It's What?

I don't think that we've totally left Plato behind. Although we have elaborated on his concepts and spun off some new ones, it was Plato who laid the cornerstone of our fancy high rise building. I think that his theory of a dual existence, the ideal and the material, was a nice try, but I think he got it backwards. I think that the material came first and that the ideal is a human construct that was inspired by the material. This kind of goes against my belief in God, but I try not to worry about that too much. God is neither material nor ideal, God is God, and that's that. Meanwhile, we mortals have to figure out how to make the most of the life He has given us.

When we went to Gage Park High, there were two states of existence, matter and energy, but now I understand that they're saying that it's all energy. I don't know what Plato would say about that, but I think he would consider energy to be material. Of course, in those days, energy wasn't understood as well as it is today, so maybe some of it would be considered magic or spirit.

You're assertion that "anything can mean anything" is fine as long as you are talking about human  language, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to apply it to the physical world. A cow would still be a cow if we called it something else and, indeed, they do call it something else in other languages. What I mean is that we call it a cow for our own convenience, but that's not what makes it what it is. You can call a cow a horse if you want to, but it will still go "moo".

I'm still not clear about your digital/analog thing. Are you talking about substance or logic? What I mean is, the Universe is made of stuff, and that stuff seems to be organized into logical systems. A vinyl record and a digital CD are both made of pretty much the same stuff. They work differently to produce sound because the stuff that they're made of is put together differently. They're both put together logically, but the mechanism by which they produce sound is based on two different types of logic. I've always thought of logic as a human construct, but maybe the logic was always there and humans discovered it rather than invented it. So then, are you saying that the Universe is also put together logically? This would seem to go against your non-belief in God, but maybe not. Would you care to try again?