East Castles

Addendum:

2009-07-27T01:36:00.003+09:00

Still trying to figure out but... basically, I think what I'm doing is to "find out meanings" of the real world. It does exist without meanings, and it might be science that proves that.

But what can you possible say, by looking at something like brain functions, about... let's use the same example here, a relationship between teacher and students? You always need meanings to make sense of events. If you are studying brain functions only, you probably wouldn't need to think about what it means (I bed you still do...) but any kind of science and logics are always associated with human reasonings.

If you don't know about OUR methodologies, we don't just believe word to word of an interview data or the result of questionnaires. For example, there is a methodology called triangulation in sociology. We search for evidences to check the validity of interpretation of the raw data, using as "empirical" evidences as possible.

Plus, science has made people believe that everything is in our brain... and I think a lot of people believe that science of human-being is all sorted out by studying nervous system or biological composition of our body... psychology had so much influence by those scientific views too.

But it's becoming to be doubted to see human-beings in that way, and within the last decades, the importance of environmental stimulus have been studied as triggers of human behaviors. What we do cannot necessarily be explained by measuring stuff inside of us.

For example, people thought that babies learn to walk at a certain point and the process of walking is designed by genes in a universal developmental process of human beings. After a baby start moving its legs, while still lying upwards, there is a certain point when it loses the movement and become still until it starts clawing on the floor. And it's been believed that those phases are genetically determined.

Of course certain movements become able supported by development of muscles and bones, but as the body weight of a baby increases, the movement is restricted and even with the physical abilities, it "seems" like they stop moving their legs for some developmental reasons. But when researchers put some equipments on babies to help reduce the weight (gravity is working as an environmental factor) on legs, they start moving their legs again... and with something to step on (environmental factor) (e.g. treadmill), they learn to walk faster than it's been expected for long.

It's all interactive...

The example above is "scientific", but this is something studied in a field of "psychology" as well... my point is that we do examine more than what's called subjective, in order to figure out factors working behind human behaviors. And I feel like it's all the name of academic principles that's bothering you to think that "other than science"" is fuzzy and and not valuable.

Science is more objective?

2009-07-27T00:18:00.004+09:00

I was going to put my original post, but since Andrew started a similar topic, here's something I wrote in reply to Andrew's note...

Andrew wrote:

We might not be able to ever get to perfect objectivity. It sometimes feels like our very own objectivity lies inside a large pool of subjectivity.
Does this mean that everything is fake unless we observe it?
Subjectively, this is true but objectively this is false..I would wager.
Then again, you can never really get true objectivity...we can get close. That's basically what science is.
There's this view that science should take into consideration that it is not the ultimate point of view. It's just a really good one inside a sphere of a better point of view...a more comprehensive point of view and one that is more human. I don't know what you would call this but I have heard several of my smart friends talk about this.

Basically, one aspect of the argument is that science CAN have some inherent flaws because humans use science and it can be a human perspective. Science is based on observation but our observations could be wrong....but my question is:

Wrong to who? In what way would it be wrong...or just not entirely correct?

Just the fact that you can say that and think that gives your argument some kind of credibility? I need more than that. If you're saying that there is a better view than science and that science should use that view in its pursuits then that is interesting but it just feels like...well...OK, this is just me but science for me brings me out of my own experience. It's so objective that I don't even feel like me sometimes...it's just an objective entity...this other view you're talking about sounds like you're talking about something that is much less objective and when it comes to feeling "more human" because of its subjectivity, I feel very...awkward. It's like a fake scientific view ...trying to be something...subverting the real scientific view...coming through the backdoor...It's like...you're trying to propose something better than science but...why can't THAT be science? I guess you feel it's so subjective that there's no way real empirical evidence can ever be really obtained ....but that's just negative thinking, right?

Tomo wrote:

Interesting. I have to emphasize that my point is not to say that there are something better than science, but to say that I agree with your idea of "getting close".

Now that being said, first, I feel like what brings you out of your own experience is the logic/reasoning behind the science. Plus, the difference with stuff what you call "other than science" is whether or not the object of research could be explained enough by a mere set of physical observations. you might be able to STUDY it scientifically, but that doesn't mean the scientific explanations could represent the whole phenomena you really wanna know about. For example, how would you SCIENTIFICALLY explain social interactions that happen in a classroom SO IT HELPS PREDICT a set of events or result of interactions in future?

And, researchers in the field of "other than science" are aware that they COULD do it other ways... they just seek for better ways to DESCRIBE EVENTS, not just a group of physical objects but more complicated events including the concept of TIME (and PROCESS) (not just the condition of starting point and the ending point but the process of gradual change)... and that doesn't mean that they think science is not the better way but they just are not interested in the non-dynamic standstill explanations.

I feel like whether or not something is empirical is not the matter of subjectivity/objectivity.

Like you said that something well defined has boundaries, I feel like science gives rigid boundaries to understanding of real world and sometimes loses "the whole dynamics" of things going on in the world.

God and America

2009-06-03T14:18:00.001+09:00

God is a position. It's not a name. I hate how everyone always gets this confused. "God" is not a name. It's a position that some being fills. Christians fuck this up all the time. Under old tradition, Yahweh was too holy of a name to say so people just started saying "god." That's how it evolved basically.

Again, people are confused about America. The pilgrims didn't write the Constitution and they did not make America in anyway. They still considered themselves British at the time. They did indeed leave for religious purposes but this has nothing to do with our Constitution. Go about 150 years later and then you have Deists (not Christians for the most part) making the country and writing the Constitution, etc. You gotta be really careful not to mistake the word "God" with the Christian god. Many time, it very well could have been just the Deist god...not Yahweh.

So don't confuse:

1.) God: the position and the being

2.) the Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers

Addendum to the Previous Critique

2009-05-28T11:40:00.001+09:00

Other parts of the Bible do mention about those topics but basically this is just a critique on the Ten Commandments. If you think it's a perfect and exhaustive list, please think again.

A Critique on the Ten Commandments

2009-05-28T11:18:00.001+09:00

Most Christians will agree that The Ten Commandments are the most perfect set of moral rules ever created. This is old news to a lot of people but I think that for a lot of the people that read this it might not be. The Ten Commandments have nothing to say about

child molestation

rape

genocide

slavery

homophobia

women's, gay, whoever's rights in general

Also, people like to say that the Old Testament is not really the thing you should follow but that's where the Ten Commandments show up. Why are people saying both? Maybe the argument is that the Ten Commandments are so powerful they supercede whatever Covenant they happen to be in but I don't think most people are thinking that far.

Basically, the thing needs to be updated. These are Bronze Age rules. We need something a little newer than that.

Places I've Never Been To But Want to Visit

2009-05-23T12:42:00.001+09:00

By the way, just zoom out on the map below.

Places I've Been So Far

2009-05-22T11:58:00.001+09:00

And More to Come

Euthyphro's Dilemma

2009-05-20T15:23:00.001+09:00

The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks Euthyphro:

"Is the pious (τὸ ὅσιον) loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" (10a)

In monotheistic terms, this is usually transformed into:

"Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?"

The dilemma has continued to present a problem for theists since Plato presented it and it is still an object of theological and philosophical debate.

My Thoughts:

1.) Some people might think that this is not a problem because whatever is "hereditary" in the universe is that way because God said so...and so God can still be considered the answer here...however..This is still not a complete or acceptable answer.

2.) No one usually thinks this far so who gives a fuck anyway, right?

3.) This is the part that I heard mostly when I was a kid and maybe as I get older the kinds of people that say the following are leaving my friend group but (and this is something that I've always hated and not understood) some people will say that you're wrong or just not trustworthy when you've done research like this because God is so apparent to them. It's so easy and natural. Something MUST be wrong we a person that has to do all this book learnin' (objective research). These kinds of people only trust people with instincts that lead them to their spiritual conclusion because that's how they did it. So the thing that is so frustrating here is that they can't fucking listen. The more you research and the more knowledgeable you become the less of a reliable resource you are to these people. It makes you go insane sometimes.

4.) The counter-argument to this (and this is similar to the previous one) is that God cannot go against his nature and so this throws a wrench into the works but still...this is only hearsay really. How the fuck do you justify that claim?

Part 2

2009-05-03T18:25:00.001+09:00

same thing. I think that if people are going to view then viewing this idea of God would be best viewed outside of any filter...outside of any religion. If God exists, then he/it/she whatever exists outside of religion just as a flower is not a Christian idea ....it's just a flower. You can look at it from all points of view but mainly it's just a flower. If there is a metaphysical force keeping the universe together that we are in contact with personally or not at all then it just exists...outside of religion.

End Transmission.

Part 1

2009-05-03T18:24:00.001+09:00

The only thing I have to say about "personal event" making/helping people believe in the Christian or any specific God is that I think it's quite suspect that if something supposedly "supernatural" happens in someone's life they automatically thank the God they know most when if it's supernatural it could have been anything. It could have been Buddha. Who knows? The main contradiction here I find is that Muslims and people of other religions will call whatever they see as "supernatural" and ascribe that event to the god they know the most already. One argument against what I'm saying right now could be that "well I prayed for this to a specific god to happen and it did so obviously it's real" however this kind of thing is said by all people of any faith really. If Christians were the only people getting their prayers answered I would be impressed but that is just not the case. Why do Spanish people always talk of seeing saints but Protestants never do? It should be the same religion.

Protestants will just say that those Spanish Catholics with their saints are just crazy but the same is said the other way around and the amount of confusion within one religion is just too much for me. There should be one central source in one religion...especially if it's monotheistic. You could say the source is Jesus but at the same time why are these Spanish Catholics and Catholics in general always talking of seeing saints in visions or Mother Mary? Why are those visions crazy but those of Jesus are not? It's just nuts to me.

To me, the way I view religion is general is man trying to cope with the knowledge of his own death. That's how it was created kind of. A lot of it today is just remaining from a time when people did not have a scientific worldview. Bronze age mentalities in the nuclear age will just not go well for too long. If there is a God in the sense that the Judeo-Christian-Muslim says there is then I'd say that all religions are just filters ...ways of seeing the

Historicity and Inerrancy: A Conversation With a Friend

2009-04-26T02:06:00.005+09:00

Andrew Bushさん 4月25日 13:06
There is a shitload of errors in the Bible. There's just recently a book out about this called "Discrepancies in the Bible" and another called something like the Untold Story of Jesus or something like that. Even within Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John...none of the books agree on who was actually there at the tomb. Some say 1 guy some say two. Some say 1 angel some say 2. It's fucking ridiculous because it's supposed to be eye-witness accounts of the greatest story ever told and simple stuff like that doesn't even hold. There's ALL kinds of stuff like that. The Bible is inconsistent. I'm sorry if I offend someone but it would be good if you would notice it if you haven't already. This comment is not so much for you, Friend, but for your audience.

Friendさん 4月26日 1:01
Andrew,
your post is exactly the flipside of what scares me about fundamentals.

First I would like to say, I think you missed my thesis completely.

This is not really a note about inconsistencies in the Bible.
Its a note about how that doesnt matter.
No one expects any other grouping of eye witness accounts in the world to match up evenly. For that to be the case, both the 5 senses and memory of all 4 writers would have to be flawless...at least.

What this note is about is how imposing the idea of perfection on the bible is an irrelevant in the debate.

The presence of discrepencies or errors does not prove validity or invalidity, as it does not for any other historical account ever given. I would encourage you to read my main arguement again.

Your arguement suffers from the same fallacy that the fundamentalists' does.
errors are irrelavent, what is the realy issue is the degree of reliability of over all historicity.

Friendさん 4月26日 1:12
i would encourage you read more of the objective (as possible) scholarship on the formation of the texts.

If for no other reasons than one, as an outspoken opponent of Christianity it is your ethical and intellectual duty to do so -

as well as out of just a deep appreciation of the religious history of mankind - much as i study other religions - not to be polemical or apologetical per se- but just out of respect and the search of knowledge. - Youmight find this to strengthen you polemics...or to form an apologetic.

As a personal side note, your opinions are always welcome here, no matter how antagonistic.

I love dialogue with disbelief.

but please interact with me, as I want to interact with you...lets use this as more of an intellectual forum as opposed to a soapbox.
ive never cared much for hard edged preaching - christian or anti-christian.

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 1:17
I re-read it your post. I have to admit that I skimmed it the first time. Sorry about that. I like to just blur things out sometimes. I still don't see what you're saying when you say that "reliability of overall historicity" is important but errors are not. I understand that the gist is there but my main position is that under my definition the Bible is not perfect and definitely not in the case of consistency. If you could clarify for me what exactly you mean by "reliability of overall historicity" and errors and how exactly these two are separate, I think I would be able to understand more. Thanks for the conversation.

Friendさん 4月26日 1:37
what im saying is that if nothing else the gospels (and that is really the specific part im talking about right now)
-if nothing else they are historical documents.
now as historical documents we have to decide wether or not they are reliable.
to do this it is better to try to forget eveything you ever learned from both christians that are ignorant and are trying to push an agenda on you as well as the anti-christian feelings that years of having christianity dumped on you has casued.

- Instead...I propose that we just read them as historical writings and try to figure out whether, flawed or not, do they give a somewhat reliabile picture of events that happened 2000 years ago. Academically there is a really good case to say that the text has been relatively unaltered since it was written down..so the original message is there.
we cant appeal to it being altered or changed...that argument is invalid, becasue due to the number of manuscripts...etc,

Friendさん 4月26日 1:45
we have more of reason to think that the New Test is a better depiction of what early Christianity actually looked like than much of other history...Christians are prolific...and from the perspective of history the more writings you have and the further thaey go back...the more accurate picture you are likely to have.

Now alot of people are going to look at the accounts and say it is likely that some of it is true, but miracles do not happen, so all of it cannot be true.

I would say that this is really more of us projecting our preconceptions on the texts.
To be honest, scientifically we dont know if miracles happen.
Because lets be honest, agnosticism is a better choice that atheism. and when it comes down to it if someone tells you they know theres not a God they are either lying or decieving themselves. We cant know things like that by ourselves...we dont have the capability.
Now of someone says they know there is a God, they are either lying, decieving themselves, or

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 1:45
I think that there have been some changes here and there throughout history but for the most part they are probably left fairly unchanged from their original states....based on my knowledge. I am willing to of course look at these documents as historical. I look at the Epic of Gilgamesh as an historical document. The problem for is when people try to say that these documents are true. Being "historical"...or, in my definition, something written down a long time and having some impact on society, has nothing to do with what was written being true or not. I recognize these are historical texts but I do not think a lot of it actually happened.

This is the sidenote of what we're talking about but some research I've come across is that one of the things that was altered was the story of Lazarus. Jesus, apparently, did not raise him from the dead in the first version. He de-excommunicated him which made church officials even more angry iwth Jesus and could explain how it could have been

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 1:47
changed into "raised from the dead" (cast out of excommunicaton). The guy's name, that I forget now, that made this change is also recorded...somewhere....I can get to that later if it comes up again...

