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vol VII: Notes

2019

Notes

Sunday 2 June 2019 - Saturday 8 June 2019

[Notebook: DB 83: Physical Theology]

Sunday 2 June 2019

[page 242]

Monday 3 June

Both the doctrine of the Trinity and quantum mechanics envisage entities interacting with themselves and complexifying, which is to say that consciousness is a necessary concomitant of existence.

The root of the evolutionary [paradigm] is the fact that we do what we have to do. [Spy Gone North The Spy Gone North - Wikipedia]

Up to very recently I have been completely binary about the Roman Catholic Church, seeing it as completely and consistently antiscientific. Now I have softened a little. It still has many absolute evils like the denial of the humanity of women and its commitment to infallibility, absolute monarchy, immortality, heaven, hell and eternal life, but what I wish to emphasise in my thesis are the openings from its imperial antiquity to scientific and democratic modernity. I have tried to do this for a long time in a purely theological way by modernizing the work of Aristotle and Aquinas with modern physics built around the concept of actus

[page 243]

purus and by reinterpretation of the absolute simplicity of god with dynamic simplicity interpreted in the light of fixed point theory, but these changes taken in their bare simplicity are a little too sudden, so now the plan is to slowly introduce changes in science from the time of Galileo and weave them into a transfinite network which is equivalent to God, a universal model that can explain its own creation and existence. Fixed point (mathematics) - Wikipedia, Galileo affair - Wikipedia

Tuesday 4 June 2019
Wednesday 5 June 2019

Blessedness, beatitudo: feeling good is all I want and the source: harmony with my environment. The greatest evil of the Catholic Church (to my mind) is its teaching that we are damaged aliens in a damaged world, a self fulfilling prophecy that empowers murderers like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Trump and all that ilk, whose principal source of pleasure is destroying people's lives. At the head of this queue we find the papacy. My answer? A divine world [everything we see is part of the vision of God]. Aquinas, Summa, I II, 3, 8: Does man's happiness consist in the vision of the divine essence?

My story is an opportunistic blend of theology, philosophy and physics ancient and modern, and is way out of reach of modern philosophy but, I believe, can be well defined from the literature but it is not the stuff from which satisfactory essays are concocted in academia as I find it. My task is to learn to speak the local language before I can express myself.

[page 244]

. . .

Watched Rocketman again and was reminded of one of the most embarrassing events in my life, the prefects dance. The trouble started when it turned out that I did not have a girlfriend to take to the dance. In fact I do not think that I knew any girls my own age at all, I had not had a girlfriend in Mount Gsmbier and moved to Adelaide when I was about fifteen and spent the last two years of my education at Blackfriars, an all boys boarding school, and met no girls. So my friends got together and lined up a potential partner and organized me to meet her after school. I chickened out, and so went to the dance without a partner deeply embarrassed as I wandered around alone with nobody to talk to. I think by that time I had already decided to enter the monastery and lead the celibate life and, looking back, I feel that fear of womanhood may have been a strong incentive to do so. Sad. Now I am back in Adelaide again at university still without a girlfriend, having has three long term partners and 4 children and not too fussed about being single, happily awaiting my fate, if any.

Thursday 6 June 2019
Friday 7 June 2019
Saturday 8 June 2019

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Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

du Maurier, Daphne, The Scapegoat, Amereon 1991 Editoprial review: 'Two men--one English, the other French--meet by chance in a provincial railway station and are astounded that they are so much alike that they could easily pass for each other. Over the course of a long evening, they talk and drink. It is not until he awakes the next day that John, the Englishman, realizes that he may have spoken too much. His French companion is gone, having stolen his identity. For his part, John has no choice but to take the Frenchman's place--as master of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a large and embittered family, and keeper of too many secrets. Loaded with suspense and wit, The Scapegoat tells the double story of the attempts by John, the imposter, to escape detection by the family, servants, and several mistresses of his alter ego, and of his constant and frustrating efforts to unravel the mystery of the enigmatic past that dominates the existence of all who live in the chateau. Hailed by the New York Times as a masterpiece of "artfully compulsive storytelling," The Scapegoat brings us Daphne du Maurier at the very top of her form.' 
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Feferman, Anita Burdman, and Solomon Feferman, Alfred Tarski: Life and Logic, Cambridge University Press 2004 Review "A chain smoker, a heavy drinker, a frequent user of 'speed', a relentless womaniser, and a man of Napoleonic self-regard and worldly ambition. This is not how one pictures an eminent Professor of Logic. And yet, this is how the great logician, Alfred Tarski, emerges from this marvellous biography. The Fefermans, of course, are uniquely qualified to lead the reader through the intricacies of Tarski's work, which they do very engagingly and with great expository skill. Tarski's colourful personality is conveyed with prose that is economical, superbly readable and extremely vivid, and the whole book is a joy to read." Ray Monk, Professor of Philosophy, University of Southampton 
Amazon
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Links

