cladking

I once calculated that it would take about 42 X 10 ^ 806,999 monkeys and typewriters to get War and Peace in a single try. The concept of infinite universes and the like is simply absurd to me. It seems apparent that God(s) must exist, but probably impossible to know the nature(s) of such. People like to pencil whip problems and invent solutions while jumping to conclusions. The world as it exists is an impossibility of the highest order yet here we are. I doubt it would matter if Tipler is right or not (I seriously doubt he is), he wouldn't be believed because everyone already has his own beliefs. WYSIWYG.

I suspect much of the reason we tend to dislike talking to very slow people is that it reminds us of our own shortcomings. When you can see the wheels turning you can be sure they aren't going very far. I believe ancient people didn't have this problem since they knew they weren't going too far anyway; (43) "Don't let your heart get big because of your knowledge. (44) Take counsel with the ignorant as well as with the scholar. (45) (For) the limits of art are not brought, (46) (and) no artisan is equipped with perfection.(12) (47) Good discourse is more hidden than green stone,(13) (48) yet may be found among the maids at the grindstones.(14) When I was young I believed everyone else could read minds so I taught myself to do it. Much later I learned most people get their cues from facial expressions.

Oh, my goodness, no. Just a few years I believed half of what you're saying but I no longer believe it at all. People tend to make up their minds and then never change them which is why almost all scientific advancement is demographic in character. Old ideas literally die out to be replaced with fresh new ideas. I don't think it's always been this way. I would agree that the truth will win in the long run and that scientific progress as it applies to thought is a steady advancement but along the way there are lots of ups and downs. Individuals are responsible for the advancement but it's a sort of group think which determines present "truth" and this "truth" may have little bearing on reality. We live in a world that most resources are wasted and ideas are a dime a dozen but in the real world, the one that has the final accounting and doesn't care about man, natural resources, human resources, and "mental" resources are the only things of true and lasting "value". It's true that "love", "loyalty", etc are of great lasting value but only to people and nature doesn't give a whit about man. It's what we do collectively that is held to a real world accounting and we actually act on beliefs both individually and collectively. All people believe what they choose to believe and act only on those beliefs. Most people have huge difficulty adapting their beliefs to fit new evidence and new facts because people become their beliefs. This is just the way we are and the amount of deviation is much less than you think. To me the unconscious mind is nothing but memories, knowledge, ability, muscle memory, body, and various learning. The brain is wired and thought fascilitates the ability to access these as needed. The unconscious is just that; unconscious. Dreams don't tell us anything about about ourselves but merely disclose the way the brain is wired by how it processes errant signals that become the dreams. You make an interesting argument about the need and importance of dreams but I'm mostly unswayed. I think the advantage is survival rather than interpersonal relations. In a school of fish each indididual has a better chance against predation than they would have individually. Multiple potential targets don't fool most predators but only the exterior fish can be targets at all. The same applies to nesting birds and most animals which move or exist in colonies or flocks. Some species, of course, also need the actions of multiple individuals to survive. There's a lot going on that isn't in plain sight. I used to tell a person all about themselves just by using clues that they display in speech, apparel, etc. Of course, I needed their cooperation in how they answered the my "predictions" since this was where most of the clues existed. Sometimes it would be uncanny how accurately I could get it. Frankly a lot of it was just guessing, stabs in the dark, and looking for more clues. Operating almost strictly on intuition doesn't hurt. It works best in person. We certainly seem to have vastly different estimations of the nature of the unconscious mind. Most of what I think I know about it has only developed in the last fifteen years and especially in the last three years so I'm not married to any of these "beliefs". I'm not really married to very many beliefs at all. Exactly. I'm pretty confident that most species other than dogs think humans are mentally slow. Most species seem to exist or coexist in a sort of unison while people are always the odd man out. At least dogs think we're smart unless they're just humoring us for the free handouts. Stay well.

