I’m grateful you put me onto this. I have heard of Taoism, and have a quite thin paperback in my bookshelf, but haven’t read it yet. Spinoza seems like a fascinating character.
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Yeah, I think you’ll like his writings. 
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“Order is good. Chaos is bad. That’s about it for rules. Otherwise there are no rules,“
So order is good chaos is bad but they can’t be the other way around right or wrong? I mean you said other than that so for sure Oder is always good and chaos is always bad… right?
Nature thrives on a certain level of randomness. Without the “chaos” of genetic mutations, species wouldn’t adapt to changing environment…. But chaos is always bad right? So adaptation for evolutionary advancement is bad right? Or am I getting this wrong?
In an organization, order manifests as “the way we’ve always done it.” When rules become more important than the goal, the system becomes a Bureaucratic Black Hole… but order is always good right ?… just want to make sure I have this right… or maybe that I have this wrong… or maybe right but wrong but also right but also wrong…. Can you help me understand the rules? I’m all for it but I think my ignorant brain that doesn’t know anything is having a hard time trying to figure it out….and I’m also confused at how you have rules but no rules… if you can explain this to me I think I’d get it ..
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Hello.
I think like me you sometimes ramble discursively (to rectify that l boomerang back to a recapitulation of key points). It sometimes seemed like you were also holding your cosmology together with chewing gum, l mean fashionable modern ideas.
Some specific feedback:
- The scientific process you say sometimes fills holes with chewing gum. I don’t believe so, l think it’s always open-ended, impartial, ego-less (unlike internet forums).
- You believe in an infinite universe. I’m wondering what your reasoning is? How come Cosmic Microwave Background exists? Why aren’t there white dwarf stars everywhere, they are the endpoint of the average stellar lifecycle.
- You believe there’s something even older than God, but it doesn’t really exist. You will leave the audience to figure it out. I feel even if true, it’s wrong to put it like that. There’s no basis tendered for what you’ve said. I know you’re laying down an entire cosmology within one post, so there’s going to be some brevity but you offhandedly say there’s something older than God, and it doesn’t even exist. And give no reasoning? If you need to reason anything, it’s this, surely? No matter, you’ve put God and this older thing that seemingly defaults to being God too, all under a Time axis, so these are just a series of babushka / matryoshka dolls, or rather a series of really strong guys. This is materialism - matter is under time, you put God under a time axis. When it collides with theism in my scheme the result is Deism. Ive researched recently and found that Deism is more about an aloof unconcerned god like Cromm Cruiach (per Conan the Barbarian, but maybe also the original Celtic deity too), one which doesn’t get into this world much at all and it’s best not to disturb him lest you rouse his ire. My interpretation of Deism though, is a physical deity within the world, because in that Cromm Cruiach defintion, it’s a deity with a body, a surface, therefore a finite deity, a really big guy. A god you can physically touch, who doesn’t get much done. Which paves the way for the human god-kings that used to do the rounds in the ancient world. They wouldn’t deign to make waves recede at high tide or make it rain, because it was beneath dignity for them … but really, they just couldn’t do such supernatural feats. SO .. in a roundabout way, Deism is god in the machine, a materialistic deity, the deity of Christology, the deity of modern Judaism and modern Xtianity one way or another (modern rabbinic Judaism has him outside of the world, aloof, Xtianity has him sent an avatar down at least, but he was never fully god, you know?). It is also the religion of the pagan Arabs, who believed in Allah but rejected resurrection and would never worship Allah directly or alone, they’d use intercessors, because to them, Allah became a really big guy pushed way out there, outside this world … and so the idol intercessors were needed as intermediaries. For a small fee to their pagan tribal chiefs l guess?
- Coupled with your saying the universe is infinite, and seemingly saying the universe is All, then l’d say you’ve opted for materialism enshrined, and your route was popular modern culture, modern fashions. Modern spiritual trends have no golden chain from God via a prophet, they are human inventions and inherently fallible and often on wild, on shaky ground.
- You say the prophets (peace be upon them) could understand their own souls and hence the nature of the universe. This is an unqualified statement which really needs explaining, though l think you mean, the soul is a fragment of true reality, which is something l’ve concluded too. Further, you seem to imply the prophets got there by themselves. That’s very New Age and fraught, we can’t become divine intermediaries by our own steam. We can’t know the Unseen (the mind of God), he makes it known to people especially prophets.
- You say the prophets speaking to others = speaking more or less to themselves and the truth is undeniable. This needs qualification. I suspect you mean the reality that all souls have a common origin?
- You then say you don’t much adhere to good and evil. You call them subjective. This amorality is pop culture. The trap of amorality is that it isn’t aloofness really. Once you remove the objective criterion of good and evil, you are left with evil, and that’s why “amoral” actually means “immoral”, not merely moral-agnostic / neutral.
