author: Pax Mundis

subject: I had a Dream Today, Oh Boy

text:
Tony Blair is preparing to address a crowd of cheering Iraqi children
as triumphant American and British troops march through the streets of
Baghdad lined with star-spangled flag-waiving citizens of a freshly
liberated country.

"Greetings!" yelled Comrade Blair drowned by a jubilant admirers
chanting "Tony, Tony, Tony, we love you".
"We invested billions of tax dollars and pounds to liberate the Iraqi
people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. Today we truly stand at the
dawning of a new era of prosperity. MacDonalds, Tesco, Walmart and
Pizza Hut have already offered to feed you all. Cartoon Network, Sky
Movies, MTV and the Adult Channel will entertain you. Now Iraq has a
democratic government we can live together in peace."
"Citizens of the Middle East. We will build a new Palestine in a
multistorey, multiethnic Israel with your friendly Jewish neighbours
downstairs. But we will not stop there, we will liberate Iran, so
their people can benefit from the Central Asian gas bonanza. We will
liberate Zimbabwe to save the oppressed white minority and restore
agricultural efficiency. I appreciate all the messages of gratitude I
have received from the wonderful Iraqi people, but don't thank me,
thank my advisors and my colleageues, thank Comrade George Dubya Bush,
Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. This is the best day the world has
lived since VE Day. Happy Shopping, Iraqis! Let the fun and games
commence!"

Tony noticed a microscopic crack in the mirror and paused long enough
to let Alastair Campbell interject "Very good, Tony, but you are
assuming there will be some Iraqis left after the war".

Peace

Visit Labour's new Web site at
http://www.infotrad.clara.co.uk/worldview/nulab.html


author: tkdowning

subject: Re: I had a Dream Today, Oh Boy

text:
Pax Mundis <[email]> wrote in message news:<[email]>...

{snip rest of poorly articulated, re-hashed leftist trash}

Strange how you seem so offended by the exporting of Western culture
to the east and south. I though multiculturalism was a "good thing"

Are you also offended by the cultures that are imported into Western
countries by every society on Gods green earth. Do you protest in
front of Chinese and Indian restaurants against the "Importing of
eastern culture" into the West? In other words: are you a xenophobic
bigot, or a bed-wetting knee-jerk leftist hypocrite?

It's people like you who fantasize about having us all live in equally
sized mud huts. Lorded over by an elite socialist ruling class of
idiots such as yourself.


author: [redacted]

subject: Re: I had a Dream Today, Oh Boy

text:
I also had a dream. I dreamed I was naked and had no peepee and my cat
(who could talk) said Ha Ha You can't see mine either. Anybody else
have an interesting phony dream?


subject: Re: I had a Dream Today, Oh Boy

text:
On 10 Sep 2002 22:00:22 -0700, [email] (tkdowning)
wrote:

One or the other, certainly. Of course, I know the dreaming gentleman
best as the learned linguist from "The difficulties of middle English"
who uses expressions like "to you or I."


subject: Re: I had a Dream Today, Oh Boy

text:
On 10 Sep 2002 22:00:22 -0700, [email] (tkdowning)
wrote:

I was taking the piss out of Blair's naive and utopian vision of a New
World Order dominated by seemingly benevolent multinationals. As it
happens I am all for cultural diversity, which stands in stark
contrast with Anglo-American cultural hegemony. I enjoy the food
served at Indian and Chinese restaurants as well as a fair number of
indigenous English, Scottish and American dishes. Mutlinationals would
like to commercialise everything, so what we have a the end of the day
are a bunch of multinationals selling us mass-produced products with
different flavours. Contrast an Asda "Chicken tikka massala" ready
meal (a dish invented in the UK) with genuine Indian food served in a
restaurant in India from natural GM and pesticide-free ingredients.
IMHO a multi-coloured swap shop, dominated by big business and
cultural decadence, is not the same as true respect for different
customs and ways of life.

Anyway the lifestyle the big oil mafia behind Bush and Blair would
like to promote is simple not sustainable for most of humanity. So
Blair's dream of a prosperous Middle East living in peace with a
prosperous Europe and North America is just a fantasy. The only way to
achieve is cut consumption drastically and develop alternatives to our
dependence on fossil fuels.

Peace

Visit Labour's new Web site at
http://www.infotrad.clara.co.uk/worldview/nulab.html


subject: Re: I had a Dream Today, Oh Boy

text:
On Wed, 11 Sep 2002 10:11:36 GMT, [email] wrote:

A well-known hypercorrection, which I used rhetorically. Alas the
subtle differences between the nominative, accusative and dative are
lost on many English speakers, hence "me and my brother went fishing".

Peace

Visit Labour's new Web site at
http://www.infotrad.clara.co.uk/worldview/nulab.html


author: Frank Matthews

subject: Re: Which way is cultural impact?

text:
Pax Mundis wrote:

In wandering the world I've seen no evidence of an Anglo-American
cultural hegemony.  In fact the only places that might qualify would be
a spot like Ibiza.  Even in places of significant impact like Scotland
there is still a moderate local culture.  In most places the impact is
less than the impact of outside cultures on the US & UK.  Fewer McDs in
Delhi than Indian places in London or Houston.

I think that your view is distorted.

Frank Matthews

I enjoy the food


author: Herman Rubin

subject: Re: Economics of medical insurance

text:
In article <71lr63$1u9$[email]>,
William C Biggs MD <[email]> wrote:

I disagree.  Local monopolies can be every bit as bad, if not worse.
The only two "big" hospitals in our area are in the process of merging.
A particular clinic seems to be attempting to take over most of the
practice of medicine in this area; the cardiologist I see belongs to
a group which (I do not know if this is still the case) was kicked out
of one of the hospitals, and the ones in the clinic are not at all to
my liking.  This clinic has merged with a national organization.

			.................

The problem is that we have prepaid health care.  It is NOT insurance, but
exactly the opposite.  Insurance is for relatively rare events.

If one reads the claims of the "insurance" companies, and the advocates
of prepaid healthcare, this is what is promised by them.  It is only in
the fine print that one can find out the limitations.

But the opposite is too often in effect.  I believe we need more, and
cheaper, diagnostic tests.  The pressure for economizing can only come
from those paying; third party payment causes distortion of the entire
system.  Doctors overprescribe drugs, because the bulk of the cost is
borne by the third party.

But we need far more protection from doctors deciding for patients.  I
have repeatedly suggested that the function of a doctor, except as a
provider of procedures, is to lay out the alternatives, and let the
patient decide.  Few doctors even attempt to do this.

Patients should be the ones to decide if tests are necessary.  Also,
they should automatically get the results of tests, in full detail.
If a patient questions a doctor, the patient's assessment of the
situation, with the full information provided, should decide.

This is especially true in the treatment of diabetics.  Even many
endocrinologists fall into the category of those who get their mental
exercise by jumping to conclusions, and the internists see to be ten
years behind.

We have had horror stories of the treatment of diabetics in hospitals
posted here.  Doctors should be consultants, not decisors.

Even with the copay, if doctors push pills, the costs will still go up.
They need to discuss alternatives, their costs and benefits, and in a
manner that points out the probabilistic risks.  At this time, they do
not even do this with their own decision-making; just looking carefully
at the alternatives will change a lot of current practices.

The medical practice groups can be every bit as bad as the insurance
companies.


author: WH

subject: Re: Economics of medical insurance

text:
<<But we need far more protection from doctors deciding for patients.  I
have repeatedly suggested that the function of a doctor, except as a
provider of procedures, is to lay out the alternatives, and let the
patient decide.  Few doctors even attempt to do this.>>

While I agree with what you're saying, I think we as patients bear a
part of the responsibility for this state of affairs.  My doctor is
almost apologetic when he has to deliver the news that something I'm
experiencing does not require a prescription, that it will clear up on
its own.  He is used to having patients demand a prescription -- many,
many people just don't feel they've gotten their money's worth unless
they walk out with a piece of paper in their hands.  And we have a "fix
it NOW" mentality.  Every time the baby has an ear ache, we rush to the
doctor and demand an antibiotic to clear it up.  Now when I was a child,
my mother would treat it herself for a while and see what happened.

I'm lucky in that I have a doctor who is not "test happy" but who will
call for one in a second if he thinks it's necessary, or if I insist
that I want it done.  The latest example was an allergy test for my son,
who was experiencing migraines.  I insisted on the test, and he
acquiesced.  It was an interesting experience for me, because the
Allergy Testing Center was an obvious mill.  They spent an hour on my
son, pricking and sticking him and coming up with nothing.  Well, there
was no more money to be made on him, so the doctor in charge prescribed
benadryl for him (why? I have no idea.  I didn't fill the prescription)
and told me to bring him back in a month.  Why?  I have no idea.  He
said he didn't have allergies, but I guess he'd make a couple of bucks
if we came back.  So I went to the desk to pay the co-pay, past the
50+kids sitting in the waiting room, waiting for their "necessary"
allergy shots and got a look at the copy of the bill my insurance
company was getting.  I was paying ten bucks; the insurance company
would be charged $660!  I actually felt guilty when I left the place.
If I had listened to my doctor, I would have saved my son a LOT of grief
and the insurance company a LOT of money.

I think we have to take responsibility for our participation in this
whole mess.

Wendy


author: William C Biggs MD

subject: Re: Economics of medical insurance

text:
Herman,

You might let us know when you initiate a cross post to a new group. The
people in talk.politics.medicine may not have realized that I was responding
to a post in misc.health.diabetes.

As far as our discussion:

Actually this situation may violate anti trust rules. Call the Department of
Justice and complain if the new entity would create a monopoly situation.
DOJ doesn't do much unless somebody complains. They then would notify the
merger partners that they are going to do a review, and often the review
scares the partners out of the deal.

I agree that 3rd party payment distorts the system.  However market forces
already are making diagnostics cheaper, and more available.

I don't think so. Patients often **expect** a medication, and get upset when
one isn't needed. When I prescribe a drug, even if it is "free" to the
patient, I know it is costing SOMEBODY.  I can't say that I ever prescribed
something that wasn't really needed. Even if the patient cost was low.