Friendさん 4月26日 1:54
they are right, because He or it or whatever, could have actually initiated a relationship with that person. Our faculties of knowledge are small, but if He exists then He is probably capable of talking to us, and he most likely capable of doing miracles.

I kind of got sidetracked, but i think it is relevant.

-What Im trying to say is that if we believe that the supernatural is at least a possible possiblity (think about that terminology), then when we look at the life of Jesus in the gospels, we can begin to ask how accurate they are academically...which is pretty accurate...the least we can say is that the people who wrote these things lived and died for thier accuracy...they thought them to be accurate.

when taken together there is a good case for a high level of the material in the 4 books as being accurate.

The last important note is that having no errors or contradictions is not a legitamate criterion for any historical document...

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 1:54
It is impossible for any rational man to say without a doubt that there is no God just as there is a God. This is throwing it kind of offtopic anyway. Proving that there is a God is one thing. Proving which one it (It?) is another. For me, if God exists religions are just humans' filtered looking at the same thing. The other side I come from is the fact that fairies and imps could be true too. There's no way to REALLY prove they don't exist. I don't think God is much different...at least the one in question now. If you were to say that God is a metaphysical force that ties the universe together ...like gluons (physics term) then I'd say that's more believable than the biblical version.

All this said, we can still have morals and a good life. Life is not meaningless without God, we just have to redefine our lives...which can be difficult depending on your background. You should check out my other blogs: http://eastcastles.blogspot.com/ and http://universethinktank.blogspot.com/

Friendさん 4月26日 1:56
all historical documents have some level of error in them...especially ancient ones.
this does not mean that they do not represent a certain level (even an extremely high one) of historical accuracy.

If perfection was a criterion of knowledge, we would know nothing.

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 2:01
Living and dying for religion is debatable. We can't use that as proof for accuracy of the texts. Look at Islam. How many people die for that. How many Christians will say that they're right too based on those actions. Also,

Just because these texts say they died doesn't mean they actually did. The writers could have just put that in there to enhance the effect. That's one way...or this kind of motif is common in literature at that time. The people at the Council of Nicaea could have changed things up from the get-go. Or maybe they really did die...but not for faith but for some political cause. We have to really examine this further before it can be used in an argument, I think.

Friendさん 4月26日 2:12
we have manuscripts that go back much earlier than Nicea.
As are their many writers who go back further.

What I am saying about living and dying is that the same people who were eyewitnesses were martyrs.

It does not prove that the texts are accurate, what it does mean is that the same people who were there...most notably John and possibly Mathew (Luke and Mark were not even direct eyewitnesses and do not claim to be - which leaves more room for minor discepencies)
those same people who saw it wrote it - and would die for it then. - The martydom of John is much different than the martyrdom of say someone today.
Because he there...he was not tricked about what happened.

-like i said (this is why are wide range of scholastic reading is good before making either dogmatic or antagonistic claims...
its important to have a good grasp of the real sources.
-the claim that Nicea changed things is clearly fallacious with this info in mind...we have to much early writing to compare

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 2:12
I posted this conversation on the East Castles. I don't mention your name. I hope you don't mind.

Friendさん 4月26日 2:15
their writing to.

Maybe they were all crazy...maybe the whole thing is wrong.
what im saying is that to make a really good call either way its gonna take some disciplined study.

- sorry if I write stupid sometimes...im not much of a proof reader..

this is the kind of discussion i like though...and appreciate it.

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 2:15
Well that Nicea thing was just speculation on my part on the kinds of possibilities. What texts say that John was an eye witness? What validity do these texts have. If it's just John saying John saw it, it's a little suspicious to me.

Friendさん 4月26日 2:23
when i say historicity i mean that it is a reconrd of actual historical events.
-i would be interest in the Lasurus info...i would like to see who wrote it, and look at the originals myself.

but i will say in advance...even if the Lasurus story is unoriginal, it changes little.
-its one of many - the rest is still there - particularly Christ's resurrection which is unanimous to the begining.

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 2:27
The Lazarus thing was basically an example that I think doesn't go against you but does go against a lot of what "normal" Christians believe. People that believe that every single letter and grammatical item in the Bible is inerrant might be surprised to find out that in actuality it's totally not the case. Now, you say that the overall account of Christ's resurrection is fairly solid. I have no problem with that statement at this time. It changes little for my position though. It just mean that several historical texts have a correlation. It does not mean that the event actually happened.

Friendさん 4月26日 2:35
sure, but that the arguement...that i think there is a good case for at least a large amount of truth being there...and that i some to this through historical probablity...not through inerrancy or scripture.
i think that people who come to the conclusion opposite of mine, should get there for the same reasons if they can.

Andrew Bushさん 4月26日 2:39
I fully recognize that there is some possibility for the existence of an historical Jesus. The historicity of the resurrection is also worth a closer look. However, for me at this time, this possibility of either does not yet warrant belief in it.

Trees

2009-03-26T19:53:00.001+09:00

Humans: Virus

Earth: Host

Viruses kill their host and with the host, they die too. There have been tribes on islands that died from losing their natural resources. Cutting too many trees, etc. They didn't know to stop and let them grow again. This kind of thing has actually happened. They just didn't know to when to stop.

Reveal

2009-03-18T11:11:00.001+09:00

If you feel that God has revealed himself to you, that's not really faith anymore, is it? If you've actually seen him? If you feel God, is that faith anymore? If God reveals himself to certain people, then He's playing favorites.

"Well you just have to have faith first and then He'll reveal himself to you."

Then why is there this test anyway? God will just test your faith for a little while...depending on the time the length of time of the test will change?

Voices

2009-03-16T13:56:00.001+09:00

I can do some voices. I recorded them on my iPod and these links only work for ten days.

Universe Professor Voice:
http://2.recordertheapp.com/af729be6ea6dd7fd11db

Country Boy Voice:
http://2.recordertheapp.com/d8f5d754854e042b3ec1

Just Because

2009-03-03T22:23:00.002+09:00

Just because it hard to scientifically prove a lot of things out there especially things concerning the beginning of the universe (if there ever was such a thing), it does not necessarily point to God.

And even if it did point to a creator or an intelligent designer, that does not necessarily point to Christianity.

I hate it when people think something points to God and it automatically means the Christian god. This just proves that people are thinking with really closed minds about the subject. It could be ANY designer from ANY religion! Or some designer that's not described by any existing religion!

All it does is point to something that we do no understand fully and one possible way to explain it is that of a designer, a guiding hand. It is just one way to explain it. We could also just say we don't know.

This way of thinking can be applied to the beginning of the universe, creation theories, miracles, etc, etc, etc. Just be a little more objective about it...please...

Andrew Shrugged

2009-02-24T16:48:00.001+09:00

"Objectivism in this context is an alternate name for philosophical realism, the view that there is a reality or ontological realm of objects and facts which exists independent of the mind":
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)#Objectivism

"Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief in a reality that is completely ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc."
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism

I have always thought this way just naturally. If there's anyone out there that doesn't think this way naturally, Please let me know. I feel like this might be one of those suttle differences between me and other people that I always detected but could never put my finger on. I feel like guys might be more inclined to think this way and girls more subjective. I am not sure. 男女差別ごめんね。

Addendum to the Previous Post

2009-02-20T12:13:00.001+09:00

It's almost like giving up this search EQUALS believing in God when it really shouldn't and doesn't have to. This is the part where faith comes in and that's a whole other story. If you know this blog, you know my feelings on that.

Giving up should not end up in God. Giving up should be exactly that,...ending back up in the neutral zone...fence sitting. Sure, you believe it should end up in God if you're a Christian but you're no longer on the fence at that point.

Not Far Enough

2009-02-18T21:01:00.002+09:00

When I hear people say, "We are unable to understand God" or "who can know the mind of God?" or "If we can understand it, then it's not God," all kinds of things come to mind.

1. It feels like you gave up too early and that you didn't even get far enough to the things that we DO understand about this thing called God.

2. It's a cop-out.

3. Just because there's eomething we don't understand at this present doesn't mean that we won't eventually.

4. Even if there are some things that humans CAN'T understand, that doesn't mean that God exists. One does not preclude the other, in my eyes.

5. Let's really try to figure out what we CAN understand before we jump to this (ultimate) conclusion that we really can't understand it.

6. If we can't understand something, the next thing I think of is ...guess what...why? If we can't, then at least explain why not.

"Because God is too big for our understanding."

Then I say, "In what way is he, she, it, this thing too big?"

Basically, one of the overarching feelings I feel when I hear this kind of thing is, "you didn't go far enough."

It's almost like giving up this search EQUALS believing in God when it really shouldn't and doesn't have to. This is the part where faith comes in and that's a whole other story. If you know this blog, you know my feelings on that.

A Day in Kichijoji

2009-02-14T03:29:00.001+09:00

This is not going to be a super-exciting post. Let me just get that out of the way right...away. I live in Kichijoji. It's near Shinjuku and Shibuya, the west side of Tokyo. It's got some colleges nearby and is basically known as a place for youngsters to hang out. It's got a nice park and all the stores and restaurants I need. Some people call me a "Kichijoji Hikikomori." A "hikikomori" is basically a "shut-in" but worse than otaku. It doesn't necessarily mean nerdy like otaku. The real meaning is something kinda bad because its describing someone who never leaves their home...out of fear, I think.

Anyway, I like the place. I really don't need to go to a lot of other places really. What I do is basically ...

1. Wake up

2. Shower

3. Work

4. Come back home and change, look for new jobs on the internet

5. Go to a coffee shop and study Japanese

6. Come back home again, play XBox, look for new jobs on the internet again

7. Sleep.

8. Repeat.

When Mike, Tomo, and I go out we:

1. Go to a coffee shop to talk about the universe or study Japanese

2. Go out to eat somewhere (taco rice, veggie curry, Village Vanguard hamburgers, ramen place where they play T.I., Mexican buffet, Thai buffet, etc...just found a vegan place in town as well).

3. Go play Street Fighter 4 in the arcade

4. Go to Yodobashi Camera (a big electronics store, not just cameras). We go to the top floor to UniQlo to just look at all the cheap and nice clothes that we won't buy because we're in money-saving mode and then to the next floor just to listen to the music in Tower Records while reading the latest Metropolis magazine. After that we go to the first floor to look at all the Apple stuff we want to buy and maybe someday will.

5. Go back and watch downloaded episodes of Star Trek and play Halo..before or after that, Daily Show and Colbert Report streaming directly from their sites...don't need to torrent anymore...

When I'm with just Tomo, it's almost the same as with Mike except that we might cut out the nerdier stuff but she is starting to like Halo. That's kind of amazing actually. Also, maybe instead of Star Trek, it's Seinfeld or the Chappelle Show. The coffee and restaurant parts are the same. Except with Tomo ..at coffee shops, I talk about really stupid stuff or science and philosophy. Basically Tomo can already speak English so this is a good time for me to get my Japanese speaking practice in.

Now these are basic outlines of what I do most of the time. in between all these steps I'm checking my facebook, studying Japanese more, and looking for jobs on-line. When I ride the train, I like listen to my iPod. I find it a little hard to read on the train. I don't get trainsick. I just find it hard to concentrate enough. Also, lately, I've been playing NinjaTown for DS. That game is ...well, I shouldn't have started playing it. It's a little too addictive...it's really great but I think I'm losing valuable time over it...

Economic Hitman

2009-02-08T11:40:00.001+09:00

The interesting part starts from 5:28 ish. Be sure to check out Pt4 by clicking the link at the end of this video.

Arrogant

2009-02-03T15:27:00.001+09:00

People that are non-religious are often called arrogant for some reason and I think this is quite a telling response.

1.) If the only reason you're being religious is NOT to be arrogant I'd say that's a bad reason to believe what you believe.

2.) If you think you need to respect religious traditions and time-honored beliefs, that's OK but then it's arrogant for YOU to say that if someone doesn't believe in those things, that unbeliever is arrogant. Look more closely to the way you cast your stones.

3.) You can't respect something that you just don't believe in. Do NOT take this the wrong way. You might say that not believing in it is disrespecting it but that's another story. What I'm saying here is that you normally don't have to respect fairies anymore (for most people) because you just don't believe they exist. It's much the same for modern religion. It's not a question of arrogance either.

Science is Awesome

2009-01-25T01:10:00.001+09:00

Obameter

2009-01-24T00:06:00.001+09:00

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

Keep track of the man's promises at the link above.

Yellow Fever

2009-01-17T11:57:00.001+09:00

Video Game Sample

2009-01-16T12:05:00.001+09:00

http://www.andrewbushfilms.com/AJB_J-E_Translation/Samples/Samples.html

Childhood

2009-01-09T03:16:00.001+09:00

A lot of what I say on this blog is probably just a lot of pent-up stuff that has been in me for a while.

The only problem I have looking back is that maybe I was spoiled a little bit. Even my father says that he wishes he could have given my brothers and me more hardship. Other than that, everything was pretty much perfect. The only faults were that of mine my own.

Just take into account what you read on this blog and know what it feels like to have ideas and ideology thrown at you that you don't agree with. It is a bit much to have someone urge you to believe in a certain way...all the time.

Addendum to the Previous Post

2009-01-04T13:53:00.001+09:00

I know if you're trying to convert someone, you're really thinking in your heart that what you're saying is true. I know the intentions are good. I just wanted to say what I had to say about the subject. Thanks.

Morals are not history. Feeling Christ.

2009-01-04T13:50:00.000+09:00

As far as I can tell there are two main appeals to religion.

1. Whatever that religion's view is of the afterlife.

2. The morals and philosophical views of that religion.

I'm gonna focus on the second one right now.

In the case of Christianity, I don't think many people say "Oh, this history is true so I believe in Christ!" It's usually the other way around, "I believe in Christ so this history is true!" When you think about it that way, it sounds almost ridiculous but this happens all the time.

"These morals are true to me so everything else in this book is too."

It's easy for people to get caught in the compassion for humanity that Christ shows in the Bible. People seem to be willing to bend their own reason and not look at history clearly because they see these morals that should have nothing to do with history in the first place.

Thomas Jefferson edited out everthing that was supernatural in the story of Jesus and basically just left his morals behind. He and many of the other forefathers liked to go by this for their moral education. They believed in those morals but not the history.

The bottom line is that morals are not history. People did moral things in history but don't bend your own reasoning just because you like the morals of something.

When people say they don't believe in religion, etc, they're always confronted with others who say "well what do you base your morals on?" What about basing them on REASON. Man in a reasoning animal. Thinking that religion and morals are inseparable is just...dead wrong. There is such a long history of secular morals and ethics in Rome. People could look that up if they want to.

