Rico Penguin

  There is something remarkable about video games. The sheer scope of what can be done even in the simplest of senses is astounding. Frogger even presented you with a universe (however small) where you interacted with a moving environment and dealt with ever present adversity. From there it has gotten all the more complicated, with creatures and characters becoming more and more lifelike. Spore even presented an entire universe that was diverse, sure the game play was as stale as year old bread, but it was a diverse universe regardless.

  So I’ve been thinking, relatively recently, about what this plays in the understanding of creationism. Creatures in video games are alive, but they are alive just because, the creator said they are alive and thusly they are alive. There are no complex mechanics within their bodies, they are solid blocks that function just because. They are held to the ground not by gravity but instead because the creator says they are held to the ground. When they eat the food just vanishes, it doesn’t flow through a series of complex systems. The sun above shines just because, there is no complex system of physics going on in the background.

  These systems exist as they do because they were created. There is absolutely no reason to add organs, if you are creating all the laws of a universe you do not need them. There is no reason to make the sun complex, it can be just as beautiful as our own just because. Indeed the suns in Spore are stunning. Water can be gorgeous just because, trees can be there just because, and indeed all live can exist just because. It doesn’t have to degenerate, there is no necessity for cancer, and with the proper knowledge even intelligence can exist just because. It does not require an incredibly complicated interconnected system to function, it can just be. Yes sure the code can be a little complicated but even that gets ever more streamlined as the understanding of creating grows for people. There is nothing stopping us from making something ultimately incredibly and infinitely simple but time.

  To me this is the big problem with creationism. It is not to say that a creator couldn’t just be very terrible at their job, that’s true, perhaps they added in a bunch of systems because they are batshit stupid. That’s fine and I can accept that. However it could not go hand in hand with being all powerful, all knowing, or all anything. These sort of mistakes are almost below human, they are insanely complicated mechanics to pull off tricks that could be as easy as a single switch. The sun is the sun because it is the sun and it glows because it is the sun. There should be no underlying mechanics beyond that. If there is that is a very distinct example of poor coding.

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."
  –  Antoine de Saint-Exuper

  So that is my problem I think. We exist in a fantastically imperfect universe and are fantastically imperfect beings. For each reason there is a previous reason and for each of those reason their exists a previous reason. All of these are unnecessary and should really boil down to “because”. The problem is that our universe does not function on a single “because” yet we try to explain it as such outside of science. That to me shows a severe disconnect between fantasy and reality.

  To think, that sort of thought all stemming from a bout of World of Warcraft. Goes to show that gaming really is rotting my brain.

  It is often said that God sent the Devil to Hell as punishment for defying him and attempting to overthrow the kingdom of Heaven. Sure this makes absolutely no sense at all but lets just run with it and assume that it does. So with this in mind the Devil has established a very powerful trait, the Devil defies God. This fact enrages the Lord and thusly he reacts win the same manner as any Tyrant and banishes the Infidel.

  The story goes that the Devil is behind all the pain we go through. Sure Eve tricked Adam into eating the Apple but it was the Snake (Devil) that tricked her. So the idea stretches on to say that the Devil is hurting all people to get back at God for being an asshole who can’t take a little insurrection.

  I would think that there is a much easier way to get back at God. In fact an action that would be so infuriating that there would likely have to be a new even worse punishment (perhaps being made non existent). This would be not harming people, or even worse still helping them. In doing so the Devil would be defying God once again and would create a system where Heaven would be depleted of its members and the Devil would then essentially own his own Heaven. It would infuriate the one asshole he never could get a long with and it would absolve him of doing exactly what his old leader demanded.

  What I find almost incomprehensible is the idea that the Devil has not already thought this up. Considering the fact that I am merely a mortal and the Devil was originally an Angel of Heaven (the top angel wasn’t it). This leads me to ask the question of whether or not the Devil (if existent) is actually already doing this. If this is the case then it follows to ask who is causing all the pain in the world?

  What better way to get people into your following than to hurt those around you and put the blame on someone else. It is entirely possible that God, being defied by Satan again, has no other option but to hurt people in order to maintain the belief that Satan is harming folks and to perpetuate the system God originally put in place to get people into the club.

  Now this might sound preposterous however it really does fall on some pretty simple facts. These tactics have been used in Governments in Human History and it has been proven that the best way to Infuriate someone you can’t kill is to disobey them and to showcase just how powerless they actually are.

