Neil,

I have to first admit to being a skeptic about our current astronomic models. My view is that we will eventually find redshift to be an optical effect and that many of the loose ends will come together and the various patches, from inflation to dark energy, will fall away.

As I see it, it is a convection cycle of expanding radiation and collapsing mass and that is why the curvature of each balances the other, leaving overall flat space. We know mass breaks down and sheds energy and since the volume of a given amount of mass is less then its constituent energy, the result is pressure. So if we look at the opposite side of the cycle and consider that such energy/radiation does coalesce into mass, the resulting geometric and spatial effect would be a vacuum. This would make gravity, not a specific force, or effect of mass, but a cumulative effect of how energy coalesces into and is absorbed by mass, as well as mass contracting and organizing into ever more dense forms. Obviously there are gaps in this concept, but there are lots of gaps in current theory and they are patched with some highly speculative propositions.

In a sense then, thermodynamics is elemental. Even the base state of background radiation(which I suspect is actually light from ever more distant sources that has been shifted off the visible spectrum.) and vacuum fluctuation would be described as thermal mediums and only have a temporal effect on the scale of specific frequencies.

One of my other points is that since we are single points of perception, we experience time as a sequence of events and so think of it as the point of the present moving from past to future, but the essential reality is that the changing configuration of the physical turns future into past. It is like seeing the sun move overhead, but its the ground moving the other way. Tomorrow becomes yesterday because the world turns. This makes time more like temperature than space.

Time is to temperature what frequency is to amplitude. With temperature we think of the collective effect, yet it consists of a multitude of individual velocities/amplitudes, but with time we think of those individual changes and measure their frequency, but cannot decern the measure of the universal rate of change. That is because, just like with temperature, it is a cumulative effect of those many actions.

I only hinted at this, in this contest, because I'm a little repetitive on the subject on FQXI forums, though I do think it is an important overlooked point.

I certainly do pinball around, but it is a very broad topic and I'm trying to aim for one of those high point holes, of trying to tie a lot together.

From your essay, "We can only steer the future if we can better steer our own selves, and we will only passionately care if we think we are truly alive."

The problem is that elemental sense of being seems to be more than just awareness, but it tends to have to project itself and so seems like a form of energy and this often acts like physical energy. Personally I work with race horses and find dealing with both animals and people that I get a much better read of them, if I simply consider their consciousness as energy fields, rather than thought processes. Much more a thermodynamic spirituality, than a linear thought process. Then they are vectors as a matter of will and singular expression. Otherwise more like a bubbling pot of complex interactions and contrasting elements.

Now I'm really starting to pinball around in my own pot...

I stuck a post on Peter Jackson's thread, May. 6, 2014 @ 23:43, that goes into this more deeply, as I should be going off to bed and putting the mind back in order.

Regards,

John

Dear John,

When you said "one day I just had this great yawning sense that any such essence would be so far beyond any reality I could comprehend, it left me disoriented and I couldn't shake it. I thought you were saying that you thought God was so beyond your comprehension and disconnected from your reality that you felt disconnected or distant from him in your relationship with him and that was somehow different from how you felt before that time. I may have misinterpreted that, however.

You are right I do have some basic boxes that separate some from others, but they are not boxes that I created. They are the boxes that God created. As an example, God has set up the choices we must make and the things we must do to become members of his body and be joined to him to have the close relationship with him where he shows us what he is doing and helps us to do likewise to please him and so we can actively grow in our knowledge of him and what he is doing in this world and why he is doing it that brings us into agreement with him as we more and more see his love and care for us, so we then learn how to love him and others also and have a desire to help others to also get that relationship. God explains these boxes in the scriptures (Holy Bible New Testament). As an example, no one can come to God the Father except by his son Jesus Christ and to be saved (become a member of God's body) it is necessary to receive and believe in Christ (Must believe that The Father sent him into the world to die for us so that we could have our sins forgiven and be reconciled and restored to a good relationship with God and that he did die for us and was buried and later resurrected as a witness to us that God the Father actually sent him and that he has the power to also raise us up and he was then received up to God to dwell with him until his enemies are brought down to earth.) (Must repent from our sins and ask God to forgive them and believe that they are forgiven.) (Must receive him as our Lord and Savior and believe that his words are actually God the Father's words that he gave through his son Jesus Christ.), etc.

