Cosmology

[desiresjab]

I cannot find any necessity yet for God to be good. An excellent case could be made and has been made that God is evil. I want to believe God is good but I need some evidence.

I cannot expect any religion to have gotten the whole thing right. I think each got only small pieces, in some cases the same pieces, but very small pieces. The common thread was probably wishful thinking. No religion is likely to have come close to the truth.

* * * * *

The Bible is very big on touting the mercy of God. At the same time God shows hardly any mercy at all in the Bible. This very human God is jealous, angers easily, vengeful, and spills blood often. Not a strong recommendation for mercy. I do not presuppose any such qualities in the Primal Consciousness. Maybe it is not the primal consciousness, then, but one of those Gods that came about naturally through Scenario #2 which has no Primal Consciousness to be found that is necessary.

There can be only one cosmological excuse for the strict harshness of the biblical God, if he is as good as advertised--his own impotence at certain acts--it is the only way he can protect his children. If they play in the street he must spank them, though it hurts him. This means the devil is strong. Many people choose to believe in God but deny the devil. If biblical cosmology is true, there must be a devil, from the evidence in the world.

* * * * *

A more acceptable view to many might be that there is only a God and no devil, but that the world the Lord made was wrought with implict dangers and risks. Hence, accident as well as evil can carry a man off.

As anyone can see, proving the existence of God under certain circumstances, is a piece of cake compared to proving his nature. The proof God exists is but a dry thing with little inspiration in it.

* * * * *

Providing that Consciousness really is indivisible, God would be proven to still be alive, under Scenario #1, since the indivisible cannot be further destroyed. Most Christians put their faith in something like this.

God might be the sum total of consciousness in the universe, not just all the consciousness we observe. That it is all connected at some source is an earnest wish of many.

Myself, I care only about one thing--an afterlife. Without an afterlife who cares about anything, really? I do not really believe the afterlife has a price of admission per se, as advertised in the bible, but the threat of punishment was necessary to keep the kids out of the road.

[desiresjab]

I can think of only one reasonable explanation of the biblical God's apparent wish to be worshipped constantly--without constant vigilance we easily lapse back into our animal ways whereby Cain killed Able, etc. Again, not for him, but for us. That would be my rationale.

[YesNo]

There is no necessity to reduce God to any particular religion. So talking about God does not imply accepting Christianity or the Muslim religion or some Hindu religion or a New Age religion. All of these are ways to approach God. There are multiple perspectives on the Biblical God depending on the original sources of the text.

I also don't think there is much of a case for a God that is "evil". That is because near-death experiences do not report such an evil God.

I also don't think there is any point in pursuing the mechanistic Scenario #2 because quantum physics shows that reality is not mechanistic.

[desiresjab]

There is no necessity to reduce God to any particular religion. So talking about God does not imply accepting Christianity or the Muslim religion or some Hindu religion or a New Age religion. All of these are ways to approach God. There are multiple perspectives on the Biblical God depending on the original sources of the text.

I already said I think all the religions together got only a little bit of the truth, sometimes ovelapping. What are you accusing me of? All these religions think they are a way to approach God. So far they haven't done much approaching, from the evidence at hand. One thing about higher consciousness--it does not seem to be contagious. We will always be referring back to religions and human experience.

I also don't think there is much of a case for a God that is "evil". That is because near-death experiences do not report such an evil God.

Well, I think there is not much of a case, either, for a God that is good. It seems pretty resasonable to me that if there are good Gods there might be bad Gods as well.

I also don't think there is any point in pursuing the mechanistic Scenario #2 because quantum physics shows that reality is not mechanistic.

Is there a particular reason you think Scenario #2 has to represent a mechanistic reality? I know "mechanistic," smacks of the antiquated to you and is practically a dirty word. If existence was always here, how does that translate as necessarily mechanistic? I am not saying you are wrong, I just want to know what you mean by the word. Do you think something which evolves by itself is mechanistic because there would be no guiding hand of consciousness, so to speak?

* * * * *

Suppose for a moment that pipelines to higher consciousness do exist. I know that east Injun texts exist which speak in terms of trillions of years of existence, because a long time ago (ahem! relatively speaking) I read some of them. I am not sure if it was the Bahagavad Gita or something else. Man, that is nearing 50 years ago.

Trillons of years is thousands of times older than we scientifically presently suppose our own universe to be. The east Injuns have always been good at numbers. Were they just making up the largest ones they could write in these cases, or did they mean what they said?

[desiresjab]

To have an afterlife is no more unlikely than to have a conscious life. Under scenario #2, just as life happens to be part of it, afterlife might also happen to be part of it.

And what if "Things," are eternal but a master consciousness is also eternal? It seems tro me there could still be God under Scenario #2. And in this case an afterlife of some sort seems very likely to me. I sometimes think of ourselves and of all living things as the sensory organs of this master consciousness, who created us because it needs us and amoeba to experience life at every level. Now that would be a God to me!

