P3T3RK3Y5

20071002

6 & 7

six things i think are arbitrary:

spoken languages
countries (lines on a map)
laws
culture
genres (of music)
the divisions of scientific disciplines (...more genre's)

seven things i think are true:

love
math
good music
gender (the complementary concept/aspects of male and female)
c
redemption
life (that life thrives)

Labels: arbitrary, poetry, truth

3 Comments:

Jed said...: I have to disagree with one of the six. You have to first define which laws are arbitrary. Those from men, or those from God? There are many man-made laws that are arbitrary, but God-given laws are legit. (Pardon the pun)

Did God create His laws for humanity (at least the earlier Mosaic dispensation) based on an arbitrary need to prove that man could not live up to a standard of perfection? Or did He create them to reflect characteristics of Himself. "Do not kill," for instance. I believe that law was made to show a need to respect life, not provide a way for God to say "I told you so," once someone did someone else in.

From our perspective, these laws are hard and fast. They are part of His Truth. From His perspective, maybe there was some wiggle room as to what the final laws were to be, but from our perspective, they are what they are, and are worlds from arbitrary.; 2:39 AM
Ryan said...: Chiao, Raymond Y., Paul G. Kwiat, Aephraim M. Steinberg. ''Faster than Light?: Quantum Experiments Involving Tunneling Photons." Scientific American 269 (1993) 52-60.
A phenomenon in quantum mechanics known as nonlocality, or "action at a distance," calls into question one of the most fundamental tenets of modern physics—the proposition that nothing travels faster than the speed of light.

Or, in more detail, http://tinyurl.com/yxa9 .

I read the cited articles back in college. The wikipedia entry is misleading in that it makes it sound like the nonlocality phenomenon is just theoretical, when in fact experiments have demonstrated the phenomenon. The wiki article does mention the two experiments where light was slowed down and stopped. Granted, it wasn't in a vacuum, but what is 'true' about c once placed in those contexts?

I would have picked gender as being more arbitrary than spoken languages, but I never had enough patience for linguistics to get past the basics of the theory.

The division of scientific disciplines is indeed arbitrary, since anyone who knows anything knows that all the disciplines are just subparts of physics...; 1:46 AM
P3T3RK3Y5 said...: thanks for making your point jed. i agree to a point.

i didn't mean to imply the ten commandments were false - i think they are legit. but those ten are arbitrary colors of the rainbow plucked from the full spectrum of truth. and like any ten colors that are contained within a rainbow - the rainbow is the truth. as indeed, the laws are summed up (i would argue, contained) in 'love God, love others'. right? so the punch line isn't much of a punch line anymore, but here it is from the NT: the law failed.

why did the law fail? well, laws can't always account for every situation. is it wrong to destroy property? yes. is it wrong to destroy property that will be used to kill innocents? uhh... oh. now its getting complicated. and when you look at local laws - you see the same thing: complexity that can't account for every case of loving God and loving others. laws are arbitrary.

ryan. i'm a firm subscriber to entanglement. i think its the most romantic notion in physics and speaks to the binding of two hearts through a subspace that transcends what we normally perceive. but entanglement doesn't violate causality - and while it is spooky action at a distance - i also don't consider c to be violated.

thanks for the scrutiny! and feel free to go on disagreeing with me :); 3:50 PM