Privative

"Privative" is the word I was searching for, that which describes the absence of something, in the sense of the second entry at http://www.dictionary.net/privative , that is:

2. Consisting in the absence of something; not positive; negative

Apparently Bacon (Sir Francis I think, not Kevin) was attributed with the saying:

Blackness and darkness are indeed but privatives.

Now my best book #4 would probably have to be "Sophie's World" by Jostein Gaarder - I can say it taught me (at a very high level) more about the history of philosophy and what each of the most prominent classical philosophers thought than any other text. I hear it is used by many philosophy undergraduates today searching for the answer to the question of "how do I get better grades?"

In that book I recall the discussion of the Platonic view, in that every real thing in this world has a perfect ideal somewhere - and a thing in this world, say "a horse" is like a cookie cutters impression of a "perfect horse" somewhere.

Taking you slightly out of context, you wrote:

A perfect vacuum is inconceivable because it would be, by definition, something that doesn't exist

Which is more along the lines of Aristotle. And, you know, scientists tend to agree with him. Due to the quantum nature of what we see around us, there is a certain amount of uncertainty around us. The Universe appears to us to be digital in nature, rather than analog, which leads to the impossibility of a perfect vacuum.

Imagine a light switch on a wall, it's one of those rotary knobs so as you turn it the light gets brighter or dimmer. We think of this as an analog process, there are an infinite number of brightness levels that can be achieved. By making smaller and smaller movements to the dial you can achieve any level of brightness. Except it doesn't work like that in "the real world". Regardless of the physical mechanism of that light switch, there will be a point where at really tiny increments of turn, the switch becomes digital. It will be a click, click, click switch as it jumps from one brightness setting to the next. What is in between the clicks no-one knows. It's not observable (and from a previous post made probably over a year ago - you'll see that I suspect that things like Heaven could be in this space between the clicks).

So we have no idea and no way to measure what is in between the clicks. In a vacuum, everything is pinned down to nothing, and that includes the bit of space between the clicks. Quantum Mechanics does not allow this - the mathematics (not the observation) says that a vacuum must be like an undulating foam, lots of virtual particles being created and destroyed in pairs. So when you look closely at a vacuum it is suspected to be something like the foam on the tip of a breaking sea wave. So modern science agrees with Aristotle on that vacuum thing - it's not nothing.

Your dagger:

Prove the validity and sufficiency of the Bible without referring to the Bible to support your position.

Killer! My answer to this of course is that I believe Jesus existed because he contacted me. I believe The Bible is our attempt to try to understand the various contacts points that God and Jesus have given humanity over the millennia.

This is why I have increasingly come to understand it is folly to argue the Christian faith as if it is a geometric proof -- if A and B, therefore C. :-)

Good ! I think we agreed a while ago that faith can be separate from reason. Like the division of church and state. One day I will get you to "If A then not necessarily A" as a real-world concept :-)

Thanks for those Bible quotes and your thoughts on the nature of Heaven. A further question is - if we still have Free Will in Heaven - but that we are perfected in some sense/way before we reach Heaven - then why couldn't God perfect us in this way before we reached Earth? I'm not trying to be flippant, but it's an important question to me. The fact that He did not leads me to believe that this life is some kind of test.

So the question in summary:

Free Will on Earth led to the fall. Free Will in Heaven will never lead to a fall. "Why is that?" Answer = "because in Heaven we are perfected". Question: "why could we not have been perfected on Earth?"

On the privative term "Atheism" Francis Bacon said:

I had rather believe all the fables in the legends and the Talmud and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.

That'll do me :-)

+++

Ah you paint a lovely picture for an open fired pipe debate my friend.

Justice and Mercy

My thoughts are that "Justice" would be meted out to a breaker of the "Treat others as you wish to be treated" Golden Rule. I wonder - do we have this rule so ingrained into ourselves that when we see it broken we want to redress the balance?

With "Mercy" isn't that about asking someone to forego their human nature? There is part of a human being (somewhere in the genes - survival of the fittest and all that) that will harm another if it is angered in some way by that other and has the power to do so. Showing mercy could be taking the choice to not harm that other person, and in so doing foregoing ones human nature. Being "civilized" in other words, being phenotypical rather than genotypical.

Could "mercy" be applied in the meting out of "justice"? I'm not sure. If one breaks the Golden Rule then one should understand that one deserves to be punished. Asking for mercy in this situation is probably not appropriate. If one does not break the Golden Rule and is still being punished, then asking for mercy seems entirely appropriate.

Note that the Golden Rule is not set by anyone above those giving out the justice or the mercy - it is set by the players themselves. A Nash Equilibrium.

Pleasure and Happiness

Lots of things make me happy. So by definition those things to me are pleasurable. I guess pleasure is of the senses and happiness is of the spirit?

Tell me your views please !