natural theology

We have just published a new book that summarizes the ideas of this site. Free at Scientific Theology, or, if you wish to support this project, buy at Scientific Theology: A New Vision of God

Contact us: Click to email

Notes

Sunday 1 November 2020 - Saturday 7 November 2020

[Notebook: DB 85 Science]

[page 252]

Sunday 1 November 2020
Sitting way out near the end of my precarious branch wondering whether my plan to unite physics and theology has any future, but finding it interesting and exciting all the same. I do it because I can, supported by pension and inheritance and spending a lot of energy exploring my connection to well known points of reference in the fields of physics and theology. The task requires that I recognise the known facts while exploring unconventional interpretations. Yesterday's work on the connection of space-time to quantum theory is a case in point. The creative universe "wants" to increase its complexity and entropy, and my hypothesis is that it can only do this by creating space to enable the simultaneous existence of independent entities to create complete systems of events (Khinchin page 2). In the pure energy/time quantum realm such systems are not possible and all we can have is time division multiplexing which I have come to see as the operation of a classical pendulum in a conservative field, potential being annihilated to create kinetic motion and kinetic motion being annihilated to create potential [the next step being simultaneous existence of potential and kinetic energy, whose sum is nevertheless zero, which requires space and time]. From the Lagrangian point of view we may see this as establishing stationary action. That is conservation of action? We see this happening in quantum

[page 253]

mechanics by unitary evolution which we understand to be a feature of conservative contact of complete state vectors mapped in Hilbert space. Here we model contact by differential operators [in a Hamiltonian energy matrix]. If we want to create space in this scheme we need to maintain contact by the invention of null geodesics which are made possible by the fact that the velocity of light is in effect the inverse of space in the same way that potential energy is the inverse of kinetic energy. This idea is the key to st06_constructing_world 6.7 quantum theory and the creation of space-time. Aleksandr Yakovlevich Khinchin: Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory, Feynman, Leighton & Sands FLP III:08: Chapter 8: The Hamiltonian Matrix, Scientific Theology chapter 6.7: Quantum theory and the creation of space-time

Quantum mechanics is the inside view of things we mostly look at from the outside but in the case of gravitation and the universe we are looking from the inside and see quantum mechanics naked and in motion. This becomes classical when observation halts the motion (computation) and we get a fixed point (particle) which encloses the computation that was halted by interfacing with the "observing" particle. From a communication point of view messages per se are fixed points, ie halted steps in a communication [computation] from which the next shift can begin work [the statistical distribution in quantum measurements may arise because the interacting particles are at different stages in their process when they interrupt each other].

Can we say that all naked quantum systems are in inertial motion since it is the only sort possible in a universe without particles which can collide and so influence one another's action in a way other than gravitation] We imagine that gravitation itself is purely unitary.

Why has physics bifurcated into two worlds, the Hilbert world and the Minkowski world, known as "quantum" and "classical"? The quantum world has spawned the many worlds hypotheses which is based on the idea that all the state vectors of the quantum world

[page 254]

are realized in their own universes. This seems exceedingly unlikely, and one way to nip it in the bud is to cut down on the number of state vectors, and one way to cut down on the number of state vectors is to implement some form of natural selection that condemns most of them to non-existence. Many-worlds interpretation - Wikipedia

A hint of how this might be done is to say that systems capable of continued life must be able to reproduce and successful reproduction requires deterministic computable processes. We know from Turing that there are at most 0 such processes, but we might guess from the superposition process postulated by quantum theory [with continuous complex superposition parameters that the theory] is capable of generating 1 state vectors, only an infinitesimal proportion of which (0 /1) are computable and so all the rest are doomed to extinction. This vague concept, applied to quantum measurement may give us a clue about how to cut the quantum world down to the size of the [classical] world and serve as a useful by-product of the transfinite quantum network model of the universe. A long shot, but while we are very much in the dark long shots are the best we have. I feel pretty helpless when confronted with the problems of interfacing physics and theology but I do not think I am alone because both physics and theology have gone through decades of "dark nights of the soul" trying to overcome the problems they face such as quantum measurement [, renormalization] and the quantization of gravitation. This is no reason to give up because eventually intelligence tunnels through impenetrable barriers.

A coin, die, roulette wheel or set of quantum amplitudes provides us with a complete system of events which can be imagined as a 'spin' which when summed or integrated gives us a total of 1 which we interpret to mean that just one of these events occurs per trial.

[page 255]

Both sides of a coin have real classical existence as do all the slots in a roulette wheel and the measurement problem of quantum mechanics arises because we think that the complete system represented by the squared amplitudes |φ|2 also exists in reality but is somehow selected out or collapsed when the event occurs and we observe one of the possibilities. Some would say that the non-appearing events are annihilated. The many worlds people say that they appear in a parallel universe. Gamblers might say that they are unrealized possibilities. Einstein wanted them to not be unrealised random events but the result of some casual event. Perhaps I see them as the outcome of a halted computation that could have reached another conclusion, perhaps due to random inputs to the deterministic process. In a way my hope for some valuable scientific result revolves around solving this problem by explaining how the world creates itself by variation and selection. So in human reproduction a vast number of superpositions of parental genomes are possible some of which are realised in viable offspring

The probabilistic outcomes of the meetings of particles arise because particles have rudimentary personalities. This is indicated by the fact that the probabilities of the outcomes of meetings are quite closely fixed unlike the probabilities of the outcomes of meetings of more complex entities like people. Nothing is independent of being observed because observation is a relationship that takes two to establish. [Two particles colliding at random times in their own internal processes might realize just one viable outcome determined by their dynamical states at the moment of meeting.]

