Quantum metaphysics

October 16, 2015 • 1:00 pm

Reader Pliny the in Between is on a roll lately at the Evolving Perspectives site; here’s the artist’s satirical take on the Templeton World Charity Foundation’s big initiative to study the metaphysics of the Trinity. The cartoon’s title is “Much physics was sacrificed in the making of this panel.” (Click to enlarge.)

Toon Background.001

 

50 thoughts on “Quantum metaphysics”

  1. Glad we’re now sacrificing physics rather than Bothans. Those Bothans are getting hard to find these days, and I think CITES is putting pressure on the trade….

    b&

  2. The poor Holy Ghost, always gets short shrift in the Trinity discussion. It needs a better PR agent.

    1. Yeah the Christian deiton is characterized by something more like color than spin up/down; you gotta have all three to be stable.

      1. The HG is normally weakly interacting. A single claimed fecund interaction with a ME virgin has not been reproduced despite 2000 years of additional observation.

        Interactions with clouds of manic penticostals are probably attributable to a very different particle, the Wackoan.

    3. Could be that, even in quantum metaphysics, personality counts. And Scripture doesn’t give the Ghost much in the way of personality — a tongue of flame here, an implied artificial insemination there, the fleeting glimpse of a dove somewhere else — or, heck, even a clearly defined gender. In the metaphysical standard model, the HG seems to play boson to the Father & the Son’s fermions.

  4. The Deitons are excited states of the agnostinos. The agnostinos are super clever particles that split into two every time humans build a better microscope. Never to be observed but forever to be postulated.

    1. You do realize, do you not, that we’re going to have to subject you to the Comfy Chair you if you persist in preaching such heresy? Why…if others learn of what you’re suggesting, it could lead to schism, with you usurping all our authority, and we can’t have that now, can we?

      b&

  8. This is the most asinine bullshit I’ve ever seen!

    (Just thought I’d go ahead and spare someone the trouble.)

    1. In the old days, we would write:

      Woo^H^H^HMetaphysics,

      but it’s harder and harder to find someone that understands what that means.

      2. …even fewer who would recognize that ctrl-W would have done the same but with many fewer keystrokes.

        Curiously enough, for whatever reason, I don’t use that when editing in vi. Muscle memory has me exiting insert mode and doing things that way.

        b&

        1. It’s not just a vi thing, it’s most user-interfaces that interpret ASCII, since ^H is the backspace character. You generally only see the “^H” displayed on TTYs or terminals that provide their own echo. ^W doesn’t have any particular control function in the ASCII character set, as far as I know.

          1. ^W is ASCII ETB (0x17), “End Transmission Block,” and has been used in the Unix world since forever to delete the previous word.

            b&

          2. Looks like a Unix idiosyncrasy. Doesn’t seem to work elsewhere. ^H should work with anything that uses ASCII.

      1. There are print-on-demand services for tee-shirts. Whether Pliny-medio is signed up for one, I don’t know.

  11. I’ve just realised that it’s really easy for nonbelievers to poke fun at believers but not for believers to poke fun at nonbelievers. Do we just have more fun, or what’s the story here?

    1. It’ s very easy to see how ridiculous this nonsense is. But theists, especially Christians, can’t admit it without destroying their self-worth so they have to treat the idea of the trinity with deadly seriousness. This tends to blind them to a lot of humor.

      1. On CBC radio the other day,I heard a comedian, do a routine about how he doesn’t have to write any material because funny situations and statements emanating from stupid people just keep occurring all around him or involving him, and he just recounts the stories.

    2. Believers violate their own standards of evidence and reasoning when accepting religious beliefs. When we make fun of them, we’re merely confronting them with this fact. What can they say, but tell us how rude we are?

      1. That’s certainly true. Consider, as a random example, Mitt Romney. He was nothing if not a hardnosed businessman. Imagine his reaction had someone brought to Bain Capital a proposed investment that was as inherently implausible, and as completely unsupported by credible evidence, as the LDS church’s stories about the golden plates, or magic underwear, or the lost Native American tribe of Israel. He would certainly have shown them his office door. Yet on the latter, he is willing to wager not simply his money, but his alleged eternal soul.

    3. What I mean is that you rarely encounter believers poking fun at nonbelievers, aside from that great cartoon from the 1800s with Darwin’s head on an ape’s body. That was clever. Maybe you just can’t ridicule what you don’t understand.

      1. There is the ongoing war of the Christian fish car decal –> Darwin walking fish –> the Truth fish eating the Darwin fish…

        1. We’ll have to see which side survives this battle for fitness — which generates novel mutations, which better adapts to its environment.

          Evolution continues apace, whether one accepts it or not.

    4. Well, if you go to the comments section of almost any WND article you can witness the tragic results when it’s attempted by the true believers. You may want to engage your caps lock shield.

  13. Hmmm…thinking a bit more…if I’m to get into the…spirit…of things…

    …I’d put the Α deiton as analogous to the quark; the Ω deiton as the electron; and the Γ deiton (that everybody’s bitching is missing from Pliny’s summary) the photon. The Α is responsible for most of the “stuff”; the Ω the outermost manifestation everything actually interacts with; and the Γ the massless force carrier that mediates everything.

    Nao I can haz sophisticationated theologidiot credz plz?

    b&

      1. We’ll hold you to that, you know!

        …of course, I’d just hand my share over to MSF, anyway…be the first time in history, I bet, that Templeton money actually did something concrete to make the world a better place….

        b&

    1. Custom T-shirt designs on the principle female character serve as easter eggs in the strip, so they vary depending on the gag in the panel. On rare occasions, such as my latest posting, the Tee design is the primary message of the panel.

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