And He would have given us more than zero evidence of his existence!
But since He hasn’t,
He is as good as dead

But Nature lives!

You just posted this in the relevant thread elsewhere. Was this an oops posting?

The Truth can never be repeated enough.


(Unless you have to hear it continually, as in ad nauseam...)

As one who gained a very powerful testimony of the Cheerios in Nursery and thus put on the path to having my brain molded by the Correlation program of this wondrous Church, the word TRUTH was well-defined for me as this beloved Correlation program carefully and thoroughly washed my brain by immersion to think the peculiar way I now have been groomed to think.

TRUTH (tm) is whatever the Brethren say :) They say that God exists and he loves us. So, because they say it then I'm programmed to believe it and not question it one bit. That is why I believe that God exists and he loves us. And then the Brethren always talk about one important matter about how we can prove that we actually believe the TRUTH (tm) and that's by us forking over lots of money and time through Tithing and other ways of completely sucking the life out of us. To those not following the TRUTH (tm) this would seem like it's a total scam from a bunch of greedy and narcissistic old men in Salt Lake who are taking advantage of so many people. However, it's the TRUTH (tm).

I put the "(tm)" with Truth because it might be a registered trademark owned by Intellectual Reserve, inc. and anyone else trying to claim they have the TRUTH(tm) might need to get themselves sued for everything they have through Heavenly Father's beloved law firm, Kirton & McConkie.

BTW, you forgot the "(tm)" when you wrote "Truth". Maybe the Correlation program didn't get your brain completely washed by immersion?

When people analyze us followers of the Ensign Peak conglomerate they often do so without understanding how we learn things and get our brains wired to think and make decisions. Here is the 5 step process.

Nursery -> Cheerios -> Correlation -> Molded -> Endure

This 5 step process complete obliterates the mission of RfM because the final step shows us all how moot the word "Recovery" in RfM is. Once we are molded then we Endure and there's nothing needing "Recovery". The webmasters here could change the name to "E[long]" to remind everyone that they could be enduring sheep and this website could be like having sacrament meeting all the time and your life completely micromanaged by the beloved BKP who recently departed this mortal life for his eternal fate. To my well-correlated mind this sounds like an awesome idea.

On occasion we see people not getting proper cheerios in Nursery and not getting taught soon enough to believe that the Correlation is non-manipulative. It's so vitally important that they must believe this wondrous program is non-manipulative or else they'll have a hard time ever reaching the Molding stage and even then they'll be at risk of dropping off the Enduring path to some other path like what the exmormons call "Recovery". However, because I was well-indoctrinated to believe that the Correlation program was non-manipulative then this idea of other paths besides "Endure" is just inconceivable.


For people who don't get to Nursery and then get good cheerios there the path to getting well-correlated can still come other ways, though not as easily. What if they have some serious health problem? Or their family gets killed in a car accident? Or they have a divorce? On such occasions we can have missionaries and others exploit the situation where the Nursery leaders never quite got started with using good cheerios to start getting the youngsters correlated and then molded to think the wondrous way I was raised to think.
Why "E[long]" as a name instead of "EM" if this website changes its name to be "Enduring" instead of "Recovery From"? I used to think of myself as Mormon and think of it meaning "more good". However, the Holy Nelson got a sacred revelation that Heavenly Father agreed with him on this grudge that Nelson had when he was an Apostle and Heavenly Father has now decided that it's a victory for Satan to use that nickname so I went from being Honest TBM to Honest TB[long] because of that long phrase I'd have to write to self-describe myself. But thanks to Heavenly Father having so many blessings in the Ensign Peak name I see that maybe I should call myself as a follower of Ensign Peak or something like that? BTW, I want to sincerely apologize for my vulgar language at the beginning of this paragraph when I used that "M" word since the usage of that word is a victory for Satan :(

Good luck to everyone on your recovery, ooops I mean enduring.

Exactly...

It doesn't seem terribly fruitful to pray to an entity who has ignored all kinds of atrocities, i.e. 9/11, the Holocaust, etc. What, God is going to find your lost car keys, now?

