natural theology > notes > 9 september 2007

Notes

[Notebook: DB 61 Warm]

[Sunday 9 September 2007 - Saturday 15 September 2007]

[page 192]

Sunday 9 September 2007

'Illud autem quod est optimum in rebus existence, est bonum ordinis universi, ut patet per Philosophum in XII Metaphys.' 1075a13, ST I 15 2 corp. Aquinas 97, Aristotle

God has many ideas but remains simple.

The necessity for information to be embodies underlies our need for resources to live. What we need to do to reduce our footprint at constant life is to reduce our ratio of resources consumed to life lived.

Vestigium trinitatis. I 45 7. Aquinas 244

It was falsely concluded from the power of Aristotle's method that truth could be demonstrates from first principles 'per se nota' ('it stands to reason'). Descartes helped to break this hypothesis and introduced the scientific idea that the true guide to truth is observation. Descartes

'Actus quidam prius est formal et integritas rei, actus autem secundus est operatio'. ST I 48 5. Aquinas 256 This distinction doe snot hold in the divine embodied world.

EMBODIMENT = NO-CLONES [matter is the principle of individuation?]

'Videmus autem quod corpora incorruptibilia, quae sunt perfectiora inter corpora, excedunt quasi incomparibiliter secundum

[page 193]

magnitudinem corpora corruptibly.' ST I 50 3. Aquinas 263

More life/energy = more people in one car.

All the terrorism scarism that we see now is a sort of collective sigh of relief rather like all the nuclear activism that began when the 'Hotline' was installed and both sides began to talk. History.com

The terrorists would like to rule but what have they got to offer as an alternative to the present? A lot of it looks like the re-establishment of authoritarianism.

Feynman: Computing: '"Perfect" codes, which we introduced in a problem earlier, are actually those for which the error spheres "fill" the message space without overlapping. If the spheres have radius e, then every point in the message space lies with e units of one and only one message point. notes, page 114. Feynman

Monday 10 September 2007

Feynman, Computing page 160: 'There was a lot of prejudice around that had to be argued against' ie positions that has to be erased before the new position could take root, costing energy, might we say 'activation energy' although we generally think of this as recoverable, whereas erasure is seen as a complete loss.

Tuesday 11 September 2007

The practical definition of uncountable is 'unresolvable'.

[page 194]

Ordering and place value notation enable us to resolve far more points than can be seen in real (unary) notation.

Sunshine washes away morning hopelessness.

Finke and Stark 45: the evolution of sects ('high tension') and churches ('low tension'). Finke and Stark

page 44: 'When a religious body has no beliefs or practices setting it apart from its environment, no tension will exist. Churches are religious bodies in a relatively low state of tension with their environments. Sects are religious bodies in a relatively high state of tension with their environments. '

page 46: Cotton Mather: 'Religion brought forth prosperity and the daughter destroyed the mother.'

Niebuhr: 'In protestant history the sect has ever been the child of an outcast minority, taking its rise in the religious revolts of the poor.' (1929, page 19)

Christianity is the common denominator of most religions in 'Christian' countries (eg USA) coruscating in thousands of subtly different forms. We ant to replace Christianity with scientific theology.

We rebadge poverty, chastity and obedience: poverty - reduced footprint; chastity -maximize pleasure, minimize reproduction; obedience - be aware of the constraints of nature.

[page 195]

In all we wish to maximize the spiritual while minimizing the enviromental impact.

Ultimately all this needs to be expressed in a self-consistent manner which will stand by itself without the scaffolding of my own life which has led me to see what I am looking for, an intelligent, personal Universe which serves as the habitat for intelligent personal beings like ourselves.

Physicists talk of the God particle etc, but they are nowhere near it. What they are elucidating is the alphabet of symbols our Universe uses to build itself, and some justification for this alphabet in terms of general physical principles, like constant velocity of light and extremal action.

The idea is to go from floating about in my own personal space and connecting it to the rest of the world by having something to trade for further understanding.

Religion is a product, like any other product, but we must begin to discipline our religion with a heavier dose of reality. God is not some outside being that we occasionally relate to; God permeates every moment of our being so there is some pressure to act divinely, whatever that may mean - minimum action.

Ambition imposes discipline, work and study to get there.

Wednesday 12 September 2007

Thursday 13 September 2007

Friday 14 September 2007

Saturday 15 September 2007

'An interpretation of the standard model.'

