The Universe: No God Required

[ballzac]

P1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

P2. The universe began to exist.

C. Therefore, the universe has a cause, and that cause must be a God.

that conclusion does logically follow from those premises. an argument can be logically valid without being true. the form of deduction used in that example is called Modus Ponens, and has been used since medieval philosophy.

 

Well, it depends how you define "God". The only way that conclusion can follow from the premises is if you define God to be the first cause. But that is rather circular. The definition of God usually discussed in this kind of context, is an intelligent, conscious, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, creator of the universe. None of that follows from the premises.

[Seldom]

* edited too slow, i added "the addition of 'and that cause must be a God' is what does not follow from the premises, the rest of the argument is sound."

you're my favourite dude on sab to but heads with about these things..

[botanika]

a belief in god is an ecological adaption. Nothing more, nothing less.

[goneski]

But that kind of reasoning still doesn't explain the actual subjective experience of consciousness, as those phenomena would still exist in a universe with no consciousness.

To give another example, how will we ever determine if artificial intelligence is conscious or not? How do we tell if the pain a robot receives is actually experienced subjectively by a 'ghost in the machine'? There is no way to determine what makes one thing conscious and another thing simply appear conscious. You can bring up things like turing tests, but all you can do is ascertain whether the machine is providing an effective illusion of consciousness. You can never determine whether it's 'consciousness' is actually experienced subjectively.

 

Define what you mean by 'actually experienced subjectively'. Neuroscience is increasingly showing phenomenology arises from physical, materialistic processes.

How can you accurately determine if a person is 'actually experiencing subjectivity'? Phantom limb syndrome and alien / anarchic hand syndrome throw these things into question,

not to mention the problem of other minds is a massive area in itself -- regardless of whether we agree with substrate neutrality.

How are you defining 'actual' vs 'illusion' of consciousness? Again, check out Thomas Metzinger's work -- backed by the findings of neuroscience -- which suggests consciousness IS the illusion.

Your very questions are based on a kind of naive realism of what consciousness is based on your own experience. How can you be certain there exists this magical thing / ghost in the machine called consciousness

separate from the 'illusion' of consciousness? This kind of thinking, along with Searle's Chinese Room argument is based upon nothing more than a hunch / intuition.

Define the supposed difference or dichotomy between 'actual' and illusion / fake consciousness.

John Searle's Chinese Room argument in the same vein -- suggesting that the computer is "just computing / translating". Along come cognitive scientists, neuroscientists saying well yes, that's all the brain is in fact doing,

albeit on a much more complex level. There are a lot of scientists and philosophers who have developed or are developing computational theories of mind (based on functionalism / computationalism) -- machine intelligence and theory of mind were my major research areas at university. The very fact we are starting to find neural correlates for various feelings, behaviours, emotions, etc also supports this.

http://www.psych.utoronto.ca/users/reingold/courses/ai/cache/searle.html

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/chinese.html

http://www.zompist.com/searle.html

http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Qbvkja-J9iQC&pg=PA323&lpg=PA323&dq=daniel+dennett+chinese+room&source=bl&ots=71dgRJlXTY&sig=biAq_oBmCX90X0kP6NBg26DfdGg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=khf8T92nC-ujiAehr4HbBg&ved=0CFYQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=daniel%20dennett%20chinese%20room&f=false

[ballzac]

How can you be certain there exists this magical thing / ghost in the machine called consciousness

 

I'm not sure. That's my whole point. Neuroscience does not provide any evidence one way or the other. Because if consciousness does exist in a machine (be it a brain or otherwise) it will look no different to that same machine if consciousness is not present.

Defining consciousness is a difficult task, but I think you would agree that we have a subjective experience of existing. An illusion of consciousness is simply where the outward behaviours are the same as for a conscious entity, but it does not have that same subjective experience.

When I talk about consciousness, I am not talking about cognition, or the sense of self. I am talking about the subjective awareness I (and I presume everyone else) have of my own existence. Try telling someone who is being tortured that his consciousness is just an illusion, and the pain is just a function of brain states and has no deeper importance.

I'm open to the possibility that consciousness is an illusion, but boy, what a concrete one. I'm also open to the possibility that there is no distinction between consciousness and apparent consciousness. In fact, I think it's unlikely that there is a distinction. But that doesn't mean that neuroscience can actually answer these questions, because the thing about subjective experience is that it is experienced...by the subject.