A lot of people say that they "feel Christ." Christ is true because they feel them. They think try to convert you because of this feeling. Isn't this a form of arrogance? That is YOUR feeling. I've seen other people REALLY feeling some Islam. REALLY feeling some Buddhism. This is when people start saying "Well, you can't say all religions are true" or "Well, you can't say there are true parts to all religion." I'm not getting to that. I'm saying that people's feelings are exactly that, just their feelings. Don't try to say it's some dogmatic universal truth just because it's YOUR feeling. Saying that your feelings are somehow connected to the Creator and everything that YOU say about this subjects of God and morals is the truth because it comes from the Creator is a bit fishy to me.

Don't you think?

Women and Belief

2009-01-04T12:15:00.001+09:00

"Across the EU, belief was higher among women, increased with age, those with strict upbringing, those with the lowest levels of formal education, those leaning towards right-wing politics, and those reflecting more upon philosophical and ethical issues."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_European_Union

Across America, even today I've heard of something called a "baby boomer" relationship or church-going relationship...I can't remember what it's called. This is referring to the wife/mother basically being the driving force in the relationship to make sure that everyone goes to church on Sunday. This can also be reflected in Marge on the Simpson's. My questions is "Why is that?" Of course, it's a why question. Japan is not religious at all but I have heard many women on TV and in person searching for something spiritual and I have heard of guys doing a little bit not as much.

I'm really not trying to be sexist here. I just want to point out a difference I've noticed. It also seems at times that women don't understand science in the way that I think a lot of guys can/do. I'm speaking in really general terms here. Basically, I'd like to know if there's some relationship with estrogen or whatever it is in women that allows for them to be more "spiritual" or more "religious" ...more about it than men in general.

Either:

1. Women are seeing/feeling something (that really is there)that men aren't.

2. Women in general have lower scores in science and therefore, by default, think of things more spiritually. (Men usually have lower scores in Literature, etc....it's the way it goes).

3. It's a combination of the two above.

4. It's a combination of the two and something else I haven't touched upon.

5. I don't know what I'm talking about.

My Experience With the Church, Revised

2009-01-01T17:47:00.002+09:00

INTRODUCTION

I always went to the church. My family was staying at a Residence Inn in Birmingham (I think) when I was about five years old for some reason for a couple of days. Taylor was probably just a baby but Jordan and I were exploring the hotel room and probably just causing trouble. We come across the Gideon's Bible. You can always find them at hotels in America. We couldn't even read yet. We asked our father what the title of the book was and he told us that it was the Bible. I very distinctly remember that Jordan started laughing first. He thought it was such an odd name. He started changing the letters, saying "Pible," etc. I laughed mainly because I thought Jordan laughing at it was funny enough. I didn't realize this until many years later but I think shortly after that, my family started going to church regularly. My parents had noticed from this incident of me and my brother making fun of how the word "Bible" sounds, that we needed to start going. My first church was a Methodist church in Tallassee, Alabama. When I was first introduced to the church I kind of liked it for the first week or so because it was kind of new. They then started talking God being able to see everything and do everything. I think I started to fear going to church. Just the atmosphere and the way people acted there was so different and weird to me that I just couldn't take it. I remember crying on my mother's shoulder asking if God was going to kill me. I remember she said, "God doesn't just go around killing people." After that, I was pretty much fine for years.

PUBERTY

Around the time I was twelve or so and puberty started to kick in, I was really doubting God and the church then too. I read a few things about evolution and I thought it was interesting but I don't suppose I could have ever commited myself to that at that time. I didn't understand enough. I suppose you could call it a true questioning period, the first of many. I never really cared one way or the other. It's hard to think seriously about science or religion at that age anyway.

GRACE

We moved to Griffin, GA when I was about 14. My brothers and I had been doing private school for one year to help transition the move. I was going absolutely crazy due to my surroundings at school in Alabama and due to plain old hormones. We started going to this private Christian school called "Grace Academy" in town. It seemed to be mainly Pentecostal but I think officially it was just Christian. I would say "Non-demoninational" but that sadly turned into a denomination of its own as well. Before we moved, the only strain of Christianity I had ever seen was that of Methodism. Pentecostals were different. It was much more energetic and I remember liking that part more. One of the main things was Salvation. Pentecostals believed that if you pray it and mean, you will be saved by Jesus. Maybe my brothers and I had our minds fixed too much on Mortal Kombat to ever really hear anything about it at First Methodist in Eclectic but I never really knew that Christians thought this way until I moved to Griffin. Of course, Methodists believed in Heaven, Hell, and Jesus, etc but this way,...this emphasis was different. At any rate, you could consider my time at Grace and my first year of college my "most Christian days." At the time, it felt like I was just giving it a shot. I gave it a shot.

NOW
I am not against people getting together and helping each other. I am not against any group of people that tries to get people off drug addictions or helps them to get jobs. I am not against any group that gives others hope.

I am against pseudo-science being taught in the schools. I am against wars raging on today that are still going on because of some stupid event that probably never happened 700 years ago (Islam) or 2000 years ago (Christianity). I am against homophobia. I am for women's rights. I am against pseudo-history. I am against people against certain works of art or literature because of that work being sacrireligious.

I am sort of with Bill Maher on this one. We don't know what's going to happen after we die. I would not DEFINITELY call myself an atheist. What people are referring to when they talk about something that allows for existence probably has some sort of correctness to it. I still have to think about it more.

Revised Site

2009-01-01T17:17:00.001+09:00

My first version was a little too plain. I updated the translation samples as well. Take a look!

http://www.andrewbushfilms.com/AJB_J-E_Translation/Home.html

Disprove

2008-12-31T17:41:00.003+09:00

I am not trying to disprove anything here. The main purpose of this blog is to show my views and things I find important. There was mainly one view that was taught to me by people that really cared for me all my life. I understand that. However, I want to show my view. I want to show my side. I don't feel like people on the other side ever really think about things in my way nor want to. I just feel like my opinion is important and worthwhile and valid and I want to talk about it here. I really don't even care if you agree with me. I'm not trying to convert anyone as much as I am trying to just show how I feel. Thanks for reading.

Religion in Europe

2008-12-31T17:36:00.002+09:00

Below are countries in Europe listed by their belief in a God (first row), Belief in a spirit or life force (second row), and Belief in Neither a Spirit or Life Force or God(third row). As you can see, Western Europe has pretty much been the more progressive side.

Estonia 16% 54% 26%
Czech Republic 19% 50% 30%
Sweden 23% 53% 23%
Denmark 31% 49% 19%
Norway 32% 47% 17%
Netherlands 34% 37% 27%
France 34% 27% 33%
Slovenia 37% 46% 16%
Latvia 37% 49% 10%
United Kingdom 38% 40% 20%
Iceland 38% 48% 11%
Bulgaria 40% 40% 13%
Finland 41% 41% 16%
Belgium 43% 29% 27%
Hungary 44% 31% 19%
Luxembourg 44% 28% 22%
Switzerland 48% 39% 9%
Lithuania 49% 36% 12%
Austria 54% 34% 8%
Spain 59% 21% 18%
Slovakia 61% 26% 11%
Croatia 67% 25% 7%
Ireland 73% 22% 4%
Italy 74% 16% 6%
Poland 80% 15% 1%
Portugal 81% 12% 6%
Greece 81% 16% 3%
Cyprus 90% 7% 2%
Romania 90% 8% 1%
Turkey 95% 2% 1%
Malta 95% 3% 1%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_European_Union

This Sums It Up

2008-12-30T14:45:00.001+09:00

This wasn't in the final cut of the movie but it's really good.

Faith and Reason

2008-12-30T13:48:00.002+09:00

Faith and religion is something that is completely immune from most modes of discourse in America. This is a real problem. We have Iron Age philosophy with 21st century weaponry.

Sean Hannity VS Christopher Hitchens

Religulous Clip

Faith and Reason Debates

Prayer and Faith

2008-12-30T02:05:00.002+09:00

Let me just say this first: I feel very fortunate that I have people that care about me. I do not think there is anything better than that.

With that out of the way.

Prayer has always seemed a bit weird to me. People say things like "No matter what, God's gonna do what he's gonna do and that's that." If you say this, then why is there any need for prayer? How does it work in the system? You need to pray to show that you care? If God is going to do what he's going to do and He already has a Divine Plan for everything then A.) Is there any free will under that system if you assume that? and B.) Why does praying even matter? Why do you need to show that you care? Why are you trying to change things and cater to the heart of God by showing that you're true worshippers by praying? If it's already said and done in God's eyes, then how is catering to the heart of God going to change things? Why do you think it's going to? The bottom line is this:

If you think it's already all planned out, then why are you praying?

Why do you think you can change it by praying? Even if God likes hearing it, it doesn't matter because it's all planned out anyway.

Also, on a side note:

Faith is a SCAM. In any other arena other than religion, is faith ever an issue. Sure, you can guess and it feels good to take risks sometimes but to say that God likes faith feels like a SCAM to me now. As soon as you start asking about things too deeply and get to the point that true believers haven't really thought out things too thoroughly or just didn't want to or just couldn't or just haven't yet, they'll say "It's faith" and then wait for you to be amazed. The next question is "Why is faith good?" Then they'll basically not understand that. "Faith brings you closer to God" "God says faith is good." But why? You can't really answer that. No Christian I have ever met really can. "It's just faith." "God requires that you take a leap of faith." Why do you think that requirement is there? Is there some ulterior motive from the church? When people talk about the leap of faith, I feel like I would be jumping for no reason into nothingness...into an archaic set of a beliefs that even most of our forefathers in America didn't believe in. (More people go to church now than they did in colonial America.) Christians will admire faith for its simplicity but I'd say there's really no meaning in what they're saying and the argument could go on forever after that.

The Best of 2008

2008-12-18T09:27:00.001+09:00

Rock Album:

Appeal to Reason by Rise Against

Rap Album:

Paper Trail by T.I.

Runner-Up

The Renaissance by Q-Tip

Video Game (Console):

Gears of War 2

Video Game (Arcade):

Street Fighter 4

Movie:

The Dark Knight

TV Show:

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (tie)

Prop 8 the Musical

2008-12-08T23:27:00.000+09:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Zeitgeist Addendum

2008-12-02T02:00:00.001+09:00

This one is a little more tame than the first one. I say that because it doesn't really hit on religions and conspiracy theories as much. It's much more solid in that way as well. The main focus is how economies and money work. It breaks down a lot of how world economy functions and how systems destroy the third world etc. It also proposes a solution for the modern era. It's pretty awesome.

Download at:
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/dloads.htm

http://www.mininova.org/tor/1900850

Or watch in chunks on YouTube:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=NT-2fenmLnc

Here's the first clip:

HSP ON SALE

2008-11-27T16:05:00.001+09:00

HSP IS FINALLY FOR SALE!

http://www.atlantabujinkan.com/documentary.html

Death is Final

2008-11-26T13:56:00.001+09:00

1.) If you get knocked out people will even use the expression, "He's not there." Your consciousness goes out the window. You eventually wake up though. Death is like this but of course, there's no waking up. This example shows that your CONSCIOUSNESS is PHYSICAL.
2.) When people get hit on the head hard or have strokes, sometimes their inner-voice can change...not so much in the way it sounds in their head but the way in which it functions.
3.) When people do psychedelic drugs such as LSD or shrooms, they have what they call a "religious experience." This shows that a lot of what other people call "religious experiences" might just be some chemicals firing off in their head in abnormal ways.
4.) The eternal soul is SUPPOSED to be exactly that: eternal. Where were you before you were born? Nowhere.

5. When stimulated one EGO part of the brain, religious people thought they were seeing God. Non-religious people thought they were meeting aliens. This is a real science experiment that happened.

Some points that theoretically work:

1.) The soul is eternal but the body and brain are not capable of accessing all of it's memory and/or potential.

2.) That's really all I got. The above is theoretically OK but it just seems too much like wishful thinking.

What now? I die and that's it?

Well, don't get too disturbed. It sucks but it makes you really think about NOW, this moment. You re-evaluate your one shot.

Doesn't this way of thinking make people go crazy and kill people?

I don't think so. In rare cases, maybe. It will probably make you depressed for a little while but not for forever. As for killing people, ...you believe in life being one shot, Why would you fuck up someone else's only shot?

What does it matter if it's all futile?

It's futile?

All of this is open for debate.

Two Movies

2008-11-23T14:21:00.001+09:00

Two Movies To Which I am Looking Forward

My Take on Guns So Far

2008-11-21T23:53:00.001+09:00

1. Hunting is probably OK.

2. The Second Amendment was made in a time when everyone had pistols and rifles. Today the government outlaws big guns for normal people while they use it for themselves.

3. The Second Amendment was made so that you could protect yourself from the government or other people if you wanted to. If a SWAT team came into your house...if the government really wanted to get you, those guns you bought at Wal-Mart are not going to do dick.

4. "So are you saying we should just outlaw all guns since it's already pointless anyway as far you can tell?" Well, it would seem that way. Basically, I just want people to see these views to have a better opinion about things. I'm not offering a solution at this point. I'm just showing more arguments.

5. "If hunting was OK, then people would probably just start killing each with those. Would crime go down just because the guns would be bigger? Also, since they're bigger, it makes it harder to conceal so now when someone is coming after you with a gun, you can recognize it quicker and have more time to run!"

6. Does making handguns illegal lower crime rates? Does it lower murder cases?

7. We are living in an age of AK-47s and Uzis. This is not the age of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. We really need to take this stuff into account and not be blinded by our own blind need to "not be foreign."

Side Note:

Patriotism

I'm fine with people loving their own country but I've always hated how patriotism AUTOMATICALLY creates barriers with other people. Patriotism means you AUTOMATICALLY dislike other countries. That's the way it seems to me. I'm objective towards patriotism.

Succession

2008-11-20T19:24:00.001+09:00

I will study warfare and strategy so that my children can learn science and mathematics and so that their children can learn art and poetry.

Addendum to the previous entry.

2008-11-14T19:37:00.001+09:00

Also, what can be very limiting and feel "empty" sometimes is the lack of sounds in Japanese. Even Wikipedia stated that Japanese "has a relatively small phonetic lexicon."

There are 48 sounds in Japanese. That's right. You can count them.

There are over 300 in English.

There are apparently other languages that have even less sounds but going from 300 or so to 48 is quite a jump and while most of the sounds are fairly easy to say and basic pronunciation is fairly simple to get...the mere lack of more sounds makes Japanese feel very stripped down.

Japanese and English

2008-11-14T09:03:00.001+09:00

For a native English speaker, Japanese can feel limiting sometimes. In Japanese, there is no:

Past Perfect (I had done that.)

Past Perfect Progressive (I had been doing that.)

Future Tense (You use the present tense and imply the future.)

Plurals (This is why they always forget it in English.)

And no language has as many expressions as English but Japanese really doesn't have that many.

And they have subjects and pronouns, but they prefer not to use them making things sound even simpler.

There is no distinction between gerund and infinitive in Japanese. In Japanese "To play baseball is fun" and "Playing baseball" is fun is the same thing.

There is no "will have done" or "will have had" or "will have been" grammatical construction in Japanese.

