Cosmology

An algebraic number I think could be defined as the root of a monic polynomial where the coefficients come from the rational numbers, Q. The reason to use a monic polynomial is to avoid having many of these minimal polynomials. For example, x - 7 = 0 gives the same root, 7, as 2x - 14 = 0 does. Since the rational numbers form a field, they have inverses so we can divide by the coefficient of the term with the highest power of x and make it 1. For example, 2x - 3 = 0 can be written as x - (3/2) = 0 and the root 3/2 is an algebraic number. In this case it is a rational number as well.

If it turns out that this minimal, monic polynomial has all integer coefficients, then one defines that root as being not only an algebraic number, but also an algebraic integer no matter what it looks like. That means (1-√5)/2, even though there is a 2 in the denominator, is also an algebraic integer. It is the root of a minimal, monic polynomial with integer coefficients. So it is an algebraic integer.

If we are looking at quadratic algebraic number fields, that is fields where the rationals Q are extended by the square root of a non-square integer, such as √5, then checking whether 5 is congruent to 1 or 3 mod 4 will tell us if the algebraic integers could have a 2 in the denominator or not.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

An algebraic number I think could be defined as the root of a monic polynomial where the coefficients come from the rational numbers, Q. The reason to use a monic polynomial is to avoid having many of these minimal polynomials. For example, x - 7 = 0 gives the same root, 7, as 2x - 14 = 0 does. Since the rational numbers form a field, they have inverses so we can divide by the coefficient of the term with the highest power of x and make it 1. For example, 2x - 3 = 0 can be written as x - (3/2) = 0 and the root 3/2 is an algebraic number. In this case it is a rational number as well.

If it turns out that this minimal, monic polynomial has all integer coefficients, then one defines that root as being not only an algebraic number, but also an algebraic integer no matter what it looks like. That means (1-√5)/2, even though there is a 2 in the denominator, is also an algebraic integer. It is the root of a minimal, monic polynomial with integer coefficients. So it is an algebraic integer.

If we are looking at quadratic algebraic number fields, that is fields where the rationals Q are extended by the square root of a non-square integer, such as √5, then checking whether 5 is congruent to 1 or 3 mod 4 will tell us if the algebraic integers could have a 2 in the denominator or not.

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Ah, in red is what I have been driving at and harping on, I don't know why. It was an instinct or the unconscious memory of something I read. It seems now that these numbers with 2 in the denominator can indeed be classified as algebraic integers as long as they are the roots of monic polynomials with integer (no, rational) coefficients.

Hmmm...I still don't know if it is rational coefficients or integer ones.

Well, lad, the only thing we have not done is the long, 19th century algebraic manipulations where these ideas came from. I don't know if we need to do that. Between your forced didacticism and my own efforts understanding seems to have arrived.

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Now we must ask: have we moved an inch, cosmologically speaking? What do ideals (and for that matter quadratic reciprocity) have to do with cosmology?

Well, do not forget, the deeper structure which we believe silently rules the universe and ourselves is what we hoped to catch a glimpse of by delving into exotic maths. Whether we have done that is a matter for debate, perhaps.

Even when numbers look exhausted and capable of no more order, enough genius is always able to find more structure nested in them. Ideals demonstrate this. I deals did not capture the ultimate order. Ideals could (ideally) apply in only some of the cases where unique factorization is not possible among the integers, polynomials et al. The theory made inroads, it did not settle all matters once and for all; it pointed a way forward.

We will continue to discover deeper and less accessible structures within numbers themselves, which will eventually connect to our own consciousness, I believe. Our consciousness likely hails from some deep structure we have barely glimpsed. Someday a connection will be made between us and the arithmetic structure we keep unraveling, is my one trusted belief.

I don't know if there is any cosmological significance in this, but there may be. I have enjoyed thinking about it and I did read most of Dedekind's book finally after having forgotten I bought it long ago.

