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Replying to post 101 by Tired of the Nonsense]
The extraordinarily precise vibration of the cesium atom was of no particular importance to humans for most of human history. Until it became important. As it turns out extraordinarily precise clocks are needed for much of modern technology to function correctly. And the extraordinarily precise vibration of the cesium atom fills the bill.
"Important"? Define "important", as it applies to temporary patterns of quantum foam.
Whether human beings have accurate GPS or not -- what difference does it make? In fact, whether a species of deranged ape, possessing a genetic aberration that produces self-consciousness and abstract thought, exists on one little planet in a vast ocean of quantum foam -- what of it? The foam don't care.
I have to keep turning back to this point, from time to, because...
Quantum mechanics in action is responsible for everything that occurs. Understanding quantum mechanics was not necessary for producing, as an example, steam engines. But quantum mechanics in action is necessary for causing them to function.
...because of this. In your worldview, everything that exists, and happens, is simply the product of mindless, random, indifferent quantum mechanics.
And yet you merrily traipse along, talking about "importance" and "meaning(lessness)" and so forth, as if these things actually exist. When from your own "mouth" they simply cannot.
You borrow these things from "my" worldview. Along with morality, ethics, values, principles, reason, and rationality.
So I'm charging interest.
Because you -- that is, "we", as in "none of us" -- can live without those items mentioned. Along with "hope", which may be the most important one.
So you (ubiquitous) have to
pretend they exist. And the impulse to do so is so ingrained, you don't even realize you're doing it. That's why I have to continually redirect you to the reality that you are.
It reminds me of being in a college fraternity or something, which has "mystic" knowledge that only the initiated may have access to, and are sworn to secrecy regarding. And it's all very exiting to the young freshmen, who are encouraged -- sometimes strenuously -- to take it all seriously. But some of the wiser, knowing seniors come to understand it's really just a bunch of BS, that everyone agrees to pretend is important.
So here is the "well-adjusted", well-meaning secularist, dutifully following the rules, watching his weight, his cholesterol, refraining from fornication with his neighbor's voluptuous wife, and buying season tickets to the local symphony. With various degrees of "happiness" (whatever that is) and self-satisfaction.
He is the "freshman".
And here is the "senior": the secularist who says "it's all BS, boys. We're all just bags of chemicals, and our pattern of quantum foam will alter soon enough into a disassociated state. And none of it makes one bit of difference, by any rational standard -- and rationality itself is just a sort of illusion."
And he proceeds to do precisely what he pleases; whatever brings him pleasure; along with the money that it takes to buy those pleasures. Maybe "legally" (whatever that is, a bunch of rules made up by a bunch of other bags of chemicals), maybe not.
Or perhaps he simply says "this is all absurd", and like the character in Tolstoy, respectfully returns his ticket. I.e., swallows a bullet.
And you know that is simply the reality we face. And that neither the "freshman" nor the "senior" is "better" than the other, or "right" or "wrong". And if you disagree -- on what basis do you disagree?
And if you can read the reality that I just described, and not think "but that's not the way it SHOULD be" -- then I submit that you SHOULD think that.
Because everything in your "psyche", or "mind" -- or whatever you want to call it; I prefer "soul" -- tells you that this life DOES have meaning, and things ARE important. You could not live as a "well-adjusted" bag of chemicals, and expression of quantum foam, otherwise.
And here is part of the Good News:
It really DOES have meaning. It really IS important.
Each quanta of foam is fraught with meaning and importance.
That's because God DOES exist, and we are part of a cosmic drama that is outside the scope of our limited reality and knowledge. But it presses in on our reality at every point.
Those with the most sensitivity to this fact are called, variously, "seers" or "mystics" or "prophets" or "saints".
It is not the nature of the truth to be either friendly or unfriendly. Truth simply is whatever it is. And it must be discovered to be true. Declaring it to be true is meaningless.
See what I mean?
Volbrigad wrote:
And isn't it interesting that the "fairy tale for grownups" -- the microbes-to-men evolutionary myth -- cannot boast of one single technological advance associated with it?
I already pointed out that it wasn't long ago that the fact that mountain ranges obviously still exist, even though if the earth is billions of years old they should have eroded away to nothing, was a very pertinent question asked by believers. Proof, according to believers, that they earth can not possibly be millions, let alone billions, of years old. Alfred Wegener proposed the occurrence of what he termed "continental drift" in 1912, but the idea that continents moved was considered something of a "fairy tale for some grown-ups" for the next fifty years, until the evidence for continental drift finally became overwhelming....
Yada yada. More "freshman" talk.
In the last election the number one issue for most people was the economy and jobs (it's the economy stupid). During the Obama years many new jobs were created. The problem is that jobs come in two forms... skilled and unskilled.
Now here is an opportunity to move the conversation to untilled ground.
Leaving aside the obvious "what difference does it make whether someone has a skilled or unskilled job? Or whether America 'succeeds' or not?", and gleefully joining in with your fabrication of meaning, value, and purpose in a sea of indifferent quantum foam (because, as mentioned, I know those things actually DO exist, and don't have to pretend they do -- and so, in your heart of hearts, do you):
I'll be happy to move on to the the more practical matters of social/economic/political realities and policies.
In that vein, let me throw out a couple of things, which you can bat back over the net, if you so choose. This area is, obviously, huge. We could probably discuss it until our foam disassociates.
Your complaint is that Christianity is responsible for America losing her "science mojo"?
You are 180 degrees out of phase with the truth, my friend.
It is the embrace or intellectual irrationality, which started with "God is dead", and quickly entered through the door of "so microbes must have become men", and the attendant cultural fatalism and nihilism associated with that fabrication, that is responsible for the woeful state of our culture, and the education/media/statist hegemony that perpetuates that woeful state.
A culture with no absolutes, that slaughters its babies on the altar of sexual promiscuity, and puts primacy on teaching "Heather has two mommies" over teaching the building blocks of science and math and language that are necessary to produce the scientists capable of colliding hadrons.
All of which -- the absolutes, and the building blocks -- were instilled into our education, when this country was still (nominally) "Christian" -- before the systematic jettisoning of our Judeo-Christian heritage, for a bunch of vague, secular, Whateverist nonsense.
You mention Europe? Why is Europe surging to the fore in science? (along with, arguably, China and India...).
For the same reason Soviet Russia was able to compete with America militarily -- the nuclear and space "races". Being a statist regime (in the case of the USSR, totalitarian), they were able to control the development of their scientific talent. Early on, the state determined the path of that development: i.e., "you, we will send the science academy; you, you are fit for the factory."
The statist governments of Europe, particularly northern Europe, have exercised a similar process for generations.
Much more so than in the USA, where we have cherished "individual autonomy", as a vestige of our J-C heritage. Only we have taken the absolutist fuel necessary for "well-adjusted" individual autonomy, and replaced it with the relativism that (because man is fallen), always follows the "gravitational pull" toward "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll."
What to do?
Become more like Europe of course.
Which is rapidly committing cultural suicide, with the infusion of hordes of barbarians who follow a perversion of Christianity in which there is no grace, no forgiveness, and no Jesus.
More later...?