Mechanical Art

[LustInBlack]

Nep:

People are so god damned stupid, it's incredible!

[silverfox]

Neptune...

Never let the closed minds of others compel you to close your own to far greater possibilities and potentials than what they've chosen to settle for.

I have a text for you to peruse at your leisure in that regard. You must judge for yourself whether your own sense of being open-minded or intelligent about such things is really what you genuinely think it is.

The questions it raises are both provocative as well as providing an entertaining display of logic in the answers it leads to. Consider it a little mental exercise and nothing more. Merely another persective to add to some of the others in what you chose to accept or believe for yourself.

http://www.thefreedomofchoice.com/e-book.pdf

[DrWhat]

Just because you are religious, that doesn't automatically put you "closer to God". In fact if we look at history it is usually quite the opposite.

[silverfox]

Form follows function, DrWhat...

So there is a valid reason why the interiors of all Protestant Churches look exactly the same as any modern courtroom does, with its pews, alter, and officials garbed in black robes and white collars that presume to sit in judgement over other people's behavior...hmmm?

Ever wonder about that, or all the common symbology?

And to place alongside that we of course have the mighty "Church of Rome" that existed long before Christianity ever arrived and was swift to co-opt that in order to continue calling the shots by using it to re-fashion a crumbling Roman Empire into the Holy Roman Empire that was scarcely any different or less ruthless when it came to dictating the affairs of ordinary people.

Now the existence and purpose of those "recognised" institutions, even today, quite obviously has far more to do with power, control, and maintaining the status-quo for the few that benefit the very most from it rather than anything to do with any real "religion" per se. That is merely a facade they have quite conveniently interpreted to suit that purpose from the very outset.

That they appeared to partially lose that battle for control to a rival set of beliefs that chose the banner of "science" or "enlightement" as a facade to advance their own kind of dogmatic psychological dictatorship over all those that the church had either failed to control or else was losing control over, was merely an expedient ploy on the part of the very same elites that had been pulling the strings in the backgound all along.

And what better way to preserve and extend their own control even further and more completely from the sidelines while their hired minions in both camps waged an endless battle with one another to keep everyone on-side regardless of whichever one it was?

So whether you genuflected to the original Holy Trinty or that of Darwin, Marx, and Freud, scarcely mattered, for they had you either way.

The fact is that you were meant to be controlled by one or the other set of competing beliefs and have no other alternative but to simply choose beween them. To criticise any of the shortcomings of one will immediately see you branded and dismissed as being an agent for the other and that that alone is your only possible motive for doing it; not and never that it might actually be true or to discourage some impending harm.

And how do the altogether unflattering and ugly pictures of humanity or the natural world either tries to portray really differ when you get right down to their bottom lines?

Are we not born badly flawed and sinfull souls if not actually decended from beasts with none at all? Is there any reason to expect the world to be any better than it is, or isn't it more the case that each of those competing beliefs claims to have supposedly made it as good as it presently is, in spite of what dreadful creatures we are?

Convenient that, isn't it? And the truth about anything, or quite concievably everything, that is buried under all those deliberate distortions and falsifications stays right where it is, and safely out of sight and mind in the meantime. So naturally it's always business as usual, no matter what year, century, or even millenium, we're in.

[John Collins]

Edited

JC

[nicbordeaux]

I see JC has backed down to avoid a general deflagration... wise choice :)

Neptune, why be an Atheist rather than a Pagan ? It's actually much more convenient to be a bigamist. Or maybe that should be a agnostic, I keep getting them mixed up.