And in Japanese, they prefer to speak with the least amount of words. I heard a Swedish girl say that she wished they'd say something other than "kawaii," which means "That's cute." She said this because apparently in Swedish they mix it up more. The same goes in English. I've heard a lot of my friends from English speaking countries say that Japanese people say "sugoi" too much which basically means "great" or "awesome," something along those lines. The thing is,...they always fucking use this word. It's never changed up. In English, we say "cool" "awesome" "sweet" "amazing" "fantastic." That's five times as many words right there! I feel like people of European descent are always feeling like, "Use another fucking word! Sugoi is wayyyyy overused!" I overheard that there was some study saying that English speakers say three times as many different words in a day than Japanese speakers.

English does not have:

Wa and Ga ...the subject and topic markers

the Volitional form ...everyone says that "darou" and "deshou" are the "future tense" in Japanese but this is just not true. "darou" and "deshou" imply INTENTION...not a place in time! It implies one's VOLITION to do something...not the FUTURE like "will" Of course, maybe we sort of have this in English if we say "I intend to do something" but it's not EXACTLY the same, I guess.

Japanese has a shitload of onomatopeaia (sp?). More than most languages.

English has no gitaigo which is onomatopeaia for states. In English, we think of it only for mocking previous existing sounds but in Japanese they have onomatopeia words for actual states of being. This "gitaigo" as it is called is not found in English at ALL....I think.

If you're Japanese and want to talk about this further, let's debate this shit. I'm ready! I'm waiting on the retort.

Taken

2008-11-13T21:54:00.004+09:00

I just saw the other good movie for this year. "Taken" starring Liam Neeson is fucking great. No bullshit. There is really nothing you do not need. The plot is that Neeson is a ex-agent of some sort, retired, but his daughter gets kidnapped on a trip in Paris. The reason she gets kidnapped is because she's attractive. The kidnappers are part of an underground group that abducts girls and sells them into some kind sex slave market. They kidnap them, drug them up, get the addicted, and then force them into prostitution. They move them to the eastern Europe or northern Africa. This kind of trade REALLY does go on in that part of the world so it's a rather believable plot. Basically, what's good about it is that it's simple. Liam wants his daughter back and he's such a badass trying to get her back. The fighting is awesome and really believable...kind of like the fighting in the Bourne Identity movies. The action is consolidated too. Again, nothing you don't need. Nothing is drawn out. The poster is in French but the movie is in English. It's a Luc Besson movie so...there ya go.

Too Much Identity

2008-11-08T11:57:00.001+09:00

Sometimes it feels like there's too much identity in being Japanese for the Japanese. I suppose I only have this opinion because I'm American. If I were European, I would probably completely understand. It's just a bit annoying when people do things ONLY because of culture or when they explain why they do the things they do. Sometimes, Japanese people will tell me that the reason they do this or that is because of some incident that happened hundreds of years ago. Maybe this kind of thing happened in Europe and was spread to America in some way. Maybe it's worse that that might happen and I don't even know the origin unlike the Japanese. It's just something that can be a huge difference between basic ways of thinking for an American and a Japanese person. Too much pre-set identity.

Obama and Taxes

2008-11-05T19:39:00.001+09:00

So it's fucking great Obama won. I just have one question. During the presidential debates, Obama was saying that he was going to cut taxes for everyone that makes less than 250K a year but now everyone's talking about his wealth redistribution plan and about him raising taxes for most people. I'm so confused. Someone please explain.

Hot Chicks

2008-11-02T23:32:00.002+09:00

Sometimes, all the deep stuff can get to be a little too much so here's something different. Here's a list of some chicks I think are fantastic.

8.) Elisha Cuthbert

So this is Elisha Cuthbert. She was in a pretty good movie called The Girl Next Door. She got my attention.

7.) Katherine Heigl

She was in Knocked Up. Fantastic.

6.) Gillian Anderson

Any nerd loves this girl. The X-Files was one of the best shows ever and it's also great to see her in the series as well.

5.) Elizabeth Hurley

She's getting to be a little older now but I've liked her for a long time. She probably looks her best in Bedazzled even though that movie sucked.

4.) Angelina Jolie

I probably don't like her as much as everyone else but I do like her. She's a little crazy but also really caring...basically a philanthropist. A hot philanthropist.

3.) Scarlett Johansson

After Lost in Translation, I was basically in love. I want to meet her in person.

2.) Dagmara Dominiczyk

I don't know why she's not more famous. She was Mercedes in the most recent The Count of Monte Cristo. She looks amazing in the movie. This picture doesn't do her justice.

1.) Monica Bellucci

When I saw the second Matrix, I was basically taken aback. I had never been taken aback before in a movie before because of a woman. I never really liked celebrities that much anyway. She played the Frenchman's Wife. Fantastic. She was also Mary in the Passion. Mel Gibson said that the crew tried so hard to make her ugly for the movie but it proved to be extremely difficult. It's going to take someone really special (who I've never seen) to replace this number one pick.

Gay Marriage

2008-11-02T23:29:00.002+09:00

Tradition

The tradition argument just basically doesn't hold water. Women's and black rights are only 50 years old or so. There's no tradition there. Now everyone believes in it. Not many people have problems with it. You cannot use tradition as a reason for being against gay marriage.

Religion

If you believe in one nation under God, then read my previous post about America's forefathers. All of that stuff was printed on our dollars and put into our government in the 1950s. America is not a Christian nation. Refer to the Treaty of Tripoli quote in my previous post. America is not a theocracy. It's a democratic-republic. The things in the Bible about homosexuality are there and you can say what you want about them but why do people say THAT'S God's Word when they say the "sell your daughter into slavery" thing is "just the Old Testament. We're in the New Testament now!" People say that they don't pick an choose in the Bible, they just go by the New Testament but if that's true why do you give a fuck about the Ten Commandments so much? It's OK to think they're good morals and everything but if you think that the Old Testament is basically thrown out and we're in the New Covenant now then how are the Ten Commandments relevant? They're Old Testament rules, right?!

There are a few things in the New Testament that speak out against homosexuality but the bottom line is this: If you're a parent, don't you want your kids to think for themselves and to just grow into who they are? If we are God's children, then why do you think He wouldn't be the same way? If that doesn't work, then I'll say this: Why does God predispose some people to the Devil more than others? Just because God made Adam and Eve (not Adam and Steve) does not mean that God wouldn't eventually make some people gay.

The Sanctity of Marriage

"We got married because we were going to have a kid," is what a lot of straight married couples say. For me personally, the sanctity is in the love. If two people make that choice to be together forever, then that's great. Gay or straight, I don't care. You can say that the "purest" weddings or whatever were in the biblical times but men usually had several wives at that time. Is that what you would consider pure? That's not a modern view. Also, the men chose the women, not vice-versa.

Science

Well, the main issue is religion, I suppose but I'll address this too. There are a lot of animals that show gay tendencies and activity. Dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants. Since this isn't the religion section, we'll just ACCEPT evolution and that humans are part of the ape family. It's OK! We can be animals AND human! The nature and nurture topic is debatable but I think it's usually mostly nature with a little bit of nurture but then again it depends on the person. There can be a lot of reasons for homosexuality. One of the striking things found is that usually gay men are the youngest of his siblings. Inside the womb, the mother washes the fetus with estrogen to try to fight this foreign body and by the time the woman has had experience and enough kids, the youngest one has a higher chance of being gay because of that gained experience, the woman's body getting more used to fighting the foreign entity. This is just one example that it could just boil down to nature (i.e. SCIENCE) in most cases. Well, hell, psychology is a science too so I guess nurture can be thrown in there.

Personally

If someone thinks about something for a long time and has years and years of personal discovery and comes to the peaceful conclusion that he or she is gay, then I'd say that's real. You can say that some people's "personal discoveries" lead them to being psycho killers but being gay and being a psycho killer are two very different things. For me, just the fact that people have to wrestle with it for a long time but then finally just feel it more honest and just feel that that's really who they are,...that's enough for me.

Civil Rights

Marriage is important as far as civil rights are concerned. Even Palin says she believes in this. If the person you love is in the hospital and you can't see him/her because he/she is not legally your spouse...then I think that's a fucked up situation.

Why do you care, Andrew? You're not gay.

Why do you care about ending slavery? You're not black? Why do you care if women can vote or not? You're not a woman. Do you see what I mean? I care about people and their rights and their fucking right to live their lives normally...with equal rights and without prejudice.

Sarah Palin Gets Punked

2008-11-02T14:07:00.001+09:00

Two DJs from Montreal pose as France's PM Sarkozy to prank Sarah Palin.

Spreading the Wealth and Socialism

2008-11-01T12:40:00.002+09:00

So this seems to be a topic recently. I just have some things to say.

1.) If you tax the rich a lot more but the rich are still rich, what's the problem?

2.) I do have a problem with it if you tax the rich so much that they're not rich anymore. The economy is said to be based on greed and what will happen with the economy if no one can become rich anymore?

3.) I think it would be a little scary if everyone was exactly the same class. I don't think there should be class discrimination either.

4.) I don't think we should reject every socialist idea just because it can be called that dirty word, "socialism."

5.) I don't like Communism mainly because I want to be able to choose what kind of job I want and a lot of government control is a little scary.

6.) Is spreading the wealth control? There's always taxes. How come this form of taxes is automatically socialist?

7.) Sometimes, competition is bad. I wouldn't want two police or fire departments competing.

8.) Should an economy be based on greed?

9.) Should a form of government systematically destroy greed?

10.) Is greed necessarily bad for the economy?

11.) I'm kind of for a scientific approach where we study how people become happy. Most tribes work on a kind of socialist base. I think that people are willing to and are happier when they work for the group, but if the idea of the "group" or "working for the betterment of the group" it is imposed by some impersonal government entity, the "group" that you're working for at that point is too big and people will lose sight of what they're doing and become depressed. The group must be smaller and personal. That's how tribes work. I mention tribes because I'm for going back to basics. Basic human nature. I kind of like the idea of Venezuela's GNH, Gross National Happiness.

12.) And one last thing, people are always going nuts over "growth." Business growth, personal growth, etc. I think it's important to succeed but if growing is all we do and we don't monitor it more, there could be no more nature left. I don't want to turn into a tree-hugger or anything but I just want to point out that maybe we should all be more objective in our views towards "growth." We have to think about our planet and future.

On SpaceShip Earth, there are no passengers, only crew.

Pay It Forward / The Last Samurai

2008-10-31T13:37:00.001+09:00

Pay It Forward is not a bad movie. I think what it's trying to say is great and there a lot of good scenes. It loses it a bit along the way and the ending seems to be there just because it "fits" with the rest of movie. There's one scene that I really love. Jim Caviezel is a homeless heroine addict in the movie and is having a hard to getting his life straight. He's backpacking across the San Francisco bridge and notices a woman that's about to jump off to commit suicide. They have a bit of an exchange and then Caviezel says "save my life" to her. She's about to kill herself and he says forget you, save my life. I love that because in a way it gives that woman who was going to kill herself some purpose in her life. You don't really hear too often that a person gives that kind of order to someone trying to kill him/herself. It's almost like you would think it's the last thing that person would need but it could have been EXACTLY what she needed. Maybe you can say suicide is selfish. I don't know. I just love that one line.

In The Last Samurai, one of the scenes that sticks with me is the one where Tom Cruise has not yet been fully accepted by the samurai and gets into a fight with wooden practice swords. It's basically a training session where emotions entered. Tom Cruise had not yet been properly trained very much in their style and so he was thorougly beaten down but there's this moment where he's just waving the sword on the ground. He can't even get up but all he's doing is trying to swing the sword. It's just one of those scenes that makes you think about motivation and not giving up.

I want to watch Rocky again too. That's another really great motivational movie.

"You could be somebody but you're just a bum!"

A Fellow POW and Acquaintance of John McCain Talks

2008-10-30T16:10:00.001+09:00

Pascal's Wager

2008-10-27T12:23:00.000+09:00

Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion posed by the French philosopher Blaise Pascal that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should "wager" as though God exists, because so living has potentially everything to gain, and certainly nothing to lose. It was set out in note 233 of his Pensées, a posthumously published collection of notes made by Pascal in his last years as he worked on a treatise on Christian apologetics. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascals_wager

In WHAT God We Trust?

2008-10-27T10:48:00.004+09:00

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; ..." the Treaty of Tripoli, 1797

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries." -1803 letter objecting use of gov. land for churches, James Madison

I don't like it when people say that the founding fathers were Christian or that America is a Christian nation. Many of the founding fathers of America were Deists, not Christians. This is why a lot of people get confused. When Benjamin Franklin or Jefferson mention God or virtue or value, they tend to automatically think that they were talking about Christianity. It was actually a mixed bag, but the majority opinion was to be secularists. Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson were probably the least religious, bordering on atheism.

Taken from the Wikipedia article:

Deism is the belief that a supreme God exists and created the physical universe, and that religious truths can be arrived at by the application of reason alone, without dependence on revelation. It is in contrast with fideism, found in many forms of Christianity[1], Islamic and Judaic teachings, which holds that religious truths rely upon revelation in sacred scriptures and upon the testimony of other people as well as reasoning.
Deists typically reject most supernatural events (prophecy, miracles) and tend to assert that God has a plan for the universe, which he does not alter by intervening in the affairs of human life nor by suspending the natural laws of the universe.

Here are some quotes from some of the Founding Fathers:

". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist." - Benjamin Franklin

"I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works ... I mean real good works ... not holy-day keeping, sermon-hearing ... or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity." -Benjamin Franklin

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved-- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!" -letter to Thomas Jefferson, John Adams

"Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself." -Thomas Jefferson, in his private journal, Feb. 1800

"What is it the New Testament teaches us? To believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith." -Thomas Paine

Now there is this link that has a lot of Christian quotes from them. I would judge any quote that does not directly mention the Bible or Jesus very carefully. It could just be in reference to Deism. http://christianparty.net/christianationquotes.htm

But here are some more that might make you think differently.

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology." - Thomas Jefferson

"It has been fifty and sixty years since I read the Apocalypse, and then I considered it merely the ravings of a maniac." - Thomas Jefferson

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." -Thomas Jefferson

Just because there are Christians in America does mean that the country has to be a Christian nation. I'm on the side of the Constitution and the Treat of Tripoli. I'm not trying to get the founding fathers on my side but I am trying to show you something that can be construed quite easily. I just wanted to show the other side.

Shows I Watched As a Kid

2008-10-26T15:20:00.001+09:00

I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid. I remember when I would talk to a kid about cartoons, he would talk like he'd watch only one show or a week or so. I always felt like I knew ALL of that kid's show and all of all the others. I watched a LOT of TV. I don't regret it actually. I still love animation. I have always been a fan of just any kind of media...maybe more than others. This is a list of shows that I watched REGULARLY, some every day.