[page 196]

Le Carre Pilgrim: 'If a democratic Russia emerges -- why then Russia will have been the winner. And if the West chokes n its own materialism, then the West may still turn out to be the loser. page 322. Le Carre

A properly democratic (= maximum entropy) nation might be expected to behave as the median of all its people, balancing the extremes to give a well defined via media in its behaviour. This ideal is not met because current means of arriving at power often select extremes of humanity (and inhumanity).

le Carre page 324: 'We've given up many freedoms in order to be free. Now we have got to take them back.'

Distilling reason from passion. Reason is in effect a deterministic process (or network of processes) ordered to a particular end (a factory) which can be represented by a Turing machine or network of Turing machines.

Unary, binary, ℵ₀nary, ℵ₁nary etc.

Related sites

Concordat Watch

Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty

You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.

Aristotle , and (translated by H Tredennick and G Cyril Armstrong), Metaphysics X-XIV, Oeconomica and Magna Moralia, Harvard University Press, ; William Heinemann Ltd. 1977 Introduction III Aristotle's Metaphysical Theory: 'The theory of universal science, as sketched by Plato in The Republic, was unsatisfactory to Aristotle's analytical mind. He felt that there must be a regular system of sciences, each concerned with a different aspect of reality. At the same time it was only reasonable to suppose that there is a supreme science, which is more ultimate, more exact, more truly Wusdom than any of the others. The discussion of this science, Wisdom, Primary Philosophy or Theology, as it is variously called, and of its scope, forms the subject of the Metaphysics. page xxv
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Descartes, Rene, Rules for the direction of the mind: Discourse on the method, Encyclopaedia BritannicaB0006AU8ZG 1955
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Feynman, Richard, Feynman Lectures on Computation, Perseus Publishing 2007 Amazon Editorial Reviews Book Description 'The famous physicist's timeless lectures on the promise and limitations of computers When, in 1984-86, Richard P. Feynman gave his famous course on computation at the California Institute of Technology, he asked Tony Hey to adapt his lecture notes into a book. Although led by Feynman, the course also featured, as occasional guest speakers, some of the most brilliant men in science at that time, including Marvin Minsky, Charles Bennett, and John Hopfield. Although the lectures are now thirteen years old, most of the material is timeless and presents a "Feynmanesque" overview of many standard and some not-so-standard topics in computer science such as reversible logic gates and quantum computers.'
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Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America 1776 - 2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Rutgers University Press 2005 Amazon book description: 'In The Churching of America, 1776 - 2005, Roger Finke and Rodney Stark once again revolutionize the way we think about religion. Extending the argument that the nation's religious environment acts as a free market economy, this extensively revised and expanded edition offers new research, statistics, and stories that document increased participation in religious groups from Independence through the twenty-first century. Adding to the thorough coverage of "mainline" religious groups, new sections chart the remarkable development and growth of African American churches from the early nineteenth century forward. Finke and Stark show how, like other "upstart sects," these churches competed for adherents and demonstrate how American norms of religious freedom allowed African American churches to construct organizational havens with little outside intervention. This edition also includes new sections on the ethnic religious communities of recent immigrants -- stories that echo those told of ethnic religious enclaves in the nineteenth century.'
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Friedenthal, Richard, Luther, Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1970 Jacket: At midday on 21 October 1517, Luther launched the Reformation by nailing his 'ninety-five theses' against Papal indulgences to the door of the Schlosskirche at Wittenberg. The world has yet to come to terms with the issues he raised. ... In this new biography Richard Friedenthal portrays the living human figure behind the accretions of pious and hostile legend. ... Interwoven with the story of Luther's life is an intricate picture of Europe as a whole undergoing the agony of the Reformation, with centuries old beliefs and customs being turned upside-down in a chaos of furious religious controversy, social upheaval and constant clashes between bishops and princelings, imperial troops and mercenaries. ...'
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Graham, Katharine, Personal History, Alan A Knopf 1997 'Jacket: 'An extraordinarily frank, honest and generous book by one of America's most famous and admired women - a book that is, as its title suggests, both personal and history.'
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Horney, Karen , Self Analysis, 1994 Introduction: 'Professional analytical help ... can scarcely reach everyone whom it is capable of benefiting. It is for this reason that the question of self-analysis has importance. Is has always been regarded as not only valuable but also feasible to "know oneself", but it is possible that the endeavour can be greatly assisted by the discoveries of psychoanalysis. ... It is the object of this book to raise this question seriously, with all due consideration for the difficulties involved.' (9)
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le Carre, John, The Secret Pilgrim, Random House Value Publishing 1992 Amazon customer review: 'Mr John LeCarré, with Len Deighton, is tops at writing about espionage and he deserves mention in the history of English literature of this century. I have all his books in my personal library. They all denote an insider's knowledge of the espionage world, the right dose of skepticism about human nature, tongue-in-cheek, sense of the plot, mastery of the language, eclecticism. The only flaw may be found in a pervasive melancholy and pessimism: there is never sun in these books, only a uniform and pervasive grayness - but I guess the world he describes is of that colour. However, he is one of the most entertaining writers I ever found and I always look for new production of his whenever I enter a bookstore.' A reader
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Matthew, and Alexander Jones (editor), in The Jerusalem Bible, Darton Longman and Todd 1966 Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels: '[Matthew is] a dramatic account in seven acts of the coming of the kingdom of heaven. 1. The preparation of the kingdom in the person of the child-Messiah. ... 2. the formal proclamation of the charter of the Kingdom ... i.e. the Sermon on the Mount ... 3. The preaching of the kingdom by missionaries ... 4. The obstacles that the kingdom will meet from men ... 5. Its embryonic existence ... 6. The crisis ... which is to prepare the way for the definitive coming of the kingdom ... 7. The coming itself ... through the Passion and resurrection.' (12)
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Links