This is a very interesting discussion and doubly so since I'm in general agreement with it. I don't believe there are so many sorts of consciousness though but the difference is more a degree of consciousness. I doubt there is so much difference between any two animals as is being suggested. Certainly bacterial, plant and small animal conmsciousness is probably pretty limited in scope but other animals experience life pretty similarly. Even something like a toad might have some limitations to his awareness and if you look in its eyes it appears no one's home but I wouldstill imagine he'd express life in much the same way as other animals were he capable of such expression. My largest disagreement might be with the differentiation of "flocking" animals. All social animals tend to flock and this applies to humans as well when they share a destination. Watch the cars turning left at a green light; if the first car makes an illegal turn there's a nearly 90% probability that they will all make the turn illegally. If the first car makes a legal turn there's about a 75% chance they all will. Some people will follow the car in front of them across a railroad track on the assumption that it must have been safe for him. Every year millions of college students congregate in Florida or whereever the current hot spot happens to be. Everytime Notre Dame plays a football game at home South Bend becomes impassable even if you're notgoing to the "big game". There are numerous natural advantages to flocking and recent research shows that the individual in front isn't necessarily the leader and that almost any individual in some species can become the leader. We tend to anthropomorphize them even when their actions are dissimilar to humans. What sets humans apart is language and it is language the allows the huge "unconscious" that we possess. We not only learn through language but we uuse it to think. While language is "confused" as a medium of communication it is somewhat more effective as medium of thought since we know the exact definition of intended words, each referent, and the meaning of any grammar. To a very real extent it is the massive amount of learning and logic that allows formation of the unconscious which can provide us with relevant or important input on a just in time basis. The unconscious of other animals is not only smaller (usually very smaller) but it contains information they've learned on their own and is only of value to that individiual or to other members of their own species. The real difference between consciousness in life forms is nominal and apparent rather than real. The apparent difference between humans and termites is primarily the result of language. We tend to downplay the accomplishments of other species but they are just as real and require theory just as much as brain surgery or rocket science. Beavers didn't stumble on dam building any more than Neil Armstrong just stumbled onto the moon. It's a matter of degree and not intelligence and not consciousness.

These were built by Egyptians sure enough but they were not the superstitious stumblebums that are always depicted but rather logical and highly intelligent scientists. Their science is wholly misinterpreted and mistranslated today. Where our science is founded on observation and experiment their's was based on observation and logic. Where few understand the modern metaphysics the ancient metaphysics was language itself! The people were thereby powerful and capable. I don't know if they descended from Atlanteans or were inspired by aliens but there is ample evidence that the people on site built these structures and that the people were Egyptians. Almost everything we know comes from tombs so our perspective is kaleidoscopic and highly slanted but one of the things that decorated tombs can tell you is how these people were related. Even Khufu's brother is buried right next to the Great pyramid with inscriptions such as "brother of the king" and a statement that he wanted to be buried next to "Khufu's Horizon" (the pyramid). All these bodies appear to be and are consistent with what we believe to be the ancient Egyptians. So far as I know there are no anomalies in this regard. This sampling is highly biased as well because only the nobles and wealthy could afford large tombs with lots of painting and writing on them. Even some of these skeletons, like those of the common workers, exhibit signs of a lifetime of hard work.

