Estimating God or No God

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... for-no-god

‘God’ cannot be shown or known, so ‘God’ is but wished for and hoped for, which is called ‘faith’, in short. ‘No God’ is also an unknown. — PoeticUniverse

I don't have the formal philosophical background to follow all of your Against God arguments. Yet I generally agree with the assertion that "there is no God" (as defined in Polytheistic and Monotheistic traditions).

However, I have concluded from scientific evidence and rational analysis, that there should be a First Cause or Prime Mover or Cosmic Principle (poetically imagined as The Tao, or Brahman, or Logos, or G*D). These philosophical entities are not presumed to be real, but ideal, not beings, but principles. And they are not to be objects of faith & hope, or worshiped as Lords, but merely accepted as universal concepts and logical necessities.

given that obviously that no Designer made everything instantly, but is curiously constrained to doing exactly what nature could do on its own (and why so slowly?), it is unlikely that all eventualities could have been foreseen by a Deity in starting a universe suitable for life. It seems more like we were fine-tuned to the Earth. — PoeticUniverse

I agree that the world was obviously not designed instantaneously, but perhaps it was programmed to evolve gradually over eons, via natural processes. The Laws of Nature are G*D-given "constraints" on Chaos. Natural Selection "fine-tunes" creatures to fit their niche, according to the programmer's criteria.

The hypothetical Programmer would not be creating a playground for bored immortals, or a domain for war-games with Satan, but an ongoing experiment in logical and statistical possibilities that must play-out within the constraints of Logic. Nature is what the program looks like from the inside. When viewed as a Darwinian program, the heuristic course of Nature makes sense. This is not a fact -- it's just a Way of thinking.

I apologize for interrupting your thread, but I just couldn't resist offering an alternative to the perennial God/No-God debate, in the form of my BothAnd G*D.


THE WAY
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
― Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching

THE PROGRAM
The G*D that is known is not the eternal Nerd
Inscrutable is the un-named Omniscient
Omnipotential is the Cause of Cosmos & Eardth
___Gnomon

Evolutionary Programming : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html
G*D : not the name of a deity, but a job-title : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... for-no-god

Here's a slightly different perspective on what you're saying, from my novel frame-of-reference, and using other metaphors :

I think the eternal first cause needs to be simple and operate at a tiny level — PoeticUniverse

Zero Point Energy (ZPE) is about as basic as it gets in the physical universe : the lowest possible energy of a quantum vacuum. That's as close to nothing as you can imagine. But it's still a Materialistic Space-Time concept that can't explain its own existence. And the notion of powerful nothingness evolved from ancient (Chaos) and 19th century (Aether) theories of emptiness-with-potential. Metaphorically, it's similar to my notion of EnFormAction, But, EFA is not the First Cause, it's merely an ongoing wave of causation, which was in-turn motivated Intention of the eternal omnipotential BEING or G*D.

A true First Cause (wave origin) would have to precede space-time and matter-energy where the ripples propagate. It would have to be more than a simple accidental quantum fluctuation though. It would have to "program" the Big Bang Singularity with all the information necessary to create a world from scratch. In my thesis, the equivalent to your ZPE was eternal Chaos (random potential), which was enformed by Intention into the organization of our Cosmos.

Virtual particles get produced in pairs — PoeticUniverse

The original Singularity functioned like an egg : once fertilized by Intention, it divides into the "ten thousand things". Each new division necessarily creates pairs. World Creation is division of The ALL (eternity-infinity) from One into Two, and so on, but the whole is still Unitary.

Note : what we call the physical "Universe" was originally presumed to be eternal-infinite, but was recently found to be bounded in space & time, hence not really the Uni-Vers (all encompassing).

Somehow the pair's virtual particles were driven apart — PoeticUniverse

Since, by the law of Logic, no two things in reality can exist in the same space-time, they are necessarily polarized and repel each other.

the real 'programming'/'coding' would be done at each new level, — PoeticUniverse

The "programming" of Old into New is accomplished by transfer of Information. The new thing inherits some of the data of the old, but then becomes unique by absorbing novel information from each interaction with other things.