[Seldom]

When I talk about consciousness, I am not talking about cognition, or the sense of self. I am talking about the subjective awareness I (and I presume everyone else) have of my own existence. Try telling someone who is being tortured that his consciousness is just an illusion, and the pain is just a function of brain states and has no deeper importance.

there were similar arguments when they discovered pain was just activity in what they call c fibres.

there a innumerable positions on this, from eliminative materialism, like Dennett, who says literally consciousness doesn;t exist, to some pantheistic conceptions which say an elemental level consciousness is an essential feature of the primary ontological substance, meaning it's in everything to some degree.

I'm also open to the possibility that there is no distinction between consciousness and apparent consciousness.

i've never heard of people making that destinction. i like the example the phrase 'the lightning flashes. there's no agent which is lightning doing the flash, the lightning is just the flash. the same in people there is no doer behind the doing, just doing .. i think its a bit of a non problem and there's nothing really wrong with just saying the mind is what the brain does. and pharmacologically part of the point of entheogens is to disrupt these known mechanisms which enable experience in order to change orientation to things and expand appreciation of stuff. even though i study psychology i still believe in acknowledging a limit to what science can be applied to, and in the value of using other methods, so as to be a more seasoned scholar of the noetic dimensions of experience. i think you have to leave hopes for intersubjubjectively verifiable things or the truth of operational constructs behind, if you want to see what the mind is in its entirety ..

[etherealdrifter]

so much thinking being thunk here

@bulls

boobs

[∂an]

Thanks for your thoughtful reply Ballzac.

In order to use science, we have to make the assumptions that the universe exists objectively, and that we can learn something about it. Science is only useful if we can build predictive models of reality. If these assumptions are correct, then science can be of great utility, and this seems to be the case. If they are not correct, then science is an ultimately useless endeavour. The point is that science cannot say anything about how things 'actually' are. All it can do is provide models that can be used to make predictions. Good models can provide many accurate predictions, poor models cannot. However, regardless of whether science can ultimately explain everything, and whether everything can ultimately be described by cause and effect, no religion has ever been able to provide evidence of a creator, and many apologists have asserted knowledge that has proven to be demonstrably false.

My point, in relation to your post, is that this cause-effect paradigm (I don't know what makes you call that a "Catholic-creator-god paradigm") seems at the very least to have utility. It is why we have computers and iPhones, and why we can treat diseases and explore other planets. Philosophically, I agree with your sentiment, but unless you can provide a framework for a new scientific paradigm, then the current scientific paradigm is the best we have.

 

I totally agree that science has great practical utility, but its philosophical utility is currently limited. I guess one may argue that if science continues on its rapid rate of advancement, it will one day obviate the need for philosophy by being able to predict the behaviour of all systems in the universe and its very existence. But currently there are many complex systems that science cannot predict the behaviour of (e.g. the human mind and the existence of the universe), and therefore I feel that science should not proclaim itself as a metatheory that all ideas must pass through to gain credence.

This is why I referred to science as being a "Catholic-creator-god paradigm":

It is interesting that many of the foundering personalities of modern science where devout Christians. Whether or not they believed in the finer points laid down by the Romain Catholic Church, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Decartes and many others, were devout believers in God. Science may have been conceived as a reaction against the divine creationism of Christianity, but it inherents many of its basic tenets, such as cause-and-effect. The bible says "in the beginning was the word, and the word was made flesh". The word of God (cause) creating the universe (effect) is a basic principle of christianity. Maybe science has subconsciously inherited this meme from Christianity? The physicists in the article linked in the OP can be paraphrased to say "in the beginning were the laws of physics, and the laws of physics made the universe". For all its sophistication, science too requires an act of God (i.e. a singularity) to kick start the universe.

The data source science is missing is the experience of human consciousness. In your first sentence you said that for science to be useful we have to assume that the universe exists objectively. The reason why I and many other people feel that science does not have all the answers, is that it is possible to have experiences where the physical world around us seems to react to our mentation of it (i.e. it can behave subjectively). If we can find a way to incorporate subjectivity into the scientific method, then maybe we really will have the ultimate philosophical tool. We shouldn't have to rely on God or a big bang or any such singularity to explain the universe, but we need to make theories using all the data available to us not just that which can be physically measured.

[ballzac]

i've never heard of people making that destinction.

 

I think this is a distinction made by most religious people. They claim that God created us with a soul, and it is this soul that has the attribute of consciousness. I think most religious people (and possibly most non-religious people too) believe that artificial intelligence can never have true consciousness, though most people in the modern era probably accept that a machine can have apparent consciousness. The question is whether the terminator has the a subjective experience of the pain he receives. Put another way, true consciousness it the attribute an entity has that makes harming it immoral. Without true consciousness, harming the entity is no more immoral than harming a rock.