Symmetry is supposed to be related to cosmological ideas. I forget how at the moment. That might be a place to continue pursuing the relationship between cosmology and mathematics. Then, of course, there is also a study of tensors and the Lorentz transformation for special relativity. Here is Einstein's "The Meaning of Relativity" which I have read parts of in the past: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36276...68a2f9e44ff27b

One place where I think mathematics leads cosmologists astray is in a belief in constants. For example, is the speed of light really a constant? Is big G, the gravitational constant, really constant? It is convenient for the mathematics that they are constant, but I don't know how we would be able to tell.

The orchestration of coordinated activity of microtubules in brain neurons is one of the initial steps to understanding consciousness as a mathematical phenomenon, i.e., one which can be explained and predicted using mathematical tools some of which might not yet exist.

When there is enough "accord," the microtubules act in unison like a school of swallows banking and twisting at high speed without collisions.

I put accord in quotations. Call it a metaphor for consciousness. Scientists are busy constructing models of consciousness in 248 dimensional matrices compressed to 8 dimensions. They are looking for ways to make the swallows act in unison.

These are the initial baby steps. Where we get to is anyone's guess. My pal YesNo is quite convinced by the Searles argument that strong AI will never come about. Actually, I take YesNo more seriously than I take Searles. To me, Searles has constructed a semantic argument I do not feel compelled to even challenge. It is like one of those old semantic arguments by Kant or Spinoza that seem quaint and innocent enough these days to bring a smile to our lips at yesterday's children.

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There is this notion (unshakeable for most) that our own intelligence is real intelligence, and everything else, if it is not made of meat or DNA, is an artificial intelligence.

I beg to differ. Only if we came about entirely without the aid of any form of consciousness is our intelligence the "natural one," the real one. Otherwise, we ourselves are created, and therefore artificial.

If our intelligence (earthly) is therefore artificial, having been aided into existence or manifestation by any form of consciousness whatsoever, then I say the job of creating artificial intelligence is already a done deal, having been accomplished at least once to date.

By extrapolation I might contend that since YesNo and others believe in a consciousness that permeates individual atomic particles, the form of intelligence we represent can hardly have been attained without contact with any individual particles! This makes us and our intelligence artificial since we defined artificial as having been aided in any way by any form of consciousness, even the wee consciousness found in individual particles.

I did not see that you had come back to answer.

Yes, symmetry is a major idea. To really study it one should probably delve head first into group theory. Boy, I don't know if I am ready for that right now. I will go only where I have to out of intrigue. Dumb people have to limit their enterprises in some way. I do it by interest alone, letting nothing else interfere. There is always something in math I feel dumb for not knowing, and this provides my main drive. But the motivation is to follow structure deeper.

Would you draw any distinctions between constants from physics like the speed of light and a geometrical constant like pi or an arithmetical one like e? For it seems like a number which is its own derivative will not change under any circumstances I can predict.

The most that anyone can come up with is a model of reality. This is an objective map. It helps make predictions but just because we have a map does not mean that map IS reality. At most it is only a part of reality that we find interesting enough to want to make predictions about. In particular it does not contain our subjective perspective on reality.

The reason I reject AI (both strong and weak version) is because the AI computer is a deterministic-random machine. It is pure objectivity, like a table or chair. It cannot make a choice that is not part of an optimization process that can explain the decision. We can make such choices. A photon can make such "choices" as well. There is no programming or optimization underlying quantum indeterminism because there are no hidden variables to explain the indeterminism.

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Originally Posted by desiresjab

Would you draw any distinctions between constants from physics like the speed of light and a geometrical constant like pi or an arithmetical one like e? For it seems like a number which is its own derivative will not change under any circumstances I can predict.

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In mathematics, the constants such as pi or e do not change. They are not empirically derived. However, physical "constants" are empirically measured. They are useful up to a certain number of decimal places. We assume they are good for any number of decimal places and that they do not change with time. But how are we going to know that empirically?

We have grasped the essence of ideals. I feel my understanding of ideals is on a par with my grasp of QR. It is time to move on unless someone has a cogent remark about ideals at this point.

I do not have an area of math in mind to visit next that I feel relates to cosmology or the deeper understanding of structure in the universe. Exploring fancy counting methods from probablity theory would be interesting and fun but seems far away from cosmological pursuits to me. We only want math involved if it offers the possibility of deep glances at structure, not math merely for the sake of having it.

