Anonymouse Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 Not only that, but he's also taking a piss-race with a jolly swell guy (or two) who actually has a Ph.D. as well. Not that there's anything wrong with discussing any subject with anyone, but he has just shown how shamelessly he just has to insist on trying to negate everything, anything, coming from people with some command over their thoughts and logic, all the while we are narrow-minded people ("evolutionists") that will cling on to our "dearly held views" at whatever expense, and after all, the anti-thesis of evolution is, you guessed it, God and aliens. The thread has achieved its mission; thank you, Rat, for the not-so-sublime entertainment. It was good up to a point until I realised you must be genuine. If you were born an Azeri, you'd be one shameless genocide denialist and "Albanianist." Then of course you would have an entirely different set of intellectual version of f*gh*gs in awe of you, how sweet, I can just picture it. Stormtrooper, the problem with you and the other folks who flaunt their PhDs valiantly as if to suggest some aura of importance and superiority, is that you have resorted to childish name calling from the onset, which makes me wonder if you have a PhD why the need to resort to such desperate measures? You claim I lack logic and thought, yet you have displayed the least of it. Now do me a favor. If you write a book called "PhD Has Gotten To My head", I will buy it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 Stormtrooper, the problem with you and the other folks who flaunt their PhDs valiantly as if to suggest some aura of importance and superiority, is that you have resorted to childish name calling from the onset, which makes me wonder if you have a PhD why the need to resort to such desperate measures? You claim I lack logic and thought, yet you have displayed the least of it. Now do me a favor. If you write a book called "PhD Has Gotten To My head", I will buy it. AnonyRat, I don't have a Ph.D. and don't recall myself or anyone saying I did, though I am beginning to consider continuing onto one at some point in my life. I have other "credentials" for my logic and thought and they are neither academic nor do they have anything to do with babysitting "smart" you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 You are the smartest person evar! What are you doing on this forum? Remember, tis far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without you having to help them. *Hands folded in respect* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 You are the smartest person evar! What are you doing on this forum? Remember, tis far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without you having to help them. *Hands folded in respect* Oh no, only after you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DominO123 Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 Oh no, only after you. Actually, anon said something that has some sense for once. You are one of the smartest persons I uncountered in my life. It isn't the first time I said that. I have read 3 times anon answer, I would like to answer but i still have not found any arguments to answer... can you show me where are those arguments in question stormig? BTW, the problem with anon is not the fact that he reject everything, I find that fun and i do believe that everyone once in a life time should do that. The problem is that when you reject everything and have another notion(which BTW could be as right as anything else) of reality, everything else must change. If I consider humans as beem of energy and walking talking souls etc... and that my theses is centered on that and that I do deny the existance of physicial reality, everything not only the theory of evolution should be modified... the important here is to make sense, and to answer questions. If one claim that aliens are reponsable of the "creation" of humanity, one must explain us from where those aliens come from? Have they been created by other aliens, by others those by others etc...? He claims his hypotheses answer more questions... where are the evidences? The moment you consider humans as animals, consider DNA... you have decided to live in a universe where evolution is responsable of all this... there might be another explanation, but you can not just reject evolution, you must reject the rest... while anon use the rest to support his claims, this same rest that he himself reject. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 Actually, anon said something that has some sense for once. You are one of the smartest persons I uncountered in my life. It isn't the first time I said that. Awwwww, I'm blushing, you tease. BTW - something just crossed my mind about Anon asking how you observe evolution. You don't. You don't see it as it happens. You study and infer it. Similarly, in the art and science known as archaeology, how do you suppose they explain the "evolution" (a.k.a. development) of cultures? They do that through artefacts. In the case of pottery, for example, they do carbon dating and sampling to "see" how the art progressed. They don't have to see it progressing, any more than a paleontologist does. They, too, follow the scientific method, and they also have their own theories. A lot of things sub-atomic aren't observed, either - they are inferred through indirect means. But we've just been told we're too smug about our dearly held beliefs. Tut tut tut, never do that again. Surrender to the ultimate wisdom. Hey Domino, has he been able to graduate his hypothesis that you copy-paste everything into a theory yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 Actually, anon said something that has some sense for once. You are one of the smartest persons I uncountered in my life. It isn't the first time I said that. I have read 3 times anon answer, I would like to answer but i still have not found any arguments to answer... can you show me where are those arguments in question stormig? BTW, the problem with anon is not the fact that he reject everything, I find that fun and i do believe that everyone once in a life time should do that. The problem is that when you reject everything and have another notion(which BTW could be as right as anything else) of reality, everything else must change. If I consider humans as beem of energy and walking talking souls etc... and that my theses is centered on that and that I do deny the existance of physicial reality, everything not only the theory of evolution should be modified... the important here is to make sense, and to answer questions. If one claim that aliens are reponsable of the "creation" of humanity, one must explain us from where those aliens come from? Have they been created by other aliens, by others those by others etc...? He claims his hypotheses answer more questions... where are the evidences? The moment you consider humans as animals, consider DNA... you have decided to live in a universe where evolution is responsable of all this... there might be another explanation, but you can not just reject evolution, you must reject the rest... while anon use the rest to support his claims, this same rest that he himself reject. If this was about Alien Theories or God I would have gladly obliged. You act as if these theories are somehow not real. They are very much so. The only difference they are not sanctioned by millions of dollars nor are they printed heavily and promoted as mainstrean science of evolution is. That is the way it goes. This is true of an idea, just like the Holocaust. Millions of dollars and constant promotion will make believers out of anyone. It will make simple tautological theories into 'absolute truths', to the point where you and Stormtrooper would resort to name calling. It's funny that you say "I have read 3 times anon answer, I would like to answer but I still have not found any arguments to answer". This is a convenient way of shunning the opposition in lieu of having to save yourself the problem of responding. This way, you can say "He's