BBella\'s Universe (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, December 01, 2011, 17:48 (4719 days ago) @ BBella

My thanks to BBella for responding to my various questions.

I think you’ve summed everything up when you say “I am probably somewhere between atheism and David’s UI...for now.” The concept of a constantly changing ALL THAT IS can be made to fit in with any –ism, which is actually a great advantage. Your ATI (hope it won’t mind my getting so familiar) is clearly a creative force here on Earth, in so far as it has produced life, reproduction and evolution, and perhaps it’s also produced other forms of life elsewhere. Neither theists nor atheists can quarrel with that. So “all” that remains is the question of the degree of its sentience and consciousness. And whoosh, that’s where the rockets go off in different directions. Well, I don’t want to cause any friction in your household or mine, or jealousy inside our little agnostic web, but if you’re somewhere between David and George, I think you’re actually sitting with me on my picket fence!

As regards morality, you can imagine “a society that has found more balance and harmony than we have now” – and I agree that in many respects we’re more balanced than we were in the dark ages. But I suspect it will need a major cataclysm before laws and governments become unnecessary – with most of the human race wiped out. And even then, we’ll start all over again along the same path. It seems to be integral to human nature that we form a group, and groups always seem to need rules and leaders.

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TONY: There is ALWAYS a pattern. Always. We may not recognize it as such, but it is most certainly there.

I wrote that once you take into account the unanswerable questions, “there is NO fixable pattern.” Perhaps I should have written “no FIXABLE pattern”. There are lots of patterns, and no-one knows which is the right one. The closer you look at the points to be joined, the more flexible the patterns become.

And keep your hands off my chocolate.

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DAVID: Try a Garmin. Really works, and you don’t have to think. They come in civilized voices, redneck, cowboy and probably Cockney.

I’ve got a Garmin. It really works – when it really works. Once it took me miles off target, so I tried a lorry driver in a layby instead, and he directed me miles back, the way I’d just come. There have been lorries squashed in narrow lanes, and cars in canals…If you think you don’t have to think, think again.