[John Collins]

Yes I had an opinion that was probably unwise to voice;-)

JC

[Michael]

When did symbology actually become a real word? From the pervasive force of fiction writer Dan Brown? I don't mean this as an attack against you silverfox. More of an annoyance at how overuse of fictional words end up becoming popularized. I can't count the number of times conspiracy theorists have used that term on the coast to coast radio show since Dan brown's novels became popular. There is already a perfectly good term for symbology. Symbolism. I tried an online search for symbology. A few online dictionaries carry it but I've never seen anything from an established source. There is a movie called Boondock Saints. Not a great movie, but not a bad movie. Should check it out. One of the main characters is a well educated F.B.I. agent, who is appalled when some detectives ask him what is the symbology of the clues he's found. Symbolism! The word is symbolism, he replies.
My rant for the month.

[neptune]

JC displayed more wisdom than I , by not expressing an opinion. On reflection , it is not just different Muslim sects who fight each other. Look at Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland . This forum is not perhaps the best place to discuss religion. Yes , I know I started it , or at least continued it. I think that religion is fine if kept to ones self. There is nothing worse than people knocking on your door , trying to convert you . I have two statements I use in this situation .
1, There are 2566 different religions on this planet. Why are you upset that I did not choose the same one as you?
2. Yes , I have met God. She is Black , isn't She?

[nicbordeaux]

Form follows function, DrWhat...
...Are we not born badly flawed and sinfull souls if not actually decended from beasts with none at all? Is there any reason to expect the world to be any better than it is, or isn't it more the case that each of those competing beliefs claims to have supposedly made it as good as it presently is, in spite of what dreadful creatures we are?

Convenient that, isn't it? And the truth about anything, or quite concievably everything, that is buried under all those deliberate distortions and falsifications stays right where it is, and safely out of sight and mind in the meantime. So naturally it's always business as usual, no matter what year, century, or even millenium, we're in. ...

Interesting enough Silverfox... but I don't get the point. I've read The Whole earth catalogue, Mad magazine, Brave new World, Chariots of the Gods, Castaneda, Gurdjieff, Playboy, a jehovah's witness booklet, the first two pages of the Saint James Bible, Desmond Morris, Animal farm, Asimov... What is the undelying truth you are pointing at ? That we do descend from protoplasm ? That God was an alien ? The gaia concept ?

Or are you arguing innate against acquired ?

[ruggerodk]

Nic..I would like to add 'Modesty Blaise' to the list... and Harold Foster...;-)

[Michael]

Nick- Castenada, we should talk.

[silverfox]

Sorry Michael...

But the word "symbology", meaning a direct study of symbols and their usage was actually coined in the 1830's and is quite legitimate to use and has a different inference than what "symbolism" merely implies.

We can find a wide range of "symbolism" itself in literary themes, poetic devices, certain objects in paintings etc. What would you prefer to call a sudy of those in general? You can also add the word "symbolist" to your lexicon, which was applied to a school of artists in the 1800's as well that relied heavily on symbolic devices or themes in their paintings.

Dan Brown, if I'm not mistaken, simply took the liberty of actually turning that loose term symbology into a university level course of some importance that is taught by the hero of his latest works, which is something it has never nor likely will ever be.

If it is studied at the university level at all it is generally under the auspices of some other disipline and only in a peripheral way...history or art history, graphic arts, elements of design and ornamentation or that sort of thing. Hardly the kind of arcane or mysterious study Brown depicts, which is not to say that there there aren't some interesting characters in real life that have made a quite serious study of those particular aspects and some of the lore that surrounds them.

Of course it's the occult significance and psychological power of symbols that is of most interest to them and there is no categorical or formal way to actually study that kind of anecdotal material or verify any of it.

[daxwc]

Michael quote:

More of an annoyance at how overuse of fictional words end up becoming popularized

Exactly, I am sure the english dictionary is big enough already.

What about "big billification", already tired of that one.

tks

[silverfox]

Nic...

Despite the fact that all physicality is merely and "effect" and an interraction of "effects" whose genuine causes all originate at a completely non-physical quantum level, you still seem to insinst on having purely "material" causes for everything and there simply aren't any.

Any and every material explanation is essentially a work of "fiction". A physical narrative that has no more to commend it than that the reality of the moment doesn't actually appear to contradict it and nothing else.