  Also doesn’t help that all of the mass murders in the Bible were perpetuated by God. Unless someone found a verse that says that the Devil was killing innocent babies, creating mass floods, and murdering hundreds of thousands of people to prove a point.

  First I’m sure there is a book with this title, its alliteration that really works well between the two words. However I am probably talking about something entirely different. Also I got a big box of magic cards yesterday and not only did I miss myth busters because of the excitement but I also forgot to update. Talk about a brain overload. At any rate.

  As I’ve stated before I tend to think that god (was) is a terrible parent. Put in basically the simplest possible parenting situation God failed terribly and theoretically it was this failure that lead to absolutely every tragedy that has ever unfolded. Hundreds of thousands of women still die every year to childbirth, that’s a single problem that can be compounded with hundreds of thousands of others that cost the lives of millions. But I’m digressing, when we look at the case of God and Parenting the introduction of the Devil comes into play.

   The serpentine form of the Devil coaxed the children like Adam and Eve into devouring the fruit of Knowledge and thus getting them nixed from the garden of Eden. Now this is a prime example of the influential powers of the devil, a being above humanity in power and knowledge (anyone wanting to disagree with that is going to need to get their Ego checked). So we go from the events that ejected the two and the punishment they (and consequently every human after them) received.

    So if in the case of two humans God could not be active enough to help hinder the actions of the devil in persuading God’s children (IE. Humans) how on Earth does anyone reasonably assume that with billions upon billions that God is anywhere near capable to deal with humanity? Especially when between the two (apparently) the Devil has had far more widespread influence. You have huge ‘false’ religions, major wars, endless civil struggles, death and disease across all edges of the world, and every form of government is rife with corruption of varying degrees. Throughout all this each Religion has thought they were the correct one and cite beings who have thought they spoke with God.

    However it is impossible to know if it was God or the Devil influencing any of these people. In fact who is to say that Two Millennia ago it was not the Devil walking the land preparing the world for a future of strife, death, and persecution because of his ‘divinity’? It seems like a wild statement, and indeed it is, but this is a wild topic. There is absolutely no way of knowing whether any event you’ve dealt with or in any way been a part of was influenced by the devil or not, without first admitting that you are more brilliant and perceptive than Angels themselves. I’m sure however that such egotism would only be welcome in one realm of the afterlife and its hardly the one that people are shooting for most times.

    If this is the case it would finally help me understand the idea of Blind Faith. What tool is more destructive than convincing people that they should follow the words of a many times translated storybook over the obvious realities of the world. Of course this also puts us in a pickle of wondering who, if anyone, is the devil. Is it me? Is it the person sitting next to you. Is it the President of France (I doubt it is any of these but I figured I’d ask)?

    We sit on a planet that is not a perfect sphere, in a Solar System we are not the center of, warmed by a huge continuous explosion that is not without blemish, and there are explanations for every previous event that is historically provable and was once thought to be the work of divine intervention. It would appear to me that as time progresses more of various texts are found to be wildly incorrect, which has always felt like a misguidance. Who would desire more to misguide you than some unexplainably selfish being of once divine nature? Other than maybe Corporations (Badumpish).

   I think such a bold statement requires a bit of introduction so without further adieu here is “Adam and Eve” for dummies. I’ll then relate it with modern day and why I feel that God was a terrible parent.

  For whatever reasons, God created man from dust (or whatever silicone based material you fancy) and then made a fancy garden. After this God created a whole bunch of animals, if it was badass and fun to be around the garden had it. However none of these animals made a good friend for Adam, not even the cute Siberian puppies . Well God decided “Hey I got a great idea!” and knocked Adam out yanking out of Adam’s body one of his ribs (It was that one that the other ribs hated). From that rib God created the smoking hot Eve and set the two out into the garden to get with the multiplying and being fruitful. Now the rules were simple. “Alright you two. You can eat absolutely ANYTHING in the garden as long as you don’t eat from the garden of Good and Evil.” The two agreed and gleefully went around having fun. Indeed they were essentially utterly innocent (read: Gullible) adults.