[page 256]

Can we make an alternative version of quantum mechanics along these lines? We have a computational explanation of invisibility, of randomisation from the timing of network interactions and determinism in local synchronized computation. And reversibility and unitarity, the features of linearity and fixed points of operators are all achieved through the algebraic closure of the complex numbers. This is in the realm of non-relativistic mechanics which predates the emergence of space. Then we go straight to Minkowski space bypassing Euclidian except as a low velocity approximation. Make all quantum, no classical, all Minkowski, no Euclid. All software contained in the particles.

Monday 2 November 2020

Does the model fit the universe? Does it provide a plausible story of creation? At present we do not have such a story. We find that given sufficient energy we can create a zoo of particles. We have established a set of theoretical relationships between these particles that we have determined by treating the world as a black box, stimulating it in various ways, some very energetic, and watching what comes out. The story we have developed has some problems which arise mainly because everything is made from energy which is very simple, and cybernetics tells us that simple things cannot control complex ones . Nevertheless the family of particles we get from accelerator experiments is very well defined [which suggests that the only selective process operating is local consistency, in some way equivalent to renormalizability] and we get very accurate results from some of our calculations [and some are way off by many tens of orders of magnitude!].

Tuesday 3 November 2020
Wednesday 4 November 2020

[page 257]

Chapter 7 The human layers

The foundation of peace is the fair and just resolution of conflicts [bearing in mind that we live in a potentially transfinite space where there is room to satisfy everybody prepared to act consistently and reasonably (?)]

Thursday 5 November 2020

Night of bad dreams. Could not kick a football straight. Most of my life I have achieved top underdog status by being a big fish in a small pond and it is only in my return to the city and the university over the last few years that has let me see my proper place in the world. That and the blow of being declared a pedophile by my children, a false accusation I am still reluctant to fight on the ground that I want them to see the light by themselves; and I am secure in my knowledge of the truth, as I am vis-a-vis the Catholic Church. Chapter 7 needs to be an intermission emphasizing the human costs of the de facto existence of trial by battle leading to the religious consequences of the new theology, a retelling of the theory of peace and in chapter 10 the consequences of the design of the social software that underpins the global development of the human organism in harmony with the nature of the planet, aka our local god. A theory of Peace I: Mathematical Theology

Headline: 'The left everywhere still has not framed a way to combat populism'. The trouble lies in the time frame. We can always rely on the fact that populist hydrogen gave way to humanity in 14 billion years of evolution [with big help from gravitation]. This is a scientific antidote to the despair induced by the success of the forces of destruction.

[page 258

Cultural evolution is stabilized on the one hand by the stability of the environment, although forced or voluntary migration may bring about the cultural change needed to adapt to a new environment. On the other hand the ephemerality of human thought may speed up cultural evolution in areas of food, clothing, music and so on where the search for new and exciting experience is the driving force.

Love and Other Drugs. The big money in movies is to tap into deep human emotional needs, the same needs as are targets of religion and the advertising industry. The scientific backing for all this is psychology, and the most proficient practitioners of the political industry, bolstering military force with police force, institutionalized deception, spin and simple straightforward lies [encapsulate their doctrine] in a sentence: 'If you die fighting for your government (us) you will go straight to heaven.' I am in this business too, so you should be warned that my book presents a fantastic hypothesis designed, like all theology, to provide a promise of salvation:
15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. 17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. 19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. 20 And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen. (Mark 16:15-20)
Love & Other Drugs - Wikipedia

Theological porn all built around the emotional power of sexuality which is the root of survival. We can see how it works: other things being equal sexier people have more offspring who, because animals breed true, tend to be sexier people.

knowledge, abstraction, stardom

Getting to the serious core of the book, the human consequences of the new vision of god.

Angel-A The hard part, how to finish a story. Best, like

[page 259]

god, no beginning, no end. Out of nowhere; into nowhere. Angel-A - Wikipedia

Waiting for a mental event. The good ones seem to have a half life of about a week, although a few have come through since I started working on chapter 7 on Monday. John Eccles (read in 1958) attributes insight to closed mental circuit. John C. Eccles: Scientific American Innovation in Science: The Physiology of Imagination

Friday 6 November 2020

Who am I writing this book for anyway? Largely for myself to convince myself of the viability of my theological hypothesis before I begin to preach it, becoming my own evangelist. My experience in the Dominican Order showed me that I could not honestly work for an Order of Preachers which pushed stories that are clearly false, beginning with the ideas that we are immortal and that we [have been] intrinsically defective beings and sinners since the Fall. Order of Preachers: Official Documents - Constitution, Catholic Catechism 385-421: The Fall

If I lie down I will have to get up again to write something down so why can't it happen to me now to save the trouble. No hope.

[Half an hour later, after failing to sleep from worrying about family problems.] The rule of law gains its power from the knowledge that it is backed bu the violent power of the state and this knowledge is imbued in all the citizens who therefore feel the potential that is written into the law. In a cognitive universe descended from an omnipotent and omniscient god this implies that the power of form is exactly equivalent to the power of energy, that is potential and [kinetic] are precisely equivalent and embodied in the initial singularity whose symmetry is broken

[page 260]

by its bifurcation [into] potential and kinetic energy [I have been calling the initial singularity pure act but a better term would be action (modern) or entelecheia (Aristotle) Wiliam E. Ritter; Why Aristotle Invented the Word Entelecheia

Democracy - the environment selects

Action = entelecheia [εντελεχεια] - integral, complete, the time integral of the energy is a task completed wholeness rather than purpose.