YesNo may have an area in mind that he feels is relevant.

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Belief #1

For the moment, I would like to turn back to what I feel is the surest idea in my philosophy.

For the universe--for all things--to come out of nothingness, is impossible. For nothingness means not only the tangible but the intangible as well. In true nothingness, there would be no existence of any kind. Even the potential for something to exist later is not permissible in nothingness, for that potential would be something which existed, though not tangible.

The forced result is that something had to always exist. There never was a time or a state in which pure nothingness prevailed. Pure nothingness cannot be, it is only a concept of the imagination.

It is logically undenaible that there is something eternal in the universe. Lacking a better name, that thing is existence itself, at the minimum, and perhaps God or consciousness, if we but knew the truth.

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Belief #2

In any possible universe with physics, 2 is the successor of 1. Universes which run backwards, universes which are p-adic, and all other apparent exceptions are easily remedied by a simple re-labling, e.g., the last event in a universe which runs backwards would become the first event under the re-labling, easily allaying the problem and casting it in its proper light as no more than a labling phenomenon. Under this belief it is forced that all universes will submit to our mathematical labling. No universe has a choice to refuse, for we are guaranteed to find mathematical lables that apply.

I agree with your two beliefs.

Symmetry or invariance may be a useful way to see the structure of physical models of the universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry_(physics) I haven't looked at this closely. Relativity is an "invariance" when measuring differences between two events in space-time from any frame of reference. What invariances are there in physical models? Philosophically, what does this tell us about reality?

I have been re-reading Moffat's "Reinventing Gravity". I would like to understand the theory of gravity well enough to make more sense out of Moffat's modification of it. It appears that Einstein's theory of gravity breaks down when discussing galaxies and larger clusters of galaxies. It no longer makes accurate predictions unless one assumes there is dark matter and dark energy present.

Then there is also quantum physics. It is easy to confuse the model with reality here, but one has to know the model to philosophically assess the confusion. These all tie together. I don't think it is possible to compress an atom into a black hole which makes me wonder if black holes are possible. If they are not then Einstein's theory of gravity needs to be modified.

For me, the whole question is philosophical, but I need to understand the mathematics and physical theory to ground that philosophy.

It usually seems to me that the deepest propositions from physics are doomed to failure and usurpation. For instance, What is the nature of matter? is to me likely a doomed question any one answer to which we will never settle on for long. Compared to this, the absolute truth of Quadratic Reciprocity stands out like a granite monument of absolute and unchanging consistency.

Each temporary answer we accept along the way will take us far and enable many new miracles of technology. But in the end each will show its limitations and contradictions which prepare the way for a new theory to supplant it.

Each new advancement will have a mathematical framework, sometimes consisting of newly invented or discovered mathematics. When the physical theory it once supported has been supplanted, the skeletal remains of these systems will consist of a funeral scaffolding of mathematics which remains true of itself without the insufficient physical theory it was once thought to support.

In other words, it is not mathematics which we cannot know with certainty, but the nature of physical reality which eludes and will continue to eldue us. Each best theory of physical reality will become insufficient and contradictory. On the other hand, addition, subtraction, derivatives, integrals and matrices are just as useful, true and efficient as they ever were at containing certain aspects of physical relaity.

That's how I see it also. Mathematics is certain. Technology, when it works, is useful. Physical theory changes.

I found Frank Wilczek's "A Beautiful Question" in the library. It is about symmetry and physics. I expect it to be a survey of ideas he finds beautiful in science.

I have avoided studies of symmetry because I feel one must know a lot of Group Theory, since that theory is known for ideas on symmetry. But, yes, it is highly provocative, and probably bears a good relationship to the deeper structures we are seeking.

I stopped reading Wilczek's book after reading the introduction. All of a sudden I felt like it might not be what I needed at the moment.