While the concept of a soul is not required to believe in consciousness, if all consciousness is apparent consciousness, then there is no soul. So disproving the existence of true consciousness is akin to disproving the soul, which in turn disproves most conceptions of God. I don't think scienc can/has done this. It's not only that I have seen no evidence for this. It's that I have seen no rationale as to how this could be proven.

This is similar to evolutionary biology providing a naturalistic basis for the origin of life, without actually being able to disprove creation or a creator. We may be able to use neuroscience to show that the concept of consciousness is superfluous, but it doesn't prove that it does not exist.

The word of God (cause) creating the universe (effect) is a basic principle of christianity. Maybe science has subconsciously inherited this meme from Christianity? The physicists in the article linked in the OP can be paraphrased to say "in the beginning were the laws of physics, and the laws of physics made the universe". For all its sophistication, science too requires an act of God (i.e. a singularity) to kick start the universe

 

You're thinking of it like this:

Christianity

....|....

....|....

....|....

Causality

....|....

....|....

....|....

Modern Science

I think it's more like this:

Causality

oooooooo/\ooooooooooo

ooooooo/---\oooooooooo

oooooo/.......\ooooooooo

Christianity Science

Akin to biological evolution, there is common descent with horizontal 'gene' transfer. I think causality is something we all believe in innately as a survival mechanism, because it is a survival mechanism, and we also learn to believe in it throughout life because we observe that the world works that way. This has been inherited by both religious and secular understandings of the world.

Edited July 10, 2012 by ballzac

[goneski]

Yep, harm is an interesting subject.. Machine intelligence and bioethics make an interesting meld

[whitewind]

In order to use science, we have to assume the laws of physics never change - and yet if we assume a point where things come in to existence, we know already that this isn't true - at some point in the distant past. So it's kind of a false premise, really.

[CβL]

In order to use science, we have to assume the laws of physics never change - and yet if we assume a point where things come in to existence, we know already that this isn't true - at some point in the distant past. So it's kind of a false premise, really.

The first part of your statement is false. Science (the method of finding "answers" via modelling, prediction and experiments) works wherever/whenever something is invariant (for which science can then find the invariance). Modern physics, you are quite right - rests on the shoulders of so called universal constants and mostly linear equations. If those constants are in fact changing (I suspect none of them are rigid everywhere in space and time), then modern physics is still fully workable. But if those constants didn't exist (i.e. before the big bang), then yeah, physics is broke - but science is not, and could find a replacement (unfortunately, or fortunately - there are probably no scientists before the big bang, so it's not actually possible).

Secondly, I think it should be made clear that most of the arguments being used here are against how science is being done at the moment, and not the concept of science itself.

[Zen Peddler]

People who dont believe that there is no intelligence behind the universe dont make sense to me. the universe, life and the animal/plant kingdom is ruled by order rather than chaos. Pure chaos would not create an ordered universe with physical rules and predictable forces.

[ballzac]

People who dont believe that there is no intelligence behind the universe dont make sense to me. the universe, life and the animal/plant kingdom is ruled by order rather than chaos. Pure chaos would not create an ordered universe with physical rules and predictable forces.

 

Did you intend all those negatives in the first sentence? The first sentence implies that you don't believe there is an intelligence behind it. The rest seems to imply the opposite.

[CβL]

The universe is not predictable at all ZPBG. Even the simple act of hanging one pendulum onto another is utterly unpredictable after sufficient time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_pendulum

<- As you can see, it does what the hell it wants to (not that this little picture is the evidence, it just helps to show). The type of equation is not solvable, and even with numeric techniques and nigh-infinite computational power, it is impossible to predict it's behaviour for a sufficient time. And that's a highly artificial example.

Humans see order where we want to. If we didn't find patterns and assume them to be true everywhere, and all the time, we would not be the top species (it's debatable if we even are).

For a long time humans thought the planets followed Newton's laws of gravitation. It turns out they don't, but it's a close fit for massive objects at low speeds (only). All of physics is like this. Superconductivity is a completely strange phenomena that classical electromagnetism could not describe whatsoever.

Wait until you find out about quantum mechanics. I don't pretend to understand it deeply. But what tiny little bits I do know, show that determinism (aka strictly following laws) does not exist here (it could on a lower level, but there's zero evidence of lower-level determinism whatsoever at the moment). So our best and deepest evidence shows that the universe does what it wants to, and cannot be predicted.