Aquinas 244 Whether in creatures is necessrily found a trace of the Trinity 'I answer that . . . in all creatures there is found the trace of the Trinity, inasmuch as in every creature are found some things which are necessarily reduced to the divine Persons as to their cause. For every creature subsists in its own being, and has a form, whereby it is determined to a species, and has relation to something else. Therefore as it is a created substance, it represents the cause and principle; and so in that manner it shows the Person of the Father, Who is the "principle from no principle." According as it has a form and species, it represents the Word as the form of the thing made by art is from the conception of the craftsman. According as it has relation of order, it represents the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as He is love, because the order of the effect to something else is from the will of the Creator. . . . ' back

Aquinas 256 Whether evil is adequately divided into pain and fault? 'I answer that, Evil, as was said above (3) is the privation of good, which chiefly and of itself consists in perfection and act. Act, however, is twofold; first, and second. The first act is the form and integrity of a thing; the second act is its operation. Therefore evil also is twofold. In one way it occurs by the subtraction of the form, or of any part required for the integrity of the thing, as blindness is an evil, as also it is an evil to be wanting in any member of the body. In another way evil exists by the withdrawal of the due operation, either because it does not exist, or because it has not its due mode and order. But because good in itself is the object of the will, evil, which is the privation of good, is found in a special way in rational creatures which have a will. Therefore the evil which comes from the withdrawal of the form and integrity of the thing, has the nature of a pain; and especially so on the supposition that all things are subject to divine providence and justice, as was shown above (22, 2); for it is of the very nature of a pain to be against the will. But the evil which consists in the subtraction of the due operation in voluntary things has the nature of a fault; for this is imputed to anyone as a fault to fail as regards perfect action, of which he is master by the will. Therefore every evil in voluntary things is to be looked upon as a pain or a fault' back

Aquinas 263 Whether angels exist in any great number? '. . . Hence it must be said that the angels, even inasmuch as they are immaterial substances, exist in exceeding great number, far beyond all material multitude. This is what Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. xiv): "There are many blessed armies of the heavenly intelligences, surpassing the weak and limited reckoning of our material numbers." The reason whereof is this, because, since it is the perfection of the Universe that God chiefly intends in the creation of things, the more perfect some things are, in so much greater an excess are they created by God. Now, as in bodies such excess is observed in regard to their magnitude, so in things incorporeal is it observed in regard to their multitude. We see, in fact, that incorruptible bodies, exceed corruptible bodies almost incomparably in magnitude; for the entire sphere of things active and passive is something very small in comparison with the heavenly bodies. Hence it is reasonable to conclude that the immaterial substances as it were incomparably exceed material substances as to multitude.' back

Aquinas 97 Whether ideas are many? 'I answer that, It must necessarily be held that ideas are many. In proof of which it is to be considered that in every effect the ultimate end is the proper intention of the principal agent, as the order of an army (is the proper intention) of the general. Now the highest good existing in things is the good of the order of the Universe, as the Philosopher clearly teaches in Metaph. xii. Therefore the order of the Universe is properly intended by God, . . . So, then, it must needs be that in the divine mind there are the proper ideas of all things. Hence Augustine says (Octog. Tri. Quaest. qu. xlvi), "that each thing was created by God according to the idea proper to it," from which it follows that in the divine mind ideas are many. . . . ' back

History.com Hotline established between Washington and Moscow 'August 30, 1963 Hotline established between Washington and Moscow On this day in 1963, John F. Kennedy becomes the first U.S. president to have a direct phone line to the Kremlin in Moscow. The "hotline" was designed to facilitate communication between the president and Soviet premier.' back