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Mark G. Nugent 11.16/02-Gambier, OH |
Empty as all get up. Belief receptacle of a brain. Praise be to somebody. If you care. Saviors be warned. I don’t care. Details cross the line between fair and ugly. But that doesn’t justify them or me or anything under the sun or over the moon or what have you or what have anybody. What have anybody? Nothing. Go ahead and confront the inevitability of this or that. Grow bored like me. Watch TV. Grow up getting bored and watching TV. For me IT’s not what you believe but how well you believe the not ITs. Nobody knows IT. A steadfast intensity of standards is lunacy.
(pity the phrase because I’m crazy and I love the moonacy)
Go for deft and mutable and delicate in understanding. Sure the external is a joke. Actions are flawed from the start. Either lie to yourself and mislead humanity or reject the possibility of a hierarchy of belief. I don’t know the system. But I know the mistake. Why allow myself to be wrong or right when I know the blah is all around us. Nonsense and the unknowable truth. Are there good and bad lies? Tell me what you will if I like it I’ll ask for more. Keep out the mind lords. When motive is alien, actions become suspect. Discount the many deliberated and externalized deeds of devotion to lies. What reward is there but books and TV and jokes and bullshit. Lies and bullshit and nonsense.
Response received: Saturday, November 23, 2002 12:52 PM EST from Dr. Yarrum:
Mark, you have not been doing your homework. The subject that bothers you has already been treated in Dr. Yarrum’s articles posted earlier. Reread the two titled “Chaos” and “Too much brain power”. There follows a comment I wrote. Our moderator buried somewhere. I now resurrect it.
Free Will Redux
Tomarken’s first “Response to a response.”
I start with an apology to Mark Nugent;
Back on 4/15/02, I posted an article on “Free Will”.
Only recently did I find that Mark had written a long thoughtful reply dated 5/23/02 .
So I am responding, responsibly.
The debate about free will is one of those puzzles that man has created to occupy his excess brain power, ( see Dr. Yarrum’s submission dated 5/31/02)
There is really no way of proving that we exercise free will.
To even start talking about it we might exclude social demands that we exercise some control over our bodily functions.
Our vital organs will function despite our free will.
The brain is also a vital organ and the assumption must be that this is the organ over which we ar able to exercise control.
The ultimate test might be that, to demonstrate his free will, some nut might commit suicide on the spot.
His opponent would counter that the dead man in front of him had eaten a pickle that disagreed with him, hence suicide.
Furthermore, over the millennia, such self destructive mutants would not have progeny, insuring the survival of the species.
I believe that it is vital to assume that we have free will, proof or no proof.
Without it, no one could be punished for criminal behavior, and society would have no one to blame for its own shortcomings.
Many religions have a problem accepting both an omniscient God and free will.
Would not an omniscient God know that Adam would eat the forbidden fruit?
The Hebrew Passover has been celebrated for thousands of years, rereading the story of their liberation from Egypt.
Each time Moses and Aaron went before Pharaoh to “let my people go”.the Haggadah reads, “and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart!”
Poor Pharaoh has gotten a bad press ever since.
Sincerely, Dr. yarrum