God is the one who is the true center of all things because he made all things and existed before all other things. He does, however, tell us about his body, so he does put us in the center of the conversation in some places in the scriptures. I can't claim to be very important among the members of his body. I am sure that many others have been given more important positions in the body than I will likely have. So far it seems that I mostly get the hard cases to deal with, but that may be because I was one of them. If I have a ministry it is to those in the scientific community because of the information that God has given to me in that area, but a large percentage of that community is currently devoted atheists or those who believe that they are God or will somehow evolve to be God, etc. For the most part very few have even understood and accepted any of the scientific information that has been presented, which could result in great advancements for man and these things are very much based on observations that could be checked out. All that is necessary is to develop the math to support it. How much harder would it be to convince those who have committed much of their lives to developing quantum physics based theories and evolution based concepts to explain creation and the development of living creatures, etc. that God exists and made all things. So I am not likely to be one of those who convert thousands to God in a day or anything like that. If I work for many years and only one is saved by all that labor, I would consider it time well spent, however. Of course, I would like to believe that many will see and receive and believe and be saved and also that the scientific principles that are presented will be received and put to use by man in the right way so as to make life better for all those who are still living here in this world. In the long run it is up to God how he uses me in those respects and others, however. I have come to the conclusion that the work that God gives us to do, such as teaching the Gospel to others, is as much if not more for our learning and growth as it is for those who are taught by us. After all, God could certainly do a better job of it himself, if he desired to do so. He often uses our interactions with others to show us things about him and his works. As an example, in my conversation with you I mentioned that my parents were divorced and I also talked about how important it is to God that his body be perfect (lacking nothing), but I didn't tell you that the reason that my parents got divorced was mostly due to money problems. My father worked switching cars for the railroad and made good money at it. Then he got his hand caught between two cars and it had to be cut off. After that he got a job in a cement plant that paid less, but it was still enough for us to get by on. Then he got a finger on his other hand caught in a machine and lost it. After that he could only get a job as a night watchman and could not make enough for us to keep up with our bills. I had never thought of it before, but it all came together to me when I was writing my previous comment to you that God was showing me, by my actually having to live through it, how important even a small loss of a part of the body is. The hand is not the most important part of the body, but it made the difference between a good life and a just getting by life. The loss of that one more finger, which is even a smaller body part made the difference between getting by and suffering from lack of necessary things. I have seen that many times God uses things that happen to us in life to instruct us about him and what he is doing and why he is doing it and what he wants us to do, etc. To me it shows his control over the creation. He allowed things to happen to me when I was young that were not pleasant to me at the time knowing that I would not understand them at that time, so I would go through the whole process of questioning his existence and searching for that answer. Then he showed me both sides of the argument and gave me the information that I needed to make the proper decision. Next he allowed me to read the scriptures and see that information already recorded in his scriptures over two thousand years earlier to finally convince me of his existence. Then he showed me why he created the universe and what my part is in it in the scriptures. One of the things he gives us to do while we are still in this world is to preach the Gospel to others. In the process of that preaching he shows me things that he has done in my life and what they were done for as noted above. All of these things and many more that he has done, show me God's power to work all of these things together over thousands of years and bring them all together at the right times to accomplish reaching out to me to give me knowledge of him and slowly bring me to him as that knowledge worked in me to allow me to see his love for me that he would do all of these things for me. Of course, I have seen these types of things worked in the lives of others also so, I can't claim that God's love is only for me, but is for all that seek him and truly desire to know him enough to take the time to search him out in the scriptures. There are also many things built into the structure of the creation and into each of our lives that also show us many things about him if we take the time to observe them. It shows God's great power in that he can work all of these kinds of things in the lives of each of us to teach us about him and what he has made us for and to demonstrate his love for us. It is true that God knows what we will ask him before we actually ask him, but at the same time he says ask and you shall receive. He desires to have a loving relationship with each of us and coming to him and asking things in prayer to him is just the beginning of that relationship. As that relationship grows and there is a real desire in us to truly know him and to be pleasing to him we begin to ask him to show us what he is doing and when he shows us we begin to act in accordance with what he is doing. The relationship progresses from asking him for things to please us to asking him to use us to please him as our love for him grows. The end result is him and us all working together as one, which is what a spirit and its body are meant to do. This world is the beginning preparation for that end result in the world to come. It will continue in the thousand year reign of Christ later in this world. Then we will be ready for the fullness of that relationship in the world to come. You are right that God does not need to worry about you or any of us for that matter, which to me all the more shows us his love for us in that he does worry and care for each of us even when we rebel or sin against him. He didn't wait for all of us to repent or turn away from sinning before he sent his son into the world to die for us so we could be saved and live. He did that when we were still sinning to show his love and caring for us. You must be extremely intelligent and in complete control of all of your actions to always figure out what you had to do and always do it. I have found that I often don't know what to do in many situations in life and need help to gain that knowledge. This meant that before I knew God I often did the wrong thing. I am not just talking about doing things that are wrong or evil in God's sight, although I sometimes did so, but I am also talking about making choices that resulted in things not giving me the results that I desired even in things that God does not say that what I did was wrong. Of course, before I had read the scriptures I did not even know whether the things that I did were against God's will for me to do or not. It sounds to me like you had some of the same kinds of results. There are a couple of things that I have observed both in myself and also in others concerning things working for us. When God first showed himself to me in the scriptures I went through a time when things did not go very well. I am not sure whether it was meant as a time of trial for me to see if I would continue with him or whether it was Satan tempting me to try to keep me from going to God (That happened to Jesus after he was baptized to begin his ministry), but If one continues with God this time passes. The next problem that I had was that after I had read the scriptures and knew God's will, I tried to do according to his will and not sin. Every time I thought that I had finally overcome sin, though, it seemed that I was tempted in some way and always failed and did the wrong thing. This was very frustrating to me until God gave me understanding of the places in the scriptures that say that God promises to come into me and dwell in me and make me perfect and raise up my mortal body to do his will. I found that the problem was that I had taken that on to do it myself, but it is not something that I can do myself. I have since found that God can do it though so, you are right that when we give up on the idea that we are going to do things and go with the flow of letting God show us what to do and then doing it with him doing it through us, things work much better and life is much easier and more pleasant also.

