Is man even a spiritual being?

[guanoloco]

Awareness, as we know it, (to whatever degree that is) comes from brain function.

You know, you state this emphatically and I have put this out before that there is clinical evidence that people are aware when their brains are flat line dead...as in iatrogenically induced with brain surgery, etc., meaning that their brains do not register any EEG lines. Neurosurgeons, psychiatrists and that ilk conclude from this that consciousness is separate from the brain - against everything they held "sacred" and were taught. They have no explanation for this.

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Roger B: Peter, Pretty lucid little write ups. There is another aspect to this, in my view. There is, of course, that nasty theory of Clausius's leading to the idea of "the heat death of the universe" thing based on his notion of entropy. Personally, I observe that the physical universe is not a closed thermodynamic system, but one charged by its juxtaposition with spirit. In essence we charge it by our playing of "attention" in the form of spiritual life-force onto or at it. Some may view this as theory, and "unproven," but for me personally, it is what I observe, experience and have done. R

Soderqvist1: What you claim amount to; you refueling the universe with negative entropy, or in the word coined by Erwin Schrödinger; “Negentropy” which is the opposite of entropy in example; gasoline or food, or simply energy available to do work. Your theory is scientific in the sense that it is possible to put to test, but I doubt at the outset that you can do any such a thing in example; find a place in time and we measure the energy level in that space before refueling, and afterward it has increased!

L. Ron Hubbard claim that in his book, “Fundamental of Thought” that in Phoenix Arizona 1951-Juli that he rather in a Scientific way than spiritual or humanistic way established that man is a spirit, because he could separate the mind spirit and body without death happen, and auditing could erase (as-is) many pounds of mental charge. But as usual he has no references to his scientific findings so other scientist can replicate his experiments and see if they can reach, or simply end up with the same result. Destroy energy is forbidden by the first law of thermodynamics, but it is possible to put a PC on a weight Scales before, and after auditing, and se if the said law has been violated and need to be discarded as false to fact.

Yes. The thing that distinct us as spirit from the physical is the fact that we have volition. The physical does not have power of choice. It can only react based on affects and influences upon it. Some will argue that that a computer "makes decisions" and can beat a human at a game of chess . . . . on this issue I would point out that the computer cannot, of its own volition, decide to lose the game. Only a human, empowered by spirit can do that. (Err, well, maybe a chimpanzee can ) It is this power of volition that is resident with spirit that demonstrates its presence and fact of existence. But, to be true, that leads to the question of: what are the spirit's characteristics, qualities, attributes And that is the big thing that LRH and most who discuss "spirituality" miss out on. Rog

Soderqvist1: You claim that a spirit has volition because he can decide to play the game as a loser, but a computer has no volition because he can only stubbornly play the game as a winner. My computer has the chess program Titan which has 10 degrees of competences, and at the level 6 Titan sometimes start to behave like an idiot, by start offering his Queen, and Towns until he loses the game.

uniquemand: Dennett oversimplifies. See McLaren's criticism of his work in his book "Humanizing Psychiatry: The Biocognitive Model", in which Dennett is shown in the end to be just another form of dualist ultimately, who never explains self-awareness, but only awareness, as you have said.

Soderqvist1: I have read some of his books “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”, and “Brainstorms”, and “Breaking The Spell”, and part of “The intentional Stance” but I haven’t seen any unlikely explanation in these books. But maybe you can explain why McLaren is more credible than Dennett? I mean you have not given any justification why one authority is more credible than the other! Then regarding Self-Aware, I propose to define it as; a subject is Self-Aware if the Subject is cognizant about himself, or can reflect upon his own condition. The simplest I can imagine is string of letters which say something about themselves in example; “I am not provable”. My computer fulfill that condition because my driver scanner time to time Scanning the programs in the computer to see if any driving routines are old, and if there is a new program to download. In example he found that the driving routine for my Microsoft Mouse is 5 years old and need to be updated, and of course I clicked the Yes button, and furthermore my Spedupyourcomputer device can find problems in my computer which hampering its optimal working and recommend me to click on the yes button so he can remove the problem. These seems to suggest self-awareness at a rudimentary level compared with the human brain.

The ability to reflect upon our own state of mind is the difference between an intelligent, sentient being and one that simply plots a course without ever understanding its own motivations. It is this ability that allows us to break through our conditioning, when we do that (rare), and to have deep connections with other sentient beings.

