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quote:

The Standard Model cannot explain the best known of the so-called four fundamental forces: gravity; and it describes only ordinary matter, which makes up but a small part of the total Universe...
About 100m below us, in a tunnel that runs in a ring for 27km (17 miles), the LHC is being assembled from its constituent parts like a vast, impossibly complex Meccano set.
When it is switched on for a pilot run in summer 2007, this huge physics experiment will collide two beams of particles head-on at super-fast speeds, recreating the conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang.

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On 'Christian nihilism', where in the (now largely secular modern) world of Christendom do you get any kind of equivalence to this:

"I came to the conclusion that we are facing a neurosis
at the level of an entire civilization. Most neuroses
have in common a dramatic event, generally linked to
an unacceptable sexual behavior. In this case, we are
talking of kids living all their lives in pure
frustration, with no opportunity to experience sex,
love, tenderness or even understanding from the
opposite sex. The separation between men and women in
Islam is absolute. So is contempt toward women, who
are totally dominated by men. This leads to a
situation of pure anxiety, in which normal behavior is
not possible. It is no coincidence that suicide
killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously
by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot
satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the
devil. Since Islam describes heaven as a place where
everything on earth will finally be allowed, and
promises 72 virgins to those frustrated kids, killing
others and killing themselves to reach this redemption
becomes their only solution."

This from an article: The psychology behind suicide bombings
By Pierre Rehov, French Documentary Filmmaker

By what possible comparison can Christian-nihilism, even in its worst form of killing, as in war, can it be compared to Muslim-nihilism, as in kill yourself to kill others (which is against the Qu'ran)? I think by comparison, Bush is more like Joan of Arc, on the Iraq issue. The daily suiciders in Iraq (and elsewhere around the infidel world) are a quantum leap, to orders of magnitude, ahead of Bush et al on the world stage.

Pierre Rehov goes on, same article:

"Generally kids between 15 and 25 bearing a lot of
complexes, generally inferiority complexes. They must
have been fed with religion. They usually have a lack
of developed personality. Usually they are
impressionable idealists. In the western world they
would easily have become drug addicts, but not
criminals. Interestingly, they are not criminals since
they don't see good and evil the same way that we do.
If they had been raised in an Occidental culture, they
would have hated violence. But they constantly battle
against their own death anxiety. The only solution to
this deep-seated pathology is to be willing to die and
be rewarded in the after life in Paradise.

Are suicide bombers principally motivated by religious
conviction?

Yes, it is their only conviction. They don't act to
gain a territory or to find freedom or even dignity.
They only follow Allah, the supreme judge, and what He
tells them to do.

Do all Muslims interpret jihad and martyrdom in the
same way?

All Muslim believers believe that, ultimately, Islam
will prevail on earth. They believe this is the only
true religion and their is no room, in their mind, for
interpret ation. The main difference between moderate
Muslims and extremists is that moderate Muslims don't
think they will see the absolute victory of Islam
during their life time, therefore they respect other
beliefs. The extremists believe that the fulfillment
of the Prophecy of Islam and ruling the entire world
as described in the Koran, is for today. Each victory
of Bin Laden convinces 20 million moderate Muslims to
become extremists.

Describe the culture that manufactures suicide
bombers.

Oppression, lack of freedom, brain washing, organized
poverty, placing God in charge of daily life, total
separation between men and women, forbidding sex,
giving women no power whatsoever, and placing men in
charge of family honor, which is mainly connected to
their women's behavior.

What socio-economic forces support the perpetuation of
suicide bombings?

Muslim charity is usually a cover for supporting
terrorist organizations. But one has also to look at
countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which
are also supporting the same organizations through
different networks. The ironic thing in the case of
Palestinian suicide bombers is that most of the money
comes through financial support from the Occidental
world, donated to a culture that utterly hates and
rejects the West (mainly symbolized by Israel)."

-FYI. So in comparing 'equality' of nihilisms, how can they even be mentioned in the same breath?

Ivan

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quote:

And of course, during this same period (post-1977) there has been a huge increase in the number of immigrants.

Yet, you dwell on the apocalyptic. What is it that you expect/want to see happen? A civil war? Armageddon?

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Reality check?

Hobbes, immigration is only one component of crime dynamics, but nor can it be discounted as irrelevant. Violent crimes come in degrees. Would you say America is now safer than it was in the 1970s? Sure, there's irony in my above, almost comedy, and that's why I referenced the Lebanon story, because it highlights what happens when Islamics become too powerful. That said, I see it as more a Europe problem than in the good ol' USA, for now.

