tar

DrP, So you hate religions? Regards, TAR String Junky, Just thinking. I personally am hurt when somebody hates me. So I don't think the only person that is hurt by a hater is the hater herself. There is a power to being shunned. When others turn their back on you in disgust, it means something. You are taken down a notch and you do not have the strength of those that you would rather have the strength of. Some people can be lone wolves, march to the beat of a different drummer and all, but its a rare individual who does not cry when cast out. Regards, TAR

Memammal, I did not click the links in your last post, which no doubt further explained various points, but my major objection is that there is already a consistency that the universe exhibits that includes one observer experiencing a different collection of events than another, AND that works perfectly fine in terms of presentism in that a thing happening over there does not announce itself to over here until later. In such a construct or understanding, the things happening over there have 13.8 billion years of history and nobody anywhere can remember what happened at the 13.9 billion year mark, because it has not been reached anywhere, or experienced by any observer, because it has not yet occurred. The block universe has a problem in that there is no observer 14 billion years old. And that is just the immediate problem. The overall problem is that there is no observer that can experience all four dimensions in their entirety...ever. Just as three dimensions make no sense as experienced all at a single place, adding a fourth dimension that can be experienced all at one time, makes no sense what so ever, and is a construct that only people with expansive imaginations can even imagine. It has nothing to do with reality. Regards. TAR

Phi, You make it political and a war between the haves and have nots. Jealousy it seems you are talking, not hatred. The killer in Orlando was confused as to which terrorist group he was killing for. He had been seen at the gay club multiple times before, been drunk and belligerent, his religion's moral code did not allow him to be gay, he hated himself as much as he hated the rich. His hatred was not against gays or rich or partygoers or the great Satan or ISIL or the ruling powers of any country or his Father or his wife...it seems the only thing that makes sense is he hated being hated by himself. Conflicted. Just like the rest of us. String Junky points out we group together, and side with others that hold our values. With the internet, and so many differing value systems mishmoshed together, it is difficult to find any more that pure evil one should side against. And difficult to resolve one's Muslim faith, with tolerance for gays, or to resolve the fact that you are Muslim AND gay, and feel to be right you probably have to throw yourself off a building. Personally I think we need some new narratives, some new stories that more carefully include everyone on the good side, and stay away from painting whole races or social statuses or religions or nationalities or sexual persuasions or whatever, as the embodiment of evil. We need stories that make everybody right to begin with and that do not promote winners and losers. It should not be 'til all the world is for Islam or until all the world embraces Western values. We need a story that takes the best, the constructive and meaningful from Eastern religions and Western religions and native religions from all over, and ties us all together . I certainly don't know how that story should go. I just don't think we have a common one yet, and we badly need one, considering how instant and widespread our relationships now are. But hatred I think is more a psychological issue than a political one. And one thing I have figured out after 62 years of interaction with other humans, is that one is rarely angry at the thing one is yelling at. It is usually something else one hates, and it is often an internal battle. Regards, TAR

After Orlando, there has been a huge conversation on TV news where commentators emphasize that love wins and hate causes more hate. But I have been confused as to how one is supposed to address people that hate them. For instance people gather to show their hatred for haters. They hate the haters, and give them no quarter, no benefit of the doubt. What is our current understanding of Hate? It must have a survival benefit, or we would not all have the emotion.