Soderqvist1: can you elaborate a little more here?
What do you understand about your motivation which a mere computer in principle is unable to do? Maybe some other module in your brain has broke your condition and put you on a new route, or in other words one program has overruled another program. Computers has deep connection with each other too through Internet. I remember one time some week ago when a program from HP visited me and said “Hi I want to search through you computer and see if something need to be updated, and I clicked on the yes button, and he did so and found out that my Wireless Assistance and something more need to be updated, so I clicked yes update!

All this is said by a spiritual machine which listening to the name Peter!

 

[guanoloco]

Soderqvist1: but these quantum fluctuations is not compatible with the first law of thermodynamics which states that; energy cannot be created or destroyed, energy can only be transformed into other forms, in example when a car burning gasoline and its energy doesn’t disappear, but transform into entropy which is an energy form which is unable to do work. The thermodynamic laws were formulated back in the mid-nineteen century it is classical science like Newtonian physics. So the law has been modified in order to include these new findings, by claim that the energy level is the same in average as particles can appear, and disappear in a billionth of a second.

Not to open a can of worms (so we'll just table it) but I do believe there are theories that an expanding universe creates Mass (which is energy) in order to maintain its aggregate or some such...would have to look that up and am not about to now - that's why we'll table it ('sides, the aggregate remains the equivalent so conservation is maintained, theoretically, if I remember correctly).

Who are these, ”many” which claim that evolution, is opposite to the Second Law?
I know creationists who has made such a claim, but they willfully ignore the first law of thermodynamics which forbid creation of mass (species) out of nothing, as that would increase the amount of energy, as mass is one form of energy! The Science of Bioenergetics is a branch of science which deals with the application of the laws of thermodynamics in biological processes and as far to my knowledge this science is part of Evolutionary Biology.

Please note that I did not state that it violates any of the laws, only that life/consciousness/evolution appears to work opposite to them. The simple single cell structures going to ever more complex systems. The fact of taking mud, putting it in a form and baking it to make a brick and then stacking one on top of another. The collation and organization of information that is collected and passed from "terminal" to "terminal", for lack of a better word. The idea that after 6 mass extinction events life crawls back and up towards more complex systems.

The OP, Feral, talked about SURVIVE seemingly being true to him. The moving to ever complex systems is the survive of life and that's what it does - it evolves...sometimes it devolves but the aggregate is that it evolves. We see this in a single person's life.

This has lead to the following quote from a book on theoretical physics that I randomly pulled from my library - note, every book on this subject that I have has something similar in it - therefore the "many".

At first, it seems as if the existence of complex life forms on Earth violates the second law (of thermodynamics). It seems remarkable that out of the chaos of the early Earth emerged an incredible diversity of intricate life forms, even harboring intelligence and consciousness, lowering the amount of entropy. Some have taken this miracle to imply the hand of a benevolent creator. But remember that life is driven by the natural laws of evolution, and that total entropy still increases, because additional energy fueling life is constantly being added by the Sun. If we include the Sun and Earth, then the total entropy still increases.

Also, it was never mentioned about something being made from nothing...that's some other theories in physics we'll take up some other time.

The eminent astronomer Fred Hoyle claimed that evolution is equally probable to a hurricane in junkyard and all the pieces of junk ends into a jumbo Jet Airplane. Some Biologists took a look at his proposition and came to the conclusion that his math is correct, but not his biology since his math is based upon one big jump, meanwhile evolutionary biology is based upon gradual step-by-step adjustment to a changing environment in geological time.

I think you mean this:

Astronomer Hugh Ross, to emphasize how truly remarkable this situation (a list of cosmic accidents allowing for life assembled by various scientists, see below) is, has compared it to a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled as a result of a tornado striking a junkyard.

And "his" "math" wasn't about any one big jump - there was no math that I'm aware of, nor was it his, and the comment was about life being able to exist at all - let alone evolution occurring. Because of this (same book):

Scientists have, in fact, assembled long lists of scores of such "happy cosmic accidents." When faced with this imposing list, it's shocking to find how many of the familiar constants of the universe lie within a very narrow band that makes life possible. If a single one of these accidents were altered, stars would never form, the universe would fly apart, DNA would not exist, life as we know it would be impossible, Earth would flip over or freeze, and so on.