If you argue that I'm not pressed to use the lower cost alternatives, you
may have a point. The problem here is I can definitely lower pharmacy
benefit costs if I use the lowest bidder in every drug category.  At the
same time you **increase** the cost of treatment failures, more frequent
testing, more morbidity, more death etc.  BUT your pharmacy cost WILL be
lower. We need to use our judgment to lower the total OVERALL cost.

I'll disagree here. You hang out with the wrong doctors.

I have no problem with that, but I hope you aren't expecting a 10 minute
visit charge for this 60 minute visit. Obviously you know statistics and can
probably weigh your options, decide on risks, etc. I love that in a patient
!  An involved and motivated patient is the best type to have.

Herman, you usually don't use the global and wide sweeping cheap shots. Must
have been a rough day in the statistics department.

Actually we have to determine what degree of interest the patient has in
making the decisions. As I said before, I love it when people take charge
and have lots of questions and have open minds. But not every patient is
like that. Some days if have to dictate "You WILL bring in your glucose
logbook next visit, and you WILL bring in the 24 hour urine so we can see if
your kidneys have failed." .

Otherwise they WON'T do it. Not because of the cost, or they have any
philosophical objection. They simply just don't care about their own health
enough to follow simple requests. Other people cut me off when I go over the
alternatives. "Oh just do what is best for me ...."

I have to do what I think will work out best for every type of personality.
If I have a "decisor patient", fabulous !
Herman, find yourself a doc who you can have that type of relationship with.
(He might cost more though. ;)

Wow!  Herman, most of my patients don't even know what statistics is ! Much
less work in the field. My last patient today graduated from the 8th grade,
65 years ago. I did discuss, in terms understandable to her, her
medications. I'll send her your way for a brush up on probability theory and
maybe she'll have more insight next time.

What groups are you referring to ?

Best wishes,
William C Biggs MD

IN47907-1399


author: Jennifer C.

subject: Re: Economics of medical insurance

text:
Dr Biggs:

I have some questions for you. Not about insurance, but about people
(i.e., patients) in general. How do you handle people who have one foot
in the grave and the other on the banana peel and look at you with a
blank stare when you tell them how they can possibly live longer if they
take better care of themselves, etc, etc, etc??? Is it denial on their
part? Is it just taking chances and whatever happens just happens? I'm a
model patient right now. But there was a time when I did the blank stare
routine with a doctor and did whatever in the hell I wanted. Thankfully,
I am still alive to tell about it (well, I wasn't THAT bad!) with no
complications after 20 yrs with Type 1. I work with a woman whose
59-yr-old father (Type 2, 20 yrs) just had his second below the knee
amputation, including a triple bypass 8 yrs ago. This is a man who smoked
like a fiend (still does) and drank. Yet, she tells me that he yells at
the doctors ("They don't know anything!"), but is starting to adjust to
life this way. Do people like this frustrate you as a physician?
Obviously, you probably became a doctor to help others. Does it depress
you to deal with those who just refuse to take an active role in their
health? Some people have this idea, "It'll never happen to me!" and
therefore take a lackadaisical attitude with their health (I know dozens
of people like this). Course, you also hear about someone who exercised
every day of their lives and never ate a cheeseburger, yet they die of
breast cancer at 45. I just think it might be interesting to hear what
you have to say about how us humans deal with our health (you don't
necessarily have to speak only of diabetes). How can you get people to
exercise more (or at all!) and quit eating bowls of ice cream and steaks
on a regular basis? Have we become unhealthier because of our bad habits?
I don't know how old you are or how long you've been practicing medicine,
but what do you think is the key to making people wake up and make their
health a priority? No one likes to be nagged. I'm sure that makes your
role as doctor even harder (how do you sound like you're not nagging?).
Thanks for the thoughts, Dr. Biggs....
Jennifer


subject: Re: Economics of medical insurance

text:
In an exchange between "Herman" and "Dr. Biggs":

Agreed,Dr. Biggs.Thus is the problem with the current  version of "socialized
medicine"(IE:Medicare and Medicaid) in this country.There is no accountability
for a pt's own health practices.Patients DO expect something for nothing.They
Do expect you to make ALL the healthcare decisions,and they DO  expect a
tangible intervention(IE: prscription or test)for every perceived ailment.
They do not expect to alter their current lifestyle practices(as is their
right)-but they do expect us to subsidize their poor decisions
indefinitely(which should not be our obligation)
I agree that the physician should be honest and straightforward with their
patients,but I also believe that the patients should be accountable for their
actions,and continued performance of undesireable activity should be penalized
by a reduction in benefits.That being said,the managed care companies would be
ahead to reward "Positive" activities(IE:smoking cessation,exercise,weight
loss)with a reduction in premiums,subsidizing of programs to assist in these,or
other incentive programs.The healthcare dollar is very expensive,especially
when it's MY dollar paying for it.I believe in rewarding those who spend my
dollar wisely,and penalizing those who don't.
"It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubborness of an incorrigible
non-conformist so warmly greeted"-Albert Einstein
Visit my website http://hometown.aol.com/Bdaws1/home.html


subject: “FOLLOW THE MONEY? GOD FORBID!”’ – A SUPERB ARTICLE ON 9/11 AND SIBEL EDMONDS’ ASTONISHING ‘U.S. NUCLEAR SECRETS FOR SALE’ ALLEGATIONS (THE CONTROLLED U.S. MEDIA ARE  STILL ‘BLACKING OUT’ THIS EXPLOSIVE STORYOF ALLEGED  TREASON AND CORRUPTION AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT!)

text:
And, Linking The Sibel Edmond's Allegations Back To The Events
Surrounding 9/11, We Get This Thoughtful And Insightful Piece...

(For constantly-updated news headline and blogger article links on the
recent sensational ‘U.S. Nuclear Treason And Betrayal’ revelations of
Sibel Edmonds, the ex-FBI whistleblower who has been called ‘The most-
gagged woman in America’, go to http://www.mimico-by-the-lake.com/EDMONDS.HTM)

'Follow The Money? God Forbid:
Why Was The Cashing Out Of Billions Of Dollars Just Before The 9/11
Attacks Never Investigated?'

by Jim Hogue,
Baltimore Chronicle,
29 January, 2008.

'It's been over six years since 9/11, but U.S. regulatory entities
have been slow to follow through with reports about the complex
financial transactions that occurred just prior to and following the
attacks. Such research could shed light on such questions as who was
behind them—and who benefited—and could help lay to rest the rumors
that have been festering. Warning bells about anomalies in the fiscal
sector were sounded in the summer of 2001, but not heeded. Among those
who has since raised questions was Bill Bergman. As a financial market
analyst for the Federal Reserve, he was assigned in 2003 to review the
record of July and August of 2001. He noticed an unusual surge in the
currency component of the M1 money supply (cash circulating outside of
banks) during that period. The surge totaled over $5 billion above the
norm for a two-month increase. The increase in August alone was the
third largest single monthly increase since 1947, even after a
significantly above-average month in July. When reviewing the record
of July and August of 2001, Bill Bergman noticed a $5 billion surge in
the currency component of the M1 money supply—the third largest such
increase since 1947. Bergman asked about this anomaly—and was removed
from his investigative duties.Surges in the currency component of M1
are often the result of people withdrawing their cash to protect
themselves lest some anticipated disaster (such as Y2K) befall the
economy...Bergman "followed the money," including developing a
framework for working with money-laundering data and “suspicious
activity” reports for monitoring and investigating terrorism. The
questions he asked about what happened during the summer of 2001
should have led to investigations, which should have resulted in the
prosecution of those with foreknowledge of the attacks...Bergman's
supervisor instructed him follow up on an unanswered question he had
raised pertaining to an August 2, 2001 letter from the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve to the 12 Reserve Banks. This letter
urged scrutiny of suspicious activity reports. Bergman learned of the
pervasiveness of the warnings of the 9/11 attacks, and wondered how
thoroughly these warnings had permeated the financial system. In this
capacity as Federal Reserve investigative point-man, and with his
money-laundering portfolio being guided by his supervisor's directive,
he asked the Board why they had issued their August 2, 2001 directive,
and whether this related to any heightened intelligence of a terrorist
threat. His position was then eliminated, and a crucial investigation
was terminated before it could even begin...R.T. Naylor suggests, in
his wonderful book 'Satanic Purses', that any major terrorist event
that involves a lot of money is 'state terrorism,' and this is
independently confirmed by Sibel Edmonds’ statements as to the
enormous sums changing hands at the time of the 9/11 attacks. I
suggest that her testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee (Leahy
and Grassley) gave the lie to the official financial myth of 9/11. If
Bergman had been allowed to continue his investigation, I suggest that
he would have uncovered the same thing. Note that the drug money and
other illicit transactions described by Edmonds occurred during the
same time period, and the amounts in the billions are comparable...'

Read the whole article at:  http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2008/012908Hogue.shtml
                                       _________________________

Across America, Voices Are Being Raised, Questions Are Being Asked,
Insiders And Politicians Are Being Confronted...

Video: 'John Bolton Truth-Squaded On PNAC, Bilderberg, & Sibel Edmonds
- Philly 9/11 Truth'
'John Bolton, speaking at the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia, was pummeled with
a fury of tough questions from Philly 9/11 Truth....'
http://www.911blogger.com/node/13603

Video: 'WeAreChangeLA Confronts Rep. Henry Waxman'
'Check out this youtube video of Waxman being confronted on...why he
is refusing to hold hearings on Sibel Edmonds ...Notice how ... Waxman
refuses any appearance at all of support or even just interest in
Sibel or her allegations when he is asked about her case on several
occasions during the meeting...'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wei_hJdwkxY
                                    _______________________

And, in case you missed them….