Saturday 7 November 2020
Last 4 chapters of Scientific Theology to cover similar territory to Aristotle's Metaphysics, Ethics, politics, Rhetoric and Poetics, ie the social and intellectual structures built on our perception of our own nature. I'm no Aristotle and I know the project is beyond me but I see some light in the future and can only go on because there is no going back. Physicists attribute this to a statistical arrow of time which is the broadest possible view framed by the laws of thermodynamics. The layered network approach sets out to add some explanation and intelligibility to this view. We have three axioms:

[page 261]

1. god the universe is pure action, entelecheia, completed events [which are classical];
2. pure action has unbounded fertility (variation);
3. the universe is locally consistent (selection).
Consequence: The past is the stable source of the future.

A productive walk. Layering and infrastructure: the body is the infrastructure of the mind providing it with information input and output, processing power and memory [as space-time does for the whole of classical physical reality]. And the mind is the seat [infrastructure] of cultural evolution and interpersonal communication. Buber Martin Buber; I and Thou

Whence comes the power of formalism? It is the element of action (enetelecheia, substantia, complete entity) that guides the energy. This is true in human societies and we use symmetry with respect to complexity to extrapolate it right back to the initial singularity.

Quantum mechanics deals with forms and possibilities and interaction of quantum systems produces "entelechies" ie elements of the real world.

The key to democracy. Environment selects by the weight of numbers, just as the weight of numbers [of quanta of action] is the foundation of the identity of mass and energy.

Turning all the old ideas on their heads, we understand metaphysics as the infrastructure of physics as metamathematics is the infrastructure of mathematics. Intellect, in the divine cognitive world, begins at the beginning with the traditional god or the initial singularity, the primordial quantum of action.

[page 262]

So we see fixed point theory as the foundation of intelligence because god is continuous, closed and convex.

Fixed point theory working on the axioms of the universe above gives us the universe as we currently experience it.

The foundation of human social evolution is through imagination and empirical information that produces social infrastructure as a result of consistency, mathematics and logic.

my desire is to convince myself that my hypothesis is true. The weak spot is my felt need to recast the physics of fundamental particles and quantum theory because I have a lot of difficulty with it, but it is not necessary since the idea that the universe plays all the roles of god is effectively achieved by a reductio ad absurdum of the traditional god whose role in theology relies fundamentally on the premise that we enjoy eternal life and so a whole new world awaits us after death. Why do I place so much evidence on the revision of physics? This is more of an aesthetic thing arising from the heuristic of simplicity applied via the initial singularity and perhaps motivated by my difficulties with the infinities and extreme complexities of fundamental physics which I attribute to the use of continuous mathematics in an arithmetic approach to what I see as a quantized logical world to be interpreted as a cognitive structure. I am at sea here but strongly attached to the feeling that given another twenty years I can make sense of it all, a pleasant delusion perhaps.

[page 263]

Feeling good abut the work but not at this moment motivated to pursue it because I am getting older and no longer in a hurry. My time will come some day, probably not in my lifetime, the paradigm change I am seeking is too big.

There is another reason for pursuing physics however in that a simple Einsteinlike tour de force of producing a theory of everything (ie a theology) that serves as a physical model of everything embracing not only gravitation but all of fundamental physics would provide me with a perfect platform for a theological revolution. This is virtually impossible for me to pull off but I think the vast increase in variety available by modelling the world by transfinite logic rather than continuous functions, which can only describe a symmetry where nothing happens rather than complex algorithms that achieve something, is a very powerful methodology that opens up possibilities far beyond differentiable manifolds and Lie groups and if I could just see how to get to grips with the application of this approach I might be able to achieve something. The only way is to keep circling around it until I find an entry. In my 20s the doctrine of the Trinity appeared to me as an impenetrable crystal ball from which my mind slid off at every approach, but now is seems as a logial commonplace that I fully understand (with modifications) and the starting point for going beyond a divine trinity to a divine transfinity. All that is needed (!!) is an application if this idea that yields numerical answers in the measurement fields of physics and engineering. Look at what Marie Curie did with precious little knowledge of nuclear physics. Marie Curie - Wikipedia

[page 264]

Like breaking concrete, chisel a bit here, chisel a bit there, until finally a big bit comes off.

Copyright:

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

Further reading

Books

Aristotle, and (translated by P H Wickstead and F M Cornford), Physics books I-IV, Harvard University Press, William Heinemann 1980 Introduction: 'The title "Physics" is misleading. .. "Lectures on Nature" the alternative title found in editions of the Greek text, is more enlightening. ... The realm of Nature, for Aristotle, includes all things that move and change ... . Thus the ultimate "matter" which, according to Aristotle, underlies all the elementary substances must be studied, in its changes at least, by the Natural Philosopher. And so must the eternal heavenly spheres of the Aristotelean philosophy, insofar as they themselves move of are the cause of motion in the sublunary world.' 
Amazon
  back

Ashby, W Ross, An Introduction to Cybernetics, Methuen 1956, 1964 'This book is intended to provide [an introduction to cybernetics]. It starts from common-place and well understood concepts, and proceeds step by step to show how these concepts can be made exact, and how they can be developed until they lead into such subjects as feedback, stability, regulation, ultrastability, information, coding, noise and other cybernetic topics.' 
Amazon
  back

Augustine, Saint, and Edmond Hill (Introduction, translation and notes), and John E Rotelle (editor), The Trinity, New City Press 399-419, 1991 Written 399 - 419: De Trinitate is a radical restatement, defence and development of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Augustine's book has served as a foundation for most subsequent work, particularly that of Thomas Aquinas.  
Amazon
  back