Astronomer Hugh Ross, to emphasize how truly remarkable this situation is, has compared it to a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled as a result of a tornado striking a junkyard.

This talks about the various "goldilocks zones" things that Earth has - too many to relate here but some are the moon as it is stabilizing the Earth's rotation on its axis among other things, Jupiter in the Solar System wiping out asteroids, planets having concentric orbits so they don't collide, the fact that protons weigh slightly less than neutrons, that protons are stable and don't decay into antielectrons, etc.

However, part and parcel to the list are these 6:

Epsilon: the relative amount of hydrogen that converts to helium via fusion in the big bang, it = 0.007. If it was 0.006 it would weaken the nuclear force and protons and neutrons would not bind together. It it was 0.008 fusion would have been so rapid that no hydrogen would have survived from the big bang = no stars today = no energy to the planets.

N: the strength of the electric force divided by the strength of gravity = 10 to the 36th power, which shows how weak gravity is. If gravity were weaker then stars cannot condense. If it were stronger they burn up too fast.

Omega: the relative density of the universe. If it were too small the universe would have expanded and cooled too fast. If it were too large the universe would've collapsed again before life started.

Lambda: the cosmological constant which determines the acceleration of the universe. A few times larger blows the universe apart and if it were negative the universe would've contracted before life started. Lambda + Omega is apparently 1.

Q: which is the amplitude of the irregularities in the cosmic microwave background and is 10 to the negative 5th power. Smaller and the universe never condenses into stars; larger and the condensation happens way sooner and results in massive black holes.

D: the number of experienced spatial dimensions. Less than 3 and life disintegrates more than 3 and atoms and solar systems probably cannot exist due to instability.

This kind of stuff is what Ross was talking about. He's talking about this list being assembled to make a universe being "chance" is equivalent to a tornado striking a junk yard and creating a Boeing 747. He's not really talking about the existence of life or evolution...he's talking about the various cosmic accidents necessary to even allow the goldilocks zones to exist which allow for life to exist which allows for evolution to exist. All those cosmic accidents lining up is as much chance as a Boeing 747 being hammered together pristine from a tornado in a junkyard. OK, dead horse beat to death.

Just now I am reading the eminent Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins book: The greatest Show on Earth; the Evidence for Evolution. Speciation happens under our very eyes as scientist has put insectivorous lizards on an island and 37 generations later there is new daughter species there, which is herbivorous which cannot interbreed with the mother species, and as far as I can see in the book, the evidence for evolution is not only strong, but corroborating evidence from various field of science makes the evidence overwhelming. That an agent outside the universe doing things here is not compatible with scientific laws, more about it here
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?23840-Criminal-timeline-of-Scientology&p=591759#post591759

I didn't say anything against evolution or about outside agents. However, there are many who suggest that the scientific laws couldn't exist without an outside agent, Ross being one of them, and there's many more than that who suggest that the universe couldn't exist without an outside agent as in observers and all that, posted earlier.

I, for one, don't know what to make of all of this but the spiritual or whatever seems more plausible in the face of this just by utilizing Occam's Razor than not, IMHO.

 

[guanoloco]

Atom smashers have nothing to do with so-called parallel universes. That is fantasy.
You might want to look up the facts about the research being done in Switzerland.

Particle accelerators are theorized to also create miniature black holes...aka, Einstein-Rosen bridge.

 

[Minuet #1 in G]

Awareness, as we know it, (to whatever degree that is) comes from brain function.
A rock does not have a brain.

Here is an interesting question: Does a single cell organism have "awareness", as we can describe it, if it commits suicide when it detects too many others of its own kind around it?
OR is there some sort of "scale" of awareness that ranges from the lowest bare chemicals to the highest neurological?
(In either case, there is nothing "spiritual" about it.)

Well, you can always correlate emotional response and thinking with chemical reactions and other groovy things happening in the brain. But the chemical reactions could well be a manifestation of some other causative factor. So, your cell might have some ethereal non physical aspect to it which is the awareness, which causes the chemical reaction.

On the matter of the scale of awareness, might this not be the field of perception. Something very little and simple in structure has a very limited field of perception. It isn't aware of much. Something bigger and more complex has potentially a much larger field with many facets or different kinds perceptions within it.