An afterlife under Scenario #2 and Scenario #1 seems likely to me, because why would God make throwaway parts? Why would those consciousnesses finally maturing at what they do, be suddenly discarded? God would make permanent beings, especially if he is a good God, because reflective beings desire permanence more than anything else.

[YesNo]

Regarding this question: "I already said I think all the religions together got only a little bit of the truth, sometimes ovelapping. What are you accusing me of?"

There is no accusation. We agree that religions only approximate the truth. They are like someone trying to write out the digits of pi. Some write 3.14. Some write 3.1415. Some go further. Some write 3.212 and get it wrong. No matter how far they go, they are still approximating with these digits. Here's the problem: Is pi itself real? One can't resolve that by saying because 3.14 and 3.1415 are different or not exactly what pi is that pi is not real. The same with God. One can't complain about particular religions and claim that God does not exist. Furthermore, if someone were able to write out all the digits of pi, that would convince me that pi did not exist. Same with God. If some religious texts exactly represented God non-metaphorically that would prove God did not exist.

I don't know what Scenario #2 is if it is not mechanistic. In that scenario, if I understand it, there are a finite or infinite number of particles to which everything, including God and our consciousness, can be reduced with different arrangements of them. With infinite time by chance or determinism all arrangements will occur over an over again. The underlying problem is can such reductions be made?

Last night I watched a set of six interviews on the observer problem in quantum physics: https://www.closertotruth.com/series/what-are-observers If we are talking about particles, we need to get quantum physics involved. The problem is that our only experience of a quantum particle occurs when we make a measurement and then it appears as a particle. We can only see quantum reality as particles. Furthermore, we can't predict exactly what will happen to any specific particle later, but we can give a probability distribution for what we might expect to see. That probability distribution is the wave function. If we could exactly predict what the particle would do there would be no mystery, but now there is this critical mystery: When we are not looking at a particular particle what is it doing? There are three general positions based on these interviews:

1) When we are not looking at the particle it is in a superposition of many possibilities. We are also in those superpositions and this creates a many worlds description of reality. See the interviews of Sean Carroll and Alan Guth.

2) When we are not looking at the particle it is in a superposition of many possibilities, but when we observe the particle those possibilities collapse into one definite particle, which is the only thing we can ever actually measure. This would be the Copenhangen or decoherence position. See the interviews of Laura Mersini-Houghton and Seth Lloyd and perhaps some of Paul Davies.

3) When we are not looking at the particle it has no properties to manifest. The wave function is only valuable for mathematical predictions. It is not reality. When we observe what a particle does it makes a choice. This would by my position. For something similar, see David Chalmers and perhaps some of Paul Davies.

For Scenario #2 to make sense it needs to fit one of those three interpretations.

Regarding this statement: "Well, I think there is not much of a case, either, for a God that is good. It seems pretty resasonable to me that if there are good Gods there might be bad Gods as well."

Perhaps we differ on perspective. I am not concerned with something being "reasonable" without empirical evidence to back it up. That is why I need the information coming from those near-death experiences, mystical experiences or personal experiences of my own subjectivity to tell me if there is an afterlife or a God. I won't trust my reasoning alone to get there without some empirical evidence to back it up. You may be a "rationalist". I am likely best described as an "empiricist".

[desiresjab]

You get stuck on notions, so I have to go against my speculative nature and play the rantionalist. Do you have some empirical evidence for a good God, good God?

You say:

When we observe what a particle does it makes a choice.

It makes a choice, eh? You are like a religious person with this chant, then all you do is refer me to your bibles. Convince some people that quantum particles make choices. How many people have the professional convincers convinced? I am not going to plough through your references. If the people you have read did their job, you should be able to present the case to me.

I can easily improvise an argument that the particle in question did not make a choice. I say it was in a specific place all the time as a particle. Since we were not observing it all of that time, how are we supposed to know where it was or what it was doing? Quantum particles operate under a different set of rules than big objects. Just because we cannot predict their positions as if we were dealing with planets, does not give them consciousness or the ability to make choices. It simply means we are just beginning to understand the rules of the realm, and may be getting ahead of ourselves.

I don't know, and the above is my own improvised argument. You should be able to shoot holes in it. And you should be able to discuss it instead of asking me to plough through a hundred articles and books.

Observation itself may change quantum phenomena. It does not do much to the side of a barn when you shoot a beam of light at it. Photons are in the same size scale as the particles we are using them to observe. So, they will "blow," them around a bit, I suppose.

You keep making the statement, lad. Let's see the evidence now instead of the continual statement repeated. If you have strong reasons, present them. I am only playing devil's advocate because I have to. I am receptive to the idea of "cosmic consciousness," but not ready to state it as truth. You state it as truth. You claim you are empirically convinced. Let's go. That means evidence.