There were two primary quarries on site for G1 (the Great Pyramid). The main quarry was due south and horseshoe shaped with the ends pointed up toward the pyramid. It's probable that around 70% of the weight (6 1/2 million tons) of the pyramid came from this quarry with much of this placed near the bottom and hoisted by a counterweight at the NE corner that ran down the cliff face. This was a 300' run and the basis of historical accounts that say stones "flew" to the pyramids 300' at a time. There was also a quarry at and around the Sphinx. About 25% of the weight came from here. These stones were pulled up from the quarry by the eastern cliff face counterweights that pulled stone due north from this region on the east side of the so called queens pyramids. These were pulled to the so called causeway and transported through the saw works on the east side to the center and then lifted straight up the pyramid one step at a time. The remaing 5% was primarily imported from across the river at the Turah Quarry but was imported from all over Egypt and even materials came in from far flung places such as Nubia and Lebanon. There may have been wood imported from the west since trees grew in low lying areas up until shortly before great pyramid building began. There is evidence that Khufu himself took expeditions to the west supposedly to secure "mefat" (mfkzt) which is supposedly red ochre. This is highly improbable because there were substantial red ochre deposits at Elephantine Island which were far more easily accessed. Very little science has been done in identifying the specific quarries from which stone came and this can be difficult to determine. These estimates are largely based on scant information and a lot of deduction. There was extensive technology employed to build these structures and Egypt had a very diverse and substantial economy drawing raw materials from far and wide and exporting paper, rope, and food. They had job titles such as "overseer of the metal shop" or 'weigher/ reckoner" rather than titles suggesting ramps or the use of brute force. Several products and materials are mentioned in the Pyramid Texts that aren't native to egypt and more exist in the record or as artefacts. The work was apparently seasonal but it was eight to ten months so it's very unlikely many farmers were employed. Construction required only about 600 men and jobs were highly sought and awarded to the home town of those who had made improvements to the process. Of course substantial numbers of men were needed in the quarries, especially during the first couple years. This would be approximately 3,500 tapering to 300 by the end of the project. These men probably used temporary quarters such as tents in fair weather and were accomodated in the workmen's village during poor weather. There was also extensive work to tend to the workmen and their needs and this was done by another 600 women and dozens of scribes, clerks, and administrators. Gender was not strictly determinative to job assignments but most workers were men and are referred to as such. Most of the others were women. The actual means used to build the pyramid is very extensively evidenced in the physical record as well as the actual culture and in the historical accounts. Indeed, everything points in a single direction and everything says that they used natural water pressure generated by a naturally carbonated water source to build. The fact is that none of this evidence is determinative or certain but in aggregate it makes a compelling case to supplant debunked ramps and the mysteries created by conventional theories. Simply stated the "land of the west", "land of Horus", or "land of rainbows" where all of the great pyramids were built was a huge cold water geyser field. They learned over the centuries to control thjis water and to use its weight to lift stones. More simply stated they used water on top of the pyramid under construction to fill counterweights that became heavier than the stones attached to them at the bottom of the opposite side. The counterweight fell and twenty tons of stones flew to the top. There is one piece of evidence that is fairly compelling and shows this process. This is the gravimatric scan that discloses that it is a five tep pyramid. It had to be five steps because they could lift stones only 81' 3" at a time since this was the height of the water column. The owners of the scanwon't allow me to put a grid on it proving it's five steps but these steps are highly visible even though misinterpreted. http://hdbui.blogspot.com/ The fact is that all the physical evidence and all thecultural evidence fits this pattern. There is even a tiny ben ben stone growing on the primeval mound in the so-called Sphinx Temple today!!! http://www.egyptiandawn.info/images/plates/small/7-62sup.jpg (photo curtesy of Robert Temple) http://www.egyptiandawn.info/chapter7.html

This is essentially untrue and shows the tremendous speculation and interpretation involved with all theories concerning construction and especially the orthodox assumptions about construction. There is what is most probably a "builders' village" nearby (SE of G2) where the workmen for both G1 and G2 lived but this town is far too tiny to support the number of workers who are speculated to have been involved in building and operating ramps. The area is in the center of this photo and is not so much larger than the soccer fields to the east. It is some 500' by 900' and would support only several hundred office workers today; http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=29.969398&lon=31.139803&z=17&m=bs Yet this tiny town is supposed to have held not only the tens of thousands necessary to move stone but also the quarry workers, the wives and children and the supplies and tools to work. The workers cemetery has equal numbers of men and women suggesting there was comparable amounts of men and womens work and they were equally safe (few skeletons show trauma and those that do indicate high level medical care). This is absolutely inconsistent with the absurd notion that any muscle based system was in place. The problem is that clues are sparse and that the clues that do exist do not support orthodox assumptions. The ancient culture left exceedingly few records. The little that survived came primarily from tombs leading to a sort of "sample error" in our understanding. To complicate matters the one piece of writing that survives from the era eventually evolved and changed into a book of magic for people many centuries later so Egyptologists take this work to be a book of magic and to extrapolate from that that the people were highly superstitious. While the later works and culture are well understood and well documented there is simply an assumption that the older book must mean the same thing despite the fact it has no apparent meaning; it appears to be mere gobblety gook and contradicts itself and reality when parsed using modern understanding. It has proven impossibler to date to learn anything about the culture from this source and all the scepters and iconms are still unknown. No aspect of the "relgion" has been positively shown to exist. In other words these people are said to be moribound with religion but we know nothing at all of the religion except what's derived or extrapolated from many centuries later. ( I can't create a new paragraph) (paragraph) I believe that everything they did and said including their artwork all depicts or is related to pyramid building. Their neters were derived from the natural processes that were used to build pyramids. This culture was very very alive and this zest for life even carried over into their burial practices and is mistaken for religion. The people were a force of nature and a part of nature. They wouldn't understand a concept like "man made" because mans' work was nature's work. They would say "by the hands of Thot" to express the concept but this isn't identical to "man made" because the hands of Thot would necessarily involve other aspects of nature as well. "Thot" is merely "human progress" and is not man or men. (paragraph) Each neter must be understood to appreciate the culture.

