Don’t agree with alot of what enlightenment period philosophes have to say…
But the clean slate ideology… I believe in that.
Really? 
Why? They challenged the church and state at the time: the world would be very different if they hadn’t! 
Very true 
I didn’t know about Bobby Fischer 
I’ve been reading a lot about Freegans at the moment: Vegans (usually)who reject all consumer society on the basis that it’s all fuelling the same corrupt political machine and impending ecological disaster There’s a whole movement in the US who go “dumpster diving” for food and goods. Actually, I guess it’s not that unusual - families in my home town were picking bread out of supermarket skips in the last recession 
The supermarkets throw out food that’s often still edible. Mind you, I never felt like doing it myself… Some of them also sqaut in disused buildings, because they believe housing is a right, or are voluntarily unemployed Others go feral and live in the wild: now that kind of apeals to me 
in summer, at least. So long as it’s somewhere without bears 
Then do you believe in reincarnation?
Hi Benny: Not sure if that’s directed at me or Trisha… But, yep, I like the idea of God(s)/the Cosmos recycling souls I remember thinking when I was very young that Heaven/Valjalla must be getting rather full by now! 
But that might just be me trying to rationalise the world…
Physical reincarnation, of course.
Now was that the first or second law of thermodynamics… hmmm
Heh, youngsters are idealists, they fail to see the grey and the black parts of life, they usually see only the pink part of it.
If you are a sinner, you don’t go to Heaven. And most people are sinners nowaday.
Same about Valjalla - you can get there if you die on a battelfield, when fighting. Nowadays people use long-ranged missiles instead to kill eachother. That’s just plain cowardice.
Hmm, I’m a little confused by this… isn’t God meant to be really into forgiveness? 
Depending on the church… I went to a Roman Catholic primary school for a year, and they actually had nine-year-olds producing a wall display on the different types of sins (seven deadly sins, seven carnal sins, etc.) - there’s a lot of them I have a vague notion I might be irredeemably condemned… 
Yes, they should bring back Dane-axes and Broadswords… All that feasting and merry-making always appealed to me
Interesting. And uh, no clue.
I know it’s not wise to generalize, but I was recently told a story by a mid-aged man from US. I’d call it a horror story. When he was a kid, he used to go to a Catholic school. He was getting his left hand beaten with a ruler on a daily basis (because he was left-handed and he was writing with the left hand). There was some law edicted by the Pope that was claiming that left-handed men are not normal, that they are tempted by Satan. That law was abrogated later, but still having such nonsense in the 20-th century just proves to me that Catholicism is a synonym for Hypocrisy.
Matter cannot be created nor destroyed?
Um, pretty sure that’s energy.
That’s quite a horror story I’ve heard some similar stories, and in recent years there have been some legal cases, where Catholic clergy have been accused of child abuse There’s a few films around… The Magdalene Sisters.
Fortunately, the Catholic church was trying to reinvent itself when I was at the school. We had proper teachers, whereas Nuns had taught at the school up until a few years before! They were a bit like the hippy teacher on Beavis & Butthead… And they had started letting a limited number of non-Catholics into the school. Most of the catholic community were very friendly too. The school was in a town where outsiders were not welcome - some of the local children were not allowed to talk to me becasue their parents branded me a “traveller” But the Catholic community were Irish, Italian and Polish families, so they were very kind to me. But still rather sexist The boys were allowed to play outside while we hand-stitched these f***ing kneeling cushions 
I managed to hit the Headmaster in the nuts with a cricket ball before I left
There are some fascinating Vatican conspiracy theories around. I’ve heard that the Pope still has a scary amount of power in some countries…
If you’re talking about all matter being made up of atoms. Then certainly it is energy.
But I guess for all practical application, it is energy that cannot be created or destroyed. The first law…
I’m glad that you see things my way.
hah!
I actually couldn’t link to the other page, but oh well… I want to say my thing on free will.
Wondering on the existence of free will, is something that sometimes induces the more philosophically inclined individual to attempt doing something really dumb just to see if they can get away with it. Almost, say… as an excuse for rebellion? From everything, including what’s been done before.