In fact, I do not see the Muslim aggression as such a big problem. Jihad in its current form is a blip on the historical radar screen. What is important, in my opinion, is a more acute awareness that if gone unchecked, Jihadic aspirations of dissaffected Muslims in Europe and elsewhere can become a bigger problem. So irony, ridicule, pointing out the absurd, are necessary tools to bring about awareness. Killing a movie maker for showing the face of Islam as it regards women, rioting because some cartoons satyrize Islamic terrorism, or the Prophet, French-Arab youth rioting for whatever, are all symptoms not to be ignored. If Monty Python did a humorous skit on Jesus, something like the Holy Grail, would Christians riot in the streets? Or are we to use totally different criteria for judging human actions by Muslims vs. everybody else? I think Islam, and its illbegotten Jihad, as not a real threat because their vehemence against the civilized world comes from a base of weakness rather than strength. They lost the world race for their own self styled 'supremacy', so now they're pissed. Too bad. Get over it. The world is not ready to roll back the timeclock by 1400 years to accomodate a primitive cultural bias. Sorry, but to acknowledge Jihadic aspirations for our planet is to entertain the absurd. The world has moved on from cannibalism, slavery, gender repression, religious repression, public beheadings, and the worship of a vengeful 'God'. Fundamentalist Muslims are not supreme in their antiquated ways of seeing the human condition, and are rather out of step with modernity at all levels, from technology to human rights. They don't have a chance.

Beyond, I like the imagery you present in:

Quote:

Think of things such as the "spirit of the age" or the "spirit of a nation". Are such spirits simple individuals, or do they emerge as communities of spirits whose constituent spirits are but spirit members of the spirits of the persons that populate the relevant age or nation?

Also, consider yourself: are you really a perfectly unitary spirit, or are you a diverse community of spirits residing together with some degree of unity but also some degree of multiplicity (i.e, just like a "community").

What I am trying to get at is to suggest that when you look for the holy spirit, do not suppose that the way to find it is to look for some simple individual spirit that is characterised by holiness. Nor should you expect to find in any one person a perfect example of pure holy spirit unmixed with unholiness of spirit.

Your interpretation of a "community of spirit" as an aggregate Holy Spirit is appealing, in that it invokes the idea that reality is made up of totalities; in this case, the totality is that of spirit as a genuine article. To my mind, this is what is reflected in the common human consciousness, so tapping into that consciousness may be the basis for our faith. In effect, the Holy Spirit is an aggregate human consciousness reaching for perfection in our being in this common reality. That works for me!

Where my 'nihistic' nature surfaces, however, is in invoking a perfect Being that is omniscient, omnibenevolent, as basis for "real" holy spirit. I think of it somewhat differently, in that if God is that perfect Totality, in that He is everyting, then within that totality exists both what we deem to be good as well as what we find reprehensible, or bad. This is why above I mentioned nature's propensity for violent predatory behavior; if God's reality is also violent, cruel, painful, then it is not entirely all benevolent. This was an issue asked by the survivors of the Holocaust: how could an all benevolent God allow such horrors to happen? So whether approached from the basis of Christianity, in what Jesus taught the world (I think of him as being closer to perfection than the rest of us profane beings), or taught in the Judaic ideals of the ancient Hebrews, or Buddhahood, or the saints of Islam: all strive for some sort of human perfection within a perfect Being, what they call "God." However, this perfection, if a Totality of All that Is, is not necessarily one that serves our spiritual sensibilities, in that it also makes us suffer, sometimes horribly.

So what does this perfection call for in such suffering? Suffering for its own sake? Suffering for a better entry into salvation? Or is it merely that as being Everything, God is a zero-sum game of both good and bad, and from this game we must choose what is right and good for us, and reject what is bad? I disagree with your imagery, though I admire it, only in the sense that it is We who create the Holy Spirit, as a community of souls, rather than that God creates it. By default, though God created us, we nevertheless have to exercise our God-given free will to choose correctly. And likewise by default, it is the human choice that will determine whether what is chosen is a good or not, whether our choice is beneficial or cause for more suffering. This is why I conclude that the Holy Spirit, as an aggregate human spirit, is nevertheless an article of faith rather than something tangibly real. It is a kind of collective "who we are" in totality. And being a totality, it means both good and bad. From this, we must then consciously choose what it is we want, and then act accordingly. I see this as a demand from the reality of our existence, within the totality of our being in it, from which we as increasingly conscious (maybe even evolved!) human beings we must choose rightly, to alleviate suffering. In this way, we honor the Holy Spirit.

Ivan

Quote:

Like you, I detect a dark connotation to the bloody sacrifice of a son to redeem a bunch of irascible creatures. This may be the originary vehicle for taking things Christian down a one-way nihilistic avenue. One-way in the sense that both lanes move nihilistically -- one lane concerned with rejecting the world and obsessed with killing things (didn't Freud get into the idea of Thanatos?). The other lane -- doing good works as expressions of decent common human love -- I would contend has been detoured into the American Dream (at least the energy, if not actually the idea of good works). Somehow, if even unconsciously, that has led to a weird transmutation of God into the abstract notions of Market and Finance. To me, that's kind of nihilistic in a super-duper way -- draining the numious spirit of God and transfusing it into the carnal -- and deadly -- forms of capitalism.

Quote:

I think that we have to understand that Christ was not sacrificed by God but was rather killed because he was seen as a threat to those in power to whom he would not bow.

