tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post1991863813725890324..comments2024-03-27T11:16:36.951-07:00Comments on One Cʘsmos: Blinded by the Light & Dreaming by Day (7.28.10)Gagdad Bobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-58458352923793397332007-08-23T08:46:00.000-07:002007-08-23T08:46:00.000-07:00Smoov my dear, wake up. Allotetraploid IS the 'hap...Smoov my dear, wake up. Allotetraploid IS the 'hapless Swede'. Yesterday's comment redirects to his new Blogger account. Go back to Bob's first post about him, click that link & you'll see.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-7368060795526607712007-08-23T07:16:00.000-07:002007-08-23T07:16:00.000-07:00Don't get me wrong, I love the humor on OC! Dupree...Don't get me wrong, I love the humor on OC! Dupree almost always cracks me up, as do most of the raccoon <I>mots juste</I>. It's the more reactionary forms of negative commentary (well, you're just an idiot!) that leave me cringing...Stephen Macdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13474300559219020772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-49969977799833440492007-08-23T07:13:00.000-07:002007-08-23T07:13:00.000-07:00This person Allotetraploid from yesterday was obvi...This person Allotetraploid from yesterday was obviously an erudite and intelligent dissenter. He didn't introduce anything that hasn't been dealt with by Bob before, however I would like to see Bob deal with him/her directly since this was one of the more forceful challenges in the comments section in some time.<BR/><BR/>Also, in my humble opinion all of the name-calling and curt dismissal of someone like Allotetraploid does not reflect well on raccoons. He did a good job of raising the standard objections to spiritual belief (especially to religious dogma). I believe Bob could deal with each of his points if he so chose, but I do feel he deserves to be taken seriously as he has advanced serious, non-trivial and not overtly trollish arguments.<BR/><BR/>He is certainly far more articulate and learned than the hapless Swede seems to be. Like I said, there's nothing new or compelling in Allotetraploid's contribution, however it would worthwhile to endeavour to explain again why he simply does not get it. This may be asking too much, I don't know. Maybe it would be better for Allotetraploid to read OCUG and then come back. In any case I hope raccoons can avoid the temptation to hurl epithets so freely. Just my 2 cents.Stephen Macdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13474300559219020772noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-3375882375169259932007-08-23T06:24:00.000-07:002007-08-23T06:24:00.000-07:00I'm kind of interested in CL's question. From my o...I'm kind of interested in CL's question. From my own standpoint, I have no problem with the existence of the immaterial and/or the unknowable. The items on his/her list, ghosts, angels, etc., don't have a place in my cosmology right now because they suggest to me a projection of our own desires and an effort to render the immaterial concrete. But I'm open to arguments for the existence of angels, and telepathy seems like less of a stretch since communication is an obvious phenomenon that we know takes place on many levels, not all of which we may have nailed down yet.<BR/><BR/>As for the existence of countries that we can't see, that kind of narcissism is normal for an 8 year old, but we're supposed to develop beyond it by the time we get into adolescence.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-26049000452851322482007-08-22T22:57:00.000-07:002007-08-22T22:57:00.000-07:00Eat! EAT!Eat! EAT!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-83680740513342643412007-08-22T21:09:00.000-07:002007-08-22T21:09:00.000-07:00talking snake said - What?talking snake said - What?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-78818140520242925342007-08-22T18:03:00.000-07:002007-08-22T18:03:00.000-07:00Susannah,I had to look that one up again today, to...Susannah,<BR/>I had to look that one up again today, too :) It's been a while since Bob's popped that one out there.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-35711201257448216472007-08-22T17:57:00.000-07:002007-08-22T17:57:00.000-07:00Grand Inquisidope more like.Yet another tin-foil-h...Grand Inquisidope more like.<BR/><BR/>Yet another tin-foil-hatter. Lordy be.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-90834478520846735102007-08-22T17:30:00.000-07:002007-08-22T17:30:00.000-07:00Bob, I'm just swirlin' in your wake here. The dar...Bob, I'm just swirlin' in your wake here. The darkroom analogy, though--all the analogies--are clear as crystal. <BR/><BR/>Part of my slowness might be that I have to read with my ears plugged in this house. Between "Cap'n Jack Sparrow" in the background and the kids playing down the hall.<BR/><BR/>"apophatic"<BR/><BR/>There's that word again. Can you believe I had to look it up again?<BR/><BR/>I'm with Dupree on G.I. Proprietary ownership of the Divine? Bwahahahaha! <BR/><BR/>Cryptic, personally I have no problem with the talking snake. As for the pool of water, there *is* depth beneath the reflection, all human misapprehension aside. That's just a simple fact. <BR/><BR/>Although one would do well to heed Van's advice. :)Susannahhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16381272662339466736noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-25105748617101403312007-08-22T16:30:00.000-07:002007-08-22T16:30:00.000-07:00"...wholeness can only be seen by night, when all ..."...wholeness can only be seen by night, when all of the apparent, well-defined parts blend together and interpenetrate." <BR/><BR/>Yes, and they do so in <I>quiet,</I> another quality of the "night" you describe.