- You say there are two major forces in the universe - order and chaos. This seems to be pop culture again, like the popular form of Hermeticism in modern spirituality, i.e. Thelema, Wicca and so forth. On the other hand you could be right. However, l think evenso, they would not be opposing forces in the sense you mean, because: if there were only order, we would all be Platonic archetypes, right? So, what would be the test of life if we are all perfect and sinless? In fact my religion, Islam, teaches that if we did not sin and repent, God would replace us with a creation that did:
Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) having said:
By Him in Whose Hand is my life, if you were not to commit sin, Allah would sweep you out of existence and He would replace (you by) those people who would commit sin and seek forgiveness from Allah, and He would have pardoned them.
|Reference|: Sahih Muslim 2749
So, the whole point is the commotion through which the Theophany manifests.
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You say wonder and the soul are essentially the same thing. This is really insightful! I’ve always thought multiple similar things (e.g. soul = pure existence, a fragment of God’s pure blissful existence which is infinite actual; also from a Shi’i hadith l learned, though l’m Sunni, that the human intellect is the most beloved thing to God) but l like the way you just wrapped it up in one line.
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You say you avoid chaos where possible. My friend, you cannot avoid chaos, even when you think you have. It is right down to the quantum level. You are chaos as much as order. Also, when a computer generates a melody, or even when you write one, it’s always nice to add some swing, some chaos, rather than perfectly placing the notes in a flat sequence and having little melodic variation too.
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Bemused rejection of heaven and hell at least their imagery per standard religions: This is how the pagan Arabs did their Deism - they rejected resurrection, and l think more or less modern Judaism rejects it too and l think Xtianity has heaven on earth? I’m unsure if l got that right.
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You say the hammer of truth hits us a single time presumably when we die, shattering the illusion of this world. It reminds me of this hadith:
"… As for the unbeliever or hypocrite, he says: I do not know, as I only said what people said! It will be said: You did not know, nor did you recite! Then he will be struck between his two ears with an iron hammer and he will cry out such that whoever is near him will hear it except humans and jinn.”
Source: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1338, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 2870
- You say we need to do payback, probably 100% - This seems to contradict your earlier amoral (moral-agnostic) stance, but l guess you can still believe good is subjective, whilst saying bad needs to be paid back 100%. I like that view, I think it shows a great sense of responsibility. However, l think forgiveness is a thing. In my beliefs, God may forgive any sin except associating others with him i.e. polytheism or perhaps, l don’t know, habitually treating his creation as equal in authority to him? Apart from that, l think you need to be open to the prospect of being forgiven. You seem at times overly lax (re: the pop sci inclinations l’ve inferred) and at times overly strict (re: the despair to be forgiven).
- You then say some stuff l don’t rightly understand about untangling. My faith teaches that once you die there are no more deeds to be done.
- You then say about God experiencing the universe, l presume you mean experiencing via the universe or perhaps you mean God is inside the universe but can’t feel it properly, hence we were made. It seems very moden (Alan Watts, Carl Sagan). Compare with the Islamic hadith quddsi: “I was a hidden treasure; I loved to be known. Hence I created the world so that I would be known”
God bless!
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Something interesting that came up:
Qur’am 4:1: “O humanity! Be mindful of your Lord Who created you from a single soul …”
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I am going to reply to the points raised here, just need time for it. I wasn’t expecting this of all the stuff I’ve posted to attract interest TBH.
..And I would have got away with it, if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids!
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For my part, l’m stealing this from you 
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No, absolutely not. Order is impossible without chaos, the two are intrinsically entwined and feed and affect each other constantly.
No, you are absolutely right. Without chaos there is no mutation, or resulting permutation. Everything is running as fast as it can, to stay in the same place.
I don’t consider that to be representative of either order or chaos, at least in their natural form. Those are human paradigms, interpretations of order which are entirely devised and have little to nothing to do with the actual natural order of things
In my original post, I was not looking at order and chaos at the same micro level as you have implied. From an entirely natural interpretation, I am a creature of order. I live in an orderly environment, on an orderly planet in an orderly system, in an orderly galaxy. Having a deep aversion to chaos on a grander scale: i.e. floods, volcanoes, tsunamis, climate change, asteroid impact, etc. is inherent in my genetic makeup. Of course those events are entirely natural, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like them.
Where I get most upset, is when human beings, not satisfied with the number of natural chaotic events that they are subject to, decide to create even more. That’s why I believe we are not a very intelligent species, by any reckoning. We have only been on this planet for five minutes, and already we are trying to consume and destroy as much as we can, and point weapons of mass destruction at ourselves in the name of politics.
So given that, the type of chaos you describe is of course completely valid and natural, and nothing could possibly exist without it. But its the unnecessary chaos that I have a problem with.