God has given each of us specific gifts of abilities and ways of looking at the world so, I have come to accept that I am sometimes limited in some ways compared to some others and also some others are sometimes limited compared to me. It is not that one is better than the other it is just that God has different things for each of us to do that, therefore, require different skills than others. I have always desired to know everything as completely as I can (my wife says that I always have to do everything the hard way), so I desire to understand both the network and the nodes. I have found that you really can't separate the nodes from the network because we live in a world of nested networks. The nodes are generally just composed of smaller level networks and the nodes in that smaller level network are usually just still smaller level networks, etc. As an example, in your example the nodes would be you, the horse, and the ground and the network would be the paths and the motions that are transferred from the ground to the horse and then to you over those paths due to the interactions involved. But if you look at one of the nodes, let's say yourself, you find that you are another network composed of nodes of various organs that are connected to each other over the various network paths in your body. If you look at one of those nodes such as your heart, you find that it again is a network of cells that are connected together over their network paths. Again, if you look at a cell which is a node in that network, you find that it is another network composed of nodes of small protein based machines and memory storage devices such as DNA, etc. networked together. There are still lower level networks with the lowest level being composed of basic motions, but I'm sure you get the idea. This hierarchical structure in which subassemblies often perform functions that are abstract to the overall function of the system are signs of an intelligent source of the structure. Man's devices often exhibit this type of structure. I don't ride horses very much, but if I did I would want to feel the motions of the particles in the ground transferred all the way up through all of those networks in the ground to the horse and through all of the networks in the horse to me and then through all of the networks in me to the place in me that gives me the feeling of it. That is when my mind is freed from the bubble when it is all there to see including all those things that can hurt and all of the paths to avoid them.

You are right that some television preacher's version of religion can't save you unless it is also God's version. I wouldn't buy the plastic Jesus. It can't save you and God doesn't like idol worship. It is always best to go to the source to get what you need to be saved and have life and have it more abundantly. I always, therefore, recommend going directly to the scriptures to get the information directly from God. God tells us that comparing ourselves among ourselves is unwise so, if we desire to compare ourselves with someone else it should be with God and compared to God we are all naïve and misinformed. Any small variations between any one of us and another one are, therefore, insignificant and unimportant. He does say though that in the world to come we will know even as we are known, so there is hope. God created evil and made us subject to it in this world so, we would learn just how bad and destructive it is and how dependent we are on him to make us to be able to do good and not evil. This is part of our instruction in this world to make us ready for the world to come. There will be no evil in the world to come because we will have learned to overcome it because God will live in us and we will live in him as one. The concept that there must always be both good and evil primarily comes from some eastern religions and is an error. The concept that when there are two opposite possibilities they must somehow both exist together in balance or shift back and forth between the extremes in cycles is not universally valid. As an example, there is matter and its opposite antimatter, but our world is composed of matter and we don't see it shifting back and forth between being composed of matter and antimatter either. I hope I can be of help to you in some small way in your preparation. As I mentioned above God has already used our conversation to give me an understanding of why I had to go through some unpleasant experiences when I was young. That kind of thing is not uncommon at least to me when sharing things concerning God with others. It is all part of the training experience.

Sincerely,

Paul B.

    Paul,

    I'm just not a centrist. When lots of people are headed in one direction, I tend to hang back, or actively go in the other direction. While I realize groups need that center point and common narrative to function as societies, which is why religion is at the center of all societies, I simply prefer to live on the fringe. Not too far in and not to far out. What falls all the way in simply becomes ever more dense, focused, uncompromising etc. Life, on the other had, isn't at the center. We are not at the center of the galaxy, or at the center of the solar system, or at the center of the earth. We are at that plane about in the middle. Not too far in and not too far out.

    Unless groups are balanced by what's outside them, or other groups, etc. and everything really does start falling into the center, it becomes very totalitarian and eventually, when all the bodies start piling up, messy.