So, rather than all being coded at once, it occurs in stages, at each stable or semi-stable level. — PoeticUniverse

Yes. But a program begins with the original input of a kernel of information (operating system), which is amplified by each iteration of the process into manifold threads of novelty. The hypothetical Singularity was the operating system for calculation of random potential into actual space-time-matter-energy.

Can't really have a full-blown Programmer just sitting around as First, it never having been put together from even more fundamental parts. — PoeticUniverse

In space-time that is true. That's why I assume that the Programmer must exist eternally as infinite Potential until Intention causes a chain of change. A human programmer is outside the operating system he creates. So why not the Programmer of our Cosmic System?


The EnFormAction Hypothesis : http://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html

The Tao that refers to here can never be the true tao.
The Name that is used here to designate is not a true name.
The Tao that is unnameable is the Source of the Heaven and the Earth.
The name, once introduced, becomes the Mother of the Ten Thousand Things.
. . . . .
Tao gives birth to one,
One gives birth to two,
Two gives birth to three,
Three gives birth to ten thousand beings.
___Lao Tse, Tao Te Ching

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... for-no-god

How might a necessary-fundamental-eternal-capability begin to develop a system of mind? — Possibility

It wouldn't have a little mind from which to intend to develop a larger system of mind. — PoeticUniverse

The notion that the observer in the mind is a little homunculus is a Materialistic concept, requiring an infinite regression of observers. In order to understand the relation between Brains and Minds, you must realize that Brain and Mind are composed of the same substance : Information (the power to enform). If you find this difficult to imagine, just remember what the spoon-bending bald kid, in The Matrix, said to Neo, "there is no spoon". You and the spoon are one. It's all Information, all the way down.


Information :
. . . Claude Shannon quantified Information not as useful ideas, but as a mathematical ratio between meaningful order (1) and meaningless disorder (0); between knowledge (1) and ignorance (0). So, that meaningful mind-stuff exists in the limbo-land of statistics, producing effects on reality while having no sensory physical properties. We know it exists ideally, only by detecting its effects in the real world.
. . . For humans, Information has the semantic quality of aboutness , that we interpret as meaning. In computer science though, Information is treated as meaningless, which makes its mathematical value more certain. It becomes meaningful only when a sentient Self interprets it as such.
. . . When spelled with an “I”, Information is a noun, referring to data & things. When spelled with an “E”, Enformation is a verb, referring to energy and processes.

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... for-no-god

The program doesn't do well; there were five near extinctions, with a sixth on the horizon. — PoeticUniverse

Conventional programmers aim for specified goals. But Evolutionary Programming intends to explore possibilities. My assumption is that the Cosmic Programmer created an ongoing experiment to explore what's possible within certain limitations (natural laws). In that case, temporary failures are merely stepping stones to the next iteration . . . the process goes on.

Evolutionary Programming : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page13.html

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... -no-god/p1

No alternative to it. — PoeticUniverse

That is indeed the assumption of the Materialist worldview. Most people have difficulty imagining Eternity and Infinity, so they simply expand on their sensory experience : eternity is a long, long time, and infinity is a really far distance. But Philosophers (and Poets and Mathematicians) have been imagining Eternity (timelessness) and Infinity (spacelessness) for millennia. Of course these notions are not physical realities, but they are useful in thinking about metaphysical idealities. The key to understanding those abstruse concepts is to realize what Aristotle was talking about in his second volume of the Physics : not Magic, but Mind, not Spiritualism, but Ontology.
Meta-Physics : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html

Too complex to be fundamental. — PoeticUniverse

Eternity-Infinity is as simple as it gets : Unbounded Potential, Wholeness with no divisions. Only in Space-Time are there boundaries between things. BEING is simple; beings are complex. The potential for existence (power to be) is as fundamental as it gets.

