tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post342893560103192661..comments2023-07-25T01:32:51.796-07:00Comments on Beyond Evolution; Is There God After Dawkins?: WONDERbeyondevolutionistheregodafterdawkins.blogspotcomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09625513549242420865noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-77171129320420497122009-10-14T01:30:02.365-07:002009-10-14T01:30:02.365-07:00Matt, you are very gracious.
To check up on stand...Matt, you are very gracious.<br /><br />To check up on standard VR theory, you could first go online and read Brian Whitworth’s interesting paper; http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0801/0801.0337.pdf and check out Andrew Thomas’ website; http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/index.asp (in particular, his 3 pages: “Is the Universe a Computer?” “Are we living in the Matrix” and “The Intelligent Universe”). Then, for the Consciousness angle –which is my main interest- read Thomas Campbell’s “My Big Toe” – (but to see if it lights your fire, first check out my review of it (I don't think there are any other detailed reviews online): http://sites.google.com/site/iscatus/review-of-my-big-tBennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-9196610423879064402009-10-13T10:14:02.613-07:002009-10-13T10:14:02.613-07:00Ben,
You are always welcome to grind your axes he...Ben, <br />You are always welcome to grind your axes here, anytime you like. It's all very intriguing. What book do you recommend as an introduction to VR theory? I would look forward to reading it as soon as I get some ideas that have been banging around off my chest in the next couple of posts.Matt Chaithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16016063540948394841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-33061855201279548242009-10-13T07:26:07.477-07:002009-10-13T07:26:07.477-07:00Matt said: The analogy with VR doesn't quite ...Matt said: <i> The analogy with VR doesn't quite work…Our body forms are ideas, but the achievement of this idea is contingent on many, many smaller ideas of form and energy that must be there to support the larger idea.</i><br /><br />A VR digital reality would not construct the world of our ordinary senses by building it up from interacting particles. It would do so by using equations. Thus, Maxwell’s four partial differential equations can be used to derive rules for our physical causality from fields of potentiality. Moving masses (and therefore gravity) would also be simulated by equations.<br /><br />In your article, you admit that the processes in a cell are apparently mechanistic. So the VR would use equations to compute them –this could explain why they can happen so incredibly quickly and accurately. <br /><br />If in addition to subscribing to VR theory, you also subscribe to the philosophical position that Consciousness is primary, you bring in dualism. In dualism, our Conscious intent (free will) continually interacts with the (previously designed or evolved) equations expressing the VR rules, and adjusts the probabilities accordingly.<br /><br />Don’t forget, the VR is not objectively there; it’s only the rules that are there, along with the minds and memories of the participators.<br /><br />In a VR based on non-physical consciousness, everything exists as information in a state of interactive consciousness potential, because consciousness is an interactive matrix of information. It will remain in that indeterminate state of relationship information until a conscious being within the VR examines it (in effect, records or measures it), at which point the probabilistic wave function collapses to a definite value –i.e. it is perceived by our senses as corpuscular matter (even though we know that solid matter is illusory – even if someone doesn’t believe that consciousness is primary, it’s still stated to be energies constrained by fields of forces). <br /><br />By this reckoning, genes are held as ideas in a database or information field (information, like consciousness is presumed here to be non-physical), and do not appear as “things” unless observed through a microscope. <br /><br />In a VR, cellular or genetic changes do not actually need to physically occur in real time on a cell by cell basis in a body which is a cooperation of 100 trillion cells. The macro probability for all 100 trillion cells (or for the organs separately) can be calculated, stored in the interactive information field and ‘revealed’ the next time direct conscious attention is given to them in as much detail as the observer is capable of demanding; or in as much detail as his senses and equipment are capable of interpreting. (In general, VR simulations (computer simulations) are done at the macro level, not the micro level, to save on computer resources.) <br /><br />But I do not particularly want to grind an axe here, Matt -I’m not saying I believe this VR idea is an accurate model of reality. It’s just a philosophical and metaphysical position which I find interesting because it brings a logical basis to mysticism.Bennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-49312653028779242642009-10-12T22:23:00.317-07:002009-10-12T22:23:00.317-07:00Ben,
