God gets to spend his billion dollars.
Offline In this topic I include some arguments from 'The God Theory' by Dr.Bernad Haisch and of couse I add a little.
Let us begin.
Some theists view God as physical entinty. That when they die, they go and meet him and perhaps invite him to a few rounds of golf. This of course preludes the argument 'If everything need creation, then who created God?'. I however hold a more scienctific view. Matter is nothing more than a filtered illusion. It is defined only by it's inertia (resistance to acceleration) giving by F=ma. The formula itself gives no rise in thought as to what causes this inertia. It wasn't derived, it is a prostulate. A physicist deriving this would be equivalent to a mathematician deriving 1+1=2, it is just assumed true and is used to advance our knowledge. I will discuss what may cause this resistance later, so keep this in mind.
We now turn to properties of matter. Take for example carbon 14 with a half life of 5730 years. That is if I have two grams of C-14 in 5730 years, I will have one gram, the rest the more stable C-12. But what if I have a single atom of C-14? I know it's half life, but how does IT know it? Why is it so stubborn to wait 5730 years, then degrade to C-12? Who is it's time keeper? This may be caused by zero-point energy. The energy that is basically everywhere. It is responsible for vacuum flucturations, and perhaps inertia. This could well be responsible to the resistance behind F=ma. Mass is just an illusion, defined by this zero point energy field resisting the force applied to it. Mass is in the field of inertia and hence encounters resistance, much like a rock flying through the air. We can't see the air, but we know it is pushing back at the rock. String theory adds to this that what we percieve as matter is mearly a melody played by the strings. Keep this in mind also.
Our brains. We use them to percieve reality. Joy, sorrow, happiness all attributed to how our brains interupt certain events. But how far can the brain go? Why do people struggle with math and physics, when others can memorize an entire book by simply reading it once! One person recited pi to over 22,000 digits in a new world record (I believe it took him 5 hours). People can mutlitply multiple digit numbers in their heads while carrying on a conversation! An infinite sea of consciousness could be around us and our brains are mainly the filter. Some filter less, some more. In this sea of infinitness it is mearly 'addition by subtraction', much like the way a light from a projector is filtered by a slide.
Now imagine a being with infinite potiental. Not the being you envision as 'God' (The one in heaven playing golf with his followers), but merely a consciousness. One may argue that you need matter and being to have consciousness. Which is our purpose. Matter is merely a filter of potential from the zero point energy field. As Dr. Haisch puts it: 'By limiting the infintely possible, you create the finitely real' God Theory page 29. As for infinte sea of consciousness: God. What good is infinte potiental and infinite consciousness if you dont use it?
'Imagine having a billion dollars in you bank account. Would this give you pleasure or satisfaction if you could never spend a penny of it?........He(God) gets to act out and live out his ideas, his fantasies. He gets to spend his billion dollars.'
The God Theory pages 15-16
[edit:fixed minor spelling error, re-worded first sentence]
It has been shown via particle accerlators that the proton itself can be broken down to two down quarks and one up quark (or is it two up, one down? Fuck it, it doesn't matter), the point is what we percive as a proton. (or what was percieved during the famous gold foil experiment) is merely an illusion. We percieve the proton only as a proton because we could not generate high enough energies to smash the proton into the quarks sub-parts. i.e at low energies, a proton can be considered a proton.
Speaking of energy, that is merely what matter is. E=mc^2 clearly states that matter and energy are interchangable. As a matter of fact (get it? LOL!) physicist don't use kilograms when dealing with the particle accelerators rather , they use electron volts (ev) One ev=1.6x10^-17J. (if you would like to me to explain where they got this number, please ask). An electron has a rest energy of 0.511 Mev.
The classical laws of physics collapse at high speeds/energies. While K.E=1/2mv^2 works for speeds well below sub-light speeds, for speeds faster, you require the Gamma factor SQRT(1-V^2/c^2). This is used for mass difference, time diliation etc... This further shows that mass is an illusion, especially the change in mass formula.
The point is that matter is not what is would seem. Now what does this have to do with God? Well, the filtered matter is merely different ways for the experience of the universe. In other universes matter may be dramitically different (A universe of anti-matter for example or muons, or leptons, dark matter etc...) My point was that there are many universes, each one with different types of matter/energy and laws of physics. Now, our universe had a transistion period (The Big Bang/Initial expansion). That is our universe went from one state (some say false vacuum) to another (what you are in now). All different universes. All different ways for God to experience the universe through matter and energy.
