Who are you you? whoo whoo, whoo whoo....Who are you?

[Barbie]

"Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not"

And so here we are saying that the Archangel Michael, is Jesus in Flesh.

[MAC]

who said that?

the angels where made of indestructible stuff but they were bound to God's law.

The devil was made of indestructible stuff but he had free will

his free will failed to prevail against the order of the universe not because he couldn't overcome it but because he couldn't have an end

as it goes, we have free will but we are finite creatures. we need not conflict with the universe because whatever we do to tip the scale one way, the order will return it to plumb once we are gone.

that quote is about the inevitable balance of existance and the meaning of our emotions & actions

[TotalAnarchy]

there is no balance. Because good is an absolute, and so is evil. But as there can be light without shadow, but not shadow without light, so can one remain and the other be destroyed.

[MAC]

light cannot create shadow on it's own.

I would argue there is nothing BUT balance

Shadows do not exist with out light AND the thing through which light cannot fully pass. There is no destruction of one or th eother, only applications. Light follows its rules and one of them is that it can cast a shadow. Shadows follow the rules based solely on lights ability to create shadow in it's absense. I have always felt that light and darkness was just another metaphor for how we "feel" and it does a poor job of summing up "order and chaos"

"Order and Chaos" does NOT run indellibly parallell to "Good and Evil"

Much of what we consider to be "good" is rather chaotic. But disorder has mass and can level the beams.

Conversely, quite a few well ordered things prove to be terribly evil. Why? Because they tip the balance too far and the correction to return it to true is often painful.

[TotalAnarchy]

true. But its like this, I think.

Can you just have an absolute? Can you imagine such a thing? It just 'is'. Full stop. No could be, no will be, just is, will, has and will always be 'is'. Could you imagine such a universe, such a reality?

That could exist, right?

How about an 'un-is'. Where there never was, never will be, never has. Un never. There was nothing, there is nothing. No. It defies logic and reason, it defies comprehension, because it defies reality. 'un-is' is a moot point, because it could not be. So therefore, you can have one absolute without the other, completely unweighted.

[ms. bing]

i would argue that we as humans could not know one absolute without another to use as a foil. there was a theory that everything, every person, had a "shadow". it applies to the hero theory quite nicely. let's face it. without lex luther, superman would just be another flying fairy in tights.
however, in my work i do not ever deal with absolutes. i'm just not wired for it. i find gray in everything, and i need that. it's why i've had no end of trouble passing college level math. x=42. no gray. why? what? how?
anyway, the above quote is so open to interpretation, and mac has interpreted it. if you asked any good east texas bible thumper (and please don't unless you have a long hour to kill and your next several sundays are free) they would tell you that it is about Good prevailing over Evil. they would tell you that only God can do that. they would tell you a whole lot of things. only the ones, however, that even acknowledged the existance of that particular passage.
i had to jump in this thread. good opening title, barbie.
i love the victorians :)

[SimpleSimon]

Mac's sig:
"Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not"

Good prevailing over evil?

It says that? Where?

By my reading, it is at best a draw. Which, going along with Mac's theory regarding balance, seems to me to be reasonable.

"Good" and "evil" are relative terms, completely relative. In the absence of one, you cannot show the other, as both are comparatives only.

Light/dark; good/evil; rich/poor; healthy/unhealthy; strong/weak - all are relativistic terms based upon a wide range/spectrum of possible states. Like virtually every conceptualization found in ANY human language or logic system, they are all inherently biased by the observer(s), and what constitutes what to any individual is completely subjective.

"Is the glass half empty; or is the glass half full?"

[Koliedrus]

"Shadows" are a product of light's interraction with a mass substantial enough to inhibit the passage of photons.

Highly energetic photons (x-rays, for instance) are able to pass through masses that block photons detectable by a human retina.

The presence of photons, regardless of their energetic state, is a positive "weight" on the scale.

"Shadow" translates to "lack of light" in most peoples' minds. The degrees of darkness vary according to specific circumstances.

"Light" is a property of this universe. It's a defined and understood characteristic. Without it, there is complete darkness. It's true that "shadow" cannot exist without light. It's also true that darkness ultimately prevails in light's absence.

Light exists.

From what I gather, you and I exist in a special space-time in regards to this universe's lifespan. It's theorized that the universe will continue to expand until photons will be unable to traverse the distances between a still-burning star and some creature with something that resembles a retina.

Meanwhile, here we are and there is light and life; right in the middle a Life Zone that includes our distance from our parent star, our location in the galaxy and our point in time as the universe expands into distant horizons.

I accept.

Feel fortunate.

[MuffyTheVampyreLayer]

People read what they want to read into ambiguous ramblings.

[MAC]

people try, desperately, to communicate things that their perspective suddenly makes clear to them

they should stop to ask themselves why other people's perspectives didn't show them the same things

but if they did that we'd have no philosophers and then what would college kids do for credits?

[Torque]

Man, I love cereal.

It's just not complicated.

[MAC]

pfffft (http://google.fda.gov/search?client=FDA&site=FDA&restrict=&oe=&lr=&proxystylesheet=FDA&output=xml_no_dtd&getfields=*&q=cereal&as=GO)