideal from genes and logic and chemicals alone, with no religion required before or around him. I don't believe he has a way to get to morals, without the emergence of symbols, and speach, stories and religion. They are part of our history, part of the fabric of our societies, laws and norms of behavior. Religion is institutionalized and has real gathering places still of "common believers". It is a real component of our reality, and saying we can be moral without it is a baseless assertion. And saying that when we see moral behavior in animals and babies that have no religion, that it is proof that morals can be had, without religion, is analogous to me considering that my s..thead dog is showing moral behavior, when he does not pee on Momma's curtains. Regards, TAR source and speech, not souce and speach, sorry my editor was not working, I had to append this

Mooeypoo, One of the books on my shelf has Hobbes in the title. I don't remember any specifics since I read it long ago in the 70s, but I know I read it cause it was assigned to me in a Philosophy course and papers and exams were based on understanding the ideas and logic he proposed, and I passed the course and have been in communication and had discussions with the professor, since, so I think Hobbes might already be intergrated into my thinking. I am in general, rather convinced that everybodies thinking, everybody that I have read, and talked to, heard on the radio and tv, and learned about through their actions, is somewhat integrated in my thinking. It could be argued that that is what my thinking consists of, an integration of all the sense input I have had during my life, all the experience of the world that I have internalized, to build a model of it, within my skull. In this, one does not come to an idea by themselves. It takes a world to model, to have a model of it in ones skull. One cannot divorce themself from the world, and consider their ideas are self generated and self sustainable. Well, one can, but then one flies jets of people into the World Trade in response to a thought that exists in their head which has nothing to do with the real world. Here we are in agreement, that using your self generated judge, and projecting him onto the world, as your authority, is false, and results in evil behavior in the eyes of every body else, that does not go by the same, made up, non-existing judge. Personally, I hate the ideas and the people that took down my World Trade center, but this goes against my Christian values of loving ones neighbor, and not judging them, so I have a dillema..... (am 15 minutes behind schedule...have to go take a shower to go to work... to be continued)

Acme, As order and disorder seem to exchange based on the scale one is considering, and as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and as energy can be neither created or destroyed and any closed system you consider will increase in entropy I often wonder if it not OK to consider that the universe is not a closed system. What I am suggesting here, is that there might be something to Mike's bell curve, with the ordered energy lost by the scale below is gained by the scale above, and the ordered energy lost by the scale above is gained by that below. The ability to do work that is lost by a considered system, is "tied up" in the atomic structure. The system is being considered closed, but it is isolation from only the scale above that is being considered, and no isolation from the scale below. This might work out mathematically to mean that entropy will increase, but what if you take the lid off, and consider the effects of the system on the scale above as well. In Mike's bell curve most of the samples he expects to find, his prediction is that stuff will have both order and disorder characteristics, when viewed from any particular scale and will be in both a state of gaining order and the ability to do work, and losing that ability, as work is done. Some of the exchange with the systems below, and some of the exchange with the systems above, but most items will fall toward the 5 neutral point. I don't think this is a bad prediction. I do think it is not required though to say the universe is heading toward order. This would be contrary the prediction made by the bell curve. Although the prediction does suggest the universe is not heading toward disorder either. The prediction is that the universe is inbetween, as most items are predicted to have order when taken on some scale, and disorder when taken on another. I like the hexagons in the heated fluid. Order achieved on one scale, as the entropy increases. Not scientific, but that is why I say life "grabbed" pattern and order from a universe otherwise heading toward entropy. On our human scale there is order. Some pumped into us from the Sun, some built outward from the mitachondria and the dna and carbon bonds within. As to cleverness, it has been dismissed as a possibility as a characteristic of the universe in terms of a God with a brain and intentions and knowledge and responsponsibility, and other human characteristics. But there is still cleverness and intention, consciousness and ideas in the universe, with many examples of it, on this very board, so it is something the universe can do, that is, it can be clever. I metabolise all the time. I know how to do it. Very clever of me, even though I never have to think about it. And there is, after all, flowers and trees and stars above, there is something smart about the place. Perhaps such things happen when disorder and order intersect at the middle of Mike's bell curve, and the outliers, toward 10 and toward 0 are something special. Regards, TAR

