The initial difficulty in creating this chapter is to set the parameters of my thoughts. While I named this chapter Religion , I probably mean the term in a broader sense than most would accept, and also, the subject matter includes science issues. The goal is to set out how chaos theory is relevant to both.
By religion I mean the entire body of language that is created from the assumption that there is any form of intelligent design to the universe. And that, assuming there is a creator/designer(s) responsible for existence that the/those creator(s) has/have some eternal plan for us to be conscious of their existence. Further that we are expected to perform certain duties as a result of our being creations, and thus exist at the pleasure of our creator. It also assumes that should those conditions exist, that our creator(s) have established some method by which we may become aware of them and their demands/wishes. By science, I mean pretty much the knowledge and procedures we have developed to enable us to do things, observe things, in relation to everything that exists. [ I strongly suspect that I have not described my parameters with enough specificity to make them clear. Feel free to rewrite the paragraph in language to your suiting, keeping in mind that I am looking for the broadest possible definitions of religion and science.]
One of the earliest and most useful ways of describing chaos is to imagine a stream of water flowing at a constant rate over a smooth creek bed. The surface of the stream appears smooth and homogeneous. If one were to take a cross section of the stream at some point, and then take another cross section at some further point downstream, the cross sections would appear to be identical. That is if I take a cross section at point a, I can then predict with a high degree of probability what a cross section b would look like several feet down stream. The flow of the stream is periodic, a=b=c=d etc. Now suppose a rock is placed on the stream bed. When the water flows past the point where the rock is located, a perturbation to the flow of water occurs, the water flows around the rock and a wave the same volume as the rock appears on the surface of the stream. But very quickly, the stream returns to its smooth, periodic flow. Increasing the number of rocks at a given location increases not only the disturbance of the stream surface, but also increases the distance the water travels before it returns to its smooth flow. Nonetheless, the same number of identical rocks placed in exactly the same order at a further point downstream would produce a surface disturbance almost exactly like the first disturbance. The stream flow is still periodic. Rock pile a disturbance = rock pile b disturbance. But there comes a point where flow of water around the rock pile becomes chaotic. Waves toss about with no apparent relation to each other. A cross section at point a now bears no resemblance to a cross section taken at point b regardless to how close the points are. Further, a cross section at point a would bear no resemblance to another cross section taken immediately thereafter at the same point. A seemingly identical pile of rocks in another section of the stream would also behave unpredictably not only within itself, but in relation to the first pile of rocks. As well, the pattern of perturbations after the water has flowed past the rock piles would not be similar either in patterns or distance. Sort of. Even though the wave patterns are unpredictable at some level, they also have boundaries. The water is limited in how far it can travel from the stream bed, which is to say that those limits form the boundary of the strange attractor basin.
In laboratory situations the mathematics of chaos precisely describe this transition from smooth flow to chaotic flow. Alas, things aren't quite that precise in real life. But they don't have to be for our purposes-- what is important is that when the water is becoming calmer, then it becomes so progressively. Likewise when it is becoming chaotic, there is a progression along the path to chaos. And all that is simply my long winded and simplistic way of saying that when events are proceeding toward chaos they become less predictable and more complex, and when things are proceeding toward steady state order they become more periodic and less complex.
Now let's take all that *picture a comedian trying to pick up several objects and every time he picks up one thing he drops others until finally both he and the objects crash to the floor*, and go back to our basic assumptions about religion. Where we left off was our process of establishing awareness of our creator's existence and expectations. She didn't make it easy. [I got tired of the multiple entity thing, and being a sensitive, advanced male I chose to use the female gender.]
So here we have this lady creator who expects us to acknowledge Her and to do what She wants us to do. How do we go about establishing that? [As any red blooded macho guy can tell you its damn near impossible to tell what a woman wants even in the best of circumstances.]