It looks unnecessary…. Until you look closer…. We think “god damn if only we were more intelligent..” but what would that get you? It’s just like saying “god damn if there were only Less war..” what do you get out of war?…. You get something awful….. and you get something acceptable…. Or let me say it a different way… you get something good and you get something bad…. Don’t you?….. aversion is the mind’s desire for comfort… but how would know comfort if you didn’t know discomfort? So without bad you would not have good… without ignorance you would not have intelligents…. Without the light there is only dark without dark there is only light…. I don’t know about you but sleeping in the dark Beats sleeping in the light…. I feel much more “whole” when I regain the ability to be consciously aware. The micro level and the macro level are no different only observed at a larger or smaller scale….
Re: gratitude for randomness of genetic mutations - l think people’s cancer cells can be grateful for that, but as for evolution, it doesn’t occur, at least not as evolution is currently understood - I’ve debunked it in this thread Evolution is Actually Disproved (even though God & Atheism are Unfalsifiable)
- though there’s a new controversy l may need to cover one day, about Nylonase but suffice to say: a mutated form of nylonase enzyme in bacteria found in a sludge pool by some factory, isn’t actually a new enzyme, the parent enzyme was also an eater of nylon. The “new” form probably already existed as part of a bell curve of forms narrowed down and amplified by the harsh environment (pool of waste). As such it is a crack baby - nobody considers the amount of crack a newborn can ingest when born to a crackhead mom, to be an advancement, nor even a novel human being.
TL;DR version: evolution is a losing ticket, pop sci at its worst - avoid
Re: randomness in order, as you know from previous replies, you cannot escape randomness (quantum world). I forgot to point out though, that even the must fundamental aspect of reality - mathematics - is entwined with, and perhaps even arises from, randomness: i.e. the Prime Number sequence. At least, it seems random so far, though patterns are observed. they aren’t wholly predictable. When you consider 1 to be the first prime number, then all reality is based on randomness surely? Especially if you also consider 2 to be a prime.
Chaos and randomness are not the same thing. It must be true, because AI told me so..
But joking aside we should be careful not to conflate the two:
No, randomness and chaos are not the same thing.
Chaos refers to deterministic systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. While the system follows precise, predictable rules, even tiny differences in starting points lead to vastly different outcomes over time, making long-term prediction impossible. For example, the motion of a double pendulum is chaotic: it’s governed by physical laws, but its behavior becomes unpredictable quickly.
Randomness, on the other hand, implies a lack of pattern or predictability, often due to inherent uncertainty or incomplete information. Random events, like a fair coin toss, are not determined by initial conditions—they are fundamentally unpredictable, even in principle.
Key differences:
Chaos is deterministic: Given perfect knowledge of initial conditions, the future state can be predicted exactly.
Randomness is non-deterministic: Even with perfect information, the outcome cannot be predicted.
Chaos appears random but stems from sensitivity to initial conditions; randomness has no such underlying order.
In short, chaotic systems can look random, but they are not truly random—they are just extremely sensitive and unpredictable in practice due to measurement limits.
Sure they are not the same thing but is it not true you find one in the other and the same in reverse?think about what an ordered system looks like to someone who has no sense of order… what do you think they would say? Take music for instance…. What do you think a piece of sheet music looks like to someone who doesn’t know how to read it ? The same as a piece of paper with words on it to someone who has no understanding of how to read them… chaos is not external of the mind but it in many ways is perceived that way. Just like reality…. Your version is probably very orderly to mine lol
Let me state the obvious: chaos derives from randomness. I’m tempted to say chaos is aesthetic, whereas randomness is numeric, but entropy (chaos) is actually based on math.
Still, there is no chaos without randomness. Perceived randomness.
To be fair, even the prime number sequence might actually have a formula. We can’t be sure if randomness truly exists.
Even if it exists, is it the mind of God? As such, it would be the nexus of Order then! This is what we in my faith call “Al Ghayb” i.e. the Unseen i.e. the Mind of God, we are forbidden from discussing it (at least where it becomes pure conjecture).
Also recall: Would you rather flatten a jazz piece into strict order? That would sound dull.
ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ
For every action.. smart guy that Newton.
You would have to have a definition of god and mind…. I have neither
Buddha said the same thing in a different way…. Was around a little before the newton fellow.. but humans understood cause and effect way earlier than that even
“2026 study published in
Science Advancesfound 60,000-year-old quartz arrowheads in South Africa’s Umhlatuzana Rock Shelter, containing traces of poison from theBoophone distichaplant. This discovery is the oldest direct evidence of poisoned weapon use, predating previous findings by tens of thousands of years, and highlights that earlyHomo sapienspossessed advanced cognitive abilities, including an understanding of complex cause-and-effect, planning, and long-term memory regarding plant properties. ” -per the google
Yeah but newton distilled it into something like this:
F=m1⋅V1–m0⋅V0t1–t0
Which is all gobbledegook to me, but apparently the boffins agree on it.
experience is the key…. True knowledge is that which gives rise to wisdom… that damn Apple lol.. mathematics is a wonderful language…. That is its limitation… not to say it is the only One… they all have this in common…”I guess you had to be there.”