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this is the kind of thing that leads me more and more to the conclusion that the scriptwriter for this show is a hack of the lowest caliber, doesn't even care any more and is probably a habitual drunkard.

There does seem to be a lot of evidence for this hypothesis. In fact, there's already a religion around the idea. "But do not reject these teachings as false because I am crazy. The reason that I am crazy is because they are true. "

God is a crazy woman.
http://www.principiadiscordia....

These chuckleheads deserve to be flooded by demands to "teach the controversy" of Time Cube, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Discordianism, Gorean philosophy, Ebolism, and even Baneposting. How dare anyone make a value judgement that contradicts anyone else's? Feels, not facts!

:D looks to me like their work is still ongoing, in the form of the 1% and the illuminati

Of course Eris is the only correct name they could have choosen. All Hail Eris!
Go read the Principia Discordia http://www.principiadiscordia....

This religion started out as a joke, and remains a joke. (Thank Goddess.)

To which goddess are we to pay thanks?

This religion started out as a joke, and remains a joke. (Thank Goddess.)

It is incredible how much americans will put up with(I am thinking about the barrage of commercial breaks also).

I love all these comments that equate to, "Well, you Americans should just stop doing that. Duh!" It's not like there's an entrenched multibillion-dollar industry dedicated to preventing that exact eventuality or anything.

One day Mal-2 asked the messenger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?

"O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!"

WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON'T SOUND WELL.

"I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe."

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

"But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it."

OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.

http://principiadiscordia.com/...

There was once a young Discordian called Golden Rod. Early in his illumination, he wondered what season his country was in.

Perhaps it was in the season of Discord, on the cusp of Bureaucracy. Surely, Order was rising to noxious levels.

Or perhaps it was already Bureaucracy, on the cusp of Aftermath. Surely, Disorder was rising to obnoxious levels.

So in his quest for An Answer, Golden Rod sought out the Discordian monk Nopants. Nopants dwelled in a basement because it would be obscene for him to go outside. Golden Rod freed himself from his leggings and descended the stairs. Below, Nopants sat on a cushion in a gross lotus position.

"My wise friend Nopants, I have come to ask you a question,” said Golden Rod, “What is Bureaucracy?"

“In India,” said Nopants, “they tie elephants to trees using thin cords. An elephant could easily snap the cord, yet they remain tethered in place. Why do you think this is?”

Golden Rod itched himself and shrugged.

“When the elephant is young,” intoned Nopants, “she is too weak to break the cord. She tries, but eventually she gives up. When the elephant grows up, she does not try to escape her puny bonds because she believes she will fail.”

“So the cord isn’t the thing keeping the elephant in place,” said Golden Rod. He squinted at Nopants, “That’s very interesting, but what does that have to do with Bureaucracy?”

“Bureaucracy,” said Nopants, “is waiting for a red traffic light in the middle of the night when no one is coming.”

Across space and time, a gong sounded.

Golden Rod left the basement and returned to the real world, thoroughly confused. As he drove home, he ran five red lights. His mirth rose with each light. By the end of the voyage he was giggling like a ninny at his newfound freedom.

Years went by and Golden Rod continued drive towards Aftermath. He ignored stop signs, blew through red lights, and opened his moon roof despite danger of falling rocks.

“Sweet Merciful Ass!” cried out Bung-Fu the Fool as he clawed at the dashboard. “You’re gonna get us both killed!”

“Nonsense! I am self-emancipated from these mundane traffic laws,” cackled Golden Rod. “I am a harbinger of Aftermath!”

“Do you always drive like this?” said Bung-Fu as he buckled his seat belt.

Golden Rod nodded. "Always."

Meanwhile, the monk Nopants was wheeling his gong across the street towards his basement. He patiently waited for the light to turn red, then pushed the ponderous percussive instrument upon the pavement.

The collision made the exact sound of enlightenment.

http://www.principiadiscordia....

This is what everyone wants, man. As the Principia Discordia points out, if it wasn't, we'd stop.