not worth it, he makes no sense" and give yourself a reason to engage in petty name calling, as FedEx always delivers. You just said it yourself "If I consider humans to be a beam of energy". It matters what belief you take, to explain how we got here. One belief isn't necessarily somehow "better" than another. Since humans will never know how we got here, and since we are imperfect we will never know everything, ergo we cannot answer the question evolution supposedly claims to have answered. Only arrogance can. That being said, to a Bible thumper, God makes much more sense to him, as you would call it "the best explanation", whereas your bias dictates that evolution is the "best explanation". I consider humans more than just dry biological organisms, I consider humans as spiritual beings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 Awwwww, I'm blushing, you tease. BTW - something just crossed my mind about Anon asking how you observe evolution. You don't. You don't see it as it happens. You study and infer it. Similarly, in the art and science known as archaeology, how do you suppose they explain the "evolution" (a.k.a. development) of cultures? They do that through artefacts. In the case of pottery, for example, they do carbon dating and sampling to "see" how the art progressed. They don't have to see it progressing, any more than a paleontologist does. They, too, follow the scientific method, and they also have their own theories. A lot of things sub-atomic aren't observed, either - they are inferred through indirect means. But we've just been told we're too smug about our dearly held beliefs. Tut tut tut, never do that again. Surrender to the ultimate wisdom. Hey Domino, has he been able to graduate his hypothesis that you copy-paste everything into a theory yet? IF you state this, then this would contradict would FedEx said in a previous post about how this is 'observed'. It's one or other, make a pick. But even then, it is to me, silly to compare organismic evolution, to cultural evolution. The evolution of organic life as opposed to ideas are different things. We say that transportation evolved from the horse, to the dune buggie, to the modern four wheel drive. That doesn't mean anything. To assert that we morphed from these simple celled organisms, is a big claim, one that lacks evidence. As for carbon dating, there are many problems with it. There are many contradictory answer with that, and the whole premise of arriving at those dates are assumptions. Fossil bones don't come with labels telling you how old they are, scientists have to guess and surmise and give them an age based on these methods. Naturally scientists who support evolution depend on billions and millions of years, since that is a necessary precondition for evolution. Obviously they reject the Bible thumper claim of the earth being 6000 years old or what have you, since evolution could not occur in that timeframe. I love it how people visit a museum and get a thorough illusion of what dinosaurs supposedly looked like, never mentioning how that is an artists rendition of a guess! The problem is that most of you who support evolution cannot see it as a belief, a religion. That is the only area that I have been trying to get across, because it is patently obvious tis a belief system. The model and structure may change in the theory, but the belief stays the same. So Stormtrooper, do you have anything of substance or just more desperation? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasun Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 Hey folks, I don't get it. Isn't an evolution thread enough to discuss evolution? By the way, what's with the name calling ('rat','stormtrooper','fedex')? And Anon, FYI I hold a copyright of calling FedEx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anonymouse Posted April 11, 2004 Report Share Posted April 11, 2004 Haha apologies, I was unaware Mr. Sasun. I'll stick to Felix. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormig Posted April 12, 2004 Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 Anon, I stick by what I said - you do not observe evolution as it is taking place, and in fact you can't within your lifetime. Within your lifetime, though, you may observe mutation. This is a conversation I had with my best friend back in 6th grade! If you look at organism remains and you interpolate, that is not observing in the real sense of the word. That is why I drew up the example of pottery. It is the same way things are inferred, and I remind you of my previous posts where I mentioned contrarianism and arrogance. "Artist's" rendition in museums - there are forensic artists, biological artists - certainly they have a better guess than you or me, who, a millenium ago, would've thought the remains of a dinosaur to be Saint George's slain dragon! Certainly Richard Neave of Manchester University has a better clue than the icon-creators about what Jesus might have looked like! The longer your posts, the deeper you sink. If you hadn't been so shameless and fallen flat on your face the first chance you got, you wouldn't have been sinking. What desperation? Someone pass me tissue paper, I'm going to cry for this poor bloke... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hyebruin Posted April 12, 2004 Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 (edited) mouse jan you are hillarious!!! fedex!! i had to do a double take on that and then you changed it to felix...and of course the classic stormtrooper...lmao here.... keep 'em coming, i like to laffff mouse jan why don't ya whip out your tail and kick some a$$$ Edited April 12, 2004 by hyebruin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anoushik Posted April 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 I am neither a theist, neither an atheist, or both a theist and an atheist. I believe that whatever there is a God or not is a question of accepting a possibility or not... believing something is choosing that possibility among many, when the belief concerns God it becomes a religion. Ok, here goes... I cannot resist and have to ask what you really believe in Domino. Why are you being so cruel and leaving members like me in the dark by not making clear what your true beliefs concerning God are? I want to know what Domino of our present universe feels about the existence of God - stating that one is both an atheist and a theist, or neither an atheist nor a theist in not enough! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sip Posted April 12, 2004 Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 And Anon, FYI I hold a copyright of calling FedEx Although you were first to use it explicitly, I think probably Moso should get credit ... look at the title here!!! Mos is just too good with names like that!!!!! Whether on purpose or just his usual typos, he comes up with some weird stuff. I perfer mine though ... I will still call him Fadio. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DominO123 Posted April 12, 2004 Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 (edited) Ok, here goes... I cannot resist and have to ask what you really believe in Domino. Why are you being so cruel and leaving members like me in the dark by not making clear what your true beliefs concerning God are? I want to know what Domino of our present universe feels about the existence of God - stating that one is both an atheist and a theist, or neither an atheist nor a theist in not enough! I made it clear in more than one occasion. Whatever or not a god exist depend on the observer(the believer). Every possibilities exist, the believer by his beliefs decide in which universe he do live. For me the atheistic or the theistic point of view is a simplified egocentric way of seing things. I already gave the analogy with the incertitude principale in physic. More precisly you measure the speed of a particule less precisely you can measure its position. When you measure its exact speed, the particule stops having a position during that measure. I also gave the example of light being matter or wave, more you measure it as a wave, more it will act as a wave and less as matter, when you consider it entirly as wave and measure it entirly as such, it does not act at all like it is made of matter(non-corpuscular). The same goes with belief in something... every possibilities exist, by your belief(the brain being a quantum computer) you decide to live in a set of universe which is not exactly the same as the others. Since there is infinit numbers of universes and between them there is no chronology(time), since time is only a phenomenology of conscienceness and happen waiting a universe and not among them; that would mean that every possibilities you think of exist, if it were to not exist you could not believe in such possibilities. So what this mean is that you as an atheistic decide to live in a world where there is no god, for a believer, that person live in a world where there is a god, both of you reject a reality, for the believer he reject the reality of the non-existance of a god, and for the non-believer he reject the reality of the existance of a god. Now this might sound a little chaotic, but it is not, because by the interactions we have with eachothers as people etc... we set a universe where we live in, and we measure things from it. This is where anon chaotic vision fail, because as humanity we already live in a universe where Earth revolve around the sun and where evolution is probably what happened... by our intereactions and belief we have build this universe of ours in which we live in... in order to live in another one, we must change the rest of science. But I won't go there right now, it is a very suny day and what to go out right now. I guess now you understand why I don't even pay attention to anon. So in conclusion, asking if god exist or not is irrelevent, because this is personal for everyone... it depend if you have decided to live in a universe where such a god exist... and if you are a believer you will observe things... if you are not, it is unlikely. There are some evidences that belief influence the outcome of an experiment, if you are interested in that i may start a thread in the science section. So what do I believe? I believe that everything exist, we live in a reality we decide to live in by our belief, or if you'de like faith... faith or belief is what paint our reality. In somme, we make of this world what we want. Edited April 12, 2004 by Fadix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sasun Posted April 12, 2004 Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 (edited) Although you were first to use it explicitly, I think probably Moso should get credit ... look at the title here!!! Mos is just too good with names like that!!!!! Whether on purpose or just his usual typos, he comes up with some weird stuff. I perfer mine though ... I will still call him Fadio. Shoot, Mos beat me? P.S. Actually no, I used it a few hours before MosJan http://armenians.com/forum/index.php?showt...indpost&p=52537 I have the copyright Edited April 12, 2004 by Sasun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DominO123 Posted April 12, 2004 Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 OK! guys, regarding the meaning of life and God... here is what is brought in the last chapter of the book of Evan Harris Walker: "The Physics of Consciousness: The Quantum Minds and the Meaning of Life." I decided to post the last chapter of the book. Anoushik, I think by reading it you will understand my critic of the post I answered on the other thread regarding why god has to be this or that. Since a god is what we make of it etc... pp. 327-338 "A God for Tomorrow I am He who exists from the Undivided. . . . It is I who am the light. . . . I am the All. Everything came from Me and Everything extends unto Me. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Part the stone, and you will find Me. -- The Gospel of Thomas It used to be that I would read a book such as Harvey Cox Secular City and feel the emptiness, the vacant eyes of the hollow men, the stuffed men. I used to believe that only a few held onto some religion and worshiped what they believed in. I used to feel alone-- alone or lost-- because I feared that perhaps I was just one of a dwindling few, leaning together-- one of a last few who still felt a need to look in wonder and in awe at the world and, in doing so, make his own kind of supplication. But I do not make that error anymore. Everyone worships-- everyone. Everyone worships reality. Each person looks about him, listens a moment-listens as long as life will let him pause to listen-- and then he falls down and worships whatever it is that looks like this is what it is all about. He does anything, and to this final meaning, he falls down and worships. In his own twilight kingdom of hoped-for dreams and voices speaking promises in his head, he falls and worships. And this is something wonderful, too. A few years ago, I attended a conference in California on "New Visions of Reality." The conference was sponsored by the Department of Physics of the University of California at Berkeley and the Journal of Time, Space, and Knowledge. Most of the conference took place at the Claremont Hotel, a huge gleaming-white Victorian resort in the hills of Berkeley overlooking the Bay Area. Among the people at the conference were Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics, Gary Zukav, author of The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Geoffrey Chew, who proposed the "Bootstrap theory of elementary particles", David Finkelstein, editor of the Journal of Theoretical Physics, Rupert Sheldrake, of "morphogenic field" fame, and Durk Pearson, author of Life Extension. For several days we talked, debated, and mulled over ideas ranging from particle physics, Buddhist thought, consciousness, evolution, and inner visions to physical fitness and vitamins. On the last day, the organizers held a news conference. About 20 reporters came to hear what had been happening. All the participants gave a synopsis of the talk each had made, a kind of last chance to publicize his or her piece of the puzzle. As I remember, toward the end, Professor Chew was once again saying things about his Bootstrap theory, about Feynman diagrams, and something about an infinite number of lines representing an infrared disaster. We had really explored some wonderful ideas at that meeting, but little of any meaning seemed to come across to the reporters. The reporters seemed to be searching for a way to yoke all these divergent ideas into something coherent. But I felt I knew what the speakers were wanting to express. It is on everybody's mind in some form, though we do not usually express it any more dearly than to say we are searching. In one way or another, we are looking for our God. When the palaver finally worked its way round to me, I said quite directly, "What we have been doing here is laying the foundations for a religion of the twenty-first century." I was surprised at how quickly the other speakers agreed with this assessment of a meeting in which neither God nor religion had figured as the primary topic. But the reason for their agreement is clear. The fabric of all our conventional beliefs has been severely strained in recent years. For many, little more than tatters remains. We were there to put some of the pieces back together, knowing that if we could understand those pieces of reality, we might then better know the mind of God and the future of religion. Mankind has traveled a long way in the search to understand reality. We have looked deeply at ourselves, at our religions, and at our science. We have looked at what we are made of and looked at our origins. Beginning with the myths and superstitions of antiquity, we have followed a path of discovery into the modern age of scientific understanding, and we have helped to open the door to new realms of science. Ancient peoples looked into the sky. Someone pointed at the eclipsing sun and said, "That is the eye of Baal closing" . . . and the people were afraid and