Ah, finally it's clear what the difference is between Jesus, Dracula, Frankenstein, and a zombie.
Thanks, Pharyngula blog.
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Very funny and naughty.
Posted by: e | November 07, 2009 at 02:31 PM
seems you don't understand nothing whatsoever
Posted by: guesswho -zombiezoo | November 08, 2009 at 03:53 AM
I desire to learn and understand something about nothingness. Could someone help me?
Thanks for any help,
Roger
Posted by: Roger | November 09, 2009 at 08:25 AM
Roger, I can't help you. But I can share a few thoughts about nothingness.
If nothingness existed, it would be something: a nothing.
So I guess nothingness doesn't exist. Just a guess, but that's something.
Alan Watts says that reality, for us, is nothing other than what we are beholding at the moment.
That's a way to look upon nothingness: there's nothing other than the something we're aware of.
Hmmmm. Maybe the notion of nothingness points us toward a realization that something is the real deal, not nothing.
If there has never been nothing, then the cosmos always has been, is, and will be.
No need to believe in God, then. Just in something. Though there is nothing else to believe in, nothingness having been taken off the belief table.
Posted by: Blogger Brian | November 09, 2009 at 10:37 AM
Hi Roger,
Take a look at the colors in the diagram again, because they're an illusion. The color orange is pure white light after every other color in the color spectrum, except orange, is filtered out. We refer to a blank white page or pure white light as nothing, when in reality it is everything.
A pictorial entity is not created by adding something to nothing, but by taking something away from everything, in a similar manner as a color slide takes away something from the white light in the slide projector in producing a perceptible image. If we look at a screen when there's not a slide in the projector we say, "there's nothing there."
Our perceptions, whether physical or mental, act as filters just as the slide acts as a filter. Our mind, or the slide, creates a duality between what is and what is not, (orange and not orange) and we mistakenly call what is not, nothing. So instead of thinking of creatio ex nihilo, we can look at things as creatio ex omnia.
Pure white light contains all possibility and potentiality of colors, yet ironically doesn’t create a particular color, because what that particular color is, is simply a delimitation of pure white light.
By placing a primacy on what is, we create the duality of what is not. However, we can avoid this by placing a primacy on potentiality, whereby we'd have the undiffused all (white light) versus what is not the all (a particular color).
What 'is' can be looked at as a subtraction from everything rather than an addition to nothing, and hence, we can dismiss the concept of nothingness as a false duality.
-John
Note: reading, "Return to the One," and stumbled across this site.
Posted by: John | November 13, 2009 at 10:08 PM
John, nicely said. I enjoyed your creative philosophizing. "Placing a primacy on potentiality"... I like the alliteration; also the notion of an undiffused all. (Very Plotinian.)
Posted by: Blogger Brian | November 14, 2009 at 12:19 AM
Hi.
I found your Web Site by Google
And I wish you the best you can get,
the peace of God through Jesus Christ.
[lengthy preachy remainder deleted by the grace of my churchless fingers... Blogger Brian]
Posted by: Allan Svensson | February 23, 2010 at 04:10 AM
ah christ almighty, do we have to be subjected to this?
Posted by: George | February 23, 2010 at 05:23 AM
Allan
The Lord doth command you to stop from this moment on, the spread of deceipt and fear in His name for thine own proselitysing purposes.
The Lord shall smite every last spawn of satan who perverts God's kindness with the putrid stench of fear and coersion.
Thosee true sons of God do not rely on propaganda and fear to coerce belief from ther fellow man.
And if you ever preach such foulness again, you will be visted by a plague of locusts that will pick off the carcass of your soul until the end of eternrity, so sayeth The merciful Lord your God.
Now go in peace and love, and extend the same teaching to all of God;s creature, including the Harlot.
Posted by: God | February 23, 2010 at 05:43 AM
God,
The Lord can really do all that? So, how can I meet this Harlot? Picking off the carcass of one's soul sounds totally groovy.
Posted by: Roger | February 23, 2010 at 10:25 AM
Roger,
Yes my son, the Lord your God is great indeed.
If you build a cathouse, she will come.
Posted by: God | February 23, 2010 at 01:11 PM
I love this site. Malcolm, uk.
Posted by: Malcolm | May 15, 2012 at 11:16 PM