So any number of "convenient" interpretations can be postulated from that simplistic standpoint and "appear to be true" but only in that sense alone. That is about as much as can "truly" be said for any of them.

Don't confuse matter with the idea of what is or can be "real" rather than understanding that there are all kinds of things that are very "real" and even considerably more "real" and far less transitory than mere matter itself is, and the quantum state and what takes place in it is at the very top of that list.

Matter is the incidental result of invisible and inexhaustible forces and energies that are relentlessly at play with one another and not bound by either time or space. They are all quite "real" or we simply wouldn't be here at all.

Real enough, in fact, that with an adequate amount of the right kind of understanding they could be induced to transform this planet into a paradise beyond any dreams of one, or with the wrong kind just as swiftly transform it into something more desolate and lifeless than the moon.

If you want to know how the universe was created, the answer is really quite simple and short. It was created in the very same way it is being created in it's entirety right now, in this very instant, and just as completely and wholly created anew right along with everything in it in each and every other instant it has or ever will exist in. If it wasn't, it wouldn't, and couldn't exist at all, and neither could we.

What people don't seem to understand is that the unusual quality and characteristicss of any and every instant we ever experience as being "now" is due to the fact that it is actually being "created" around and with us, physically speaking. That is why the sensation of being "now" and being "alive" in it, is what it is, and no less makes it what it is.

You have deliberated at some length about the nature of "chaos" without considering that the very last thing missing from that picture is any "pattern" or that the real situation is simply a stage wherein all possible and potential patterns all exist simultaneously and undifferentiated simply from your own perspective, untill one of them is ultimately chosen from all the rest, and although you can't see it taking place, that is always and already underway in something of a pattern of it's own.

The implicate order of things is the order of things and nothing is ever random or accidental, even and especially if it looks that way. Reality doesn't conflict with the earth looking flat or with the Sun "rising" in the morning where even the simple and material truth itself is quite other than that. Just how much of a limb do you really think we're out on when it comes to far more serious and complex issues with that being the only, official, bona fide, or "reliable" measuring stick we're willing to use?

Eveything is the result of deliberate, continuous and ongoing "choices" at each and every level that steadily unfolds or refolds matter back into the quantum level it comes from...perpetually.

In any so-called "chaotic" state the atoms themselves will choose to obey and conform to the dictates of their own nature and always form the most attractive arrangements that are within their reach and abandon or pass over any others that aren't as they do.

As that occurs certain potential patterns will be automatically eliminated at every step while fewer and fewer move steadily forward until the only one there is, is. And one always does because it has to and there is no way to concievably ever prevent that from happening.

Were you able to examine each and every choice that went into that process they would be as predictable and perfectly logical as if they were fore-ordained, because in a manner of speaking, they are fore-ordained at the quantum level from which they all actually arise. What takes place physically is merely a reflection of what was already underway well ahead of it in that invisible realm.

Now new species are being found every single day, complete and fully formed and perfectly adapted to the environments they're discovered in. In no case has there ever been any tangible evidence of anything they could possibly have come from in any physical sense. They are quite simply "there" and as far as anyone knows they weren't before. That is common to them all and always has been.

To say they must have come from something else that already exists and then look for anything similar even if the closest example is several thousand miles away and simply say it just had to come from that is a gross rationalization based on a completely unfounded assumption that has never at any time ever been proven, much less conclusively.

Die hard evolutionists examine the fossilized remains of creatures long extinct and fail to see the evidence in their hands for exactly what it is. Not some distant relation but a casualty of nature, an extinct species that couldn't adapt and simply died out. The only thing they evolved into was the sad fossilized remains they hold in their hands. Each and every supposed link is an entirely different species that has suffered that same fate and that is all there is that genuinely connects any of them together in any way at all.

And where is the real logic, rather than pure imagination, in insisting that they must have changed into something else and continued on only to do that again and again?