The matter of a large animal having lots of little awarenesses in it is interesting (ie the cells). How far does this go up? Do species have a species awareness? Planetary awareness?

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Not to open a can of worms (so we'll just table it) but I do believe there are theories that an expanding universe creates Mass (which is energy) in order to maintain its aggregate or some such...would have to look that up and am not about to now - that's why we'll table it ('sides, the aggregate remains the equivalent so conservation is maintained, theoretically, if I remember correctly).



Please note that I did not state that it violates any of the laws, only that life/consciousness/evolution appears to work opposite to them. The simple single cell structures going to ever more complex systems. The fact of taking mud, putting it in a form and baking it to make a brick and then stacking one on top of another. The collation and organization of information that is collected and passed from "terminal" to "terminal", for lack of a better word. The idea that after 6 mass extinction events life crawls back and up towards more complex systems.

The OP, Feral, talked about SURVIVE seemingly being true to him. The moving to ever complex systems is the survive of life and that's what it does - it evolves...sometimes it devolves but the aggregate is that it evolves. We see this in a single person's life.

This has lead to the following quote from a book on theoretical physics that I randomly pulled from my library - note, every book on this subject that I have has something similar in it - therefore the "many".



Also, it was never mentioned about something being made from nothing...that's some other theories in physics we'll take up some other time.



I think you mean this:

Astronomer Hugh Ross, to emphasize how truly remarkable this situation (a list of cosmic accidents allowing for life assembled by various scientists, see below) is, has compared it to a Boeing 747 aircraft being completely assembled as a result of a tornado striking a junkyard.

And "his" "math" wasn't about any one big jump - there was no math that I'm aware of, nor was it his, and the comment was about life being able to exist at all - let alone evolution occurring. Because of this (same book):



This talks about the various "goldilocks zones" things that Earth has - too many to relate here but some are the moon as it is stabilizing the Earth's rotation on its axis among other things, Jupiter in the Solar System wiping out asteroids, planets having concentric orbits so they don't collide, the fact that protons weigh slightly less than neutrons, that protons are stable and don't decay into antielectrons, etc.

However, part and parcel to the list are these 6:

Epsilon: the relative amount of hydrogen that converts to helium via fusion in the big bang, it = 0.007. If it was 0.006 it would weaken the nuclear force and protons and neutrons would not bind together. It it was 0.008 fusion would have been so rapid that no hydrogen would have survived from the big bang = no stars today = no energy to the planets.

N: the strength of the electric force divided by the strength of gravity = 10 to the 36th power, which shows how weak gravity is. If gravity were weaker then stars cannot condense. If it were stronger they burn up too fast.

Omega: the relative density of the universe. If it were too small the universe would have expanded and cooled too fast. If it were too large the universe would've collapsed again before life started.

Lambda: the cosmological constant which determines the acceleration of the universe. A few times larger blows the universe apart and if it were negative the universe would've contracted before life started. Lambda + Omega is apparently 1.

Q: which is the amplitude of the irregularities in the cosmic microwave background and is 10 to the negative 5th power. Smaller and the universe never condenses into stars; larger and the condensation happens way sooner and results in massive black holes.

D: the number of experienced spatial dimensions. Less than 3 and life disintegrates more than 3 and atoms and solar systems probably cannot exist due to instability.

This kind of stuff is what Ross was talking about. He's talking about this list being assembled to make a universe being "chance" is equivalent to a tornado striking a junk yard and creating a Boeing 747. He's not really talking about the existence of life or evolution...he's talking about the various cosmic accidents necessary to even allow the goldilocks zones to exist which allow for life to exist which allows for evolution to exist. All those cosmic accidents lining up is as much chance as a Boeing 747 being hammered together pristine from a tornado in a junkyard. OK, dead horse beat to death.



I didn't say anything against evolution or about outside agents. However, there are many who suggest that the scientific laws couldn't exist without an outside agent, Ross being one of them, and there's many more than that who suggest that the universe couldn't exist without an outside agent as in observers and all that, posted earlier.

I, for one, don't know what to make of all of this but the spiritual or whatever seems more plausible in the face of this just by utilizing Occam's Razor than not, IMHO.

