Richard Robertson

Simon Paynton wrote:
But an abstraction is different from a construct, and they are more than mere words, they refer to a world of abstraction.

I went here for clarification on the word and context, and perhaps I’m confusing what’s meta (e.g. language) with what’s real (e.g. universal laws of physics), and I’ll admit I’m working above my pay…[Read more]

Finally got my AS degree in Natural Science, back in December. But still taking classes, this semester two in computer science. One of my instructors LOVES a number, called Belphegor’s Prime (and even has a t-shirt for it).

It’s 1000000000000066600000000000001, and it’s palindromic around an interesting center. You can read more devilish intent here.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
And you had a child with “her” and expect me to just pretend nothing happened? Sadist.

Jesus, what a soap opera!

Unseen, I’ve seen theologians conflate their theology with logic. Simon, I’ve seen humans conflate “evolution” (with its various meanings) and logic with natural law (whatever that means!), but the point imo is that we’re still making it all up, just trying to invent models, definitions, and ways of thinking to best help us understand how reality…[Read more]

Davis wrote:
Woah. Where on Earth did you pull that figure from? Source?

OK, I pulled that number out of my pope ass… it’s ball park. An expression, even. But doesn’t just about everyone, even non-educated people, know about at least a few of the ancient gods in myth, gods that people actually used to believe in? More to the point, how about…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
But there is no “whole scheme of things” that can overcome the fact that, in a sense, it will have never existed.

To be fair, we’re presuming we know for a fact that some version of our history will not be somehow preserved elsewhere, or that no intelligent agent will exist to care about it. Otherwise, when genuinely trying to sci…[Read more]

Along the same lines as what Simon’s saying, logic and math are human constructs, yet worthy of permanent usefulness because of how they can be used to help us understand the real world around us. (The “real world” being everything that exists, whether or not we exist. We merely invent common language and methods to understand the real world, and…[Read more]

Ninety-nine percent of educated humans can probably agree that gods have been invented by humans. There’s still that percent of humans who just won’t let go of traditional beliefs, always yearning for that omnipotent father who sees and knows all, and is the ultimate, unerring judge in life. Marriages to God include comforting ceremonies and…[Read more]