There is ample evidence that the Egyptians were in the area at the time the great pyramids were built likely between about 2900 and 2730 BC. It's a virtual certainty that Khufu (or an actual individual we know by that name) was the Egyptian king at the time that The Great Pyramid was built around 2750 BC. Traditional dating places this a little later but it's impossible to convert ancient Egyptian dating to our dating at this time and C14 dating suggests it's a little older. I doubt the actual Egyptians on site would agree with the contention that they built it. Every indication is they gave the bulk of the credit to the "neters" for the construction. They used the term "neter" to refer to natural phenomena as determined through the context of what they actually wrote. The word appears to be mistakingly translated as "god" since that time. In their language "neter" was actually a colloquial term for "aspect of nature" and terms were selected to determine meaning rather than word meaning being determined by context as in our language. All "aspects of nature" were anthropomorphized to show their relationships and natures. Egyptology is essentially a belief system founded on the assumptions that the ancient Egyptians were changeless and superstitious people who built tombs by dragging stones up ramps. These assumptions have been debunked except it is not yet established that they were not superstitious. As soon as real science is done anywhere in the region the pyramids were built, it will be established they were not superstitious as well. It's somewhat improbable the cartouches are fake and are not central to the argument that "Khufu" was king. They are simply further corroboration. At one time they were critically important to the argument and it is known that the finder had the means and motives to fake them. The ancient Egptians recorded the pyramid construction everywhere but most of it is misinterpreted and misunderstood.

Ultimately all theory and all science are based on observation and logic and if they can't make accurate predictions then they are worthless. If they make inaccurate predictions then they are wrong.

I believe the questions are irrelevant, immaterial, and illegitimate. They arise chiefly from a confusion of what it means to be an animal or a human caused by language. Life is a biological imperative and humans are a social animal. There aren't really any questions so long as we keep sight of definitions and conditions. Cultures have lost sight and formed gestalts that are not reflective of any reality. It leaves people groping for answers to questions that need no answers and aren't quite real. Each individual has distinct needs and perspectives but each individual is very much a product of his time and place making his perspective very much a part of the whole. We are animals who use a specific metaphysics to understand our place in nature and this metaphysics generates technology which few comprehend. Look at the question that made a run of message board a few years back about whether a plane could take off from a moving surface. This is a very simple concept and most got it wrong. Many otherwise intelligent people still can't understand and/ or accept the answers. Even fewer understand the metaphysics. Word meaning dances about and every statement can be deconstructed to mean almost anything. No matter how I phrase this people will each take their own meaning. It's little wonder we feel adrift and lost.

I'm in general agreement. The strawberry will die before its seeds because that is its nature. But the seeds continue to be alive until they are no longer viable. In view of the fact that a live strawberry can exist with no viable seeds then the strawberry dies in its entirety only when the seeds could no longer propogate even had they been viable. I'm simply arguing that nonviable seeds are alive until they undergo the changes that would kill a viable one. A eunich or a mule are just as alive a person or a horse.

There's even evidence bacteria are conscious. One will glow when a certain number exist in a given location. We're going to find out that consciousness isn't what we think it is and much of what we think is not real. I tried finding bacterium that glows and came up with this instead. I didn't watch it so I can reccommend it, but it's on subject. http://www.ted.com/talks/bonnie_bassler_on_how_bacteria_communicate.html There's quite a bit of research along these lines now and a quick google will keep you busy a while.

Excellent post. I once watched a yew tree desseminate its pollen. It was a very breezy day with unstable wind direction and speed. What struck me as being so remarkable is that the amount of pollen that blew off was not very well correlated with how violently it was being shaken by the wind. Large gusts could have little effect and tiny breezes might unleash a cloud. There appeared to be some consciouness driving this. Somehow the plant seemed to be communicating with its enviroment to achieve the greatest effect. If you watch nature it seems things such as this are quite commonplace. There is far more inexplicable than anything you can just google up. For instance the reason ants make piles of sand at their entrances probably came to me the other day. My guess is these grains of sand present an insurmountable hurdle to any mites that would come to live on or with them. The actions of chemicals and minerals in the earth is impossibly complex but it is made many orders of magnitude more complex by the actions of life. Life begets life. And life affects everything around it.