[added matter points I will try to incorporate it into a full essay.]
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Why should we suppose a "Why?"
Does everything rise from a conscious process, or does consciousness rise from unconscious processes? Do we not have a better case for the latter?
If deists want to call nature "god," I'll be happy to continue calling it "nature."
returning to our original train of thought, Pineapple, the workings of this depend on which quantum theory you subscribe to. The best two for compatibilty are CCC and It from bit. Now, I haven't made up my mind between the two, what's your call?
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Well, I would respond, but I don't quite know how. It sounds to me like a bunch of metaphysical hocus pocus. You're basing your entire argument on a false premise that "conciousness" entails anything special, or that the universe is an illusion of conciousness.
Consciousness is an observable and explainable phenomenon that arises from natural interactions in the brain. If you come with the metaphysical line of "everything is an illusion", then frankly you're missing the point. If you come at it with that line of thought, the only conclusion that comes from your reasoning is nihilism or a god entity to fill the gap.
we have basically an unbreakable case for them being hand in hand, Nature has a consciousness and it's us, it's always been us because it grew and spread into being us.
If we think way back in evolution to when we were baby conciousness even then that conciousness pursued it's own diversity and complexity as a whole in nature to become human consciousness. So in that sense we have always had a concious god-like part in nature that looked exactly like us even in evolutionary terms. In this sense the terms are kind of interchangable without assuming unrelated information. This is a kind of philosophical theism, and it could be the true rendering of God behind all the books about god but we need to seek that out for ourselves as individuals, as is done in the best tribal traditions because the nature of the books is very subjective compared to the philosophical deism.
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CCC as in Cyrogenic Current Comparator or some other CCC that I'm not thinking of?
As for 'It from bit' I'm going to try to do some more investigation into this.
See my 'Matter is an illusion' topic.
CCC as in Cyrogenic Current Comparator or some other CCC that I'm not thinking of?
As for 'It from bit' I'm going to try to do some more investigation into this.
Close. CCC as in consciousness causes wavefunction collapse
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
LOL, yeah I was like WTF? I think of it as CWFC Conscious Wave Function Collapse.
Okay, I know what your talking about now.
I've been thinking about this and am somewhat leaning towards CCC. (I don't like abreviations. Too many ideas, too few letters)
However, as I do more research into 'it by bit' (Can you recommend any books? I've already read Parallel Worlds) I may sway to that. Or none of them which would put me in a pickle.
The question regarding CCC: What happened before life developed? i.e what collapsed the wave function of the Earth before sentient beings developed? Perhaps the infinite consciousness? Or is this a completly stupid question? Or is it just stupid because I percieve it as stupid? I'm so confused.
more metaphysical garbage. Inanimate objects are not concious. Consciousness arose on Earth relatively recentley, and only in the form of neurons and their interconnections. Probably the only "concious" creatures on this planet that have ever lived would be:
Species in the genus Homo (All probably had some form of conciousness)
Some of the Great Apes
Elephants and some of their forebearers (sketchy)
Dolphins and some of their forebearers
Ravens (very sketchy)
The rest of the body of the Animal kingdom barely possesses enough brainpower to have self-awareness, let alone a concious understanding of the world around it, let alone any kind of self-dialouge. Apes, elephants and dolphins remember their kin and can recognize themselves in a mirror, ravens remember individuals and use logic (one of the very few in the animal kingdom). Does this mean they have conciousness? Maybe.
But I can tell you that "the earth" or "the universe" almost certainly possesses no conciousness. To have conciousness you have to have parallel processes in multiple entities connected together by some kind of data link. Maybe one day our computers will become the first non-organic concious objects in the universe, but I doubt any of it could have originated naturally without natural selection.
The question regarding CCC: What happened before life developed? i.e what collapsed the wave function of the Earth before sentient beings developed? Perhaps the infinite consciousness? Or is this a completly stupid question? Or is it just stupid because I percieve it as stupid? I'm so confused.