believed. Others at other times saw an image in a gnarled branch and cut a god free with a stone knife, or chiseled gods out of whole rock . . . and the people were afraid and believed. They fashioned myths and gods, philosophies and religions as tools for their minds to understand a beautiful and fearsome world . . . and the people were afraid and believed. But over the generations, people have tested these ideas little by little. They developed pictures of their world that could give them a better understanding of reality. New ideas moved them step by step closer to answers about their origins-our origins-- and about the meaning of life. These pictures, these ideas are still a part of our lives, and the questions are still with us as well. We still ask about the meaning of life. We still believe and we are still afraid. We still search to find who we are. We still hunger to find some god that we can know. We still ask, "Is there a God?" We still look to see where. Our Hubble telescope peers to the beginning of time, and we ask, "Where could He be in this vast, empty universe?" And in a universe with 100 billion galaxies of 100 billion stars, if He does exist, somehow entwined in these laws that turn the wheels of time, can there be anything there in Him that cares about us, about me? Do we have some meaning that transcends this moment in time? Do we have souls? Do those we have loved, who have now died, still exist somewhere? Is there a God to watch over us, some God of Abraham who would intervene in His great clockwork to spare even the whole world even for a moment? Is God a personal God? Was there a resurrection of Christ? And where is her soul? Where is Merilyn? How many of us fear we already know the answer? How many live tied and baled by the skeptical judgment we fear true? The words were spoken by Lucretiuis. The words are as ancient as humanity, and as modern as today's science news: The world, the universe-- all of it is made of matter. When the matter is lifeless, we are dead, and there is nothing else. We are no more. Death is the end. There is no God. There are no miracles. And she no longer exists. But it isn't so. Now we know that the world is something entirely different from what we imagined before. Now we know from our study of Bell's theorem that the simple picture of a box-like space containing pieces of matter is not adequate to explain how the universe works or what we are. We have discovered that there is much more. We have examined the world, the physics of particles, the nature of mind and will, and the things that tie it all together. We have seen how consciousness is something involving the creation of potentialities as described by quantum theory. We have seen how will is a part of the conscious mind that selects what will happen to those possibilities. We have seen how all of us-- our minds-- are connected. We have seen how this collective consciousness is the source of psychic knowledge, is the power that creates miracles, and is infinite in its span of space and-- time. We have seen that our universe came into being in the first moment of time-- in an explosive expansion of potential states described by that same quantum theory. In an instant, the mind of the cosmos created our universe in a thought, in a conscious act of will. We have searched back to the beginning of time and to the origin of the universe to find the first thought, the first word of God springing into existence as consciousness and physical matter. Consciousness, will, mind-- these were the first moment, the potentialities that continue to this day. Our consciousness, our mind, and the will of God are the same mind. Over and over, scientists have searched for and found the most fundamental truths of reality amid those ideas that resemble the most beautiful forms of nature-- creations that are the lilies of the valley. Even as science would remove one imperfect god created in our image, we have caught, in the same new threads of this greater fabric, a glimpse of a more nearly perfect pattern woven by a greater weaver. That the laws of motion set down by Isaac Newton could span so much of nature seemed to Newton more like a sermon than like the agnostic retort others have turned it into. Einstein, who did not believe in any personal God, nevertheless had an odd faith in the orderliness of nature, a faith that induced him to seek the truths he found for us in an inner sense of an almost mystical conception of the material world. But it is in his efforts to understand matter-- to unify all our experience of reality into a single conception that would unify all the forces and all the laws of nature into a single edifice, reaching, he hoped, from the atomic to the cosmos-that we first see that objective reality is a flawed and incomplete conception of reality. We find that what we had thought was an independent and objective physical world is in fact contingent on the observer, on our combined consciousness, in a most basic way. And it follows that the God we find must be a personal God. It is here that we first see that the observer-- that we ourselves-- must feature in this picture of reality. It is in Einstein's relativity and in his space-time that matter begins to lose its sharp edge. It no longer cuts antithetical views quite so deeply nor quite so well. Now we see that the independent existence of matter and the absoluteness of space were false dogma. But it has only been with the advent of quantum theory that we have discovered proof that we exist as something more than pieces of matter. In the development of quantum theory, the observer emerges as a co-equal in the foundry of creation. Just as the clock tender is implied by the clock's turning hands, so the quantum view of matter requires the presence of an observer. The tests of Bell's theorem have shown us that objective reality as it has been conceived is not the true fabric of reality. The observer interacts with matter. Consciousness, the substance of this new-found reality that defines the observer, has fundamental existence. It is the quantum mind that is the basic reality. We have explored the nature of consciousness and of mind. We have found the measures of consciousness, and we have found out something about the machinery of the brain that is the source of our human consciousness. We have found ways to take the measure of consciousness, to study its contact with the functions of the brain, and to discover how the mind, through the agency of the will, affects matter and transcends the limits of space and time. We have seen how our individual wills, each of which can intervene in the material events of the world, can and must be constrained at some common source. We have gone just a bit further to see, perhaps, where matter comes from and what space itself is, and we have even seen something of the nature and structure of time. We have seen matter and. space as the natural consequence of nothing more than the fact that conscious observers exist. I do not know how much of all this will remain and stand the test of time. I do know that the philosophy of science that ignored the question of consciousness is standing there dead. I know too that science can no longer ignore the fact that our conscious observation affects the quantum potentialities of matter, and we can no longer ignore the significance of what our will does in bridging minds and affecting phenomena in the physical world. The links that exist among the measurement problem in quantum mechanics, the concept of the observer in physics, information processing by the synapses of the brain, consciousness, and mind-these are going to remain. I believe that in all of this we can see a few answers to the many questions about our place in the universe. We can see the "secular," material aspect as only a part of a larger reality. We have a mind that is indeed our own to govern a brain and a body. We have a quantifiable will that controls the brain and reaches out to influence the world we observe. And more than this, there is a collective will that has some of the characteristics of what we call God. What happens to our consciousness on the death of our body? The answer is not yet dear. Our will is transcendent. It has existence that is not dependent on any limits of space and time, an existence that is shared with others. Thus, to a certain extent, it seems something of us must survive. There is, of course, a great deal to be learned before we will know the answers to the question of survival, but at least we see that there are valid approaches to such questions. We also now know that miracles occur, and we know the mechanism of such intervention in the workings of the world. The quantum mind is what lies behind the selection of quantum events and determines the outcome of quantum mechanically entangled states. 