Philosophical randomness
Wesley Osam used the wonderful phrase "like asking a priest to transubstantiate a Pop Tart" over on Jade Pagoda. In my philosophical blundering I have compared the concept of transubstantiation to Otherkin in this very LJ. Some more thoughts on the concept of changing the essence of a thing, without changing its external characteristics:
- I think it's incompatible with Buddhist philosophy, in which there would be no essence to be transformed.
- It's a bit like the Polymorph spell in D&D.
- *Could* a priest transubstantiate a Pop Tart? Your answers on the back of a postcard.
Gakked from rjanderson_blog: a famous atheist has now become a famous deist. Horribly this appears to be because of his shaky grip on biological science. I was gloating about this until I realised I have my own suspicions about the apparent fine-tuning of the universe's physics to permit Life As We Know It. If you don't understand how genes and evolution and things work, then of course they look miraculous and clever, but when you know a few things about them they look rather the opposite - clumsy, bungling, wasteful, cruel, short-sighted, desperately improvisational. We don't know how universes come about, so I could be suffering from the same illusion. What could be more wasteful, cruel, and short-sighted than a flat universe?
- I think it's incompatible with Buddhist philosophy, in which there would be no essence to be transformed.
- It's a bit like the Polymorph spell in D&D.
- *Could* a priest transubstantiate a Pop Tart? Your answers on the back of a postcard.
Gakked from rjanderson_blog: a famous atheist has now become a famous deist. Horribly this appears to be because of his shaky grip on biological science. I was gloating about this until I realised I have my own suspicions about the apparent fine-tuning of the universe's physics to permit Life As We Know It. If you don't understand how genes and evolution and things work, then of course they look miraculous and clever, but when you know a few things about them they look rather the opposite - clumsy, bungling, wasteful, cruel, short-sighted, desperately improvisational. We don't know how universes come about, so I could be suffering from the same illusion. What could be more wasteful, cruel, and short-sighted than a flat universe?