Buber, Martin, I and Thou, Martino Fine Books 2010 Review: 'I and Thou, Martin Buber's classic philosophical work, is among the 20th century's foundational documents of religious ethics. "The close association of the relation to God with the relation to one's fellow-men . . . is my most essential concern," Buber explains in the Afterword. Before discussing that relationship, in the book's final chapter, Buber explains at length the range and ramifications of the ways people treat one another, and the ways they bear themselves in the natural world. "One should beware altogether of understanding the conversation with God . . . as something that occurs merely apart from or above the everyday," Buber explains. "God's address to man penetrates the events in all our lives and all the events in the world around us, everything biographical and everything historical, and turns it into instruction, into demands for you and me." Throughout I and Thou, Buber argues for an ethic that does not use other people (or books, or trees, or God), and does not consider them objects of one's own personal experience. Instead, Buber writes, we must learn to consider everything around us as "You" speaking to "me," and requiring a response. Buber's dense arguments can be rough going at times, but Walter Kaufmann's definitive 1970 translation contains hundreds of helpful footnotes providing Buber's own explanations of the book's most difficult passages.' --Michael Joseph Gross 
Amazon
  back

Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. . . . In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands 
Amazon
  back

Fitzgerald, A E, and David E Higginbotham, , Mcgraw Hill 1957  
Amazon
  back

Goetz, Philip W, and (Editor-in-Chief), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Helen Hemingway Benton 1981  
Amazon
  back

Khinchin, Aleksandr Yakovlevich, Mathematical Foundations of Information Theory (translated by P A Silvermann and M D Friedman), Dover 1957 Jacket: 'The first comprehensive introduction to information theory, this book places the work begun by Shannon and continued by McMillan, Feinstein and Khinchin on a rigorous mathematical basis. For the first time, mathematicians, statisticians, physicists, cyberneticists and communications engineers are offered a lucid, comprehensive introduction to this rapidly growing field.' 
Amazon
  back

Khinchin, Aleksandr Yakovlevich, The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Statistics, Dover 1998 'In the area of quantum statistics, I show that a rigorous mathematical basis of the computational formulas of statistical physics . . . may be obtained from an elementary application of the well-developed limit theorems of the theory of probability.' 
Amazon
  back

Veltman, Martinus, Diagrammatica: The Path to the Feynman Rules, Cambridge University Press 1994 Jacket: 'This book provides an easily accessible introduction to quantum field theory via Feynman rules and calculations in particle physics. The aim is to make clear what the physical foundations of present-day field theory are, to clarify the physical content of Feynman rules, and to outline their domain of applicability. ... The book includes valuable appendices that review some essential mathematics, including complex spaces, matrices, the CBH equation, traces and dimensional regularization. ...' 
Amazon
  back

Papers

Dirac, P A M, "The Lagrangian in Quantum Mechanics", Physikalische Zeitschrift der Sowjetunion, 3, 1, 1933, page 64-72. 'Quantum mechanics was built up on a foundation of analogy with the Hamiltonian theory of classical mechanics. . . . there is an alternative formulation of classical dynamics provided by the Lagrangian. This requires one to work in terms of coordinates and velocities instead of coordinates and momenta. The two formulations are, of course, closely related, but there are reasons for believing that the Lagrangian one is the more fundamental.' Reprinted in Julian Schwinger (editor), Selected Papers on Quantum Electrodynamics, Dover, New York, 1958.. back

Feynman, R P, "Space-Time approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics", Reviews of Modern Physics, 20, , 1948, page 367 - 387. 'Non-relativistic quantum mechanics is formulated here in a different way. It is, however, mathematically equivalent to the familiar formulation. In quantum mechanics the probability of an event which can happen in several different ways is the absolute square of a sum of the complex contributions, one from each alternative way. The probability that a particle will be found to have a path x(t) lying somewere within a region of space time is the square of a sum of contributions, one from each path in the region. The contribution from a single path is postulated to be an exponential whose (imaginary) phase is the classical action (in units of h) for the path in question. The total contribution from all paths reaching , x, t from the past is the wave function psi(x, t). This is shown to satisfy Schroedinger's equation. The relation to matrix agebra is discussed. Applications are indicated, in particular to eliminate the coordinates of the field oscillators from the equations of quantum electrodynamics.'. back

Links

Albert Einstein, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, An english translation of the paper that founded Special relativity. 'Examples of this sort, [in the contemporary application of Maxwell's electrodynamics to moving bodies] together with the unsuccessful attempts to discover any motion of the earth relatively to the ``light medium,'' suggest that the phenomena of electrodynamics as well as of mechanics possess no properties corresponding to the idea of absolute rest. They suggest rather that, as has already been shown to the first order of small quantities, the same laws of electrodynamics and optics will be valid for all frames of reference for which the equations of mechanics hold good.' back

Alexandra Petri, America's friends embarased it still insisting Trumpism a fluke, not personality trait, ' “I just think I am better than this,” the United States said very slowly. “I have to think that.” Everyone nodded encouragingly. “Of course. If it weren’t for thinking you were better than you are, you’d have no personality whatsoever.” ' back

Andreas Ortmann, The replication crisis has engulfed economics, 'A sense of crisis is developing in economics after two Federal Reserve economists came to the alarming conclusion that economics research is usually not replicable. The economists took 67 empirical papers from 13 reputable academic journals. Without assistance from the original researchers they were only able to get the same result in a third of cases. With the original researchers’ assistance, that percentage increased to about half, suggesting reporting practices and requirements are seriously deficient.' back

