Otter is a webkit-based browser that distinguishes itself from other Chromium clones by means of Opera-like interface. It's still in alpha stage so let's keep track of the development and hope it goes well.
What I know about Chromium itself, it's possible to set there a speeddial-like startup page. Speeddial is a feature first implemented in Opera, so it makes sense that this feature is planned in Otter too. The place in settings configuration dialogue already exists, but is inactive as of yet.
The main webkit-based browsers that I use are Luakit and Rekonq. I have not looked too deep under the hood of Rekonq, because it comes with sensible enough defaults considering my preferences. It makes for good basic browsing without font issues, which is a good achievement for something webkit-based. The downside of Rekonq is that the interface only looks good in KDE and has dependencies in that direction too.
Luakit is an almost faceless browser: It has no buttons on the interface. It's meant to be primarily driven by keyboard. I am keyboard-focused myself, so I like this basic idea, but the rendering engine has font issues and I have had the app stall with downloads. Tweaking the keyboard shortcuts and other settings means hacking config files. There's no settings configuration dialogue. Anyway, the configuration files can be figured out almost without additional documentation, which makes the learning process enjoyable. I would be very happy if Otter's config files became the same.
At the current stage, Otter has a very good feature that stands out: Focus on font settings in the configuration dialogue, already implemented to an extent. Fonts are extensively configurable in old Opera too, so this is no surprise, but in a webkit-based browser, ability to set fonts is actually very important, because webkit is notorious for font issues.
Otter has made a good start by getting font and colour settings right. Let's hope for other features too that Opera was famous for, such as very sensible downloader, perfect bookmarking, sidebar, stacking and tiling of pages in single window, userCSS and userJS, etc.
- Why dependent on Qt5? This dependency makes it difficult to install.
Qt5 allows to easily create multi platform applications, without it it could be even more difficult to built it from sources. ;-) And surely it would take much more time to develop.
My question stems from my lack of understanding of what Qt is at all. As a matter of principle, too many or too obscure dependencies make installation difficult. In this case, the issue is that Qt5 is not an easy-peasily available package that would handily self-install when one attempts installing Otter that requires it.
I managed to install Otter on Manjaro Linux with the help of Yaourt on third try. I have not managed to install it on any other distro. It's because "building a package" is like Chinese to me. If make and install don't straightforwardly lead to the desired result, I simply don't know what to do. And most people who are newer to Linux than me, they don't even know about make and install and if they know, they might be impatient. If we are making a product for people to use, it should be relatively easy to install.
- Any plans to implement the startup dialog (options 'continue from last', 'home page', etc.)? Old Opera had excellent crash management.
Yes, it is planned, but probably defaulting to continue from last session, as it is now.
The default for the dialogue should be to show itself when the user attempts to launch the app again after crash - just like Opera Presto does. For example, when there is a specific page that makes it crash inevitably, then going back to that page by default would make it crash again. Which is something that already happened to me with Otter. Otter crashed on me on a page that pushed a download that I refused. So, launching it again takes it to the same page and I get the same download that I don't want. It's not good to create an endless crash loop.
There is much common sense in many details implemented in Opera. I am confident that this is the main drive in the development, so keep it up
Shouldn't we have browser stats there, being keen web-browsing people in general and promoters of Otter browser?
To keep the stats table still straight in graphical browsers in big monitors, I suggest replacing one frame with browser stats frame. Namely, Top 10 Boards looks worthless. We don't even have 10 boards, so there should be Top 10 Browsers instead. We collectively definitely use more than 10 browsers.
Cutesy game, even though its only purpose seems to be virtual sightseeing. Anyway, before moving over to Linux completely, RJ would do well to try it for a longer while in dual boot. Maybe he will learn to set up a virtual Windows installation to play the game.
I'd understand the complaint if he were playing games for a living. Maybe he does...
So, what country is that one called in the map "Islamic Sacred State"? never heard about it. It's just bellow Jordan that appears as "Greater Jordan"...
That's the Hajj destination area, set apart probably to be under community management by the whole Muslim world. Hardly a workable idea. Will the Wahhabi dictatorship really be happy in the Saudi desert next to it? Besides, Saudis are friends of the U.S., vital to their interests in the region. Another oversight from the drawer of the map.