Unfortunately you have not proven that there must be a creator anymore than I can prove there cannot be a creator (I'm not actually trying to prove that though). There could be a creator, and there might not be. It requires more explanation to suppose there's a magical guy with superpowers than to suppose "what there is is what there was" - which is the strongest argument we can muster for why there probably isn't creator. The argument doesn't say there cannot be one, only that it's unlikely there's a creator as there's no non-ambiguous evidence. What "evidence" you do have, is unfortunately misconceptions of what science has actually shown, and furthermore support your view no more than mine (actually my view includes yours, yours does not include mine, which actually gives a higher probability to my view of "could be both - not sure, need more data").

[Zen Peddler]

Did you intend all those negatives in the first sentence? The first sentence implies that you don't believe there is an intelligence behind it. The rest seems to imply the opposite

Written in a hurry sorry.

Humans see order where we want to.

 

More tellingly people look for evidence that supports their preconceived views about certain things - often making generalisations to support what really is a faith-based or gut belief or impression. And to state that all of physics is random and does not conform to rules other than those that we see (that arent really there) is an extreme stretch. Rather than a measure my random science knowledge competition, I'd end with the point that if the dynamics of the world, biology and the universe were truly random in every parameter science would not exist as there would be nothing to measure or contend, as the result of every analysis or test would have totally random results. And our skin might just randomly turn into anti matter and make our bodies explode at any point. But that wouldnt matter because time would not follow any measurable course. As we would exist in a timeless environment - or then again time might start and stop and fluctuate randomly.

What "evidence" you do have, is unfortunately misconceptions of what science has actually shown,

So for me to have misconceptions of what science has 'shown' you are implying that you understand 'what science has shown' as if all scientific knowldge can be easily quantified and generalised into an argument that the parameters of the physical universe are all purely chaotic and follow no rules. I had no idea you comprehend and have appreciation of every scientific discovery ever made. And that the whole of science can be boiled down into this narrow statement.

Science is actually about questioning - investigating and attempting to test a contention - questioning that contention rather than trying to twist a few random examples into demonstrating a preconceived view. That's more the realm of religion...

Edited July 14, 2012 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[Zen Peddler]

Phantom limb syndrome, for example, is one phenomenon showing how subjectivity may be an illusion of sorts.

Then there's also alien / anarchic hand syndrome..

 

Peripheral autonomic nervation and pain reception have so many variables. People with peripheral neuropathies and other neuropathic abnormalities dont tend to lose the feeling of self / ego / sentience, so Im not convinced that this proves much about the nature of consciousness.

Edited July 14, 2012 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[Zen Peddler]

I wonder if Hawking has ever had a 'mystical' experience? There seems to be a tendency for people that have not had paradigm-defying experiences to dismiss those that have as delusional. Its a rare minority of people how have had mystical experiences that are able to explain them away with the delusion argument. Having an open mind and trusting your own perception is the key.

Exactly!! A valid point. Unlike my own

Edited July 15, 2012 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[ThunderIdeal]

what if instead of believing in the universe, so vast, you had a strong suspicion that infinity existed. i can rationalise it a number of ways but for the sake of simplicity, why would there be so much, but no more? is there an boundary beyond which existence can't occur? is there a finite quantity of stuffs? a start, a finish?

i guess infinity has unifying structures, because it's all inclusive. it wouldn't be complete without a strand tying it together.

[myco]

Watched a doco the other day wich was basically Stephen Hawkins thoughts on the meaning of life and where we came from

Was actually a pretty interesting watch but he believes in the whole bing bang thing wich seems to make sense his claim was basically this

There is no god because before the big bang there was only nothingness there was no time

and therefore there was no time for a so called god to create the universe

Me personally I guess you could call me an atheist I don't believe there is any particular god up there that controls everything we do and every aspect of our lives in my opinion with the advances in sience the whole idea of it is absolutely ridiculous but who am I to judge I'm going of my own thoughts

I have some mixed theories on things alot of the ancient astronaut theories seem to make alot of sense at times

I also found the spirit molecule doco to be extremely intriguing it actually kinda blew my mind

Had me racing with thoughts of how this could make sense

I believe there is more to the universe and everything than meets the eye

But I definately don't believe there is one almighty god controlling and creating everything

Just my opinion guys hope I didn't offend anyone never my intentions

[goneski]

I'm just going to put this here..

http://www.math.com/...life/life.html/

.. and state that the 'order' in the universe is only relative to the physics of the universe in which it is observed..