  Now, as you would expect, a Serpent either got into the garden or was made when God was going SimAnimals all over. That slick little bastard went up to Eve and slyly tricked her into eating from the tree of Good and Evil. Essentially the conversation went something like this: “Hey you should eat some of that fruit.” “But dad said we can’t eat from the Tree of Good and Evil.” “Well yeah I know but that isn’t the tree, its just like, a similar one.” “Oh coolio! *munches*”. At this point she chucks one over to Adam who is likewise interested. “Hey this is good fruit right?” “Yes. It’s safe.” So he gobbles it down and now the two can see evil, hate their bodies, and God pops in and kicks their asses out. Also God forces women to have painful childbirth, just to make sure the message hits home.

  So for those confused on my point lets look at a modern example. You have a child, and you tell the child to not touch boiling pots. However you likewise do not tell the child exactly what a boiling pot looks like, you just say “all other pots are fine.” Now, you have no other job besides taking care of this child, however you leave a boiling pot on the stove and you go off to do whatever you are doing.

  Now the neighbor is an asshole and he comes in and tells your young child that they should touch the boiling pot on the stove in the following manner: “Hey little Adam you should touch that shiny pot right there. Your parent said it was ok to touch pots.” “But isn’t that the boiling pot?” “Oh of course not silly. The boiling one is…ugh…over there.” To which your child yanks down the pot horrible scalding them across there entire body. Now you return to find your child scalded, would you then punish your child with child birth pains and life outside of your home, or would you punish the neighbor for fucking with your kid OR would you punish yourself for not paying attention to your only child?

  This is not to say some ridiculously negligent creator doesn’t exist. But I would argue that if a deity like this cannot take care of two people, how on Earth do millions (if not Billions) of people honestly feel that this being is able to keep up with the everyday events of their life? Freedom of thought and action has nothing to do with proper protective care. This was nothing more than negligence that, given the powers of the parent involved, seriously requires involvement of some sort of inter existence court.

  Just seems like a pretty poor case to punish all further generations for. It’s certainly been a problem I’ve had with the entire story for a while.

  It’s official I have apparently hit a point where I set off at least one persons matchbox. So I figured I’d write a post on this topic so that when they get angry and Google someday they end up here . Likewise it provides all of you with something interesting (I hope) to read. Perhaps even a bit of redundancy once again if I brought it up before.

  Theoretically since before the beginning of time (to some folks) there was an entity or perhaps entities that defied all forms of logic and decided to create something from the vast nothingness in all directions. Certainly an intro that would sell a couple of books methinks. What we are to take for granted is that something so amazingly vast, powerful, seemingly the pinnacle of all thought power and any other trait humanity finds valuable, a convenient coincidence is an entity that we, beings with noses less accurate than dogs, ears less accurate than bats, and eyes less accurate than a verifiable arcs worth of animals supposedly have good sense enough to just ‘know’ that something out there exists. However I put forth, if we can understand something as vastly powerful and infinitely old as a deity, theoretically we should be able to “in words” explain in good enough detail anything else that is lesser than such a being. For it would come to reason that absolutely anything lesser than god would be child’s play in our hands if we can indeed grasp the thought processes of something that wouldn’t even (one would surmise) belong to any realm of understanding we have, seeing as this being or beings can overwrite or at the very least create laws that all things must follow (and thusly is freakishly gifted in possible activities).

  But I would like to take it a big step down, I realize that technologically its unfair to assume that we could explain any of the trillions upon trillions of things that exist outside of our senses. Sure we can’t see almost all life on Earth with our naked eye, but hey that’s just not as important as being able to sense the greatest form of life (well technically not alive in the conventional sense since living things are bound by natural law). It just seems incredibly naive of me to think that man can overcome arguably the greatest question that the universe has to offer yet cannot break down something as simple and elementary as color.

  Indeed I would argue that until a language has the power and versatility to describe a base color, without any visual examples (like showing a blue shirt), to a person who has never seen or knows blue, that that same language is entirely incapable of describing something more complex than blue. You can say that a color is merely a frequency of light, but that does nothing to generate the same mental image of blue in others as you. It’s not to say God isn’t real (however my personal belief is pretty obvious) but I feel that it is wrong headed to think that “Yes we can understand God…that’s easy peezy. But color, now THAT’S complicated.”

  We’ll begin with a story, in (large) part inspired by Professor Markosian. At the beginning of our class on Wednesday we were presented with the following argument known as “The Argument from Conceivability.”

The Argument from Conceivability
(1) I can conceive of existing without my body.
(2) If (1), then it is possible for me to exist without my body.
(3) If it is possible for me to exist without my body, then I am not identical to my body.
(4) If I am not identical to my body, then Materialism is false.
––––––––––––––––––––––
(5) Materialism is false.

  What I failed to explain clearly was however explained perfectly by the professor. He argued that proposition 1 of the argument is flawed. We cannot conceive existing without our bodies, we just think we can. He used the following example which he dubbed “The Lois Lane Argument”. If you don’t know even vaguely who the following characters are…shame on you!

The Lois Lane Argument
(1) Lois can conceive of Superman existing without Clark Kent.
(2) If (1), then it is possible for Superman to exist without Clark Kent.
(3) If it is possible for Superman to exist without Clark Kent, then Superman is not identical to Clark Kent.
(4) If Superman is not identical to Clark Kent, then the Superman = Clark Kent theory is false.
––––––––––––––––––––––
(5) The Superman = Clark Kent theory is false.

  He followed this with a story which I’ll attempt to recreate. Say the Lois decided she in fact wanted to believe that both Clark Kent and Superman are different people, she would verify this belief with the following (somewhat morbid) idea. We are at the funeral of Clark Kent, he has been cremated and is most certainly gone. At this funeral Lois stands beside Superman looking at the Urn of Clark Kent.

  In this example she is not accomplishing the first proposition. She is not conceiving Superman existing without Clark Kent, they are one in the same, as she creates the thought she is placing Superman (who is Clark Kent) into the thought mistakenly assuming that he is a separate being. At least one person in the class argued that they could easily think of them as two different beings, which is true (they being the student) but I feel I know why.

  We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Superman and Clark Kent are a single entity. As Bill of Kill Bill said “Peter Parker was just Peter Parker before the Spider bit him. But Superman, he was always Superman, even beneath the guise of Clark Kent he is still Superman.” We know that they are the same entity and thusly with this information we can manipulate the scenario to create a situation where in fact they are different individuals.

  Lois however does not know. When she creates the scenario she is placing her Superman (who is Clark Kent) into the funeral looking at an Urn of himself. She is creating a paradox without even knowing that she has created a paradox. It is the fact that we know they are one in the same that gives us the power to separate them. Otherwise we cannot earnestly conceive it.

  Now what bothers me is the abuse of the concept of conceiving. You can indeed lie to yourself unknowingly, if you are adopted and do not know it you can earnestly believe that when you think of your biological father fighting (while using the image of your Adopted father) that it is the correct image when in fact the information you are using is false. Likewise for a while some fast food places primarily used a clay mineral for their shakes (which is why they didn’t call them milk shakes) you can imagine yourself drinking one of these and mistakenly believing it is primarily a dairy product where in fact it is a mineral based solution (the clay held its shape at room temperature much longer than a diary medium). We create illusions in our own fantasies because the information we are using is incorrect from the beginning.

  To clarify I have a strong belief that I will lay upon you all. I feel that ALL knowledge is either the product of your outside world or the product of previous information gathered from your outside world. Everything you know is manufactured from either outside stimulus or the stored information of previous outside stimulus. Likewise information carried over in your genes was stored there from your parents who either gathered there information from the outside world or from their parents genes caring it over and continuing on. It’s a constant pattern and is the entire reason we advance with our understanding of the world. We are literally building our understanding of the universe on top of previous understandings that we have about the universe. I think if you take a moment to think about it it’s pretty easy to see where I come to that bold conclusion. A Biologist can explain the transfer of base information across DNA far far far better than I can so ask them to clarify and not me.

  I am reminded of a story, that either I made up or heard from someone (I can’t tell these days too many stories), regardless of its source it still works pretty well. There is a man who walks upon the beach and see’s the corpse of a horse very near the dismembered horn of a narwhale. So close in fact that it looks as if the horn itself has fallen off of the very horse that lies there dead. The horse itself is in beautiful condition and seems to have fallen from (the conception) of heaven itself. This man happens to be a wonderful artist and goes home to draw what he felt had died upon that beach. He has know previous knowledge of narwhales, and thusly a magnificent new creature is born.

Painting by: Andy Mack 

  This man has indeed to the best of his abilities conceived of a horse with a horn using information he perceives to be true. He saw a fallen horse very near the horn that had no apparent source other than the horse. However he indeed wrong about what he is imagining. The imaginative figure is not ‘wrong’ just like there are no honest stupid questions, but in relation to reality it is indeed wrong. He thinks what he is imagining is what he saw dead upon that beach, he is entirely correct in thinking what he believes is true, he is however wrong in the fact that it is true. Much like Lois is wrong in believing that figure she is projecting in her thoughts is a figure that is separate of Superman. We however know that in both these situations what the reality is, thusly we can actually create a conception that is real.

  I may or may not have confused more people than I helped with that last example but at the very least I got to show a picture of a unicorn. So on with the discussion.

  There is one thing that is generally missing from conceived notions that are unintentional fallacies and that is specificity. Now forgive me if I use the word incorrectly but I feel that people will understand my meaning regardless (vernacular is amazing in that incorrectly using a word can still convey the same message as using the correct word for the message). I believe on surface glance that I can create images of amazingly vivid quality, in fact in my mind I can see dragons battling humans in this epic war with flames and death and maybe cheesecake. However once I attempt to get specifics, to look at that image and really scrutinize it, I find pieces fading. When I attempt to really honestly see that dragon’s face it starts to become a blur. Pieces fall off to accommodate more acuity. I believe this in part is the issue many people overlook when they think they can conceive something.

  Which leads us back to the original example. The idea is that someone can tell you a story about leaving your body, going to heaven, seeing the pearly gates, and meeting the gate keeper. If you can ‘perceive’ this then it is obviously possible, because we cannot perceive the impossible (by definition I’m sure). The idea being that if it is possible then Materialism cannot exist because Materialism says strictly that it is in no way possible.

  However in this situation you are not perceiving heaven, nor are you perceiving the experience of life after death. You are perceiving (I’ll start saying imagining cause its a quicker word for typing) a single concept of such. You are looking at an idea, not an actual thing. We can say that we can imagine an unstoppable force and an immovable object in the same existence, however in actuality these two things must be mutually exclusive. Because the results of their contact is incomprehensible…or more simply…unimaginable. However if we remain as vague as we possible can we can give the illusion of imagining. Which is a popular tactic in the metaphysics course I’m taking.

  It is the moment that you lose that specificity, that you have left the realm of true perception, and entered an illusionary sense of certainty. Now that we have reached this point I’ll quickly recap.

  I feel that all knowledge is based off either information gathered from the outside world, or previous information that was gathered from the outside world. This can be abstracted to include nitpicky things like two pieces of information previously gathered against one another but in the end it requires the outside world (you don’t create something from nothing). Secondly I feel that you can conceive something that you feel is what you are conceiving but it actually isn’t, which falls back upon the previous statement of the source of knowledge. Thirdly the introduction of ambiguity or vagueness (pick your favorite word) can create a false sense of certainty that leads to flimsy logic (or rather illogic).

  We enter now the next part of my experience. Today we began talking about another metaphysical philosophy called “Interactionism”. It quite simple goes as follows (information provided by Professor Markosian).

Interactionism: (i) People are composite objects. (ii) Each living person is composed of two parts: a mind and a body. (iii) The mind and body of a single person typically enter into two-way causal interaction.

  It’s essentially dualism with a new clause slapped on the end like trucker mud flaps. What it basically says is that we are a symbiosis of two entities, the physical self and the non-physical self. These two things interact in a causal two-way relationship. Essentially the mind communicates non-physically with your physical body and your body communicates physically with your non-physical brain (for some of you that last sentence just blew your brain into chunks for the rest let me continue to the argument). In the book the question is asked how on earth does a non-physical thing interact with a physical object. By the very natural laws that hold our universe together (well..they do something…haha) you can in no situation have a physical thing interact with a non physical object. It is an instance that is unimaginable, if you take a rather ambiguous look at it and merely allow it to happen it looks imaginable, but once again you are not actually imagining what you think you are (go back to Lois and maybe get a drink if you need a break).

  The Professor provided an equally persuasive argument in the direction of the body interacting with the mind that I feel will be a productive piece of information.

The No Interaction Argument
(1) Causal interaction between minds and bodies is inconceivable.
(2) If (1), then causal interaction between minds and bodies does not occur.
(3) If causal interaction between minds and bodies does not occur, then Interactionism is false.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
(4) Interactionism is false.

