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Notes

[Notebook: DB 58 Bringing god home]

[Sunday 18 September 2005 - Saturday 24 September 2005]

[page 8]

Sunday 18 September 2005

Usually I only write here when the urge to write is strong. But as Agatha says, one is a professional writer when one writes whether one likes it or not, just as a bricklayer lays bricks day after day and a clerk clerks. From this point of view, this is an amateur work, but with professional intent, in that I hope that my individual jottings will in the end become a 'whole genome shotgun' picture of a coherent foundation for belief, from which such foundation may possibly be extracted and exhibited, ie find a model that fits experience, with all its ups and downs.

INSIGHT - a random event.

Monday 19 September 2005
Tuesday 20 September 2005

My story starts with a bit of apocryphal hagiography. Somewhere in the last fifty years I have read that young Thomas Aquinas, in his bath, asked his nurse 'quid est hoc quad est esse?' literally 'what is this which is to be?' in other words, what is the meaning of life.

Like Thomas, i was brought up in the Judaeo-Christian tradition which situates human life n a cosmic drama which begins with creation and continues through Fall and Redemption to an Apocalyptic end where the good are rewarded and the bad punished. As a piece of fiction, the Christian story has certainly stood the test of time. but is it true? How can we decide?

Let me say that a story rings true if it fits my experience. So, for instance, pornographic love stories where people meet and fuck happily ever after do not reflect my experience of

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real love affairs with real people. There is much more to life than sex, and the complex interactions of independent desires can easily lead to conflict. The Bible resonates strongly with our experience. Aspects (at least) of the world seem to have been created by an intelligent agent. Thee is plenty of rape, murder, genocide, revolution, judicial torture, reward and punishment in the Bible and there is some hope that everything will turn out right in the end (though you should have a look at the Book of Job).

But there are problems with the Christian story. Why, if God made everything so good, did we go bad? Another serpent? No, obviously we were led astray by curiosity. Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and pissed God off. This reveals God as rather a small minded fool, being upset when the work of his own hands acts as it was (presumably) designed to act.

God also revealed a nasty vicious streak when his creatures set out to learn more. The flaws in the Bible tend to reveal its deeper purpose. it is a political document designed to increase the power of the owners of the document.

Wednesday 21 September 2005
Thursday 22 September 2005
Friday 23 September 2005
Saturday 24 September 2005

PEACE == UNITY
CONFLICT = DISCONNECTED DIVERSITY

One of the deep philosophical questions that has been with us from time immemorial is the distinction between peaceful and violent diversity. How can an entity be both one and ,many and yet keep the peace? We have two historical approaches to choose from: one, the Pax Romana, peace maintained by the threat of violence;

[page 10]

and the other we will dub the 'pax recursiva' because it feeds upon itself to generate more complex levels of peace. The Romana on the other hand, tends to decrease diversity because naive security forces see all difference as danger and so act in the belief that decreasing difference will increase security.

The recursiva, on the other hand, recognizes that a countable (ie infinitesimal) fraction of differences are indeed dangerous and need to be constrained in some way. Epidemic disease states fall into the category of dangerous differences as do policies which are not firmly coupled to the environment in which they operate.

Quantum mechanics is our guide to metaphysics.

Quantum mechanics lives in 'transfinite function space' and partitions that space into functions that appear to be realize din our Universe and those which cannot. In general we say that any function can be realized which can be represented by a unitary operator, a function which performs allowed transformations between allowed states. The eigenvalue equation : we are saying that a complex process (multiplying by a matrix) is equivalent to a simple operation (multiplication by a scalar)

QM, as with sex, the beauty does not really show until you get down to the exciting interlocking details.