Angel-A - Wikipedia, Angel-A - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Angel-A, is a 2005 French fantasy and romantic drama film written and directed by Luc Besson and featuring Jamel Debbouze and Rie Rasmussen.' back

Aristotle - On the Soul, On the Soul - The Internet Classics Archive, 'Holding as we do that, while knowledge of any kind is a thing to be honoured and prized, one kind of it may, either by reason of its greater exactness or of a higher dignity and greater wonderfulness in its objects, be more honourable and precious than another, on both accounts we should naturally be led to place in the front rank the study of the soul. The knowledge of the soul admittedly contributes greatly to the advance of truth in general, and, above all, to our understanding of Nature, for the soul is in some sense the principle of animal life. Our aim is to grasp and understand, first its essential nature, and secondly its properties; of these some are taught to be affections proper to the soul itself, while others are considered to attach to the animal owing to the presence within it of soul.' back

Boolean algebra - Wikipedia, Boolean algebra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematics and mathematical logic, Boolean algebra is the branch of algebra in which the values of the variables are the truth values true and false, usually denoted 1 and 0 respectively. Instead of elementary algebra where the values of the variables are numbers, and the main operations are addition and multiplication, the main operations of Boolean algebra are the conjunction and, denoted ∧, the disjunction or, denoted ∨, and the negation not, denoted ¬. It is thus a formalism for describing logical relations in the same way that ordinary algebra describes numeric relations.' back

Bose-Einstein statistics - Wikipedia, Bose-Einstein statistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In statistical mechanics, Bose–Einstein statistics (or more colloquially B–E statistics) determines the statistical distribution of identical indistinguishable bosons over the energy states in thermal equilibrium.' back

Catholic Catechism, p1, s2, c1, a1, p7, The Fall, '391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing." ' back

Christopher Shields, Aristotle (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), First published Thu Sep 25, 2008 'Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) numbers among the greatest philosophers of all time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: . . . A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive. His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines, from logic, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, through ethics, political theory, aesthetics and rhetoric, and into such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology, where he excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and taxonomy. In all these areas, Aristotle's theories have provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership.' back

Christopher Shields, Aristotle's Psychology (Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), 'De Anima, . . . introduces as a question for consideration “whether all affections are common to what has the soul or whether there is some affection peculiar to the soul itself” (De Anima i 1, 402a3–5). That is, in De Anima Aristotle wants to know whether all psychological states are also material states of the body. “This,” he remarks, “it is necessary to grasp, but not easy” (De Anima i 1, 402a5). In this way, De Anima proceeds at a higher level of abstraction than the Parva Naturalia. It is generally more theoretical, more self-conscious about method, and more alert to general philosophical questions about perception, thinking, and soul-body relations. back

Christopher Shields - Aristotle, Aristotle (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy), First published Thu Sep 25, 2008 'Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) numbers among the greatest philosophers of all time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence, only Plato is his peer: . . . A prodigious researcher and writer, Aristotle left a great body of work, perhaps numbering as many as two-hundred treatises, from which approximately thirty-one survive. His extant writings span a wide range of disciplines, from logic, metaphysics and philosophy of mind, through ethics, political theory, aesthetics and rhetoric, and into such primarily non-philosophical fields as empirical biology, where he excelled at detailed plant and animal observation and taxonomy. In all these areas, Aristotle's theories have provided illumination, met with resistance, sparked debate, and generally stimulated the sustained interest of an abiding readership.' back

Chritine L. Corton, The Return of London's Fog, 'Cambridge, England — IN January, researchers at King’s College London announced that pollution levels on Oxford Street, in central London, had exceeded limits set for the entire year in just the first four days of 2015. Similarly alarming numbers have been recorded for other streets in the city — and yet the mayor, Boris Johnson, has delayed implementation of stricter air-quality measures until 2020.' back

CSIRO, Australian National Outlook 2015, ' Helping to navigate the future The National Outlook is a first attempt to understand and analyse the connections in Australia’s physical economy many decades into the future.' back

dailytheology.org, (DT) Daily Theology, 'Rooted in the Roman Catholic tradition, our posts aim at creating conversations that are meaningful for a diversity of human experiences today. We hope to integrate intellectual endeavor with spiritual exploration by viewing relevant topics–from pop culture to family life to world politics–through distinct theological disciplines–from ethics to liturgical studies to systematic theology. We promote honest and open dialogue through accessible, critical, and self-reflective writing that seeks deeper understanding of our Christian faith and upholds the dignity of all people.' back

David Kaiser, How Politics Shaped General Relativity, 'In the 100 years since, Einstein’s theory has been famously successful. Physicists and astronomers have applied general relativity to far-flung reaches of the cosmos, and no experiment or observation has yet revealed a discrepancy. Less commonly understood, however, is how thoroughly the research into this profound, abstruse and seemingly otherworldly theory was shaped by the messy human dramas of the past century.' back

Delphi Classics, Delphi Classics, 'We are a publishing team that blends our love of classic literature and art with consummate eBook editing skills. What separates Delphi Classics from other digital publishers of classic literature is our dedication to providing the actual complete works of authors, as we seek out rare and ‘lost’ texts to add to our attractive editions. For the first time in publishing history, readers can enjoy the complete works of writers such as Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Beatrix Potter and many, many more in a single edition. And each collection is charged at less than the price of a cup of coffee.' back

Dennis Overbye, Looking for Another Earth? Here are 300 Million, Maybe, ' A decade ago, a band of astronomers set out to investigate one of the oldest questions taunting philosophers, scientists, priests, astronomers, mystics and the rest of the human race: How many more Earths are out there, if any? How many far-flung planets exist that could harbor life as we know it? . . . According to NASA estimates there are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way, of which about 4 billion are sunlike. If only 7 percent of those stars have habitable planets — a seriously conservative estimate — there could be as many as 300 million potentially habitable Earths out there in the whole Milky Way alone.' back