Scooby Doo
Popeye
Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers
Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin
BeetleJuice
Captain N: Game Master
Curious George
Care Bears
Captain Caveman
The Centurions
Dennis the Menace
Dink the Last Dinosaur
Dino-Riders
Dinosaucers
Winnie the Pooh
Duck Tales
Flintstone Kids
The Flintstones
Fraggle Rock
G.I. Joe
Garfield and Friends
Heathcliff
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
Inspector Gadget
Jetsons
Mighty Mouse
Muppet Babies
The New Adventures of Johnny Quest
A Pup Named Scooby Doo
GhostBusters
Transformers
Simpsons
Schoolhouse Rock
Smurfs
Snorks
SilverHawks
The Super Mario Brothers
ThunderCats
ThunderBirds
Tom and Jerry
Looney Tunes
Turbo Teen
TaleSpin

90s
I can't mention the 90s without the NickToons.

I saw every episode of:
Doug
The Ren and Stimpy Show
Rocko's Modern Life

several times.

RugRats
Aaahh! Real Monsters!
KaBlam!
Hey Arnold!
Angry Beavers
CatDog
SpongeBob Squarepants
Pete and Pete
Spiderman
Batman: the new Animated Series
The Pirates of Dark Water
Eek! the Cat
Animaniacs
Bobby's World
Cow and Chicken
Dexter's Lab
PowerPuff Girls
Duckman
Earthworm Jim (only like half a season was ever made)
Freakazoid!
Johnny Bravo
Pinky and the Brain (although I always thought this was the weakest of the Animaniac's characters)
Reboot
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Swat Kats
The Tick
X-Men

Then there was Snick, which was Saturday Night Nickelodeon.

Clarissa Explains It All
Roundhouse
The Ren & Stimpy Show
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Summer 1993 and 1994
Clarissa Explains It All
The Adventures of Pete & Pete
The Ren & Stimpy Show
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Roundhouse
1994-early 1996
The Secret World of Alex Mack
All That
The Ren & Stimpy Show
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Early 1996-late 1996
The Secret World of Alex Mack
All That
Space Cases
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Late 1996-early 1997
Kenan & Kel
All That
The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo
Kablam
1997-1999
Rugrats
All That
Action League Now!
Kenan & Kel

There were some other shows that I watched maybe once or just half an episode that I did not list. Snick, NickToons, X-Men, Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and Batman, and Rocko's Modern Life were and still are at the top of m list!

A question on everyone's mind

2008-10-25T12:07:00.000+09:00

Is Barack a Muslin?

Obama

2008-10-25T11:18:00.003+09:00

1. He is not a Muslim.

2. Being on a committee with a terrorist that was more than likely formed to do something very good and definitely not for terrorism does not make him a terrorist.

3. He is half-white. His very mother is white. I think calling him black is ridiculous. We should be able to call him white as well if we do that.

4. He's not an elitist. He's cutting all the taxes for the middle class. He may come off as elitist because he's very intelligent. He went to Harvard for crying out loud. Isn't the President of the United States of America the most elite office on Earth anyway? The elitist argument is worst bullshit I've ever heard. They're all elitist. The question is why is that bad? Everyone should strive to be elite. Being elite does not automatically mean hating on those you feel lower than you.

5. The Republican is using you. They always say they're Christian and whatnot. In 8 years, did Bush do ANYTHING to end abortion? Let's think about that.

6. I totally agree with John Stewart on this one. Muslim boys that died fighting for America in Iraq are American. Being Muslim automatically makes you non-American now? Why the Hell am I even talking about this when Obama is openly a Christian? Did everyone forget about his crazy CHRISTIAN pastor?

7. Are Democrats all of a sudden non-American now? Having a different opinion is non-American now? That's not the kind of America I was taught.

8. If you're the king of a country, why would you destroy your own country? If Obama is a terrorist and wins the election, what would he do?

9. Bush was eating with Osama Bin Laden's family on the morning of 9/11. There are talks that Bush planned 9/11 to gain support for his agenda, i.e. the Patriot Act and the War. When time for re-election came about, a video from Osama was released at SUCH a convenient time. The video helped secure his win. Who's the terrorist?

10. Democrats tend to fall more toward socialist views but Obama has never said he was a socialist. Look at the Patriot Act. Isn't this the scariest thing in fucking history? Doesn't this make it easier for the government to take advantage of your rights? What about the bailout? The government bailed out a company. Isn't that socialist? Why did Republicans support this bullshit? Who are you anymore?

This post was inspired from this link.

Found It

2008-10-23T22:38:00.003+09:00

OK, so this is the Middle Eastern sounding one. In the areas where people still speak Aramaic, the Lord's Prayer is actually sung, not recited. Notice how Islamy this sounds.

The Way I See It

2008-10-23T22:22:00.000+09:00

It probably happened something like this...as far I as I can tell right now.

1. There was one, several, or no real Jesus figures at that time.

2. Real or not, many or one, this person became some sort of religious figure.

3. Early Christianity had no set canon as far as I can tell. All of the Bible, Apocrypha, and Lost Books were read and used ...probably depending on the tribe.

4. The religion gained some sort of popularity but really picked up steam when it was basically picked reluctantly by Constantine to be the official state religion of Rome. The Council of Nicaea picked the books they deemed fit and so formed what we now call Helios Biblia...I mean Sun Book...I mean Holy Bible.

5. After that, it became basically the religion of the West. Before that, white people were basically these pagans. I feel that since it's a part of history...deeply rooted...some people might think that's reason enough for its validity.

The questions that come to mind are:

A.) Is Christianity in America and in the West in general the same as it was during its formative years?

B.) Isn't it dangerous that today's "Christian soldiers" don't even think about this kind of history?

C.) Shouldn't people be questioning their own community's version of Christianity? How do Christians in the Middle East view their religion?

D.) Don't you know that if you're a Christian, you basically entrust your whole life to this set of books that were picked by old white guy at a council a long time ago. Of course, this question never goes anywhere because people always say the council was "divinely led." In the words of Sam Harris, that's a conversation-ender.

Anyway, since I'm posting about this stuff, I thought I'd include a video of the Lord's Prayer...being sung in Aramaic, the language Jesus (if he existed, and if that actually matters) spoke. The first version I saw but cannot find now sounded much more "Middle Eastern" but this is not bad. It's just interesting to hear it in that language.

America Is Broken

2008-10-23T18:08:00.001+09:00

The following shows the kind of person in America that I disagree with. The super right-wing of America is crazy. They'll say things like "That's not the Christianity, I know" when I can't help but think that their own fucking Christianity is not the Christianity that their forefathers gave them. Most Christian scholars believe that in early Christianity and up until fairly recently...a few hundred years ago or so, ...no one took the Bible THAT literally. I don't think anyone cared to. The Christianity of every age is different. Everyone says it's one unchanging thing but that's bullshit. What happened in America ...especially the South is that the extremely religious from Scotland and Ireland came over and set up camp. That's basically it. The British were never as religious as the Scottish or Irish. If you look at the South's heritage, you can see that most people there are of that heritage. This is how we get the Bible Belt today. This is why the North is different. There's two different original cultures here.
Just one more thing before I go, I hate it when people believe the Rapture WILL happen in their lifetime. I don't care if you believe it'll happen at some point. I don't care if you say it MIGHT happen in our lifetime...but for Christ's sake, ...believing that without a doubt that the world WILL end in the next 60 or so years is madness. It is dangerous and it will not set up things in the best way, I feel, for generations to come. Anyway, the video below of this woman is just one thing that's wrong with Americans. Keep the populace stupid and they'll do whatever you want.

Endorsements

2008-10-20T19:09:00.002+09:00

A while back, Christopher Hitchens endorsed Obama. Hitchens is known for his unusual political views. He fully supports preemptive invasions to over thrown dangerous regimes, such as Iraq and Iran, which many of his collegues dissagree with. This is one choice he won't need to defend as much as usual.

More recently, Obama received perhaps his most important endorsement ever. Colin Powell. He is one of the most respected public officials around today, as far as I know. Here's the video from meet the press.

Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals

2008-10-19T22:43:00.001+09:00

This was one of those stupid skits that I know is stupid but I still really liked it.

And this is the follow-up with the real Mark Wahlberg and maybe even funnier.

The Real Palin on SNL

2008-10-19T22:29:00.001+09:00

Hockey

2008-10-18T23:19:00.001+09:00

I don't know why but I'm getting into hockey recently. I haven't played it myself yet but I've been trying to find some people on-line that play hockey in Tokyo. The video below are some good goals.

Language Is Not Fair

2008-10-18T11:55:00.001+09:00

I think Japanese people put more emphasis on pronunciation than we do in English. For me, it's grammar. If I hear someone say "I go to the bathroom" instead of "I WILL go to the bathroom" with perfect pronunciation the red light goes off in my head a lot more than if someone places the accent in the wrong spot. If you place the accent in the wrong spot in Japanese, I feel like their red lights go off. Like, if you same tsuNAmi instead of TSUnami, it goes off big time for them. I feel like if your grammar is good, then I can understand you more. If you mispronounce something and the grammar is good, I can probably guess from context what you're talking about anyway. I guess pronunciation is important but what I'm trying to say is that when I listen to someone in any language, I'm MUUUUUUCCCH more sensitive to their grammar than pronunciation. Anytime they forget "will" or plurals or "the" or "a," I feel like it's the same thing for them when you have that gaijin accent.

This is why it's so hard to learn another language. Every language has its own standards and ideas for speaking well. In Japanese, you have to be succinct and efficient. In English, we prefer to be clear grammatically and leave little to be understood in context. If you think about it this way, the two are exactly opposite.

Japanese is concise.

English is precise.

Politics Make Me Angry

2008-10-18T00:29:00.001+09:00

1. What was the purpose of the committee that Obama and that terrorist guy were on? The guy is a former terrorist. That's a fact. However, what if the purpose of that committee was something that wasn't so crazy? Let's get all the facts straight first.

2. McCain's rallies are going nuts. I like the way McCain's handling it though. It really shows the mentality of some of those people there. Calling Obama an Arab is fucking ridiculous. Being Muslim does not mean being Arab and vice-versa. Even if he was Arab or Muslim, who gives a fuck? Calling every Muslim a radical like the Taliban is like calling every Christian a Nazi. Bottom line. It just so happens that Obama is a (openly) a Christian. My theory is that he's not as "religious" in the right-wing sense as people may think he is.

3. Oil is king. Afghanistan attacks us and then we go into Iran and Iraq. Why? If France attacks us will we attack Germany and Austria? What the fuck? Every American just thinks "they're all the same" and that's how this mess gets support. Do you know how fucking dangerous that way of thinking is?

4. Recycling doesn't kick enough ass. Electric cars don't kick enough ass for Americans to care. Things have to really KICK ASS for Americans to give a shit. The truth is that polluting and not converting to all electric (NOT this hybrid bullshit) cars is kicking the earth's ass every day. Ask any reputable scientist on the planet. I've actually heard some Americans say that only because they don't go 150mph, they think electric sucks. Or...shit like..they just don't have that sound...or there's always some fond connection to the traditional engine. Excuse me for not being nostalgic. I don't give a fuck. I say let's get rid of all gas-powered cars for good and use gas only for aircraft until we build good enough electric engines for those too. They have electric cars that can run all day and all night for very cheap but guess what...Exxon bought the patent. Fuck that.

Everyone Loves Good Impressions

2008-10-16T21:59:00.001+09:00

Mike showed me this. The impression of Robert DeNiro playing Frankenstein is the best one.

John's Blog

2008-10-15T14:00:00.004+09:00

One of these days, I'll write about something that isn't such heavy subject. My friend John Fannin, who is a friend of my oldest friend, Reid, wrote something that really rings true to me. It's a blog about people's perceptions of God and the universe. Check it out here.

Perception

2008-10-09T22:34:00.000+09:00

Me: OK, I thought of a few. you said "which perceive other dimensions as being aspects of time." I was wondering if you explain a littler further what you mean by "other dimensions being aspects of time"?

Also, you said," looked at from higher dimensional spaces, otherwise discrete objects become connected as aspects of one, larger object." Is there any way you can explain how these discrete objects become one? Is there an easy way for a layman to grasp this kind of thing? Thanks a lot

Matt: In order to understand how spacial dimensions can be packed into time, it's necessary to think about how space and time appear to the consciousness of a lower animal. First, take a snail. Snails have a very simple sensorium, as well as a very bare-bones nervous system (if I can be forgiven that phrase for a boneless animal.) Now, to a snail, the world it perceives is very small: essentially, only that which is immediately in front of, and immediately behind it. In essence, it perceives the world to be fundamentally one-dimensional, a line along which it travels. Of course, we can look at it and see that it's actually travelling within three dimensions, but the snail can't see that; to the snail, the other two spacial dimensions exist only as aspects of time. That is, while it can encounter other aspects of an object, it doesn't grasp the unity of those aspects, but experiences each aspect as a stand-alone.

Now, take a higher animal, say, a dog. Here the discussion gets a little more involved. Dogs - or any other animal, besides a human - are unable to form abstract concepts, because the formation of such concepts requires language. They can sense things, and they can form impressions, but that's the limit. This means that the third dimension - which can exist, cognitively, only as a concept - is fundamentally beyond their grasp. If you think about it, the third dimension is actually invisible; you can't ever see it. All the eyes can see is a two-dimensional image of reality. In the human mind, of course, that 2D spread is interpolated into three dimensions, something we can do only because we can form concepts, ie in our mind there is the concept of tree: we might see many trees, all different, but all are an example of the type 'tree', whereas for a dog or any other animal, every tree is one-of-a-kind, to be treated as an individual.

My own understanding of this is somewhat imperfect, so it could be that I'm not explaining it too well. I'll direct you to the source, then, the Russian philosopher Ouspensky:

http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/wave6.htm

You can find an extended excerpt from one of Ouspensky's books at that link.

At any rate, when I say that higher dimensions are packed into time, what I'm basically talking about is perception. Lower animals perceive fewer dimensions, because the higher dimensions (ie 2nd and 3rd) which we perceive, we do so by virtue of cognitive faculties which they lack. Following this chain of reasoning, it's easy to speculate that there are yet higher levels of awareness, as far beyond us as we are beyond snails or dogs, which allow the perception of higher dimensions, dimensions which appear to us be aspects of time.

Now for the second question. It's helpful to understand a bit about higher dimensional thinking, here. Diagrams would be useful, but difficult in an email, so I'll do what I can. Now, imagine that you're only able to perceive two dimensions, ie, you're a flat creature on a flat world, a living diagram on a piece of paper. If someone jabs a fork into the paper, what you'll see is four suddenly appearing line segments, apparently separate, but linked through the 3rd dimension (which is of course invisible to you.) Essentially, any group of lower-dimensional objects can be linked through higher dimensions, while leaving their lower-dimensional appearance unaltered.