Mooeypoo, "I don't think there's a judge at all, and I believe morality is not fixed; it evolves with time and changes with different societies, as we can see all over the world. That said, this fits the idea that morality can exist outside of religion, which is what this thread is about. We seem to be in agreement here, unless I'm missing something." We are in agreement on many things. But the "idea" of a judge is what I beleive allows us to have morals. You say there is not "a" judge, which I agree with in some regards but not others. The concept of unity is not only singularity, and singularity is not only unity. There is not "a" specific judge, but there are judges. We each individually have human judgement. I know it, I count on it and have a theory of mind that places something similar to my human judgement in the minds of other humans, that have the same basic arrangement of senses and brain as I do (genes), and the same basic "outside" history of stories and ledgends, rules of behavior, history of ideas, wars, religions, political establishments and technological advances (the real world). What I judge to be correct behavior under the circumstances, is liable to coincide somewhat with what another human considers correct behavior. We have ideas and laws and religion to be our judge. Ideas that trancend any particular judge, or group of judges. You say that morality changes, which it obviously does. That would indicate to me that one can not say "I have morality" as if you are endowed with such at birth, before you learned anything about it. The judge is required. We as atheists and scientists have already determined that we seem to do all the things we do without any particular sky faries being either evident or logically required. We see a lot of pain and evil and wrong being done in the name of one religion or another so figure it best to do without it. Christopher Hitchins made quite a point of it, and relegated religion to the force that messed everything up. What I am considering here, is that both religion and morals are related to how we judge ourselves and others, and there is a good side to religion that has given us the ability to know when things are messed up. Thus my hypothesis that one can be moral without religion, but that one cannot have a judge, an unseen other that would be pleased with certain behavior and displeased with other behavior, without the real world having something to do with being that judge. John Cuthber is here, without religion, and constitutes in reality one of the judges that judge my behavior and intent. His judgement matters to me, I am responsible for crafting a plan of behavior and intent that would please him, and not annoy him, based upon what my theory of the mind of John Cuthber would consider his "better" judgement. My "better" judgement of a situation is partially reliant on satisfying the "better" judgement of unseen others. This is "a" judge. An external judge, that I have internalized. You say there is not a judge. But it is not true to say this, in the sense that I am here to judge the veracity of your statement, as John Cuthber is here to call any statement of mine into question. We judge each other, since we all have human judgement, and when we judge based on common stories and lessons, principles and codes, we have the good part of religion. In this, my stance on this thread is not that Forufes is correct and religion is all good, or that Hitchens is correct and religion is all bad, but that we got our morals from religion, regardless of which particular god we chose to be our personal god, or which particular god of others we find insufficient to be considered the "final" judge. I know I got my morals from my parents and my schooling, and my reading about the ideas of philosophers and prophets, as well as from my own muses and insights, logical determinations and epiphanies, about the world around me. And this proceedure, that endowed morals in me was not devoid of religion. In fact it was steeped in it. So I am arguing you can be moral without being religious, or believing in God, which is perfectly possible in the case of John Cuthber, and in the case of TAR, but you cannot be moral without considering a transcendent judge that exists that would be pleased or annoyed at your behavior and intent. Moral people act "as if" their actions and intent are being judged by an outside party. And this "idea" comes from religion. Whether you have a particular religion or not. Or so, my argument and hypothesis goes. Regards, TAR2

Mooeypoo, The religious wars that we have had can not be assigned to God, since we have not found any particular God to assign them to. The belief in a particular god or gods can certainly be the cause of religious wars because since their are no gods to battle it out, it is us that must be battling it out. One groups will against another groups will, based on the common beliefs of right and wrong held by an entire population that tie the entire population to a "greater" good, as the definition of religion alludes to. Take the current situation in the Ukraine. Split loyalties. Some facing East to mother Russia, some facing West to Europe and the Americas, and some just wanting to be Ukrainian. There is probably not very many people in the Ukraine right now, that just wish the nightmare would be over, and they could wake up and just live life again, the way its "supposed" to be lived. Yet we here in America, and in Europe believe that Putin has overstepped his bounds and broken the rules of international behavior, by taking over the Crimean pennisula by force of arms. Stovestapol (sorry forget the spelling) has a shared port, used by both the Ukrainian and Russian fleets. The Russians required the Ukrainian sailors to immediately surrender their ships or be boarded and steved (whatever that is). So how does one "stop" Putin's will? On what moral basis? That there is a "greater good" of peace and freedom, democracy and human rights and world order and cooperation at stake, that one should look to as a common belief that "should" win the day? Can we talk? Can we reason it out? Do we apply political pressure and cause Putin to feel like an "outsider" to morally? And if he persists, do we come to blows? Already, the U.S. is mired in battles around the world, do we commit blood and money to yet another "moral" battle? If morals could be had, without religion (a common set of beliefs), we would have an easy answer. It is no more moral or immoral to impose your will on another, believing you are right, then to let evil stand, knowing it is wrong and "should" be defeated. The litany of battles fought in the name of religion is long and stupid. But since there is no God to fight in the name of, or against, then all that remains to consider is the ideas and the ideals that form our morality. If there is an overarching judge of us, that can be used in all situations, whether that be logic or math or genes or survival of the species or whatever, if there is a "final" judge of right and wrong, then this is not a completely different "idea" than the idea of God. And if we all held the same beliefs as to what the nature of this judge is/was/will be, then it would be a religious belief. Dimreepr, The Pirahas came into my consciousness concerning my personal investigation of the "meaning" behind language. What was automatic and "from the genes" and what was learned. Specifically important to both understanding language, and morals and religion, in terms of what neurological aspects are repurposed or hijacked or "common" to all, is the fact that the Pirahas don't know how to count. Never used it, and don't see a reason to learn how to do it. They know "more" and "less" but never bothered to put a number to it. We have Arabic numerals, because some Arab gave them to us. Regards, TAR