High priority / ASAP: - start page - page specific preferences - passwords manager - delayed loading of Flash objects
Medium priority / soon: - content blocking - spell checking - feeds reader (as module) - panels (page informations, notes, transfers, bookmarks etc.) - greater UI customization abilities (configurable toolbars, overwriting list of context menu actions etc.) - system tray icon
Low priority / later: - mail client (as module) - shared contacts database - fine-tune UI (sizes, margins and other details) - form auto completion - exposing MDI features - mouse gestures - tabs grouping (stacking and panorama mode) - import of existing settings, bookmarks etc. - extensions (Firefox and Chrome APIs support) - Opera Link like solution - improved integration with different platforms (Windows taskbar integration etc.) - Blink backend (with upcoming QtWebEngine, when API will be useful)
Low priority / maybe: - support for Opera skins (through custom QStyle) - IM client module (libpurple based, including support for IRC) - BitTorrent module - support for tab thumbnails embedded in tab bar
Nothing could be worse than the world thirty years ago, except the world forty or more years ago.
Why so? Did you have a miserable childhood? I had a lovely childhood. And already as a child I knew that everything goes worse as time moves on. Thus far it has been completely confirmed.
The best life in the world was about thousand years ago. And then about three thousand years before that. Maybe times will become tolerable again in another two thousand years. What made you pick 2030 specifically?
- Why dependent on Qt5? This dependency makes it difficult to install. - Will the GUI be skinnable with old Opera skins? - Any plans to implement the startup dialog (options 'continue from last', 'home page', etc.)? Old Opera had excellent crash management. - What are the plans with otter.conf? I would like a human-readable configuration file where absolutely everything is there. An otter:config page would be nice as a perfect mirror of otter.conf, but the conf file is more important.
To tell you the truth--hate is so entrenched in that region that I don't believe there will be peace over there in 1000 years...not even in 100,000 years (I think they absolutely enjoy hating each other--it's part of who they are and they're damn proud of it).
Where did you get this truth? Historically there was peace since Saladin to British rule. That's about 800 years. British colonisation made it into a quagmire and Israel made it into a hell-hole. Under Muslim rule the place was just fine.
Interesting oldmap (from 2006). I wonder how much blood it would take to get from here to there.
That particular map would be bloody to implement, yes, and it would ensure continued bloodshed. Some reasons:
- Expanded Azerbaijan (why?) - Diminished Iran (particularly Arab Shia state would be better off under Iran, that's where Shias want to be) - Unredeemed Armenia - Israel is still on the map - the nationality of the person who drew the map
You keep talking as if my tentative conclusions and hypotheses were my starting point, which I find very odd. I find the fact that you consider that tentativeness a weakness even more odd.
Yup, another fundamental difference. Seriously, it never got through that you were talking tentatively, as if showing a cautious interest in the matter to see if anything useful can be done with it. You never left that impression. Instead, an increasing amount of fixed presuppositions kept emerging that you never let go no matter how untenable and disproven.
Tentatively, all workable ideas should be welcome. At least this is how it works for me when I am in the tentative mode. But in this discussion I am quite sure it got through that I never talked tentatively. I was open about my premises all along and gave several full rounds of the way I reason. In this mode I am ready to be proven wrong. Flaws can be demonstrated. Incoherence can be revealed. Negative can be proven. In philosophy, you don't even need experiments for that. All it takes is thinking straight. Specifically, thinking straighter than me.
And let it be known that I am not quite happy with the change of the thread title either. With the old title, it was more about religion, about the quest, about defining principles and spiritual goals and practising the methods. This is what religiousness is - to me. With the new title it's like "throw anything into here and have fun".
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Religion is not so much about proving others wrong. It's just that people who are too dismissive are worse than wrong, because they are missing the point. Properly, religion is giving goals to those who don't have it. When you can't find the meaning of life on your own, it's inevitable that you have to accept it from others because there has to be some meaning to keep you going. Very few people can define the meaning of life for themselves, and that's why big exoteric religions exist, to help them out.
Big religions are not just opium for the masses. They have cultural traditions and history that give societies, well, if not straightforward meaning, then at least structure. People need structure in their lives. This structure cannot be simply taken away. It is severely damaging to lose this structure, it's about as bad as losing a job. Actually even worse, because for many people religion is what keeps them going when they lose a job.