Fermi-Dirac statistics - Wikipedia, Fermi-Dirac statistics - Wikipedia, the fre encyclopedia, 'In statistical mechanics, Fermi-Dirac statistics is a particular case of particle statistics developed by Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac that determines the statistical distribution of fermions over the energy states for a system in thermal equilibrium. In other words, it is the distribution of the probabilities that each possible energy levels is occupied by a fermion. back

Feynman, Leighton & Sands FLP III:08, Chapter 8: The Hamiltonian Matrix, 'One problem then in describing nature is to find a suitable representation for the base states. But that’s only the beginning. We still want to be able to say what “happens.” If we know the “condition” of the world at one moment, we would like to know the condition at a later moment. So we also have to find the laws that determine how things change with time. We now address ourselves to this second part of the framework of quantum mechanics—how states change with time.' back

Gödel number - Wikipedia, Gödel number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematical logic, a Gödel numbering is a function that assigns to each symbol and well-formed formula of some formal language a unique natural number, called its Gödel number. The concept was first used by Kurt Gödel for the proof of his incompleteness theorem. A Gödel numbering can be interpreted as an encoding in which a number is assigned to each symbol of a mathematical notation, after which a sequence of natural numbers can then represent a sequence of strings. These sequences of natural numbers can again be represented by single natural numbers, facilitating their manipulation in formal theories of arithmetic.' back

Harriet Sherwood, Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts, study finds, 'They found that religious belief is a negative influence on children’s altruism. “Overall, our findings ... contradict the commonsense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind towards others,” said the authors of The Negative Association Between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism Across the World, published this week in Current Biology. back

Jeanett Bergan, Xi Jinping can combat the world's single greatest threat - if he walks the talk on carbon neutrality, ' Faced with our greatest single global threat, man-made climate change, Xi has much more power to change the future than Trump, who claimed China invented global warming and promised to bring back coal but instead oversaw a national coal industry collapse at a faster rate than his predecessor Barack Obama. . . . Despite mass national clean energy deployment , Chinese provinces are still directing their capital at coal. This is a colossal waste – nearly 60 per cent of China’s current enormous coal fleet is running at a loss. Now is the time to lock in a green stimulus with the right plans and policies.' back

John C. Eccles, Innovation in Science: The Physiology of Imagination, ' Our task here is to see how far our present ideas on the working of the brain can be related to the experiences of mind. The way to the imagination, the highest level of mental experience, lies through the lower levels of sensory experience, imagery, hallucination and memory, and that is the path we shall traverse. All that we shall learn must itself, of course, be the product of perceiving, reasoning and imagining by our brains! back

Jonathan Fredland, The assassintion of Yitzak Rabin: 'H never knew it was one of his peole who shot him in the back', ' But it wasn’t just his car that was waiting backstage. Yigal Amir, a 25-year-old Israeli Jew, fervent in his faith and his nationalism, stepped out of the shadows and calmly shot the prime minister twice in quick succession. An hour and a half later, Rabin would be pronounced dead. Within a few months, his government would go the same way, taking the prospect of a lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis along with it.' back

Josh Roose, Trump still enjoys huge support among evangelical voters — and its not only becasue of abortion, ' The latest Pew Research Centre report shows Trump is favoured over his current Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, among white evangelicals (78%), non-evangelical white Protestants (53%) and white Catholics (52%). Among other religious groups, Trump’s support is much lower. He trails his Biden among Jewish voters (70-27%), Hispanic Catholics (67-26%) and importantly, Black Protestants (90-9%). The question persists then why, despite Trump’s many moral failings, he has maintained such strong support from white evangelicals.' back

Juan Yin et al, Bounding the speed of 'spooky action at a distance', ' In their well-known paper, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen called the nonlocal correlation in quantum entanglement a “spooky action at a distance.” If the spooky action does exist, what is its speed? All previous experiments along this direction have locality and freedom-of-choice loopholes. Here, we strictly closed the loopholes by observing a 12 h continuous violation of the Bell inequality and concluded that the lower bound speed of spooky action was 4 orders of magnitude of the speed of light if Earth’s speed in any inertial reference frame was less than 10-3 time the speed of light. ' back

Love & Other Drugs - Wikipedia, Love & Other Drugs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Love & Other Drugs is a 2010 American romantic comedy-drama film directed, produced and co-written by Edward Zwick and based on Jamie Reidy's 2005 non-fiction book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway, Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria, Josh Gad and Gabriel Macht, the film tells the story of a medicine peddler in 1990s Pittsburgh who starts a relationship with a young woman suffering from Parkinson's Disease.' back

Lowenheim–Skolem theorem - Wikipedia, Löwenheim–Skolem theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In mathematical logic, the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem states that if a countable first-order theory has an infinite model, then for every infinite cardinal number κ it has a model of size κ. The result implies that first-order theories are unable to control the cardinality of their infinite models, and that no first-order theory with an infinite model can have exactly one model up to isomorphism. The (downward) Löwenheim–Skolem theorem is one of the two key properties, along with the compactness theorem, that is used in Lindström's theorem to characterize first-order logic. In general, the Löwenheim–Skolem theorem does not hold in stronger logics such as second-order logic.' back

