Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Post 4. Continued . . .  

    Quantum Reality vs Religious Fantasy

In a world of idealistic & imaginative humans, how can we know what's real, and what's fantasy? The scientific method was designed for just that purpose. But it originally assumed a clear distinction between Fact and Fiction. Unfortunately, such a precise dichotomy is no longer realistic, since the thoroughly attested Quantum Theory describes  the invisible foundations of our observed universe in terms of entities that are literally-unreal abstractions, verifiable only by inference from paradoxical lab results. / see End Note1. /  In my own personal experience, I have never seen a wishy-washy-waving quantum particle or felt the spooky chill of a quantum field brimming with ghostly unborn particles. Hence, I have to trust the professional physicists who assure me that what I see with my natural senses is not the ultimate reality. As a Christian, I had faith in Bible stories that assured me there was a God in heaven directing the show in which I was a minor player. Sadly, some of those myths later proved to be politically motivated fictional fabrications. So, in both accounts, my personal sensory Reality is different from what I'm told about ultimate non-sensory Ideality. In either case, reality seems to be more than what meets the eye.

Unlike the materialistic world we know via our physical senses, the heavenly/quantum realm can be experienced only by extending our mental powers beyond the inherent limitations of our material bodies by means of rational inference from what our intuition or technology reveals. According to the priesthood of Physics, the invisible world within is populated by fantastic entities like “wavicles” with strange powers such as the ability to be in two or more places at the same time (superposition). Likewise, speculative theories of Multiverses & Many Worlds, describe super-realities that are no more physically real than the “many mansions” in heaven that Jesus assured his followers awaited them after death. In both the religious and scientific worlds I have to take the existence of such marvelous & metaphysical things on faith --- in fallible humans. Fortunately, in the scientific community at least, we're not required to trust those authorities without protecting ourselves with a sheild of skeptical scrutiny.

Reacting to the confounding fantasies of human imagination, hardline Empiricists, when they find it impossible to believe in such Religious & Rationalist fairytales, exercise their option to believe only what they can sense in the here & now, without reference to hypothetical entities or imaginary futures or mythical histories. In such an austere material world though, there is no larger context for my pitiful life, which besides being “brutal, nasty & short”, seems to be empty and meaningless. That cold-hearted view of Reality prompted idealist philosopher Berkeley to propose an alternative Empiricism, in which God is the ultimate perceiver of what's what. Lacking our modern technology though, Berkeley3 had to put his trust in ancient scriptures, written by men who were blessed with divine visions in order to “see” true reality. Since the atheistic-quantifiable-materialistic worldview seems to ignore the existence or significance of the Qualia of the world, that give meaning to our lives, like Berkeley, I must look “outside the box” to find answers to ontological “why” questions, via a combination of Quantifiable and Qualitative experience.       

Post 4 Continued  . . . . .click Next

 Quantum Information Science : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_information_science

3. Berkeley's God was modeled on the only known examples of Mind & Meaning & Knowing & Creating in the physical world :  the apex of evolution, Homo Sapiens.

Today we can imagine even more powerful beings, based on computer & robot models, and more expansive worlds, based on parallel universes & eternal multiverses.

Qualia : the feeling of what-it's-like to experience reality

Image :
Christian physicist believes in the reality of a quantum world

Image :
Quantum physicist does not deny objective reality