As am I. The one thing which really got me about the quantum paradoxes is how little they matter. Just because we cannot know the definite state of the cat in the box and have to draw a wavefunction does not mean the cat is in a definite state. I think that CCC is saying not that the cat is not in a definite state without an observer, but instead that there is no way to know the definite state without an observer. But that's obvious! I'm really confused too. I think I'll stick to the relatively safe (but still totally absurd) world of particle physics, instead of quantum paradoxes. Drop John Wheeler a message about it, see what he thinks. After all, he developed it.
I think Ill stick to It from Bit, which says the only predicate for WF collapse is information expressed in the particles, not an observed. This gets around the problem you posed. CCC is problematic because it leads to an infinite regress of conscious observers, possibly up to God himself. But that's just ridiculous in terms of parsimony. If you look up "breaking Occam's Razor", you'll find a picture of a person looking into a box with a cat.
For parsimony, put money on Wheeler's It from bit, since in that picture, there are no wavefunctions to collapse, since it is impossible to isolate a system of information (For example, in the box with the cat, a single air molecule entering or escaping would collapse the WF). Far from collapsing the wavefunctions, there are no wavefunctions to collapse. Since all bodies capable of existing in multiple quantum states emit information, wavefunctions do not exist, and this is the epitome of parsimony.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Arose from what? Preconscious-conciousness would only be an embryonic form of human consciousness. That's still us.
Yes it does. It possesses us, and all the animals you mentioned above, and all the barely concious beings down the scale of consciousness from that. We are the earths consciousness, that is not metaphysical garbage it's how it happened. The elements evolved into earth and consciousness in one diverse unit. It could have been the other way round basically just as much because the earth came from the elements too, conciousness could have emerged in peaches for all this matters it would still be the consciousness which belongs to the whole that was originally.
How is natural selection not natural?
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The more I ponder this, the more I'm intrigued. It could explain the Quantum Zeno paradox that I mentioned earlier.
However, wavefunctions are the bread and butter of QM. The Uncertanty principle, electron diffraction and Quantum Tunneling all rely on De-Broglie waves.
That sounds like a composition fallacy, Eloise. That the earth, or in the galaxy, or in the universe, can contain conscious beings makes none of them conscious themselves.
There are natural processes at work constantly. Energies and matter weave together, each bit moving helplessly toward equilibrium. They form into complex dynamics based on their set behaviors. It is expressed in a self-sustaining pattern (life), and then a conscious pattern. The pattern observes itself (us at this moment). If that made any sense, in that model consciousness isn't necessary to the formation of the universe, life or consciousness itself.
I didn't say that. I said we are it's consciousness. There is a philosophical bent in there but at the same time it's a fairly basic truth of the progression. Where did the consciousness come from? Same place we came from and the earth came from. It's a bit like a family relationship, we and the earth have the same cosmological parent, therefore we are related and we are the family's consciousness. If what is in dispute between us is not that it's true or untrue, but whether we have any obligation to care that we are part of that cosmological family that bit is most definitely up to you to decide for your self.
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I think it's a bit like saying the bacteria in your digestive system are your consciousness. Clearly, they're not, because they don't exercise any deliberate control over your behavior. We sustain them, but they are not an extension of our consciousness. In the same way, there is no exercise of our conscious will upon the earth or the rest of the universe by us. We are made of earthly elements, we can control ourselves, and we affect the earth through physical means, but all that doesn't come together to make us the consciousness of the earth. The observation on causality doesn't apply to conscious beings especially, it applies to absolutely everything, conscious or not, living or not.
LOL, is this the same thread where Pineapple and DeludedGod are discussing CCC ? That would be funny. It's probably not the same thread.. oh well.
There is a lot left to understand about consciousness before we can be saying it's insignificant or otherwise, in any case, I'm not interested in arguing the truth of speculations at all. We are both entitled to opinions on the unknown. To me it's like saying gut bacteria are the microscopic cleaning and regulating organisms of our body and nothing more than that. By natural selection we could have ended up with little wash boards on extendable fingers for the job or close to any random thing that might have been favoured, but the point is cleaning was a function seeded by the original soup of our existence and bacteria are the latest model of that function.