Another useful conceptual tool is the idea of the wormhole, which I'm sure you've encountered due to its ubiquity in SF. What a wormhole does is link two points in space-time through a higher dimension. Togo back to our two dimensional world, say we made two little holes on opposite ends of a strip of paper. To a 2D entity, going from one hole to the other would take a certain amount of time; however, the paper can be easily folded through the 3rd dimension, such that the two
holes now touch. Of course this folding is imperceptible to the 2D entity, but if it could locate the hole it would be able to cross over to the other side of the paper instantaneously. The same logic applies at higher dimenions: lower dimensions can always be folded and connected through higher dimensions.

Now, I wasn't talking about wormholes, exactly; rather, I was alluding to the concept that discrete particles in 3D space (electrons, protons, etc) may well be projections into the 3rd dimension of a single shape in a higher dimension. Maybe the 4th, maybe the 5th, maybe the 13th. At this point, with what we know of science, it's impossible to say with any certainty.

Education

2008-10-09T14:54:00.001+09:00

"Thomas Jefferson rode his horse alone every day for months to mourn the loss of his wife. He was quite the romantic."

"Thomas Jefferson is famous for the Louisian Purchase."

Which of these is more interesting. I guess both are important but a good way to get to know a historical figure and to just make it interesting is to introduce the figure with something like the first example. Every student in the room will pay attention to that. Then you can go into Louis and Clark and Louisiana, etc. American education makes things that would be interesting very boring.

The Universe Connected, Part 2

2008-10-09T00:53:00.001+09:00

Me: If you're getting tired of this, please let me know. Do you believe that the whole universe is connected and if so, how do atoms or anything connect through the vacuum of space? I could understand everything on earth being connected due to everything being atoms, but in empty space, it would seem
like it's a way of separated things in the universe...

Matt: Through gravity, quantum entanglement, or higher dimensions (take your pick, one or all three), everything is connected instantaneously, ie,connected as though there is NO intervening space. That objects seem to be discrete, separate, and localized in space, is an illusion arising from our, which perceive other dimensions as being aspects of time. Looked at from higher dimensional spaces, otherwise discrete objects become connected as aspects of one, larger object.

Also, space isn't empty: it's filled with virtual particles (just do a wikipedia search), which pop in and out of existence almost too fast too measure (ALMOST; see Casimir effect.) Thus 'empty' space is also an illusion.

At the same time, 'matter' itself is mostly 'empty' space. But space isn't exactly empty....

So we seem to have a paradox. Which usually indicates that our understanding is imperfect. As to how, exactly, we might go about perfecting our understanding, I'm not exactly certain. However, I have a gut feeling that issues of simultaneity and non-locality (that's physics-speak for universal connectedness) will figure greatly, one way or another.

Everything is connected, of course. If All is One, how could it be otherwise? More seriously, entangled quantum systems affect each other instantaneously, regardless of distance. There's some evidence that gravity itself is an instantaneous effect. Either way leads one inescapably to the conclusion that every piece of matter, everywhere, is under the continual summed influence of every other piece of matter in the universe.

Difficult to treat mathematically, of course.

Also, don't make the mistake of three dimensional thinking. It is very likely that the only reason we perceive three dimensions is that our minds happen to work that way. At higher dimensions, every piece of matter may well be connected.

Waveform Collapse, the Saga Continues

2008-10-07T12:14:00.003+09:00

Me: What exactly is the evidence or backing or how do people support the claim

for the One? You might have already answered this in some way but I was just

wanting to clarify it. Thanks.

Matt: Evidence? What evidence? The evidence is everywhere, including inside you.

God does not give proof. It demeans him, and besides which, it serves no purpose. Think about it: at what point are you satisfied that the evidence is sufficient? No matter what were to be brought forward, at any point you can say, "Well, that doesn't prove it. It might equally be explained by x, y, or z."

Proof, of necessity, is something external to that which is to be proven. This is why you can't define a word by using the word. Thing is, when you're talking about the One, there is nothing external to it. By definition. It is everything. Thus, it cannot be proven.

Me: Thanks a lot. Can you explain in laymen's terms what waveform collapse is

and its implications to what we're talking about...thanks.

Matt: The wavefunction is the mathematical description of all the possible states a given particle might occupy, expressed as a probabilistic wave. Collapse is what happens when the particle is observed (i.e. interacts with consciousness, or is measured): the act of looking at it causes the particle to immediately jump into one of the various states from the wavefunction. In other words, collapsing the

wavefunction removes all of the possible states to leave a single remaining actual state. This might seem like a mathematical formalism or philosophical game, but actual laboratory experiment bears it out time and again: when a particle isn't being looked at, it's a wave, and when it is, it's a particle.

Me: Doesn't that have to do with light being shown on it though? Also, when humans look at something, doesn't something in the atmosphere change anyway...like...just because our heads are occupying that space? Are you saying that if we looked at it but did not recognize it, the particle would not change? Would it have to be registered consciously to change?

Matt:The question of precisely why observation causes particles to change as they do is one of the great questions of modern physics. People have been asking it since the discipline was formulated back in the 30s, and as yet, there are no satisfactory answers.

Me: But does it actually have to register in the brain to change? Are our perceptions and those electrons linked? Is it our physically looking at it that makes them change or is it actually us becoming conscious of them? This kind of thing is confusing...

Matt: Try not to anthropomorphize (difficult, I know, given we're talking consciousness here. Bear with me.) You have to be careful to see phrases like 'looking' at the particle in a somewhat metaphorical light. Cells, for example, don't 'look' at anything. They do however sense, and by doing that, exert a very low level of consciousness.

I'd even argue (and from a scientific perspective I'm way out on a limb) that atoms themselves possess a certain degree of consciousness, insofar as an atom can a) sense another atom and b) react to what it senses (ie, moving towards something that attracts it, away from something that repels it.)

Now, you can't talk about the measurement problem without talking about entanglement. The simplest way I can put entanglement is this: entanglement is what happens when the wavefunctions of two previously separate systems merge. After entangling, neither system can be described in isolation, for their have become one system. This is very important.

Now, you have an atom, alone in space. Un'observed', its wave function smears out. Then it gets perturbed by another atom; this constitutes observation, and the wave-function collapses. Those two atoms, however, are now a single system; merely by coming into contact, they have entangled, and are now described by a single wavefunction, which again smears out until it's 'observed' (ie, brought into contact with, perturbed, etc) by something outside itself ... which then merges ...and so on ... until you get to the level of the entire Universe.

Me: And how would you define consciousness? I always thought of it as something similar to sentience. Self-awareness. Animals are somewhat conscious but I wouldn't say rocks are. I'd even go so far as to say plants are probably conscious.

Matt: Even rocks have consciousness. Everything does. Consciousness is inherent in matter. Neither can exist without the other.

Me: By the way, everyone should check out Matt's own blog here on blogspot. It's at http://psikigram.blogspot.com/ . He has a lot of good stuff on there.

Mary Poppins

2008-10-06T23:46:00.001+09:00

Governor Palin

2008-10-06T18:25:00.003+09:00

SNL does the VP debate. For those of you who made the debate a drinking game (I know I did), watch this to the end. Hilarious.

Sarah Palin in 30 seconds:

Bill Maher New Rules. Palin and her cult religion.

Care

2008-10-05T23:08:00.002+09:00

Do people only care about the afterlife and religious things because of culture? Is it all just nurture. I used to think it was very much a nature thing because we all die but it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that that is just not the case.

When someone tells me that I should not care about the afterlife so much and start to think about NOW I feel like, "Alright, I want every fucking second from now until I die to be fucking amazing. I want nothing but that. I want happiness crystallized and injected inside of me." Of course, this just can't be the case but I feel like the people that tell me about NOW don't share the same feelings.

Nicholas Haywood and the Priory of Scion

2008-10-04T23:04:00.006+09:00

The Priory of Scion is a society located mainly in France that people say that they have the mummified bodies of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. I don't know if I believe all of that. I really can't with the evidence I have but this guy's interview is really really amazing. He is quite believable considering the claims he's making.

And then there's this clip of him talking about the coming Apocalypse.

Jesus Was a Buddhist

2008-10-04T22:11:00.005+09:00

At this point, I really don't know if I believe in the historicity of Jesus or not. I am not sure if I need to care or not. I'm sure a lot of these questions have more complicated answers than I can imagine right now.

There is some evidence that shows that during the period that is not really recorded in the standard canon, Jesus went to India. Actually, I can't remember the exact place but it's a place where Buddhism was being practiced. There are actually temples where these Buddhists have scriptures of a Middle Eastern man staying with them for several years in order to learn their ways. I believe "Iesu" is how you say Jesus in Hebrew, which is one language Jesus could speak other than Aramaic. In Aramaic, I think it's "Yehashua." Anyway, at these temples, they speak of a man named "Iasu." Actually, in those languages back then in that time period, vowels were interchangeable...so there ya go.

"An Eye for an Eye, A Tooth for a Tooth" was the Old Testament way of thinking. One of Jesus' teachings was something that went directly against that, "turn the other cheek." This kind of thinking was and is a Buddhist teaching. Also, if you look at Gnosis, which is something that is talked about in detail in the Gospel of Thomas and other books not found in the standard canon, it is very revealing. Gnosis is a very Eastern-ish religious practice ...much more so than anything that was being practiced in the area where Jesus was at that time.

To be honest with you, when I think of the "Mystery Plays" of Egypt and how they might be more connected than most people suspect, I feel like the Jesus story could be something like that. Some people believe that the Mystery Plays of Egypt were basically plays to help grow your mind. Almost like a thought experiment that many physicists and philosophers do. It's an interesting way to think about it.

If any of my facts (not beliefs because I really didn't post about those this time) were wrong, please comment and let me know.

The E-Mail Think Tank continued...

2008-10-03T08:38:00.004+09:00

1. Matt: So, how is it that when my eyes look at something and it registers in my animal brain that there's some magic happening just because it's being observed. How does dumb matter even know it's being observed? Does the observer have to be as sentient as us or can this work with dolphins and chimpanzees as well? Sorry, I just don't get this all the way. Thanks.

Matt: It's an open question, scientifically, just how conscious an observer has to be to collapse the wavefunction. My guess would be that, the more conscious an observer is, the more wavefunctions it's able to collapse.

As to how dumb matter knows it's being observed, welcome to one of th mysteries of quantum physics. We don't really know how, exactly. We just know that it does.

2. Me: Is the soul and the spark of Awareness the same thing?

Matt: More or less, I'd say. Could be wrong though.

the Absolute, Matter and Consciousness, E-Mail Think Tank Series

2008-10-02T08:55:00.002+09:00

So I asked my friend, Matt, some questions about the universe again and this was his answer(s)...

The universe is temporally bracketed. In the past is the Big Bang: primal matter and energy springing out from an infinitely small point. In the future is the One, the Universe Become Conscious, which from its perspective at the end of time can see and remember everything that has ever happened, and by thus observing it snaps it all into actual being. This might sound like mysticism but it's really quantum physics: in order for matter to exist, it needs an observor, for without observation it stays in a diffuse cloud of probability and never really becomes real. The two - Big Bang and the Absolute, matter and consciousness - cannot be understood in isolation. Ultimately they are the same thing. - Matt

My Responses to Matt, E-Mail Think Tank Series

2008-10-02T08:54:00.003+09:00

So I asked my friend, Matt, some questions about the universe again and this was his answer(s)...

Hey, go ahead! I have no problem with this being made public. Now,

I have a few questions...

1. How can you know that the One exists?

Matt: A mixture of logic and introspection. It's difficult to communicateverbally. 'It exists because it has to'. A tautology, yes, but it captures the essence.

2. Also, I have problems believing in a soul even with your explanations.

Matt: See above.

3. You're pretty much talking about reincarnation as well.

Matt: Not pretty much, I am.

4. I really don't remember any of my past lives. Do you?

Matt: Nope.

5. I have always been extremely suspicious of that kind of stuff.

Matt: Ditto.

6. Either this is my first time or...I dunno.

Matt: Highly doubtful. Look, the trajectory of every soul is from the One, through the world, and back to the One, each along it's own independent course but meeting at origin and destination. But now what happens after it goes back into the One? Well, everything fuses there (by definition) and then radiates out again. You could well look at it as though every soul not only follows a unique trajectory through one cycle of the universe, but a unique cycle through every universe. If the universe has had (and will have) an infinite number of cycles, that means that every soul lives every possible life. Which brings us back to the One.

(The picture I've just painted is a very linear one. It's important to note that we are in fact talking about a highly nonlinear process here, so that while from our perspective it appears as a great chain of being, in fact from other perspectives it's more like a tree or a network; higher entities might, for example, be able to incarnate simultaneously in multiple realities.)

People don't generally remember past lives for the simple reason that there are too many to remember. The human brain can only resonate with so much infornation.

7. So the purpose would then be to reincarnate enough times until you get it right? Why do you have to reincarnate? Why can't you get closer to the One in the non-physical realm?

Matt: You can. At each stage, the soul chooses to reincarnate. It does so because it wants to; what it wants to do (insofar as 'want' is a state that can be accurately ascribed to a soul) is to reach union with the One; but doing that requires not just 'wishing' it, but actually becoming it. Just like if you want to become something (say, a doctor), you can't just wish it to happen, but have to actually apply yourself and learn. Now, souls undoubtedly CAN move towards union without incarnating; in fact, at the higher levels discarnate pathways are likely the only ones remaining. It just so happens that the physical route at this level of reality is the one that has been chosen by our souls.

Hope this clarified a few things, or at least stimulated some thought.

Later,

Matt

The Spark of Awareness, E-Mail Think Tank Series

2008-10-02T08:53:00.003+09:00

Matt:

That 'spark of awareness' is inherently an immaterial thing, thus
difficult to measure and so outside the purview of science, at least
science as conceptualized in the Western tradition. It's what you get
when you take any entity - human, animal, plant, or bacterium - and
strip away everything 'external' to it. Body, memory, emotion, sense,
all of these things can be removed while still leaving the little
light of awareness intact.

Even 'dead' matter can be said to possess this spark, at a very
fundamental level, if you think about the way in which matter is
mostly empty space, with vanishingly compact concentrations of stuff
(very similar to the mathematical concept of Cantor dust) which are
able to create larger and more complex structures by virtue of their
ability to 'sense' and 'react' to other particles. The forces -
electromagnetic, gravitational, strong and weak nuclear - endow every
particle with both the ability to notice other particles (through the
forces those particles exert) and to act upon those particles (by
extering force on them), either pushing them away or pulling them
closer. In this metaphor, the material component of matter is
analogous to the spark of awareness: that which notices the world,
initiates action upon it, but is too small to see (quarks are the
smallest part that have been observed, but the laws of physics make
probing at lower levels prohibitively difficult; however the pattern
that science has so far shown indicates that the Cantor dust of matter
may well continue on to much smaller scales), and is not, itself,
fundamentally changed by anything in the outer world. That is, a
particle's position may be affected, but the motion itself does not
alter the particle in any internal way. In an analogous fashion, the
Self internal to every being cannot be altered by anything that
happens external to it, including events both within the entity and
without.