1 It is at once a part of a more fully understood natural world and at the same time the direct intervention of the mind of a greater Consciousness. We do not know whether God would intervene to speak to Moses or lead a people. Of course, we do not know from what we have studied here whether Jesus healed the lame and gave sight to the blind. We do not know whether Jesus; rose from the dead. But we do understand that things that would seem miraculous can be brought about by the intervention of mind. Low-probability states from the state vector allowed by quantum mechanics do occur, and their occurrence happens because we are part of the selection process. More than this, we know there is a Consciousness that at least would have had the power to do these things-a consciousness so great that it was able to create all the potentialities of the universe in one thought, in that first 10-43 second . . . in the beginning. Certainly I want to know the true answers. But it is only through a careful. and faithful study of science that we can find the answers and the basis for accepting as fact any of the stories of our religions. Contrary to what many may conclude, I have not sought answers that would satisfy any prior commitment of my own. Far from it! I began as the most ardent student of objective science. I did want to search for answers to the fundamental questions of philosophy. But just as it should be in science, the facts have pointed the direction. Consciousness is a fact that had been overlooked in conventional science. Understanding what consciousness is led me into the intricacies of the measurement problem on the one hand and into an understanding of how the mind selects quantum (and realworld) events on the other. At every turn, the requirements of physics have dictated the conclusions. Different observers cannot see different realities. The hidden variables of conscious observation must be collectively constrained. These are facts that shape the reality we live in. Whatever future and more nearly perfect description of physics may be discovered, it must still embrace these same facts. And if it says this, then there must exist something that with time we can only come to know better, something that stands in the role of God. Many scientists will deplore my saying this and my saying it this way. Most scientists think we cannot speak of God in science without losing objectivity. The abuses of dogmatists in religion are still fresh in the collective mind of science. Undoubtedly, these abuses are just cause for concern, but it will not do for us to have thrown off one group of dogmatists only to deliver science into the clutches of another such group. The tools of science permit us to question, test, and dispute atheistic doctrines posing as scientific principle just as much as they permit us to question, test, and dispute theistic doctrines. Scientists have long believed that science had to embrace the doctrine of materialism. Well, science has had a long and glorious history discovering the secrets of matter. It has studied, classified, theorized, and measured matter in all its manifestations and has given us great understanding. Along the way, many false visions, including many scriptural teachings, have fallen victim to the scrutiny of science. As T. H. Huxley put it, "Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside [the cradle of] Hercules." Materialism in science has served us well. It has enlightened us. It has brought us closer to many truths. But science's investment in materialism has itself turned into a creed, with its own high priests ready to torment the unorthodox. Many phenomena have been ignored in the name of this materialism. The obvious-- such as consciousness-- has been shut out, exactly as if such ideas were the teachings of a heretic. Phenomena that would not fit materialistic concepts have been made anathema and estranged. Science has rolled its war wagons over the crushed myths of so many religious beliefs. It has marshaled its mechanics to explain the motions of the sun, moon, and stars. It has mapped the heavens, leaving no place there for gods to live. It has rolled out its Darwin, its chronologies and atomic dating methods, and its Freud to destroy the ideas of our creation in the image of God, of an earth believed to have been made in 4004 B.C., of religious visions, and of divine inspiration. The consequences have been devastating to religion. Religion-- all religion-has for some time been dying a slow death. Many will greet such a statement with elation that the earth may be freed of the self-righteous, the fearmongers, those who raise the specter of eternal condemnation, those who instill guilt in children and the frail of mind, and those who have inflicted pain, inflamed hatred, and fostered wars in the name of this or that religion. Sadly, these have indeed been legion. Surely what I have to say here, what I see for tomorrow, will never tolerate the return of such perverted minds. We cannot understand those like the conquistadores, who crossed the oceans to enslave the aborigines, steal their gold, and save their souls. We cannot understand those who went to war to capture Jerusalem for Jesus. We cannot understand those who could even imagine a "holy war" as anything but sacrilege. We cannot understand those atrocities any more than we can comprehend the twentieth-century world with its 100-million-killed militarism inflicting fascism or dialectical materialism. But at least we have risen high enough on our hind legs to know that those were truly perversions-- perversions that had nothing to do with religion. Religion to me is not merely one particular creed, though perhaps it is best experienced through one's own creed. It is not the condemning of the sins of others. It is none of the vile acts of hate and war and death. It is not the harbinger of misery. All that is the treachery of usurpers who use whatever device they can find to turn people to their own purposes. But for all this terror, there is one thing that is worse: the thought that all the suffering and all the pleasure of life have no meaning. And that is the sad corollary of our vanishing religious life. Science has the capacity to show us the path to truth. We must go down that path and face whatever is there. But I think that just as some high priests of past religions have sought to impose their personal wills by distorting the teaching of their own prophets, so too scientists have often guided our steps down equally false trails. We have often presumed the direction of science first and cut the path later, before checking to see whether we were going the right way. Science has ignored all issues that might have suggested some middle ground or that might have compromised its secular bias. It has now brought us to the very edge of a world stripped of all innate moral values, without giving us anything to take its place. While humanism and existential philosophies may be formulated in the universities, the ignorant thug in the street has already reached the conclusion that awaits the ponderous thinker: "You have nothing else but what you get. When you're dead, you're dead." Bankrupt of values, civilization is on a course to disaster-- a disaster to kindle nostalgia for the relative tranquility that has been the