Exactly.
But on the other hand, the fittest life has survived, adapted and evolved on earth continuously for 4 billion years, despite 5 mass extinction events (6 if you included the current, human caused mass extinction) and destructive forces. The combined creative/destructive forces and fundamental cosmological constants have combined to result in life in this Goldilocks zone where water exists in liquid form, long enough for life to emerge from non-life, consciousness to emerge and the universe to become self conscious.
No scientist says any of that was by accident.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2023 01:43PM by schrodingerscat.

This is such a weak argument as to be laughable. If you were a rat in a maze and owned your existence to lab scientists would you trust them simply because they exist?

And they give you food which you obviously aren't requiring off God.

It was actually a modified quote I heard recently from the late great British Comedian Linda Smith, who said,”If God wanted us to believe in him then he’d exist.”

https://www.chortle.co.uk/features/2019/01/29/42176/remembering_linda_smith

So this thread is just a joke?

> But Nature lives!

We should worship the sun!  Unless the word Nature includes the sun?

Maybe you could define nature for us?

And what about "The *nature* man is the enemy of ghawd" thing?

You are like the Russian soldier whose cell call to his girlfriend was intercepted by Ukrainian intelligence and used for targeting purposes.

Incoming.

...I have my books and my poetry to protect me.  I am shielded in my armor, hiding in my room, safe within my womb, I touch no one,
and no one touches me.  I am a rock, I am an island...  And for no particular reason, I shall add that I once split the ass end seam of my trousers while dancing at a disco on Hollywood Blvd. but didn't know it until I got home and was undressing.  You may well imagine some of the thoughts that went through my mind, having been the only representative of the 'darker' races at that particular venue.

You're living the good life when you can smile and declare that *Life* is only as complicated as you make it.  I've been one very lucky individual.

Now, what was it you were asking?

Uh, I've forgotten.

I'll bet you win a lot of arguments that way.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > But Nature lives!
>
> We should worship the sun!  Unless the word
> Nature includes the sun?

Yes, nature includes the sun and everything else in the cosmos.

> Maybe you could define nature for us?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a book on the subject, Nature.

https://emersoncentral.com/texts/nature-addresses-lectures/nature2/chapter1-nature/

“Nature Summary:
"Nature" is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson that was first published in 1836. In this work, Emerson reflects on the beauty and power of nature and argues that it can serve as a source of inspiration and enlightenment for individuals. He encourages readers to look beyond the surface of nature and appreciate its underlying spiritual essence. He also asserts that nature is not separate from the individual but instead is an integral part of the self and can be perceived through spiritual intuition. "Nature" is considered a seminal work in the American Transcendentalist movement and is often seen as an expression of Emerson's philosophical beliefs about the interconnectedness of all things.“

> And what about "The *nature* man is the enemy of
> ghawd" thing?

Even as a brainwashed Mormon I always thought that was the dumbest concept I’d ever heard of. It’s like original sin, but for Mormons. It’s a way to make us feel like we are naturally inadequate and our only hope for redemption is through God, the Redeemer. When, in reality, there is no such thing as God, it’s just the church that invented the concept to exploit gullible people into believing they are worthless without the church and irredeemable, which is nonsense.

>> But Nature lives! <<

But nature doesn't require trust!

But jumping out of an airplane wearing a parachute packed by a minimum-wage worker does, so explain that!

Roy G Biv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> >> But Nature lives! <<
>
> But nature doesn't require trust!


True.
Nor does it ‘want’ anything from us.

What about Nature's demand that we reproduce?

Is "territorial imperative" a function of Nature?

What if Nature is just some kind of Eternal Lottery, meaning that the meteor strike 63 million years ago that removed Dinosoria from the Earth equation was as random as us destined to get up close and personal with the Great Attractor?

Is Nature so in charge that a Reasonable Man similarly situated would see the need for what we know of the Earth's geological history to be 'of necessity'?

Does Nature have a plan, or was given a plan that poor old helpless Nature must follow?

>> Nor does it ‘want’ anything from us. <<

True, that's why I don't see the need to equate nature with god...by any definition.

You might not but Einstein, Sagan and Hawking did.

“So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.” Stephen Hawking

“The idea that God is an oversized white male with a flowing beard, who sits in the sky and tallies the fall of every sparrow is ludicrous. But if by 'God,' one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.” Carl Sagan

I agree that it doesn’t make much sense to pray to god or gravity, but it might make us feel more at peace if we pray to the forces that combined to create life and have sustained it over the past 4 billion yrs w/o interruption.