Yes, necessarily random, having no input. — PoeticUniverse

Chaos is randomness, like the noise on your TV screen, but also infinite Potential upon which unlimited images may be inscribed. Chaos is Formless, but also infinitely enformable, like a lump of clay. The "input" is Intention, which is simply the power to cause change. In space-time we call it Energy. In Virtual Reality we call it Potential. Potential is not Real, but the power to actualize..

Perhaps like one is a positive field lump and the other its a negative field lump (trough). — PoeticUniverse

Prior to space-time there was only one lump : BEING, an infinite Aristotelian "substance" (blank slate) with the potential to be anything. Once holistic Infinity divides there exists a "difference" : Information is the difference (change) that makes a difference (meaning).

I was a programmer — PoeticUniverse

You, of all people, should be aware that the programmer is not "in" the program physically, but is "in" the program mentally and meta-physically. You put something of yourself into the program : not a piece of your physical body, but a piece of your metaphysical mind.

The G*D or BEING or First Cause or Creator of my thesis is not a theistic person in Heaven or Olympus, but the Principle of Causation that, like a Programmer, is both "in" and "external to" the running program. One term for such a concept is PanEnDeism.
PanEnDeism : http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html


Law of Metaphysics :
Since the mechanical laws of physics don’t explain the emergence of metaphysical Life & Mind & Qualia, we must assume that the program for our evolving world includes algorithms for the immaterial aspects of reality. Exactly what those “laws” might be, remain to be discovered. But, like the regulations of physics they are probably mathematical and proportional in nature.

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/340936

11. God’s operations, curiously restricted to be the same as nature’s — PoeticUniverse

That's because the evolutionary program devised by the presumptive Programmer is experienced by us little avatars as Nature, in all its aspects, both good (Enformy) and bad.(Entropy). The values of our program range from Zero (death) to One (life), and everywhere in between. Apparently It's our job as thinking beings to make sense of that disparity, as best we can.

10. It doesn’t seem like a God’s world, and so fundamentalist literalist Biblical ‘reasons’ cannot apply here, — PoeticUniverse

I must again clarify that I am in agreement with most of your arguments against the obsolete notions of deity based on ancient scriptures. But I am not in agreement with certain atheistic arguments that are based on obsolete science. Prior to the Big Bang theory, it was plausible that the world was self-existent. But now we know that it did not exist before that act of creation. Prior to the Quantum theory, the materialistic belief in fundamental atoms was plausible. But now the foundations of reality fade into virtuality as mathematical fields. So, it no longer seems like the old 19th century materialistic scientific empirical 'reasons" apply here. That's why Enformationism is proposed as an update for both Theistic and Atheistic worldviews.

For further clarification, I'll try to explain that the Enformationism thesis is not Theistic like Christianity and Islam. It is not Occult & Magical like New Age cults. And it is not Superstitious like Paganism and Shamanism. It is instead an attempt to understand the world in both Physical and Metaphysical aspects, by explaining how Quanta and Qualia are instantiated in the world.

FWIW, I sometimes refer to myself as an "Agnostic Deist", because my G*D hypothesis is a gap-filler for the enormous abyss of our understanding of Ultimate Reality.

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/341278

Pictures from my trip: — PoeticUniverse

Were you tripping in the Astral Plane? I enjoyed your little excursions into fairy-tale fantasy. And also your insightful glimpses into some far-out scientific "aspects of reality". Not many people could pull-off both in the same post.

Quantum non-locality seems to imply that every region of space is in instant and constant contact with every other, perhaps even in time as well, and so the holistic universe is governed by the property of the solitary whole—and so that could be the underlying guidance principle. — PoeticUniverse

Yes. Materialists won't appreciate this analogy -- due to it's spooky implications -- but "non-locality" is essentially the same thing as Infinity/Eternity, as proposed in Einstein's theory of Block Time (Ultimate Reality). All points in space & time are indeed in contact with each other, because there is no distinction in Unity (wholeness). Yet, we space-time creatures experience Proximate Reality as one point (thing, event) at a time. That's why I have to postulate a "guiding principle" (G*D) to conceive of all possibilities at once, and then to select via Intention a sub-set of infinite what-if maybes (Ideality), transforming them into finite what-is actualities (Reality).