Robbitybob1, The site I was looking at was at 37degrees13 minutes 03.80minutes North 38degrees 51minutes 13.53seconds East. As you move the cursor around the site and watch the elevation there appears to be a hilltop to your South East and a road going off to the West and then South that if you follow it with your cursor it appears to go down in elevation with higher elevations to its North and South. And I am just wondering, if the tells are lined up with the stars and planets if there was a precession of the stars and planets that caused them each in succession to be out of alignment, and require a new setup to exactly work, and the earlier one was covered but not destroyed because there was the thought that the previous alignment might come around again, given the periodic nature of the position of the stars, the Sun the Moon, and the planets. And long term thinking wise there is a slow progression of the position of a distant galaxy in relation to the local stars that are circling the center of our galaxy together. I suppose the alignment of the structures to the stars and planets have been studied. Perhaps exactly what they were looking for or lining up with is not currently apparent because the heavens are not exactly fixed and things change over a 10,000 period. (and our poles wobble) Also I am wondering now if there might have been a different show from the top of each of the surrounding Ts, useful or workable at different times of the year.​So, ma​ybe its a calender or sky observation site which would be useful to tell when the seasons and food sources were to be available. So I suppose it need not be either religious or an animal trap, but it could be each or some combination. There is an aspect of art, an aspect of technology, an aspect of communal endeavor, an aspect of awareness of cohabitation with the objects in the sky...but I am still holding a little thought that there is a superiority achieved when you stand on the shoulders of giants and this superiority over prey might have been the way it was done 10,000 years ago. ​Regards, TAR

But looking at the site on Google Earth there looks to be a valley to the ESE. The hills on either side would help to funnel a herd up to the trap. Branches and such could easily be piled in a V to urge the animals toward the entrance. One way in. No way out. A trap. Once the heard is in the entrance is closed and the throwers are standing above the herd in perfect position. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

I will have to read up on the city. Seems though, since I was taught the importance of the area between the Tigris and the Eurphrates, as the cradle of civilization even before people talked about Gobekli Tepe, it should be really important to us, how and why the place was built. I think there is plenty of room for speculation along unfamiliar lines, because we didn't think organized civilizations went back that far. Calling the place a temple and talking about religion though, and higher spiritual beings and such I think is unrequired. They were aware of the Sun and the Moon and the animals, but that does not mean they needed a priest or a god. Regards, TAR or visitors from outer space What ever they were and did came before whatever we did and do now, so in some sense or another, they laid the groundwork upon which our civilizations have been built. Mastery of the environment though does not require obedience to god. Just an understanding of the natural world. The animals, carving rock, turning sticks to tools and fibers and fur to clothes, building protection against the weather, and understanding the seasons and such. there is also the possibility that the old ones were buried when the new ones were built as one could probably find the foundation of some settler's house under some street in New York or some burial site under an arena In fact that is not a bad theory even with my trap hypothesis. One would be used for hundreds of years and someone would have an idea for improvement. Make the Ts higher the outside ring more symmetric or some artist really good at carving or a spiral design better at confusing and trapping the animals, or all of the above. The old one would be filled in so the herded animals would not enter an unmanned trap, and so on. Only why the last was covered would then be the mystery. Under this theory, the last would be the best.

Robittybob1, Long pieces of that, some interviews, were in Turkish or some other language I don't know. However it does seem that there is some symbolism built into the arrangement of the stones, and into the carvings on them. Maybe enough that that my thought about them being a hunting or slaughter area, is not so obvious to me as it has been. Two things are making me change my mind a little, maybe three. One, I thought the pock marks on the top of the stones were places where a thrower could lodge ammunition before the animals were funneled in, but after seeing the quarry site, and noticing the pock marks on the limestone still in the ground, I am thinking that may just be the way limestone ages, with small depressions gathering a puddle which dissolves a little more limestone... The second thing was that the floors were waterproof, and I did not know that. I envisioned a dirt floor, like in an arena where the killing could take place. A smooth waterproof floor seems more suited for habitation or ritual. The third thing was the lack of claw and hoofmarks and broken relief near the bases of the Ts which probably would have occurred had centuries of panicking animals been repeatedly present. Still, I am not completely releasing the hypothesis, because these things seemed preagriculture, and as such, with hunters and gatherers it seems odd to get enough people together to carve and move the stones, unless there was a payoff. If it allowed a communal hunt and slaughter, it could give large collections of people the reason to come, work together and leave with bone and fur and full bellies and perhaps salted meat and such. (or given the fact that an animal could be knocked out and not killed, perhaps enslaved animals, that could be butchered later, or used for milking or metered bleeding and such) Then again, beyond cave paintings and finds such as Golbekli Tepe we don't have many news reports from 14,000 years ago, and it is hard to piece together what races and species where vying for dominance or what political stuff and class warfare type situations might have been going on. The owners of the technology, the means of production would be king. As such I was thinking that the builders of the animal trap would be looked up to as providers. Harder to figure where the obedience would come from if it were just a temple. The Mayan priests were king because their knowledge of the heavens allowed them to pretend to bring the life giving rains. What power of the universe did the builders of these "temples" usurp? Regards, TAR