[YesNo]

In response to: "Do you have some empirical evidence for a good God, good God?"

Yes, near-death experiences and after-death communications. They don't report an evil God.

In response to: "You are like a religious person with this chant, then all you do is refer me to your bibles."

I referred you to interviews of people with three very different opinions: (1) many worlds, the materialist perspective, (2) decoherence, the dualist perspective and (3) panpsychism, the idealist perspective. I disagreed with most of the interviewees. They aren't my bibles. I read them or listen to them to see where I differ from them.

In response to: "You claim you are empirically convinced. Let's go. That means evidence."

The evidence is partially in the near-death experiences. These are case studies. The quantum evidence comes from repeatable science experiments. My position is an interpretation of them. I think the idealist interpretation fits the problem better.

I don't think you should accept "cosmic consciousness" without understanding it. It is easy to get stuck in some New Age fog about quantum reality.

[desiresjab]

The near death experiences are not bad evidence, after a fashion, of course. I like it at least. You say they do not report an evil God. Do they report any God at all?

My biggest doubt comes from observing light bulbs blow, and realizing stars (of the right size) expand to a red giant before going out. One may take a split second and the other millions of years, but they seem like similar phenomena on one level of abstraction. There is a little light show from both before they expire. The brain may put on its own light show just before we die. The light show could even be culturally conditioned. For that reason it would be interesting to see the reports of people who came from non-Christian cultures. Are their experiences any different, I wonder.

What is needed is a way of inducing this state into humans we can later revive and get reports from after a prolonged experience. Performing such experiments would walk an ethical tightrope, of course. I can see such experiments providing valuable evidence, relating, possibly, to both dreams and space travel.

I believe astral travel is possible, and I believe experiments can be designed to test that. I tried it as a young man. But I got scared and backed out when it felt like it was beginning to work. Now I would fear for my old body more than my "soul."

The next paradigm in human evolution may well come from an arcane area like this, rather than pure scientific research in physics. This has been my feeling for some time. I believed it before I ever read it. Once that door of possibility is opened a crack, earnest research will begin on a large scale.

One of the drawbacks may be that financially valuable results could be scarce or a long time coming in this field. I think the U.S. administration at the present time is skeptical of even the value of the space program in general. They would be much more interested, for instance, in new allloys that might be produced under the zero gravity of space, than any speculative advances on our nature and origin. The human race has outlasted all administrations so far. Our angle of interest is a changing feature of us.

Some high powered minds like the mighty Brian Josephson have already made the switch to the future line of resesarch. They went southpaw. Probably only their great standing keeps the pitchforks and torches away.

Truth be told, this field of research will always be a magnet for charlatinism, sloppy experiments and results obtained because they were desired. Maintaining scientific discipline and distinguishing disciplined results from a huge tangle of less disciplined, will be key problems in the coming paradigm, as they already are now.

[desiresjab]

I forgot to add that I think it is a trend in physics today to name your theories after appealing human abstractions. In songwritung they are called "Hooks."

Relativity, String Theory, The Big Bang, Many Worlds, Cosmic Inflation...Particle Choices--these are all hooks, carefully chosen names to draw people in, even those named long after their inception. The hooks are so powerful and compelling they gain admirers and become our favorite songs. Hooks will be an even greater problem in the future, I can foresee, making it more difficult to distinguish good research from good names.

[YesNo]

Some of the near-death experiences mention God and that God isn't restricted to one religion or no religion or a particular culture which is as one would expect it to be if it is true. I mentioned earlier a book about this: Long and Perry, "God and the Afterlife" that I skimmed recently. Other information is available at http://www.nderf.org/index.htm Having said that, I don't spend too much time looking at this research except to get a general idea what the results are. Religious groups have to come to terms with this evidence as much as atheists. As a panentheist, these results don't contradict anything that I think is true.

I don't know much about astral travel. I have found out how to see auras. They are easy and safer than astral travel.

I agree with you that one has to avoid foggy results including the fog in established science with their "hooks" as you put it. For example, I don't see how an empirical scientist can even consider many worlds that no one can see as an interpretation for anything. A speculative science fiction writer might find it cool. As a reader I would find it boring. The same thing goes for black or dark stuff in the universe that no one can directly observe that keeps a current gravitation theory afloat. That there exists other gravitation theories that don't require these things is all the more reason to modify the current one and get on with it. However, developing experiments to prove or disprove any of these is worth doing. It improves our skills and knowledge. Part of my interest in looking at scientific results that I question is to ask what is the cultural motivation underlying these beliefs.

I am interested at the moment in "quantum computing". I don't understand what underlies it. It might challenge my idealist perspective but perhaps it doesn't.