Thus both our consciousness and the holistic universe, each having a singular nature, would be the clue. Maybe they are of the same basis of fundamental consciousness, but separate as two manifestations, each controlling a different realm, — PoeticUniverse

Subjective Consciousness and Objective Physics are indeed separate manifestations of Ultimate Reality. Subjectively, we experience reality as a sequence of events or as a collection of parts. But Objectively, we can conclude, as Einstein did, that all things are relative, and our personal perspective is only a fraction of absolute reality.

Lee Smolin has it that qfundamental and can express itself in two ways, in consciousness and in matter. ualia are intrinsic, as fundamental, and Chalmers has it that information is — PoeticUniverse

Precisely. Materialists see only the quantitative aspects of reality, and ignore the intrinsic qualitative aspects, because they are too personal and subjective. But physicist Smolin thinks that's "The Trouble With Physics" : turning a blind-eye to qualia. Information is now viewed by some serious scientists as The Fundamental Element of the universe, being intrinsic in both Mind and Matter. Perhaps the primary reason most physicists object to that interpretation of Information is that it seems to open the door to Magic, Miracles, and Myths, due to the non-empirical nature of subjective consciousness. But Enformationism is an attempt to have the Qualia without losing track of the difference between "as-if" and "as-is". That way we can enjoy fiction & fantasy without compromising facts & science.

It is still that the apparent atoms and molecules make the happenings, via physical-chemical reactions; however, this observation cannot be equated to an ‘explanation’, for we must wonder what underlies the chemical mattering and reacting that seems to have some unity of direction to it. — PoeticUniverse

Yes. We need both imaginative Ideality and no-nonsense Reality to see beyond the particular "happenings" of Physics into the holistic "whys" of Meta-physics.


I had been to FairyLande once before, bringing my epic poem, ‘Flora Symbolica’, unto them, and writing up the results in ‘Elfin Legends’, and so they had bid me to return one day when I had a meaningful quest. — PoeticUniverse

Have these odes been published in the mundane world?
Were the Fae Folk dismissing your quest for a reconciliation of Poetry and Science as a meaningless mission?

[Gnomon]

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/341278

If a complex system such as the Universe were to be intentionally planned, then the mind that planned it would need to be at least as complex. — Janus

That complex effects require even more complex causes is true within the space-time universe. But in the hypothetical eternal-state-prior-to-the-Big-Bang all events exist simultaneously (holistically), as in Einstein's Block Universe. Hence, our one-thing-at-a-time-universe seems complex to us because we experience it one-step-at-a-time (now), while all other steps (past/future) are hidden from us. But the presumptive Programmer (The ALL) is all-at-once, hence utterly simple.

One way to imagine this fantastic scientific scenario is to picture the random static on an infinite TV screen. Since there are no objects visible, all you see is a continuous shade of gray. But each of those countless pixels has the potential to become either black (0) or white (1), or any color in between. So, the cosmic Programmer (or TV Producer) can select any subset of pixels and specify their colors in order to produce a meaningful image. Play those images in succession, and you have the "real" world that we experience one-frame-at-a-time.

Black or white, all or nothing, one or zero . . . these are examples of the simplest element of reality : either/or. The potential of Eternity/Infinity is a two-sided coin, but both sides are of the same coin : unity.

Block Universe : https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-debate ... -20160719/
Eternalism : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalis ... y_of_time)

[Gnomon]

The video of Flora Symbolica isn't out there yet. — PoeticUniverse

Wow! That was a fantastic trip, and it was drug-free!

I noticed that all the Fae Folk depicted were in the female form. Is there a Freudian explanation for that, or is it simply Fairy Porn? :love:

[Gnomon]

Universe was planned? — ozymandias11111

No. It was Programmed. The difference between a blueprint and DNA is that one produces a predestined object, and the other an open-ended system. We are currently living in a living organism, working out its own destiny. And each of us is a microcosm of that Cosmos. The presumptive Programmer is merely observing the process to see how it turns out.