sophiaserpentia | (no subject)

Was quoting Bucky Fuller for a comment in

novapsyche's journal, and it led me down some mental pathways this morning. So I thought I'd record them here for posterity.

Synergetics 311.03 Universe is the aggregate of eternal generalized principles whose nonunitarily conceptual scenario is unfoldingly manifest in a variety of special-case, local, time-space transformative, evolutionary events.

Some of the more intriguing results to come out of physics labs in recent months have called into question the universal constancy of the speed of light and other very basic assumptions on which our current theories are based.

Suppose that no constants at all can be assumed. One one level this would be a satisfactory result for physicists, who do not like to postulate "arbitrary" natural laws. But the implications are mind-blowing. If nothing is constant, then ultimately the universe and everything in it is "special case." Only local conditions can be described with any accuracy. Nature is made of 'stuff' that figures out how to exist, ever improving in its efficiency, and then propagates solutions outwards like ripples -- no condition can be said to be true 'everywhere at once.'

Simply put, the universe refuses to cooperate with our need/desire to express infinite potential in terms understandable to finite minds.

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postulating that everything is a self-organising system. we're just advanced slime mold.

Yes, but can slime mold do this? ;-D

You make remarkably cogent arguements which I shall borrow for discussions with monotheists.

Not wanting to put you opn the spot here, but are you a rather heretical Gnostic Christian? Or ave most of those I have met over the years professing to be Gnostic Christians just been far more monotheistic than you?

Well, in many ways I seem to be considered somewhat heterodox within the Gnostic community, but not 'unacceptably' so.

I'm just a little confused -- I've never professed to being anything other than a monotheist -- so I'm wondering what it is about this particular post that makes you think it is anti-monotheist?

Ah, let me clarify that I do not believe in the "personal" God that many people believe in -- that is, an omniscient omnipotent God with will and intention. Instead my beliefs about God are best summed up in this post I made on Jan. 6.

The suggestion that natural laws do not exist certainly does argue against the "personal God," but not against the vaguely Taoist notion of God as ground-of-being.

> what it is about this particular post that makes you think it is anti-monotheist?

Not so much that your post is anti-monotheist, but that I can use it to perhaps open discussion with monotheists. If people are beginning to concede that "natural law" is a purely localized phenomena, then perhaps one could entertain the notion that a universal God, is just a local phenomena as well. To me, the notion of a universal God exists from the perspective of the limited perceptions of a finite observer locked in space/time. While true for that particular person at that particular location & time, such notions need not be universal, imo. See my post earlier at http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=alobar&itemid=280841

Ah, that's a very good point -- perhaps while things look like there is a "Universal God" here at this vantage point, there might actually be points far enough down the line where this no longer holds. And I certainly can't argue against that.

Since I define God as a nothingness, though, I'm inclined to feel that my definition does not suffer from this same shortcoming. But I can't prove it. (Nor can anyone prove the converse.)

Thank you for pointing out an obvious implication of my thoughts that I had missed.