> and have sustained it
> over the past 4 billion
> years w/o interruption.


Dinosaurs, Dodo Birds and Neanderthals can't argue with that statement.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > and have sustained it
> > over the past 4 billion
> > years w/o interruption.
>
>
> Dinosaurs, Dodo Birds and Neanderthals can't argue
> with that statement.


That’s the good news, the fittest life survived whatever killed off the dinosaurs, Dodobirds and Neanderthals, and it adapted to the changes, uninterrupted.

Waterbears, jellyfish and cephalopods (octopus & squid) have survived all 5 mass extinctions.

Neanderthals didn’t go extinct. You are likely 2% Neanderthal unless you are 100% African. Meaning we, Homo sapiens sapiens, combined with other sub species of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans, to create a hybrid species. And the original Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Africans) were a hybrid sub species of Homo Sspiens, because our African predecessor, Homo Sapiens Idaltu, likely mated with one or more other 10+ sub species of Homos who coexisted with Idaltu in Africa.

IOW, we are all mutts.

There is no such thing as a ‘purebred’ Homo Sapiens Sapiens. The closest thing to it is Africans, but even they are mutts.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2023 12:44PM by schrodingerscat.

>> ...but it might make us feel more at peace if we pray to the forces that combined to create life and have sustained it over the past 4 billion yrs w/o interruption. <<

Well, to each their own. I love nature. The property I own has lots of it. I marvel at it pretty much daily.....but pray to it?

How would one do that? What would the prayer be like....and do you do that?

One of the last times I prayed in earnest, I got what I prayed for.

That sure taught me a valuable lesson!!

Same thing happened to me!

Your not my ex-wife impersonating a well seasoned Lamanito are you?

You guitar-picking mo/fo, I was going to ask you the same thing!!!

Well, at least we have that in common!

And I think you typo'd....it's not mo/fo.....it's fo/mo...former mormon.

Mo/fo.....Mormer formon doesn't make any sense.

Thank you for the heads up!  Now that I consider it, mo/fo makes no sense whatsoever!  What was I thinking...

Sometimes I think of "prayer" in terms of appreciation. I appreciate being alive on this beautiful planet, under a starry sky. To whom or what that appreciation goes, I have no idea.

I'm aware that it doesn't work for everyone, sad to say, but may I suggest looking in the mirror when those moments of wanting to express gratitude arise?  If the person you see reflected worked hard to get where she is, she deserves your thanks.

In my case, I just say, "You goddam lucky-ass fo/mo!"

I meditate daily.
Like Emerson, I reflect on the beauty and power of nature and it serves as a source of inspiration and enlightenment for me in my art and in my personal work.
I look beyond the surface of nature and appreciate its underlying spiritual essence.
I agree with Emerson, that nature is not separate from the individual but instead is an integral part of the self and can be perceived through spiritual intuition.
Philosophically I’m an American Transcendentalist who believes in the interconnectedness and oneness of all things.
I also agree with Roger Penrose, who won a Nobel prize for his mathematical proof of Einstein’s theory of relativity’s prediction of black hole singularity that exists at the center of every black hole. I believe that the singularity is the source of everything and that we exist inside of the singularity, which also exists at the center of every black hole.
I meditate about the singularity and black/white holes every night as I go to sleep.
It helps me sleep.
I believe the singularity is what we came from and where we are headed.
I trust the singularity.

Roy--what do you have to say to that???

Hmmmmm.....where to start?

1) Meditating isn't praying.

2) I don't need hero's or authority figures to appreciate nature.

3) There's a lot of woo woo gobble-d-gook in that there post.

4) I sometimes giggle a bit when he posts about black holes :)

5) If the singularity wants me to trust it, it has to show itself.

6) What does spiritual essence smell like?

7) How much does a pint of spiritual intuition cost and where can I get some? All I have is rye and bourbon at home.

8) Could meditating on black/ white holes every night while going to sleep be caused by watching too much free porn on the interwebs?

9) I believe Astrud Gilberto (she's a famous samba/ bossanova singer) when she say's "...and when she passes, each one she passes goes....ahhhhh."

10) Do I need a passport if I'm headed for the singularity?