Related sites

Concordat Watch

Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty


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Links

Aquinas II, II 47, 1, Is prudence in the will or in reason?, 'I answer that, As Isidore says (Etym. x): "A prudent man is one who sees as it were from afar, for his sight is keen, and he foresees the event of uncertainties." Now sight belongs not to the appetitive but to the cognitive faculty. Wherefore it is manifest that prudence belongs directly to the cognitive, and not to the sensitive faculty, because by the latter we know nothing but what is within reach and offers itself to the senses: while to obtain knowledge of the future from knowledge of the present or past, which pertains to prudence, belongs properly to the reason, because this is done by a process of comparison. It follows therefore that prudence, properly speaking, is in the reason.' back

Aquinas, I II, 59, 4, Are all moral virtues about the passions?, 'I answer that, Moral virtue perfects the appetitive part of the soul by directing it to good as defined by reason. Now good as defined by reason is that which is moderated or directed by reason. Consequently there are moral virtues about all matters that are subject to reason's direction and moderation. Now reason directs, not only the passions of the sensitive appetite, but also the operations of the intellective appetite, i.e. the will, which is not the subject of a passion, as stated above (Question 22, Article 3). Therefore not all the moral virtues are about passions, but some are about passions, some about operations.' back

Australian Government, Children Care, 'What is out-of-home care? Out-of-home care refers to the care of children and young people up to 18 years who are unable to live with their families (often due to child abuse and neglect). It involves the placement of a child or young person with alternate caregivers on a short- or long-term basis (Victorian Department of Human Services, 2007). Out-of-home care can be arranged either formally or informally. Informal care refers to arrangements made without intervention by statutory authorities or courts, and formal care occurs following a child protection intervention (either by voluntary agreement or a care and protection court order). This paper will describe those children in out-of-home care in Australia who are on care and protection orders.' back

Binoy Kampmark, History will pardon Snowdon even of Obama won't, 'What Snowden revealed was a technology security complex inefficient yet invasive; global and indifferent to national borders and oversight. It also revealed the institutional bankruptcy between the public citizen and the global watchers; and stressed the enormous importance of taking self-help measures in guarding against hacking intrusions. There have never been better times for companies specialising in self-encryption, or discussion about a global bill of digital privacy. Even if Snowden receives no pardon from President Obama, he can at least be sure to have been pardoned, to a large extent, by history.' back

Bob Dylan, Hey Mr Tambourine Man (Live at the Newport Folk Festival 1964), back

Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin', 'Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no telling who that it’s naming
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times they are a-changing'
back

Criticism of the theory of relativity - Wikipedia, Criticism of the theory of relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Criticism of the theory of relativity of Albert Einstein was mainly expressed in the early years after its publication in the early twentieth century, on scientific, pseudoscientific, philosophical, or ideological bases.Though some of these criticisms had the support of reputable scientists, Einstein's theory of relativity is now accepted by the scientific community. Reasons for criticism of the theory of relativity have included alternative theories, rejection of the abstract-mathematical method, and alleged errors of the theory. . . . There are still some critics of relativity today, but their opinions are not shared by the majority in the scientific community.' back

David Marr, Farrell puts Catholic Church's atitude to Australian law under the microscope, 'The furrows deepened on the brow of Father Brian Lucas. . . . On one reading of this tangled story, Lucas could face possible criminal charges for failing to alert the police 24 years ago to the apparently frank confessions of a paedophile priest. He doesn’t see it that way. . . . Lucas matters. . . . The Farrell case is the commission’s last look at the role of the Catholic church. It’s no afterthought. This is the scandal that raises the fundamental question of the church’s attitude to Australian law. Is it a “good citizen” as Cardinal George Pell has so often claimed? Or does the church see itself as a separate realm answerable to the laws of Rome?' back