Soderqvist1: no I really had Fred Hoyle in mind!
I have read about his argument in Richard Dawkins Book; “The Blind Watchmaker 1986”, as a side note I have all Dawkins books, and the one I am at now is the ninth. To the point; I don’t know who Hugh Ross is, but he seems to be one of them who uses the self-assembly in a junkyard by a hurricane as evidence against chemical Evolution!

Wikipedia Fred Hoyle
Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." Hoyle also compared the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cube simultaneously.(See the watchmaker analogy for similar reasoning.) Hoyle's statements and this line of reasoning (at various levels of accuracy) appears frequently in support of intelligent design. Mainstream evolutionary biology rejects Hoyle's interpretation of statistics, and supporters of modern evolutionary theory, such as Richard Dawkins, refer to this as "Hoyle's fallacy".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle

Wikipedia Hoyle's fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyle's_fallacy

Soderqvist1: Regarding the fine tuning of the universe as evidence of intelligent design is wishful thinking by these scientist if they claim that here is no other explanation for the universe’s fine tuning. It would be more correct to say that scientific findings doesn’t contradict what they believe, but it is not science because they don’t make theoretical prediction form the ID Stance which can be confirmed or falsified by experiments. I know an explanation namely; in the Multiverse of all permutation of all possible universes ours just happens to be one of these universes which are fine tuned enough for life to arise, and the evidence is that we are here and figure about how unlikely happenings it is that all other universes are teaming with life, but my proposition is not science because it cannot at least for the moment be put to test, but it proves at least that we should take all these ontological arguments with a grain of salt!

David Deutsch the author of “the Fabric of Reality” at the University of Oxford takes Carl Popper’s Epistemology, and Hugh Everett’s Many World Interpretation, and Alan Turing’s theory of Computation, and Richard Dawkins theory of the Selfish Gene seriously into a theory of everything there is, and he has a theory how to test his idea in the future with the help of Artificial Intelligence, and Quantum Computers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabric_of_Reality

 

[programmer_guy]

Henry Markram: Supercomputing the brain's secrets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS3wMC2BpxU&feature=related

Henry Markram says that he believes that it will eventually be possible to
build a human brain. (I think that he really means an artificial human brain.)


And, for your entertainment: (Sorry, I couldn't resist. <snicker>)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pnLtsdSqU4&feature=related

 

[programmer_guy]

You know, you state this emphatically and I have put this out before that there is clinical evidence that people are aware when their brains are flat line dead...as in iatrogenically induced with brain surgery, etc., meaning that their brains do not register any EEG lines. Neurosurgeons, psychiatrists and that ilk conclude from this that consciousness is separate from the brain - against everything they held "sacred" and were taught. They have no explanation for this.

Please give me some URLs. I would like to read them. Okay?

 

[Thrak]

Please give me some URLs. I would like to read them. Okay?

Ditto

 

[Royal Prince Xenu]

Please give me some URLs. I would like to read them. Okay?

I can give hundreds of URLs but none of them would be relevant.

 

[apocalyptic]

It's ALL spirit. To limit Spirit to "man" is, well, very limiting. And one of the most wonderful aspects: Spirit is not "definable". However, is experienceable. In a way that's all you ever do, is experience spirit.

For many, if not nearly all, the 'word' spirit is sufficiently ambiguous to deflect the truth of what you have written. Being akin to the near complete historical decimation of the 'word' God.

Nonetheless, fortunately, a meaning does not suffer the same fate as a word. Meaning: that which is, remains that which is, regardless of ones labeling of it.

We suspect/hope the word Energy might be useful in slowing the hemorrhaging of the discussion. Realizing however, it may not.

The upshot is the word 'Man' itself is equally as corrupted in terms of meaning as the words Spirit and God are. Meaning: all three words point to one essential reality. Which reality is neither creatable nor destructible, notwithstanding the passing illusion of passing appearances to the contrary.

Life is Energy is God is Spirit is Man is Infinite, and, is Eternally All there is. In a necessarily linear display of it's Being. Where the infinite demands such finite illusion in order to experience what is otherwise void. To wit: form is a mirror of the formless. Or, the reality of unity cannot be experienced in the absence of duality as a forum for such experience.

Or, as our friend Blake once said: Infinity is in love with the productions of time.