I'm with you. I want to go back to somet...Ben,<br />I'm with you. I want to go back to something you said earlier,<br /><br /><i>VR theory would be that they are only actually enacted when we query them in ever increasing detail through our microscopes. Before the querying takes place, they are nothing more than ideas in the Great Mind which have not yet been given form.</i><br /><br />The analogy with VR doesn't quite work. The point in VR theory is that the direction you are looking in is materialized, while all the other directions exist only as potential. When we are talking about the complexity of the cell we are talking about the same direction, just the mechanics that produce what we are already observing. The better analogy in VR terms would be the electronics that produce the image that we are <b>already</b> looking at. <br /><br />But all the mechanics are materializations of ideas as well. Each new gene is not the result of a new accidental mutation, but a new idea. Each new biological feature is a new idea of a new shape, a new way of energizing this shape, new building materials (proteins) and new methods of construction (genes and gene sequences) for achieving this shape. Our body forms are ideas, but the achievement of this idea is contingent on many, many smaller ideas of form and energy that must be there to support the larger idea.Matt Chaithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16016063540948394841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-7108511100318889292009-10-12T00:59:18.990-07:002009-10-12T00:59:18.990-07:00Matt said:
There are three things: particles, wav...Matt said: <br /><i>There are three things: particles, waves and observers. Observers are neither particles nor waves. Observers are beings here to play in and experience this world of waves and particles. All observers are really the same Observer and are part of God but we have chosen to attach ourselves to a particular body and a particular point of view which makes us perceive a world of particles, and the particular particles that we want to play in.</i><br /><br />I agree with this, Matt. In fact, I think we can go even further and say that there is not even any space or time. If God is pure Mind, then space and time are concepts -ideas evolved within that mind. God must in essence be a singularity – a point of pure consciousness without intrinsic dimensions. If you think of it like this, it becomes obvious why we are “all one” or why we are all “entangled” together.Bennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-77689021133757643112009-10-08T23:21:43.628-07:002009-10-08T23:21:43.628-07:00Another commenter on MP's blog wrote:
The obv...Another commenter on MP's blog wrote:<br /><br /><i>The obvious objection (mentioned also by Michael) to that model is that the persons who do the calculations (i.e. scientists) are, themselves, composed of physical particles.<br /><br />And if physical particles/objects only exist potentially until calculations are made, it doesn't explain why the physical bodies of scientists are actual, not potential.</i><br /><br />An important distinction is between the scientists, the people that do the observations, and the scientist's bodies. The scientists, the actual observers, do not consist of bodies and are neither waves nor particles. There are three things: particles, waves and observers. Observers are neither particles nor waves. Observers are beings here to play in and experience this world of waves and particles. All observers are really the same Observer and are part of God but we have chosen to attach ourselves to a particular body and a particular point of view which makes us perceive a world of particles, and the particular particles that we want to play in (at least this time around).<br /><br />Also, growing up, the main part of our education is learning the boundaries, where we separate waves into particles, then give those particles names and ascribe meanings to them. These meanings and boundaries are re-inforced everytime we are aware of anyone using or acknowledging these particles, in the agreed upon way.<br /><br />The important questions regarding free will are: Do we choose the particular world of particles that we are born into? I think we do. And, do we have the choice to change the context in which we experience this world of particles, so that even if we continue to do the same activities, even if circumstances force us to continue to do the same activities, we can experience them in an entirely new way? There I can say, from my experience, that we most definitely can, and that is where our real freedom lies.Matt Chaithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16016063540948394841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-50124700437058951022009-10-08T23:12:49.480-07:002009-10-08T23:12:49.480-07:00MP said:
It's no good to say that God's c...MP said:<br /><i> It's no good to say that God's consciousness was observing everything and making it manifest, because if that were true, then presumably God (being omniscient and eternal) would still be observing everything all the time -- in which case, particles would always behave like particles and never like waves, since there would never be a time when they were unobserved.</i><br /><br />God's observation is different than ours. God creates and makes manifest the waves. Our observation makes manifest the particles. God's observation creates a world of potentialities for us, and God has also created the biological equipment for us (sensory organs, nervous sytems and brains) so that we will observe the world in a particular way and have a life dealing with the particles in it that our perception has created. This life of particles, of familiar faces and things, usually starts out pulsing with meaning and excitement, then tends to run its course and we begin to yearn for something more, and that more is to sense the waves behind the particles, the connections behind the competition. We yearn to be unbound by the very particles, the specifics, that we had whole heartedly embraced earlier.