Karl

That wasn't deliberate I was thinking nature as I wrote laws. Same thing just scrub out my use of laws of nature. There were objects termed 'undifferentiated energy'. You just used a concept. The nature of objects is the nature of objects, the laws of physics are abstracts of causality. That is your materialism speaking :-) The nature of man is to reason. I could be a sod here and play devils advocate just to wind you up but I will refrain :-) The nature of man to reason is not a law of physics. Mans consciousness is not the laws of physics. Man does certain things, things happen in his body, currents flow and from that we can abstract the observations into laws we can use. It's good this discussion. Proper philosophical breakdance with a half materialist, half spiritualist.

Getting closer. Right, the laws of nature are not things in themselves, they pertain to the nature of specific objects. I think I covered this in 101 when considering two billiard balls striking each other. The temptation is to remove the balls, but leave the path. Same with space, it describes the distance between specific objects-space isn't a thing in itself. The Dao then is simply an abstract concept, but it has to be based on objects. The laws of physics did not cause the Big Bang. The nature of objects caused the Big Bang.

Finite, not fixed. Like a balloon it always is a balloon whether it's not blown up are about ready to pop. Funny, but you are edging towards the other side of the philosophical argument which says we can't know reality because it is constantly changing. A number sequence it potentially infinite, but that's an illusion. However big a number you count to, that is the present finite limit.

Finite but boundless.

@MH I can't tell if you are deliberately avoiding my question, being subtly evasive, or just not seeing it. You said Dao was no-thing 'giving birth to' the one thing. Then you said that the Dao was prior to the Big Bang, that Dao was not a thing. You must see the logical issue with that premise bearing in mind your materialist views. If the universe was created, given birth, the Dao prior to the singularity, then you are a creationist. Either the Dao was or it wasn't. If it was then you are giving an atheistic explanation but it's still mystic muscle. It deletes God and puts in place Dao. Or the universe has always been- Big Bang or not-and therefore there was no creation event. If that's so then there is no Dao. Unless your saying Dao is the universe, or Dao is causality within the universe. As soon as you say the Dao cannot be known, surely you see the similarities that God can't be known. The Dao intrinsically imparts its 'way' as God intrinsically imparts the knowledge of 'him'. I cannot see a difference except in the practices that surround the base belief. No religious person these days describes God as a giant bearded character, it's described more as an ethereal kind of spirit in everything. That's what the Dao is.

It's definitely finite.

It is if you are attacking and not simply defending yourself from attack/potential attack. I agree with Lerner, in most cases you walk away from conflict if it isn't going to come back at a later stage. It's one thing avoiding conflict and quite another to take the stance of a pacifist-which is cowardice and it's not just name calling, it's the potential of letting evil manifest. In most cases you call the cops on your behalf and let law take its course. For 'slights' name calling, offensiveness you don't even need to care, it should glance off you if you are secure and confident. Just pursue your argument rationally and poke a bit of fun at the name caller.

I used to get close to adopting that policy when I was nominally libertarian (the non-aggression principle) but eventually I saw the enormous flaw in it. Try responding lovingly to a bull elephant intent on crushing you to death, or a Shark with its teeth around your leg. When someone tries violence you must respond with force or you are inviting evil and chaos to reign. Love does not work against force. Reason does not work against the irrational. Reason cannot thrive where force is operable and thence love dies. Though I walk through the valley of death I fear no evil. Because I am armed with my rod, staff and reason. By heck, anyone trying to stiff me better watch out because I will beat them to a bloody pulp and then find like minded peaceful people with which I can engage in love. Don't turn the other cheek. If someone wants to seriously physical aggress against you, then you had better strike first or you won't be around to do much loving ;-) your first responsibility is to yourself and the values you hold. Anything that unreasonably, or violently gets in the way of you or your values have no hesitation. Smash them to dust so they can't do it to you or anyone else. You have a responsibility to smash evil where you find it, to face it bravely, to proceed with solemnity, without any joy or emotion, to dispatch the thing with as little pain as possible and to take no pleasure, or reward from the experience.

Love COULD never ask for sacrifice. Love is selfish not selfless. Sacrifice is antithetical to love. Love is LIFE affirming. Life and love vs death and hate. Good vs Evil. Sacrifice=selflessness and life=selfishness. I'm talking about rational selfishness and not the emotional state.