twentieth century. Science has warred with religion, and for many of the world, it has won. It has pushed back superstition and ignorance, but it has left no principles on which to build lives or any new system of values. Science has won not by showing the concerns of religion to be false but by ignoring those areas it could not deal with. It has ignored questions of God, mind, and morals and replaced them with material pursuits. This has made it appear that there is nothing else to reality but a material world. I would like to believe that what we have done here at least indicates that there are other worlds for science to find and explore. I hope we have shown that questions of religion can be pursued and answered by science and that somewhere in the future, perhaps, we will have a full understanding of our reality. I think one thing at least is certain: It is clear that consciousness can be broached scientifically. Consciousness exists. And for the first time, we have used the instruments of scientific investigation to fit its existence into the overall tapestry of reality. For the first time, we understand what consciousness is. We can understand mind as including conscious experience and will. We can see how these fit into the physical processes of the brain that are involved in thinking, the dataprocessing operations at synaptic junctions in the brain. Our knowledge of consciousness enables us to understand how things must work in the brain. For once, we can extend our knowledge of physical processes and quantum mechanics into realms we never dreamed could be fathomed. We see how paradoxes in physics, such as the Wigner's Friend paradox and the puzzles of the test of Bell's theorem, can all be put together to show that we as observers of reality play a basic role in the structure of the universe. But more than all of this, surprisingly, we have discovered that every path we have taken to learn something of the structure of the universe finally comes around to the same result. Whether to understand the interconnections of will, to understand the most basic facts in quantum theory, or to discover the beginnings of the Big Bang universe, each path leads to the fact that there must exist a supreme Consciousness out of which everything else springs. It is Consciousness that began everything, that grows matter into a universe of existence; it is Consciousness that unifies and constrains all of us as individual beings; it is Consciousness that orders space and time out of a chaos of random events. Perhaps, too, we have seen something more than all of this. Perhaps knowing that consciousness is something real and ponderable, perhaps we see that the Kingdom is here and it is now. We may be attached to bodies, and maybe we can see that is well and good, but our existence, this infinite space of consciousness, this Hilbert space of many places, is the house of many mansions-- not figuratively, but quite literally. All of us have known the materialist's vision of reality. All of us have spent most of our lives boxed up in it. Maybe now, some of us at least can see beyond this. Maybe now, some of us can see the justification of faith. Maybe some of us can see deep in all of this the God of Abraham, see the Trinity, see miracles as more than myth in shaping who we are. Perhaps in what we have learned, we can see something of the beliefs that inspired the great Buddha, see something of the Taoist's way, something of the ancient ways of the Hindu. And if we have learned well, we will see all of this as one vision that does not lead to competitive struggles or conflict. There are many questions to which we do not have answers. We have the beginnings of many answers, but many questions remain about the structure of reality, about other realities, about life after our bodily death. We have many questions about just how we should sort the wheat from the chaff of all the religious literature that has come down to us through the ages. We should know that if we can understand the message clearly, it has something to tell us. But we need more tools to find the comfort of truth that faith alone has been able to give us in the past. Faith was never meant to be blind faith. Faith was always meant to be a faith guided by revealed truth-- revealed through the experience of something beyond our own physical self; revealed through the lives that many have lived as examples; revealed in histories, in prophesies, and in the poetry of scripture. But the demands are so much greater now. Now we can see better how easily we err and how easily we stray. We need a better way to seek out truth, to assimilate the jewels of all our religious teaching into one universal faith founded in knowledge that we can verify as we do the facts of science. I hope that the discoveries recorded in this book are the beginning of such a mission. No one who believes; in the truth of any of the world's great religions should fear losing any essential part of that faith by testing its truth against what we can learn with this new science. Those willing to discover an even greater truth in their religion will find-untold wonders hidden in what they already believe. A god waiting to be chiseled free from the stone or exposed from within the fiber of the tree . . . the mechanics of pendulums, clocks, planets and stars . . . images of objective reality made of rocks, atoms, and quarks-- these have marked our passage. But there is a greater reality. We have seen that the discoveries of the twentieth century have altered the view of reality as something that can be understood apart from the observer who is a part of that reality. Space, time, matter, and energy-- the very stuff of objective reality, as it turns out-depend on the perceptual participation of the observer. His or her motion, place, and frame of reference alter that structure in an oddly democratic way, with no special preferred observer. Even the atoms and particles of matter have structures that depend on what can and what cannot in principle be observed by us. But it is with the tests of the EPR paradox that we have been forced to abandon the concept of objective reality. After so many hints, we see at last that we must restructure our concepts of nature and put ourselves back into the picture. Finally, we see that we must understand consciousness, so obviously a part of reality, in order to understand fully any part of the design. Our knowledge of how quantum mechanics works with state vector collapse on observation ties in with a quantum mechanical picture of consciousness, consciousness arising out of the very observer-dependent processes that go on in the brain as they do in the laboratories of physicists, in the hearts of atoms, and in the cores of stars. And with an observer in the brain, this consciousness selects the things that happen in the external world. Out of this arises a special picture of what the fabric of reality is. Because of that signal-to-noise disparity between the will and the consciousness of our mind, only about a thousandth of what could happen happens out of an ostensive correlation with what we would wish for. All the rest is stochastic or moves inexorably forward under the laws of physics for microscopic bodies. Matter, objects-- a physical domain exists that is governed by immutable laws. But these laws leave open a range of happenings that are left to the selection of the mind. Behind this selection is the will. The will works much like a communications channel that links all of us to a common control center. Within the power of our combined will lies the power to do essentially anything. Within the power of this will lies any knowledge-- of anything known, or knowable-- of the past or of the future. And it is a power that is always present. This is the collective will of all sentient beings with the power of determining the state of all events, with the knowledge of a seer. This is the Omnipresence, the Omniscience, the Omnipotence of Abrahams' God, at once personal and supreme. This is a God of our collective will and of the collective