So, maybe covered to preserve? I will have to watch he doc later.

robittybob1, OK the 1000 years later part falsifies the smell of death idea, but leaves open that one tribe or group had reason to cover up the civilization of another, for spite, or because society had changed and sought to bury the ways of the past. Regards, TAR , Maybe somehow Neanderthals were involved and there was a desire for the Neanderthal structures to be buried, by haters of the Neanderthals.

Robittybob1, I thought the site looked like the walled areas could have be constructed as a pen to corral edible wild animals herded in, funneled in by teams of "hunters" the prey was running from. Then others stood on the top of the Ts and threw large stones down, knocking out the animals, preserving the tasty and nutritious blood without fouling the meat with bile, while safe from the hoof and claw and tooth. As to filling in the sites, perhaps one would smell so of death that the next herd would not enter, and they would have to build another, or build another in a better spot for herding in the next group. Or perhaps rivals would fill in the site to keep the others from decimating the herds, as the method was so effective. Just a thought. Regards, TAR

Mike, So we have creation and destruction. But the purpose is not clear. Is it to destroy or build? Come together, or tear apart? Is an atom attempting to come to rest, or to make itself known to the rest of the universe? Which is better, to be a universe with separation and divisions and separate entities going about their business of existing, or is it better to be a black hole singularity? Regards, TAR

Memammal and disarray, a I read the Pearce outline and found it quite logically contradictory, at least in terms of using terms that canceled each other out to the point of meaninglessness. Perhaps equations are handy to have things equal to zero and cancel each other out, but in terms of human understanding, based on the a priori understanding of space and of time, it is not understandable to say anything about our situation if you eliminate either or both, from the description...at least if you mean to have the resulting statement say anything understandable. You cannot stand outside the universe and look at it, and you cannot refer to a sequence without order and direction in terms of tense. I am thinking that we absolutely can depend on our understanding of space and time, and logically rely on the universe to follow the apparent plan, because we emerged from the place, and mirror the place in terms of our analog copies of the place that we house in the synapses and structures of our bodies and brains. That is, to a certain extent we operate as the universe operates since we are made of the same atoms and interplay of fundamental forces, that everything else, every other entity in the universe is made of. We can have an inside and an outside because the universe does such things as develops entities with constituents that are in turn constituents of larger entities. We don't make these patterns and forms up, we experience them, and record them, in an analog fashion in our brains or in our books and computer programs, diagrams and formulae. But and this is the big but...the universe does not happen completely, anywhere. We are separated by time and space from other events and other entities. It is false to build a static model of the place that is complete and whole and completely done and finished as a static structure with no dimensions of space and time, when it is the very fact that the universe is not at one place at one time, that makes it our universe. Regards, TAR As far as now goes though, I think it interesting that you over there and me over here experience the same one, at least measurably within the time it takes radio or light signals to travel between us. That is, it is 11:57AM on 6/11/2016 in New Jersey for me now, and for you now. In an hour it will be 12:58 in New Jersey, quite independently from whether you and I agree on it or not. And if a log is floating on the Passaic at a particular spot right now, in an hour it will most likely be an hour downstream according to the current. Quite without our approval or involvement the place and all its inhabitants will together flow with the river. I am fairly sure the universe has not yet done what it is going to do next. The pattern is too complex to not have a "next" arrangement that is unique in that it could never have happened before because for one I was never 62 before. There was never an arrangement of the universe whereby TAR on Earth was 63. Now an observer 49 light years from here could currently be seeing TAR as a 13 year old human holding a match in the air on a summer night at a North Jersey lake. But that particular event is past for Earth observers, and no observer anywhere has seen TAR at 63 because that arrangement of the universe has not yet come to pass. Thusly the grandfather paradox is solved, because time travel is impossible. You cannot go back in time, because everything would have to be reset with you. Every photon from every portion of the galaxy and universe would have to be put back in its position at a previous moment in time. The universe does not work like that. Once it does a thing the new arrangement is manifest. one proceeds from there

