To be honest, I understood that and simply took advantage of the situation
to present some ideas that I've seen nowhere else. I tried to give a more
direct answer to her question in my first reply to her posting.
>Janet is having difficulty conceptualizing a universe without a cause.
>Hardly an uncommon problem, especially for Westerners. I'm guessing from
>your reply that you are implying such a universal history. There was no
>ultimate cause. It just happened. (Which reminds me of an amateur
>theologist's argument that "'Just happened' is what I call God" -- from the
>documentary film Vernon, Florida.)
By pointing out that our evolutionary hieratage extends all the way back to
the creation of the stars, I think I've acommplished two things:
1) Coupling this concept with meaning(life)=sum(memes) gives Virus a wide
and deep base to draw from. meaning(life)=sum(memes) causes the thread of
each life to extend throughout all time, in both directions. Pointing out
that we evolved from stars extends that thread throughout all space. These
scope of these concepts puts Virus on par with the scope of normal
religions. It has the additional virtue of being based entirely on fact.
2) It creates an Eastern-like sense of oneness with existance. Stars are not
just flaming balls of gas, they are our ancestors. Again, this is not
mystical nonsense, it is a fact.
>Note that there is a difference between not having a root cause and not
>having a beginning.
True, but having no root cause AND no beginning is worse than having no root
cause BUT having a beginning.
As for having a root cause, that comes from inside, not from God. God
doesn't exist.
Thanks,
Dave Leeper
dleeper@sybase.com
-----------------------------------
David Leeper replying to Janet:
>>This amorphous soup where we all began--where did it come from?
>
>The ocean. But a step or two beyond that, all matter comes from stars.
> When a star goes super-nova is spews matter out into the universe. This
>eventually becomes solar systems. In other words, as surely as we are
>childern of the apes, we are living, self-aware childern of the stars. We
>are descended from stars.
David, I think Janet is trying to get at the root cause of all these
things. She is asking what humans have asked as long as they've been able.
Janet is having difficulty conceptualizing a universe without a cause.
Hardly an uncommon problem, especially for Westerners. I'm guessing from
your reply that you are implying such a universal history. There was no
ultimate cause. It just happened. (Which reminds me of an amateur
theologist's argument that "'Just happened' is what I call God" -- from the
documentary film Vernon, Florida.)
Note that there is a difference between not having a root cause and not
having a beginning.
____________________________________________________________________________
Tyson Vaughan memetic engineer
tvaughan@ux.accesscom.net graphic designer