Initially, we would be expected to try a wide variety of communication modalities, and to get a broad range of things possibly expected of us. But as time goes on, our communication modalities would become fewer and fewer as we eliminated methods that did not work for everybody. And, by that same process of elimination, we would grow more and more certain about exactly what was expected of us, all of us.
Just to pick an arbitrary starting point lets start with the life of Jesus. [The primary reason for doing that is because I know more about Christianity than other possibilities, and it is the most common belief system in these parts.] Referring back to the very truncated list of church organization dates I used to create my introductory graphics [I make no claim for accuracy of the numbers, but I believe they will suffice as metaphorical tools.] So anyway, for the first thousand years after Jesus, there would seem to be only 5 or 6 new "denominations" of Christian groups. That does not seem to be particularly disturbing. With no clearly delineated path to Her and Her Wishes, one could certainly understand that there would be some initial disagreements both as to the path to Her and to Her Wishes. But if the communication between Her and us was progressing toward steady state certainty, those disagreements would tend to blend with each other and result in more unity between the various groups looking for the truth. That didn't happen. During the century of the 1800's there were at least 21 major new denominations, each with different versions of the path to Her and Her Wishes. During the just past century there were at least 43 major new denominations. Further, with the advent of the Internet, and more and more information available to persons, there is a growing trend toward people avoiding all organized religions and finding their on individual path to Her and Her Wishes.
Clearly, irrefutably so, the process of communication between Her and us has become chaotic, in fact, has been chaotic for a long time. And that chaotic communication will never, never reach a generally accepted steady state of communication clarity. Never. Nicht. Nunca. Jamias. In Nessun Momento. Nimmer. Aldri. Sohasem. Ei Koskaan. Aldrig. Etc.
So still working from the assumption that the universe was set in place by intelligent design, and that She wants us to be aware of Her and Her Wishes, several things are abundantly clear. Example: Abdul, a devout Muslim, and Levy a devout orthodox Jew are standing in the middle of a field arguing over a plot of ground. Abdul says, with complete assurance Allah has given him this spot of land to establish a holy shrine. But Levy says with complete assurance, God has given him the spot of land to build a temple. Well what can we, the outside observers, conclude about this situation? It could be that She did tell them both what they think She told them, and She was just playing a joke on them, or maybe She did it because She wanted to entertain Herself by watching them fight to the death. Or it could be that when She gave all those folks at the Tower of Babel different languages that She forgot to give all the factions a translator so they all could understand Her commands. Whatever ! What is chillingly clear is that neither Abdul or Levy can compromise without betraying their faith, and denying the validity of the Intelligent Designer's gift to them, at which point she would probably renege on Her offer because of his denial of faith. OK now this is no longer a metaphor. When Bush sits down with Sharon to talk, at the deepest level of Bush's faith he believes Sharon is going to hell when he dies and can't possibly be trusted. Sharon, in his deepest level of faith, believes that Bush is a heretic, and a nonbeliever who is not one of the chosen ones so he can't possibly understand the will of Yaweh. This is not a trivial matter. We are talking here about contradictory versions of the entire universe and all time. Not only can they both not be right, but there is absolutely no way that both versions of the universe can be used concurrently to help them make a decision- about anything.
This is not an argument about the existence of intelligent design. Believe what you will, with my blessing [just had to sneak that in]. But we cannot accomplish jack shit or do anything to help preserve our species if we depend on some ultimate truth to be made know to us by some divine creator. It just can't be. And it can't be because that line of communication is chaotic and will never reach steady state clarity.
Guess I better slip in another caveat before I start in on science. This is not going to be a brief but brilliant synopsis of the history of science. It is fortuitous that is not my intent mainly because I am not the least bit qualified for such a task. But I do want to say something about the future of science, and, since it hasn't happened yet no one can prove me wrong. And that is my point, my riason d'étre: no one can prove you wrong either. I am rather troubled about the state of our species. We have come to believe that we must be rescued- either by the benevolence of a higher intelligence, or by the wonders of scientific progress. Most of all we have come to depend on the guidance of those we consider, at our most private level, to be our betters; our priests tell us what to believe, our scientists tell us what to make, our elected leaders tell us which way to go. But none of them know. Nor will they ever. It is just us.