Malina, McKinnon, Kruger, & Balia, An open ketter from 1,200 Australian academics on the Djab Wurring trees, ' In an open letter, more than 1,200 academics from universities and institutes across Australia have written to the Victorian government to protest against the destruction of Djab Wurrung country as part of a highway duplication in the west of the state. The letter follows the removal of the Directions Tree last week. The signatories listed below are both Indigenous and non-Indigenous. We are Australian academics* writing to condemn the destruction of the 350 year-old sacred Djab Wurrung Directions Tree at the hands of the Victorian government. We call on the government to urgently halt works and protect the remaining Djab Wurrung trees and land from destruction.' back

Many-worlds interpretation - Wikipedia, Many-worlds interpretation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wavefunction collapse. This implies that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realized in some "world" or universe.' back

Marie Curie - Wikipedia, Marie Curie - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Marie Skłodowska Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. As part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes, she was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.' back

Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics - Wikipedia, Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In statistical mechanics, Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics describes the statistical distribution of material particles over various energy states in thermal equilibrium, when the temperature is high enough and density is low enough to render quantum effects negligible.' back

Memory management - Wikipedia, Memory management - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Memory management is the act of managing computer memory at the system level. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when no longer needed. This is critical to any advanced computer system where more than a single process might be underway at any time.' back

Micah Lakin Avni, The Facebook Infitada, 'Sickeningly, my father, too, became a viral hit on Palestinian social media: Hours after he was shot and stabbed, a video re-enactment of the attack was posted online celebrating the gruesome incident, and calling on more young Palestinians to go out and murder Jews. Such images, YouTube videos and comments have become a regular feature on social media after every attack.' back

Michael Corkery and Jessica Silver-Greenberg, In Religious Arbitration Scripture is the Rule of Law, 'To his family and friends, Mr. Ellison’s professed identity change was just one of many clues that something had gone wrong at the program, Teen Challenge, where he had been sent by a judge as an alternative to jail. But when his family sued Teen Challenge in 2012 hoping to uncover what had happened, they quickly hit a wall. When he was admitted to the program, at age 20, Mr. Ellison signed a contract that prevented him and his family from taking the Christian group to court. Instead, his claim had to be resolved through a mediation or arbitration process that would be bound not by state or federal law, but by the Bible. “The Holy Scripture shall be the supreme authority,” the rules of the proceedings state.' back

Minkowski space - Wikipedia, Minkowski space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In mathematical physics, Minkowski space or Minkowski spacetime is a combination of Euclidean space and time into a four-dimensional manifold where the spacetime interval between any two events is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded. Although initially developed by mathematician Hermann Minkowski for Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, the mathematical structure of Minkowski spacetime was shown to be an immediate consequence of the postulates of special relativity.' back

N D Cook, Unification of Nuclear Structure Theory is Possible, Essay Abstract 'The impossibility of achieving a unified theory of nuclear structure has been the conventional wisdom in nuclear physics since the 1960s. However, already in 1937 Eugene Wigner indicated a way forward in theoretical work that eventually led to a Nobel Prize, but not directly to unification. Specifically, he showed that the symmetries of the Schrodinger equation have an intrinsic face-centered-cubic (FCC) geometry. Those symmetries provide for a fully quantum mechanical unification of the diverse models of nuclear structure theory, as indicated by the following facts: (i) The FCC lattice reproduces the properties of the liquid-drop model due to short-range nucleon-nucleon interactions (constant core density, saturation of binding energies, nuclear radii dependent on the number of nucleons, vibrational states, etc.). (ii) There is an inherent tetrahedral subgrouping of nucleons in the close-packed lattice (producing configurations of alpha clusters identical to those in the cluster models). And, most importantly, (iii) all of the quantum n-shells, and j- and m-subshells of the independent-particle model are reproduced as spherical, cylindrical and conical substructures within the FCC lattice – with, moreover, proton and neutron occupancies in each shell and subshell identical to those known from the shell model. These facts were established in the 1970s and 1980s, but the “impossibility of unification” had already achieved the status of dogma by the 1960s. Here, I present the case for viewing the lattice model as a unification of tradi'tional nuclear structure theory – an unambiguous example of how declarations of the “impossibility” of progress can impede progress. back

Order of Preachers, Official Documents - Constitution, ' CONSTITUTIO FUNDAMENTALIS1. — § I. – Propositum Ordinis his exprimebat verbis Honorius papa III s. Dominico et fratribus eius scribens: “Is qui Ecclesiam suam nova semper prole fecundat, volens hæc moderna tempora conformare prioribus et fidem catholicam propagare, pium inspiravit vobis affectum quo, amplexi paupertatem et regularem vitam professi verbi Dei exhortationi vacetis, evangelizantes per orbem nomen Domini nostri Iesu Christi”. back

Q factor - Wikipedia, Q factor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In physics and engineering the quality factor or Q factor is a dimensionless parameter that describes how under-damped an oscillator or resonator is,[1] or equivalently, characterizes a resonator's bandwidth relative to its center frequency.[2] Higher Q indicates a lower rate of energy loss relative to the stored energy of the oscillator; the oscillations die out more slowly.' back

Ross Douhat, Letter to the Catholic Academy, 'So in my columns, I’ve tried to cut through those obfuscations toward what seems like basic truth. There really is a high-stakes division, at the highest levels of the church, over whether to admit divorced and remarried Catholics to communion and what that change would mean. In this division, the pope clearly inclines toward the liberalizing view and has consistently maneuvered to advance it. At the recent synod, he was dealt a modest but genuine setback by conservatives.' back