disarray, I thought about the Nirvana thing, and logically falsified it by considering this. If the Monk on the mountaintop becomes one with all the universe, that would have to include me, as I am part of the universe. Therefore, when the monk reaches Nirvana, he should be taking the rest of us with him and there would be no divisions between us. If however the rest of the population of the Earth feels nothing, and does not realize the Monk has reached Nirvana, then he has made the trip by himself, and has not left his own imagination. The best analogy I can draw, in terms of the dopamine you speak of, is the drug addict, super high and feeling on top of the world, victorious and invincible...while in reality he is lying in his own filth in the gutter, penniless and friendless. Where we can go in our minds, in our dreams, in our imagination, in our muses and calculations is indeed a kind of transcendence, but its not actual. It does not matter to any other part of the universe but us, what dopamine is circulating in our brains. Except of course those who love us and consider our joy their joy, and some dopamine flows in their brains, to see us happy. But the waking world has repercussions when a thing is done. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, everything fits and is connected. The butterfly flaps his wings and the hurricane forms on the other side of the world as the turbWulence ripples through. The mind however can put things together that don't actually fit, don't actually work, don't actually make a ripple and change the waking world, that we all have access to. ​ There is the world, and then there is our model of it. The model can never be superior to the thing it is modeling. The universe is a mighty big place. It cannot fit inside our skull. Whatever model we may hold of it, does not do the place justice. We cannot transcend the place. We can only recognize its immense nature and its long life and consider it greater than us...by definition. We are in it and of it and would be nothing without it. I doubt the soul can exist without a body/brain,/heart group, that has been with us since our conception. Without the body/brain/heart group we would have no identity. No place for dopamine to flow. No place for blood and hormones to be. No body to take a position in the world. No focal point, no image. And yes, another universe would be quite useless to us in this one. If there is no connection, no history, no future, no way of the one affecting the other, then the one is pretty much nonexistent to the other. Regards, TAR

Memammal, Possibly, but the block universe has this static aspect to it, like everything already exists, and has already happened and that just does not seem to be the way it works. And it needs some greater kind of consciousness to contain it, to transcend it, which we don't have any idea of the kind of "reader" that would see the whole picture at once It seems more reasonable to me, that the universe has not yet done what it is about to do. This of course assumes there is a universal now, that is 13.8 billion years old, everywhere. And it assumes that whatever is done now, at each location in space will not be announced to the rest of the place at the same time. Close stuff will get the message first then further away stuff and then far away stuff and perhaps really far away stuff never, if the expansion of the place is outrunning the photons making the announcement. But this view of the place is not compatible with events having already occurred. For instance right now, me typing this has not happened yet, anywhere. Tomorrow it would be in our past, but in Alpha Centuri''s future. I think the universe, in terms of what is happening now, does not happen all together, but takes eons if not forever to completely happen. And as such, what happens anywhere is sort of the effect of all the causes in the universe, arriving at any one point in totality and in sequence. That is, if it takes three generations of stars to produce iron then we would not expect to see the signature of iron emanating from any galaxy that is far enough away for our image of it to be young enough, that there was not the time for it to have experienced three generations of stars. Regards, TAR disarray, Yes, I guess I am doing those things you say I am doing. But in the spirit of "we are all in this together", as in you don't need a special key to reach nirvana or the father or whatever. My constant admonishment relates to anyone, including myself, or the least of us, or the best of us, considering what is in our minds as being transcendent to reality. That is we can be modest about our role and not be wrong. At the same time as we can be in and of the place, fully. Regards, TAR or perhaps I mean to say, we cannot trump ourselves, we can not get to a spot and look back down and see us poor mortal souls mucking about This because we are exactly the poor mortal souls we are, and the capability we have is exactly that which we can conceive of having and bring into existence.