11) If everything is interconnected and one thing, why can't I access Jeff Bezos' bank account?

12) If you place a cat in the singularity, can it be alive and dead at the same time?

13) If there is a singularity in every black hole, wouldn't that make it be a multiplarity?

14) Do you need X-ray specs to look beyond the surface of nature?

Enough for now, its friggin' Friday and almost quittin' time!

Wow. With that many koans, my meditation needs are set for years.

Happy smoking, my friend!

Just got home and am on my way to do just that! Happy indeed :)

Roy G Biv Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hmmmmm.....where to start?
>
> 1) Meditating isn't praying.

I didn’t say it was, but it is a form of worship, in antiquity and in most of the East

> 2) I don't need hero's or authority figures to
> appreciate nature.

I don’t either, but I appreciate the wisdom of wise men like Emerson and Thoreau, among others.

> 3) There's a lot of woo woo gobble-d-gook in that
> there post.

Like what?

> 4) I sometimes giggle a bit when he posts about
> black holes :)

I didn’t say anything that Penrose hasn’t said and he won a Nobel prize for his black hole singularity theory.

> 5) If the singularity wants me to trust it, it has
> to show itself.

Ok

> 6) What does spiritual essence smell like?

Petricor

> 7) How much does a pint of spiritual intuition
> cost and where can I get some? All I have is rye
> and bourbon at home.

That’ll work in a pinch

> 8) Could meditating on black/ white holes every
> night while going to sleep be caused by watching
> too much free porn on the interwebs?

That or the Tao/yin Yang supersymetry

> 9) I believe Astrud Gilberto (she's a famous
> samba/ bossanova singer) when she say's "...and
> when she passes, each one she passes
> goes....ahhhhh."

Cool

> 10) Do I need a passport if I'm headed for the
> singularity?

No. We’re all headed there, thanks to the cosmological constant, lambda, passport or not.

> 11) If everything is interconnected and one thing,
> why can't I access Jeff Bezos' bank account?

Because you’re not as smart as him.

> 12) If you place a cat in the singularity, can it
> be alive and dead at the same time?

Yes

> 13) If there is a singularity in every black hole,
> wouldn't that make it be a multiplarity?

It’s all one.
It looks like we are outside looking in at it,
But ironically we are inside of the singularity and it is at the center of everything

> 14) Do you need X-ray specs to look beyond the
> surface of nature?

Gamma ray specs

> Enough for now, its friggin' Friday and almost
> quittin' time!

Happy fried day!

There it is again:

"We’re all headed [to the singularity], thanks to the cosmological constant, lambda, passport or not."

Ah, the El Gato word salad was extra salady tonight.

BTW, the entire concept of a singularity is built on the assumption that time, space and energy are infinitely subdividable. That’s the basic premise calculus is built on.

We know that energy is not infinitely subdivisable. There is reason to suspect that time and/or space also exist in some sort of quantum form as well, though we don’t have evidence of that yet.

And we definitely don’t know what happens inside a black hole at the theoretical singularity, or how the quantum nature of energy would affect the properties of the theoretical singularity.

The point I was struck by was the usual insinuation that the Milky Way is being sucked into that nearby galaxy's black hole.

Thank you for documenting my point. That little article says that the forces pulling the earth, the galaxy, and the universe apart are stronger than the ones pulling them together. Which of course means that the earth will never meet the Great Attractor.

But smarter people than me have already explained that to you many times.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you for documenting my point. That little
> article says that the forces pulling the earth,
> the galaxy, and the universe apart are stronger
> than the ones pulling them together. Which of
> course means that the earth will never meet the
> Great Attractor.
>
> But smarter people than me have already explained
> that to you many times.

I NEVER said we’d ever meet the Great Attractor.
I said we are moving towards it at 1/500th the speed of light, which the NASA site on the Dipole CMB says.

“Our Earth is not at rest. The Earth moves around the Sun. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy orbits in the Local Group of Galaxies. The Local Group falls toward the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies. But these speeds are less than the speed that all of these objects together move relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). In the featured all-sky map from the COBE satellite in 1993, microwave light in the Earth's direction of motion appears blueshifted and hence hotter, while microwave light on the opposite side of the sky is redshifted and colder. The map indicates that the Local Group moves at about 600 kilometers per second relative to this primordial radiation. This high speed was initially unexpected and its magnitude is still unexplained. Why are we moving so fast? What is out there?”