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I'm not even nearly alluding to anything of the sort. What I am talking to is more like a collective wisdom which passes between generations of consciousness guiding the path of their natural selection. For example take one tribe living on one side of the jungle, they are adapting to jungle life there and all it brings from living within a 50 km radius of their home. A certain generation of the tribe decides in their wisdom to move to the other side of the jungle 100km away where conditions for certain lifestyles are better. This is their discrete individual wisdom which can change the course of their evolution guiding it towards what conditions are better for, however, once they have settled there they remain in the tradition of staying within 50km of their home this is the collective conscious wisdom which also guides the course of natural selection as they adapt further in evolution, they are still not adapting beyond the limits of 50km. Over a greater span of time the historical collective consciousness made up of regular passed down programs in the group encircles the whole of a large progression of the group. It is a conscious being which exists as the collective itself and in many ways it is the god-like influence on their being, unseen and holding all in it's grasp. The Hopi indians used to call this the Great Hoop of Life and they say that an ancient wise being taught them very specific ways how to use it for the good of all the group.
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Are you making a suggestion that organisms make a concious choice to evolve?
...
Natural selection has no foresight. Nothing "guides" it except the environment.
What you're talking about here is cultural pressures, and memes passed down from generation to generation. This cannot affect evolution because it happens in too short a time frame. Humans, because we are concious, are capable of experiencing this, but really very few other organisms are going to be affected by cultural traditions and memes.
I'm thinking of adding the information in my 'matter is an illusion' topic to the OP.
Are you kidding?
My argument was directly pointing to environment because it is what guides natural selection over sufficient timeframes. But refer to my other argument where I am trying to point out the methodology of computation, memes are a late version of something else that has performed the same task regressively back in computational complexity throughout evolution, cultural memes which cohere enivironmental conditions are included in that group. Computational consciousness doesn't contradict these things it is in support of them. Computaional consciousness exists as expansions on the same framework or some otherwordly being came and plugged in new frameworks that didn't exist in the original one, take your pick. If they are expansions on the same framework then there is a unity of the whole framework with consciousness itself, whether that matters to you is your own choice, what it definitively means about the place of consciousness in the world is a matter for speculation. I'm not going to try and make it matter to you or force my beliefs down your throat.
Edit: Just to clear up the foresight issue. I'm not saying Natural selection has to have foresight. What I said was that it performs the same function that foresight would do regardless, and it would seem some religious old native american tribes actually figured this out and inferred quite cleverly that it would be prudent to add foresight to it themselves.
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That doesn't seem to be so.
I have no idea what point you're trying to make anymore. There's too much badly-defined lay language in this thread, and I'm contributing to it as well. I don't see much point in this conversation.
Hey, Deluded, I've been thinking of 'it form bit' and came up with data is required to collapse the wavefunction, but it is not information until our consciousness regonizes it. So in a way consciousness is still required to experience the wave-function collapse. What good is data if without consciousness to process it?
Hey Pineapple, mind if I edge in here and say I think consciousness simply modulates the data stream to fit it's own channel. It doesn't cause a collapse per se, it just simulates one in order to recieve the signal on definite terms. It's a very subjective model but I think it's also objective in the sense that the true objective signal is never actually corrupted at all by observation but merely transformed into the one of its natural expressions which best fits the conscious observation.
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What? You mean like a radio signal? Data is the signal and consciousness is the reciever? Or that all possible state wavefunctions are signals and consciousness is the reciever? Is that what you're talking about?
Yeah in a sense. To put another analogy to it it's a bit like a blending of signal transmission and law of conservation, The signal being data makes it material therefore it's conserved but transformed like light to heat to excitation. Another analogy could be a modular universe, where conciousness is one of the modes, but it has complex modularity like atomic structure; so where it exchanges energy with a system the system and itself have bonding principle which defines the shape of the final molecule.
Oh yeah, and yes possible state wavefunctions are analogous to a signal, that's what I mean.
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Okay, I'm going to add the matter illusion stuff.
In a nutshell what I am saying is if you apply functionalism to your solution of the mind body problem you are still officially on neutral dualism/monism ground, reconciling your ideas to one side of dualism or monism is for your speculation and choice, functionalism does not objectively fall on one side or the other per se. Try the 'Chinese Nation' (Ned Block)
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String theory pahhh bunch of highly disputed fantastic nonsense
The Universe is spinning. think about it