The London ‘Sunday Times’: 'For Sale: West's Deadly Nuclear Secrets'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3137695.ece

The London ‘Sunday Times’: 'FBI Denies File Exposing Nuclear Secrets
Theft'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.ece

The London ‘Sunday Times’: 'Mole’s Tip-Off Thwarted Nuclear Spy Ring
Probe'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3257725.ece

“We Can’t Afford to Let Them Spill the Beans”
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/01/%E2%80%9Cwe-can%E2%80%99t-afford-to-let-them-spill-the-beans%E2%80%9D/

‘None Dare Call It Treason’
Who is stealing our nuclear secrets – and why are they being shielded
by the authorities?
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12276

‘ Holy Nuclear Secrets, Batman!’ http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=264628&pub=1&div=Opinion

'UK Times: Brewster Jennings Outed By 'Treasonous' U.S. Government
Official In 2001, Not 2003'
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/print_friendly.php?p=genera_luke_ryl_080126_uk_times_3a_brewster_j.htm

''Sibel, Nukes, And Covering Ass'
http://rastibini.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-nukes-and-covering-ass.html

'Sibel Edmonds, Susurluk And The Turkish Mafia' (2006)
http://hevallo.blogspot.com/2008/01/sibel-edmonds-susurluk-and-turkish.html

Turkey's Drug-Terrorism Connection’
: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/012408a.html

Turkey: ‘Pasas In A Panic And Deep State Drug Trafficking’
(Links between the massive Turkish heroin trade and the U.S. elite)
http://rastibini.blogspot.com/2008/01/paas-in-panic-and-deep-state-drug.html

Harper's Magazine: 'Missing News Items Report: Spy And Counterspy'
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/01/hbc-90002264

 Daily Kos: 'Sibel Edmonds And A Democratic Coup D'Etat In Turkey!'
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/29/817/64181

'Who's Afraid Ff Sibel Edmonds?'
 http://www.organizedpolitics.com/node/59

‘Kevin Barrett: Media Are Ignoring 9/11 Whistle-Blowers’
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/letters/269331

Watch This Astonishing Documentary Video, And Share It With Your
Friends!
YouTube Video: The Sibel Edmonds Movie "Kill The Messenger" (Part 1 of
6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99lH4B3slGM
YouTube Video: The Sibel Edmonds Movie "Kill The Messenger" (Part 2 of
6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Tb_py9CzI
YouTube Video: The Sibel Edmonds Movie "Kill The Messenger" (Part 3 of
6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB64UVyp-x0
YouTube Video: The Sibel Edmonds Movie "Kill The Messenger" (Part 4 of
6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCigSefXYjg
YouTube Video: The Sibel Edmonds Movie "Kill The Messenger" (Part 5 of
6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP2S-IileTA
YouTube Video: The Sibel Edmonds Movie "Kill The Messenger" (Part 6 of
6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRRvRKjRIzo
These links are courtesy of the superb but often-overlooked American
Patriot Friends Network – APFN - http://www.apfn.org/apfn.htm
Click on the following link for a page listing all of their other
links to online patriotic and pro-constitution videos - http://www.apfn.net/videos.asp

'A Partial Social Network Map For The Sibel Edmonds Story'
http://wecanchangetheworld.wordpress.com/2008/01/27/a-partial-social-network-map-for-the-sibel-edmonds-story/

'The Sibel Edmonds Map'
(This Sibel Edmonds map relationship map is interactive. Click around
to explore relations in the map)
http://www.muckety.com/8B7E4F3633765AECF4CD890661FBFC78.map

Patriotism And Loyalty Are Non-Partisan: If Treason Is The Issue,
Impeachment Is The Remedy...
'Get This Story Out If You Want Impeachment'
http://www.ronpaulwarroom.com/?p=3779
                                _______________________

For constantly-updated news headline and blogger article links on the
recent sensational ‘U.S. Nuclear Treason And Betrayal’ revelations of
Sibel Edmonds, the ex-FBI whistleblower who has been called ‘The most-
gagged woman in America’, go to http://www.mimico-by-the-lake.com/EDMONDS.HTM

These serious allegations, involving the alleged ‘sale’ of nuclear
secrets, reach right to the top of the U.S. government. The
prestigious London ‘Sunday Times’ first broke this blockbuster story
on 6th January, 2008 – it has been completely ‘blacked out’ by the
U.S. media and wire services!

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this
case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal
trials” – Sibel Edmonds

These news items are posted here under ‘Fair Use’ provisions.

       (This posting may be freely reproduced and  reposted)


author: FriarTuck

subject: Re: “FOLLOW THE MONEY? GOD FORBID!”’ – A SUPERBARTICLE ON 9/11 AND SIBEL EDMONDS’ ASTONISHING ‘U.S. NUCLEAR SECRETS FOR SALE’ ALLEGATIONS (THE CONTROLLED U.S. MEDIA ARE  STILL ‘BLACKING OUT’ THIS EXPLOSIVE STORYOF ALLEGED  TREASON AND CORRUPTION AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT!)

text:
On Wed, 30 Jan 2008 02:59:38 -0800, whileyouslept wrote:

does anyone seriously need to think twice about why that was....

because the shits dem are "kings" and crooks through and through....

read the Iron Heel by Jack London, it is the most accurate description of
what it is today that I have read, Orwell shows what the near future is,
Huxley the slightly more distant future if we are not careful (maybe its
actually what huxley thought would be best, but I don't find it utopian)
but Jack London shows you how it is such establishment figures as the
church etc. (and the chain of command down to the factory foreman)
currently reconcile themselves to their money and status...


author: Immortalist

subject: Theory of Immortality: Resurrection Theory

text:
Perdurantism: objects persist by having different temporal parts at different
times.

There are two main theories about the persistence of objects through time.
Endurantists hold that objects are three-dimensional, have only spatial parts,
and wholly exist at each moment of their existence. Perdurantists hold that
objects are four-dimensional, have temporal parts, and exist only partly at each
moment of their existence. ...endurantism is poorly suited to describe the
persistence of objects in a world governed by special relativity, and it can
accommodate a relativistic world only at a high price not worth paying.
Perdurantism, on the other hand, fits beautifully with our current scientific
understanding of the world. We use only the implications of
the -Lorentz_transformations-, without appeal to geometrical interpretations,
dimensional analogies or auxiliary premises like temporal eternalism.

http://www.ingenta.com/isis/searching/ExpandTOC/ingenta?issue=pubinfobike://bpl/phiq/2003/00000053/00000213&index=3

Immortality for Skeptics

There are very good scientific reasons to believe that every human person
persists endlessly. ...a theory of immortality: resurrection theory.  The soul is
defined scientifically as the algorithmic form of the body -- a kind of
biological program.  Persons are computations.  Persons run on a series of
increasingly complex machines in increasingly complex physical universes.
...resurrection is trans-world computation.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/DEFAULT.HTP

Immortality is endless personal persistence. Persistence is continuity through
time.  There are two theories of persistence: endurantism and perdurantism.
Endurantism is one of the main philosophical obstacles to resurrection (Hudson,
2001: 186).  Endurantism says that things are substances and persistence is
identity.  So we need to look at identity to see whether endurantism is true.
Fortunately, endurantism has too many logical problems to have any claim to
truth.  The alternative to endurantism is perdurantism.  Perdurantism says that a
persisting thing is a series of instantaneous stages just like a film is a series
of frames.  Perdurantism does not suffer from any logical problems and has many
attractive features.  It permits one person to have stages from many bodies in
many universes.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-TOC.HTM

The Logic of Identity -- We need to look at identity to test endurantism.  This
article defines <x is identical to y>.  Identity is defined using two principles:
the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Identity of Indiscernibiles.  Thus x
is identical to y if and only if x and y share all properties in common.  So x is
identical to y iff x is the same being as y.  Identity is a strictly logical
relation.  It has nothing to do with time, space, or any other physical
structure.  When we say that things continuee through time, we are talking about
persistence; but persistence is not identity.  Time implies change; change
implies difference; difference negates identity.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-LOGIC.HTM

Things are Not Enduring Substances -- This article discusses and rejects
endurantism.  Endurantism says that things are substances that remain identical
despite changes in their parts and properties.  According to the endurantist,
persistence is identity through time.  Endurantism has these problems: (1)
asymmetry between time and space; (2) problems with change of properties; (3)
problems with changes of parts; (4) problems with fission; and (5) problems
defining different kinds of persistence conditions for different kinds of things.
Attempts to fix endurantism only make it worse.  Endurantism is false.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-LOGIC.HTM

Things are Perduring Space-Time Wholes -- Persisting things are peduring things.
A perduring thing is a 4-dimensional (4D) space-time whole whose temporal parts
(stages) are instantaneous 3-dimensional (3D) things.  A perduring thing is thus
like a film whose stages are still photos (frames) or it is like a book whose
stages are its pages.  A perdurantist distinguishes between  three kinds of
sameness statements: 3D-to-3D; 4D-to-4D; and 3D-to-4D.  Statements of "identity
through time" are 3D-to-4D sameness statements.  They do not express identity;
they express the co-membership of two 3D stages in one 4D thing.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-PERDURE.HTM

No Identity through Time for Human Persons -- This article explains why it is not
possible for there to be any identity through time for human persons.  Human
persons change their properties and parts as time goes by; so there is no
identity through time for human persons.  An expression of the form <later x is
the same person as earlier y> can only mean that x and y are both 3D stages of
the same 4D person. If we wonder whether Old Chuck is the same person as Young
Charles, then we are wondering whether Old Chuck is in the same 4D person as
Young Charles.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-NPERS.HTM

Persistence overview:

endurantism/perdurantism --- according to endurantism for a concrete particular
to persist through time is for it to exist wholly at different times (3D); for
pedurantism a concrete particular is a whole made up of different temporal
parts/phases/stages/slices and is larger than the part of that particular which
exists at a given moment (4D)

presentism/eternalism --- according to presentism, only what exists now is real;
according to eternalism, all times and their contents are equally real; often
presentism parallels endurantism while eternalism parallels perdurantism

parallel actualism/possibilism --- recall that actualism recognized only the
actual world as real (like presentism), while possibilism took all worlds and
contents to be equally real (like eternalism); similarly, both possibilism and
perdurantism exclude transworld/time individuals; the full parallel here is
3D/endurantism/presentism/actualism vs 4D/perdurantism/eternalism/possibilism

scattered objects --- for perdurantists there is a material object for every
filled region of spacetime (even one as strange as the mereological sum of Joe
before 1980 and Ed's earlobe after 1980); there are infinitely many ways of
cutting up the 4D material world into material objects; familiar objects are
those with relations of spatiotemporal proximity, similarity, causation;
endurantists deny such scattered objects entirely

Change in properties:

argument for perdurantism --- endurantist account does not explain persistence
through change, as they tree in the fall would not be the same as the tree in the
spring because they are qualitatively discernible; perdurantists believe their
account preserves indisc of ident and our beliefs about persistence through
change; the "two" trees are the same because the are both temporal slices of the
whole tree

parallels possibilism/actualism --- recall according to possibilism we had
world-indexed objects while in actualism we had world-indexed properties; here
for perdurantism we have time-indexed objects while for endurantism we have
time-indexed properties; similar arguments about properties simpliciter are
raised by the perdurantist against endurantism

Change in parts:

argument for perdurantism --- endurantist account does not explain persistence
through change in parts

Descartes-Minus --- suppose Descartes loses a hand at time t, there's
Descartes-before-t = Descartes-after-t, but there's also Descartes-minus-before-t
= Descartes-after-t, so Descartes-minus-before-t = Descartes-before-t (Heller,
Van Inwagen)

sameness --- Chisholm (following Butler) says there are two senses of the word
"same", the "strict and philosophical" sense and the "loose and popular" sense;
Geach says there are multiple identity relations, namely "the same F"

http://www.simons-rock.edu/~sara/philosophy/metaphysicsexam/metaphysics-loux.txt


subject: Re: Theory of Immortality: Resurrection Theory

text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 09:41:03 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

Err, ri-i-i-ght.

