1. Is there an Artificial God?

Comment #59208 by prelevent on July 28, 2007 at 9:28 am

Just an off-topic question for fellow users here. Has anyone else noticed the little text box added to this posting about deep linking? Isn't any url other than a link to a home page a form of deep linking? Including the url in the little text box?

2. An Exercise in Contempt

Comment #12579 by prelevent on December 12, 2006 at 3:56 pm

Just a little clear up. When I say, "I see relatively little substantial difference between the two quotes" I mean to say that they are several hundred years removed from each other, but that the central "awe" is found in both. One comes with several hundred years of refinement though... and this means that the other lacks the new framework with which to approach that awe.

3. An Exercise in Contempt

Comment #12575 by prelevent on December 12, 2006 at 3:46 pm

The part of this little review that struck me the most was the quotation of Pascal's,

The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short, it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God that imagination loses itself in that thought."


When I first read this it reminded me of another person perpetually in awe of the vastness of the universe,

"The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky."

This is of course Carl Sagan from Cosmos. I see relatively little substantial difference between the two quotes. Kirk even acknowledges Sagan's "semi-mystical awe" as he dismisses what I think to be a virtually identical awe in the words of Dawkins.

(I think this is from Ancestor's Tale)
"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings."