MetaFilter posts tagged with philosophy and life

transcendental numbers rumble in the technium

kliuless — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:00:48 -0800

Extropy
How did life arise? What is information? In his recent dispatches from The Technium, Kevin Kelly would say extropy (cf. negentropy & Prigogine). [previously 1|2]

The Spark of Life

homunculus — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:38:57 -0800

Sparks of Life. "That the electric 'spark of life' figured prominently in debates over the nature of life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is well known. Less well known is the fact that prior to this period, gunpowder was often identified with the substances that were necessary to life, if not as a vitalistic spirit, then as an essential element in the animation of the body. The idea of a spark of life went back to ancient times, likening living beings to the glowing embers of a fire. In the Old Testament, for example, the wise woman of Tekoah begs for the life of her son, pleading 'they will stamp out my last live ember.' But from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this vital flame was often equated with gunpowder. There was fire in the blood: not electric, but pyrotechnic fire."

We should seek the truth without hesitation!

carsonb — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:49:07 -0800

Why do we spend so many precious hours of our lives watching films? What is it about cinema that it should occupy a place of such prominence in our lives? And why do we even need movies? It is as though we are trying to fill a gap in our lives - a void, an emptiness within ourselves. So to even begin on the path of our Truth Quest, we have to see the broader picture of how film correlates to life, and life to film. To find this higher perspective, it is helpful to look towards the other arts, as well as philosophy.
Cinema Seekers: Searching for truth in cinema and in life. Above excerpt from Dies Irae.
The site is a little overwhelming. Here's a text only version. If the Web 1.0 design doesn't bother, I recommend starting with
The Honor Roll: 400 of the World's Greatest ART Films (from a spiritual perspective), a nice way to browse the essays on particular films and/or directors.
The Cinema Seekers, Gregory and Maria, are inspired by and draw their philosophy from the wisdom of Abd-ru-shin (Oskar Ernst Bernhardt), distilled in his book In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message. They've interpreted text from the book with a two-part (so far) series From Cinema to Life.

Life

homunculus — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:40:51 -0800

The Meaning of Life. "We create life, we search for it, we manipulate and revere it. Is it possible that we haven't yet defined the term (PDF)?" [Via The Loom.]

"There has never really been any modernity, never any real progress, never any assured liberation."

Blazecock Pileon — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 23:46:18 -0800

Meditations on: the poetic and profane; on silence; death; catastrophe; Cage — and yet more strangeness and beauty from David Ralph Lichtensteiger's travels within the world of 20th C. avant garde music and postmodernism.

God's Darwin or Chance's Drawin'?

daksya — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 14:13:57 -0800

Did the discovery of evolution lead to Darwin's agnosticism, as claimed? Carl Zimmer wonders. More importantly, can evolution be reconciled with Christianity?

Consciousness

Gyan — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 11:14:43 -0800

Who are YOU?

Meaning of Life

andrew cooke — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 17:29:27 -0800

The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)

swift — Mon, 05 Nov 2001 08:16:39 -0800

The Meaning of Life and, of course, The Meaning of Life, Part II.