    What I like about Christianity is the trinity. Christ is the balance between God the father at the center and what comes next, out there, the future, etc. in the function of the Holy Ghost.

    People make up these models to explain very fundamental principles to the laity, who like to think in stories, not theories, but I'm someone who doesn't need stories, I can handle the abstractions, even though their manifestation is as us living organisms. That's why I spend my spare time on physics forums, not religious ones.

    Regards,

    John

    Aaron,

    Thank you for the consideration. I have considered your article, but have not voted on it. In fact the only voting I've done so far is to promote a few which I felt deserve attention. While FQXI is science oriented in general, this essay question, I think, is far more sociological and the solution will entail more of re-arranging/reseting our current thinking, than any extension, or projection of our current scientific or technological talents. While your entry is an interesting proposal, I'm not sure it will work to solve the most pressing issues.

    I think, to the extent physics offers any solutions to this issue, it is mostly to provide us with some objective perspective on how our economic, political and social functions work. I think thermodynamics provides some very deep insights as to how people act.

    So for me, I have to advocate for the frankly few papers which point in that direction. The only one, other than mine, to make the case for the need to reform the very nature of the banking and the monetary system, given the enormous damage it does to both society and the environment, in terms of resources, is the one by Stefan Weckbach, yet it hasn't scored well, so if you so feel inclined to promote an essential topic, do give him a boost.

    Thanks,

    John

    Ps, Thanks for seeing the humor in that bio. I have participated in a number of these contests previously and do think there is a lot in current physics theory which needs reforming and so found it amusing to push Lorraine Ford's entry to second place for a day. This in my usual pet obsession.

    Hello John,

    Thanks for the thoughtful pieces you have dropped me links to. I just wanted you to know I am paying attention and attempting to take in everything offered, but I may not have time for detailed comments if I am in 'receive' mode for long periods of time. Also, there is that thing called life which beckons my participation. A group of about two dozen awaits me now.

    I will respond to all the input I can.

    All the Best,

    Jonathan

      Joanathan,

      Not a problem. I happened across them and they seemed to fit in with your basic thesis.

      Regards,

      John

      Dear John,

      Your essay is short but touches a variety of subjects. You have quite a lot of philosophical quotes. I see a lot of attention on energy on your essay, until I hit "energy can be conserved".

      I have rated you. I also employ you to read my article on STRIKING A BALANCE BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND ECOSYTEM using this direct link http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2020

      I anticipate your comment and rating

      Wishing you the best in this competition and your future endeavor

      Regards

      Gbenga

        Gbenga,

        I did read your and I like your general approach and your determination. I have problems with your writing and your conclusions. This is just my personal opinion, but based on my years of reading and an attention span that has been lost to all the information of the internet, but you make way to much use of examples and other points. You need to take the information and focus it like a light beam on a singular and pointed conclusion. It is good to see others in this discussion who realize the possible solutions to our problems are not just marching onto higher levels of technology, but a strong need to go back and review what our underlaying premises are.

        I'm usually against vote trading, but since I do like your general approach, I'll score it well, but not the highest, because it doesn't have as strong a focus as necessary.

        Regards,

        John

        Hi John,

        I got to thinking about your essay while practicing to sing "Comfort Ye" from Handel's Messiah (whose lyric is from Isaiah). The language is kind of odd, by modern standards, and what got me thinking was the word iniquity. It's not much used today, but if you trace it back, it relates to inequity and thus to inequality. That is; if you didn't play fair, it was a sin. When you come right down to it; a lot of what is considered sinful or evil, by the old standards, relates to unfairness, cheating someone of their due, and so on.

        How different that is from today, where it is almost a badge of honor - in some circles - to be able to say that you cheated someone out of a lot of money, and got rich as a result. These days; it seems that inequity is a way of life, for some people, and that is shrugged off as not even being a personal decision, but rather a simple acknowledgement of the ways of the world. We have always had liars, cheats, and thieves - but our culture did not always exalt such people, or revere them above others.

        All the Best,

        Jonathan

          Dear John,

          First, why did you choose to discuss my article on your wall? If others had followed your path, I am sure your thread will be empty by now! The culture is- respond to comment as posted on your wall if you feel so, and if otherwise it is not a crime. There are more than 150 essays in this forum and it may be a little tasking in reading essay you have already commented on while other have not even been read at all. All essays authored in this forum are equally important.

          Your comment however is not a reflection of what is in my article! You have a style of writing, and then I have decided to use my own unique style to discuss the theme of the essay. It is not possible to compel me to adjust to your style. Remember it is the quality of your content that make a good article and not the philosophy of writing! Let's leave the stylish thing to the ultimate judge.