It was not my wish to end up proving stuff right and wrong. It's not so much about right or wrong as it is about giving things structure and meaning, so that when something is lost in life, the rest of the structure keeps you still up, psychologically. As long as the rest of it still stands, you can repair it. And if it's well built, you can keep building further on it, until the structure covers everything conceivable, thus becoming a theory of everything.
Now, you may think that it's science's or philosophy's job to provide theories. Unfortunately modern science of the materialist paradigm fails miserably. It's easily proven that materialism is mostly lacking and, when not lacking, wrong. I am still under the shock of what Frenzie made me read. The article says that emotions, such as fear and disgust are to protect the individual's or organism's integrity. What is this supposed to mean? On the surface, it means that fear and disgust are occasionally good for us. So, it looks like explaining something about life. What are those occasions when fear and disgust are good for us? It doesn't spell out any principles. Now the article doesn't look so explanatory any more. It looks insufficient, i.e. begins to fail. Then get this: "In the social emotion of contempt there is a rejection of certain behaviors or ideas rather than an expulsion of toxic substances or their tell-tale signs. Contempt can be seen as a biological metaphor for disgust. [...] The advantages of contempt are apparent: the rejection of behaviors deemed dangerous to individuals or groups, and the social isolation of those who produce such behaviors." What does this say? Contempt is occasionally good. But suppose we ask: If it's good, should we follow through with the impulse? Expel people who have contemptuous behaviour? How? On what occasions? Basically, the question is: Does *is* translate into *should*? Science doesn't say. At least this article doesn't - which is actually good because all attempts by scientists to translate *is* into *should* that I have seen have been a complete failure. Science has nothing interesting to say about how to live a human life.
Philosophy does a better job. Philosophy has a nice repertoir of moral theories and of principles to compare them. Choose your favourite and be happy. However, know that since there are logical principles that can provide comparative ranking order to any and all theories, there may always be a better theory. Also, philosophy in general does not emphasise spirituality specifically, so people with spiritual inclinations may find it lacking in the end.
Hence religion. Religion can handily do everything where science is lacking, to spell out morals and ultimate goals. It surely does when used this way, constructively - self-constructively most of all. And it readily lends itself be used this way whenever disgust, ridicule, double standards, and disingenuity are dropped in one's approach to religion.
These days, since religions are many and directly competiting with each other in the marketplace of ideas, religions also do the amazing job of philosophy, the job of proving each other's comparative betterness. Anyone can choose the religion that fits them best, either the one with most elaborate metaphysics and workable concept system, the one with most straightforward moral theory, most fascinating symbology or mythology, or with the prettiest rituals. Anything wrong with it?
Conclusion: your assumptions about what materialism "assumes" are absurd. You presuppose that consciousness is something that can't happen in a strictly physical universe, which may or may not be true depending on what you mean by consciousness, and then say that if you remove consciousness from the equation you can't influence your feelings.
I don't presuppose. I explain observations. You only confirm my assumptions about materialism when you say:
You've got this highly complex organ in your head and yet you assume that in a materialist account, if you give it a bit of cortisol and adrenaline, the only thing it can do is run away like the furnace attached to the thermostat.
So, in materialist account, the organ is "complex" and therefore, when you stimulate it with hormones, anything can happen this or that way, but the fact that anything can happen must not deter us from assuming that the causality is precisely from the hormones to the rest, not the other way, definitely not from non-physical towards physical, nevermind the actual observations.
In materialist account, everything that appears wrong with the experiment is explained by means of gaps: "We don't know everything yet. Please fund our studies better." In logic and philosophy there are no gaps. Lack of explanation is precisely that - lack of explanation. It's proof that something is wrong with the account itself and in a principled way. Materialism is full of such holes. The hard problem of consciousness is one of the better known ones. It would be nice if you had a direct response to the problem of consciousness the way I phrased it, or show how I failed to explain something, anything. Because, seriously, I will be happy with nothing less than a full and complete account. If my account has holes, you are doing me a service when you point them out.