Heh...

Get your Discordia from the real source: http://www.principiadiscordia.com/ or in hardcover from From the same publisher of the diluted version you referred to

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land,
Man got to tell himself he understand.

It's not only insightful, it's also got a good beat that you can dance to.

Principia Discordia.

Disorganized religion. There you go. Read it now, thank me later fnord.

We can all be either disgusting drooling snotty ape like creatures, or divine beings.

It's not an exclusive or. We are drooling (sometimes) snotty (sometimes) ape like creatures. And since we create gods, we are also divine beings.

You just have to learn to swallow the dilemma.

(Fortunately, we Discordians are trained in dilemma swallowing, as well as proposition juggling, axiom throwing, rebutting on a bed of nails, and all the other arts of the sideshow philosopher.)

But then again discordianism beats the pants off of Church of the Subgenius, because it's much more fun and expandable.

1 + 1 = 2 will be true in any universe, under any god(s), in any circumstances. And all of mathematics is built up from that.

1 + 1 = 0 under the circumstances of modulo 2 arithmetic.

Any mathematical statement rests upon a set of assumptions and definitions. If you want universal truths, math is a bad place to look.

Physics is the model of the universe that we build out of mathematics. It's no more surprising that the more we look the more we see a deep connection between physics and math, than that when we look at a digital photo we see a bunch of pixels. Or that we see the connection between anything and the number 5 to be more and more manifest the harder we look.

I almost universally tend to agree that speculation about ID adds nothing to the knowledge of our own universe. Whether there is any interesting (though perhaps of no practical value, notwithstanding fruitful linguistic consequences of David Lewis's many-worlds modal realism (a distinct beast from the quantum many-worlds interpretation and cosmological multiverse theories, be careful here!)) information to be garnered from philosophical exploration of any members of the general class of things that we can never actually determine by observation and measurement of the natural world is another question outside of the scope of this discussion. (It's a lot more than just theology, if you've never checked into it; for example, one of the more interesting modern developments in ontology is Saul Kripke's lectures on the subject.)

However, humans have a natural propensity for spirituality, and it does seem to make them happy. I don't see any point in deceiving yourself about the nature of the universe by pursuing many of the popular theological fallacies currently prevailing, but certain types of panentheism are rather fun (see Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon for an introduction to lots of things outside of the modern major religions; also, many slashdotters or Douglas Adams readers would probably enjoy the Principia Discordia as reading material).

To use an arbitrary, off-the-top-of-my-head analogy (likely needing solid refinement in order to avoid easy refutation (exercise for the interested reader?)): Humans have to eat food. We could just take a handful of vitamins and supplements with a bucket of flavorless carbohydrates, proteins, fats, and fiber in the proper proportions, but I think most people find exercising their senses in the process of eating to be far more enjoyable. We don't have to deceive ourselves about what foods are detrimental to us in the process of receiving the natural enjoyment of eating, so I don't see a similar situation can't exist with spirituality (note, spirituality can be a very different thing from organized religion if one so chooses).

The tendency for humans to come up with the "I can't explain it, therefore God did it" argument time and again has many possible origins. Brain systems that evolved to do one thing often have other odd effects in situations very different from those in which they evolved (I linked to the 3rd page in that atricle, but the rest of it is also relevant and informative). There's a lot of interesting speculation among neurologists on the various direct evolutionary advantages of animism for our ancient ancestors, and we've all heard the somewhat misunderstood Karl Marx quote about religion and opium. Human culture tends to be memetic, with its own form of "DNA" for concepts and ideas. It's no surprise that the phenomenon is still so persistent, especially when people will stubbornly cling on to ideas (beyond the point of healthy promotion of short-term stability required for any idea to mature; rather, into the territory of irrational tenacity), finding curious ways to interpret reality so they don't have to re-evaluate their own beliefs nor find solutions to their own problems rather than hoping some mysterious, transcendental, benevolent thingamagod is going to fix everything for them.