          About rating! The choice is yours. I have rated so many essays in this forum including yours because I wish them good. It is my philosophy just to help other succeed. I only requested you to read, comment and rate. I do not need to beg you to rate my essay. The comments about your essay pasted earlier are just my philosophy.

          If you still choose to discuss my MY OWN ESSAY on your thread, please be kindly informed that it will not be recognized!!!!!!

          Regards

          Gbenga

          Jonathan,

          It's not so much a question of life being unequal and often unfair, but the much more specific dynamics of why this current situation is going parabolic and how can it be logically addressed.

          Society is always going to have winners and losers and different strata and both friction and exchange between them all. As I keep saying much of human activity on the surface of this planet can be modeled by the same thermodynamic convection cycles which pretty much explain most of the abiotic and much of the biotic activity.

          Money originated in many forms and situations. Some were actual commodities, like the salt paid to Roman soldiers. Others originated as a form of contract, like the clay token Sumerians used as receipts for grain, which were then traded around. Much of what we think of as money today, is various forms of contracts. Promises of some value for which the certificate can be exchanged. National currencies, now that they are completely backed by the debt of the issuing country, are based on the future health, wealth and productivity of that country.

          Remember when many banks had the term "Trust" as part of the name? The problem is that since we all want money, not just the rich, because it signifies security and stability for most, it creates a strong incentive to produce more than there are resources to back it with. Now that the situation has grown completely out of control and the very function of the economy is to produce ever more of these increasingly unsupported and unsupportable promises, which become ever more leveraged and ethereal, that the actual health, wealth and productivity of the world is being sacrificed to manufacture them.

          When you really stand back and think it through, it is as ultimately illogical as those Easter Islanders who destroyed their island to manufacture those stone monoliths, because they signified some overriding ideal.

          The fact is that we do need a medium of exchange for large societies to function, but it is a public medium, like a road system and to the extent it is based on public debt, ie. obligations, it is a contract between a community and its members, that one's services will be rewarded.

          Now in some ways, it is like blood in the civic body and like blood, it needs to keep flowing evenly around and large pools of it are extremely unhealthy and functionally unnecessary.

          Since the main reason most people save money is for large purchases, retirement, eduction, etc. Then other, more effective social mechanisms need to evolve around those needs, leaving the conventional monetary system to handle the more liquid aspects. For one thing, if we understood strong communities and a healthy environment are a valuable resource and time and effort should be invested in maintaining them, such activities as elder, youth care and education might function much more as organic expressions of society. Not to mention having manufacturing produce product which could be maintained and last a long time and not simply be thrown away, it would create a significant local servicing capacity.

          Since they would be acknowledged as a contract, those caught abusing the system would consequently have the value of their notes penalized.

          Essentially all this requires is acknowledging these notes are not personal property, but public contracts and that is exactly what they are in the first place!! Your picture is not on them, nor are you individually responsible for guaranteeing their value. Consider that if the average Joe Sixpack understood those bills in his pocket were no more his property than the section of road he was driving on, he would be far less impressed with possessing as many of them as possible and would be careful what tangible value he would exchange for them. His efforts would have to go to making his family life more important, his social relations stronger and his environment healthier, because he would know that this is what would matter, not how many zeros are in his bank account. Then consider what this would do to the governments and financial industries currently drunk on all this power we subconsciously give them.

          The fact is that since the system has gone parabolic and every time it has another heart attack, the response is more of the same and so the problem grows even bigger. When the next crisis occurs, it is going to start to be obvious to pretty much everyone that it is unsustainable. Then people will be looking for other answers.

          Regards,

          John

          Dear John

          Your article, filled with analogies and allegories, was pleasant to read. Wars and guns are certainly manifestations of a disease conditioned by non-living virus, build and led by infected, self-destructive cells. Money (non-value) flow is one of the circulatory mechanism of spreading and maintaining the infection. Without reproductive mechanism of a living cell, virus is a frigid information, unable to replicate itself. Planted and maintained delusion is the most fertile ground at which virus can flourish. By mastering the ability to recognise and block such non-living intruder, life immunizes, reinforces and evolves itself. Only life can procreate, organise, maintain and evolve life. Life borrows life to a virus for only as long as it takes to decode it. Hence, the virus can be considered as Tanatos, sculpting Eros. The next evolutionary step in sculpting life of our shared, accelerating space-time orbit is in recognition of a malicious virus tricking our immune system by calling itself "Humanity". Did you notice that all living necessities, like sexual, reproductive parts of our body, or natural, like natural food and healing plants... is stigmatized and controlled by "them"? On the other hand, all which is unnecessary, artificial, unhealthy, lethal and non-alive is favoured by "them". "They" arbitrarily invent and execute their irrelevant, local legislations falsifying them as laws. "Altruistically", it is always "in the name of progress, in the name of democracy, in the name of god, in the name of humanity, in the name of our children... bla, bla..." Well, who the "bad word for sexual activity" are them, and in the name of whom...? It is of course always infected "I Am (not)" in the name of "I Am (not)" ...