I took a look behind your link and, as expected, it fails to explain anything. It gives the evolutionary explanation to emotions, and says about e.g. fear and disgust that they are protecting the integrity of the individual or of the organism. Which, of course, is true in about half of the cases, wrong in half of the cases, i.e totally unexplanatory. For example: How is your disgust of religion and fear of the concept of God protecting the integrity of your organism right now? Conclusion: Emotions have some behavioural context, sure enough, but beyond that there is no "neural basis" to them, and even the behavioural context is fluid enough so that any assumption that lays too much emphasis on it shoots itself in the foot. The behavioural context and the "neural basis" are very limited and very primitive explanations that leave most of reality unexplained.
Materialism always was materialism of the gaps, rush inductive generalisations on things that appear to be, forgetting that appearances may deceive. Induction is misleading. Russell knew it. You have to arrive at the right principle first to organise your facts, then we can begin to discuss the real thing.
He doesn't give me any grounds for contemplating experience or consciousness as something in principle irreducible. Besides, his views seem to lack explanatory power. He says some parts of consciousness are an easy problem, and some other part a hard one. I posit that once you remove (solve) the "easy" problems, you probably won't have a "hard" one left.
There are two distinct problems of consciousness: the easy one and the hard one. The easy one is to do with perceived/measurable reactions and/or ability to report them. It's like Pavlov's dog salivating or intensity of brainwaves when a person dreams versus sleeps non-dreaming. The easy one is easy because it looks straightforward enough to probably have neurophysiological linear causal explanation.
The hard problem is hard because there's no way it could have a linear causal explanation in terms of neurophysiology - and everybody recognises this. Everybody. Except that those entrenched in the materialist paradigm say "We don't know everything yet (so let's postpone our attempts to explain this away a little bit longer)" which is the wrong answer in philosophy. "Don't know" is not an answer.
Note, I find Nagel's peculiar phrasing of the problem as "there is something it is like to be that" almost circumventive, and it's unfortunate that Chalmers quotes Nagel when talking about it. So I understand if the full force of the problem is not reaching you and you complain that Chalmers seems to lack explanatory power. Still, this does not mean that the problem is not there. I just rephrased it for you so you get it better. You welcome.
I personally am more radical than Chalmers. I disagree that even the easy problem is easy. To me, there are no necessarily linear causal relations between perception/stimuli and reaction. Reactions may be habitual, thus seemingly linear in relation to stimuli, but all habits can be trained away, to the level of reflexes and even to the level of instincts. Basic drives, such as sex instinct and survival instinct, can be trained away - and it doesn't necessarily happen by means of changing one's neurophysiology - can happen that way too, but not necessarily. It can happen by means of one momentous thought. One moment you are afraid of death, at another you are not, no changes in internal or external situation needed. Definitely no change in neurophysiology.
In terms of what *you* want to believe, non-linear reactions stemming from thought-reflection, choice, and will should not be there in the first place. The hard problem will not go away by means of explaining the easy problem. The hard problem is a distinct problem.
I have had my fill of reductionist accounts. Reductionism is logically flawed. Attempts to reduce consciousness to neurophysiology are subject to the same objections I brought up when talking about emergentism and atomism. The analogies can easily be adjusted to suit neurophysiology. For example, let's say you see a vicious dog and you get scared. Adrenalin flows with fear. Do you get scared because adrenalin (or whatever the exact hormon is) flows or does adrenalin flow because you get scared? In reductionist account, it must be the adrenalin causing fear. However, a person with self-control won't have fear. Such person may not be able to control the flow of adrenalin directly, but adrenalin won't have the same effect any more. As per reductionist account, this should not be possible! The relationship between fear and adrenalin should be straightforward and linear as per reductionist account. On the other hand, in dualist account it makes perfect sense: Of course consciousness has primacy and controls physiology in all ways, and does so imperfectly only where will, attention, and wisdom are lacking. Give it some more conscious effort and the lacking areas will be fixed too. And sometimes, as anyone of us knows, a momentous thought can cause wondrous instant changes in consciousness - in consciousness first, and physiology may or may not follow, depending on the continuity of the effort, or on remembrance of the momentous experience. Conclusion: The causality works the other way round than materialism assumes, and is non-linear to boot.