<snip remaining 142 lines of gobbledygook>


author: Bobby D. Bryant

text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 09:41:03 -0700, Immortalist wrote:

In what sense is that definition scientific?


author: Keynes

text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 09:41:03 -0700, "Immortalist" <[email]>
wrote:

Four dimensionality is a geometric visualization of time and space
best shown by the work of Einstein and Minkowski.  It works in
the mathematical engineering sense like the computing of cannon ball
trajectories does in newtonian math. It's a chart, an aid to temporal
navigation, a map.  It is not the territory.  Once time is naively accepted
as a stream made of equal parts, then that visualization is mistakenly reified.

In 1952, in his book Relativity, in reference to Minkowski's Space World
interpretation of the relativity theory, Einstein writes:
"Since there exist in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer
any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening
and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated.
It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four
dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three
dimensional existence."

"...the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely
suspended, but yet complicated."  That's wrong.  The absence of a 'now'
is necessary to the concept of a continuum.  What good is such a map
of time if there's actually no room for humanly experienced time in it?
Is an engineering map to be taken for the self-evident terrirtory?

Logical objections to it are - past, present, and future are not of the
same nature. The past is certain, and the future is uncertain. If they are
visualized as a spacial geometric continuum, the distictions of past, present,
and future are entirely lost, because there is no 'now', no present in it to
divide past and future. If time were a continuum, both past and future
would be of the same Certain nature, and there could be no such a thing as
the present, the only 'time' we can ever know.

Logically, 'now' is not a time. It has no measurable duration by any clock,
yet it appears to have no beginning or end. It is simultaneously both impossibly
short and long (in terms of physically measurable time). 'Now' also has the
unaccountable property of turning the uncertain future into the certain past,
zipping up the pants of time by means unknown.

Logically, there can be no continuum.  Without the image of times past,
present, and future simultneously existing as a dead spacial object (completely
contrary to our experience of time, with time actually dead and burried in it),
we have to deal with time as we know it and not as we visualize it.

If we can find physical reality in the present, where is it in the past or
future?  If we can think, sense and feel in the present, why can't we do it
in the past or the future?  Where in the world Are the past and the future?
They're not spacial, not physical. We can't come and go to the past or the
future. What are they then but present memory and present imagination?

This doesn't mean that our memories are not real, or that our anticipations
are entirely mistaken.  It just means that physical time is a deeper mystery
than any 4-dimensional visualization.  Physical time, whatever it may be,
rules the physical body and the brain.  But our sense of being (in the
inescapable and unmeasurable 'now') is not of the nature of physically
measurable time. And it is only the fact of this eternal 'now' that turns
the uncertain future into the certain past.

Time appears to us as an ordered sequence of physical events. But --
The concept of physical time absolutely requires a view from Outside of
physical time in order to establish any kind of sequence.  A view from inside
of physical time (as we suppose we are) would turn dynamic time into static
space, the dreaded continuum with a certain and complete past and future,
without a difference between them, and no 'now' to observe it by.

Life without time sequence is unthinkable. One might as well be a a dead
picture on the wall.  The changes of time appear to be life itself.  Yet if we
actually lived and died in time as we suppose, there couldn't even BE such
a thing as time.  Our experience absolutely requires a view from outside
of physical time.  A view from within it would turn time into space
and bring an end to everything.

Name them.

Is a person his job? Relations? Possessions? Opinions? Ideas? Memories?
Habits? Age? Bodily health?  Are these the persistent qualities of the 'soul'?
If not, then no program, biological or silcon, can capture the soul.
The soul must be what's left when all the changeable things in life are
discounted and subtracted.  Otherwise you can lose your soul when you
lose your job or get a divorce or even change your mind.

Time is entirely problematic. What is the point of living in the future,
when the future is to never come (by definition).  Should we store up
acorns continually and forever, and never eat any?  Squirrels are smarter
than that.  Theoretically, everyone will die sometime or other. Even if
one lived for 10,000 years he might eventually die.  Meantime, every
living thing is alive right 'now'. In the future everything that lives will
live in that same 'now'. When will the end come? Right 'now' of course.

Perdurantism is problematic.  If the instantaneous stages are different as they
certainly must be, what connects them?  Apparently only the amorphous
definition of a 'thing' that persists through changes.  Continuity is entirely
a matter of definition, meaning opinion.  So we'll make no distinctions
between an ice cube and steam, or the living and the dead.

Everything in the physical world arises mutually according to conditions,
and changes according to conditions.  Everything is in flux, never complete
in itself, but mutually dependent on it's causes and effects.  Nothing can be
said to endure in physical time and space, so no 'thing' can be discriminated
except by arbitrary definition.  Apart from everything, there is nothing.

All of those faults apply to perdurism.

Hocus pocus.
This makes time the real identity of changeable thing,
and not any other property of it.  What is the 4th dimensional connection?


author: Patrioaf

text:
Top posting because there is no bottom. How do you reconcile
this with your Extreme Fundy Supernatural Repugliar belief theory?

"Immortalist" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...


author: Mike Vanecek

text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 09:41:03 -0700, Immortalist wrote:

[bunch of copy/pastes from various sources - snip]

Very little original thought in your post of copy/paste abstracts from various
sources.


author: stoney

text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 09:41:03 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote that it was dearly in need to learn
what a theory is and excreted the following::

Mindless bullshit-what you posted above and what I erased below.
[]


author: JD

text:
"Immortalist" <[email]> wrote in message news:<[email]>...

This seems to be yet another case of "wordplay-philosophy", which
basically is thought systems that develop because of ill-defined
fundamentals.  Instead of refining and defining the fundamentals,
the wordplay-philosopher prefers to build high sandcastles on them,
and sometimes is able to get a lot of mileage out of
imprecision in definitions.

This particular case seems to depend upon imprecisions in the definitions
of words like "objects" and "persistence" and "time", which
are intuitively understood but ill-defined.  This ill-definition
allows a lot of wordplay.

While it would be a very interesting exercise to get more
precise about what exactly is an "object" and what
exactly is "time" and what exactly is "persistence",
that's not the tack of the wordplayers.  The approach instead is
to gloss over the imprecisions, and give full
vent to daydreaming, with an attempt to borrow respect
from things the author do not appear to understand much,
e.g. special theory of relativity or Lorentz transformations.
[At the least, anybody who has seriously studied relativity is
expected to know that "general" theory of relativity is 4-dimensional,
not "special" theory of relativity or Lorentz transformations.
Attempt to borrow respect should involve at least
a little bit of homework.]


text:
"raven1" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

What are you trying to say, that you prefer Perdurantists over Endurantists in
this branch of metaphysics?


author: Tim

text:
"raven1" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
different

Excuse my interruption, but googleygook is perhaps a better description.


text:
"Bobby D. Bryant" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

A token of neurological properties is identical to tokens of mental properties?
Which means it is a falsifiable theory when put up next to (types) of properties
in-a-narrow-sense.

Functionalism is one of the major proposals that have been offered as solutions
to the mind/body problem. Solutions to the mind/body problem usually try to
answer questions such as: What is the ultimate nature of the mental? At the most
general level, what makes a mental state mental? Or more specifically, What do
thoughts have in common in virtue of which they are thoughts? That is, what makes
a thought a thought? What makes a pain a pain? Cartesian Dualism said the
ultimate nature of the mental was to be found in a special mental substance.
Behaviorism identified mental states with behavioral dispositions; physicalism in
its most influential version identifies mental states with brain states.
Functionalism says that mental states are constituted by their causal relations
to one another and to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. Functionalism is one
of the major theoretical developments of Twentieth Century analytic philosophy,
and provides the conceptual underpinnings of much work in cognitive science.

Functionalism has three distinct sources. First, Putnam and Fodor saw mental
states in terms of an empirical computational theory of the mind. Second, Smart's
"topic neutral" analyses led Armstrong and Lewis to a functionalist analysis of
mental concepts. Third, Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use led to a version of
functionalism as a theory of meaning, further developed by Sellars and later
Harman.

One motivation behind functionalism can be appreciated by attention to artifact
concepts like carburetor and biological concepts like kidney. What it is for
something to be a carburetor is for it to mix fuel and air in an internal
combustion engine--carburetor is a functional concept. In the case of the kidney,
the scientific concept is functional--defined in terms of a role in filtering the
blood and maintaining certain chemical balances...

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/functionalism.html

A popular way to pump the intuition that all that needs to be kept constant about
a subject to keep the subject's mental properties constant is the set of causal
relational properties of the subject is what has come to be known as "the silicon
chip replacement" thought experiment.

