Christianity and the End Times

Nice talk. Worthy goal, worthy program. Not "despite the second law" but because of it, maybe.There was a paper a few years ago by a math prof at Harvard/MIT someplace where he showed, quite diligently, that under a thermodynamic excess chemistry has no choice than to clump in more ordered forms. I wish I could find it. I'll keep looking.The problem, as I see it, is that the universe has already shown us that in open systems like Earth, entropy can take other paths allowing decreases in disorder thus "creating" things. We cannot say the same for any cosmic intelligence. There is no observed effect obvious to its existence and no mechanism viable enough to be host. It is a fantasy. Prof Tegmark doesn't say that the "Math" exists in a compartment of some ethereal cosmic spacetime but that the particle/energy relationships we observe are due to the imperatives that underlay the functions of the universe, not the math's physical manifestation. There is a difference.Intelligence involves the access/use of facts which requires a storage medium for that information before and after its use. It seems to require pathways of causal logical analysis. It seems to need a sensory grid with mechanisms for transferring information about observed structure and happenings. All of that seems to denote structure. Quantum Cosmic Brain don't got none of that as far as can be determined. Human brains got all the above ... in spades.There doesn't appear to be any cosmic-wide intelligence imperatives operating in the universe. Items that some may point to as evidence of such an operation are more easily, logically and demonstrably shown to be of known and natural causes. Yeah, we're like that. Evidence is such a bitch of a requirement. Which is nowhere. Sure. Until someone can show a viable venue otherwise, that is all we have to work with. And that appears to be quite sufficient for this tribe of monkeys to contemplate the secrets of the universe. We aren't afraid of anything, except maybe wasps. Hate wasps.Actually, our curiosity is hell bent on finding out exactly what IS doing the doing and how did it get here.At this point in our musings we have all but eliminated a lot of crazy speculations on this subject like Quantum Cosmic Brains, fairies, interdenominational wormholes and gods. All subject to further review, of course. With my deepest respects to Dr. Tegmark ... no.What would become the math within the heads of humans, the approximate models/equations, is nothing more than stuff following its natural inclinations in this universe and right now we don't know why.More ignorance in which to hide some gods? Computing machines indeed entered into human consciousness well before the machine itself was built. The ideas were born of creative fact juxtipositions and the forward perceptive abilities within (solely within) a number of human brains.Quite different from the subject at hand here.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Depends.If there is an alien species on the other side of the galaxy we know nothing of it. We could never hope to define or describe such a thing ... yet.Does it exist? "For all practical purposes" ... no.But, to save the day, there is in the human consciousness the idea of alien creatures on the other side of the galaxy just the fine details aren't filled in all that well.Before us humans and our new-fangled big abstract-enabled brains there were dinos. She had ideas too. The ideas in her head were I want to eat it or I want to fuck it or I want to run away from it. Not much else. It took the human cogitation to say "the angle of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of other three sides."Unless and until whatever it is comes crashing into our notice directly or through our own creativity or leaves breadcrumbs on the sidewalk for us to follow, an idea doesn't come into being.Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Everything you're made of, and I do mean everything, came to being about 13.7 billion years ago when the universe was created. Doesn't make much difference if it was cooked into a different configuration then globbed into a sun or a planet or a people. It's all the same stuff.Remember, we're talking about your god using some majik words to supposedly create the universe except the universe was already around for 13.7 blyrs before any word, a human construct, came into being so your god was late on the scene.Somewhere around 250,000 years ago some young pretty pre-proto-human girl was just sitting on a stone near the fire when a handsome pre-proto-human boy walked up and handed her a good hunk of fresh liver he received from the hunters. She smiled through her browning teeth and hairy lips lighting up her eyes below her protruding hairy uni-brow and said thank you.Well, actually she said something like "grrug-ugh" but he understood and smiled back beneath his own protruding hairy uni-brow. So they sat there side by side eating hunks of liver with blood and bile dripping down their fingers and arms making little grunting noises at each other. Ah, young love.Anyway that was the first word to exist in the universe. Tens of thousands of years later when your god finally was thunk into existence I guess he tried to speak the universe into creation right dab in the middle of an already existing universe.Like I said ... way too late. Really bad form for an omniscient being, too, but he was new at this and hadn't been properly prepared by his makers.So, if your story is that your god tried to speak the universe into existance by saying words then it was a frightful cockup having intruded on an already existing creation ... and billions of years after that original one was already in place. Actually the verdict was rendered some many millennia ago and all appeals have been exhausted.Your god was spoken into existence but not until humans had already developed words and grammar and syntax and about a thousand other gods prior.

I should think 4-20 would be an appropriate choice for Rapture Day.Those of us not going anywhere would be in the right frame of mind to handle the disappointment.I plan to be in such a mood tomorrow just in case.

I was referring to the peace and tranquility of coloring eggs for Easter.I have no idea what you are talking about.

Because you are only one of us if you look like me, speak and act like me and believe like me otherwise you're one of "them" and them is not really people.

Serendipity.Here from SciAm: Understanding Political Behavior

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In the case of nationalism, the motivation to view one’s national group as superior to others must work hand in hand with a belief that members of this group are systematically, meaningfully different from members of other national groups; if we’re all the same, claims of superiority don’t make sense.
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Yet, nationalism makes sense to a lot of people. Why? One reason might be that it is intuitive to think of national groups as deeply different, perhaps in part because it’s aligned with how we viewed these phenomena as children.
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Younger children were also more likely to think that the traits and behaviors that are associated with being an American (e.g., eating certain types of foods) are not learned but simply inherited from one’s parents. One child succinctly summarized this view: Being an American “feels like it’s in your body.”

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Acculturation. Breaking this subtle cycle is not easy.