These are not new things. I'm saying nothing new. Nothing should be surprising. What is surprising is that reductionists have no response, but still manage to remain reductionists. The paradigmatic bubble is hard to break. This too is self-explanatory from the dualist point of view. And I'm not even a dualist.
And do you agree with the conclusion? "...what we will be left with is irreducibility and perhaps even a kind of dualism, rather than the kind of reductive explanation that Lloyd is searching for." Or do you have a refutation for it?
There's something it's like to be you or me, and you're saying this quality, this personal experience, can't be explained in purely physical terms. Is that correct?
This is how Nagel put it. The way I put it:
- For every object there's the subject. If not, there's no relevant object to discuss. - The subject is consciousness in the role of observer. There's no logical necessity to predicate anything physical about the subject. All physicality is on the object side. - The conscious apprehends the physical (material). Laws of thought trump sense-data. Never the other way round.
Principles sort out details. So-called facts without organisation and context are meaningless. If we don't agree on this, then in philosophical terms we don't agree on anything. The philosophical divide between us is indeed tremendous, if you still have questions about these things.
Note that I have not read Nagel. I am not a convert from materialism by any sort of philosophical argument. Ever since I remember myself (which is at very early age) I have found philosophical materialism dubious, and soon enough untenable and indefensible. For some time I guess I have had a subconscious struggle with various shapes and shades of dualism, until figuring out how spiritual monism works.
Here's something I have read fairly recently http://consc.net/papers/nature.html Note the arguments against materialism from section 3 to the end of the paper. I'd say that if you don't have a response to every problem with materialism pointed out there, then you don't really know what materialism entails and you have not made a conscious choice when siding with materialism. If you don't understand those arguments (admittedly technical talk there) or you don't think they matter, then you are not philosophical. And it's okay. People don't have to be philosophically informed. Most people are not, and they live their lives just fine.
The time has come. Opera forums are now turning read-only. They could just leave them as an archive for at least a couple of years. Unless they are ashamed of the past.
Right, I logged in and found this message "The My Opera forums are being replaced by our new forums. Starting February 26th, the My Opera forums will be in read-only mode. On March 3rd, they will be removed along with the rest of My Opera."
You say materialism is called physicalism these days, but the empty space, as you put it, is why I don't typically use the phrase materialism—precisely because it might promote the false impression that it's only about matter and not about empty space. And it's not just the empty space between atoms. Most of the universe is empty space even without there being more empty space in us than not.
I'm not sure what kind of tension or problems you see with the word 'materialism'. I personally don't. What I have seen from philosophical discussions, atheists want some other word to replace materialism due to moral implications - *moral* materialist is a worshipper of Mammon, but this is not how the word is used in philosophy. If religious fanatics have insulted ontological materialists in Western Europe and America by making this connection (I don't know if they have, but it's likely), then I understand. I personally don't confuse ontological and moral materialism.
I'm okay with the term physicalism pro ontological materialism. Mind you, materialism - the root word 'matter' - does not necessarily mean particled matter, but may also include the space in between, if one so wishes. Sophisticated materialists (physicalists) often believed there was something more to matter than mere atoms, most readily called energy. Therefore my distinct discussion about atomism. Atomistic or not, emergentism is materialism, physicalism. And Jehovah's Witnesses' belief that the human being dies when the body dies (with the consciousness of the individual gone into oblivion, except that only "God remembers him") is sheer materialism, physicalism - they have no meaningful concept of the soul. The soul equates the body for them. Sheer materialism as I said.
I'm not okay with the word naturalism pro ontological materialism. This word implies as if other beliefs were unnatural and that materialism were natural, even though materialism disregards pretty much everything about the nature of consciousness. They always disregard the observer, the philosophical subject side, the factually necessary creator of experiments in science. They struggle with consciousness and, so it seems, think that consciousness is unnatural. Sorry, but consciousness is as natural as anything else - it's not going anywhere.
The point: You are a composite entirety. You can be disassembled, but this disassemblage will be *less* than you rather than the exact same you.
This being The Point, offhand may seem profound, but really has no meaning. Sure you went on to deduce how natural occurrence, from the view you want to discredit, seems unlikely. But I can't put my finger on the part that supports this statement with something that isn't pulled from thin air.
Not only did you miss the part where I distinctly argued for this thesis (to help you out, it was the example of airplane - if airplanes are meant to fly too, then the airplane is not just the assemblage of its parts - the pilot is another necessary element that goes into making up the airplane as it really is), but you also missed an earlier broader point: It was never the point to convince anyone of anything. I'm only showing the way I reason.
This also applies in the opposite direction. When you say you can't put your finger on something - and this is your whole issue with my thesis - then you are only showing the way you reason. And, sure enough, you're not being convincing.
The same way, as a demonstration, please give an exposition of your own philosophy. Or tell more what you think philosophy should be. It's all about sharing and comparing.I noticed that you asked me about creation. I will answer in a few days. But right now, for a change, I seriously think it's your turn to build a thesis.
I don't have quite the same egocentric approach as some. As I said I've had enough of this and besides your post simply reinforced my remarks so more is not needed.
How is sharing egocentric? I can easily think of ways in which non-sharing is egocentric.
Anyway, when I promise something, I always do my best to follow through. Like it or not, but here are a few words on creation. In my response to Frenzie, I already made an intro, and here's the continuation.
ATOMISM
Above I disproved the assumption that smaller components of things are somehow more fundamental than things themselves. Is the wing of a bird more fundamental than the bird? Is your arm or leg or kidney more fundamental than yourself? If you insist on your own material constitution, you are the sum total of your cells, not this or that cell rather than some other cell.
The point: You are a composite entirety. You can be disassembled, but this disassemblage will be *less* than you rather than the exact same you.
Atomism (belief or theory that particles are foundational to everything else) is false. However, atomism is influential enough in people's thinking, even in the minds of average religious people, so there are peculiar concepts of God that atomist theists hold. Adherence to atomism and even to materialism (called physicalism these days) does not sharply distinguish an atheist from theist.
So, I hope it gets through that I have nothing to do with atomistic premises. Atoms may exist, if they be a useful consideration in some contexts, but, logically, the space between of equal importance in constituting reality. It's unscientific to ignore the space between atoms. Considering atoms and space, neither is more fundamental than the other. If you want to know the way I think about the universe, drop atomistic assumptions. This enables you to understand better what follows.
CONTINUUM THEORY
How to reconcile the fact that both atoms and space are equally important constituents of reality? The answer is in continuum theories. The ultimate reality does not reside in this or that particle or thing, but is spread out evenly everywhere.
One of the corollaries of the continuum theory is that objects, beings, and phenomena are not strictly limitable. The edges between any one thing and another are undefinable, strictly speaking. In fact, this tenet has been found true in modern science. Humans are composed of cells, but the cells are constantly being lost on the surface, while new ones spring forth from inside the organism, providing continuity to human body throughout its life cycle. Same with the so-called atoms themselves. Rather than thinking of them as tiny solids that you see in school physics classrooms, quantum physics describes them as specific mathematical values of energy - and only that, no solidity whatsoever.
In continuum theory, the universe does not consist of distinct objects or particles, but of general properties that the entities share, such as mass, volume or speed - everybody has these general properties. The distinctions are changing, sometimes fluidly with an apparent continuity (such as the sun moving across the sky), sometimes abruptly (such as death of an individual or quantum leap of the electron). The shared poperties - universals - matter more, because they are more stable. That which exists in a more stable way, *exists more* as it were, more than that which is more perishable, unstable and changing. Solidity doesn't matter when it goes away. Logically, stability matters, even if ephemeral in the physical or empirical sense.
FUNDAMENTALS OF THE UNIVERSE
Philosophically, continuum theory lays primacy to general properties and universals over particulars. In philosophical realism, universals are true, because they are indispensable to analysis. Logically, that which you can't deny exists.
In particularist observation there are cold and warm objects. Each object has its own temperature. In continuum theory, cold and warm are values on a universal scale called temperature. Rather than existing in particularised way apart in several bodies, temperature exists everywhere. It has different values in different places, but there's no place without temperature. Hence, temperature exists everywhere, and cold and warm are its relative manifestations.
By this analysis, it turns out that universals are true. Math is true. And when it's true, then it exists. That which can't be logically denied must exist. What other option is there? The other option is to deny one's own reasoning, to hide from the consequences of one's own thinking.