I am sort of avoiding symmetry for the same reason, but if I think of symmetry as a way to achieve "invariance" in physics theory I start looking at it differently. I do have Carmichael's Introduction to Groups of Finite Order. That will take some time to read and most of it may not be relevant to physics.

I am not searching for religion. But one person I am acquainted with through music and who can suddenly turn anti-religious in the typical ranting way, has already tentatively grouped me with the "religious kooks," I can tell, because I related my recent reflections to him. The fact that I even related them to him indicates the paucity of philosophical minds in this berg.

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Let us recap. Over in the thread The Fall under the category of Religion, I offered a proof of the existence of a consciousness if there was a beginning of everything. It is simple, and I am satisfied with it, for the moment.

Going to Scenario #1 where absolutely nothing existed, we see that something had to exist anyway, namely the potential for all other things to come about, or else we could not be here now.

To hazard what this potential actually consisted of, we were only able to come up with two possibilities:

1 Some sort of Meta thing that could exist under these conditions.

2 A Consciousness, i.e., a Will.

No one offered any other alternatives. We were able to dispel the notion of Meta things quite easily, as it turned out. Not a thing else exists, remember, even ideas and other abstractions. The Meta things are like precursors of things to come. Except there is no, "to come." There is no time. The Meta thing cannot become real. It cannot move from its original condition. Its so-called potential to create real things is only an illusion after all.

The remaining possibility is Consciousness. It is a very good candidate because we know so little about it. It is the only other candidate, which is quite compelling indeed. We do not know where consciousness comes from, what truly restrains and produces it, nor indeed even what it is.

The fact that Consciousness can have an Imagination, means to me that even if Time did not exist, it could be imagined by the Primal Consciousness. The same with light and all the other phenomena of our universe. That is something Meta things cannot do, unless they, too, had imaginations, which would end that part of the discussion, and in fact does end it to my satisfaction. Also, Meta things contain no way of kickstarting the creaton of everything.

By this point in our discussion it is okay to sometimes use the word God, since we mean Primal Consciousness by it, and are not ready to assign qualities to God unless we find there is one.

The basic argument is a very old one called the First Cause argument. What satisfies me is that there is no viable alternative to consciousness. In order for Meta things to be able to perform the tasks that the single concept of consciousness could, it would need to consist of myriad other things, such as built in programs for kickstarting Time, a concept, remember, which does not exist. Without an imagination, Meta things cannot conceive of Time, either. Occam's razor seems to demand that consciousness be our philosophical supposition.

The argument has some contingencies regarding the nature of consciousness and its ability to operate under the condition of nothingness. It is the only candidate that might be able to do this. No one else has put forward another.

That is the conclusion of arguments for Scenario #1.

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Scenario #2 is the only other possible Scenario. It is the scenario under which we assume things have existed forever. We have seen that it is an undenaible fact that something always had to exist. In Scenario #1 it turned out to be potential in the form of consciousness with an imagination, as near as we could figure.

Under Scenario #2 the world, as in something or the other, as in everything, always existed, it was not created. This scenario is philosophically a tougher nut to crack. Immediately, it is difficult to ascertain a logical necessity for there being a Primal Consciousness. Things simply always were. Hmmmm...

Such a proposition must surely mean life always existed, too. We are talking about times beyond this universe, a trillion Big Bangs ago. This would amount to an absolute certainty that we are not the first conscious life forms. This is asymptotically close to a certainty. Infinite time before us has produced every individual type of thing before us, because there was infinite time to accomplish it in. There actually is nothing new under the sun, in this scenario. There cannot be.
Dwell on it, you will see.

Lack of dwelling on it is one problem in talking about these things with folk who are just going about their daily business. Unless one has dwelled and meditated on the exact topics for hours on end, they are received as just words, which are then processed in the normal way with all predjudices present, right after the grocery list.

Meditate on the concepts to know the truth.

I will now prove the necessity of God under the remaining Scenraio, #2.

You missed it again. Me, too. But, ah, now I have seen it. People underestimate infinity. They underestimate infinite Time. There has been time under this scenario for everything and anything to come about. So a God came about by necessity. This God would not have created the universe (as in everything), but is a God nonetheless.