          As concerning your analogy of information and energy processing divisions of human body, each of us is as well consisted of two to three kilograms of bacteria... This symbiotic structure evolved into cooperation and self-organised necessity, rather than combat, domination and competition. "I am" is the only power holder over "I am not". And what makes "I am not" being blind to the simple truth that the "All mighty" is in fact "I am" is non-alive, frigid and useless information contradicting life.

          Regards

          andrej

            Andrej,

            Humanity is one more flower reaching for the sun. Hopefully the seeds it scatters won't be as foolish as we have been.

            I think also it is each of us is I am, but we don't always identify the I am in the other, because we only see their wants conflicting with our wants and like the same ends of magnets, we push each other away.

            It is only when what we have to give matches they want and vice versa, that we become one.

            Regards,

            John

            Dear John,

            Thanks for your explanations. I was not offended. Really, this platform has brought a combination of diverse backgrounds together. But we can continue to learn from one another especially on the subject of the theme that has united us together. The liveliness of this forum is in our diversities.

            Thanks so much. You are great! All the best!

            Best regards

            Gbenga

            Hi John - I tend to agree with Robert. My impression is that you neither engage nor dismiss the question of steering, but flirt with it. This doesn't so much place you off topic as erode somewhat my interest while reading. "Tell me how to steer," I want to urge, "or tell me that I can't steer, but tell me something definite."

            Like Robert, I missed your plan for using "the up coming financial crisis" to change the economy, "treating money as a contract, not a commodity"; it didn't come across as a definite plan. Instead I saw your proposal for reforming the US budget process (p. 5-6), but I don't think you meant that as a full-blown steering plan. Your essay ends frankly on this point, "If others have plans..., I'm all ears." - Mike

            Dear John,

            I don't believe in being a centrist just for the sake of being a centrist either. I go where the evidence leads me. Sometimes that can be to the center of something and sometimes it can be at the outer extreme or anywhere in between. When it comes to God I hung back for over 22 years while I observed the evidence on both sides. When the weight of that evidence overwhelmingly tilted in favor of God's existence I went where it led me and have found that it only has pointed more strongly in that direction since then. I do agree that there are those who you might find at the center of the group of believers that tend to get carried away and make up their own rules and traditions, etc. that are not in accordance with God's will and teachings. This is made clear in the scriptures even during Jesus' ministry in that Jesus had to point out errors in the teachings of the Scribes and Pharisees, who were at the center of the Jew's religion at the time. The one place that I am sort of a centrist is that, as you say, God is at the center of all things and if you want to be joined to him you have to come to him at the center also. I have found that God desires to have a relationship with us that is closer than any that we can have with each other in this world. It is closer than the relationship of marriage between a man and a woman, which is an image of God's relationship with man when both the man and his wife are perfect, because that relationship is limited in that a man and his wife do not share their thoughts or even their experiences and feelings internally with each other, but God shares his thoughts, feelings, and experiences with us and, of course he can always share in our thoughts feelings, and experiences. I have not seen that he offers to have a permanent fringe or distant relationship with him because he made us to be close to him as members or parts of his body. He has, however, built in a degree of separation between us and him in that he has placed Jesus Christ as the mediator between himself and us. This seems to be mainly because his intents, thoughts and ways are well beyond our ability to understand directly, so he has placed Jesus Christ in the middle to translate his intents, thoughts, and ways into a form that we can understand, etc. There is, therefore, that amount of separation from him (the center). He made things in a similar way in our relationship with the natural world. We cannot connect directly to matter structures and observe their internal information directly, but must observe them through the mediator of energy and sub-energy interactions, etc. If this works ok for someone in this world, he probably will find a relationship with God acceptable also. The natural world cannot love us and care for us as God does though.

            Although you could look at God's relationship with man as totalitarian, in that he has ultimate power and control over us, his rule over us is not like that of man's totalitarian governments that are based on satisfying the lusts, greed, desire to forcefully use and misuse subjects for his gain at their expense. Since God is the source of all things, he does not need to take resources from his subjects. Instead he is the one that provides all resources to them. To be high in God's kingdom does not mean that you will be in charge of taking resources from the people to supply the needs and desires of the king, but that you will be in charge of distributing resources that come from God to the people. God's kingdom is based on his love for us in that he created us to be joined to him as members of his body and he demonstrated that love to us by greatly suffering for us, so that he could save us from death and give us eternal life in him. This is one case in which the bodies only pile up in those who do not come to him at the center. He does give everyone that choice, though.

            I agree. God has perfectly balanced all things in him.