Of course, that Self or Awareness is also identical between any two
entities, for it is found by removing all of the features that
distinguish one entity from another. Thus another way to look at the
situation is of myriad little windows upon the world, allowing the
world to perceive itself from every conceivable direction. I think of
it as God's Eyes, endlessly observing the universe and thus bringing
it into being.

Like I said, this is not the kind of thing easily penetrated by the
usual methods of science. Physics has probably made more inroads into
the subject than any other branch, but if it has done so, it has been
because it has spent centuries rigorously ignoring all of the wider
implications of its researches into the nature of matter, and swearing
blind that it is not engaged in any sort of study of the nature of
consciousness. The Eastern Vedic tradition, and the Buddhist tradition
that evolved out of it, have tackled the problem in a very scientific
fashion, though their methods - rigorous comparison of the internal
states created through contemplation, meditation, and introspection -
are so far outside the purview of Western science that even now few
scientists will even toy with the idea of their validity.

Now, you might well object that the awareness of a rock is not to be
compared with the awareness of a worm, much less a human. The best I
can put it is, while the spark of awareness of a human being is itself
exactly identical to that of a quark, the human organism serves to
amplify the ability of that spark to both perceive and act upon the
world. A quark is limited in its perceptions and actions to a few
other quarks inside a subatomic particle, whereas a human can, of
course, work at a much greater scale. Indeed, you could say that the
whole purpose of the great chain of being is to amplify the effects of
awareness so that it can operate at every possible scale.

Whew! A long answer to a short question. Let me know if you have any more.

Matt

My Views on Palin

2008-09-30T22:42:00.000+09:00

are pretty much exactly the same as Matt Damon's.

The Loss of Ego, E-Mail Think Tank series

2008-09-30T22:40:00.003+09:00

Me: I have been listening to the Ascent of Humanity stuff and I was wondering what your thoughts were about the afterlife. He says that people with near-death experiences realize that we are not our ego and that there
is something else. I kind of feel that our atoms will go somewhere but I was wondering what exactly you thought. I feel like personally, our ego goes away...our way of knowing ourselves goes away and if that's gone, we're basically gone, right? Your thoughts?

Matt:

Hmmm, the afterlife, eh? That's a big subject. Well, from the material
perspective, our atoms basically get recycled into the world. There's
nothing new there, of course: a being's atoms are continually being
cycled throughout its life. As for the non-material component,
assuming such exists, well now....

A lot of it comes down to how you define yourself. Obviously, if you
identify with body and ego, then death is a pretty final sort of
thing. The relevent thought experiment here is to ask how much of
'you' you can lose and still be 'you'. We can pretty safely say the
body doesn't count: if you were just a head on life support, you'd
still feel like you. Ditto senses: take away sight, hearing, touch,
taste, and smell, and you're still basically you. I'd argue the same
for memories, after all, the older you will be losing them, and the
younger you didn't have them, but you were still you.

So no body, no senses, no memories ... what's left? Just a little
spark of awareness, deep inside, essentially the same between any two
beings. This isn't Descartes' cogito ergo sum, exactly, because I'm
not talking about thought, here (individual thoughts being transient,
you can't identify the self with them.) In this sense if in no other,
every being can be said to be immortal, as that little window of
awareness exists in every entity, unchanged. So far as I can tell,
this is Eisenstein's view on the matter.

My own thoughts on the subject are a little more speculative. I'd say
that upon death, the soul retires to a contemplative zone, wherein it
reviews the life it just led, incorporates the lessons of that life
into what it has already learned from its many previous lives, and
then decides where and when to incarnate next based on what lessons it
feels are most appropriate, given what it now knows. The soul, of
course, doesn't identify with your ego, any more than you identify
with any one of your cells, and for essentially similar reasons: the
soul is a composite of a vast number of separate egos from all its
different lives, no one of which is any more important than the
others. The goal towards which every soul moves is to become one with
the One, a state which from it's perspective exists eternally (the
absolute being timeless), and from ours is probably located somewhere
around the end of the universe, when the entire physical universe has
come to life (thus allowing the entire past back to the Big Bang to be
by means of observing it into being.)

Hmm. I may have strayed a bit from the topic at hand there.

Anyhow, that's more or less how I see it. Thoughts?

by my friend, Matt

I Love Tina Fey

2008-09-29T21:29:00.001+09:00

This is the real one.

And these are the SNL skits.

Religion

2008-09-29T21:05:00.002+09:00

Caveat

Who can know the mind of God?

Why does God do the things He does?

Because it is good to be king.

The meaning of God and life is lost in semantics. A meme that maybe has no meaning in and of itself but the effect of that meme on humans is quite strong and that's what is important.

Real or not, Jesus will "live" longer than me. In the human consciousness.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

When I heard this for the first time when I was a kid, I thought it was a stupid question because it was being presented as this deep philosophical question and I thought the answer was easy. I thought, "Of course it would make a sound! If you put a tape recorder there in the forest and no human was around to hear it, when you came back for the recorder after the tree fell, you would hear the tree falling on the tape." That was my immediate response.

Do things need an observer in order to exist?

When you die, you are not observing anything but the universe goes on. Earth will still be there. The Earth may have died TO that person but not to anyone else. If all humans died, I feel like the Earth would still move on...humanless.

What is this whole big deal about observation?

Yes, you could say that the universe dies with you when you die because you won't experience it anymore. It sorts of hits on the idea of everything is just in your head. You only know anything at all through your own experience.

Can you make a difference between the world in your head and the natural world?

Does that difference exist?

Is the "natural world" only something that exists in the human mind?

What is it about human observation that makes it so special. The fact that we are sentient? Other animals are sentient:dolphins, chimpanzees, etc. I guess that their kind of sentience is probably different from human sentience but my questions still feel unanswered.

The ideas in my head feel separated from the natural world because I don't feel like they affect anything but me. I guess after they affect me I might affect the world.

I would really like people's thoughts on observation and existence. Thanks!

Abomination (Latin abominatus, past participle of abominari, "to deprecate as an ill omen") English term used to translate the Biblical term תֹּועֵבָה tōʻēḇā or to'ba (noun) or ta'ab (verb).

The term in English signifies that which is exceptionally loathsome, hateful, wicked, or vile. In Biblical terms to'ba does not carry the same sense of exceptionalism as the English term. It simply signifies that which is forbidden or unclean according to the religion.

Linguistically it is therefore close in meaning to the Polynesian term taboo or tapu, signifying that which is forbidden, should be left alone and not touched, or (for some items) brings death by the act of touching.

This article examines the term as it is used in English translations of the Bible, and also the actual senses of the words which are being translated into this term in English.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination_%28Bible%29

"When we say that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was produced without sexual union, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding the sons (the god) Jupiter."

- Saint Justin Martyr, 100-165 AD

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Martyr

I am having an exchange of ideas via e-mail with a friend. This is an answer to one of my questions.

"Hey Andrew,

That's a hard question to answer. A lot of it comes down to gut instinct: I just can't believe that the universe, and everything in it, is ultimately purposeless and futile, which is what a matter-primary world implies, at least to me. A universe in which there is a sort of centreless, conscious field permeating the cosmos is much more intuitive to me.

One thought experiment that helped me accept the idea (and this is just me) is, what would happen if an intelligent species successfully colonized the universe? Not just a few stars or a galactic empire or something, but the entire universe? The universe might be mostly dumb matter now, but give it a few hundred billion years and it might fill up. Whatever happened to the universe after that, would be whatever the conscious entities occupying it directed to happen. The cosmologist Frank Herbert, a grand old man of science, developed a theory in which those far-future colonists (really highly advanced robots and computers) would manage the collapse of the universe in order to extract energy (and thus stay alive) right up to the Big Crunch, and then tunnel through and manage the Big Bang, managing the past as well as the universe's future. He was laughed out to the fringes for his Omega Point theory, but it's a difficult one to refute, in truth.

There's also the simulation paradox. Posit a far-future civilization with the computational resources to run massively parallel historical simulations, accurate down to the level of individual sims being

conscious entities every bit as real as a 'real' person. Either civilizations always self-destruct before they attain the technological prowess to run such simulations, or the odds are huge that the reality we know is just a computer simulation ... a neat little logical puzzle that, for me, is resolved - or at least mooted - if you just start from the assumption that consciousness is the precursor to existence. Saying we're all a simulation, after all, is just a modern way of saying we're just God's dream. Or, to put it more accurately, we're God dreaming itself.

Anyhow, that's more or less where I'm coming from on a theoretical level."

"Here's my reply:

Hey, it's the author of the piece above.

I'd say the 'god-field' is more like the ether, something that's just sort of there, supporting reality. Calling it conscious probably isn't accurate, actually, not unless you stretch the definition of

consciousness beyond the point of meaninglessness. You could call it superconscious or metaconscious, but really there aren't any elegant words in English for the concept (except for God, which I don't like to use because it runs the risk of anthropomorphizing.) The Indians -

who have put thousands of years of contemplation into the question of how to understand the god-field - call it Brahman, the source of creation and the goal of spiritual evolution, which is as good a word as any.

The question of who, exactly, has control is a difficult one, especially if you look at it from the point of view of 'God vs mortals'. Of course, if instead you posit that everything in the universe is part of God, then the problem disappears. Control is shared by everything, and held by nothing.

(As usual with this sort of topic, it's virtually impossible to discuss without tripping over paradoxes....)

Matt

I signed on to livejournal as dinopteryx just so I could post ... then found out I had to be listed as your friend...."

I feel like I've been asked my entire life, "Do you always need a reason? Can't you just go with the flow?" This post is less about me attacking that statement and more about trying to think about it deeper. Here are some things that I think about when the above question is asked to me. It has been asked to me many times throughout my life but I never felt like I could answer it well...or never had the time enough to think about my answers to it. At least not as much as I wanted to have.

1. How does asking the question "why?" go against the flow?

2. Why is this even an issue at all? Can't I ask why and it not be a problem?

3. Why do you think that asking why goes against the flow?

4. Why do you not look for reasons in your own life?

5. Isn't "why?" the most important question of them all anyway?

6. If it is not reasons that you are living by, then what?

7. Why is it such a big deal...or why do you think it's such hard work to search for reasons?

Now to go into this even further, I don't think I need reasons for EVERYTHING but I do feel that most "why?" questions are answered in one or two sentences. Maybe it's because I feel this way that I often ask why.

Also, I do (as you probably can already tell) ask why for the big questions...questions concerning religion, the human condition, etc. I understand that those need a lot of work but I feel that I often get asked "Can't you just go with the flow?" when I ask "why" for the little things. I suppose people get angry or frustrated when asked "why?" concerning little things but then I get back to my old self when that happens and ask (usually to myself), "Why do you get frustrated when I ask that?"

All that is good and wonderful in the world can be seen and heard at ted.com...or so I thought. There's one more lecture that wasn't at TED that's really awesome. Randy Pausch gives this speech just before he died of pancreatic cancer. He was a pioneer of virtual reality. Maybe you saw the Randy Pausch link on google. The speech is really inspiring and makes you want to live your dreams.

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo&eurl=http://www.google.com/reader/view/

I feel like people use their "faith" in order to skirt around actual scientific and historical evidence. It's a way of jumping to where they want to be and, I feel, the jump is so premature. A lot of people make the jump without thinking the jump through....but then again "it's faith you don't have think! That's the beauty of it! Faith is easy on my brain!"

If you want to know more about my views, or where I get a lot of my views lately, please watch these videos.

This is Sam Harris.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=s8dv7OUKjeE

Also, here's one on stem cell research that really helped me to form my opinion on the issue.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=kUwnMX8ht3U&feature=related

And this is Richard Dawkins and Christian theologian debating.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6PSM887YIs4

"Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained."

Duke of Wellington

"A couple in love doesn't look at each other, they look in the same direction." - I saw this quote on my friend's profile a long time ago and I still really believe in it today.

"Being a fool for a woman such as yourself is always the right thing to do." - Esteban Vihaio, Kill Bill

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds." - Francis Bacon

"You deserve the teacher that you find." - Bud Malmstrom

"The man who asks how will always have a job, but will always work for the man who asks why." - a high school teacher I had

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln

"The vast universe, beautiful in its coldly impersonal totality, contains all that we call good or bad, all the answers for all the paradoxes we see around us. " - Masaaki Hatsumi

"Despite their extremely disproportionate numbers, Greek morale was high. Herodotus writes that when Dienekes, a Spartan soldier, was informed that Persian arrows would be so numerous as "to blot out the sun", he responded with a characteristically laconic remark, "So much the better, we shall fight in the shade."[31]" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. " - Albert Einstein

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." - Albert Einstein

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Art is lies that tell the truth.” - Picasso

"If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was

standing on the shoulder of giants." - Isaac Newton

"Be calm, and share the bananas." - Koko the Gorilla (in sign language)

"I am still learning." - Michelangelo (Age 83)

"If you have a faith, it is statistically overwhelmingly likely that it is the same faith as your parents and grandparents had. No doubt soaring cathedrals, stirring music, moving stories and parables, help a bit. But by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place. Epidemiology, not evidence." - Richard Dawkins

Here are some things to consider about Christianity.

1. The first murder...I forget who it was but the guy that did it was cast out of Eden and into the Land of Nod. If you read this, it shows that the Land of Nod had people in it. What does this mean? It means that there were other people other than Adam and Eve and that whole crew at that time. Some people take this interpretation as Adam and Eve being the beginning of the Jewish people only and the people of Nod were goyem.

2. There is no Hell in the Old Testament. Some people think Jesus made it up. This is why Jews don't believe in Hell because they focus only on the Old Testament.

3. This one is a fucking doozy. People are always praying to God for fucking help. I have known people to turn to Jesus after horrible accidents and whatnot. WHO THE FUCK LET YOU HAVE THAT ACCIDENT, YOU FUCK? If you believe he's in control of everything and omnipresent...where the fuck was he then? Is this wheelchair for the rest of your life some kind of fucking trial God has set before you? I'm not saying don't believe in this god because of it...I'm saying if you believe that he's in control...if your idea of God is a God that is omnipresent and ever-loving...where was he during that fateful night? Why aren't you angry at your new trial and tribulation that God has set before you...for the rest of your fucking life. Instead of getting angry, people turn to God during these times of hardship. Why...because when people feel out of control of their life or basically get the shit scared out of them, they turn to this universal...old dude in the sky. Why the fuck didn't you turn to him before? If you believe in the shit so much where were you before, asshole? Don't say a goddamn thing to me. God is there when good things happen but not there when bad things happen...what the fuck is that?

You turn to the guy that caused the accident in the first place. Maybe he didn't cause it but he sure as hell let it happen. You don't notice that he's the one who let it happen in the first place?

4. Number three reminds me of the Book of Job. This is about Job being played like fucking dice between Satan and God. This is all well and good if you take it for face value and say that it's not a true story but I come from the snake-handling, let's kill us some niggers South and people believe that shit is truer than global warming. Why the fuck do you want to believe in some shit where God is playing with you like a doll with the devil?