In the logically lenient world of metaphorical communication both religion and science have similar goals. While religion searches for the ultimate meaning of existence, science searches for a single body of knowledge to explain how everything in the universe works -- the Theory of Everything. The first Theory of Everything seems to have been suggested by Empedocles around 450 B.C. Empedocles theorized that everything was made up of the four basic elements, earth, water, air, and fire. There seems to be no record of whether the laboratory experiments to create different substances by various mixes of these four elements proved to be successful.
Much has been written elsewhere about the contributions of Newton, but I can submit a little known historical fact about the person some consider the greatest scientist who ever lived. The story of his observation of an apple falling, which led to his theory of gravity, is sometimes embellished such that the apple fell on his head. What is known is that he owned an apple orchard at the time of his discovery, but subsequently replaced his apple trees with fig trees.
Skipping way ahead in search of our next scientific triple crown winner, Einstein came on the scene as a reasonable contender.
Continued>>>>>>>>>>>>
By religion I mean the entire body of language that is created from the assumption that there is any form of intelligent design to the universe. And that, assuming there is a creator/designer(s) responsible for existence that the/those creator(s) has/have some eternal plan for us to be conscious of their existence. Further that we are expected to perform certain duties as a result of our being creations, and thus exist at the pleasure of our creator. It also assumes that should those conditions exist, that our creator(s) have established some method by which we may become aware of them and their demands/wishes. By science, I mean pretty much the knowledge and procedures we have developed to enable us to do things, observe things, in relation to everything that exists. [ I strongly suspect that I have not described my parameters with enough specificity to make them clear. Feel free to rewrite the paragraph in language to your suiting, keeping in mind that I am looking for the broadest possible definitions of religion and science.]
One of the earliest and most useful ways of describing chaos is to imagine a stream of water flowing at a constant rate over a smooth creek bed. The surface of the stream appears smooth and homogeneous. If one were to take a cross section of the stream at some point, and then take another cross section at some further point downstream, the cross sections would appear to be identical. That is if I take a cross section at point a, I can then predict with a high degree of probability what a cross section b would look like several feet down stream. The flow of the stream is periodic, a=b=c=d etc. Now suppose a rock is placed on the stream bed. When the water flows past the point where the rock is located, a perturbation to the flow of water occurs, the water flows around the rock and a wave the same volume as the rock appears on the surface of the stream. But very quickly, the stream returns to its smooth, periodic flow. Increasing the number of rocks at a given location increases not only the disturbance of the stream surface, but also increases the distance the water travels before it returns to its smooth flow. Nonetheless, the same number of identical rocks placed in exactly the same order at a further point downstream would produce a surface disturbance almost exactly like the first disturbance. The stream flow is still periodic. Rock pile a disturbance = rock pile b disturbance. But there comes a point where flow of water around the rock pile becomes chaotic. Waves toss about with no apparent relation to each other. A cross section at point a now bears no resemblance to a cross section taken at point b regardless to how close the points are. Further, a cross section at point a would bear no resemblance to another cross section taken immediately thereafter at the same point. A seemingly identical pile of rocks in another section of the stream would also behave unpredictably not only within itself, but in relation to the first pile of rocks. As well, the pattern of perturbations after the water has flowed past the rock piles would not be similar either in patterns or distance. Sort of. Even though the wave patterns are unpredictable at some level, they also have boundaries. The water is limited in how far it can travel from the stream bed, which is to say that those limits form the boundary of the strange attractor basin.
In laboratory situations the mathematics of chaos precisely describe this transition from smooth flow to chaotic flow. Alas, things aren't quite that precise in real life. But they don't have to be for our purposes-- what is important is that when the water is becoming calmer, then it becomes so progressively. Likewise when it is becoming chaotic, there is a progression along the path to chaos. And all that is simply my long winded and simplistic way of saying that when events are proceeding toward chaos they become less predictable and more complex, and when things are proceeding toward steady state order they become more periodic and less complex.
