God = Universe, says one blogger
March 16th 2007 04:59
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It's an interesting concept, isn't it.
But this idea is from rphaedrus ([info]rphaedrus) wrote,
@ 2007-03-15
I've been following the debate on religion and science between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris. One of Sullivan's readers wrote in with a very interesting perspective. For those of you who know me or read any of the spirituality posts that I wrote some time ago, you may know that at the end of my college career, I was working on a spiritual theory that fit with my understanding of science and - in my mind - fit as a fairly comfortable superset of most other religions (as long as you accept that all religions have mythic artifacts to fill in gaps of understanding as well as quite a bit of colorful metaphor).
Anyway, the way I'd worked it up ended up failing when I learned that it has been "proven" that without matter, time still exists. I guess I gave up too easy because the following post has some theories which can, er, resurrect my framework. Sweet spot in bold:
Re: your latest response to Sam Harris, I've been researching the latest scientific theories on supra-normal human experience, for an article in a future issue of Discover. Near Death Experiences (NDEs), out-of-body experiences (OBEs), reincarnation - nothing's off-limits as long as there's been some kind of serious scientific inquiry into the phenomenon. The most fascinating stuff I've come across in my research, by a long shot, is in the area of quantum mechanics, as presented in the work of the Oxford mathematican/physicist Roger Penrose and his colleague Stuart Hameroff, an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona.
Together, Penrose and Hameroff have developed a theory of consciousness called ORCH OR (Orchestrated Objective Eduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules) which posits that consciousness "occurs" not at the neuronal level in the brain, and not in algorithmic processes mimicking on a grand scale the way computers work, but at the sub-neuronal level, in the microtubles (crystal-like lattice structures that help organize cell structures and enable information processing) in which quantum processing interacts with classical physics. It's that intersect, between classical and quantum physics, to drastically over-simplify the Penrose/Hameroff model, that "provides the global binding necessary to consciousness."
Why is this interesting? Two reasons: because it suggests that the brain functions not like a computer but in a non-computable (i.e. non-reproducible by artificial means) way, and because Penrose goes further, and theorizes a stable set of Platonic ideal structures residing at the very lowest energy level of the Planck scale (where quantum gravity, whatever that is, would be strongest), which inform and influence at least our unconscious minds. Because quantum mechanics allows for non-local patterns, and because these non-local patterns repeat everywhere, the implication is that the universe is in some way conscious, and that we are part of that consciousness.
The Italian physicist Paola Zizzi, taking the Penrose/Hameroff model a logical step forward, has developed the theory that in the moment of the Big Bang, the universe also acquired consciousness (in the sense of these Platonic ideal structures), which she calls the Big Wow. The immediate implications of this theory are profound, and echo some of the basic tenets (though certainly not much in the way of dogma) of our major religions: that we are all connected; that consciousness exists apart from the purely mechanistic or biological workings of our temporal bodies; that consciousness exists outside of classical space/time; and that when we die, or when our brain activity ceases, to be precise, the quantum information that has accreted through a lifetime of experience does not disappear. It may decohere, in the sense that the individual information is no longer organized the way your brain organized it, or it may remain semi-coherent in what Hameroff suggests as some kind "hologram," (he is after all still a scientist); it may even float around and reconstitute itself in some other form, that's to say as some other person. No one knows.
What Penrose/Hameroff do claim to know, or at least strongly suggest, is that individual consciousness does remain, after death, in some form (perhaps outside the ken of current science, or even philosophy, though certainly not religion). I'm probably doing grave injustice to Penrose and Hameroff by summarizing their theory with such radical simplicity. Penrose's two books: "The Emperor's New Mind" (written before he'd come into contact with Hameroff's research into microtubules) and especially "Shadows Of The Mind: A Search For The Missing Science Of Consciousness," are undoubtedly better resources if you're interested.
For the record, it seems that Penrose is brilliant but his theories are not accepted by the rest of the scientific community. Not that doubted theories haven't turned out to be true in the past...
Oh, if Penrose is right, it raises the bar for developing man made conscious AI.
For the record, the description of the state of the divine, our interrelation with it, and what happens with our consciousness when we live and die is quite close to the working aspects of my theory. I guess it goes with out saying that this resonates with me. I'm either brilliant or an idiot. I suspect a bit of both.
Is this a worry? or is it exciting? - These are my questions - katyzzz
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Comment by Ahmed
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I could get into it more but umm, I'm kind of lazy so let me summarize the whole debate.
On the one hand we have the self proclaimed peace loving Atheists who claim they just want to get by in life with others but who also have the tendency to put down people who don't share their beliefs. They basically have convinced themselves of being good decent folk yet the way they behave is anything but.
They like to insult religion in various forms, often times you hear them yell 'atheism has never been used as an excuse to murder', of course there are a few holes in their little story they like to imply religous people are murdering nutcases.
gah, I can just go on and on but I won't.
As for on the other end you have the religious folk who babble about crazy theories of the earth being 6000 years old... heh, 'nuff said really.
I don't even want to associate with either group.
Comment by katyzzz
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