Research your own religion. Don't believe in some shit that you barely known anything about. Research other religions as well. Perspective is one of the most important things. I find that most Japanese people don't even know where to begin with the Christian idea of God. They think that God is something inside you only...and not this ...I don't even know...old dude in the sky? What exactly do Christians believe? Is God a force? A metaphysical consciousness that somehow keeps the universe together? I kind of like the last one the most but I'm not entirely convinced of that one either.

That's another thing, I was always confused at people that totally believed they were gods and in control of their own destiny. I think that's fine. Taking control of your own life is a damn good thing but saying you're a god is a little much. I suppose the key points (back to astronomy and shit) to God for me were always...how did we get here? Who created the universe? Was it created? How was it created? Of course I thought about my future as well....but when talking about God...I was always interested more in the Universe...not my future as much...which I suppose is a bit weird. Maybe both are control issues though.

If you say that you are a god, if you say that you believe that you are your own god...then what about creation? Creation of the universe. I am referring to any kind of creation....the universe creating itself or God doing it.

Also, perhaps referring back to entropy....I think the more we progress as a world civilization ...the closer we are to all dying. Perhaps our progress as a world society is a step to doom for mankind. I don't know.

Is there a theory that dinosaurs shit themselves to death? Seriously, bovine gases (cow farts) are a recorded and proven reason for part of the global warming problem. Dinosaurs were huge animals and they were all over the Earth...probably more than there are cows today...did they just fart themselves into extinction?

Are we humans just shitting ourselves to extinction? Factories usually are pretty damn smelly if you ask me.

"God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture."

"A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific. Religion is a scientific theory."

- Richard Dawkins

Classical Education

2008-09-29T10:02:00.001+09:00

The Trivium

Logic is concerned with the thing as-it-is-known,
Grammar is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-symbolized, and
Rhetoric is concerned with the thing-as-it-is-communicated.

The Quadrivium

Arithmetic is the Discrete At Rest

Astronomy is the Discrete In Motion

Geometry is the Continuous At Rest

Music is the Continuous In Motion

Lost souls

2008-09-27T01:20:00.005+09:00

Cultures, and people, change in time. Maybe some things are taken after in core, or center, over generations, but surface or peripheral parts look changed and often are different in fact.

Religions could be powerful agencies to pass a certain set of cultural or social lessons to the following generations. So could be political parties, maybe. Even in a place where those kinds of cultural or social agencies seem to have clear frames and bodies to unite people under their own values and ideas, still people never stay at the same spot. They flow, thus forming new cultures (in the same current).

In this country, religions don't have a strong influence in formal fashion anymore. I wouldn't say they're gone, but it is true that a lot of people are not religious. Nor do they have clear political views either. Compared to other countries, people are way less interested in politics in this country. They do know what media say, but they don't talk about it among themselves.

The tricky part is, that even after losing the shape of religions and stuff, modern cultures or people's mind are not built on nothing. Morality and values are taught to young generations in messages at school, family, and society itself, while interacting with older people. And the problems is that those lessons don't make sense, lacking the basis, and we don't know where they came from. We just do it because it "feels" right and we are taught to do so.

Not making sense is not just the problem foreigners find when coming to Japan. It's also a bothering aspect of Japanese "culture" for people in this country. We don't know what Yamato-damashii（大和魂）exactly means, we don't know why we have such a strong seniority system all over the society... well, we know that it was originally adopted from Confucianism, but that's not an explanation "why" we have it now.

I don't like blaming people for not being open to other cultures or being proud of their nationality or whatever. I just believe we should start questioning about and talking about our own "cultures". Where did it come from, and where is it going? There are so many things in this society, things that don't make sense.

いわゆる変なこと

2008-09-26T19:51:00.001+09:00

よく分からないけど日本では一番大切なのは文化だろう。アメリカでは州によって違うけど一番大切なのは宗教。特にアメリカの田舎。日本にはじめて旅行した時に俺は日本人にとって一番大切な事が神道か仏教だと信じていた。アメリカでは宗教を信じる人が多いからその日本に関するイメージがある。仏教を信じる人が毎週の日曜日の朝に寺とかに行ったりするイメージ。

だからヨロッパ人じゃなくて特にアメリカ人にとってこの「文化が一番」という考え方が分かりにくい。たまにアメリカ人が文化に尊敬しないかもしれないけどその人は一般的に文化を尊敬しない。自分の国でも。だけど、その人は多分宗教を尊敬するかも。

中学校で先生が「誰が居ない？」と聞いたら一人の男子が「外人」って答えた。本当にびっくりした。アメリカ人としてそういう事に非常に敏感。僕は日本のいわゆる変な習慣とかに全然気にしないけどそういう差別の事が言われたら本当にショックされる。「お前のクラスメートでしょ？」とか「その外国人に名前あるでしょ？」とか言いたかった。

日本人に成りたくない。日本語習いたいけど日本人に成りたくない。成れない。でも、差別の事とか「日本はこれ、外国はそれ」っていう考え方を辞めて欲しい。たまに僕は日本がまた鎖国に陥る気がする。

Language

2008-09-26T19:41:00.002+09:00

Do you like apples?

Do you like cabbage?

Do you like lettuce?

Why are the leafy ones singular? You can say "I like tomatoes" but you have to use the singular for "I like eggplant."

In other European languages they use "the" a lot more. If we were speaking French we would say something like "I'll go to the bed now" whereas in English we'd just say "I'll go to bed." This makes it obvious that there's no real rule sometimes for a, an, and the ...a lot of it is just what is common. How is it commonly said...not what rule do I use. How is it thought of in that language. It's really quite arbitrary, I suppose.

Japanese is a highly regular language. Hell there's only two irregular verbs and the rest is pretty easy. This is what makes Japanese different, not difficult. The grammar is really difficult at first but after you get used to that different system...that system is extremely regular...not with all of English's grammatical madness.

[Jul. 5th, 2008|08:29 pm]

I found out about a great site.

http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

Discussion ABOUT language, no matter how detailed, erudite or numerical, is not, cannot and will never be language itself.

The typical student of Latin today probably knows more about Latin than most Roman citizens ever did; I can just see Roman kids all: “hey, Quintus, what’s the ablative singular on that, bro?”

B-star came to Japan aged 27, 7 years ago. Not a word of Japanese. He’s now completely fluent. We talked to each other in Japanese, he told me:“When I first came to Japan, I went to a Japanese school and looked at the books, but it just kind of sucked, you know? So I was like…this isn’t going to work; I’m not going to learn this way; I just have to go out there and figure it out. Pretty soon I was speaking, and people asked me ‘how did you learn?’, I said: ‘I don’t know! Not even I know!’”.

"had been"

"will have had"

Japanese is an aspect language. English is a tense and aspect language. From what I can tell, this means that there are certain grammatical constructions that involve referencing to time in strange ways. Whenever you say "had been" like "He had been playing the guitar for twelve years." This means there are two points of time in question. The first is a starting point in the past...when he started playing guitar...and an ending point...(this is still kind of questionable but just for example sake) ...when he stopped playing guitar. I think most languages are like Japanese where there is just aspect...but languages like English and Russian are tense and aspect. When you talk about the past tense in Japanese, there is usually only one point in time in question.

If you look at "will have had"...man...what a doozy. That's definitely something that's really Englishy. You're referencing the future like it's the past. You're combining the future and the past with a hypothetical experience. When you think about these grammatical concepts and how complicated they really are...it's easy to see how it might not carry into other languages, especially those with completely separate evolutions.

"I will have had three ice creams by then."

"I translate the ideas, their forms, or as one might say, their shapes; however, I translate them into a language that is in tune with our conventions of usage (verbis ad nostram consuetudinem aptis). Therefore, I did not have to make a word-for-word translation but rather a translation that reflects the general stylistic features (genus) and the meaning (vis) of the foreign words." (De optimo genere oratorum) - Cicero, talking about his translation of Demosthenes

It is said that if you are artistic, homosexual, or left-handed you can learn languages easily. Also, women are usually naturally better than men. "Feeling a language" is better than "thinking a language." Women are usually more right-brain oriented and if you haven't noticed, homosexuality, being artistic or just irrational, and left-handed are all signs of being right-brain oriented.

"People good at learning languages usually have "a high coincidence of left-handedness, homosexuality, auto-immune disorders, learning disorders and talents in art, mathematics and, possibly, languages." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpolyglot#Learning_language

Is there a direct connection between the right side of the brain and language acquisition? For "feeling the language" ...the most important part of language learning...the right-brain might be the key for a more complete if not full acquisition of language.

As I continue to learn Japanese, it has become apparent to me that "fluent" is a very broad term. People that don't study other languages do not know about this but it's really true. You don't just find the cut-off point some day and you're "fluent."

"There is no clear definition of what it means to "speak a language." A tourist who can handle a simple conversation with a waiter may be completely lost when it comes to discussing current affairs or even using multiple tenses. A diplomat or businessman who can handle complicated negotiations in a foreign language may not be able to write a simple letter correctly. A four-year-old French child usually must be said to "speak French fluently", but it is possible that he cannot handle the grammar as well as even some mediocre foreign students of the language do and will surely have a very limited vocabulary despite having perfect pronunciation." -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperpolyglot#Learning_language

You know, there are apparently different classifications for bilinguals as well.

"a) Coordinate Bilingualism: In this type, the person learns the languages in separate environments, and words of the two languages are kept separate with each word having its own specific meaning. An instance of this is seen in a Cameroonian child learning English at school. This may also be referred to as subtractive bilingualism.
b) Compound Bilingualism: Here, the person learns the two languages in the same context where they are used concurrently, so that there is a fused representation of the languages in the brain. This is the case when a child is brought up by bilingual parents, or those from two different linguistic backgrounds. This is additive in nature.
It is worthy of note that the above classification has given rise to several models of bilingual education programmes. Larsen and Long (1994) distinguish two main types:
i. The model devised to help students continue to grow in their first language while acquiring a second language, and
ii. The immersion programme permitting native speakers to receive all of their initial education in a second language. After early grades, more and more content courses are taught in the target language." - http://www.translationdirectory.com/article419.htm

" ▪ For compound bilinguals, words and phrases in different languages are the same concepts. That means, a 'chien' and a 'dog' are two words for the same concept for a French-English speaker of this type. These speakers are usually fluent in both languages.

▪ For coordinate bilinguals, words and phrases in the speaker's mind are all related to their own unique concepts. That means, a bilingual speaker of this type has different associations for chien and for 'dog'. In these individuals, one language, usually the first language, is more dominant than the other, and the first language may be used to think through the second language. These speakers are known to use very different intonation and pronunciation features, and sometimes assert the feeling of having different personalities attached to each of their languages."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism#Learning_language

“Traduttore traditore” (The translator is a traitor). Italian epigram

Soul

2008-09-26T19:39:00.000+09:00

"She was talking about talking about how she doesn't eat animals and she kept arguing about how she thought animals had souls. I said I don't think I have a soul. Her talking about animals having personalities equals them having souls is such bullshit."

I agree. Having emotion, sympathy, and personality does not mean you have a soul.

Science is a perspective.

I feel like you can look at like that but that brain that you have that believes in that is governed by science. Natural laws. Yes, I do believe that science is a perspective out of a multitude but at the same time I can't help but believe that because of its fundamental nature...the fact that it can describe everything on a very basic level makes it almost like the underlying perspective to all other perspectives. You can pick the other perspectives but they'll always be influenced directly or indirectly by science. As soon as you choose another perspective, the other one(s) float out of existence. Observation is key, I suppose.

Mathematicians would argue that math is the ultimate underlying perspective. Perhaps that is true.

For me, it's hard to see science as just a perspective you CAN choose from. I feel a lot of the time that it's the only one. If you don't see it that way, I feel like you're uneducated or you just don't know much about science.

Morals...

Evolutionary SCIENCE can explain why we have the morals we do. MORALS, VIRTUE, etc...all of these realms that were previously thought to be scientifically unexplainable.

Love...

There's a lot of scientific study on love. Just because it can be explained scientifically does not make it any worse or better. Some people act like science tries to water down love. I have problems with that.

Christians are the general public in America.

They say that anyone who is not a Christian is unhappy or a bad person or is really in need of something because of something missing or wrong in their souls.

If the general public is saying this, then people living in those areas that are not Christians might really be unhappy or incontent. It might seem like something is wrong with their souls.

What happens after that is that people caught in the middle of worldviews hears what the Christians have to say and then look at all of the non-Christians and see that they're always pissed or incontent because the Christians won't get off their backs so some people decide "Well the Christians must be right because look at all of these bad, incontent, frustrated people. There must be something wrong with their souls." If so, some might turn to Christianity because of that.

Part of my culture shock was seeing happy people in Japan that were not Christian. Fucking normal people with no Christian baggage. As a kid in America, you see that Christians have a lot of the same baggage (without really identifying that it is, indeed, baggage) and you start to make assumptions about THE HUMAN SOUL IN GENERAL. Even non-Christians have Christian baggage in America because of the huge influence of the religion overall. When I came to Japan and started to talk to people about this kind of stuff, it became very apparent that this kind of thing is not a "God-sized hole in your heart" as Christians like to say it is nor is it some general problem with people's souls. It is something that is very much dependent on culture and religion.

Christians believe that there is one God so there is one set of rules. Because of these spiritual and/or cosmic rules, everyone's "soul problems" are the same.

After coming to Japan, I had to rethink that entirely. It's a very tightly woven but vicious spiritual circle in America. It can change your perceptions.

Sometimes, I still wonder what people think in Japan about spirituality. I think it's very much a role here but in what capacity? If you read this blog, you know my views on Christianity by now but I feel like at least Christianity had an answer...even if it was a wrong one. It had a very specific answer to spiritual things. Japanese people don't even seem to care to search for anything too specific when it comes to stuff like that. A lot of the people I've met are basically agnostic. They feel like they can't understand such things so they don't even try. It's not even a fight to be specific at that point, it feels like giving up before even getting to the basics.

It might just FEEL agnostic to me because how can one get close to Christianity as far as being specific without becoming dogmatic or ridiculous? Or just supposing too much? Maybe I'm just used to people having something to bring to the table...even though I usually disagree with whatever that is.

Impossible English

2008-09-26T19:32:00.005+09:00

「日本人だから英語が無理です。」

This is something that some students say sometimes. This is the thing that probably bugs me the most. It means, "BECAUSE I'm Japanese, English is impossible." That's a super-literal translation but I feel that's the best way to express it here. It's really annoying for some reason. That weakness. Maybe they just really don't care and maybe that's fine but it's hard for me to hear it. Also, you have to think about the other students that ARE actually learning English. They're Japanese too but are somehow magically learning English.

I suppose middle school children say things that don't make sense sometimes.

Intro

2008-09-25T13:11:00.002+09:00

This will be the blog for Tomo, Mike, and me. We will try to blog in both Japanese and English.