Now let's take all that *picture a comedian trying to pick up several objects and every time he picks up one thing he drops others until finally both he and the objects crash to the floor*, and go back to our basic assumptions about religion. Where we left off was our process of establishing awareness of our creator's existence and expectations. She didn't make it easy. [I got tired of the multiple entity thing, and being a sensitive, advanced male I chose to use the female gender.]
So here we have this lady creator who expects us to acknowledge Her and to do what She wants us to do. How do we go about establishing that? [As any red blooded macho guy can tell you its damn near impossible to tell what a woman wants even in the best of circumstances.]
Initially, we would be expected to try a wide variety of communication modalities, and to get a broad range of things possibly expected of us. But as time goes on, our communication modalities would become fewer and fewer as we eliminated methods that did not work for everybody. And, by that same process of elimination, we would grow more and more certain about exactly what was expected of us, all of us.
Just to pick an arbitrary starting point lets start with the life of Jesus. [The primary reason for doing that is because I know more about Christianity than other possibilities, and it is the most common belief system in these parts.] Referring back to the very truncated list of church organization dates I used to create my introductory graphics [I make no claim for accuracy of the numbers, but I believe they will suffice as metaphorical tools.] So anyway, for the first thousand years after Jesus, there would seem to be only 5 or 6 new "denominations" of Christian groups. That does not seem to be particularly disturbing. With no clearly delineated path to Her and Her Wishes, one could certainly understand that there would be some initial disagreements both as to the path to Her and to Her Wishes. But if the communication between Her and us was progressing toward steady state certainty, those disagreements would tend to blend with each other and result in more unity between the various groups looking for the truth. That didn't happen. During the century of the 1800's there were at least 21 major new denominations, each with different versions of the path to Her and Her Wishes. During the just past century there were at least 43 major new denominations. Further, with the advent of the Internet, and more and more information available to persons, there is a growing trend toward people avoiding all organized religions and finding their on individual path to Her and Her Wishes.
Clearly, irrefutably so, the process of communication between Her and us has become chaotic, in fact, has been chaotic for a long time. And that chaotic communication will never, never reach a generally accepted steady state of communication clarity. Never. Nicht. Nunca. Jamias. In Nessun Momento. Nimmer. Aldri. Sohasem. Ei Koskaan. Aldrig. Etc.
So still working from the assumption that the universe was set in place by intelligent design, and that She wants us to be aware of Her and Her Wishes, several things are abundantly clear. Example: Abdul, a devout Muslim, and Levy a devout orthodox Jew are standing in the middle of a field arguing over a plot of ground. Abdul says, with complete assurance Allah has given him this spot of land to establish a holy shrine. But Levy says with complete assurance, God has given him the spot of land to build a temple. Well what can we, the outside observers, conclude about this situation? It could be that She did tell them both what they think She told them, and She was just playing a joke on them, or maybe She did it because She wanted to entertain Herself by watching them fight to the death. Or it could be that when She gave all those folks at the Tower of Babel different languages that She forgot to give all the factions a translator so they all could understand Her commands. Whatever ! What is chillingly clear is that neither Abdul or Levy can compromise without betraying their faith, and denying the validity of the Intelligent Designer's gift to them, at which point she would probably renege on Her offer because of his denial of faith. OK now this is no longer a metaphor. When Bush sits down with Sharon to talk, at the deepest level of Bush's faith he believes Sharon is going to hell when he dies and can't possibly be trusted. Sharon, in his deepest level of faith, believes that Bush is a heretic, and a nonbeliever who is not one of the chosen ones so he can't possibly understand the will of Yaweh. This is not a trivial matter. We are talking here about contradictory versions of the entire universe and all time. Not only can they both not be right, but there is absolutely no way that both versions of the universe can be used concurrently to help them make a decision- about anything.