Apocalyptic

 

[pomfritz]

Since leaving the cult I have been swinging from one extreme to the other on this. Having now been out for about 7 years I feel I have been able to distance myself from the propaganda forced down my throat and step back to see for myself. What I found was an inherent energy that I and others have. I don't think this would be news to anyone but how we each use it or are aware of it differs greatly to the point that it is something one person actively manipulates it and others have no clue about it.

Between my wife and I there is such a bond and such a flow of energy that we will just hug each other for a long time and just feel the energy flow between us. It is very palpable and jsut feels so damn awesome. When we do this the dog starts whining to be part of it, her reaction is very funny but understandable. Does this mean we are spiritual? I don't know but it's hard to imagine we are not with what we feel. FWIW we've made plans to hook up again after this life, will it work? ?????? but I think being aware of it and really creating it may be big steps towards it happening. As unscientific as this sounds I think you get what you create. If some want to create a nothingness when you die, good chance that's what you'll get.

I gotta tell you since I've swung back from the Mr Skeptic side of things, I feel I've grown in many ways and despite having to struggle sometimes with what life throws in front, there is more of an inner calmness and an ability to put it in perspective in light of a greater being or existence. I am also training as a massage therapist, something my wife has done very successfully since we left and recently I have felt drawn towards this as a way to tangibly help another as well as her as she needs regular massages at the rate she does them.

Also I've tried to simplify my life and reassess what is needed to be happy, it's not much. I think we tend to believe we need all these material things to be happy but to steal a line from someone else, the best things in life are not things. I believe shedding this material need also helps us to discover a spiritual side if one exists. As I write this I realize this is nothing new but to me more of a personal realization. And yes I am so glad to be free of the cult.

Peace to you all.

 

[guanoloco]

Soderqvist1: no I really had Fred Hoyle in mind!
I have read about his argument in Richard Dawkins Book; “The Blind Watchmaker 1986”, as a side note I have all Dawkins books, and the one I am at now is the ninth. To the point; I don’t know who Hugh Ross is, but he seems to be one of them who uses the self-assembly in a junkyard by a hurricane as evidence against chemical Evolution!

Wikipedia Fred Hoyle
Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." Hoyle also compared the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cube simultaneously.(See the watchmaker analogy for similar reasoning.) Hoyle's statements and this line of reasoning (at various levels of accuracy) appears frequently in support of intelligent design. Mainstream evolutionary biology rejects Hoyle's interpretation of statistics, and supporters of modern evolutionary theory, such as Richard Dawkins, refer to this as "Hoyle's fallacy".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle

Wikipedia Hoyle's fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoyle's_fallacy

Soderqvist1: Regarding the fine tuning of the universe as evidence of intelligent design is wishful thinking by these scientist if they claim that here is no other explanation for the universe’s fine tuning. It would be more correct to say that scientific findings doesn’t contradict what they believe, but it is not science because they don’t make theoretical prediction form the ID Stance which can be confirmed or falsified by experiments. I know an explanation namely; in the Multiverse of all permutation of all possible universes ours just happens to be one of these universes which are fine tuned enough for life to arise, and the evidence is that we are here and figure about how unlikely happenings it is that all other universes are teaming with life, but my proposition is not science because it cannot at least for the moment be put to test, but it proves at least that we should take all these ontological arguments with a grain of salt!

David Deutsch the author of “the Fabric of Reality” at the University of Oxford takes Carl Popper’s Epistemology, and Hugh Everett’s Many World Interpretation, and Alan Turing’s theory of Computation, and Richard Dawkins theory of the Selfish Gene seriously into a theory of everything there is, and he has a theory how to test his idea in the future with the help of Artificial Intelligence, and Quantum Computers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabric_of_Reality

I suspected "The God Delusion" would show up on this thread!

Interesting on Hoyle...I was aware of his steady-state/Big Bang debate and giving the Big Bang its name but not of his evolutionary view...however, here's the Ross deal here. Clearly he's referencing the requirements for life to evolve and not the evolution itself. Keep in mind that Ross may be Christian or something.

I don't know if Hoyle picked it up from there or where. Of course, both of these guys would reject the multiverse out of hand and would most likely be firmly entrenched in the Copenhagen interpretation or something thereabouts.

I'll start reading Deutsch, thanks for that... as I posted before IMHO many worlds and multiverse have strengths in their anti-Anthropic Principle stance - which has been a boon to "science" and understanding time and again...all very, very complex but ultimately may be the simplest solutions.

