What are the implications of the scientific worldview?
The main cosmic process is entropy, increasing disorder. Life is local, temporary, negative entropy and consciousness is a byproduct of natural selection. Therefore, we are not the main process but an accident within an exception.
Is any spiritual practice appropriate in this scenario? Yes, Zen meditation is the practice of awareness, referring neither to a deity nor to an immortal soul. The universe is conscious of itself through every conscious organism and therefore is a universal self or subject of consciousness. Mystics intuit and realize cosmic unity/identity. Particular deities must be understood as personifications, not persons, the highest creations of the imagination without which we would not be who or what we are.
29 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I simply don't believe that makes any sense, saying God (there are no other "gods") is a mere personification. I believe God to be indeed a Being, even a Trinity of Persons in the One Godhead.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Of course we can merely state conflicting beliefs and we remain with those conflicting beliefs!
I reasoned as consistently as I could from the premise that entropy, not divine creation, is the main cosmic process and concluded that human consciousness, meditation and imagination remain worthwhile.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But your argument here seems to come close to pantheism, if you want to be "mystical" about the universe. I don't say that is how you think, but I suspecy many "would get religion" about such ideas. The example I thought of from Anderson's works being the Cosmenosism cooked up by Aycharaych in THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I think that there is one reality which is experienced through the senses and through mediation so, yes, I am a pantheist.
Paul.
meditation.
Kaor, Paul!
And I don't believe the universe is all that is. And I'm sure you don't literally think the universe is God or that your kitchen table is a tiny bit of God.
I have to reject pantheism because, if taken literally, it means worshiping the creature instead of the Creator.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But that assumes that there is a Creator-creature distinction.
I do not believe that my table is a bit of the Biblical God because I don't believe that there is a Biblical God but I do believe that there is one reality which manifests itself both as my table as my and your states of consciousness.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
We and your table exists as PHENOMENA in that universe. But not as parts of some quasi mystic "unity."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
What is "quasi" about it? We and the furniture are composed of particles composed of energy. The same energy takes different forms. The UNIverse is indeed a UNIty. All its parts interact. Each part exists as it does now only because of its relationships to all the other parts. A substance that is a solid in one planetary environment is a liquid in another. Nothing is separate or permanent. The subatomic particles that are in one object can become part of another object. Indeed, our bodies continually absorb matter and transform it into bodily cells while returning other matter to the environment. All is one.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course you are correct, about the SCIENTIFIC unity of the universe. I simply don't believe that is all that IS.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But, if there is a cosmic unity, then mystics can intuit it and scientists can detect it. Unity is one. I do not deny other universes although we have to start being more precise with the word, "universe." Our system of stars and galaxies expanding from a single monobloc is one "universe" but, if there are other such systems and if they are all somehow connected, then they are all one "universe" in the more basic sense. We have coined the term, "multiverse," but that "multiverse" is a unity if its various "universes" are connected. (And, if they are not connected, then we cannot know anything about them.) Nor do I deny a reality transcending the uni-multi-verse. Why should I? Although I have problems regarding the transcendent as (a) person(s). Personality is self-consciousness. Self requires other as up requires down or a square requires sides. The universe is a universal self because it appears to itself as other before realizing its unity/identity.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Some of your comments here puzzles me. If scientists can say a LOT about our system of stars, planets, galaxies and how they expanded from the primal monobloc, what need is there for mystics to "intuit" when they already know the universe exists? To me, it would seem more logical for mystics to seek after the Creator of that universe/multiverse/alternate universes. Or at least strive to find Who or what was the first cause.
By "multiverse" do you also mean universes "parallel" to ours? We both have read popularizing explanations of the alternate world hypothesis (scientists like Frank Tipler and Sean Carroll comes to mind). It might theoretically be possible to "access" a fellow multiverse "adjacent" to ours (in the sense your neighbors houses are adjacent to yours). But if that "multiverse" is alternate from ours, I don't see how it can be connected to our multiverse.*
We have discussed the issue of God "needing" other selves to exist before He could be said to exist. And I simply don't agree that even makes sense. God, because He is God, is already infinitely happy and perfect, and needs nothing from anybody or anything else. I have suggested, quoting Dante, that God created other beings (angels and physically incarnate beings), not because He needs them, but because He wanted to rejoice in the existence of other beings who could declare, "I am" to Him.
Ad astra! Sean
*I forgot to write a note for that asterisk in my comment above. Poul Anderson suggested in one of his letters to me that it might be speculatively possible to access an alternate universes via a black hole. IF anyone who tries that can survive!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
There is no need for mystical experience. It happens.
It makes sense to seek the Creator/first cause if you assume that there is one. This is circular.
"God, because He is God..." This begs the question.
If an other universe can be accessed, then it is connected. If there is something that is not connected, then we cannot even know that it exists.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Mysticism happens. I can see that.
I think it is just as circular to think, as you seem to do, that "matter/energy" is eternal. That IT is the first cause.
