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“God is a Verb” by R. Buckminster Fuller (1968)
- wizardforhire 9y agoTrim tab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_tab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trim_tab
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- plainOldText 9y agoBuckminster Fuller was the architect who envisioned a new kind of house, called the Dymaxion House. Fortunately it didn’t pick up. It was a great engineering exercise, as the house was quite simple and efficient, but on the other hand it had no soul. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_house
- frozenport 9y agoIt was actually tiny, about 2/3 of even the smallest homes of the time: For the last prototype of the Dymaxion House, Buckminster Fuller settled at just over 1000 square feet. Although this is would presently be considered meagre in size, it was approximately the size of the average single family home at the time. [1] BUT apparently not: Williams targeting the small home appeared right after World War II. In the early 1950s popular designer/developer Cliff May compressed the sprawling ranch house concept into his Low-Cost Ranch House idea, which was typically 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in 1,675 sq. ft. [2] [1] http://b2dymaxionhouse.blogspot.com/p/mass-production.html http://b2dymaxionhouse.blogspot.com/p/mass-production.html [2] https://blog.houseplans.com/article/whats-a-typical-house-size-today https://blog.houseplans.com/article/whats-a-typical-house-si...
- officialchicken 9y agoHe popularized the geodesic dome. While no doubt an eccentric genius and early advocate of systems theory, I can't really give him a pass after coining the term "synergetics" [0]. The common form of the word used today is - synergy. He also coined the terms "cloud nine", "tensegrity", and "dymaxion". "Experience with synergetics encourages a new way of approaching and solving problems." - R. Buckminster Fuller Reader beware: much of his writings are either math heavy or word salad. Or both. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synergetics_(Fuller) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synergetics_(Fuller) Edit: corrected spelling of his name
- wu-ikkyu 9y agoNot having a "soul" seems like a poor reason to rejoice in the failure of such an affordable and efficient home, especially considering how many people live in "cookie cutter" houses, bland apartments, not to mention outrageous prices, and the effect on the environment of building such inefficient homes. "The severest blow of all was that both the national electricians and plumber's organizations said they would have to be paid to take apart all the prefabricated and pre-installed wiring and plumbing, and put it together again, else they would not connect the otherwise "ready to live in" house to the town's or city's electrical lines and water mains. They held exclusively the official license to do this by long-time politically enacted laws." -Fuller
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- bonesss 9y agoNot too far removed (philosophically), from 'theological noncognitivism ' [0]: the idea that 'god' is more of a concept like 'hope' or 'love', not a thing like 'milk', and a poorly understood & undefined one at that. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theological_noncognitivism
- blowski 9y agoI’m a regular Church-going Christian, and could definitely go along with that theory. As a gross over-simplification Jesus is a noun, the Holy Sprit is a verb, God is an entire language.
- kendallpark 9y agoCurious: what is the Father, then?
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- klez 9y agoIn the context of the post I think that by God GP meant the Father. EDIT: I re-read the post and no, they didn't seem to mean that.
- blowski 9y agoI just thought about it... and I'm not really sure. I'll cop-out and say something like "God is unknowable, undefinable, and constrainable".
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- rusk 9y agoIn the Holy Trinity, God is the father, the son, and the holy ghost. I understand these terms to signify 'aspects' of the same thing.
- zigzag448 9y agoGod is a point in an uncertain future. The more uncertain the future the bigger God wil be. This also explains the friction between science and religion,because science makes the future less uncertain and thus god smaller.
- sametmax 9y agoGiven that God is omnipotent, you can always build a narrative where God is responsible for science and whatever future. You can't make the concept of God smaller. At best you can make a religious narrative irrelevant. But you also don't need a religion to play with the concept of God. And you certainly don't even need God to have a religion.
- beders 9y agoIf he(?!?) is omnipotent, he's a massive douche. Or as Epicurus put it: Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?
- Amezarak 9y agoOne of the many problems with this argument is it presumes that your personal moral compass is objectively and universally true. I don't mean this to argue otherwise - it is my personal belief that it is not possible to prove or disprove the existence of God with reason alone, thus why the argument has lasted for millenia. The mass of texts written to do one or the other are worth, in my opinion, for nothing much besides exercising your mind.
- beders 9y ago' your personal moral compass is objectively and universally true.' Not it doesn't. It assumes there's at least one moral compass.
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- jkingsbery 9y agoAquinas wrote that God is "ipsum esse subsistens," translated by Bishop Robert Barron as "the shear act of 'to be' itself." So the idea of God not simply as a noun but as an action (i.e., verb) can be found at least as early as the 13th century.
- igammarays 9y agoGhazali and Ibn al-Arabi asserted a related concept known as "wahdat al-Wujud" in Sufi literature. Often translated as "unity of Being" and confused with pantheism (which it is not), it could encompass what Aquinas said, "the sheer act of 'to be' itself", but with the additional restrictive clause that "nothing else 'is' itself". Which is a significantly more precise predicate than "God is a verb".
- danharaj 9y agoThere is a similar thought in the Dao De Jing
- 09bjb 9y agoThere are similar thoughts in many spiritual traditions...find your mystic or gnostic vein in any religion and you're not far away from this concept. "God likes to play hide-n-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with!" http://educateinspirechange.org/spirituality/concept-great-philosopher-alan-watts-god-god-big-game/ http://educateinspirechange.org/spirituality/concept-great-p...
- igammarays 9y agoInteresting. In my reading of the Dao De Jing and other Taoist texts I've only seen the affirmative side "the unity of being" which has sometimes been dismissed as "monism", but not necessarily the negative side: "nothing else truly 'is'". These might sound like logically equivalent statements but there is a subtle rhetorical and practical difference. Monism: https://meaningness.com/monism https://meaningness.com/monism
- warent 9y agoThe line breaks on this make it hard to read. Is there a rhyming mechanism in play here that my amateur poetic brain isn't picking up on?
- bordercases 9y agoIt's acting as a universal delimiter, like commas. Even though it would be technically correct to put commas everywhere for creating emphasis, it would be ugly, and wouldn't cover all the cases for emphasis that Fuller is trying to create. My guess is that he's trying to communicate how he would pace the poem in his own speech.
- kleer001 9y agoGod is a direction.
- beders 9y agoMore of a misdirection, really. I cry over the thousands of years of wasted time where humanity has tried to figure out the demands of an entity that simply doesn't exist. Instead, we got dragged into wars, instigated by rulers who manipulated followers of so-called 'holy books' into killing their brethren. We denied education to large parts of the population. We suppressed anything resembling science&progress because it might offend an imaginary being. It's a frigging disaster. Imagine a world where we would have followed science and reason early. Where we didn't destroy libraries, but gradually improved their wisdom. All those years down the drain. Sigh.
- vumgl 9y agoNot only wasted time, but also wasted intellectual energy. Many theologians and apologetics are often smart people that could use their intellect to more useful (i.e. right direction) domains.
- 09bjb 9y agoMoral questions are religious questions. Can suffering be scientifically observed and quantified? The "right direction" is a fairly large, old, and subtle debate without an easy or obvious answer. While I'm totally on board with the idea that furthering scientific knowledge is a net positive, we're definitely suffering these days from an overabundance of powerful technology and a deficit of "right direction" for that technology. Thinking deeply about what exactly the right direction is in no way strikes me as wasted intellectual effort.
- vumgl 9y agoCan suffering be observed and quantified using religion? I would still use science for that.
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