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quote:

Ivan,

While I generally agree with your description and analysis of the process of Americanized and Christianized capitalism, I'm struck by this part of your opening paragraph:

"Tim, if you look at the historical American experience, the driving force behind our phenomenal economic success is not so much the opening of the western lands, though this was important, but the use of good judgment in how was formed our government and laws, how these morphed into our market driven capitalistic system, combined with the energy of a population eager for success. Underpinning this success is a moral certitude that to do things honorably and with trust, that contractual agreements are valued and safeguarded by law, and that doing 'good works' whether in the name or God, or for its own sake, drove generations of people to give it their best."

I'm at a loss to find a connection with this phenomenon and the words attributed to Jesus. It's like some bastardized thing has sprung demonically from those originary words. Aside from very general things like freedom and dignity, Jesus seemed more concerned with *not* achieving material success, more concerned with stripping oneself of such things and living thoroughly for others...in fact, contrary to the widely held notion that Jesus is the predicate for personal dignity, his example seems more like a disregard of personal dignity.

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Quote:

I think it important to echo much of what has been said about Christ and the impact that his teachings have had on the world and how they inspired not only Christians but others to follow his model of non-violent disobedience as the tool that englightened men like Gandi and Martin Luther King, and Pope John Paul II used to move nations.

moving along the t1 axis is one universe, rest mass is at v=c; while simultaneously moving in the d1 axis of the other universe, is where rest mass is at v=0.

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Nach innen und mehr zu findene Themen: Aristotle, Vereinbarung, ausländische Zivilisation, Anti- Schwerkraftenergie, Atheism, Glaube, Bewußtsein, Vertrag, Cosmos, slaying Drache, Ausbildung, Gefühle, Ende Krieg, Ethik, Entwicklung, Austausch, zukünftige Entwicklungen, zukünftige Raumfahrt, Genome, Giordano Bruno, Göttinnen, Götter, habeaskorpus, habeasmentem, Harmonie, Haupt-, menschliches Bewußtsein, menschliche Identität, menschliche Rechte, Stimmung, Ideen, Unbegrenztheit, Verwandtschaft, Gesetz der Vereinbarung, love, Machiavelli, Märkte, Vermittlung, Metaphysik, Mikroentscheidungen, Jahrtausendfeier, Verstand, Sittlichkeitsgefühl, natürliches Heilend, Naturerhaltung, Vermittlungen, neues Alter, neue Weltordnung, peace, Philosophie, Plato,rassischer, Ayn Rand, Religion, Seele, Sorteüberleben, spirituality, Dreier, Dreiheit, Vertrauen, Wahrheit, Universum, Krieg, Fraugleichheit, Weltordnung, Weltfrieden, Weltreligionen, Anbetung, 2000 und mehr und mehr... endlos.
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• p is pi
• G is the gravitational 'constant' -ha ha ha ha!
• c is light speed in a vacuum
• p is energy density in a vacuum

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quote:

The role of entropy in cosmology remains a controversial subject. Recent work has cast extensive doubt on the heat death hypothesis and the applicability of any simple thermodynamic model to the universe in general. Although entropy does increase in an expanding universe, the maximum possible entropy rises much more rapidly and leads to an "entropy gap," thus pushing the system further away from equilibrium with each time increment. Complicating factors, such as the energy density of the vacuum and macroscopic quantum effects, are difficult to reconcile with thermodynamical models, making any predictions of large-scale thermodynamics extremely difficult.

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quote:

The BB might have started everywhere equally, but the end product, what you see today, cannot be equally the same in all directions at all! Somewhere there is an edge to it, and you are on it.

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With the neo-conservatives in power, under the current administration, with many of them scribing to a fundmentalist world view, they (the current administration and its supporters) went for the short term change option and engaged in war. Much like Johnson did in Vietnam. Hence the similarities between the two. With intelligence being manipulated to support poltical objectives.

The difference this time is that what we, the former Cold War analysts did not see and caught us by surprise, was the rise of a quasi relgious leader in the United States that would be guided by faith instead of rational logic and pragmatism who would engage us in a divisive war in the Middle East, based largely upon a fundamentalis World View that cast the current war in Iraq as part of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

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quote:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/php/documents/collection_1/docs/warplan1-engl.htm

The above link is copy of the original war plan for the 1st Czech Peoples Army. It was modified slightly over the years.

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quote:

"Proof: The key here is to set x = 1/t:

lim f'(x) = lim f'(1/t) ... etc.
x-->inf g'(x) t-|->0 g'(1/t)

Then it gives a warnings:

CAUTION: L'Hospital's rule does not apply when the numerator or the denominator has a finite nonzero limit.

The author then shows how limit x-->0 leads to zero; while inversely x-->infin leads to =1 is WRONG.

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zero x infinity = 1

n x 1/n = 1

f(x^2) = 2x, conversely, eq. f(x^2) = 1/2 x
lim-->0 ... .... ... ... ... lim-->infin

If f(x) = 1, then f(1/x) = 0
lim-->inf ... .... lim-->inf

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The difference between us, military proffesionals, and the terrorists is that we are hurt by our actions and the knowledge of what we had to do to defend freedom, while they revel in it.

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