Edited August 14, 2012 by SYNeR

[ThunderIdeal]

Watched a doco the other day wich was basically Stephen Hawkins thoughts on the meaning of life and where we came from

Was actually a pretty interesting watch but he believes in the whole bing bang thing wich seems to make sense his claim was basically this

There is no god because before the big bang there was only nothingness there was no time

and therefore there was no time for a so called god to create the universe

Me personally I guess you could call me an atheist I don't believe there is any particular god up there that controls everything we do and every aspect of our lives in my opinion with the advances in sience the whole idea of it is absolutely ridiculous but who am I to judge I'm going of my own thoughts

I have some mixed theories on things alot of the ancient astronaut theories seem to make alot of sense at times

I also found the spirit molecule doco to be extremely intriguing it actually kinda blew my mind

Had me racing with thoughts of how this could make sense

I believe there is more to the universe and everything than meets the eye

But I definately don't believe there is one almighty god controlling and creating everything

Just my opinion guys hope I didn't offend anyone never my intentions

 

really, you liked the spirit molecule doco?

yeah stephen hawkings, the universe in a nutshell. from beginning to (finish??) the universe and it's laws sit in a kind of sealed envelope outside of which there is no time or space, hence why it is a nutshell with the pointy end as the start and the widening signifies the expansion of space. he did contemplate other universes including unstable ones but from what i remember reading (works intended for a wider audience) he never gave any real explanation for why the big bang occurred, he seemed more concerned with explaining the rapid early expansion and dreaming about a grand unified theory which would explain THIS universe.

myco from your wording it sounds like hawkings was denying the kind of god portrayed in several religions who kind of sits around and then decides to mould the earth and the stars, and maybe listens to people's prayers and rewards the best brown-nosers i wish we could all move past it. this is part of the reason i favour hinduism, even though it does give descriptions of god, it also says 'look, you can't really understand god'. incidentally it may or may not be taken as a prescription to start brown-nosing, but all of this can be looked at and rationalised in different ways.

there seems to be a bit more interest now in what might lay further beyond. it was really cool when somebody thought they might be looking at evidence of the universe having jostled against other expanding universes earlier in it's life.

[GregKasarik]

This is one of those fascinating conversations that tends to highlight what I regard as the only "Truth", namely that there is no "Truth".

I am a philosophical Rationalist in the pure sense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism), as opposed to modern "Rationalists", who are in fact Empiricists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism) in drag and who happen to think that it is scientific and cool to form "Rationalist Societies", that are in fact nothing of the sort. Philosophical Rationalism is almost dead in the modern world, so my belief in Reason as the only thing that can ever produce "Truth" may seem rather strange. My perspectives might seem very different from fairly much everyone else's although other mystics might recognise threads of similarity.

My Rationalism is driven by the possibility that we live in an Infiniverse, where everything that is logically and mathematically possible to occur does in fact occur. In an Infiniverse, Uncertainty is the only certainty, as one can never know whereabouts one is within the yawning abyss of potential worlds.

Generally Empiricists find people like me to be vaguely annoying, because we don't play nice with the axioms of epistemology.

The whole question of why there exists something, rather than nothing is one which I doubt that we can ever explain. If there exists a Supreme Being, I am sure that this question is one that keeps him awake at night as well. Despite the protestations of scientists and priests, neither God, nor physics can ever be a part of the answer, because both of these are something and can't therefore be used to explain the existence of something. The notion of the "uncaused cause" is quite silly indeed.

My ideas regarding the issue of "creation" are more in line with those of Parmenides, the teacher of Socrates, who posited that the universe simply exists as a static and ever unchanging whole and that both time and motion are merely illusions (intriguingly, I have just gotten my hands on a book called "The End of Time", by a chap by the name of Julian Barbour, who argues this from the perspective of modern physics). Parmenides was the genius who first realsed that "nothing can ever come from nothing".

By "nothing" I (and he) mean a state of non-existence; a state which is completely devoid of any information content. Nothing whatsoever exists, including time and space. It is impossible for something to arise out of the state of nothingness. If it were, this would imply that it the state of non-existence actually contained within it the possibility of something existing. But possibility is in fact itself “something”, if only an information state that recognises potential. Possibility describes potential within time, and time does not exist within the non-existent state.

Not only does nothing not exist, but non-existence precludes the existence of existence; they are mutually exclusive states. Just as "nothing" can't arise from "something", so to can't "something" give way to "nothing", as in order to do so it would have had to never existed in the first place.