Cold and warm don't exist as distinct particulars, but as values in the unbroken continuum of temperature. The same way, objects and other entities, including conscious human beings, exist as Theseus' ships in the continuum of existence.
The fundamentals of the universe are the fundamentals of logic. Details may matter, but principles matter more. In terms of the physical universe, details correspond to particular events, objects or data, whereas principles correspond to laws of nature. Principles are not a denial of details, but explanation of them. Details are facts as they appear, but principles are facts as they really are, with explanation how and why the details appear as they do. Sometimes principles seemingly "explain away" things, but this only by means of pointing out irrelevancies according to logically necessary priorities. "Explaining away" is pointing out an irrelevancy in relation to a greater relevancy.
NATURE OF UNIVERSALS
How do universals exist? Where? In the above analysis, the problems with affirming particulars was pointed out: Principles and universals matter more than details and particulars. Another aspect of the same problem is the problem of multiplicity. When there are multiple things, multiple anything, the problems of precedence and of ultimate relevance arise. This problem also applies to multiple universals. Therefore, in the final analysis, there's just one universal - existence itself, Being Itself.
Let's consider again how temperature exists. It appears that there's cold in one place and warm in another, so there are as if multiple existences of warm and cold places, but in truth it's one universal - temperature - perceivable and measurable in different ways anywhere and everywhere. This kind of existent is called omnipresent. The same applies to other universals, such as mass, volume, speed, intensity, life, etc. It applies to all physical and conscious (abstract and moral) universals. They are all omnipresent. And there's no contradiction in that they are all omnipresent, because existence is ultimately just one continuum. Universals are conceptually distinct aspects of that single continuum.
NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE
The universe is a continuum of existence. Undeniably, we still normally perceive multiplicity. The multiplicity of physicality within the universe, such as objects, events, cause and effect, space and time, is due to the essential infinite richness of the single absolute existence. The apparent self-contradiction of universals, such as cold and warm, life and death, good and evil, is due to the perception of various degrees of intensity of the self-same continuum at different places and instances. We attribute too much value to our particularised experiences. This misattribution is due to lack of consideration of the absolute point of view - it's due to fluctuations and conceptuality in the mind. Conceptual distinctions in the mind are given different names - such as temperature, which is really one thing, is given contradictory names "cold" and "warm" - and this only reinforces the apparent multiplicity of the external universe. Such multiplicity persists as long as the final analysis towards the ultimate absolute universal has not been completed by oneself.
CREATION
The problem of creation is the problem of beginning. It's a logical problem, a matter of point of view. Considering logical absolute timescale, it's a matter of point of view what one considers the beginning. There is a concurrent logical problem: Beginning of what? If we want to be logical, we want to avoid the problem of infinite regress.
Indubitably, human beings have minds more comfortable with multiplicity than with unity, even though many have a rational and spiritual tendency towards unity. To remain intelligible to human minds, a multiplicity of some kind or another must necessarily be posited. Let's take the multiplicity of points of view. There's the point of view of (1) infinity and of (2) temporality, of time.
Infinity is the ultimate absolute existence where there's logically no flux, no time, no space. Or, if you insist there is time, it's omnidirectional rather than unidirectional. There's no logical limit to infinity, there's no way to compel or to force the absolute in any way whatsoever. This is God's point of view.
Whereas temporality is the point of view that time moves irreversibly and unstoppably in one direction. It's the human point of view. Given the network of sense-perceptions where we are entangled, the experience of differentiated multiplicity that appears to exist around us, the logical analysis that I performed above towards universality is the account of evolution of the universe in reverse order. It's roughly the same evolution as Darwinian evolution, only I don't overemphasise our biological or material history. Rather, I give reasonable proportionate status to mind and consciousness.
From the human point of view, because our collective experience indicates unidirectional temporality, creation must have occurred, and, because our analysis is gradual, it necessarily appears like evolution to us. For rank-and-file theists, God must have done it in some way, because it could not have begun on its own. But for atheists almost anything goes: It began in whatever way - except by God. Whereas, from God's point of view, there's no unidirectional temporality.
Naturally, I'm not the first one to think of it this way. For example St. Augustine writes roughly the same thing (just to give a familiar name). I won't get deep into the implications of this point of view now. I'm seriously out of space already. (There's limit of space here - 20,000 chars per post.)