[Grammar nazis: go to town! I don't feel like fixing my run-on sentences or horrible paragraph structures right now, but you're welcome to do so. *g*]

And for what it's worth, I think taking spirituality seriously to be a HUGE error.

Damn straight. The human race will begin solving it's problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously.

Fnord.

I'm going to pretend I didn't see that.

The analysis concluded that there were 4759 votes cast...Can anyone figure out what the hidden message is?

4 + 7 + 5 + 9 = 25, which of course is the square of 5. It's just the Law of Fives in action.

Remember, the harder you look, the more you will see the Law of Fives!

Our constructs have no affect on reality, but reality had better affect our constructs.

The notion of "objective reality" - that things exist outside of our observations - is a construct. A useful construct, to be sure, but a construct all the same.

Our constructs affect the observations we choose to make, and even bias the observations themselve observations (like how Millikan's results for the charge of the election biased subsequent research). By biasing our observations, our constructs affect reality-as-we-know-it. (This is how the Law of Fives works.)

And reality-as-we-know-it is the only "reality" we can meaningfully talk about: "That's the very model of what a true scientific law must always be: a statement about how the human mind relates to the cosmos. We can never make a statement about the cosmos itself -- but only about how our senses (or our instruments) detect it, and about how our codes and languages symbolize it." - Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

You should try discordianism then. It's one of only a very few religions that accepts athiests as members, and actually requires it's members to think for themselves. As presented in The Pentabarf, (which is always presented in written form) "V - A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads."

You need to read the Principia Discordia (crappy link; there are other places that have links to more resources and ideas, but that URL is, obviously, very easy to remember). Preferably, multiple times. Preferably, in paperback form. Preferably, while sober, then while intoxicated, then while sober again, and then while incredibly intoxicated just for the fun of trying.

For those who don't catch the references...
Principia Discordia (visual)... and there are many sequels, such as the apocrypha and the errata

Or rather, all axioms are opinions, we understand nothing, which is really the only defensible position.

There is a perspective from which that is true, yes. At this point, however, the Zen master slaps you in the face and says "Did you understand that, fool?"

As the Principia Discordia puts it:

All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. -- A public service clarification by the Sri Syadasti School of Spiritual Wisdom, Wilmette.

The teachings of the Sri Syadasti School of Spiritual School of Spiritual Wisdom are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense. -- Patamunzo Lingananda School of Higher Spiritual Wisdom, Skokie.

That said: when we engange in a disussion of ethical and politcal rights, we've already by convention accepted a great number of axioms about humans and their behavior - just as when we walk into a calculus class we've already accepted a great number of axioms of number theory.

He has stated quite clearly that humans have rights irrespective of whether or not society chooses to recognize those rights. There have been several societies that have not protected what are considered by many to be universal rights.

Of course. And those have been societies in which individual human beings did not thrive. The requirements for thriving, the "natural rights", the "Tao of human beings", does not change. The degree to which institutionalized social norms - "laws" - recognize and fulfil those requirements, clearly vary.

It's true that when people speak of "natural rights", they often get tangled up in notions of supernatualism or somesuch and don't clearly see the nature of these rights. That doesn't mean the concept isn't valid.

To return again to a mathematical analogy, Newton used to idea of limits to develop calculus, even though that idea was not yet on soundly proven and defined mathematical footing. Calculus wasn't put on a truly rigorous basis until the 19th century. Yet is was a useful concept for all those years in between.

Similarly, while the idea of "natural rights" was a first not on a rigorous footing, the idea is still valuable and useful, and work continues to put it on a firmer foundation.

Hey, I never said your shouldn't do your own "miniscule" part based on your values. If you think a resource might be exhausted, use less of it, or buy calls on the futures, or whatever you see as appropriate for your personal behavior. Deciding on that action shouldn't take much mental effort once your conclusion that a problem exists has been reached, and you can move on. Actually *worrying* about it is unhealthy and unhelpful and doesn't make you a more responsible citizen. It just makes you worried.