Dusko Pavlovic and Catherine Meadows, Actor-network procedures: Modelling multi-factorial authentication, device pairing, social interactions, 'Abstract. As computation spreads from computers to networks of compute rs, and migrates into cyberspace, it ceases to be globally programmable, but it remains programmable ind irectly and partially: network com- putations cannot be controlled, but they can be steered by imposin g local constraints on network nodes. The tasks of ”programming” global behaviors through local const raints belong to the area of security . The “program particles” that assure that a system of local interactio ns leads towards some desired global goals are called security protocols . They are the software connectors of modern, world wide softwa re systems. As computation spreads beyond cyberspace, into physical and so cial spaces, new security tasks and prob- lems arise. As computer networks are extended by nodes with phys ical sensors and controllers, including the humans, and interlaced with social networks, the engineering conc epts and techniques of computer security blend with the social processes of security, that evolved since the dawn of mankind. These new connectors for computational and social software require a new “discipline of p rogramming” of global behaviors through local constraints. Since the new discipline seems to be emerging from a combination of established models of security protocols with older methods of procedural programm ing, we use the name procedures for these new connectors, that generalize protocols. In the present paper we propose actor-networks as a formal model of computation in heterogenous net- works of computers, humans and their devices, where these new p rocedures run; and we introduce Procedure Derivation Logic (PDL) as a framework for reasoning about security in actor-netw orks. On the way, we survey the guiding ideas of Protocol Derivation Logic (also PDL) that evolved through our work in security in last 10 years. Both formalisms are geared towards graphic reaso ning and, ultimately, tool support. We illustrate their workings by analysing a popular form of two-factor a uthentication, and a multi-channel device pairing procedure, devised for this occasion.' back

Gwenda Tavan, If the normal rules of politcial engagement don't apply, how do we handle Pauline Hanson?, 'She and her fellow travellers conform to what US historian Richard Hofstadter once referred to as “the paranoid style”. Hofstadter did not mean such people were clinically insane, rather that they were normal people motivated by tendencies towards acute exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy. History, Hofstadter pointed out, is peppered with individuals and groups who mobilised politically on the basis of their belief that their group was under direct threat from hostile forces intrinsically opposed to the “in-group’s” values and ideals.' back

Hannan Devlin, Indigenous Australians most ancient civilization on Earth, DNA study confirms, 'Scientists were able to trace the remarkable journey made by intrepid ancient humans by sifting through clues left in the DNA of modern populations in Australia and Papua New Guinea. The analysis shows that their ancestors were probably the first humans to cross an ocean, and reveals evidence of prehistoric liaisons with an unknown hominin cousin. . . . The findings appear in one of four major human origins papers published in Nature this week, which together give an unprecedented insight into how humans first migrated out of the African continent, splintered into distinct populations and spread across the globe.' back

History - Wikipedia, History - Wikipedia, the cree encyclopedia, 'History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory. It is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians.' back

History of religions - Wikipedia, History of religions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The history of religion refers to the written record of human religious experiences and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,200 years ago (3200 BCE). The prehistory of religion relates to a study of religious beliefs that existed prior to the advent of written records.' back

Janissary - Wikipedia, Janissary - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The Janissaries (from Ottoman Turkish يڭيچرى Yeniçeri meaning "new soldier", Albanian: Jeniçer) were infantry units that formed the Ottoman sultan's household troops and bodyguards. The force was created by the Sultan Murad I from Christian boys levied through the devşirme system from conquered countries in the 14th century[1] and was abolished by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826 with the Auspicious Incident.' back

Jesus wept - Wikipedia, Jesus wept - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Jesus wept (Greek: ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς) is a phrase famous for being the shortest verse in the King James Version of the Bible, as well as many other versions.' back

Lee Drutman, The Divided States of America, 'Most large cities, college towns, the Northeast and the West Coast are deep-blue Democratic. Ruby-red Republican strongholds take up most of the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States and the suburban and rural areas in between. Rather than compete directly against each other, both parties increasingly occupy their separate territories, with diminishing overlap and disappearing common accountability. They hear from very different constituents, with very different priorities. The minimal electoral incentives they do face all push toward nurturing, rather than bridging, those increasingly wide divisions.' back