Alan Cowell, Overlooked No More: Alan Turing, Condemned Code Breaker and Computer Visionary, ' On June 7, 1954, Alan Turing, a British mathematician who has since been acknowledged as one the most innovative and powerful thinkers of the 20th century — sometimes called the progenitor of modern computing — died as a criminal, having been convicted under Victorian laws as a homosexual and forced to endure chemical castration. Britain didn’t take its first steps toward decriminalizing homosexuality until 1967. Only in 2009 did the government apologize for his treatment.' back

Aquinas, Summa, I II, 3, 8, Does man's happiness consist in the vision of the divine essence?, Utrum beatitudo hominis sit in visione divinae essentiae? ' I answer that, Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence. To make this clear, two points must be observed. First, that man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek: . . . If therefore the human intellect, knowing the essence of some created effect, knows no more of God than "that He is"; the perfection of that intellect does not yet reach simply the First Cause, but there remains in it the natural desire to seek the cause. Wherefore it is not yet perfectly happy. Consequently, for perfect happiness the intellect needs to reach the very Essence of the First Cause. And thus it will have its perfection through union with God as with that object, in which alone man's happiness consists, as stated above (this question articles 1, 7; q 2, a 8). back

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, Bishop Geoffrey James Robinson, 'Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney, Emeritus' back

Fixed point (mathematics) - Wikipedia, Fixed point (mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics, a fixed point (sometimes shortened to fixpoint) of a function is a point that is mapped to itself by the function. That is to say, x is a fixed point of the function fif and only if f(x) = x.' back

Galileo affair - Wikipedia, Galileo affair - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Galileo affair was a sequence of events, beginning around 1610, during which Galileo Galilei came into conflict with both the Catholic Church, for his support of Copernican astronomy, and secular philosophers, for his criticism of Aristotelianism.' back

Joe Scarborough, Disregard Trump's ground noise. Focus on the signal, ' After one particularly stem-winding speech that I delivered at the downtown Rotary Club in Pensacola, Fla., three-star admiral Jack Fetterman took me aside and gently offered advice that I carry with me a quarter-century later. He put his arm around me and said, “Joe, you have to learn to separate the ground noise from the signal. And here’s the secret, son: It’s almost always ground noise.” ' back

Liz Ford, US abortion policy is 'extremis hate' and 'torture' says UN commisioner, ' The US policy on abortion is a form of extremist hate that amounts to the torture of women, the UN deputy high commissioner for human rights told the Guardian. The attack on women’s rights was a “crisis”, organised and well-resourced by very extremist groups. . . . “It’s clear it’s torture – it’s a deprivation of a right to health,” she warned, pointing out that the committee of experts assigned to monitor the implementation of the nine core UN human rights instruments have each “independently declared the absolute prohibition of abortion … is against human rights”.' back

Minnie Chan, How Tiananmen crackdown left deep scar in China's military psyche, ' The brutal military crackdown on peaceful protesters in Beijing 30 years ago might have saved the Communist Party’s rule, but it has since become a cross to bear for the People’s Liberation Army. Today, the world’s largest fighting force is still haunted by the Tiananmen Square tragedy in 1989, despite efforts to rebuild its image. After the bloodshed, it was the military that suggested the pro-democracy student movement be referred to not as a “counter-revolutionary rebellion” but as a time of “political turmoil”, two former PLA officers told the South China Morning Post.' back

Muhammad Shehada, Jared Kushner Just Killed the Palestinian Peace Camp, ' The most disturbing aspect of the already-failed deal is its disastrous effect on the overall peace process paradigm. In simple terms: Palestinians are losing faith fast with the foundational idea of peace through negotiations. The humiliating and extremely biased parameters of the deal – and its methodology of battering Palestinians into submission and defeat – is causing wide and ever-growing disillusionment amongst Palestinians with the peace process itself and the path of negotiations. ' back

The Spy Gone North - Wikipedia, The Spy Gone North - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Spy Gone North is a 2018 South Korean spy drama film directed by Yoon Jong-bin. It stars Hwang Jung-min, Lee Sung-min, Cho Jin-woong and Ju Ji-hoon.[2][3][4] The film is loosely based on the true story of Park Chae-seo, a former South Korean agent who infiltrated North Korea's nuclear facilities.[5] The film was released in theaters on August 8, 2018.' back

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