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Fractal of the Day
by Jim Muth
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Fractal visionaries and enthusiasts: Today's fractal is a scene deep in a star of the Mandelbrot set. I gave it no name and no rating. The render time of 41 seconds is so fast that little time advantage is to be gained by downloading the finished GIF image from the FOTD web site at: In the Sep-Oct 2005 issue of 'Skeptical Inquirer' magazine, an Atheist-leaning publication, there is an article in the form of an imaginary interview with a person who believes in an all-evil god. The article shows how illogical it would be to believe in an all-evil god, and how easily such a belief could be shown to be unfounded. The author then points out that the belief in an all-good god is just as unfounded as the belief in an evil god. It goes without saying that I agree with the author of the article. The conventional western image of God is a logical absurdity. But I do not consider myself an Atheist. Atheism is founded on the philosophy of positivism, which states that true knowledge can come only from natural phenomena as observed by the senses and verified by the empirical sciences. When I consider the unsolved and unsolvable mysteries currently facing science, I become convinced that there is far more to existence than we can detect through our very limited senses. In my opinion, both believers and Atheists are naive. It takes just as much an effort of faith to believe in nothing beyond the range of the senses as it takes to believe in a grey-haired old man whimsically distributing good and bad fortune from his mansion in the sky. The final word on the existence or description of God is far from being written. In the last installment of philosophy I had worked myself into a hole. I stated the scientific objections to the existence of subjective inner realities and commented that even if such realities did exist, they could not be scientifically verified, and could therefore not be taken seriously. It seemed as though I had debunked my own claims. But how can science deny inner realities when it uses many such inner realities in its own scientific method? Mathematics and logic are but two of the inner realities accepted and used by science. Science cannot toss all inner realities into the trash can without tossing itself as well. And there are all these pesky puzzles involving things such as worm holes and time travel. There are still great unsolved mysteries about the nature of the universe and the nature of the quantum world. One of the solutions to the quantum puzzles is the assumption that other worlds exist. The elusive theory of (almost) everything remains elusive. The last I heard, superstrings and supermembranes were raising as many new problems as they were solving, and the 'big-bang' was no longer quite as big. There are equally great mysteries about the nature of consciousness, which some people claim are beyond solution. None of these puzzles proves that the things we now consider subjective are actually another form of reality. But taken together, they are strong evidence that our current view of reality is incorrect, and lacking in some very important aspects. And there are those kooky beliefs in things like Astrology, fortune telling, ghosts -- the list of is endless. Is every last kooky belief totally wrong? I doubt it. We also have the mystics, who spend their lives in meditation, studying the inner worlds of their minds. They universally claim to be absolutely certain that the inner worlds possess a different form of reality. After a life of meditation, have mystics not even reached the point to recognize the true nature of the things they experience during their meditation? Does all that I have said prove that life has hope and a meaning that reaches beyond the physical? No, my words do not offer the hard proof which a repeatable experiment would give. No words alone could do so. But to me, the cumulative weight of evidence raises the likelihood of inner reality beyond the point of reasonable doubt. The current burst of philosophy has pretty much run its course. I doubt that anyone's world view has been changed. But I have raised some puzzling points to be considered. I'll have some final words in the next FOTD to wrap things up. The weather started to deteriorate here at Fractal Central on Wednesday. The temperature of 84F 29C was fair enough, but occasional sprinkles of rain kept the grass a bit too damp for the paws of the fractal cats. Today is starting cloudy again, with showers nearby, it could be a questionable day. For me the day looks to be rather busy, but not so busy that I will lack time for the next FOTD, which will appear in 24 hours. Until then, take care, and seek the source. Jim Muth jamth@mindspring.com jimmuth@aol.com |
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