On 01-29-98 Richard Meic wrote to Day Brown... 
DB> You assumed Richard, that I assumed that the universe was created 
DB> by God. It was not. God and the universe evolved concurrently.The 
DB> universe is that part which you see, God is that part you can not. 
 RM>  
 RM> Interesting twist you provide here.  When you say that god and the  
 RM> universe evolved at the same time do you mean that they came into  
 RM> existence together or always existed? 
So far as I can tell, the universe, and our world in it, shows it 
is *still* evolving.  The analysis of the evolutionary processes 
that I see seem to converge, and suggest the big bang... i.e. that 
they came into existence togather. 
 
 RM>  RM>> What?  We "KNOW" that there are more then 3 dimensions?  Lets 
 RM>  RM>> ignore time for a moment, prove to me that there are more then 3 
 RM>  RM>> dimensions... show them to me. 
 RM>  
 RM>  DB> I do not think I can show them to you; you have to show them to 
 RM>  DB> yourself; 200 micrograms of lysergic acid would do the job for 
 RM>  DB> you.  Of course, there is some risk to your sanity and career.  
 RM>       
 RM> I am not a naive little boy, I am 32 and have been around the block a  
 RM> few times. 
Hey Richard- niave little boys don't have careers to worry about, 
and the evidence I see, suggests minds that have a high degree of 
the kind of synaptic responses naturally which LSD promotes in an 
adult brain.  No patronization intended. 
 
 RM>  DB> the last 30 years, I have never met anyone who had done acid who 
 RM>  DB> retained an atheist position; the other 2499 had all seen God. 
 RM>  
 RM> Well, you can consider me as the first one, then.  I have done acid in 
 RM> my youth (plenty of it), yet I remain atheist.  I did not see higher  
 RM> dimensions, I did not see "God",... once I thought I saw a peanut 
 RM> butter jar melt into a table, but that is all. 
That will do for starters Richard.  The accepted view is that when 
one sees phenomena like this that the sensory apparatus is faulty. 
Defensible up to a point, but that does not exclude incidents that 
are, in fact, supernatural, and perceived that way. 
 
The modern experiments in quantum physics persent phenomena which 
cannot be understood in terms of the aforementioned 3 dimensions, 
in which there is a connection between the observed and observer, 
such as your experience with peanut butter morphing into table. 
To the quantum experimentor, the experience is much the same, he 
sees stuff happening he cannot believe.  By and large, phenomena 
like this have always been present, but simply ignored as trivial 
to the fundamental truth of reality.  I am not so sure. 
 
Nor would I expect you to see God in morphing peanut butter; yet, 
the idea that 'form' is not what it is cracked up to be has much 
to recommend it, and when it is looked at subatomically, it looks 
a lot like a projection in three dimensions from a device or some 
system made up of more dimensions.  The organization of that is 
to some considerable extent dependent on a very complex bit of 
software that most people perceive as 'God'. 
 
Where I take issue with religionists in the attribution of some 
kind of personality they are familiar with to God, usually as an 
autocratic tryannical father.  Primitive pre-agarians saw God as 
a female, less vindictive and dictatorial; an idea that deserves 
some merit.  I personally see her much as I would a projectionist 
at a movie theatre- not responsible for the plot on the screen, 
just here to make sure the show goes on, on time. 
 
Since she gets to see so many movies, I try to be interesting. 
 
 RM> MAN, you must have been dealing with a pretty unstable bunch. 
Well frankly, they look to be more stable afterwards than before; 
IMHO, such behavior patterns are indicative of someone who already 
has considerable motivation to make a change in lifestyle, and the 
very willingness to try LSD, [with it notorious reputation] bears 
some support for the idea. 
 
 RM> I do not seek "truth", I seek "reality independent of the observer". 
What do you make of Quantum physics? 
 
 RM> Well, that would depend on WHO's truth, one man's view of "truth A" is 
 RM> not always the other man's view of "truth A".  I don't think "truth" 
 RM> is a proper word here. 
Well, if we may extend the movie metaphor, then obviously some at 
the show have brought to it different expectations, and therefore 
draw different conclusions from the unfolding plot.  And as we've 
seen have been willing to kill each other over the interpretation 
of the 'facts'. 
 
But, what happens when you quit watching the show, get up and go 
back to face the source of the image?  For one thing, you are apt 
to loose track of the plot onscreen, or obstruct the view of some 
others while you stumble around in the dark, and even if you do 
manage to get into the projection booth, do you understand what 
all the strange machinery is, and does it have anything at all to 
do with the plot? And, if you do understand, that does not give 
you a vocabulary to describe what you know, and if you go back to 
try to tell your friends in the ninth row about it, they all say 
to sit down and shut up... after all, they came to watch a movie. 
 
So, most folks seem to have as much truth as they want.  Richard, 
if you wonder about all this stuff, you must know you are pretty 
odd, so the fact that you have not seen 'god' as you expected to 
does not surprise me... you may have selected a different movie. 
 
The more I think about this stuff, the more I see allegory as a 
more useful tool; Plato's cave is a case in point where he sees 
the same problem we have been discussing.  He did not say that a 
God was responsible, but that was more from an unwillingness to 
ascribe a personality, which is what everone who thought about 
God did in his, and indeed our, time do, and did. 
___ 
 * OFFLINE 1.58 * A stud named Kingdom, cause he comes all the time. 
--- Maximus 3.01
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