Ned Block (1980) identifies three senses of functionalism. The first is simple
decompositional functionalism. 'Functionalism' in this sense refers to a research
strategy that relies on the decomposition of a system into its components; the
whole system is then explained in terms of these functional parts. Second,
computation-representation functionalism is a special case of decompositional
functionalism which relies heavily on the 'computer-as-mind' analogy.
Psychological explanation under computation-representation functionalism is "akin
to providing a computer program for the mind" (Block 1980, p.171). Thus, mental
processes are seen as being decomposable to a point where they can be thought of
as processes which are as simple as those of a digital computer or, similarly, a
Turing machine. Lastly, Block identifies metaphysical functionalism. This form of
functionalism is a theory of mind that hypothesizes that mental states simply are
functional states. The metaphysical functionalist claims that mental states are
the types of mental state they are because of the causal relations between
inputs, outputs and other mental (i.e. functional) states of the system, as in
the Turing machine. The physical implementation of the set of functions which
implement a mind are irrelevant to what makes something a mind - it's the
functional relations that count.

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/functionalism.html

But I prefer the Token-Token theory that leads to "Property Dualism" over the
Type-Type scientific theories branching off from neuroscience;

I) Reductive Materialism:
The Type-Type Identity Theory

The crucial claim of a reductive materialist is that mental entities such as
sensations are nothing over and above certain physical entities such as brain
processes. This reductive claim states more than that each mental entity is the
same thing as some brain (or neural) entity, because the phrase 'nothing over and
above' also implies that mental entities have only the physiological properties
of certain brain entities, together with some topic-neutral properties.
Topic-neutral properties are neither mental nor material. For instance, if there
are moral properties, then being morally good would qualify as a topic-neutral
property: the fact that something, X, is morally good does not imply either that
X is a mental thing or that X is a material thing. Thus, for the reductive
materialist, mental entities have no mental properties, in spite of the way it
may seem.

This reductive materialist position implies that each mental entity is identical
to a purely material entity, namely a brain or neural entity of some type. This
sort of theory is often called the type-type identity theory, because it
identifies types of mental entities with types of material entities. Each mental
entity type (e.g., pain, belief, desire) is held to be identical with a material
(neural) entity type (e.g., an activation pattern of some complex of neurons).
Such an identity theory should be distinguished from a close cousin, the
token-token identity theory. The latter holds that each instance or token of a
mental entity (e.g., the particular twinge of pain that a person feels at a
certain moment) is identical with an instance or token of a material entity
(e.g., a particular neural event in the person's brain). The differences between
these two identity theories will emerge later when functionalism is discussed.
For now we need only note that the type-type theory implies the token-token
theory, but that the converse implication does not hold. The token-token theory
is compatible with the falsity of reductive materialism. The type-type identity
theory, however, has often been supposed to imply reductive materialism.

Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/


text:
"stoney" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Didn't anyone ever teach you that spite doesn't entail conclusions to this kind
of argument. Propositions must have warrent to qualify as responses to these
kinds of arguments therefore you are wrong and mindless bullshit continues to be
only in your mind and not at this point verifiable sir.

Your daddy should have taught you about the fallacy of the appeal to spite;

Appeal to Spite

Description:

The Appeal to Spite Fallacy is a fallacy in which spite is substituted for
evidence when an "argument" is made against a claim. This line of "reasoning" has
the following form:

1. Claim X is presented with the intent of generating spite.

2. Therefore claim C is false (or true)

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because a feeling of spite does not count
as evidence for or against a claim. This is quite clear in the following case:
"Bill claims that the earth revolves around the sun. But remember that dirty
trick he pulled on you last week. Now, doesn't my claim that the sun revolves
around the earth make sense to you?"

Of course, there are cases in which a claim that evokes a feeling of spite or
malice can serve as legitimate evidence. However, it should be noted that the
actual feelings of malice or spite are not evidence. The following is an example
of such a situation:

Jill: "I think I'll vote for Jane to be treasurer of NOW."

Vicki: "Remember the time that your purse vanished at a meeting last year?"

Jill: "Yes."

Vicki: "Well, I just found out that she stole your purse and stole some other
stuff from people."

Jill: "I'm not voting for her!"

In this case, Jill has a good reason not to vote for Jane. Since a treasurer
should be honest, a known thief would be a bad choice. As long as Jill concludes
that she should vote against Jane because she is a thief and not just out of
spite, her reasoning would not be fallacious.

Example #1:

Bill: "I think that Jane did a great job this year. I'm going to nominate her for
the award."

Dave: "Have you forgotten last year? Remember that she didn't nominate you last
year."

Bill: "You're right. I'm not going to nominate her."

Example #2:

Jill: "I think Jane's idea is a really good one and will really save a lot of
money for the department."

Bill: "Maybe. Remember how she showed that your paper had a fatal flaw when you
read it at the convention last year."

Jill: "I had just about forgotten about that! I think I'll go with your idea
instead."

http://www.opifex.cnchost.com/reasoning/fallacies/appealtospite.htm


text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:01:29 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

I'm trying to say that what you posted was meaningless gibberish.


author: John Baker

text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:01:29 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

No, I believe he's saying you're full of shit.

But then, that's just my philosophy....


text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:01:29 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

   I believe he is saying,not trying to say that "you are full of it".
If that be the case I concur.


text:
"Tim" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Are you saying that it is not possible that your subjective experiences are
identical to the activities of your nerve cells? Do you believe that you are only
the activities of these cells and not the cells?


text:
"Tim" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Good one!  LOL!


text:
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 11:24:11 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

A statement of fact is 'spite?'  (blink blink)

Endless babbling about nothing may generate lots of excitement for
you, and that's fine.  In which case, it should be kept in its proper
newsgroup-of which alt.atheism isn't one of them.

Your 'propositions' have no warrent and you've no argument.

Come back when you've something of substance and I'll gladly discuss
it with you.  Until then there is nothing to look for or examine.

In discussion, I have no problem with disagreement.  It often is
interesting to see the journey another has taken.

(snip more drooling)


subject: Re: Hypothesis of Immortality: Resurrection Hypothesis

text:
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 11:24:11 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

A statement of fact is 'spite?'  (blink blink)

Endless babbling about nothing may generate lots of excitement for
you, and that's fine.  In which case, it should be kept in its proper
newsgroup-of which alt.atheism isn't one of them.

Your 'propositions' have no warrent and you've no argument.

Come back when you've something of substance and I'll gladly discuss
it with you.  Until then there is nothing to look for or examine.

In discussion, I have no problem with disagreement.  It often is
interesting to see the journey another has taken.

BTW, please learn what a theory is.

(snip more drooling)


text:
"raven1" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
different

Do you have the same opinion about metaphysics or just this part of it? Or maybe
you don't understand what part metaphysics plays in philosophy? Have you ever
learned philosophy?


text:
"?????" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
different

But your claim seems empty since you have not provided any evidence against the
metaphysics of time. When we make value judgements it is like telling others what
kind of music you like. If you prescribe value judgements then you are like
telling someone what kind of music they should listen to.

In logic these value judgements are considered as similar to grunts and groans
made while pointing because they don't really assert anything. This seems like
what you both are doing when tell us how much you like or dislike the philosophy
of time.


text:
"Immortalist" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
are
are only

I believe that the answer to these questions, nay all questions, reside in
the filling of a donut, located at the center of a galaxy, far, far away.

Live long and google deatache.


text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:46:45 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

  Yet more nonsense, are you related to"easily duped"? You sound much
like him.


text:
"stoney" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
different
kind

How do you show that it was a statement of fact? Metaphysics is a branch of
philosophy have been developed forthousands of years. Calling it a name and
waving your hands doesn't seem to constitute a fact in ccomparison. Do you have a
better refutation of philosophy that doesn't sound like spitefull name calling in
place of premises that lead to a conclusion?

Before you try and decise if metaphysics is relevent to atheism you should take
the time to understand what atheism is about. Can you show why metaphysics isn't
relevant to atheism?

be

You again throw around rought sounding opinions with no evidence to support them.
How do my propositions have no warrent or argument?

The Problem of the Criterion

A general argument against the invocation of any standard for knowledge has
come to be known as "the problem of the criterion." As we have just seen,
there have been disputes about standards of knowledge. Some are about
particular kinds of arguments that provide evidence for knowledge claims. As
we will see shortly, others are about the degree of evidential support or
reliability required for knowledge. The Pyrrhonian skeptics argued that such
disputes cannot be settled.

If the dispute is to be settled rationally, there must be some means for
settling it. It would do no good of each side simply to assert its position
without argument. So how would a standard of knowledge (or "criterion of
truth," in the language of the Stoics) be defended? It could only be
defended by reference to some standard or other. If the standard under
dispute is invoked, then the question has been begged. If another standard
is appealed to, the question arises again, to be answered either by circular
reasoning or by appeal to yet another standard. So either the process of
invoking standards does not terminate, or it ends in circular reasoning, and
thus the dispute over the standard cannot be settled rationally.
Lehrer takes on the problem of criterion in the guise of the question
whether he can justify his acceptance of his own theory of justification. He
rejects the appeal to a higher-order theory of justification as well as
dogmatic acceptance of the theory (p. 228). This leaves only circularity, or
a "loop" of justification. Lehrer defends the loop of justification as being
virtuous.

... "When we construct a complete justification, a special issue arises when
we ask whether the theory itself is justified" (p. 228). The range of
answers he proposes shows that he is not really concerned with justifying a
theory of justification (providing an "meta-justification"), but with
whether we can use the theory to explain why we are justified in accepting
the theory of justification. Couched in these terms, the task is much
easier, since when we explain why something is the case, we suppose that it
actually is the case. I would not try to explain why there are thirty people
in my office right now, because I am the only one here. But I might try to
explain why I am alone in the office.

http://comm.ucdavis.edu/phi102/lecmenu.htm

Atheists never talk about time or process? Do you have a bunch of people in there
who agree with you ignorantly?

Talk about babbling.

The mistake on your part is forgivable.

It appears you are ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater becasue some
religion ticked you off.


text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 12:29:39 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

Philosophy is rivaled only by Theology in the amount of utterly
useless nonsense it's produced.


text:
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 12:59:49 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

   You have not produced a shred of evidence to support the B.S. that
you are spewing.
  Rather it's much like the grunts and groans people make when they
are trying to get rid of some of "it".

  Your whole time wasting  post, sounds as if you were passing a lot
of stinky gas


author: Bob

text:
"Immortalist" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Ah, but you can not provide objective evidence FOR the metaphysics of time.

Therefore, you are doing the logical fallacy known as 'shifting the burden
of proof'


author: Kermit

text:
"Immortalist" <[email]> wrote in message news:<[email]>...