            You are right. Many men have made up stories that are not according to god's word and have misled many. God does give examples in the scriptures from the lives of people (both the good and the evil) to demonstrate how he has made the world to work and what kinds of results can be expected by either going according to his will and working in line with the way he designed the world to work or, on the other hand, going against his will by working against the way the world was made to properly work. Of course, God does not need to use theories because he knows all things concerning the universe, since he made it. There are some things in the scriptures that are presented in what would usually be considered very abstract forms. I have found that at least a large number of them appear that way because they tell us about things that man has not yet come to understand. As man's understanding increases their meanings become clear. Those who don't have the background information to understand them tend to either read them and then ignore them or try to apply meanings to them according to their current level of understanding. I go to the type of forum that God leads me to at any given time. I have found that both truth and error can be found at any type of forum. Only God's word can be counted on.

            Sincerely,

            Paul B.

              Paul,

              I really don't think you try to understand my point of view. Since I don't follow your theological model, you make a bunch of assumptions about what I think. Having followed religious beliefs over the years, I do have some sense of that top down, paternal deity to which you subscribe and I just find it limited and pretentious, not to mention hypocritical. It may not be authoritarian in the way human governments tend to become, but it does validate top down authority. I suppose the female side of the spiritual equation is just a form of Adam's rib and incidental to this model, but I think this dichotomy is far more reflective of much deeper spiritual realities. Going through all which you write, the separation of god and humanity, the need to come to 'him,' etc. all speak to methods of social control and direction which serve normal civic functions and while they might well be necessary to have a cohesive society, can also be misused and so don't necessarily need unquestioning validation, since this serves the purposes of those who will misuse them.

              I could go on, but I realize you are not going to listen and what you say isn't anything I've haven't already heard by others wishing me to join their church.

              Regards,

              John

              Dear John

              Nice reading your essay, well written and concise. You touch several delicate topics, such as economy, politics and even religion. I would avoid talking about God in science groups. I think science and God are irreconcilable. Anyways, religion also plays its role in society. You also ask some philosophical questions difficult to answer. You are a mature man and have a lot experience in life; that's what your essay reflects. According to your experience, what do you think humankind is seeking? Shall we arrive at stable state in the future? What is your vision for the future of humanity?

              I'd be grateful if you could take a look at my essay and leave some comments.

              Best regards

              Israel

                Israel,

                I did read your essay and went back and reviewed it. As you say, the situation is overwhelmingly complex when we start considering all the actual details. A big part of the reason why I like discussing physics, rather than history, politics, sociology, etc. The secret seems to be to find the patterns and processes within all those details. For one thing, we really are not looking for stability as an overall state. There has to be inherent ebb and flow. It is just when it gets out of the acceptable and manageable ranges and those vary, according to perspective. Otherwise stability eventually leads to stagnation and then disruption, as that stable state decays.

                As for science and religion, they actually evolved as two sides of the same coin. When you go back to the ancients, it was a matter of both describing natural order and explaining it. This description became mathematics and science. Think cosmology. Meanwhile religion grew out of the entirely natural impulse to explain this order as intentional and assign personality to these natural forces. Beauty, anger, fear, ego, attraction eroticism etc. can all find, with a little imagination, parallels in the natural order of things. The premise of monotheism is essentially knowledge and wisdom as a form of platonic ideal. Given the inherent dynamic of intellectualism is to distill signals from the noise, this reductionism is a logical progression. Christianity is actually a bit of a step back, with the concept of the trinity, to the inescapable complexities. Essentially it is a personification of past/father, present/son and future/holy ghost, since it grew out of a schism in Judaism and so the son was projected as a renewal, but after suffering centuries of persecution, hope for the future became its selling point to those who where persecuted, which is a big audience.

                Islam was actually a much more politically successful movement for its first seven hundred years (and largely coasted for the next six hundred), compared to Christianity and as such, was able to project a more monolithic vision and only in the last hundred years, have the downsides of this, in its lack of conceptual diversity and thus social inertia, come home to roost.

                We are taught good and bad are some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, but they are in fact the biological binary code of attraction to the beneficial and repulsion of the detrimental. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken and there is no clear line where the chicken ends and the fox begins. Between black and white are not only shades of grey, but all the other colors of the spectrum.

                What might be good for the individual, expansion and reproduction, might be bad for the group, if it uses up all the resources, so like any computation, the factors are many. The fact is that reality is bottom up and we only see it top down from our particular limited point of view.

                So analyzing religion really must be part of any full scale review of humanity and its options, since it functions as the core and vision of societies.