[desiresjab]

After doing some cursory reading on Near death experiences, I find the following to be true:

A small percentage of people (anywhere from 1% to 25%) report hell and or demons in their near death esperiences. So perhaps there is some evidence for an evil God after all. The scientific rationale for NDEs is similar to mine. It is interesting that a person sleeping can detect a bright light shined at their eyelids and can give signals back to the experimentor while remaining asleep. My own problem with Lucid Dreaming, and I have had them, is that I wake up every time I become aware I am dreaming.

I don't know what my swami boys up in the Himalayas can do. Reports vary. When talking about this subject expect hyperbole and wishful thinking. The tiger swamis are supposed to live around tigers like house cats and command them. Recently we got a glimpse of their modern spiritualism when they were charged with selling tiger body parts on the black market. Maybe donations were down.

There is not a single human beyond corruption--Papal assistants, tiger swamis, TV ministers. Where does that leave the rest of us? Well, it leaves us without power, always a good place from which to begin a spiritual quest.

Apparently, Christians never see Buddah coming to pick them up in the taxi to heaven, it is always Jesus. Hindus never see Jesus coming. The experiences do seem to have strong cultural inflections.

* * * * *

The only way I can reconcile heaven with a merciful God is if you get what you believe at death. Those who believe in Christian heaven get that. Moslems get a moslem heaven replete with immaculate virgins. I hope there is sort of a library where Christians can check out virgins for a while, too.

That is the preparation for the afterlife we are in. We are here to imagine it so strongly that it shapes it beforehand at quantum level. It is our ticket. One way or another, we are leaving, but there are different destinations. All tickets are not the same. For all we know, only the imaginations of the devout work hard enough to put some extra shape on their afterlife. Other peoples' occasional musings and vague beliefs may not be enough to transform the quantum architecture of a generic afterlife into something more special, which could be the whole point of religious devotion.

[tailor STATELY]

As a man of faith I've been enjoying your recent interchange of ideas and comments and keep coming up with a remembrance of "The King Follett Sermon" by Joseph Smith, Jr. (First President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). The "Sermon" isn't canonized by the church, hence Mormon literature, but offers insights to the character of God as revealed to Joseph... http://mldb.byu.edu/follett.htm I've been reflecting upon the "Sermon" and its consequences for years and continue my study within the canon of LDS scripture.

Ta ! (short for tarradiddle),
tailor STATELY

[YesNo]

Religions that have an immanent and transcendent view of God would be "panentheistic" by my view of the word, however different their practices or texts may be. That includes Christians, Hindus, many others and pagans and even some atheists who acknowledge their own subjectivity which is hard not to acknowledge. One thing I disagree with Joseph Smith's writing is this which comes from John and is similar to the beliefs of other Christian religions: "This is life eternal"--to know God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent." The only part I disagree with is the implication that this is the only way. Life like ours on other planets will not know Jesus, nor will such life in other universes. This can't be the only way.

I don't see anything other than that to disagree with because I don't know enough about it. He did mention something interesting about the Devil:

"The contention in heaven was this: Jesus said there would be certain souls that would not be saved, and the devil said he could save them all. The grand council gave in for Jesus Christ. So the devil rebelled against God and fell, with all who put up their heads for him." http://mldb.byu.edu/follett.htm

That brings up the idea of hell that desiresjab mentioned. Some people do experience hellish near death experiences. I don't think that implies God is evil. Nor do I think that implies there is an eternal hell. Long and Perry have a chapter on hellish experiences in "God and the Afterlife". Long, I assume, wrote, "I never read an NDE describing God casting the NDEr into an irredeemable hellish realm." (page 171) He speculates that they would be there because of "very poor choices" and they "have the free will to both make good choices and return to the heavenly realms".

Regarding cultural influences on what those having an NDE saw, he asked them "Have your religious beliefs/spiritual practices changed specifically as a result of your experience?" 73 percent said they had. (page 189) They may go into these NDEs with a cultural bias, but many come out with a changed perspective.

[tailor STATELY]

Life like ours on other planets will not know Jesus, nor will such life in other universes. This can't be the only way.

The doctrine of my faith teaches that our Savior is the Savior of all worlds. A poem by Joseph Smith, Jr. that resonates for me:

For the Lord he is God, and his life never ends,
And besides him there ne’er was a Saviour of men. …
He’s the Saviour, and only begotten of God—
By him, of him, and through him, the worlds were all made,
Even all that career in the heavens so broad,
Whose inhabitants, too, from the first to the last,
Are sav’d by the very same Saviour of ours;
And, of course, are begotten God’s daughters and sons,
By the very same truths, and the very same pow’rs.”
(Times and Seasons 4:82–85.)

... a link to one of my favorite hymns: http://www.timesandseasons.org/harch...-kolob-lyrics/