We've been using oil for 40 years because it's better than coal. No one was bamboozled into dependency on cars, people just like them - cars grant freedom. A 10-20% supply hiccough would cause shortages, no doubt. But we somehow survived this the last time it happened with nothing worse than gas lines (do you remember the Carter years?). And prior to that we survived gas rationing durring WWII with minimal social disruption because there was a real and genuine shortage (not a *potential* problem), so everyone helped out. Sure, we can't replace fossil fuels this year, but we don't need to this year. We could pretty easily switch to all nuclear power in 20 years if it became cheaper and easier than oil, however (and we could switch much sooner if anyone solves the problem of storing hydrogen densely, as building a larger electrical power distribution network is the largest hurdle in moving away from fossil fuels).

And that is on top of record levels of personal and national debt

Are you talking about in the US? Didn't you say you live in Soviet Canuckistan? Are you really worrying now over the levels of national debt of *another* nation? You can't even have a miniscule effect on that one!

Don't turn your brain off, turn it to things which you can affect. I suspect the truth here is that your sense of self worth is tied up in "believing the Right Things, not like those idiots", instead of in doing useful and productive things. If you're an engineer like many of the grown-ups on slashdot, go design some product that people want or need, or that will protect them from disaster. That's worthwhile. (And if you're a kid, go become an engineer - we need more people who add value to society!)

I leave you with this parable. It was written about a worried man in a time of trouble from a different century, but is nevertheless appropriate here. http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/12.php

1. Chaos
2. Discord
3. Confusion
4. Bureaucracy
5. The Aftermath

God, there's a shining example of the law of fives if I ever saw one.

You know, the more and the harder I look, the more I see the truth of the Law of Fives... :-)

Not to mention the 17-23 connection...

Oi!
I'm a religious fanatic, and damn happy with my role in life.

Worship Eris, Goddess of Chaos and Confusion!

Any effort, gesture, event, etc is meaningful at some levels of abstraction but not others. Once you accept and wrap your mind around that, and understand that there are levels of abstraction on which our conciousness is not only meaningless but does not exist it becomes easier to move beyond philosophy to practical reality.

I wouldn't use the term "levels of abstraction", as it misleadingly suggests a hierarchical one-dimensional relationship. But yes, there are points of view or perspectives in which consciousness is meaningless or non-existant.

As the Discordians put it, "All statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense."

This is not a realization to "move beyond", it is the foundation of liberation. Though yes, another part of liberation is not getting stuck there, getting back to "chopping wood and carrying water". (So the Zen master should come hit me with his stick right about now, eh? :-) )

At the levels of abstraction where it is meaningful, focus is not subjective. Focus IS a chemical state.

If focus is not subjective, not an experience that you are having, why do you care about it? Are you just making your brain chemistry fit a certain pattern as a party trick to show your friends?

Somewhere in there is presumably a subjective experience you're trying to alter. Whether you call that "focus" or "recognition of focus" or "recognition of recognition of focus" doesn't much matter. Though when most of us say "I'm focused on this" we're refering to our subjective mental state, not looking at EEG output, so I have to say your semantics are rather odd.

I'm reminded of a Raymond Smullyan piece, An Epistemological Nightmare, where an "experimental epistemologist" is unable to state his own beliefs without checking his brain-reading machine...

Actually, hot dog buns are forbidden on every day of the week.

Today is beer day
Tomorrow is 1's day
and Saturday is Mojoday.

Maybe we can invite those 1 million zombies to the shindig. Yow!

In the real world, statements are either true or false;

Depends on what you mean by "real world". The "real world" of experience is subjective, and statements about it can be simultaneously true, false, true and false, meaningless, true and meaningless, false and meaningless, and true and false and meaningless.

The "real world" of "objective reality" is consenus-based, and that consensus has been known to change. Any statement about the "objective" universe more detailed than "the universe is doing what the universe is doing" is an approximation, a statement about our model(s) of the universe.