I could have given a long definition of the properties or qualities that makes God what He is. I did not think that was necessary. So I was brief.
No objection to your last paragraph. Scientists can only speculate, based on their interpretations of quantum mechanics, that alternate universes exist. A concept SF writers like L. Sprague DeCamp, Poul Anderson, Ward Moore, S.M. Stirling, etc., have used in many stories. But, as of now, I don't believe any evidence for alternate worlds has been found.
We do see the Draka in Stirling's DRAKON finding technological means of transferring from their universe to one that look uncomfortably like ours.
Ad astra! Sean
The earliest scientifically hypothesized cause of anything is a quantum fluctuation in a vacuum.
Sherlock Holmes, because he IS Sherlock Holmes, is very clever but it does not follow from this that he IS: two different meanings of "IS."
Sean,
Energy might not be beginningless and endless. We don't know. But, empirically so far, it is what has been found to underlie everything else. It is not circular to acknowledge that.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I think that too brings up an obvious question: what caused that quantum fluctuation and vacuum to even exist?
Certainly, "is" can have different meanings. Sherlock Holmes is a very clever detective, but that was not the same as saying he is an actual person.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
And I agree "energy" underlies everything that exists. I simply don't think it had no beginning.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But we don't know whether or not it had a beginning.
Paul.
Sean,
Quantum fluctuations are random, statistical, uncaused.
As with Sherlock Holmes, the idea of God is of a perfect being but it does not follow from the idea alone that such a being exists.
Paul.
If we explain anything, e.g., World War I, there is always an earliest known cause and maybe some earlier hypothetical causes and that is as far as we can go. If asked about anything earlier than that, we say that we don't know.
Maybe the Theory of Everything, if there is one, will explain mathematically why, instead of mere nothingness, there is a dynamic vacuum full of potential energy and virtual particles, capable of generating "inflation" and expanding universes or maybe it won't. Why, at this stage, should we make any absolute statements about such matters? We are only just beginning to learn.
Kaor, Paul!
We might not KNOW whether matter/energy had a beginning, but it at least seems REASONABLE to think it did have a beginning.
Yes, but again, it seems reasonable to think there was, at one time, a first quantum fluctuation.
And philosophers have argued for the existence of God from reasoning alone, which I do not claim proves God exists.
As for your last comment, some of your blog pieces, including this one, seems to come close to making such an "absolute" statement when you wrote: "Particular deities MUST* be understood as personifications, not persons, the highest creations of the imagination..." I admit that made me take the opposing POV.
Ad astra! Sean
*My stress, SMB.
Sean,
I meant absolute statements about ultimate reality.
Deities MUST be understood as personifications IF it is the case that consciousness is only a byproduct of natural selection and IF is also the case that life is only a local, temporary exception to increasing entropy. That did not make you take the opposing view. You take the opposing view in any case.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I take the opposing view to many of your statements because I disagreed with them. And I don't believe your "IF" is correct.
Btw, I have been wondering if any sick Buddhists, Protestants, Jews, or even Muslims make pilgrimages to Lourdes, hoping (or being open to?) for cures there? I can see Orthodox Christians, with beliefs much like those of Catholics, making such pilgrimages, which made me wonder if any adherents of the others I listed did so. My belief is that God, being the God of all mankind (even when not acknowledged as such) is fully capable of showing compassion to such person who seek Him out sincerely.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
It is reasonable to think that energy had a beginning and that there was a first quantum fluctuation? Is it? But where does that get us? Are you looking for some earlier moment at which you can say, "It must have been God before that"? We do not know what was before the earliest things that we know.
People retain preconceived conclusions. I have heard it said, "We do not know what was before the Big Bang so there must have been consciousness before the Big Bang!" Not only does this conclusion not follow from the premise. It contradicts it.
Paul.
Sean,
You disagree with my premise but my only point was that I thought that my conclusion followed from the premise, not that the conclusion had to be accepted in an absolute sense.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
To begin with the first comment: then it might have helped if you had more emphatically stated you were only thinking you were drawing a conclusion from a premise, and not that the conclusion had to be absolutely accepted.
What I thought by that first quantum fluctuation comment was how or what or who caused it?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the post begins by asking what are the implications of the scientific worldview and then goes on to summarize what I think is the answer to that question. Obviously someone else might either not accept that worldview or disagree with me about what its implications are.
The nature of a quantum event is that it is uncaused. An electron changes its orbit around a nucleus without any prior event having happened to cause that change of orbit. It just happens. That is what differentiates a quantum event from other, causally determined, events.
If there were an earliest known event that was not of a quantum nature, then we would only be able to say that we did not know what had caused it. To ask "what or WHO" is to introduce the idea of personal causation at a stage long before, according to the evidence, any self-conscious beings had yet come into existence. Maybe there were personal beings that far back but that is only one, less likely, hypothesis, and then how had they come into existence?
Paul.
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