I am under no injunction to make my God the creator of the universe. I am not a Christian, Moslem or Hindu.

Infinite time produces everything, since things always existed. We know for a fact that if Scenario #2 is true, that it produced consciousness one way or another, which is a step toward God already.

It is improper to view ourselves as the first to evolve toward the Godly, simply because we cannot be, in a Scenario where Time and Things have always existed. It would be logically erroneous for us to view ourselves as the first who have started toward Godhood. Godhood already has to have been attaineded, one way or another, one scenario or another. We have to live with that. It is logically sound.

That concludes arguments fir the case of Scenario #2. I have proven that under any case imaginable, logically God exists.

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No single religion or denomination thereof will approve, I am sure.

Remember, I did not say God was not immortal and had not been around forever. I said that if he wasn't around forever, he was around by now anyway. As far back in time as you want to go, infinite time has already existed before that point.

In a universe with infinite time, there are only finite arrangements of all the particles. Even if it takes an octillion years, the exact arrangement of particles which constitutes you will come around again, and you will be born into a world which is the exactly same, nearly the same, or radically different from the one you know now. All of them will come, and have come, given infinite time.

What has existed? Nothing but everything. If not in this universe, which may be finite, then it has existed in another one. Everything we have imagined in our fiction has already been reality--giant robots fighting mankind's battles, dragons, demon possession, time travel--have all inevitably existed under Scenario #2, plus many more things we have not yet imagijned. The cinch is that anything we do imagine has already happened.

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God exists, folks. Like it. Unfortunately, the devil and all his demons necessarily do, too.

A Scenario where God is not all-powerful in the sense of having created everything, comes together logically very nicely once one is over the initial hump of realizing there necessarily is a God in this scenario, too. As powerful as you want to name, but not the creator of the universe. Not infinitely powerful, but as powerful as you can name. But possibly as old as the universe anyway, and at least its ultimate inhabitant.

Like it. There is a God who may or may not have created the universe, but who nonetheless may be as "old," as existence itself.

There it is.

I am thinking along the same lines. At place where we might disagree is here (for some reason I can't quote a post, so I will just copy it):

"In a universe with infinite time, there are only finite arrangements of all the particles. Even if it takes an octillion years, the exact arrangement of particles which constitutes you will come around again, and you will be born into a world which is the exactly same, nearly the same, or radically different from the one you know now. All of them will come, and have come, given infinite time."

If unconscious things do exist and they can be reduced to particles and we are the result of them then I think this would be true. But (1) do unconscious things exist and (2) are they reducible to particles and (3) is our consciousness reducible to them? If there are unconscious particles then what we are may be infinite, with infinite variability and so in a finite amount of time everything could be different.

The idea does imply the old notion of randomness and that particles have no other reason to get together. In a mechanistic universe with infinite time available, particle arrangements are finite and must repeat. I am sure you willl have no objection to that much.

Particle arrangements may draw consciousness to them rather create consciousness.

There is also the possibility that consciousness (God) imparted some of itself to us--the conscious part. Where was it stored, so that generation after generation now imparts it to their own kind who are conscious at birth? I do not believe Amoeba are conscious, because they do not have a reflective sense of self. You are convinced electrons are conscious, so maybe you have no trouble accepting an amoeba into the fold.

Or perhaps (something like the mechanistic view again) certain arrangements naturally provide consciousness into the arrangement. The arrangement did it, mama.

Now a man (this man, at least) has to have a pretty good reason for choosing one of these over the other. So far I do not have that good reason. I refuse to believe and defend something simply because I fervently want it to be true. I want there to be an afterlife. But so far I have not proven or demonstrated convincingly that there is one, I have not shown the logical necessity or the likely existence of one. To say that infinite time would create anything, including an afterlife, is not good enough in this case, as it was in the case of physical particles, since we can posit nothing yet as to the nature of this afterlife, if it did exist--what it is made of, and the like.

Of course, not knowing what consciousness is made of, leaves us in the same conundrun.. I have a strong inkling the afterlife is made only of consciousness, however. This final component of the scenario may be made of only itself, indivisible.