If it were possible to present evidence of any kind, it would be
physics, not philosophy.

Maybe they don't like your presentation of it.

I gave up on mainstream philosphy after a semester of grad work. My
metaphysics professor told me there were no toy guns, because "guns
weren't toys". Also, the Vikings did not worship Wodin, because Wodin
did not exist, and never did. As far as I could tell, the man didn't
know how to speak his own native tongue. I had some great philosphy
teachers, but there was rather too much stuff and nonsense. Philosphy
should be about clear thinking and clear communication. If it's not
contributing to one or the other, it's suspect.

Kermit


text:
"?????" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
only

You continue to do yourself a disservice by not providing evidence that it is
nonsense. Then it looks like you are throwing out knee jerk reactions because
they miss the point. If one believes that the activities of the brain is
subjective experience how is one "easily duped?"

I don't want to appear arrogent but you seem easy prey for my level of expertise,
we'll call you munchies and snacks. There is hope for you if you can make the
aggressive sounding phrase stick by providing evidence to nail the point home.


text:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 08:57:52 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

Metaphysics and philosophy is rubbing dry verbage together and
generating no heat.

Bullshit is bullshit.  That's a fact.  Whether you, like a child
screaming "Santa Claus" does *to* exist, don't like it is your
problem.  (shrug)

People in aa can, and often do, work within the fictional theist
fantasy worlds for fun, to illuminate the ramifications and
reprecussions of 'x,' and other reasons.

BAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!  Gosh, I love it when people like
you project.  Atheism, oh unlearned one, is nothing more than the lack
of theism.

Done.  See above.

Because they've no substance.

As I indicated, if you  love meaningless word salad that's fine, but
please keep it in the proper newsgroups.

[]


text:
The whole idea of mortality and immortality as birth and death
(or no death) in the stream of time makes naive and unwarranted
assumptions about the nature of time.  To begin with an unfounded
and illogical concept of time is to wander from irrelevance to absurdity.

It's like discussing how to grow better blossoms on onion plants.

First take a hard look at time.  Put it to the test.

Time is not a continuum of like substance.
The past is certain and the future is uncertain. How alike are they?
Their only common feature is their insubstantial ungraspability.

Past and future are only defined by the living present that divides
them.  Everything must happen in the present (because that is always
where we are, observing, feeling, thinking, and acting.) We have never
seen any other 'time'.  Without the present, there can be no conceptual
past or future.

We assume the past has been just like the present, and that the future
will also be just like the present, a continuum of a very long present,
even though the present we experience is vanishingly short, too
short to physically measure by any means.

But the past is dead certain and the future is unborn possibility.
They do not LIVE as the present does.  We can't travel to or
act in the past or future.  There is no physical evidence that they
exist.  We must admit that the past is only a present memory and
the future is only present imagination.

There is a rational progression of events that we call time, but
our conception of it is not rational or logical.  Even animals act
from past causes for future rewards.  Our notion of time is instinctive
but not logically defensible.  If we look at the indisputable facts,
there has never been any other time but the present, and never
can be.  Too much temporal prudence is to kill the living present
on the altar of the never to be reached imaginary future.


text:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 08:59:59 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

[]

What about time?
What type of process?

Gotta love it.  Because the person doesn't agree with what was stated
such is automatically ignorance.

I'm so sorry you weren't able to understand the point raised about
discussion.

You haven't shown any mistake on my part, oh handwaver.

(LAUGHTER)

You've neither a 'baby' or 'bathwater' to throw out.  That's the point
you've apparently not been able to grasp.

At the top here, you've indicated a couple of items; time and process
each of which got a question in return.


text:
"raven1" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
in
maybe

If most of the things we know once started out as philosophy then are most of the
things you know are nonesense? If true then please make the case about how I
could trust what you say about philosophy if it is nonsense? Would it be by luck,
if not by philosophical logic, that truth was displayed?

Please define philosophy, we may not be talking about the same thing;

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=XdOdnYwbYdPzy-zcRVn-sQ%40comcast.com


author: Aubz

text:
raven1 scrivened news:[email] in
talk.atheism:

<<SNIPPED FOR BREVITY>>

....Also totally unparalleled in the number of pedantic pseudo-intellectual
twonks who expound their fevered imaginings as being valid theories :o)


text:
"?????" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
in
the
what

I provided the definition which constitutes evidence for the idea of Endurantism
and Perdurantism. You thought I was easy, and were wrong, you snipped and tucked
habitually, now your ass is mine. The way I see it you could just, not respond,
continue to embarass yourself or actually ponder the metaphysics of time with me.

Once again the evidence I provided has in no way been challenged.

philosophy

The accusation that my post is time wasting has no evidence to support it. You
missed the point and are simply mistaken.


text:
"Bob" <[email]> wrote in message
news:W1_cd.83085$[email]...

What would constitute objective evidence for the metaphysisics of time? Are you
creating a straw man blow up doll to beat on?

He claimed that ideas about time a full of it at the same time that he took time
to type out the words which contradicts his position. Therefore he believes in
the theory of time or he types without knowing.

I challenged the covertly contained assumptions hidden in his "subject." He
claims, necessarily by definition, that he has some evidence against the
philosophy of time. When he said "full of shit" normal people take this to mean
without evidence or false. He has not provided enough overt evidence therefore I
am justified in elucidated the covert material in his subject assuming something
about Perdurantism && Endurantism.

You dare question the Reanimater? Step up, oh brave one, and be prepared for a
slaughter.


text:
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:05:36 -0700, "Immortalist" <[email]>
wrote:

Here again is some proof that you conveniently overlooked, sir.
Will you slink away into the darkness one more time?

On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 09:41:03 -0700, "Immortalist" <[email]>
wrote:

Four dimensionality is a geometric visualization of time and space
best shown by the work of Einstein and Minkowski.  It works in
the mathematical engineering sense like the computing of cannon ball
trajectories does in newtonian math. It's a chart, an aid to temporal
navigation, a map.  It is not the territory.  Once time is naively accepted
as a stream made of equal parts, then that visualization is mistakenly reified.

In 1952, in his book Relativity, in reference to Minkowski's Space World
interpretation of the relativity theory, Einstein writes:
"Since there exist in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer
any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening
and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated.
It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four
dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three
dimensional existence."

"...the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely
suspended, but yet complicated."  That's wrong.  The absence of a 'now'
is necessary to the concept of a continuum.  What good is such a map
of time if there's actually no room for humanly experienced time in it?
Is an engineering map to be taken for the self-evident terrirtory?

Logical objections to it are - past, present, and future are not of the
same nature. The past is certain, and the future is uncertain. If they are
visualized as a spacial geometric continuum, the distictions of past, present,
and future are entirely lost, because there is no 'now', no present in it to
divide past and future. If time were a continuum, both past and future
would be of the same Certain nature, and there could be no such a thing as
the present, the only 'time' we can ever know.

Logically, 'now' is not a time. It has no measurable duration by any clock,
yet it appears to have no beginning or end. It is simultaneously both impossibly
short and long (in terms of physically measurable time). 'Now' also has the
unaccountable property of turning the uncertain future into the certain past,
zipping up the pants of time by means unknown.

Logically, there can be no continuum.  Without the image of times past,
present, and future simultneously existing as a dead spacial object (completely
contrary to our experience of time, with time actually dead and burried in it),
we have to deal with time as we know it and not as we visualize it.

If we can find physical reality in the present, where is it in the past or
future?  If we can think, sense and feel in the present, why can't we do it
in the past or the future?  Where in the world Are the past and the future?
They're not spacial, not physical. We can't come and go to the past or the
future. What are they then but present memory and present imagination?

This doesn't mean that our memories are not real, or that our anticipations
are entirely mistaken.  It just means that physical time is a deeper mystery
than any 4-dimensional visualization.  Physical time, whatever it may be,
rules the physical body and the brain.  But our sense of being (in the
inescapable and unmeasurable 'now') is not of the nature of physically
measurable time. And it is only the fact of this eternal 'now' that turns
the uncertain future into the certain past.

Time appears to us as an ordered sequence of physical events. But --
The concept of physical time absolutely requires a view from Outside of
physical time in order to establish any kind of sequence.  A view from inside
of physical time (as we suppose we are) would turn dynamic time into static
space, the dreaded continuum with a certain and complete past and future,
without a difference between them, and no 'now' to observe it by.

Life without time sequence is unthinkable. One might as well be a a dead
picture on the wall.  The changes of time appear to be life itself.  Yet if we
actually lived and died in time as we suppose, there couldn't even BE such
a thing as time.  Our experience absolutely requires a view from outside
of physical time.  A view from within it would turn time into space
and bring an end to everything.

Name them.

Is a person his job? Relations? Possessions? Opinions? Ideas? Memories?
Habits? Age? Bodily health?  Are these the persistent qualities of the 'soul'?
If not, then no program, biological or silcon, can capture the soul.
The soul must be what's left when all the changeable things in life are
discounted and subtracted.  Otherwise you can lose your soul when you
lose your job or get a divorce or even change your mind.

Time is entirely problematic. What is the point of living in the future,
when the future is to never come (by definition).  Should we store up
acorns continually and forever, and never eat any?  Squirrels are smarter
than that.  Theoretically, everyone will die sometime or other. Even if
one lived for 10,000 years he might eventually die.  Meantime, every
living thing is alive right 'now'. In the future everything that lives will
live in that same 'now'. When will the end come? Right 'now' of course.

Perdurantism is problematic.  If the instantaneous stages are different as they
certainly must be, what connects them?  Apparently only the amorphous
definition of a 'thing' that persists through changes.  Continuity is entirely
a matter of definition, meaning opinion.  So we'll make no distinctions
between an ice cube and steam, or the living and the dead.

Everything in the physical world arises mutually according to conditions,
and changes according to conditions.  Everything is in flux, never complete
in itself, but mutually dependent on it's causes and effects.  Nothing can be
said to endure in physical time and space, so no 'thing' can be discriminated
except by arbitrary definition.  Apart from everything, there is nothing.

All of those faults apply to perdurism.