<br /><br />I have had some experience with this, coming under the sway of a few different 'saints', or God-like men (and women). When these saints are putting their full attention on you and you open yourself to the experience, you feel elated and kind of wobbly. They give you no support or acknowledgement for the particular person that you are and the particular accomplishments that you have achieved and no real sympathy for the disappointments that you may have suffered. They hone right in on You, not your list of accomplishments and failures but the accomplisher, the real you, and you realize that you are not a particle, but a potential; that you are not trapped by the solidity of your resume or the habitual way that your life and your relationships have been to this point. You experience yourself as a connected, boundless wave, and not an isolated, immutable particle. And you live in a world, not of solid objects, but of dynamic potentials. The boundaries between things begin to blur. The quiescence of solid objects are replaced with a whirl of energy, and the emptiness of space is filled with the same flowing energy. The boundaries of where your body ends and the rest of the world begins start to blur and your particular points of view, especially those that you spent a lot of time rationalizing and defending and using to consider yourself superior to other particular people; all of those begin to crumble, as you enter into a world of waves rather than particles, where separations are fluid if they exist at all. And you can stay in this wave observer mode until your desires, your attachment to particular particles, takes over and you re-enter the agreement, which is the social agreement that all the things you are dealing with are solid, immutable particles and that this is not only 'reality' but the only 'stable' reality; and for the sake of your sanity, you should come back into it and never leave it's comfortable boundaries again.Matt Chaithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16016063540948394841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-43115173020824851752009-10-08T23:01:39.418-07:002009-10-08T23:01:39.418-07:00Ben,
I'm not seeing this. The results of this...Ben,<br />I'm not seeing this. The results of this complexity: digestion, elimination, sense awareness, etc. we have been observing all along. Are you saying that until we looked through our modern instrumentation, these processes just produced results without any mechanisms? The revelation of these micro-mechanics seems to me to be the result of our optical technology, not our belief systems. Even if the whole physical world is illusory, and,ultimately, I think it is, all of the mechanics to bring about this illusion had to be there from the beginning. Anything manifested on the physical plane has to operate within the inviolable laws of physics and chemistry. <br /><br />I just recently read MP's post 'Two for One' about QM(Michael Prescott's fantastic blog: michaelprescott.typepad.com) and wrote a comment that I include in the comment below. I tried to publish it, but he had already closed the comments on that post.Matt Chaithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16016063540948394841noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5236639220165681993.post-32443700808581950052009-10-08T03:41:30.115-07:002009-10-08T03:41:30.115-07:00Matt, this is good stuff, yet again. The cooperati...Matt, this is good stuff, yet again. The cooperation of the 100 trillion cells of the human body (or 50 trillion according to Bruce Lipton –but what’s a mere 50 trillion difference between friends?) gives the lie to the idea of Nature being all about competition; it’s even more about cooperation. <br /><br />The incredible mechanical processes of cellular biology are indeed much ignored by science. In fact, they are so complexly cooperative, you wonder: how can they really be happening? <br /><br />Interestingly, some of the modern theories devised by physicists (eg Brian Whitworth) that everything is “information” and that our physical world is a Virtual Reality appear to bypass the intricate processes of biology. <br /><br />The explanation for such improbably intricate cooperative processes according to VR theory would be that they are only actually enacted when we query them in ever increasing detail through our microscopes. Before the querying takes place, they are nothing more than ideas in the Great Mind which have not yet been given form. <br /><br />Thus the impossibly complex is explained away: physical reality is just a series of images, and its deeper, informing processes don’t actually ‘happen’ until queried by a conscious being. The level of detail discovered is determined by (and computed according to) the pre-existing beliefs, knowledge and expectations present in the mind of the beholder.<br /><br />I’m open-minded about this, but it is worth considering for 2 reasons:<br /><br />1. The VR idea is like a modern update of the old mystical idea of the physical world as an illusion (Hindu = Maya). <br />2. It fits in with the Copenhagen interpretation of QM (that a conscious observer collapses the wavefunction).Bennoreply@blogger.com