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The notion that God created us might only mean he imbued an animal with consciousness, not that he directed our evolution from a single cell. These things must all be reasoned out.

The next place to dwell is on the likely nature of God, since we have shown the existence of at least a primal consciousness. In Scenario #1 we could not prove that God was not already dead, however, just that he had existed in the beginning. In Scenario #2 it did not matter if God had died, for he would come around again, eventually creating a version of God that was not temporal.

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I lean heavily toward Scenario #2. Christians would like Scenario #1 better. But I guess I am averse to the idea of beginnings. I already know existence was already here. If existence was here, I think everything about existence was here.

God may be in an existence he did not create. The universe he created may only be this artificial one we experience. That is where God would have absolute and universal power, but perhaps not in the larger Scenario he is part of.

To my way of thinking, we are already artificial, along with our whole universe, if we were indeed "created." All creations are artifice, artificial, not original, purposefully made by another consciousness. We would have to admit we are artificial, if we believe we were created. It should not shock Christians that our reality is less real than the reality of God. In the Bible I believe what God is promising to obedient servants is a further taste of that higher reality.

I agree with what you say about a mechanistic universe. The arrangement of finite particles would repeatedly return to a same arrangement. However, I don't see our universe as mechanistic. So the argument is hypothetical for me.

I don't see consciousness as dependent on self-reflection. Nor the ability to make a choice depend on self-reflection. Our choices appear with prior causes or they would not be "free". Our self-reflective reason rationalizes these prior free choices. So I could have consciousness, characterized as an ability to make a choice, where ever I could show that neither determinism nor uniformly distributed random processes can explain the behavior of something. That would include quantum reality.

Traditionally God does more than "create" the universe like one might create a computer and then let it run down. That's an atheistic simplification of a God to argue against its existence. I agree with them. Such deities do not exist. Besides they are mechanistic and their existence would assume the universe were mechanistic, which it is not. Such deities have nothing to do with what people who are theistic mean by "God". God also sustains the universe, that is, keeps it in being constantly. So there is no way for Him to be already dead.

In Scenario 1, things had a beginning. In Scenario 2, things are eternal. One needs to know what "things" are. Defining things is as difficult as defining consciousness.

Consider Scenario 1: The universe had a beginning. Some consciousness preceded this beginning, but nothing comes from nothing, so there is no-thing now under that scenario. There is only consciousness that gets manifested to us as objects. Our present universe looks like this given the big bang.

Consider Scenario 2: The universe did not have a beginning, but because we are here, the universe does contain consciousness. We don't know that it contains anything "unconscious". What we see is what reality appears like to us. Supposing there is something unconscious in the universe, then we have to make sense out of how both conscious and unconscious reality can exist together. I don't think it can, so even in Scenario 2, all we have is consciousness.

Are we artificial? It is true that an AI robot is artificial just like the chair I am sitting on. Because of that the robot or the chair, not the reality they are made out of, is not consciousness. But we are conscious. How can something conscious be artificial?

You are really stretching, while I am staying logical.

The word "choice," is a bad choice for whether something is manifesting consciousness, because your standards seem so low for what constitutes a choice.

God is only for sure not dead under Scenario #1 where he created "everything," out of his imagination and must still be around to keep the light show going.

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For a consciousness unfamiliar with ideas, what starts as an urge could grow into an idea.

The necessary Gods of Scenario #2 did not create the universe. The necessary ones (as in logically demonstrated) are products themselves of a universe infinitely old which has had to produce everything already that it was going to. And given enough time, one of the things it was going to produce were beings that made us look like amoeba at a Mensa meeting, spread out among the stars, or in hidden universes.

If God is next of kin to consciousness, God is not dead, but it had to be mentioned and considered.

Your personal beliefs are pushing way ahead of the discussion and proof. I cannot grant consciousness to particles or state flatly the universe is not mechanistic.

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I am willing to logically speculate on certain things, and call them speculations.