Michael Westway et al, DNA reveals a new history of the First Australians, 'The first few decades of modern archaeological research into Australia’s ancient past was conducted with very little to no involvement of Aboriginal Australian people. This was followed by decades of debate over ownership of the past. Initial DNA research proposals floundered because little to no consultation was undertaken. A new period of community based research with Aboriginal people was forged through the sensitive and highly consultative approach pioneered by geneticist Sheila Van Holst Pellekaan. Her work with Aboriginal people set the standard for later scientific studies in Australia.' back

Nicholas Kristof, The Best News You Don't know, '■ As recently as 1981, when I was finishing college, 44 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty, according to the World Bank. Now the share is believed to be less than 10 percent and falling. “This is the best story in the world today,” says Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank.' back

Pallavi Singhal, How early Aboriginal Australians journeyed from Africa, '"We've tried to reconstruct this genetic map of Australia that tells a story of how dynamic Aboriginal society was over 50,000 years," said Michael Westaway, senior research fellow at Griffith University and co-author of the study, published in Nature./ back

Peter Kornbluh, Why the Obama administration is giving state secrets to Latin American allies, 'Alongside the traditional instruments of statecraft, the Obama administration has developed an entirely new tool: declassifying decades-old secrets of state to share with other governments and their societies. President Obama has used this declassification diplomacy to mend fences with other countries, advance the cause of human rights and even redress the dark history of Washington’s support for repression abroad. Allies are grateful and historians are delighted. And given the depth and range of still-secret U.S. Cold War records, declassified diplomacy has the potential to go much, much further.'
Peter Kornbluh is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive and the author of “The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability.” back

Sam Bowker, Friday essay: the Australian Mosque, 'I presented a slide of an Afghan cameleer’s mosque to a conference of art historians last year, noting that this was Australia’s most distinctive contribution to Islamic architecture. Some of them laughed. It was, after all, little more than a corrugated iron shed, stained and dented, a humble outback structure that serves its purpose and makes no claims to magnificence. Our “Afghan” mosques – made by skilled cameleers and traders from Afghanistan and beyond – are unique to Australia and they are remarkable. But should these 19th and early 20th-century regional buildings define our concept of a typically Australian mosque today?' back

Scott Shane, Richerd Perez-Pena and Aurelien Breeden, 'In-Betweeners" Are Part of a Rich Recruiting Pool for Jihadists, '“When you dig into these cases, you find the ‘why’ is a very complex question,” said Peter Bergen, the director of the security program at New America, a research group, and author of “United States of Jihad.” Personal disappointment, perceptions of discrimination, anger about American foreign policy and the desire “to become a hero in one’s own story” are all at play in addition to jihadist ideology, he said.' back

Sean Thompson, Stan Grant talking about inspiration for his book Talking To My Country after being short-listed for the NIB , 'Mr Grant said he hoped the book would help start conversations and encourage a closer look at what was really happening in Aboriginal communities. “Our history is one of lost opportunity, denial and suffering that we continues to see on a massive scale in this country,” he said.' back

Thomas L. Friedman, Two Ex-Spies and Donald Trump, 'And right now, two of the world’s foremost former spymasters are sending uncoded messages about what it will mean for America and the Western alliance if Donald Trump is elected president. Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce former C.I.A. Director Robert Gates and his longtime nemesis and former K.G.B. agent, President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Putin is voting Trump. Gates is not.' back

Tracy Chevalier, 'Writing is a magic trick that still surprises me when I put pen to paper', 'But what is going on when my pen is scratching, pausing, scratching? I am performing a magic trick that still surprises me. I am in this world, at my desk or kitchen table, but I am simultaneously holding in my head another world full of people I have never physically met but know to their core. That world and those people pour out through my pen: rough – often very rough – but insistent.' back

Writing - Wikipedia, Writing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion through the inscription or recording of signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language. Writing is not a language but a form of technology that developed as tools developed with human society.' back

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