Re: a comment on REM Sleep by mystic enoch	20-Mar-06/11:08 AM
P.S. -- EVERYONE'S GIFT Hilda: We shall not go to heaven, and even if we were both to go, we would have no eyes to see each other, no hands to touch each other. In heaven, there is no time for anything but God... Here you are: a little flesh, worn-out, rough, miserable—a life, a wretched life. It is this flesh and this life I love. We can only love on Earth, and against God’s will... When people love each other they become invisible to God. - Sartre, "The Devil and the Good Lord"
Re: a comment on REM Sleep by mystic enoch	20-Mar-06/11:06 AM
No, I mean if you peel back the layers you've got nothing. That doesn't mean I didn't wake up at 5 this morning to make my wife's capuccino and bath the way she likes them. There is no useful or interesting discussion about love or God except interesting trivia and theatre of the absurd. That's what I mean.
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	20-Mar-06/11:04 AM
Christ. All gears come full circle, Dovina, toothless or not. And what the hell is the issue? Nothing.
Re: a comment on REM Sleep by mystic enoch	20-Mar-06/10:38 AM
The line is where you start talking about God and love unironically. You all ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
Re: a comment on REM Sleep by mystic enoch	20-Mar-06/9:23 AM
As long as the Numbers in Heaven conversation continues, I'm not here.
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	16-Mar-06/8:35 AM
I've often wondered the same thing. Sometimes I think the real sign of Job's faith wasn't that he believed in God through hardship, but that he believed when everything was going great for him. I've often not had cash in my pocket. I have had rough times. I've seen awful things happen. When people talk about all the crap they go through in their lives, I usually think I've had about the same number of bad things happen to me. Um, if my wife died...? I honestly can't say. I think I could handle it, but there's no telling. Anyway, I'd mistrust any religion that was so obviously a crutch. I mean, if my wife dies and I just HAVE TO believe that there's an afterlife because I can't stand the thought of her simply being GONE... well, I haven't had any EXPERIENCE of God. I don't have anything showing me there is a heaven. I just have need or want. Want isn't God, to me. It doesn't add to my knowledge or experience. Anyway, that's all kind of beside the point, for me. I don't mean that I have fewer bad experiences or times in my life, but that when I have a bad time, I really believe I'm going to be able to take care of it on my own. So the experience doesn't seem so bad. I don't know, maybe if I believed in God, if I was fatalistic or lacked confidence, those times would seem worse to me. My life would seem worse. You know? PS-I enjoy these conversations too.
Re: Mango Pickle by amanda_dcosta	16-Mar-06/8:16 AM
Much of Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight's Children is about mango pickle. You must have picked up on the same vibe.
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	14-Mar-06/7:08 PM
Obviously, AlChemy means your conception of God, not whatever God there is or isn't who is or isn't affected by what you think about him. While we're on the topic, Real God probably wouldn't allow himself to be put into or removed from rules and logic like some kind of, I don't know, giant tiddlywink.
Re: a comment on We Do Not Write About by faithmairee	14-Mar-06/2:36 PM
Well, it would be more like asking how much farther the undetermined spot is from NY than Texas when you know it's on a line connecting the two cities and also past Texas, heading away from New York. But not much more. I'm brushing up on number theory and learning all kinds of stuff I never wanted to know again.
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	14-Mar-06/2:20 PM
Considering that your comprehension doesn't include rules and logic, Dovina, it seems perfectly possible that God could be logical and, therefore, incomprehensible to you. re: "The strange thing about people who say that a good god would not allow suffering is that they usually also say, 'the human race is, on the whole, intelligent and capable of solving its problems.'" Who says both of those things? Certainly not me. In fact, in my experience, people seem to say either one or the other. In short, you are so full of beans you make my eyes hurt. You seem incapable of making sense except by accident.
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	14-Mar-06/12:48 PM
I forgot to say before that your previous post was very good. This one, too. From my perspective, everything I know about makes perfect sense without including God in my explanations for things. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to run my life, and I have to say I do pretty well. I'm a very good person. I have no problems in my life. Seriously. When I have had problems in the past, I've taken care of them the best I could by myself, and they've worked out. I don't feel any lack. I don't feel like anything doesn't make sense. I don't feel displeased by life or the usual explanations for things. Why would I include God in things? Really, without already believing, what'll make me interested in believing?
Re: a comment on We Do Not Write About by faithmairee	14-Mar-06/12:36 PM
For ALL x, x-2 > x-5. Infinity is exactly 3 further away from 2 than 5.
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	14-Mar-06/10:57 AM
For the sake of argument, let's say I DID say "the human race is on the whole intelligent and capable of solving its problems WITHOUT GOD'S HELP". I didn't, but let's say I did. Wouldn't it be a really cool thing for God to make human beings well enough that they could solve problems? I think it would. It would be better than him making us just awful. And do you really believe God sitting up in his workshop says, I'm going to make humans utterly incompetent! That'll show 'em! And making good people would be a good way of helping the world without being obvious. Like say He sees India is having a lot of trouble under British Rule and says, "Hey, I'll make a really great guy named Gandhi who's able to help out the country." Don't you agree it's possible that God works like that? Sure, God also makes bad people, the way I see it. But I believe on the whole He makes more good people than bad people, if He does exist. Yes, that's very hypothetical. Because it's my BELIEF. My BELIEF is also that Dovina isn't an actual angel because, one, I don't think angels exist, and two, her ignorance is beyond beyond.
Re: a comment on We Do Not Write About by faithmairee	14-Mar-06/10:47 AM
"infinity can exist within 183". Yes, and even easier than your example. Like this: 183.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000 => infinity dovina = 1/183 of the square root of infinity dovina = (square root of infinity)/183 dovina x 183 = (square root of infinity) (dovina x 183)^2 = infinity So, 183 does not become infinity squared. (dovina x 183)^4 becomes infinity squared. But that's not the point. The point is 183 becomes the square root of infinity divided by 1 dovina.
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	14-Mar-06/10:36 AM
For one, that's not what I said. For two, I don't really believe everything in the Bible, so posting a passage to support your argument doesn't really help me.
Re: a comment on We Do Not Write About by faithmairee	14-Mar-06/10:28 AM
I've agreed with you dozens of times. I'm not, however, agreeing with you now. There is not more than one infinity.
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	14-Mar-06/10:26 AM
I'd love Dovina to be born in heaven and nested eternally there. Seriously. But 183 isn't proof, demonstration, model or symbol of that, and even Dovina doesn't think so. I'm not nervous about religion, heaven, creatures, or 183. I am nervous when my belief that the human race is on the whole intelligent and capable of working out its problems is so shaken by willful ignorance such as Dovina's. So sue me.
Re: a comment on We Do Not Write About by faithmairee	14-Mar-06/10:23 AM
Yes it can. Imagine a graph on which y = the square root of x. Or if you can't, here's wikipedia's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Square_root.png Naturally, x > y for all x > 1. Now follow the graph right until you reach infinity. x will still be greater than y, but x will be infinity and y will be infinity.
Re: a comment on We Do Not Write About by faithmairee	14-Mar-06/10:06 AM
YOUR GIFT: - If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. - A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and this [sense] alone, I am a deeply religious man. - I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. Einstein Today's his birthday
Re: a comment on Numbers In Heaven by Dovina	14-Mar-06/10:05 AM
Both. In equal proportions.