In #2 it seems to me we could expect every kind of God, both good and malicious. A God powerful enough to be the devil seems likely. (There I go again trying out of the corner of my eye to rectify my speculations with Christian tradition simply because I grew up in it, when I do not actually believe the relgious part of the tradition any more than I believe Moslem teachings.)

We could expect a malicious God powerful enough to be called the Devil. Judaic/Christian tadition tells me the Devil is so powerful that God can only protect me under certain conditions. I have to behave. A father does not sentence his own "children," to an eternity of the worst kind of punishment for misbehavior, unless he has no choice. So, the God known as the Devil would be quite strong, if Scenario #2 is the real scenario.

Ignoring Biblical sources, we may postulate the devil is either an invader in another God's domain, or a rightful occupant fighting off an invader.

What we are both doing is rationalizing our prior beliefs. We are both being logical but we haven't convinced the other. That is fine. We shouldn't aim to convince, but to use this opportunity to clarify our position for ourselves, make our rationalizations better.

The reason I use choice is because it is how one could interpret quantum physics. The standards are that the behavior cannot be explained by either determinism or uniformly distributed chance. I don't know what consciousness means for those particles. All we could see is the behavior, so this interpretation is speculation, not science. However, I think it is a more sensible speculation than to say something, like many world does, that an entirely new universe that we can't see pops into existence for every possible outcome at the quantum level to eliminate the choice interpretation.

We agree in Scenario #1 that God sustains, not only creates.

I think I understand that the Gods, both good ones and bad ones, in Scenario #2 would be combinations of particles that just happened to happen. Given an infinite amount of time everything will happen. This argument is similar to the anthropic principle. However, is Scenario #2 even appropriate for the reality we experience. Is reality really reducible to particles and is the universe mechanistic? That has to be established or at least noted that it has not been settled before one can say much about Scenario #2. In Scenario #1 we started with consciousness. That evidently exists because we are conscious.

You used the phrase "manifesting consciousness". The more correct phrase for Scenario #1 is "consciousness manifesting things" because consciousness is the given in Scenario #1. Which brings me back to the question: what are things? We make cultural things, like chairs and computers, out of stuff or things, but culturally what we see are the objects we have made not the underlying stuff they are made out of. None of those things are conscious as a chair or a computer, although the stuff they are made out of may be conscious. The closest we get to creating something conscious is through procreation. The resulting baby is conscious unlike the chair or the computer. I think the reason the baby is different from the computer is because the baby can make choices and the computer can't. That is another reason why I keep coming back to choice.

Not being a Christian, I feel no pressure to posit free will, either. I don't know if we have it. We are at least free enough to believe we are making decisions and to see ourselves as having free will. We seem to ourselves just like beings with free will.

In case there is a Judaic/Christian God, it is better that I am not free. If there is a God, then no merciful being would send his children off to an eternity of punishment when they were not responsible for their own actions. Maybe we are only semi-responsible, at best. The Primal Consciousness would know this and cut us a break, if he were really merciful and compassionate.

I'm not worried about hell. Our ability to make choices, not just imaginary ones and not with absolute freedom, makes sense to me. I see no reason to reject it.

Kidnapped and enslaved by the Devil is how I would interpret hell. Evil Gods must take some pleasure in pain. Or maybe their pleasure is in capturing subjects of the altruistic God. It is not out of the question that we are caught in the middle of a battle between these high lords who did not create the universe or all things. Like Pork Chop Hill, we are not important in ourselves, but as symbolic turf.

As a theme for fantasy fiction, that view of the Devil might work. The only thing I know of the afterlife is what people who have had near-death experiences or people who have received after death communications tell me. I would count the events after the crucifixion of Jesus in those communications and experiences realizing the canonical accounts might have been modified for theological correctness. Personally, I imagine heaven and hell as a different, perhaps expanded, perspective on reality from our current perspectives which are very localized.

I picked up Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry's "God and the Afterlife" in a used book store a few days ago. They research near-death experiences. Often I don't read the books I buy, expecting to read them sometime in the future and then forgetting about them, but you are encouraging me to look at this now.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by YesNo

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

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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?

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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?

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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

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.

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

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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:

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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.)

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