<BR/><BR/>Bob, your use of metaphors and analogies in this post - light/dark, night/day, etc etc - framed your points very clearly. It is an approach to the divine that inspires so many connections within the reader. <BR/><BR/>Thanks.walthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01388218390016612051noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-85724281238028739962007-08-22T16:11:00.000-07:002007-08-22T16:11:00.000-07:00Cryptic,the most memorable occasion was the cgi sc...Cryptic,<BR/>the most memorable occasion was the cgi screen of the motion ride at the Luxor, back in the 90s. The scenario was something about flying through space, I think, but at one point about halfway through my brain simply could not make sense of what it was seeing for what seemed a long time (probably only ten seconds or so). Suddenly, I was staring at a random collection of colors moving on a screen. It completely broke the illusion of three dimensional travel (which was frankly not all that powerful to begin with), and suddenly I was simply staring at a flat screen while the seat below me moved for no obvious reason. When my brain sorted it out, I was able to experience the illusion again. There have been other occasions, but it does not happen often (which is why it's so memorable, I suppose).<BR/><BR/>On lesser occasions, my brain frequently will make assumptions based on partial information, such as glimpsing a part of a written sign and "seeing" it as a completely different message than it actually is. Usually, the words that get inserted are rather funny, to me at least.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-35650247120483470102007-08-22T15:23:00.000-07:002007-08-22T15:23:00.000-07:00Crypticlife - What if you are meant to be a lot mo...Crypticlife - What if you are meant to be a lot more than you could ever make of yourself? It is the Christian proposition that everyone who enters this mortal coil has a missing piece that only the Creator can supply. Many seem to live out their lives never heeding the sense that something is missing. In fact, they fill the space with all manner of earthly things. Many others come to acknowledge that they are formed incompletely and are compelled to find the missing piece. Do you think you nicknamed yourself crypticlife, or continue visiting the raccoon den by accident? There is definitely something inside you that compels you to unravel the mystery. Like a black hole inevitably draws in everything around it.<BR/><BR/>“Cryptic” comes from the Greek work kruptein (to hide) and is used in various forms many times throughout the oldest greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Perhaps an exploration of where and why it was used might be enlightening to you. Why would things be hidden? Jesus meaning was often hidden even from those closest to him at the time he spoke. Why? There is indeed much that is cryptic in this life, but not forever. Meaning and deeper meaning - is there any greater goal to pursue?NoMohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01100042056270224683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-90415588018758201972007-08-22T15:02:00.000-07:002007-08-22T15:02:00.000-07:00Not very inquisitive. Much less grand.Not very inquisitive. Much less grand.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-72213652107195902662007-08-22T14:55:00.000-07:002007-08-22T14:55:00.000-07:00Exoteric religion, which is the only kind of relig...Exoteric religion, which is the only kind of religion that exists in the USA and the West, achieves physically effective mind-control over human individuals and collectives by means of invariably conspicuous social and political moral performances, power alliances with social and political institutions, the public proliferation of sacred enclosures such as temple architecture, and the broad scale persistent propagandizing of sacred artifices, such as religious myths,irreducibly objectified beliefs, symbolic ceremonials, ritual re-enactments, religious art, and the authoritarian assertion of such ideas as objective certainty, moral absolutes, the inherent integrity and reliability of tradition, happiness by means of religious institutions, blessedness by means of sacramentally authorized heirarchies of religious officials, faith as an exercise superior to all other human efforts, the necessary immortality of the ego or soul, and both the authority and the ultimate sufficiency of religion itself.<BR/><BR/>What is more all, of that is also a collective effort to control the Divine my reducing the Divine to the scale of the ego, both individual and collective. It also re-creates the Divine into the image of the ego, both individual and collective.<BR/><BR/>It is also a collective effort to claim sole proprietary ownership of the Divine. The one true god. Such claims to owbership also inevitably brings it into inevitable conflict with other collectives who also claim sole proprietary ownership of the Divine.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-86411583471005530762007-08-22T14:47:00.000-07:002007-08-22T14:47:00.000-07:00CL:Are we talking: Ghost, Angels/demons, Magic, Te...CL:<BR/>Are we talking: Ghost, Angels/demons, Magic, Telepathy, Talking Snakes?<BR/><BR/>Anything else?<BR/><BR/>By the way, I could smell that photo of Nippon on your site, along with feeling the air, mist included. Used to cut language class there to walk the hills surrounding Kyoto. Value-wise, a slam-dunk compared to grammer drills.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-81518387271446934442007-08-22T14:36:00.000-07:002007-08-22T14:36:00.000-07:00“Although I'm not particularly fond of analogies t...“Although I'm not particularly fond of analogies the recent one of the atheist looking at the pool of water and seeing only a flat, slightly shiny disk interested me.”<BR/><BR/>The analogy or the shiny disk?Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10589423819039764711noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-36524193232429091982007-08-22T14:28:00.000-07:002007-08-22T14:28:00.000-07:00ximeze: Thank you -- I have considered it, but I ...ximeze: Thank you -- I have considered it, but I shall again. Does your response mean you reject none of the possibilities I mentioned? I would not blame you if you did accept them, it would be consistent. If you rejected them I'd be interested in why you would reject them.