Consult your local Zen master for further enlightenment. Or your pineal gland, whatever.

Page 34 of the Principia Discordia.

Page 34 of the Principia Discordia.

Maybe this would help in this terrible situation fnord.

You'll get a quadratic with the solutions (1 +/- sqrt(5))/2, or 1.618... and -0.618...

Phi is the arithmetic mean of 1 and the square root of five. Discordians should consider the significance of this...

If mathematics are not universal, then the mathematical reasoning that can be conducted to deduce the laws of nature is also not universal.

You're assuming a relationship between mathematics and the "laws of nature" that isn't there. As Einstein put it, As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

Mathematics is as socially constructed as any other form of language. It is based on axioms and defintions, not observation of reality. We select those axioms and definitions in a way to be useful to us, just as we select for those lingustic constructs that are useful. But this selection is based on our desire to communicate with others - it is a social construct. Once upon a time if you asked mathematicians what nubmer, when squared, gave negative one, they'd say there was no such number; now, any bright middle school kids know it's i.

"Reality" is also to a large degree socially constructed, since all can ever speak of is our observations, which are socially conditioned. You see what you expect to see or are trained to see. (You don't see the fnords, or Sombody Else's Problem, while the hypothetical planet Vulcan (the one inside the orbit of Mercury, not Mr. Spock's home) was observed several times, as were Blondlot's N-rays.) This is why double-blind protocols are used - though if everyone involved has an expectation, that doesn't help.

What we think of as "reality" is just a model that we mostly share. The electron, for example, is not a component of human experience but a component of a model that unifies and predicts many observations. That is a very good and useful model, but it is entirely conceivable that some extra-terrestrial civilization has (or some future human civilization will have) a model that is just as useful but doesn't contain anything like electrons. (Just like Chinese Medicine has a "patterne-thinking" model of the human being that is radically different than and incompatible with the reductionist model, yet is extremely useful.) What would such an electron-free model look like? I can't tell you, I'm too conditioned by the electron model.

Remember: for any set of observations, there are an infinite number of hypothesis to fit them. There's no end to the curves you can plot through any finite set of data points. We see the points and call them a line, but it ain't necessarily so. The best we can do is eliminate lines that don't go anywhere near the points.

Eris loves your idea !

Illuminatus! Trilogy
Shroedinger's Cat Trilogy
Masks of the Illuminati

This is a trilogy of sorts that includes trilogies for the first 2 books of the trilogy. Great reading though, very stimulating, funny, and you'll probably learn something.

The Principia Discordia is a fun read too, and available online. Better to check it out as a book and randomly flip through it though.

You can always rely on the Official Discordian Super Sercret Cryptographic Cypher Code, from the Principia Discordia:

DISCORDIAN SOCIETY SUPER SECRET CRYPTOGRAPHIC CYPHER CODE,

Of possible interest to all Discordians, this information is herewith released from the vaults of A.I.S.B., under the auspices of Episkopos Dr. Mordecai Malignatius, KNS.

SAMPLE MESSAGE: ("HAIL ERIS")

CONVERSION:
[Simple letter-to number conversion: A=1, B=2, etc.]

STEP 1. Write out the message (HAIL ERIS) and put all the vowels at the end (HLRSAIEI)

STEP 2. Reverse order (IEIASRLH)

STEP 3. Convert to numbers (9-5-9-1-19-18-12-8)

STEP 4. Put into numerical order (1-5-8-9-9-12-18-19)

STEP 5. Convert back to letters (AEHIILRS)

This cryptographic cypher code is GUARANTEED TO BE 100% UNBREAKABLE.

BEWARE! THE PARANOIDS ARE WATCHING YOU!

It would be like taking all your bills, letters, homework assignments (or real work), picturers, porn, etc and threw them into a big pile on your desk.

You say that like it's a bad thing...

Filing it all under "miscellaneous" not only saves time, it's a religious devotion to the One True Goddess.