This is not an argument about the existence of intelligent design. Believe what you will, with my blessing [just had to sneak that in]. But we cannot accomplish jack shit or do anything to help preserve our species if we depend on some ultimate truth to be made know to us by some divine creator. It just can't be. And it can't be because that line of communication is chaotic and will never reach steady state clarity.
Guess I better slip in another caveat before I start in on science. This is not going to be a brief but brilliant synopsis of the history of science. It is fortuitous that is not my intent mainly because I am not the least bit qualified for such a task. But I do want to say something about the future of science, and, since it hasn't happened yet no one can prove me wrong. And that is my point, my riason d'étre: no one can prove you wrong either. I am rather troubled about the state of our species. We have come to believe that we must be rescued- either by the benevolence of a higher intelligence, or by the wonders of scientific progress. Most of all we have come to depend on the guidance of those we consider, at our most private level, to be our betters; our priests tell us what to believe, our scientists tell us what to make, our elected leaders tell us which way to go. But none of them know. Nor will they ever. It is just us.
In the logically lenient world of metaphorical communication both religion and science have similar goals. While religion searches for the ultimate meaning of existence, science searches for a single body of knowledge to explain how everything in the universe works -- the Theory of Everything. The first Theory of Everything seems to have been suggested by Empedocles around 450 B.C. Empedocles theorized that everything was made up of the four basic elements, earth, water, air, and fire. There seems to be no record of whether the laboratory experiments to create different substances by various mixes of these four elements proved to be successful.
Much has been written elsewhere about the contributions of Newton, but I can submit a little known historical fact about the person some consider the greatest scientist who ever lived. The story of his observation of an apple falling, which led to his theory of gravity, is sometimes embellished such that the apple fell on his head. What is known is that he owned an apple orchard at the time of his discovery, but subsequently replaced his apple trees with fig trees.
Skipping way ahead in search of our next scientific triple crown winner, Einstein came on the scene as a reasonable contender.
Continued>>>>>>>>>>>>
" Dear Policeman, I am God. Do not tell the media about this".
Beltway sniper
Beltway sniper
Christianity
James Warren "Jim" Jones
Islam
David Icke
Hinduism
Buddhism
Confucianism
Taoism
David Koresh
Maria Devi Christos
Mahdi Jaunpuri
Sikhism
Sathya Sai Baba
Juhayman al-Otaibi
Juche
Judah
Jesus
ministry of Jesus circa 30 A.D.
Catholic Church 107 A.D.
Coptic Orthodox 451 AD
Sikhism 1469 AD
Moravian Church 1727 AD
Zoroastrianism
'Abd al-Malik ibn
Unitarian
Rastafarian
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
1830 AD
Tenrikyo 1838 AD
Ann Lee
Neo-Paganism
Jacob Frank
New Age
Falun Gong
Emperor Haile Selassie I
Sun Myung Moon
Michael Travesser
Soka Gakkai 1937 AD
The Church of God (Seventh Day) 1884 AD
Baha'i Faith 1863 AD
Church of the Nazarene 1908 AD
Church of Scientology 1954 AD
Jehovah's Witnesses 1870 AD
United Church of Christ 1957 AD
Iglesia ni Cristo 1914 AD
Secular Humanistic Judaism 1963 AD
Assemblies of God 1914 AD
Church of Christ, Scientist 1879 AD
Pentecostal Assemblies of the World 1919 AD
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel 1923 AD
Nation of Islam 1931 AD
Marshall Herff Applewhite
Meher Baba
Mother Meera
Or You May Mix and Match From These Assorted Religions, Dates of Origin, Or Folks Who Claim to Be God Or Sum'n Similar
Wicca 1951 AD
Once you have made your selections. You may proceed to the chapter on religion. If
you choose to proceed alone, the author cannot guarantee the safety of your beliefs.
you choose to proceed alone, the author cannot guarantee the safety of your beliefs.