I'm like a babe in the woods discussing consciousness. I do understand some of what you're saying but my perspective is very very different. My perspective comes from taking consciousness entirely for granted (and somewhat selfishly). My interest has always been the nature of thought rather than consciousness. I believe thought is the result of impulses (consciousness?) being processed by the brain. This processing is built from language and beliefs as well as bits and pieces of things like math, logic, unconscious, experiences etc etc... This structure I call "attention pockets" because our very awareness is defined from experience, knowledge, and belief. People are almost infinitely adaptable and do much of the wiring of their berains themselves. Once we view something one way or accept something as normal it becomes quite difficult to unseat out perspective. Beliefs have largely replaced instinct and our beliefs are shaped (and integrated) largely when we are young making us a product of our time and place. The better educated a person is the more he is a product of his time and place. This may not be relevant but I do believe that most things most people have ever been taught is wrong. Obviously there is a great deal going on in the mind (brain and body) of which we aren't aware. Indeed, I suspect even the ganglia and nervous system have a low level consciousness that is fully aware of us (the mind), but we are barely even dimly aware of them. It is these separate consciousnesses that are muscle memory. They are also critical to the functioning of the entire animal. You can't have your feet racing off in different directions in an emergency especially if the best strategy is to stand and fight. There are many layers to thought (consciouness?) and we can't be aware of them all simultaneously meaning a great deal of activity is beneath the level of consciousness, awareness, or thought. Much of the brain seems to be not directly even connected to thought so there are, no doubt, some very highly complicated interconnections. People can become anything but they do become their beliefs. If you believe that dreams are important then you will begin having memorable dreams and they can become important. I believe these are just memories of random nerve firings in our sleep and these firings are partially processed as thought. We can learn about how we think or what we believe from them. But many things occur of which we aren't aware and it's entirely within the realm of reason that some of these might be exposed to consciousness because of a dream. Let me try to get back to the point. We are what we eat but it's even more true that we are what we believe and any belief is possible. We are fed many of our beliefs as a child so become a product of the civilization in which we are born. Society generally does an exceedingly poor job of creating citizens allowed to excel in their strenghts and instead pidgeon holes almost everyone. Most of what you've been told about the Egyptians is false or, more likely, applies only to the Egyptians after 2000 BC. I do agree that emotion and consciousness are intimately related but I think of emotion as a sort of vector total of the mind/ body reaction to stimulus. This mind/ body reaction is far greater to stimuli related to things that are extremely important to us. The death of the neighbor's dog has far less impact on us than the death of our own. It's easy to get along with somebody else's troubles. Emotion is probably much more an amygdalan response governed by experience and the higher brain centers. You said; And then defended the statement. Since they knew almost nothing about almost everything it would seem to follow that they were superstitious. If they could lift 6 1/2 million tons of stone and we're too afraid to even apply the science to determinine how it was done it makes us the superstitious people. But more importantly and equally relevantly you also said; And defended this. There is a strong implication that you believe we pretty much have knowledge of radioactivity all zipped up; that we understand the nature of all radioactive decay and the emitted energy. Further there is the implication that we know how all radioactive things behave under all conditions and parameters. I deny that we know much of anything about the subject even though we can do a good job of measuring and predicting decay rates and specific emissions. There's simply no reason to believe our understanding is the only possible understanding and it's absurd to believe our knowledge is even close to being complete.

You are essentially suggesting that we now know everything and all possible observations related to radioactivity have been made and can be explained. You are further suggesting that the ancients had no knowledge at all about anything at all. Ancient people saw everything as being about gods and magic so there was no room for any knowledge at all. This is illogical in the extreme. If we already know everything we might as well shut down research and quit fretting about dark matter. Why study radiation at all if it's settled science? If the ancients were superstitious then they mustta used ramps and beavers mustta built their first dam by accident. If memory serves the ancients used some radioactive glow in the dark chemicals as pigments in paint or ceramics. I believe Pliny spoke of it. Be this as it may what logic is there in assuming a primitive understanding of something is equivalent to a lack of understanding? They did invent agriculture and cities so their knowledge mustta had some utility. At what point exactly did the human race pass from superstition to omniscience? Was it 1942? 1982? 1492? I, for one, still have questions.