Here's some recent stuff, heads up progammer guy:

The first place to look for evidence of the multiverse is at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle accelerator at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland. Physicists there hope to unmask the secret identity of dark matter, the mysterious unidentified substance believed to make up the majority of matter in the universe. The best candidates for dark matter are "supersymmetric WIMPS" (weakly interacting massive particles) for which LHC physicists are already on the lookout. But, if Linde is right, physicists may find out that dark matter is made out other exotic particles, called "axions," which are backed by the multiverse theory.

then from here:

Dead Parrot Watch: The Multiverse Appears To Be in Trouble. Does That Mean Atheism Is in Trouble Too?
Posted on July 20, 2011 by santitafarella

In 2008, cosmologist Bernard Carr of Queen Mary University of London, told a science journalist for Discover the following:

If there is only one universe, you might have to have a fine-tuner. If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.​

Carr said this because our universe appears to have numerous wildly improbable properties hard to explain by chance (especially if our known Big Bang universe is the only roll of the cosmic dice, setting its cosmological constants). Put bluntly, the cosmos appears to have been designed, and with very particular purposes in mind.

In whose mind?

Well, God’s of course!

Like an apple tree following its genetic imperatives, the universe appears to be following the imperatives of its cosmological constants. It apples galaxies, carbon-based life forms (like apple trees), and minds (like our own).

On planet Earth alone, there are 7 billion minds right now and counting.

Whooda thunk it?

Maybe Someone did.

The Discover article gave examples that illustrate our universe’s mind-boggling good luck (or creation by God, if the multiverse doesn’t come to the rescue of atheism). Here’s one:

The early universe was delicately poised between runaway expansion and terminal collapse. Had the universe contained much more matter, additional gravity would have made it implode. If it contained less, the universe would have expanded too quickly for galaxies to form.​

The 2008 article that Bernard Carr was quoted in also noted this:

The credibility of string theory and the multiverse may get a boost within the next year or two, once physicists start analyzing results from the Large Hadron Collider, the new, $8 billion particle accelerator built on the Swiss-French border.​

Now, fast forward to 2011. What’s the status of string theory and the multiverse in light of the data that has come in from the LHC (Large Hadron Collider)?

Answer: Not good.

Atheists, are you listening?

Theoretical physicist and mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University, discussing this summer’s String 2011 Conference at his blog, writes that at past conferences they:

. . . often featured a call for progress towards making predictions that could be tested at the LHC [Large Hadron Collider]. With LHC data now coming in, [opening speaker David] Gross acknowledged that this had been a failure: there are no string theory LHC predictions.​

None.

As for what the String 2011 Conference’s opening speaker, David Gross, said of the multiverse, here’s Peter Woit again:

Surprisingly, not a word from Gross about anthropics or the multiverse. I assume he’s still an opponent, but perhaps feels that there’s no point in beating a dying horse. Susskind isn’t there and oddly, the only multiverse-related talks are from the two speakers brought in to do public lectures (Brian Greene and Andrei Linde, Hawking’s health has kept him from a planned appearance). So the multiverse is a huge part of the public profile of the conference, but pretty well suppressed at the scientific sections. Also pretty well suppressed is “string phenomenology”, or any attempt to use string theory to do unification. Out of 35 or so talks I see only a couple related to this, which is still the main advertised goal of string theory.​

A dying horse. Isn’t that sad? And remember: as goes string theory, so goes the multiverse.

And perhaps even atheism. As uber-atheist Jerry Coyne noted recently at his blog, how the multiverse debate pans out among physicists has unmistakable consequences for the God question:

[M]ultiverse theories . . . represent physicists’ attempts to give a naturalistic explanation for what others see as evidence of design.​

But here’s how Peter Woit describes the String 2011 Conference summary by Jeff Harvey:

In Jeff Harvey’s summary of the conference, he notes that many people have remarked that there hasn’t been much string theory at the conference. About the landscape, his comment is that “personally I think it’s unlikely to be possible to do science this way.” He describes the situation of string theory unification as like the Monty Python parrot “No, he’s not dead, he’s resting.” while expressing some hope that a miracle will occur at the LHC or in the study of string vacua, reviving the parrot.