  Following this we had two major arguments, both were inherently flawed, the latter of which leads us back to the very first (I’d hope) sentence you read when you came to this particular thread: the topic header. The first argument was this. The brain (or mind) and the body interact in a fashion like Casper the friendly ghost, because as we all know he’s a good source of scientific information. Casper can will himself to be visible (a physical trait), can will himself to touch physical things (such as a Pepsi can), can will himself to no longer be visible or tangible (non physical traits), and he can even create mixtures of the two where part of him is intangible and part is tangible. The idea being that you can imagine your brain communicating with your mind/body and it makes perfect sense.

  I however think this returns us back to the Lois Lane situation. We are not in the situation of the outside entity, in the case of Lane and Kent we are outside observers looking in upon a concrete world with concrete limitations (as in there is no case where Kent is not Superman, as far as I know Superman is essentially the same guy in all the infinite DC universes even. He’s relatively consistent consistent compared to his comrades). We beyond a shadow of a doubt know what is true and false in the world of Superman, because we have direct access to the entities that created it: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Because of this we know beyond a shadow of a doubt (if one is to assume that neither of them are habitual liars) what is true and false in that universe and it is that concrete knowledge of that world that allows us to earnestly conceive of alterations to it. Unlike Lois who is naive to the unity of Kent and Superman, we know that they are the same entity, and thusly we can earnestly separate them. We have the chunks of outside information necessary to correctly fabricate the new possibility in our mind.

  Going back to Casper, we are in a position to posit that in Casper’s universe under all the known rules of that universe the intangible can communicate with the tangible. Keeping in mind that at no point does this information in any way negate our own reality or our own natural laws. Because that communication in no way breaks into our world, as I assume not one of the billions of people in the known history of humanity has ever had a real discussion with Casper over a Pepsi.

  The second argument actually upset me a bit. It was given by a classmate who felt that there is no reason to believe that an object must be physical to touch physical things or nonphysical to touch nonphysical things. There was no reasoning given, no example (although I think you know where I’m going with this) of a situation where this occurs, just a blatantly ambiguous statement. As I said before one can mistakenly assume they have overcome a problem by thinking of it ambiguously.

  This to me is a Pandora’s box of epic proportions which earnestly left me asking another student why she was even in college in the first place (for reasons outlined soon). If we are willing to accept something merely because we can what point is there to knowledge? It would appear to me if you are willing to posit that such reasoning is sound you are essentially accepting the following.

The God Problem (Version 2.0 now )

1. If God Exists all things are possible. 
2. Natural law cannot exist if all things are possible.
3. If (2), Nature (The outside world) does not exist.
4. If (3), We know nothing about the external world.
5. if (4), We know nothing.
————–
6. We Know Nothing. 

  If we exist is in a reality that does not exist (which is possible by proposition 1), then we can learn absolutely nothing (proposition 4), if that is the case then why go to college? Because if you can answer all of the questions in life with “God did it” then haven’t you already completed the equation? This is much like my unicorn story before, I don’t know if I heard it in a dream or from another person but.

“Anything that explains everything explains absolutely nothing.”

  If in fact God does exist, and if in fact this breaks ground to the idea that anything is possible (like Casper), it would appear to me that we place ourselves back into the original problem of the course. The problem of Skepticism.

The Brain In a Vat Hypothesis (BIVH): I am just a brain in a vat being fooled by alien scientists.

In Logical Form:

The Brain in a Vat Argument
(1) I don’t know that BIVH is false.
(2) If (1), then I don’t know anything about the external world.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
(3) I don’t know anything about the external world.

  It essentially places us in a universal Lois Lane situation, we believe that we understand the things around us because of the knowledge we believe to be true. However it is incorrect because the information we are using (information from our outside world) is from the very beginning a fallacy. We believe in any instance that the information we are using (even the information you are using at this moment to dispute my case) is real but in fact it is all an illusion.

  It just seems to me that you could have no case where God (or at the very least minds/souls) can exist in the natural world and interact with this natural world without completely negating the natural laws that hold the natural world together. It’s completely sane to say that Casper can sip a Pepsi within the universe he was created in, however I strongly question the legitimacy of thinking that Casper could (or does) reach into the our universe and sip Pepsi with us. You can’t have your cake and eat it to. (In the sense that once you eat it you no longer have it) I feel that too many people use ambiguity to accomplish that task. I hope that I wasn’t ambiguous, anyone who needs clarifications can leave a comment and I will clarify the problem .