So how did the pyramid builders study radioactivity? Surely, in the countless centuries before the Curie's at least a few people observed phenomena related to radioactivity. Is the fact that none studied it really indicative of the nature of the observers or the nature of radioactivity? Is the fact that we know so much about the relative sizes and energies of radioactivity proof that we know everything and that no anomylous observations can occur in the future? How can we be sure that when some new attribute is first observed that the observer will be able to duplicate and study it? How can something not exist simply because we don't observe or study it unless nature was far simpler before we began to learn about it 40,000 years ago? How can we even be sure that the first observer to see something new will even be knowledgeable of the state of the science and competent to know it is a new phenomenon he is witnessing?

You're speaking of repeatable observations and things that can be measured. Science and measurement simply doesn't apply to many things that are one of a kind or can't be duplicated. Obviously that something happens only once or is fleeting does not mean it exists outside of natural laws but many people see a pattern to some of these events and attribute them to deities, magic, or one of manty categories into which these events might fit. For instance, I one saw an asphalt surface broken up into a checker board pattern that had diamonds rather than squares. This was a quite regular failure but the pattern became more distorted and irregular away from the "center". This isn't extremely unusual but what was remarkable is that every other diamond was wet so it was colored similarly to a checker board. I could not deternmine a cause for this nor even form a reasonable hypothesis. I've seen similar patterns in nature such as moisture on the leaves of redbud trees after a rain. For some of these I have found a cause. While there is no group of people who believe road gravel plays chess when we aren't looking there are some people who believe unusual events taken in aggrevate suggest ghosts, or deities, or ESP. It seems to me that science can't answer very many practical questions so why should we be so quick to simply dismiss other attempts to organize knowledge? Mans' knowledge is exceedingly limited. This doesn't mean we should abandon the tools we use to achieve it but we need to recognize our limitations and few do. It is the fact that we have lost sight of how we came to know what we do that has allowed us to so grossly overestimate our knowledge and to dismiss other perspectives less firmly firmly rooted in our metaphysics. One might be better advised getting advice on "trivialities" like marriage or retirement from a priest or a tea leaf reader than a cosmologist. Science is a very poor tool for answers to practical questions. I'm sure there's some truth here. Reality exists outside society. Indeed, it is only experienced outside of society. The purpose for most people who study anything is to seek the reality. That this often become a niche or career choice is secondary to the belief in my opinion. How many atheist priests are likely to exist?

Part of the problem with this thread may be the title. Most scientific people have a knee-jerk reaction to the "supernatural". It's only a word but most of us have a mechanistic view of reality and believe that nothing can exist outside of the laws of nature. It's not even relevant that we hardly can begin to understand nature because the assumption is nothing exists outside of it. I once lived about eight minutes from a stoplight that separated me from my job. When I got about four minutes away I could see where it was in its ~1 1/2 minute cycle. Virtually every morning I'd get to the light just as it turned green (30 sec green). I rarely had the sense that I was adjusting my speed to catch the light though sometimes it was necessary to slow or speed slightly to get it. It was not on a clock. People attend to things that are important to them. They see what they expect and can't see what they don't expect. They believe what they want to believe and in time become those beliefs. Perhaps "inexplicable" or "not yet explained" would be a better word than "supernatural". "Superstitious" might be a more apt term to explain the way our brains are wired. Observations are probably usually correct but they can be warped by a poor or improper perspective. A small slice of reality might not look like reality at all especially if the perspective is off. A scientific perspective will sometimes be the wrong perspective toward trying to understand what we see though, obviously, explanations must always revolve around logic and facts iff they exist. This isn't to say religion, magic, etc are improper in any way, merely that they have historically proven ineffective at understanding nature.

...And where exactly do you think this religious hokum originated? I can tell you exactly but then this post would be split off into another thread in speculations so instead let me just say that the writers of the Bible obviously had at their disposal numerous very old books. It's a virtually foregone conclusion that these were adapted for use to tell a story and that most of them are gone and lost forever. No books survive from before 2000 BC other than fragments and unintelligible works but such ancient books and copies of them probably did survive in the days the "sacred works" of the Bible were compiled. We see "impossible" and highly implausible stories and rather than trying to interpret thenm in ways that make sense we simply dismiss the authors as sun added bumpkins. The bottom line superstition and religion never invented nor discovered anything (beyond religious philosophy) and it required as much skill and theory to invent agriculture and cities as it does for beavers to dam a creek; maybe even more. Human history before 2000 BC wasn't invented through superstition. It wasn't religion that led to the invention of writing. We assume the human race has always been confused and superstitious but there is no evidence to support it. There is only interpretation of pot shards and the reason bones were arranged in graves as they were. There is no such thing as a "subconscious" but there are numerous events occurring beneath consciousness. We wire our brains by our experiences, language, and beliefs and activity occurs at levels outside our consciousness. It's easy to train yourself to solve problems in your sleep and ideas can leep forth from mental activity that is not part of our consciousness. We can see the most subtle clues at times especially, as Gees suggests, when they involve people we care about. This isn't to say I necessarily believe in ESP but people who pay attention to such things will see inexplicaple or very difficult to explain phenomena. These can often sound even more implausible than a woman turning into a pillar of salt or Enoch living 365 years before going on a long tutorial with the Creator. There are more things on heaven and earth... ...Than anyone might imagine.