Hocus pocus.
This makes time the real identity of changeable thing,
and not any other property of it.  What is the 4th dimensional connection?


text:
"Immortalist" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Well, you do yourself a disservice by not providing objective evidence it is
MORE that nonsense.   That burden of proof is on you. So far, you use
double talk.

First, provide objective evidence you are doing more than babbling.


text:
"stoney" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

You obviously don't know much formal philosophy and display the lack of knowledge
by putting out knee-jerk reactions to misinformed stereotypes based upon
generalizations you have fallen for. Here is the table of contents to a standard
textbook on Metaphysics;

Metaphysics - by D. W. Hamlyn
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521286905/

ï¿½ Cambridge University Press 1984
First published 1984
Library of Congress Catalogue number: 84-1881
ISBN 0-521-24449-8 hardback
ISBN 0-521-28690-5 paperback

Contents

Dust Cover
Preface

1 - Introduction

- What is metaphysics?
- Two concepts of metaphysics
- Appendix - the possibility of metaphysics

2 - Appearance and reality

- Appearance, reality and idealism
- Arguments for idealism
- Transcendental idealism
- Absolute idealism
- Realism

3 - Ontology

- What there is
- Being-qua-being
- Ontological relativity
- The relativity of philosophical ontologies
- Formal concepts

4 - Substance

- The traditional conception of substance
- Must there be substances?
- The individuation of substances
- Essentialism
- Primary and secondary qualities

5 - Particular and general

- The distinction
- Everything that exists is particular
- Theories of universals
- The primacy of the particular

6 - Simple substances: Monism and pluralism

- Must substance be simple?
- Monism and pluralism
- Absolute idealism and logical atomism

7 - Space and time

- What are space and time?
- Must space and time be infinite?
- Are space and time essentially one?
- Temporality and temporal becoming
- McTaggart on the unreality of time
- Time and human existence

8 - Minds

- The concept of the mental
- Body-mind theories
- Cartesian dualism
- The criteria of the mental
- Can dualism be defended?
- Psychophysical monism

9 - Persons and personal identity

- Persons and selves
- The Strawsonian concept of a person
- What are persons?
- The criteria of identity for persons
- Survival
- "I"

10 - Epilogue: Man and nature - Bibliography & Index

Metaphysics - by D. W. Hamlyn
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521286905/

have a
in

The philosophical considerations of time are not bullshit. You havn't shown any
evidence yet except some grunts, groans, and hand waving about what you like and
dislike.

take

This how how little you know of the philosophy of religion. Atheism is a branch
of the philosophy of religion, for instance;

Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/

Chapter 5 - The Problem of Justifying Belief in God

A) Examination of the Concept of a Supreme Being

1) The Supreme Being Is All-Good

2) The Supreme Being Is Omnipotent

3) The Supreme Being Is Omniscient

4) Other Characteristics of a Supreme Being

B) Can the Belief in the Existence
of a Supreme Being Be Justified?

C) Appeal to Experience of God

1) The Argument from Mystical Experience

2) Support for the Argument: God Must Be
Postulated as Experienced or as Cause

3) Objection: No Need to Postulate the Supernatural

4) The Argument from Revelations and Miracles

5) Hume's Objection: Belief in
Violation-Miracles Is Always Unjustified

6) A Third Argument from Experience

7) Objection: Perception of Physical Objects and
Perception of God Are Radically Dissimilar

8) Reply: Arbitrary Double Standards and
Epistemic Circularity

9) Two Further Objections: The Fundamental
Nature of Perception, and the Easter Bunny

D) Three A Posteriori Arguments

1) The First-Cause Argument

- First Interpretation:
Temporally First Cause

- Second Interpretation:
Ontologically Ultimate Cause

- Third Interpretation:
Ultimate Explanation of Things

- A Problem: Are Adequate Scientific
Explanations Complete Explanations?

2) The Argument from Contingency

3) Objection: An Equivocation-Physical
versus Logical Possibility

4) The Argument from Design

- Analogical Arguments

- Two Versions of the Argument from Design

- Objection to Cleanthes' Analogy:
Nonintelligent Causes of Design

- Objection to Inferring that the Cause
of the Universe Is God: Like
Effects Have Like Causes

E) An A Priori Argument

1) The Ontological Argument:
Descartes's Version

- Kant's Objection:
'Existence' Is Not a Predicate

- Another Objection:
Existence Is Not a Perfection

2) The Ontological Argument:
St. Anselm's Version

- Gaunilo's Objection:
The Greatest Island Possible

- Reply to Gaunilo: A Being Greater
Than the Greatest Island Possible

- Another Objection:
The Dirtiest Being Possible

F) A Pragmatic Justification of
Belief in the Existence of God

1) The Religious Option and
the Right to Believe

G) Evil as Evidence Against the Existence of God

1) The Argument from Evil: The Logical Version

- Objection: The Best
World Might Contain Evil

2) The Argument from Evil: The Probability Version

- Objection: Evidence Available
to Human Beings Is Insufficient

- Reply: Believe in Accordance with
the Total Evidence Available

- Objection: People Are
Responsible for Evil

- Reply: Moral versus Natural Evil

- Objection: Satan as One
Cause of Natural Evil

- Reply: Noninterference and
Natural Causes

- Compensation for Victims:
The Prospect of an Afterlife

- Reply: No Good Evidence of an Afterlife

- Objection: Natural Evils Are Unavoidable

- Reply: Examples of Avoidable Evils

- Objection: Some Evil Is
Necessary for Some Knowledge

- Another Objection: Evils Are Necessary
for There to Be Higher Goods

- Reply: Why So Much Natural Evil?

- Objection: Total Evidence and Probability

- Reply: No Knowledge of the Probabilities

- Objection: Exact Probabilities
and Comparative Probabilities

H) Conclusion

I) Exercises

1) The Concept of a Supreme Being

2) Mystical Experience, Revelation,
and Miracles

3) The First-Cause Argument
and the Argument from Design

4) Other Arguments for Theism

Philosophical Problems and Arguments: An Introduction
by James W. Cornman, Keith Lehrer, George Sotiros Pappas
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0872201244/

to
them.


text:
"Keynes" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

Following you up to here.

If "our conception of it is not rational or logical" then how are you supposing
you can be rational or logical about it enough to (determine) that the living
present is killed on the alter of imagination? Accourding to your logic it may or
may not be so killed but where do you come off with it is killed?


author: boughtmysoul

text:
Keynes <[email]> wrote in message news:<[email]>...

etc, etc.

Whatever...immortality is one of those things, like the existence of
Heaven, that necessitates us dying to find out. Like religion itself,
there isn't a sufficient amount of evidence that would completely
discredit it (for true believers). It's a matter of faith, not reason.
(I think it's reasonable to not believe in immortality, but then
again, I could be wrong ;-)


text:
"stoney" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...

When I started this thread that was the subject of the body text. Afraid you
won't be able to bumble or slop one in while debating me and expect to not take
the ball back out ot the pocket. Prepare to pull you nut-sack out of your
butt-crack and pay attention wankee-pee-pee;

Perdurantism: objects persist by having different temporal parts at different
times.

There are two main theories about the persistence of objects through time.
Endurantists hold that objects are three-dimensional, have only spatial parts,
and wholly exist at each moment of their existence. Perdurantists hold that
objects are four-dimensional, have temporal parts, and exist only partly at each
moment of their existence. ...endurantism is poorly suited to describe the
persistence of objects in a world governed by special relativity, and it can
accommodate a relativistic world only at a high price not worth paying.
Perdurantism, on the other hand, fits beautifully with our current scientific
understanding of the world. We use only the implications of
the -Lorentz_transformations-, without appeal to geometrical interpretations,
dimensional analogies or auxiliary premises like temporal eternalism.

http://www.ingenta.com/isis/searching/ExpandTOC/ingenta?issue=pubinfobike://bpl/phiq/2003/00000053/00000213&index=3

Immortality for Skeptics

There are very good scientific reasons to believe that every human person
persists endlessly. ...a theory of immortality: resurrection theory.  The soul is
defined scientifically as the algorithmic form of the body -- a kind of
biological program.  Persons are computations.  Persons run on a series of
increasingly complex machines in increasingly complex physical universes.
...resurrection is trans-world computation.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/DEFAULT.HTP

Immortality is endless personal persistence. Persistence is continuity through
time.  There are two theories of persistence: endurantism and perdurantism.
Endurantism is one of the main philosophical obstacles to resurrection (Hudson,
2001: 186).  Endurantism says that things are substances and persistence is
identity.  So we need to look at identity to see whether endurantism is true.
Fortunately, endurantism has too many logical problems to have any claim to
truth.  The alternative to endurantism is perdurantism.  Perdurantism says that a
persisting thing is a series of instantaneous stages just like a film is a series
of frames.  Perdurantism does not suffer from any logical problems and has many
attractive features.  It permits one person to have stages from many bodies in
many universes.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-TOC.HTM

The Logic of Identity -- We need to look at identity to test endurantism.  This
article defines <x is identical to y>.  Identity is defined using two principles:
the Indiscernibility of Identicals and the Identity of Indiscernibiles.  Thus x
is identical to y if and only if x and y share all properties in common.  So x is
identical to y iff x is the same being as y.  Identity is a strictly logical
relation.  It has nothing to do with time, space, or any other physical
structure.  When we say that things continuee through time, we are talking about
persistence; but persistence is not identity.  Time implies change; change
implies difference; difference negates identity.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-LOGIC.HTM

Things are Not Enduring Substances -- This article discusses and rejects
endurantism.  Endurantism says that things are substances that remain identical
despite changes in their parts and properties.  According to the endurantist,
persistence is identity through time.  Endurantism has these problems: (1)
asymmetry between time and space; (2) problems with change of properties; (3)
problems with changes of parts; (4) problems with fission; and (5) problems
defining different kinds of persistence conditions for different kinds of things.
Attempts to fix endurantism only make it worse.  Endurantism is false.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-LOGIC.HTM

Things are Perduring Space-Time Wholes -- Persisting things are peduring things.
A perduring thing is a 4-dimensional (4D) space-time whole whose temporal parts
(stages) are instantaneous 3-dimensional (3D) things.  A perduring thing is thus
like a film whose stages are still photos (frames) or it is like a book whose
stages are its pages.  A perdurantist distinguishes between  three kinds of
sameness statements: 3D-to-3D; 4D-to-4D; and 3D-to-4D.  Statements of "identity
through time" are 3D-to-4D sameness statements.  They do not express identity;
they express the co-membership of two 3D stages in one 4D thing.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-PERDURE.HTM