Not to say that this is the whole point of the short story, but Graham Greene’s andquot;The Destructorsandquot; deals somewhat with free will, and how we can choose to let the systems that we create fall apart. Its almost easier. Entropy (which I think exists in states of mind, as well as in the mere physical,/biological world.) would have a tendency to tear apart all that is created by human beings. In fact… Entropy would have a tendency to delete life, cancelling the universe with its equivalent amount of antimatter (we’re not talking star-trek, here).
But that’s not the case… (unless i don’t exist )
So that rules out the (known) laws of the universe being the source of free will because the obvious intent of its will would create a lack of existence for everything. This leaves the mind of the self or the influence of a diety as an influence for one’s decisions. (I apologize if my definitions or usage of terms are inadequate, but oh well…)
Sanduleak, I think, already mentioned the idea that people could potentially be acting moving only as the result of chemical synapses. I’ve thought this through to a great extent
Here’s a comparison to the human mind:
Written language is perhaps considered to be one of the greatest inventions (not necessarily discoveries) of mankind. What really takes place with Written language… is the transfer of one idea from the mind of one person to another while putting a suspension on time. E=mc^2 (which I believe is one of the laws of physics, not thermodynamics, but maybe both…) is the (simplified version of the) mathematical equation for the conservation of energy.
So… matter can’t be created nor destroyed, but can only be converted from one form to another.
So what happens when you write down the fruits of your thoughts and experiences in a journal which is lost for a thousand years, then someone else reads it and learns from your writing? Information may not be exactly the same as energy, but it requires energy to store information in any form. From my limited collegiate studies of Physics, every real machine or system (as in, not a theorization of ideal conditions) has a great percentage of lost energy.
Similarly… when one person reads something written by another person, they aren’t really reading the same thing. They are applying their personal experiences and their backgrounds to this new thing… which has essentially been created in there minds, induced by the written material. Some of the information is lost.
Now, back to the chemical control of your head:
Everything you know (or might care to remember…) is stored in your brain. You experienced it from the translation of chemical to electrical transmissions in your nervous system, originating from your sensing extremities. Your senses allow you to come into contact with the outside world, transferring information from places, things, and people.
So information has been transferred from person to person to person, throughout generations and for all of human existence… And data has been gathered from the world… info about plants and animals and perhaps the weather, eh? Now your various spins have been put on your observations, stemming from the data recieved from other people. Through the transfer, however, some of the data from other people has obviously been lost.
Without original thought… and the loss of information, we would necessitate towards entropy. We would be getting stupider, and not smarter. But, civilization has been building up and the human race as a whole, is getting smarter (in theory… but we may have to exclude the president and a few others…)
If we are cognitive beings, part of this must be sentient and cognitive choice. Our civilization would not be possible without it.
We have to have free will.
Besides… you won’t get anywhere if you blame someone else for all your problems. You have to do something.
(Donnie Darko anyone? almost a comforting thought if we’re thinking about Armageddon…)
andgt;Sanduleak, I think, already mentioned the idea that andgt;people could potentially be acting moving only as the andgt;result of chemical synapses. andnbsp;I’ve thought this through andgt;to a great extent.
I’m not too sure if I said that… but I did not intend on sounding like I don’t believe in Free Will… if that’s how you took it. Or, I’m currently apologizing for the misinterpretation of somebody else’s post. shrugs
However, I really enjoyed this post. I’m going to share this with some friends of mine… I think they’ll like it.
Is this your own independent thought or are you restating an argument made by somebody previously?
independant, I like to think… but I may just be interpolating a different shade of blue,… if you know what I mean (Hume)
nods
BtheDragonman you are talking about anarchy, haveing a freewill is far different from anarchy, there is no need to sterio-type something you dont understand, obviously the programming of todays sociaty has taken a toll on you mind, which is sad because i feel that if one loses any control of their own thoughts or dreams they have lost all possibility of being able achieve true innerpeace, and or greatness.