Why can't time be both immutable and transmutable?

And perhaps it only shows that a reality where nothing can arise from nothing can arise from nothing.

I've seen this before. It is superbly done.

We exist because we exist. You wouldn't ask such a question if you didn't exist. Time is, by definition, what stops two objects from being in the same place. Ancients called this "khepri". They observed sunspots on the sun at sunset and saw the same sunspots at sunrise so this became the phenomenon of pre-existence; nothing arose from nothing. Everything arose from something. You can seek cosmological, theological, or philosophical answers to how we came to exist but still each of us arose from what came before and will return to the vast soup from which all things arise. Our atoms will be used to constitute new life or to power it. New things, which still won't be in the same place at the same time, will spring from our having existed. Our ability to think allows us new ways to organize, understand, or see our place in nature but ultimately our only answers will remain speculative. Simple answers must be sufficient at least at this time and the foreseeable future. One might as well have fun and try to leave the world a better place for tomorrow we die and our children will be left.

Actually I find your ideas intruiging even where they aren't always convincing. It's quite apparent you've put a lot of thought into these things and I can't come along and dismiss them very readily. There's no reason to dismiss any idea that is founded in logic. I do disagree that Plato's division of the soul is in any way similar to Freud's or at least common interpretation of Freud. Plato was seeking to divide the mind theoretically and examine its parts where the common understanding of Freud's work is that there exist three warped caricatures of an individual beneath his consciousness which comprise him. This belief has led to a world where people aren't responsible for their outcomes or even their actions. In some strange perverted way though they are responsible for their beliefs and all beliefs are equally valid. So we had tens of millions of murders for convenience in the 20th century which started just about the same time that Freud published. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_tripartite_theory_of_soul If there were actually such a thing as a subconscious we would still need to deny its existence. But, of course, one can't show it doesn't really exist any more than one can prove God doesn't exist. We experience both. We are a product of our time and place so people believe in a subconscious that drives and excuses their behavior and the behavior of those around them. We promote those who ruin companies and even hail them as "turn around specialists". We vote for politicians even though they have failed utterly in the past. Where beliefs should be irrelevant and outcomes the only thing of importance instead we are judged by intentions rather than what we do. So long as we are PC it doesn't matter what mayhem surrounds us. I like your water analogies and suspect they could be extended. I've seen similar phenomena in accelerations and believe it to be primarily coincidence but quite possibly it is related to something fundamental or structural since we are primarily water and there even seems to be a microbe at the root of the brain if not consciousness itself. Both ancient and modern languages have a tendency to flow like water and grammar imposes the same sort of restrictions as water finds in a container. Perhaps it's little beyond a linguistic coincidence but it's still extremely interesting. I'm sure I don't know why what you've observed exists. As a pragmatist i have a strong tendency to take consciousness as a given, perhaps the only given and see little reason not to assume it's widespread through nature. Supposing that termites invented cities through trial and error or that man made pyramids through trial and error is, to me, as absurd as supposing we invented our ability to go to the moon by trial and error. All advancement requires thought whether one is a man or a mouse. No advancement is possible until theory is established. They told me the same thing but it's not true. Indeed, most of what we were taught is either untrue or only partially true. We all have instincts but most of them have little value in day to day life. Even where they would be useful most individuals will wholly suppress them and proceed with learning and knowledge instead. Many individuals, especially women, can go almost a lifetime without exhibiting any instinctual behavior. Most humans spend most of their time in human situations where instincts would be inappropriate or less adaptive to their situations. We suppress them through upbringing and through learning, but they still exist.

Excellent. Water and light make rainbows; consciousness and light make ideas. Mebbe you can create a whole new math.