That the summary speaker at the main conference for a field would compare the state of the main public motivation for the field as similar to that of the parrot in the Monty Python sketch is pretty remarkable. In the sketch, the whole joke is the parrot’s seller’s unwillingness, no matter what, to admit that what he was selling was a dead parrot.​

And, as for Scientific American’s recent coverage of the multiverse hypothesis, Woit is critical:

One might be tempted to criticize Scientific American for keeping this alive, but they just reflect the fact that this pseudo-science continues to have significant influence at the highest levels of the physics establishment.​

The multiverse is pseudo-science. Really?

Based on what Bernard Carr said in 2008, and what Woit reports of the goings-on at the String 2011 Conference and in Scientific American, should this alert us to the possibility that atheism itself might be quietly trending in the direction of Monty Python’s dead parrot?

...and so the debate goes on...

Quite literally, though, the multiverse does not rule out God or man being spiritual any more than evolution does nor does the absence of the mulitverse rule in God or man being spiritual, IMHO.

 

[programmer_guy]

Here's some recent stuff, heads up progammer guy:


then from here:

Muchas gracias.
I'll do some reading on your suggestions over the weekend.

 

[RolandRB]

No, we are just a bunch of chemicals. Just molecules interacting with each other.

Life has no significance. The universe will carry on regardless of whether there is life in it or not.

 

[Thrak]

Since leaving the cult I have been swinging from one extreme to the other on this. Having now been out for about 7 years I feel I have been able to distance myself from the propaganda forced down my throat and step back to see for myself. What I found was an inherent energy that I and others have. I don't think this would be news to anyone but how we each use it or are aware of it differs greatly to the point that it is something one person actively manipulates it and others have no clue about it.

Between my wife and I there is such a bond and such a flow of energy that we will just hug each other for a long time and just feel the energy flow between us. It is very palpable and jsut feels so damn awesome. When we do this the dog starts whining to be part of it, her reaction is very funny but understandable. Does this mean we are spiritual? I don't know but it's hard to imagine we are not with what we feel. FWIW we've made plans to hook up again after this life, will it work? ?????? but I think being aware of it and really creating it may be big steps towards it happening. As unscientific as this sounds I think you get what you create. If some want to create a nothingness when you die, good chance that's what you'll get.

I gotta tell you since I've swung back from the Mr Skeptic side of things, I feel I've grown in many ways and despite having to struggle sometimes with what life throws in front, there is more of an inner calmness and an ability to put it in perspective in light of a greater being or existence. I am also training as a massage therapist, something my wife has done very successfully since we left and recently I have felt drawn towards this as a way to tangibly help another as well as her as she needs regular massages at the rate she does them.

Also I've tried to simplify my life and reassess what is needed to be happy, it's not much. I think we tend to believe we need all these material things to be happy but to steal a line from someone else, the best things in life are not things. I believe shedding this material need also helps us to discover a spiritual side if one exists. As I write this I realize this is nothing new but to me more of a personal realization. And yes I am so glad to be free of the cult.

Peace to you all.

Nice post. Glad to see you check in.

 

[programmer_guy]

No, we are just a bunch of chemicals. Just molecules interacting with each other.

Life has no significance. The universe will carry on regardless of whether there is life in it or not.

Our lives do have significance to ourselves and each other.
The significance is what we make it to be in the limited time that we have.
(And I agree with your last sentence.)

 

[oneonewasaracecar]

No, we are just a bunch of chemicals. Just molecules interacting with each other.

Life has no significance. The universe will carry on regardless of whether there is life in it or not.

You're being optomistic. You don't know the universe will go on forever, it is the current accepted hypothesis that it will because we have considerable evidence we live in a flat universe.

 

[programmer_guy]

You're being optomistic. You don't know the universe will go on forever, it is the current accepted hypothesis that it will because we have considerable evidence we live in a flat universe.

No, if it is "saddle shaped" then it will expand until the "event horizon" is beyond perception.
Sort of like a bubble that pops... while other bubbles are continually being made.
Life and death of universes.

 

[RolandRB]

Our lives do have significance to ourselves and each other.
The significance is what we make it to be in the limited time that we have.
(And I agree with your last sentence.)

I agree with Dr. Manhattan

"In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon.

Laurie Juspeczyk: Everyone will die!
Dr. Manhattan : And the universe will not even notice."

http://dissention.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/dr-manhattan-quotes/