No Identity through Time for Human Persons -- This article explains why it is not
possible for there to be any identity through time for human persons.  Human
persons change their properties and parts as time goes by; so there is no
identity through time for human persons.  An expression of the form <later x is
the same person as earlier y> can only mean that x and y are both 3D stages of
the same 4D person. If we wonder whether Old Chuck is the same person as Young
Charles, then we are wondering whether Old Chuck is in the same 4D person as
Young Charles.

http://www.wpunj.edu/cohss/philosophy/faculty/esteinha/LIVEDEAD/ID-NPERS.HTM

Persistence overview:

endurantism/perdurantism --- according to endurantism for a concrete particular
to persist through time is for it to exist wholly at different times (3D); for
pedurantism a concrete particular is a whole made up of different temporal
parts/phases/stages/slices and is larger than the part of that particular which
exists at a given moment (4D)

presentism/eternalism --- according to presentism, only what exists now is real;
according to eternalism, all times and their contents are equally real; often
presentism parallels endurantism while eternalism parallels perdurantism

parallel actualism/possibilism --- recall that actualism recognized only the
actual world as real (like presentism), while possibilism took all worlds and
contents to be equally real (like eternalism); similarly, both possibilism and
perdurantism exclude transworld/time individuals; the full parallel here is
3D/endurantism/presentism/actualism vs 4D/perdurantism/eternalism/possibilism

scattered objects --- for perdurantists there is a material object for every
filled region of spacetime (even one as strange as the mereological sum of Joe
before 1980 and Ed's earlobe after 1980); there are infinitely many ways of
cutting up the 4D material world into material objects; familiar objects are
those with relations of spatiotemporal proximity, similarity, causation;
endurantists deny such scattered objects entirely

Change in properties:

argument for perdurantism --- endurantist account does not explain persistence
through change, as they tree in the fall would not be the same as the tree in the
spring because they are qualitatively discernible; perdurantists believe their
account preserves indisc of ident and our beliefs about persistence through
change; the "two" trees are the same because the are both temporal slices of the
whole tree

parallels possibilism/actualism --- recall according to possibilism we had
world-indexed objects while in actualism we had world-indexed properties; here
for perdurantism we have time-indexed objects while for endurantism we have
time-indexed properties; similar arguments about properties simpliciter are
raised by the perdurantist against endurantism

Change in parts:

argument for perdurantism --- endurantist account does not explain persistence
through change in parts

Descartes-Minus --- suppose Descartes loses a hand at time t, there's
Descartes-before-t = Descartes-after-t, but there's also Descartes-minus-before-t
= Descartes-after-t, so Descartes-minus-before-t = Descartes-before-t (Heller,
Van Inwagen)

sameness --- Chisholm (following Butler) says there are two senses of the word
"same", the "strict and philosophical" sense and the "loose and popular" sense;
Geach says there are multiple identity relations, namely "the same F"

http://www.simons-rock.edu/~sara/philosophy/metaphysicsexam/metaphysics-loux.txt

Ignorance on your part because the body text was all about time and you seemed to
deny that or must have missed it. What aroused you to answer in the first place?

The other way around, you didn't understand the argument I began.

The subject was about time and you claimed it was something else.

You really must be a stupid son-of-a-bitch.

Whatever.


text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 13:27:19 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

Most of the things we *know*, as opposed to things we merely
*believe*, we gained knowledge of through empirical research, not
through philosophical musings.


text:
On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 13:27:19 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

Which of these cover your nonsense?

   philosophy (fï¿½-lï¿½sï¿½e-fï¿½) noun
plural philosophies
Abbr. phil., philos.
1.a. Love and pursuit of wisdom by intellectual means and moral
self-discipline. b. The investigation of causes and laws underlying
reality. c. A system of philosophical inquiry or demonstration.
2.Inquiry into the nature of things based on logical reasoning rather
than empirical methods.
3.The critique and analysis of fundamental beliefs as they come to be
conceptualized and formulated.
4.The synthesis of all learning.
5.All learning except technical precepts and practical arts.
6.All the disciplines presented in university curriculums of science
and the liberal arts, except medicine, law, and theology.
7.The science comprising logic, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and
epistemology.
8.A system of motivating concepts or principles: the philosophy of a
culture.
9.A basic theory; a viewpoint: an original philosophy of advertising.
10.The system of values by which one lives: has an unusual philosophy
of life.

Excerpted from The American Heritageï¿½ Dictionary of the English
Language, Third Edition  ï¿½ 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further
reproduction and distribution in accordance with the Copyright Law of
the United States. All rights reserved.


text:
"Bob" <[email]> wrote in message
news:g4_cd.83086$[email]...

I never asserted it was double-talk therefore you need to learn some logic.
Didn't you ever learn that the burden of proof is on the one who asserts. And
your good buddy asserted that my propositions were as you say.

And since you snipped out the assertions I would defend if the burden was upon me
your hanging by the nutz friend because you eliminated your grounds and no
warrent remains even for the leg humpin' you is doin' to your freind.

Why should I, I never claimed I was babbling. I should come over to your group
and clean some house for a few weeks if your in control.

Fallacy: Burden of Proof

Includes: Appeal to Ignorance ("Ad Ignorantiam")

Description of Burden of Proof

Burden of Proof is a fallacy in which the burden of proof is placed on the wrong
side. Another version occurs when a lack of evidence for side A is taken to be
evidence for side B in cases in which the burden of proof actually rests on side
B. A common name for this is an Appeal to Ignorance. This sort of reasoning
typically has the following form:

   1. Claim X is presented by side A and the burden of proof actually rests on
side B.

   2. Side B claims that X is false because there is no proof for X.

In many situations, one side has the burden of proof resting on it. This side is
obligated to provide evidence for its position. The claim of the other side, the
one that does not bear the burden of proof, is assumed to be true unless proven
otherwise. The difficulty in such cases is determining which side, if any, the
burden of proof rests on. In many cases, settling this issue can be a matter of
significant debate. In some cases the burden of proof is set by the situation.
For example, in American law a person is assumed to be innocent until proven
guilty (hence the burden of proof is on the prosecution). As another example, in
debate the burden of proof is placed on the affirmative team. As a final example,
in most cases the burden of proof rests on those who claim something exists (such
as Bigfoot, psychic powers, universals, and sense data).
Examples of Burden of Proof

   1. Bill: "I think that we should invest more money in expanding the interstate
system."

      Jill: "I think that would be a bad idea, considering the state of the
treasury."

      Bill: "How can anyone be against highway improvements?"

   2. Bill: "I think that some people have psychic powers."

      Jill: "What is your proof?"

      Bill: "No one has been able to prove that people do not have psychic
powers."

   3. "You cannot prove that God does not exist, so He does."

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/burden-of-proof.html

Your peeing in the wind with this assertion "babbling exists" since the burnen is
upon you to defend your assertion.


text:
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 11:10:23 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

Again, this is alt.atheism not alt.philosophy nor is this the drooling
idiocy called 'meta' physics.

Please address the points, troll.

[]


text:
On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:07:01 -0700, "Immortalist" <[email]>
wrote:

To dwell on the past or the future is mental mumbling in the present.
If you keep talking to yourself in that way, you can't hear much else.
Then you are wasting your 'time'.


text:
"boughtmysoul" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
news:<[email]>...

The problem with that is that we have no evidence that heavan exists but we do
have evidence that you and I exist and are therefore possible. Now it is the
problem of whether this possibiliy continues after we die if the appropriate
agency can arrange the means like either a god or natural selection did to bring
us about. The means to become are possible but what is needed is the agency or
equivalence of agency to arrange those means to those ends of you and I.


text:
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 11:01:16 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

Not at all.  You started drooling bullshit in an off-topic newsgroup.
I've been questioning that from my first response and you've done
nothing but handwave and continue to drool.

I have had no reason, and even less now, to take you seriously.  You
see, oh mindless wanker, a wise speaker tailors what they have to say
to their intended audience in a way to engage their interest.

Again, what reason do I, as a subscriber to alt.atheism, have to be
interested in 'philosophy' or 'metaphysics?'

Your coming in with 'Theory' of 'x' and 'y' in the subject line
screamed; troll as well as undeducated troll.  The selection of
newsgroups was an amplifier to the initial conclusion.

I asked you;
What about time?
and
What process?

What I was looking for a answer from you, not a couple hundred lines
of drivel (which I didn't read).    A few sentences, perhaps a
paragraph or two to engage interest would have been sufficient.

Generally, people here are interested in discussion of many different
things, such as; anthropology, physics, astronomy, cosmology, biology,
current events, mythology, as well as other things which might engage
a persons interest.  I'm not taking the explaination time for you, oh
mindless one.  I'm explaining further for those who happen to be
browsing this thread.

Oh, piss off you arrogant, ignorant, and damned wanker.  *I'm* not the
one wandering into off-topic newsgroups and metaphorically shitting
and pissing on the carpet after barging in and wondering why your
reception is less than joyous.  Yep, as I thought, another mindless
troll.

Thank you for indicating you've no posts involving substance.  I will
now leave you to play with yourself.

[]


text:
"?????" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
Endurantists
ever
the
luck,

Metaphysics. What evidence can you provide for the assertion that it is nonsense
in place of pointing while making grunting sounds?


text:
On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 21:38:31 -0700, "Immortalist"
<[email]> wrote:

  And established he is twin of "easily duped"


text:
"stoney" <[email]> wrote in message
news:[email]...
this
knowledge

Metaphysics is talked about alot in alt.atheism. I can't help it if you don't
know what your talking about. I am here now to help you understand. Hint; the
believer says the world is X, then the atheist says the world is Y. Metaphysic
plain and simple.

No, alt.atheism is an unmoderated group. The only thing you can do is either
complain or plonk. Besides whenever the origin of the universe or evolution comes
up these subjects are merely attributes of the class called time. (in a
dispositional vs occurent sense)

http://www.thehalloweengroup.com/foam.htm

(;-