The Profundity Thread

Sarcasmo

A Taste Of Honey Fluff Boy
Mar 28, 2005
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Austin
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This thread is a bit ambiguous, but I guess that's the point. Hopefully it will be interesting and not fail miserably. I wanted to create a general repository for things that you consider to be "profound". Thoughts, quotes, ideas, conjecture...you name it. Things that just amaze and astound you, and serve to compel the spinning of your brain's little gears like nothing else.

For me two studies tend to do this more than any other: physics and biology. Astronomy and genetics, respectively, to be more precise. The concepts behind these two studies would definitely have to be the language of God, in my opinion. They boggle the mind. So I will start off with a biology/genetics quote that kind of boggles MY mind every time I hear it.

"As the earth and ocean were probably peopled with vegetable productions long before the existence of animals; and many families of these animals long before other families of them, shall we conjecture that one and the same kind of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life?"

- Erasmus Darwin, 1794 (grandfather of Charles Darwin)


To presume that Erasmus was eluding to the functional concept and structure of DNA approximately 100 years before the isolation of basic nucleic acids and roughly 160 years before scientists using highly advanced lab equipment finally made the discovery is fascinating, to say the least. Many think his use of the phrase 'living filaments' was allegorical and unintentional (describing a 'linear species' and not an actual chemical component), but it's weirdly accurate enough to make me wonder. Especially considering his theories on the natural sciences and evolution, and the famous work of his grandson 60 years later involving The Origin of Species.

It's also startling to realize exactly how much people have known about the world and for how long. I think a lot of us tend to think science started in the 1900s and before that we were stumbling, uninformed idiots. Consider Aristotle, for example. 2,300 years ago his ponderances of inductive reasoning, epistemology, medicine, and the now-classic argument of the egg and the chicken (or the acorn and the oak tree) could rationally be considered the precursor of modern genetics. (Max Delbruck once joked, even, that he should be awarded a posthumous Nobel for the discovery of DNA.)

So anyway, what do you consider profound?
 
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I predict this thread will go to hell FAST.

I like the interplay of words by their meaning and sound. When I read something I can practically see patterns and colours with how they relate to each other. Consonance, assonance, personification, allusion, they make me squishy on the inside. Good double sens, catachresis etc.

I could attempt to please by seeking out a prfound statement that draws on these literary devices but it's a waste of time. It will be ignored and possibly ridiculed by those who comprehend it. Those who don't merely will fail to comment. So I leave this:

"A witty saying proves nothing."
-Tolstoy

P.S.

Don't get high and post.
 
Book quotes can totally blow my mind. For example from Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

"You musn't give your heart to a wild thing. The more you do, the stronger they get, until they're strong enough to run into the woods or fly into a tree. And then to a higher tree and then to the sky . . . but it's much better to look to the sky than live in it."

Also music can take my breath away, when you hear something so original. You know the first time you hear an amazing song and you can remember exactly where you heard it.
 
Let's assume that:

1. God is an infallible being. Nothing can beat Him and nothing can prove Him wrong...He is God.

2. God has the power to create, or do pretty much anything both conceivable and inconceivable.

That said, could god create a being that could always and consistently beat him at tennis. To do so would mean that He was fallible in the world of tennis. To not do so would mean that He was unable to create such a being, thus He is fallible.

Does this prove that a deity that can do everything and always be right is impossible, or does it suggest that there might be another dimension of thought that humans are simply incapable of understanding and that I'm going to be struck by lightning when I leave the building today?
 
ERage said:
Let's assume that:

1. God is an infallible being. Nothing can beat Him and nothing can prove Him wrong...He is God.

2. God has the power to create, or do pretty much anything both conceivable and inconceivable.

That said, could god create a being that could always and consistently beat him at tennis. To do so would mean that He was fallible in the world of tennis. To not do so would mean that He was unable to create such a being, thus He is fallible.

Does this prove that a deity that can do everything and always be right is impossible, or does it suggest that there might be another dimension of thought that humans are simply incapable of understanding and that I'm going to be struck by lightning when I leave the building today?

tastygod.jpg
 
bast_imret said:
http://uselessforums.com/files/120505/tastygod.jpg[IMG][/QUOTE]

strangely enough, i was compelled to visit krispy kreme last night and pick up a hot dozen. The rest still reside on my counter at home :drool:
 
ERage said:
strangely enough, i was compelled to visit krispy kreme last night and pick up a hot dozen. The rest still reside on my counter at home :drool:

radiant monitor heat keeping them warm?
 
ERage said:
Let's assume that:

1. God is an infallible being. Nothing can beat Him and nothing can prove Him wrong...He is God.

2. God has the power to create, or do pretty much anything both conceivable and inconceivable.

That said, could god create a being that could always and consistently beat him at tennis. To do so would mean that He was fallible in the world of tennis. To not do so would mean that He was unable to create such a being, thus He is fallible.

Does this prove that a deity that can do everything and always be right is impossible, or does it suggest that there might be another dimension of thought that humans are simply incapable of understanding and that I'm going to be struck by lightning when I leave the building today?
God, being omnipotent, can change reality to suit the rules of His logic.

I can expand upon this until your head explodes. That is a weak argument for any student of philosophy.