Well, I am thinking we have to get real basic here, and not try to prove any complicated reason prior a thing coming into being. I am thinking the reason presents itself after the thing happens. That random motion, the interplay between one thing and another, causes there to be situations, patterns, areas of concentration and rarity, where an "entity" emerges. Once such a situation is manifest, then there is an identity, that may or may not be recognized, by anyone, anywhere, but may just be a situation that "belongs" only to the participating entities. Take a wisp of smoke, curling in the air for a moment and becoming rarer and rarer until the particles that make it up dissipate into the general atmosphere. Still bound to the Earth by gravity, and changing the chemical constituency of the Earth's atmosphere just that little bit. The curve of the wisp, that moment ago is locally forgotten, but would be remembered had a flash of light happened at the same time and an area (like a photographic plate) been present, where the particular curve would have an analog in the medium of the plate, (given a focusing lens that would repeat the pattern on the other side of the focal point.) (not unlike a human eye and brain upon which the image is cast) But the curl of smoke is not forgotten yet to the universe. Like a pebble dropped in a pond, the ripples go out, the light patterns from the incident have no boundry they can proceed outward, the photons bouncing off stuff and being absorbed, for quite a long time and traveling quite a long distance. And the chemical constituents of the air are still present, a human passing by might take a whiff of the air and call the park ranger. So was there a purpose to the curl...to alert the park ranger? I think the purpose comes after the fact. Better we think in terms of entities and memory and the interplay between all entities in the universe. We would not see the light of a quasar had this location not been receiving photons from that spot since that time that the universe became transparent to photons, and the first one from that spot where the quasar would develop that reached this spot where the Earth would develop made a connection a communication with here that has been going on for eons. And vice a versa. Any development of one area of space, has, within its history the "noticing" of the announcements made, in photon terms, of the activities and patterns of the rest of the universe. So purpose, in terms of appreciation, or noticing the rest of the place is not a new thing, that started with human consciousness. It started when the universe became transparent to photons. Regards, TAR Which reminds me of one of my pet ideas. Each atom, since it came into being, has been "trying" to get rid of its energy, and releasing photons as its electrons seek the lowest possible energy level...problem is, the rest of the universe is attempting the same feat...and for every photon released there are billions on their way, sent by other releasers, directly toward each thusly foiled atom.

disarray, So why do people ask the question in the first place? I don't know, but I am thinking in terms of personal property, and the roles of first, second and third person in our thinking and language. This universe would be mine, it would also be yours, it is also their universe. However another universe would only be their's. So perhaps we ask, wanting to know if there is any part of reality that we have no claim to. Regards, TAR

Memammal, it is difficult when a metaphor is literally defended. And not required. A metaphor does not refer to the physical thing it depicts. It is the meaning behind that is important. B. John Jones, If you think faith has a physical size, you missed the point of the mustard seed thing. It was an analogy. Which is how we think, one thing standing for another. That is what symbols and language are all about. That is why a Chinese person can make a sound that means snow, and you can make a sound that means snow, and the two sounds are completely different. Regards, TAR but the snow is still crystalized H2O

Disarray, I stated equal access, not equality of knowledge. Like we all, with a license have equal access to the public roads, even though we might have different vehicals or be better drivers or have explored more routes than another or have different amounts of funds for gas and tolls and parking. The scene in the telescope is the same for a child or an astrophyicist . What it means to the one or the other is what differs. The scientist builds a different model of the world in her mind than does the layperson. The mailman has a different model of the neighborhood built in his mind than does the school bus driver, than does the guy who drives the same route to work every day. But the three have equal access to reality. It is particularly hard to know what another person considers literal and figurative, Even today it is hard to know who takes god literally and who takes their god figuratively and what the combination is between belief in the model and belief in the thing as it is, when it comes to the stars. Some, when they think of spacetime see a formula. Some see that parabolic conical representation of the universe. Some just look up at the starry sky on a clear night in the mountains. Others see balls on rubber sheets, or galaxies as atoms in some huge molecule, or perhaps a foam with the galaxies the soap and the voids the air bubbles between. We all, with all our senses, and the liberty to move around and read have the same access to reality as any other human with the same senses and brain, body and heart. Regards TAR there is not a one of us who transcends reality not and remains in the waking world only in the mind, only in dream world can one of us reside in a place where the other has less access