will of the universe. This is a God that has the potential of any knowledge that we know. A God that has the power to make any event occur and yet is restrained by the limits of our own minds. A God that pervades all things and yet acts through our vision. We have seen the connection between consciousness and the workings of the brain. We have studied the role of consciousness in state vector collapse. We have fathomed the relationship between mind phenomena and quantum mechanics-between miracle and physics. In all this, we can see that the miracles of our faiths, which seemed to defy all reason, now lie within the grasp of our understanding. These things do not violate the laws of the universe but rather form a part of a reality that bonds man, mind, and God together in a lawful and knowing universe. We can now understand that these miracles are the inevitable consequence of our own being. But this trinity of man, mind, and God-- of brain consciousness and collective will-- is not the full realization of the fabric of reality. There is a structure that I as a Christian find a justification of the central features of the Judeo-Christian conception of nature. But I also see, as one and the same, a Buddhist conception, even in its most solemn expression-- a unity in nature, all things being aspects of mind. But now we see more of the underlying structure, of the engine that drives our struggling souls. We see the separation that lies between any of us and the rest of reality. We see space and matter as springing from the brow of God. A universe that has only matter cannot have consciousness and cannot have will.The picture painted to explain the material world, orderly but without God, has failed to work. The closer conception of a Spinozan universe, matter that is ordered into a divine-like creation, is also a flawed philosophy. It does not have the machinery to account for its order, and it does not represent the real universe in which conscious beings dwell. Einstein could see the print of God's hand on creation extending to the edges of the cosmos, but he failed to see us there, he failed to see the implications of mind for physics, and he failed to see anything but the shadow of God. Some have failed to see any place-- any space-- where God could reside, and others have failed to see where any consciousness could hide within the atoms of matter. But we have found that reality. We have found that hiding place. We have seen that the universe springs from every thought of God and matter from the very existence of mind. We have looked to find reality. We have seen beyond the open door. Monday, October 17, 1988: Often I had walked up to Clermont, past the house at 1414, past that steep lawn with brown pine needles mingled with ivy leaves spilling down the bank and over the wall by the sidewalk. Often I had walked there, each time hoping to find some feeling of her presence still, some tangible fragment of those memories, hoping for something that would come to me as though a ghost of her being were still there, somewhere along the walk to her house. But it was always just old memories-- old memories of all those same houses. Memories of those same yards, grown fall with vegetation just as it was then, all the same, but with the children now changed to old people, bent, turning slightly at their door to see me walk past. But this time I stopped at the park where we had played tennis and strolled down the same paths in the park, past the same tennis courts, past the same chain-link fence around the courts where people were playing as we had played years ago. There were the same half-buried flagstone walkways there then that now zig-zag as if for no reason across a culvert that has since been covered over. Some of the cannas that once lined this culvert are still there, but they now are separated into two rows, seemingly with no reason for being where they stand. I walked past the stone walls and past the same picnic table pavilion where we dashed to wait out one of those heavy Alabama downpours. I walked across the wooden bridge we had crossed so often, stepping up the same oversized concrete steps to cross the creek there, and, once again, I walked around the tennis court. Suddenly, I felt as if half a dozen souls had rushed through me, causing time to shudder as if I were only a jittering image on a TV screen or some Kirk starship caught in a rift in space. I was physically shaken. Her soul had passed through me. Shaking, I walked through the same park, past the same fence, the same flagstone wall, and I felt her presence as though we were still playing there . . . she waiting for me to die . . . waiting for some future when my soul would be free . . . waiting for me. . . . I left, driving away still tingling in my fingers and on my face, my legs still shaking and nervous from this strange meeting that we had just had across the decades. Something of her was still there waiting. And where else would she have gone to play and to wait? As I walked down the steps from her apartment, my mind went back over the years. My mind went back to things that have been and that I have done, the things of my life and the things of that day. My mind went back to the things I have told you about Merilyn, back to an image, to a wonderful image, to a vision forever of my future and of my destiny. My mind went back there. As I reached the landing, my mind went back to that time long ago, back to her memory within me, and I knew, at last, that she is still with us." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THOTH Posted April 12, 2004 Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 I havent yet had time to read your overly long post Domino - but if you feel this is what you need to post to expalin your position - OK - I think I already understand yoru position - but I will try to rerad it at some point - perhaps next weekend...lol Yes Domino - you and I hold perhaps entirely the opposite view. Where you accept everything and say all is true because it is based on our believf. I contend that it is the opposite (most) everythign we believe is wrong. It is clear to me that it is entirely beyond our capacity - our conciousness does not even function on the proper plane for understanding - we cannot know - it is impossible. So any attempt to presuppose that one does know - that one's beliefs are right - and another's are wrong is pointless (maybe we actually agree on that part). But clearly I do not believe that anyt evidence or such has been put forth to compell one to at all believe in a diety or dieties per se - nor is there any need it seems - and even if so - the comprehension of such is entirely beyond me - so yes I willfully cchoose to reject - not to believe - becsue what is it that I could believe in - somethign that I know to be false? That is hypocritical. And I certainly do not believe that through our thoughts alone we can make it happen - that any reality which we can concieve is anything more then a figment of imagination - perhaps a lens that colors our empiracle perceptions - but this does not drive or control reality. I mean if it did = where all all these gods and fairies and beings and such running around? And is any wacko's word good enough? Should David Berkowitz be set free? Are his voices real - in the sense that other beings originated such and - thorugh his belief - he was compeled to follow such etc etc insufficient.