Well I'm happy enough with that explanation as an interpretation of 'nominal centre', but you really can't have a precise geometric centre in anything other than a regular, uniform geometric shape. As I didn't see the program I can't really argue the point and really wouldn't anyway. No doubt there is a gravitational centre made up of diverse gravitational points as well. However, in any argument we must define the terms, so 'nominal' can mean many things. We can say centre of gravity, centre of mass, centre of balance centre of population etc.

The whole point of discussion is that we don't share each other's views :-) if you did accept my views there isn't anything else to say. I don't really know how little the steps can be I'm trying to do that through objectivist 101. This stuff isn't exactly simple so you have to begin by accepting that reason and logic is the only arbitrator. If we can't get to square one it's impossible to make progress. It's like showing someone a magnetic compass and a map only to be told that it can't be used for navigating because someone has a bad feeling, that it's Gods will, or that we can't ever know true reality and that the map and compass isn't representative. Then when I ask how we get to our destination, the first says the destination isn't important only how someone feels 'in the moment', the second say 'if it's Gods will we will go' the third says 'how do you know we aren't already there ?' The baby steps are the acceptance that reason and logic are necessary otherwise I'm going to drop kick the compass into a lake and eat the map. I don't know if there is a centre, you are presuming a regular shape. What if the universe is a spiral, or an enormous curl or a stack of cubes ? I don't know, it's immaterial to me if there is or isn't. That's not my fight. I can kind of get where he might be coming from if you consider 'space' is simply the distance between specific objects. So, we can determine (roughly) the centre point between two planets, but then if we have billions of galaxies how do we then find a centre ?

Cheeky twat ;-) LOL

I would love to sit down with you over a cold beer and chat face to face. You have two ends of a ball of twine which end in two ends but looks like you have the complete thread. You have two philosophies wedged together in a way that you think makes perfect sense, but you did not answer my previous question. Instead you have put a 'remainder' or 'balancer' in place to avoid answering it. I don't think you are aware of it, I think it just suits your viewpoint. It's something all philosophers encounter when they embark on a treaties and discover they haven't correctly defined a term. It's very easy for the brain to just intuit some connection, just gloss over the unknown term as if it cannot matter in the overall philosophy. So, firstly I wasn't suggesting there was a God. Going back to Plato reveals that his view was of our universe being a pale imitation of the real universe- one of perfect forms. This for Plato was the origin of the universe. A place no man could know, but could only perceive by the weaker corrupted projections that he perceived in this universe. You see the sprouting of the glossing beginning here. Plato didn't know and so he just added a fudge factor like we often do with aether or dark matter. That there must be something that created the universe we perceive, but we can't know it. Then the religious Mystics got a hold of this philosophy and substituted heaven and God for Platos perfect forms. Finally the modern sophist (Kant/Hegel/Dewey/Descartes) has imparted the fully scientific universe in which many scientists have found themselves emulating philosophers and many economists also. This is the philosophy that man never steps in the same stream twice-which is essentially the Dao and why you are so attracted to it. If you get chance look up the works of the very earliest philosopher Heraclitus and you will see Daoism staring at you. Unfortunately scientist seem to be readily abandoning reason on which all science is based and are heading off into nebulous sophistry. I came up with sophistry myself almost completely by accident in a pub whilst working in Aberdeen. Seems funny to recount it because so much has happened since. I had an epiphany-or so I thought-that 0=1. You might see that I had already accelerated past Hawkins at that point. I had already discovered the erroneous theory that the universe was nothingness and nothingness was equal to somethingness. Atheism is not the denial of the supernatural. It is the denial of the spiritual supernatural. Atheism, in the sense you mean it, is the acceptance of the muscular supernatural. We have been bobbing along between these two mystic cults for so long we have created immense narratives of broadened fantasy. The supernatural muscular has nothing to do with science, it is pseudo science. It is science bereft of reason but like Aquinus did for religion, reason is tacked on in a supporting role for the inherent sophist mysticism that runs through it like raspberry ripple. Until you wallow in the philosophies you can't grasp the significance. They are not just some dusty old folks that gave lectures and wrote their thoughts on faded parchment, their philosophies are alive in all of us, they shape our every thought and action. Science is totally inspired by philosophy, but it isn't philosophy, it's supposed to be reason and logic applied to observation. Once science began to believe it was philosophy it threw reason in the bin and fell into a religious self belief that it was the source of all knowledge. Our literature is filled with warnings about letting the tool become the artist.