B. John Jones, But we have not seen this physical God. We checked out the top of mount Olympus and there was nobody home. We flew through the clouds with cameras and other sensors and recorders and did not find an entity there, of the characteristics you suggest. If heaven is not a real place, it must be a figurative place. If it was a literal place you could get there by going to its physical location. The evidence we have thus far collected suggest that an anthropomorphic god is more likely a projection of our own consciousness upon the universe, than an actual consciousness projecting the universe in its minds eye. That is, if literally true, we could find, in the waking world evidence that would satisfy us both of such an entity. Giving that you have no such evidence, I think it more likely you made the guy up. Regards, TAR That is you are taking myths and legends and stories of old, as literally true when they were meant as stories. One thing standing for another, in the manner humans have of internalizing the external world and making sense of it.

Mike, I remember how well our first experiment went. I enjoy being 1 for 1. Proving ourselves wrong would probably be easy. Better for the moment to live with the success. Regards, TAR

B John Jones, You are talking figurative stuff. Not literal stuff. You are speaking of such figurative stuff as if it is literal. You do not know the difference between the waking world and the dream world. Regards, TAR

Mike, This is just my take. My way of combining the literal with the figurative. In Eastern religions there is a constant march toward perfection, toward a reuniting with the Brahman or the lifeforce or what ever you want to call it. In the biblical tradition of Moses and Christ and Mohammed, there is a one god, a creator and judge to which you return after mortal pursuits and by which you are judged as to whether you did it right or not...but many talk of the separation of man from nature, the fall of man, the imperfection of being separate from the universe, and the ultimate goal of reunification. To remove the separation that human consciousness creates, to lose the identity of being a single point of focus, and regain the overall, transcendent view, where everything is one. To this, and in relation to the OP there is a constant betterment. A striving to rejoin, to remove ignorance and know everything. The more the better. Knowing everything would be better than knowing just what is in your backyard. But the secret I promised to keep with God, the one I didn't keep, was that my awareness of the universe from this single point of view, of TAR, was required for there to be something different than one thing. So we are doing the universe a favor, by not being a singularity anymore...or at least not a singularity at the moment. We have different points of view, and as you say, observations are made, and reality is thusly established. Regards. TAR

disarray, Granted. But this universe is my universe. I don't care if I am not its only child. It is still my parent, still the only thing I am in and of. That it is your universe too, does not make me jealous...it just makes us brothers. Regards TAR In this it makes no sense to think that one can only reach the father through Christ...we all have equal access already to the universe. And similarly it makes no sense to figure a scientist has more access to reality than a layman. We have equal access to the universe already.

Mike, But bedrock was once molten lava, it is only the base, given a starting point. I am taking your thought that things will always get better, in terms of the truth will always out, or always win out in the end, or in the sense that good will always triumph over evil, or maybe in the biblical sense of there being a time for every purpose under heaven... There is however a relativity related to value. One man's reward is another man's punishment. One man's victory, another man's defeat. One man's answer is another's question. One man's goal the same man's next starting point. Taking the thought all the way to a creator, that had a purpose, I logically go back to a thought I had as a 13 year old, thinking about God, as the ultimate parent, and a pledge I made to this creator, to keep its secret. My thought was that god already knew the beginning and end and already knew everything that ever happened and ever will. It was all contained in God's knowledge...it was all known to God and therefore there was nothing outside of god, nothing else but god, no place to go, nothing to do, alone and complete, a singularity with no motion or change possible...and creation, or the universe, or me, was god's way of forgetting he was alone and had nothing to do and no where to go. So I pledged to keep it a secret. I have spilled the beans before, and I do it here, but with the knowledge that its OK because it is impossible to keep a secret from yourself. Regards, TAR