                As for our immediate situation, I just wrote a comment on Don Limuti's entry, which I think lays out the immediate situation and where to go from here. I've given this topic a fair amount of thought over the years, but tend to have trouble finding forums willing to discuss it in real depth, so I don't get a lot of feedback. Since I submitted my entry with the very first batch, I have been getting enough feedback to think it through even more, so this comment reflects that slightly more complex view. I'll post it here anyway;

                "Don,

                A spot on and logically focused article. I've been castigating various entrants for their 'out in space' entries and so it is nice to have such a well centered and reasonable one. I think though, that the possibility exists to be far more radical than you might think possible. Significant change is only possible when the old order breaks down, but right now the current status quo is coalescing in upon itself and only re-enforcing its own increasingly disfunctional methods. So all the various sectors of society mostly seek to hold onto what they have and further antagonize other parts of society. In this situation, even your reasonable proposals would meet considerable resistance from those who are more focused on holding onto what they have, than gambling on a better outcome.

                The result would normally be a state of slow stagnation and increasingly stratified and compartmentalized future society. Yet I think that the monumental nature of these issues provides a potential relief.

                The enormous tumor of financial excess can only keep growing at this exponential rate and will blow up when it reaches some totally unsustainable level. The result will be the equivalent of a massive heart attack on society, as the economic circulation system siezes up. While this will be potentially catastrophic in some quarters, it is not as though monetary regimes haven't collapsed before and had forms of local exchange rise in their place.

                My proposal is that we begin treating money as the contract which it is, rather than the commodity we have been led to believe it is. While this might seem a minor conceptual issue, it has the potential to change the paradigm by which society functions.

                Any society above a few hundred people needs a medium of exchange. If there is not some readily available commodity with universal applications, such as gold, silver, salt, grain, etc. then a debt based monetary system is quite effective. Yet we forget it is essentially a form of public utility and social contract, not private property. We no more own those bills in our pockets, than we own the section of road we happen to be driving on, yet it is very much in the interest of those controlling this system for us to believe that it is personal property, much as it is in the fisherman's interest for the fish to think that worm belongs to it. This way, every aspect of exchange becomes denominated in this medium and everyone wants as much as possible, further empowering those controlling it.

                Money functions like blood in the economy and as such it needs to keep flowing. Since everyone wishes to obtain as much as possible, this naturally creates excess. If we simply take it out of circulation and store it, it means more must be issued and then there becomes more than necessary, so that if the value started to go down, people would try dumping these stores, further decreasing the value.

                Otherwise it must be invested, ie. loaned to someone else who can effectively spend it in ways to make even more and then pay off the debt and still earn enough to make the effort worthwhile. The fact is there are far fewer of these opportunities, then there is money seeking worthwhile investments.

                This then leads to various unsustainable feedback loops, such as that once speculative investing, ie. greater fool systems, start, it can quickly become possible that money can be borrowed into existence cheaper than these bubbles grow and thus building on theselves, as is currently happening in much of the investment world

                There is also the need to create ever more debt to feed the production of this capital and so lending standards fall. Not to mention the innumerable ways further leverage is added.

                Now if people wish to gamble, this should be perfectly legal, with the understanding that it is gambling, not disguised as safe investment.

                So in reality money is a form of debt. One person's asset is another person's obligation. When those with large piles of these surplus bills gain functional control over the government, then they can effectively have the government, ie. the public, buy this notational wealth as public debt and so sustain its value, since the public is required to pay it back, with interest. Then this money has to be spent and often it is in ways which further enrich those in control.

                Now if we were to begin to understand that money functions as a necessary social contract and we don't actually own it, then most people will start to be far more careful how much they are willing to pull value out of personal and social relations, as well as environmental resources. This would then make the community and the environment natural stores of wealth, not just resources to be mined for value, in order to compete and gamble in the financial system.

                Since stores of currency would be recognized as potentially unhealthy to the system, methods would be devised to reduce them. Most people store wealth for such needs as elder and youth care, education, housing and other large expenses. Now if we started storing value within our communities and relations, the normal, organic systems of exchange and reciprocity would emerge. We would start caring for the old folks and kids like nature intended, as part of life, not just services bought and sold. Much of primary education could also naturally fall into this system and more naturally integrated systems of secondary eduction might evolve as well. Then there could be forms of mutual building societies, much as the Amish do.

                This is not to say a normal and extensive monetary, or even various overlapping monetary ststems wouldn't still function, but they would be built with full understandings of how they best function and for more liquid forms of exchange. Then local public banks would use their profits to fund services and projects within the communities that produced those profits. They would then serve as shareholders in regional systems, in a bottom up system.

                Much as the body has both a heart and a head, society would naturally keep this function of circulation of wealth somewhat distinct from its public management, as a natural distribution and separation of power.

                So this is how I think humanity should be steered; When this current financial system does break down, which seems imminent, but has been for a few decades, but they keep patching with ever more public debt and the resulting surplus credit, we simply have to open our eyes and understand this stuff called money is not, in and of itself, a form of commodity, but a contract which a community is making with its members and those caught abusing this system will naturally have their benefits penalized, not be allowed to profit from this abuse.

                We need to educate people how it all works!!!!

                Regards,

                John Merryman

                I