Speed of light,C=300,000kps
/600kps = 500

https://science.nasa.gov/cmb-dipole-speeding-through-universe

What is out there that is making us move at 1/500th the speed of light? The Great Attractor.

“The Norma Cluster is the closest massive galaxy cluster to the Milky Way, and lies about 220 million light-years away. The enormous mass concentrated here, and the consequent gravitational attraction, mean that this region of space is known to astronomers as the Great Attractor, and it dominates our region of the Universe.”

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/great-attractor.html

“What is a Cosmological Constant?

Einstein first proposed the cosmological constant (not to be confused with the Hubble Constant) usually symbolized by the greek letter "lambda" (Λ), as a mathematical fix to the theory of general relativity. In its simplest form, general relativity predicted that the universe must either expand or contract. Einstein thought the universe was static, so he added this new term to stop the expansion. Friedmann, a Russian mathematician, realized that this was an unstable fix, like balancing a pencil on its point, and proposed an expanding universe model, now called the Big Bang theory. When Hubble's study of nearby galaxies showed that the universe was in fact expanding, Einstein regretted modifying his elegant theory and viewed the cosmological constant term as his "greatest mistake".

Many cosmologists advocate reviving the cosmological constant term on theoretical grounds. Modern field theory associates this term with the energy density of the vacuum. For this energy density to be comparable to other forms of matter in the universe, it would require new physics: the addition of a cosmological constant term has profound implications for particle physics and our understanding of the fundamental forces of nature.

The main attraction of the cosmological constant term is that it significantly improves the agreement between theory and observation.”

https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_accel.html

The standard model of the cosmos is the LambdaCDM model
Lambda is like a pencil balanced on its point,
Like a pencil shooting at 1/500th the speed of light, along the DipoleCMB.

“As observations have accumulated to help refine or reject theoretical predictions, a consensus or "standard" 6-parameter Cosmological-constant (Lambda - Λ) Cold Dark Matter (CDM) model has been successfully applied to the interpretation of a range of cosmologically-oriented observations.”

https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/graphic_history/#:~:text=%CE%9BCDM%20assumes%20that%20the%20universe,acceleration%20in%20the%20Hubble%20expansion.

https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/graphic_history/univ_evol.html



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/05/2023 12:05PM by schrodingerscat.

Thanks for responding with a bit of humor! Nice to see that coming out of you. Makes it more enjoyable to have you in the conversation :)

Thanks, life is short, might as well enjoy the ride through the technicolor dipole Cosmic Microwave Background at 1/500th the speed of light, towards the Great Attractor!

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> It helps me sleep.


What a coincidence!!

I sleep every night and I live each day like its the last one. That way I can get up in the morning and say "Oh boy, now this will all be over!"

@cat
On your death bed you will receive totally consciousness... So you have that going for you, which is nice.

What happens if you're in a death car, or in a death plane, or zonked out during a hopefully lifesaving operation, or trying to buy illegal drugs in Central Park...?

...So many questions!!!!

Terminal lucidity may or may not be a good thing.

Nature is God that builds wholes and organizes timeline.

Big Bang
Formation of elements
Formation of stars
Formation of planets (earth)
Ocean forms on earth
Life on earth
Atmosphere on earth
Millions of years of evolution with humans only around the 200k years

So from relative chaos to thinking (some people at least can think) beings

If that ain't God I don't know what is. Not some asshole sitting on Kolob jerking off ignoring his "children."

Black Wholes...

The mind boggles!

I would never denigrate Nature and the Cosmos by calling it God. What a slur. Most everything that word is attached to is pretty slimy.

Me & god aren't on speaking terms at the moment. He can't keep his end of a conversation going, so until he can, we ain't speaking.

However, if he showed up and moved the mountain from the East side of Salt Lake City to the West side, I might consider a re-consider.

But did you try sign language and smoke signals?

Also, considering how dated God is, I'd say either Morse Code or, as a last ditch effort, try learning Hebrew.

Have you thought of going pagan? It's not a big leap from Mormon folk magic and you don't have to put up with douchebag Mormon God.