Genetics allows for an infinite and limitless non-repeating creation of unique individuals within any particular species which it is profoundly and remarkably designed to do with absolutely no provision for that species to ever be anything other than what it is and every possible safeguard imaginable built in lock-step to prevent that from ever happening. Simple efforts to try and push adaptability itself in that direction invariably results in spontaneous abortion or sterility, take your pick. Nature is non-negiotiable on that particular sticking point.

Now the friendly chimpanzee may share many common genetic markers with us but so too does a cabbage along with far more unfamiliar stuff, so what, really?

That chimp is actually the new kid on our block and we have been around for tens of thousands of years longer, and that is has been rather well established.

So is it logical or reasonable to assume he must be descended from us or does that fall flat because he isn't actually a better and more improved model higher up on Dawkin's completely ridiculous Mount Improbable?

If he isn't, and he simply has to come from "something else" then that something else had to be living on this planet right alongside us at the very same time and as far back as our own mysterious beginnings. So what could that be and why isn't there anything or the remains of anything that would even begin to fit that description to be found anywhere at all and with such very good odds that there should be and of us unavoidably tripping over it?

And the rationale for why there simply must be such a progenitor, is what? Because it must? Because it simply has to? And the reason to insist and remain adamantly inflexible upon that point is based on what particular proof, may I ask?

The short answer is that all those who insist upon it, do so only because they are abject and unreasoning materialists, pure and simple, and they are only insisting because they are active proponents and promoting the wholly discredited philosophy of materialism while they're about it and lying through their teeth whenever they attempt to deny that simply isn't the case. Beyond that they have neither a rationale nor any physical evidence of any kind to support their position.

And "science" has merely become a convenient shield for that activity, and is subsequently presented in such a way that it is merely "unfortunate" if it actively searches out information that has nothing but potentially harmful and destructive applications because it's just "new knowledge" after all, and it isn't science's job to police whatever gets done with it. No, of course not, not even when it's being paid and told quite expressly what to look for and why by people whose intentions leave nothing to the imagination at all when it comes to that...hmmm?

Meanwhile quantum physics is at an impasse because it isn't allowed to explain anything other than in strictly Newtonian terms which cannot be done, and it has already committed the unpardonable sin of adding the word "consciousness" to it's lexicon and accepting that it can instigate and directly influence physical effects without being physical itself and with no physical evidence to even prove that consciousness itself exists beyond the fact that we all know it does or we wouldn't be able to know anything at all.

Any sense of reason and reasonableness is now utterly lost in those matters, as is any ability to simply think straight about almost anything.

You want the pattern of Perpetual Motion? Accept that if such a thing exists it must be perfectly logical and that it is you instead that isn't being that way if you cannot deduce what it is and set about to rectify that.

You have a left foot and a right one, do you not? You can start with either and commence to walk continuously with each step automatically calling forth the next and without any need to think about it and gravity is fully compliant with your desire to simply do that, isn't it?

How's that for a logical clue to begin with?

So in terms of a wheel how would you translate that if not one step equalling one full rotation that calls forth the next and another full rotation, and it a next, and so on? Doesn't that sound reasonable? Or is it too simple?

Walk accross the room and simply pay attention to what your own feet do and when they do it without any need to ask you. From behind to ahead, and from behind to ahead. A perfectly rhythmic and dynamically balanced interchange and a very nice way to descibe what's taking place, isn't it?

A matched set, equal in every respect, able to do naturally and with perfect timing with your own body weight what you yourself could not begin to mentally calculate without either falling flat on your face or flat on your ass before you could possibly send the necessary messages if you actually had to deliberately command each and every step. Think carefully about that.

You walk, like you ride a bike, and of course you never remember how you learned to do either because all you had to learn was to co-operate with gravity the way you were already perfectly designed to do and just let nature look after the rest. It always happens in an unguarded moment and without thinking and we suddenly realize we can do it and that it was simply trying to, and too hard at that, that was all that was ever holding us back. Finding Perpetual Motion can only come the same way...