These somewhat complex and confusing ideas are explained in more detail (and hopefully more clarity) here: http://www.kasarik.com/Something-vs-Nothing.php

I also hold that if we were to be looking for a fundamental unit of existence, it would most likely be Maths, as this seems to be the only thing that can "exist" without requiring a universe within which to contain it. Being Infinite, Maths is of course the ideal source of an Infiniverse. Of course, not everyone would agree as can be shown by the fact that mathematicians are still debating whether maths is invented or discovered. And don't ask me how we go from Maths to a universe that we can see and experience. You do know that this is all speculation don't you?

With respect to this universe, science can tell us a lot about it, but by definition it isn't equipped to deal with our universe's metaphysics (if it where, metaphysics would be called "physics"). Of course science is the child of empiricist philosophy (and does a damned find job at it, which is why Rationalists are so few and far between) and assumes that this universe is "real" in some meaningful, objective sense and isn't simply a magical, or technical simulation, or perhaps even the creation of the observers own mind. The unfortunate fact is that this universe could be explained by any one of a potentially infinite number of metaphysical possibilities, so it is perhaps almost a given that any theory we decide upon is going to be significantly false in one way, or another. To complicate matters, it could very well be the case that this very universe exists simultaneously within all possible metaphysical realities, in much the same way as a smaller mathematical equation can be bracketed into an infinite number of larger ones. Eg. a+b*(4+6) compared to 2a+2b*(4+6), and 3a+3b*(4+6) and onto infinity with na+nb*(4+6).

But just as science can't disprove the Matrix, so to can mystics not disprove the Null Hypothesis, the hypothesis that everything is exactly as it is presented by the likes of Dawkins and that the only "reality" is the cold, impersonal and uncaring reality described by science (yes I need a better - perhaps more poetic - way of explaining that but I've been awake for over 24 hours and my brain is getting foggy...)

With this in mind, questions of metaphysics become quite irrelevant to our daily grind, even as they are an endless source of entertaining conversation and speculation. Ultimately we must each believe what makes sense to us and determine our own course through existence, irrespective of whether it lasts one, or one thousand, or one googlolplexian lifetimes. (Apparently it is a real word, but I think they just made it up. Much like all the other words really...)

The question of sentience is one of major importance to many of us, if for no other reason than our own fear of death and the desire to survive beyond the limits of this particular life. I freely admit that the thought of my own oblivion terrifies me, even as the thought of my own physical death does not.

I know that I am sentient, but as Descartes demonstrated, perhaps with the exception of mathematical, logical and definitional truths (and there are those that argue that there is no such thing as a mathematical "truth"), that is really the extent of what I can properly claim to "Know". I can't even be sure that anyone else has any sentience, or that they really exist. Ironically, not even "God" as described by Christian theologians could really "know" if his creations were sentient in any meaningful sense, which is another reason to suppose that if an omniscient being did exist (which is something that I have reasonably demonstrated is logically impossible), it would in fact be you. By definition, the consciousness of an Omniscient being entails the consciousnesses of every other possible being and any "created" being would merely be a copy of an extant memory of the Omniscient being.

I am certainly not the only one who has experienced Transcendent mystical states in which they felt their consciousness become an infinite, timeless reality and in which they perceived themselves as an inseparable part of a unitary consciousness that binds all sentient beings together. Is this sensation a reflection of something that is "real"? I honestly don't know, but by the same token I honestly can't deny the power of the experience and am thankful of the glimpse that I have been given into what might be the central secret of the Infiniverse.

Don't ask me to prove it. Heck, I can't even really explain it: The first Disciple is always the first Heretic. But I am left with the distinct impression that everything will turn out all right in the end and that my death will simply be the end of this particular story. Just as there are an infinite set of numbers, so too are there an infinite set of stories and each of them will be told. God, if he exists, does so at the unattainable end of creation, not the beginning.

Of course, the ultimate irony is that if my death really is the final curtain call, I'll never realise that everything I ever believed and experienced was nothing but misplaced illusion.

Which neatly brings us full circle to the fundamental realisation that "The Truth is not out there"! :-)

[IndianDreaming]

Well articulated! This is my favourite version of the tale...

 

 

[goneski]

Emergence / Emergent Complexity is a very relevant (and even new in some regards) field..

As before: http://www.math.com/...life/life.html/

Also:

http://en.wikipedia....Boltzmann_brain

 

Edited August 14, 2012 by SYNeR