Only if you consider death as strength and life as weakness. It's true that you can't hurt the dead anywhere near as much as the living. That's why collectivist and religious ideologies centre around the sacrifice of self, either to 'the greater good' (state/society) or to God (heaven). They are predominantly anti-life and tell people to be selfless so they get a better life in heaven, or die a glorious death for the nation state. So, if death is you aim and you wish to sacrifice your life for some higher ideal then strength is weakness, just as hate is love, war is peace. Orwell would have made you a character in his book. See, you have actually given up, surrendered, laid down and stopped struggling. It feels peaceful because death is peaceful. When you drowning and give up the struggle then all is peaceful, your life is ended and you accepted it. To do that in everyday life is to deny the value of your life. It's living suicide.

It isn't about perspectives but about logic. If someone discovers a better means of thinking than logic then I've yet to hear it. If the universe was 'created' then it isn't the universe. It's something else entirely and we might as well say it was God because that really is where people like Hawkins are headed. That's the problem with materialist atheists, they live by science as a philosophy and it isn't one. Science comes after philosophy. If a scientist is getting into creationism -even an atheistic version-he has veered into philosophy and he must put away his microscope and go macro. It's not my 'opinion' that shows me an atheist creationist is logically inconsistent. I can add 2 + 2 = 4 I don't need to consider alternative perspectives. I don't require 'it might be true for you but not for me' or ' that 2 is just a symbol' or 'no one can know if it's exactly 2'. Scientists should stop philosophising and get back to their microscopes, experiments and direct observations utilising the logical method they were given. The universe wasn't created, because that involves an infinite regression. The intrincisists came up with God and now the subjectivists have determined it's nothingness. Absolutely barmy. What created God, what created nothingness ? Maybe nothingness created God, or God first created nothingness-I mean he is omnipotent and omniscient so nothingness is a fucking doddle for God. He is just as relevant as nothingness in that context. The final play for materialists is to substitute zero for the intrinsicist infinity. It's like crap chequers.

I have no idea how you integrate that with your materialist views ! When have you ever witnessed no-thing giving birth to some-thing ? We have a universe that is, always will be and always has been. There was no 'before' and there will be no 'after'.

I disagree. Something is something; nothing is nothing. The universe has identity no matter if it's homogenous or not. It is something. I don't have any confusion with the issue as long as we stay on the philosophical end of things. I don't argue entropy only causality. Things don't rearrange themselves back into the things they were prior to disintegration, but that does not mean they don't form new things. The universe was supposed to be contracting until it was discovered it is actual expanding.

I can't decide if you are being serious or not ? :-)

You think that Britain should stay in the EU because Britain has a strong financial industry and no bankers went to jail :-/ I'm sure that won't appear in the Remain campaigns reasons to stay and the Leave campaign certainly would be threatened by that revelation.m

No. Something is not the absence of nothing. Something is something. Nothing is nothing. We can't envisage nothing and that's where the confusion is. There are no cakes left on the plate, does not mean there are no cakes, only that there are no cakes in that particular place. There aren't cake shaped holes in the plate devoid of anything.

Yes they are only perceptual symbols, but they are linked to concepts. You know what a flower is even if I haven't yet told you what kind of flower. The concept of 'flower' is a mass of every flower you have ever perceived, plus all those that you haven't by the process of inductance. If I then add red and rose, then you know the concept of colour and the species of flower. There is obviously no intrinsic flower in the word flower.

That's completely irrelevant. Putting bankers in prison has as much to do with things as how many prisoners did Stalin lock up in the Gulags. It tells me nothing about the EU only something about portugals laws. Iceland and the USA locked up several bankers and they aren't in the EU so then :-/

Depends on your definition of perfect. Perfect is a conceptual measuring by a human. A flower cannot be said to be anything but a flower. It is what it is. A human may say the flower is 'perfect'. They may mean that it fits their idea of beauty, shape, size, colour or other comparative. It must be perfect in respect of a flower which the human believes is less than perfect, but the flower remains a flower despite its colour, shape, number and shape of petals, perfume. Unless you can specifically define the Dao then it has no identity. If you say the Dao is everything then that equates to the universe and all its materials and causalities. If you say the Dao is nothing, then it is nothing, it is an unintelligible noise, or scribble, which is backed by nothing and has no connection with reality.

You might see a contradiction in that statement. You are saying in effect something is nothing. Thus A is not A. In order to say A is not A you must first say A is A or you are really saying that anything you say means nothing and we can all act as if you said nothing at all. I'm not sure how well that will translate in your native tongue.

Same with AYP or indeed any religion. That's my point.