Fun thread--though somewhat removed from Bradbury directly. These questions on free will have been hashed out for centuries, but they continue to be hashed out because they continue to resonate with man. The discussions are not settled, they are very real. No matter what one generation claims, the next generation has to take the questions up again. Just like each generation has to have its own encounter with God.

Nard: Your last entry was inspiring.

I'm enjoying the discussion.

I'm largely keeping out of the discussion, because I'm an atheist rationalist who finds it hard to even converse with some of the religious folks on the board (our world-views are so vastly different that we barely comprehend each other).

However, Nard posed a good question a while back about dinosaurs: how come nobody found any until about the 19th century? The answer is because palaeontology (like other historical sciences) is interpretive. Unless you stumble across a fully formed, completely articulated T Rex, you are unlikely to recognise it as such. The first bits and pieces found and interpreted tended to be teeth. It was only as people began to piece together bits and pieces that they began to see hints of a complete animal.

I think it was Kant (I should look this up to check for accuracy, but I don't have time right now!) who said something along the lines of:

Concepts without percepts are empty; Percepts without concepts are blind.

So what you believe depends on what you see, and what you see depends on what you are looking for. The late Stephen Jay Gould was very fond of quoting this to illustrate how 'theory' and 'observation' are not independent of each other.

I should add that neither I, nor Prof Gould, took these ideas as support for an idea that everything is relative, or that nothing could be proved; on the contrary, it points up the necessity of building a world-view based on diverse, interlocking evidence.

Thus the importance of learning to critically analyze and synthesize ideas. It is just as important in textual (biblical) analysis as it is in science. Knowledge is synthesis.

If any of you have seen the Al Gore Movie "An Inconvient Truth" about global warming etc. there is a vary interesting shot in the film which shows the Earth taken from space by one of the spacecraft sent out to search the solar system. There is the whole galaxy of our home stars, and in the middle of all that white, yellow, and tones of other hue, from the millions of stars, is a tiny blue ball, the Earth. The stricking thing about this picture is that we are so insignificant in all the others, and that picture is only of our galaxy, what about the millions of other galxaies? You can purchase this picture from the Planetary Society and it is breathtaking in its impact. I think it begs the question, why would Mankind be singled out for special treatment when there are so many others to worry about in the universe. I believe that Mankind had better get used to the idea that we are on our own in this life and begin to treat the "US" as if we are all that we have. That, in fact, may be the case.

Maybe God is testing us to see if we can survive, get along, and rise to a more responsible level of behavior toward our fellow beings, to show that we are worthy of further intervention.


In February 1990, Voyager 1 looked back at its home planet for the last time. The image of Earth as a tiny bluish dot inspired Carl Sagan to write one of his best-known essays, which starts off his book The Pale Blue Dot. The poster features Carl's timeless words and the full frame of the profound image captured by Voyager 1.

12 in. x 30 in



326$10.00

This message has been edited. Last edited by: patrask,

I find this sort of thing interesting (see attached - this is the 5th of a series-couldn't figure out how to attach more than one...)

Also, another linguistic pet peeve:
to "beg the question" means to evade or sidestep the question. I know everybody seems to agree on using the phrase incorrectly these days, but still...

A similar popular misusage is "moot point", which means a point worthy of discussion, not ,as is often thought, a point no longer debatable. (Think of Tolkien's "entmoot")

SizeOfEarth-5.jpg (42 Kb, 7 downloads)

Braling II:

In the last photo of our Sun against the larger Suns, I guess it's impossible to find my house, especially since I can't locate the Earth, since it's probably not even there, and if it were I wouldn't be able to locate it. I like the theory of a handful of scientists at the University of Chicago. Their discussions and presentations have been on the idea that the Big Bang was highly localized.
----------------------

philnic:

I try to find things that explain the idea of God in a way that at least gets someone thinking about 'alternative' ways of approaching the subject.The dinosaur bones speaks of the idea that reality can stare you in the face, but if you don't know what you are looking at, it isn't worth much ...to you.
An example is a stereogram. Familiar with a stereogram? Here's one. In it is St. Joan sitting on a horse. Seeing it is a matter of how you focus your eyes. If you look at this picture as if you are looking in a mirror, you'll see it. When you look at a mirror, you never look at the surface of the mirror. You focus your eyes to see passed the surface of the mirror. If you do the same here, you'll see the picture.
http://www.stjoan-center.com/p00591.jpg
---------------------------------------------------------

Nard,
I remember when these things first started to show up in "Games" magazine. For some reason, many folks (me included) usually see a concave, rather than a convex image. I can usually see them OK now, though.

Phil,
One thing I posted some time ago bears repeating here:
To paraphrase Fr. Thomas Hopko: Tell me about the God you don't believe in, and 10 times out of 10 that won't be the God I believe in either.

Ever read Dostoyevsky?

I love sterograms and was very happy that I could "see" this one.

biplane1: Then, be carried away by Stephen Hawking/and or Ray Bradbury...propelling us into the vortex of space aboard this stereogram:
http://home.teleport.com/~jrolsen/stereograms/stereo98.html

Pictures and posters...yes.
Try this one: Go to the bottom of the page at Adventure Books Sci-Fi Shop and check the Adventure Books'Official Large Poster.

We set the price at the same thing we have to pay ourselves, because we order them a lot and send them out to bookstores. It's for marketing, etc. Help yourself. We tell people: get a frame, don't use thumbtacks on this one.