<BR/><BR/>juliec: I'll want to consider your comment a while before I respond. I'd be curious what sort of thing you'd looked upon that you didn't immediately comprehend, whether it was just a strange angle or something more involved.CrypticLifehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05313033952671292402noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-16835720881154883852007-08-22T14:25:00.000-07:002007-08-22T14:25:00.000-07:00The credo of radical environmentalists: "We love l...The credo of radical environmentalists: "We love life. It's the <I>living</I> we can't stand."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-24621414691744427692007-08-22T13:59:00.000-07:002007-08-22T13:59:00.000-07:00How many carbon offsets for shootin' a moose?How many <A HREF="http://freecarbonoffsets.com/genCert.do" REL="nofollow">carbon offsets</A> for shootin' a moose?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-86683222346374087392007-08-22T13:04:00.000-07:002007-08-22T13:04:00.000-07:00CL:You might consider what you reject by defaultCL:<BR/>You might consider what you reject by defaultAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-35414152074920772642007-08-22T12:57:00.000-07:002007-08-22T12:57:00.000-07:00River,Ah, very cute. I hadn't really intended to ...River,<BR/><BR/>Ah, very cute. I hadn't really intended to argue that way, but if I could accept a deity accepting the idea of talking snakes would be a snap. I was just curious where the line is drawn, or if all these other things are things you'd accept by default.<BR/><BR/>No, my real name's not Thomas, but I'll admit to a skeptical nature. I recall in third grade considering quite seriously whether foreign countries might not actually exist, and instead be a scam perpetrated by adults. I eventually rejected the idea that foreign countries do not exist for reasons of parsimony, but wasn't entirely satisfied.CrypticLifehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05313033952671292402noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-68423836843122668032007-08-22T12:50:00.000-07:002007-08-22T12:50:00.000-07:00cryptic, the whole point is that, from a certain (...cryptic, <BR/><BR/>the whole point is that, from a certain (and rational, not necessarily false, but decidedly incomplete) perspective, it's <I>all</I> silly, or just outright bizarre. From a deeper perspective, however, it makes perfect sense. <BR/><BR/>Let's go back to that analogy, but instead of a pool of water it's a window. Take a <A HREF="http://juliecork.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/ghost-girl.jpg" REL="nofollow">look</A>. What do you see? In the play of light, there are many contradictory truths all in the same place. It took not two but three "eyes" to even show them all in the same virtual space. There is a flat surface, the window. But behind it, in the darkness, there is an entire space, which throws up tantalizing glimpses if you look just so. And in front of it, though you can't see it in reality, there is clearly a place of vivid light, about which we can learn quite a lot by seeing the reflection. It's backwards, though, and the backwardness may cause that place to look strange and absurd. In the rest of the image, there is a tracery of three girls who are one, and a rainbow which could only properly be seen by combining three images. <BR/><BR/>Anybody who is accustomed to looking at and interpreting photographs can comprehend what they are seeing and know that there are many dimensions represented, but in fact this comprehension is something <I>learned</I>. If I were to print it out and show it to my dog, for instance, she would not see the images at all - she would see a flat piece of paper with colors (or shades of gray) on it. If she tried to comprehend it, she would lick and sniff at it, using those senses which serve her best. In doing so, she would most certainly learn truths about the paper and the ink, but the message of the image would be completely lost upon her. The same is true for small children, who will most likely stick the paper in their mouths, or tear it up into pieces. <BR/><BR/>Have you ever, as an adult, looked at something which your brain could not immediately comprehend, something entirely new to your visual experience? I have. It's a strange experience - the mind will try several tactics before the truth clicks into place, some of which are funny, some of which are disorienting, and some of which may be downright frightening. Until you learn what it is you are looking at, though, one thing is certain - it will not make sense.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-29218378465709927812007-08-22T12:48:00.000-07:002007-08-22T12:48:00.000-07:00"Shoot a moose and save yourself a climate quota" ..."Shoot a moose and save yourself a climate quota" & "pigs and chickens are more environmentally considerate"<BR/><BR/>Bwaa ha ha ha ha<BR/><BR/>Poor algoreAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-18890344211762804212007-08-22T12:47:00.000-07:002007-08-22T12:47:00.000-07:00God's Gonna Cut You DownMcK<A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e0EQlQXoEo" REL="nofollow">God's Gonna Cut You Down</A><BR/><BR/>McKAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-8895508597182104272007-08-22T11:54:00.000-07:002007-08-22T11:54:00.000-07:00Global warming moose, from the moose's own mouth, ...<A HREF="http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1949645.ece" REL="nofollow">Global warming moose</A>, from the moose's own mouth, so to speak.<BR/><BR/>Who did you think has held off the impending ice age for all those chilly years?<BR/><BR/>wv:hemosbMagnus Itlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18445902788427523461noreply@blogger.com