[MD] The SOM/MOQ discrepancy.

[Krimel]

> [Ham]:
> When I say "Primary", I'm referring to that which transcends
> process.  Since Essence is absolute and immutable, it is not
> caused or created and, unlike man, is not dependent on
> otherness (being).  From the perspective of Essence, there is
> no other.

 [Krimel]:
> You are not "solving" the problem of the chain of causality here;
> you are simply defining it away. You don't answer the question
> of what caused essence.

[Ham]
Essence is the beginning and end of causality, which is man's intellection 
of "things in process."  Absolute Oneness neither possesses nor is subject 
to the conditions of space/time existence.  A chain is of no value unless it

is attached to something permanent.  The view that existence is a "chain of 
causal effects" leads to the absurdity of an infinite regression of causes. 
I resolve this paradox by positing the ultimate cause as the uncreated 
Source.  This is no great breakthrough, Krimel; Eastern mystics and Western 
theologians have accepted the concept of an immutable source for thousands 
of years.  Why should we reject this idea simply because we're opposed to 
the dogma of a "personal diety"?

[Krimel]
It really seems that all you are doing is saying, "We have a problem with
the chain of causality. How can there be a first cause or an uncaused
cause." Rather than actually dealing with the issue all you are doing is
saying, "I define "essence" to be: that which solves the problem."

You aren't solving the problem; you are just wishing it away. Furthermore it
does not even qualify as a solution. It adds nothing to our understanding of
the world. It offers no means of verification. It certainly does not qualify
as philosophy and yet you bristle when someone suggests that it is in fact
theology.

[Ham]
Man is the product of a dichotomy, a splitting of the One into two by 
nothingness, which is the beginning of Difference.  This results in the 
appearance of a relational world of which the cognizant agent is a 
'being-aware'.  Because the experience of this agent is incremental in time,

phenomena are seen as events coming into existence as effects of an 
antecedent cause.  And since we don't know what started this stream of 
events, we defer to Science which holds that it began with a Big Bang. 
While that answer satisfies the objectivists, it is obvious that prior 
forces must have been in place for the Bang to occur.  What were these 
forces?  (Quality patterns?)  And what created them?  (DQ?)  Such 
speculation is nonsensical, and we are back to the infinite regression 
paradox.

[Krimel]
It is not hard to see why you retreat into theology when your understanding
of science and philosophy is so poor. Your understanding of "nothing," for
example. For you "nothing" seems to be empty space and yet empty space is
not "nothing". It is not even empty. Even the vacuum of space is filled with
forces and light and virtual particles that blink in and out of existence
without cause. 

Your understanding of the Big Bang is equally misguided and seems not to
have matured despite repeated attempts to explain it to you. According to
the theory, prior to the Big Bang there were no forces, there was no space,
there was no time. There was Nothing. That is "nothing" in the sense that
you seem incapable of grasping. Of course this is unsatisfying. No one says
it is. But the theory that grows out of it can account very well for
everything in the observable universe from fundamental particles to
fluctuations in the stock market.

Your notion of time and space is equally mistaken. It is like some relic of
the middle ages. For you time is incremental in the sense that a motion
picture is incremental. It all exists as a set of reels that can be played
forwards or backwards. You assume that God somehow stands outside of the box
of reels and is the totality of the contents of the reels. This
understanding holds that the past is fixed and rigid and that the future
while unknown in the present is equally preordained. I think something you
said recently really points to your motive in clinging to this mistaken
understanding of time. You hope that something in or of Ham will survive
death and can partake in this non-incremental timeless existence. Again we
see that your motives for clinging to this are theological.

In the modern world that is, post middle ages, post scholastic philosophy;
we understand that time does no work this way. The future is not fait
accompli. It can not be predicted with certainty. We can see its broad
outlines but specific outcomes await the unfolding of events. Our knowledge
of the future is limited specifically by uncertainty at the level of
particles and by the shear number of potential influences on any particular
set of events. I maintain that the past is equally uncertain and subject to
the same fundamental unpredictability as the future. The bottom line here is
that even God can not know the future. Even God can not reconstruct the
past.

Aside from this we can and do experience time in exactly the way you claim
God can. We can and do stand outside of time and look upon it from a God eye
view. This is of course an illusion but it is one that serves us well. If I
ask you to remember your wedding day, I suspect you can do it. But it will
not unfold in your consciousness like the third reel in the movie of your
life. You will not recall waking up that momentous morning and going to the
bathroom and eating breakfast and dressing and going to the chapel. Rather
your will recall the day as a whole and the events not as a sequence but as
a set of snapshots or impressions or emotions. If I ask you what your plans
for the holiday are you do not provide an answer by fast forwarding through
some imagined sequence of events in detail, rather you construct a set of
plans and predictions based on your experiences in the past; plans made with
family or friends, previous holiday festivities, thoughts and conversations
you have had that lead you that have certain expectations for the future. 

Now both our recollections of the past and our expectations for the future
are subject to errors of recall and failure to anticipate all of the
variables that might come into play. Any realistic remembrance or prediction
can not be constructed of "facts" but only of probabilities. The past was
probably as you remember it and the future will probably conform to your
expectations. Probably but not certainly.

[Ham]
The only solution is to understand "process" (the sequence of events) as an 
illusion of man's experience.  The separation of an absolute source into a 
multiplistic system of relational things is the temporal mode of human 
experience.  But it allows the Value of the Source to be realized, which is 
man's inextricable link to his essential Source.  It makes sense if you can 
ignore the labels that detractors are bound to throw at it.

[Krimel]
The only point I will comment on here is the concept of "illusion". Once
again I would point out that an illusion is not a falsehood or a chimera. It
is simply a particular point of view. It is a way of organizing all of the
data present to the sense and memory at a given moment. We can shift our
understanding and "perceive" a new illusion but we are always and forever
experiencing the world as "illusion".

One final comment on your "creation hypothesis" I sincerely wish you would
stop calling it a "hypothesis." A hypothesis, at least as I understand it,
is a statement that is in principle testable and verifiable. Yours is not.
Perhaps you could more properly refer it as a "creation fantasy" or a "wish
concerning creation" or a "pipe dream about creation". I would suggest that
a more accurate description would be a "creation theology."

[Ham]
Good to hear from you again, Krimel.  Your comments are somewhat of a rarity

these days.

[Krimel]
As noted a couple of months ago I have been very busy and lurking as a
result. Only your infuriating posts and the odd fear that some of the
"newbs" might actually take them seriously could coax this much posting out
of me.