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DominO123 Posted April 12, 2004 Report Share Posted April 12, 2004 I havent yet had time to read your overly long post Domino - but if you feel this is what you need to post to expalin your position - OK - I think I already understand yoru position - but I will try to rerad it at some point - perhaps next weekend...lol Yes Domino - you and I hold perhaps entirely the opposite view. Where you accept everything and say all is true because it is based on our believf. I contend that it is the opposite (most) everythign we believe is wrong. It is clear to me that it is entirely beyond our capacity - our conciousness does not even function on the proper plane for understanding - we cannot know - it is impossible. So any attempt to presuppose that one does know - that one's beliefs are right - and another's are wrong is pointless (maybe we actually agree on that part). But clearly I do not believe that anyt evidence or such has been put forth to compell one to at all believe in a diety or dieties per se - nor is there any need it seems - and even if so - the comprehension of such is entirely beyond me - so yes I willfully cchoose to reject - not to believe - becsue what is it that I could believe in - somethign that I know to be false? That is hypocritical. And I certainly do not believe that through our thoughts alone we can make it happen - that any reality which we can concieve is anything more then a figment of imagination - perhaps a lens that colors our empiracle perceptions - but this does not drive or control reality. I mean if it did = where all all these gods and fairies and beings and such running around? And is any wacko's word good enough? Should David Berkowitz be set free? Are his voices real - in the sense that other beings originated such and - thorugh his belief - he was compeled to follow such etc etc insufficient.... No thoth, that is not my position(if you are talking about the last chapter of the book), maybe the quantum part is. I just found out interesting the struggle of the author of the book who tries to find answers, meanings etc... and find out appopriate to post it here, that is all. Mind you here that my belief is supportable by quantum mechanic and the string theory, and it is the only way to not have a preestablished belief. Being an atheist or a theist imply that you believe and made your choice and this is in major contradiction with your argument that we can not know the answers. The atheist already made his choice and has chosen a probability, the same goes for the theist. I on the other hand am acting like a true scientific should act, everything is possible, and I keep an open mind... if something were to not be possible I could not even concieve it or think about it... the fact that you believe in something is an evidences that the possibility of its existance exist. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THOTH Posted April 13, 2004 Report Share Posted April 13, 2004 Sorry Domino - I stil don't buy it..and you have called me overly open to accepting anythign in the past - LOL. It not sufiicient to beleive that everythign is possible (because I beleive in at least that possibility - even if I reject it on a practicle level) - it still essentially says nothign about the state of reality - just your openess to possibilities - it doesnt explain anything or answer any questions. At some poijt you must begin to make assumptions - and for these assumptions to lead to somethign valid they must be supportable. And I contend that this can tell us much - but only so far. The rest is beyond us - and liekley always will be as long as we are beings constrained by time and flesh. Beyond that I cannot not specualte - only that clearly all the explanation sgiven - ever given - are inadequate - so my "believf" perhaps has as much agnostiscim as atheism (as well as some Doaism - but no problem there)...but I stick to my atheism in the face of those who claim to know. For I know that my claim that they are wrong - and that the probabilities (there is that word) that they are even remotely close to the truth are so minimal to not even bother to account....ultimatly that is where I stand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boghos Posted April 13, 2004 Report Share Posted April 13, 2004 At some poijt you must begin to make assumptions - and for these assumptions to lead to somethign valid they must be supportable. And I contend that this can tell us much - but only so far. The rest is beyond us - and liekley always will be as long as we are beings constrained by time and flesh. Beyond that I cannot not specualte - only that clearly all the explanation sgiven - ever given - are inadequate - so my "believf" perhaps has as much agnostiscim as atheism (as well as some Doaism - but no problem there)...but I stick to my atheism in the face of those who claim to know. For I know that my claim that they are wrong - and that the probabilities (there is that word) that they are even remotely close to the truth are so minimal to not even bother to account....ultimatly that is where I stand. If you concede that we as humans are very far from understanding what "reality" is and have very few and poor explanations for almost everything, wouldn´t that be a tacit acknowledgment that affirming that God doesn´t exist would amount to extreme arrogance ? As someone whom I don´t remember said: the issue is not if I believe in God, but if he believes in me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Armat Posted April 13, 2004 Report Share Posted April 13, 2004 (edited) Being an atheist or a theist imply that you believe and made your choice and this is in major contradiction with your argument that we can not know the answers. Domino Sharp observation!Thoth you can't have it both ways either you don't know or you firmly believe to be an atheist which you stated several times. I wonder if you believe in anything at all like right from wrong, good and bad or is everything reletive for you. I feel that people who are so firm in their rejection of God keep trying to prove others how right they are. If “you” are so right in your rejection of God then you should rejoice in your existence and be content but why do I sense a guilty conscious here. Edited April 13, 2004 by Armat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
THOTH Posted April 13, 2004 Report Share Posted April 13, 2004 well Boghos - obviously I was joking to make a point. And I think my position should be clear otherwise. Are we arrogant to disbelieve in Odin? etc I don't se the difference? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boghos Posted April 13, 2004 Report Share Posted April 13, 2004 The issue is banalizing religion not whether Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny exist. I haven´t read most of the posts here but I happen to agree with your statement, joke or not, that we have very limited and imprecise knowledge of what exists around us. Is that proof that God exists ? Obviously not. But it at least should be enough to leave a doubt out there. Mind you not that I find it that relevant, as God can be defined in countless ways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DominO123 Posted April 13, 2004 Report Share Posted April 13, 2004 If you concede that we as humans are very far from understanding what "reality" is and have very few and poor explanations for almost everything, wouldn´t that be a tacit acknowledgment that affirming that God doesn´t exist would amount to extreme arrogance ? As someone whom I don´t remember said: the issue is not if I believe in God, but if he believes in me. EXACTLY!!! This was exactly what I've repeated countless numbers of times to Thoth. There is a contradiction between saying that we can not know and saying that there is no god. Beside that Thoth, from your point of view you are forced to accept the multiple universe theses as being the only way for life to exist without an intervention, if you accept the multiple universe theses, that would mean that there will still be a possibility that there is in many of those universes where a god might exist. The existance of a god is a personal matter for everyone, just like the belief of the non-existance... for the believer a god exist, no matter what you might say for that believer a god exist, and that person will observe stuff that you will not. You know I have been a believer, an atheistic, an agnostic before my final conclusion. And I am forced to conclude that telling that god does not exist or telling it exist is kind of egocentric. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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