Ross Gittins, Economists propose same old same old on tax reform, 'It's a way for economists to appear to have useful advice on problems they don't really know much about. Q: How should we encourage people to work more? A: cut the company tax rate and the top rate on individuals. Q: How should we encourage people to save more? A: cut the company tax rate and the top rate on individuals. Q: How should we encourage people to invest more? A: cut the company tax rate and the top rate on individuals. Q: How should we encourage innovation? A: cut the company tax rate and the top rate on individuals. Q: How can we make the economy more agile? A: cut the company tax rate and the top rate on individuals.' back

Sheffer stroke - Wikipedia, Sheffer stroke - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In Boolean functions and propositional calculus, the Sheffer stroke, named after Henry M. Sheffer, written "|" . . . denotes a logical operation that is equivalent to the negation of the conjunction operation, expressed in ordinary language as "not both". It is also called nand ("not and") or the alternative denial, since it says in effect that at least one of its operands is false.' back

Statistical mechanics - Wikipedia, Statistical mechanics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Statistical mechanics (or statistical thermodynamics is the application of probability theory, which includes mathematical tools for dealing with large populations, to the field of mechanics, which is concerned with the motion of particles or objects when subjected to a force. . . . The essential problem in statistical thermodynamics is to determine the distribution of a given amount of energy E over N identical systems. The goal of statistical thermodynamics is to understand and to interpret the measurable macroscopic properties of materials in terms of the properties of their constituent particles and the interactions between them. This is done by connecting thermodynamic functions to quantum-mechanic equations. Two central quantities in statistical thermodynamics are the Boltzmann factor and the partition function.' back

Steve Hatfield-Dodds et. al, Australia is 'free to choose' economic growth and falling environmental pressures, Abstract: Over two centuries of economic growth have put undeniable pressure on the ecological systems that underpin human well-being. While it is agreed that these pressures are increasing, views divide on how they may be alleviated. Some suggest technological advances will automatically keep us from transgressing key environmental thresholds; others that policy reform can reconcile economic and ecological goals; while a third school argues that only a fundamental shift in societal values can keep human demands within the Earth’s ecological limits. Here we use novel integrated analysis of the energy–water–food nexus, rural land use (including biodiversity), material flows and climate change to explore whether mounting ecological pressures in Australia can be reversed, while the population grows and living standards improve. We show that, in the right circumstances, economic and environmental outcomes can be decoupled. Although economic growth is strong across all scenarios, environmental performance varies widely: pressures are projected to more than double, stabilize or fall markedly by 2050. However, we find no evidence that decoupling will occur automatically. Nor do we find that a shift in societal values is required. Rather, extensions of current policies that mobilize technology and incentivize reduced pressure account for the majority of differences in environmental performance. Our results show that Australia can make great progress towards sustainable prosperity, if it chooses to do so.' back

Stoicism - Wikipedia, Stoicism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early 3rd century BC. The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and the active relationship between cosmic determinism and human freedom, and the belief that it is virtuous to maintain a will (called prohairesis) that is in accord with nature. Because of this, the Stoics presented their philosophy as a way of life, and they thought that the best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved.' back

Tilman Ruff 7 Dimity Hawkins, 315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nucelar testing in Australia and the Pacific, ' The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received its 50th ratification on October 24, and will therefore come into force in January 2021. A historic development, this new international law will ban the possession, development, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. . . . From 1946, around 315 nuclear tests were carried out in the Pacific by the US, Britain and France. These nations’ largest ever nuclear tests took place on colonised lands and oceans, from Australia to the Marshall Islands, Kiribati to French Polynesia. . . . The total number of global cancer deaths as a result of atmospheric nuclear test explosions has been estimated at between 2 million and 2.4 million, even though these studies used radiation risk estimates that are now dated and likely underestimated the risk. ' back

Timothy Egan, Fossil Fools, 'It’s not surprising, given its army of first-rate scientists and engineers, that Exxon was aware as far back as the 1970s that carbon dioxide from oil and gas burning could have dire effects on the earth. Nor is it surprising that Exxon would later try to cast doubt on what its experts knew to be true, to inject informational pollution into the river of knowledge about climate change. But what is startling is how a deliberate campaign of misinformation — now disavowed by even Exxon Mobil itself — has found its way into the minds of the leading Republican presidential candidates.' back

Wiliam E. Ritter, Why Aristotle Invented the Word Entelecheia, ' The definition of entelecheia given by Ross and others, namely, "actuality, complete reality," appears to be true to the make-up of the word: enteles, complete, in full; echein, have, hold. ... Again with but little violence to truth we may say that the treatises on Logic, Rhetoric, and Poetry; and on Politics and Ethics are the Aristotelian effort to analyze the entelecheia of man on the spiritual side of his nature." back

Yoni - Wikipedia, Yoni - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Yoni (Sanskrit: योनि yoni, literally "vagina" or "womb") is the symbol of the Goddess (Shakti or Devi), the Hindu Divine Mother. Within Shaivism, the sect dedicated to the god Shiva, the yoni symbolizes his consort. The male counterpart of the yoni is the lingam. Their union represents the eternal process of creation and regeneration.' back

Zva Bar'el, Achieving the Impossible, Trump May Leave the Middle East Worse Than He Found It, ' One thing you can’t accuse President Donald Trump of is being boring. He knows how to put on a show, enthrall global audiences, evoke tragic laughter even when speaking broken English, and create tsunamis on social media better than any other leader. And he scrupulously avoids telling the truth. In the Middle East, he stormed into a junkyard, searched for and found all the parts that don’t fit together, and used them to build a horse with nine legs and five heads.' back

www.naturaltheology.net is maintained by The Theology Company Proprietary Limited ACN 097 887 075 ABN 74 097 887 075 Copyright 2000-2020 © Jeffrey Nicholls