Introduction
My last article, Religion and Social Progress, got me thinking about something hard enough that I decided to write about it. By now, you might want to ask if I really believe in God, and why. The answer is “yes,” and I will tell you why.
God and Empiricism
God has taken quite a hit since the beginning of empiricism. Pioneers like Copernicus and Galileo dared to share their observations of the world around us, at their own peril, which threatened the “perfect world” created by the almighty God. Humanity’s imagination of the world has evolved over time. Going way back, the world was some big flat tablet that sat on the back of a turtle. Later imaginings yielded an Earth that was in a fixed position, with the sun, moon and stars in orbit around it. Scientific observation showed that not only did the Earth move, but it was not at the center of the universe at all. It orbited around the sun, which also does not lie at the center of the universe. This took away from the idea that God had created a perfect world for his (former) perfect people so they could execute his perfect will. Indeed, scientific observation has done harm to the idea of an almighty God.
Belief in God has always gone hand-in-hand with some kind of religious authority. At one time the Christian church was a unified entity throughout the world. It was a convenient thing because the church had enough clout to take part in government, and because most people couldn’t read and could only receive Scripture through a priest during a service. People questioned existence not really because they didn’t understand the elements; they questioned their own miserable existences at the mercy of the powerful landowners. They would take every bit of hope they would get from the church, and you better believe the church took advantage of that.
The world began to realize it was simply wrong to cater to the rich and leave the poor to their own destinies. We saw things like compulsory schooling for everyone and labor unions. People no longer had to worry as much. There was room to question what the church had told them, especially since most people could at that point read the Bible on their own. As the world grew into the one we live in now, people became more willing to question authority. They became more willing to challenge the ideas that had been passed on to them from previous generations.
Nowadays, empiricism has shown that there is no need for an almighty creator in order for the universe, and us, to exist. Nothing need come from an architect. We know now that something truly can come from nothing without the intervention from a higher power. Nor does the universe need a conductor to lead the greatest orchestra of all. Many have come to believe that they are the masters of their own destiny.
Consciousness I: Consciousness and the Universe
Now, while the universe doesn’t really need God, I have my own reasons to believe there is one. Where I want to start is with consciousness. “What is consciousness” is an age-old question, and I won’t go very deep here. Consciousness, quite simply is awareness of one’s surroundings combined with self-awareness. With that comes the ability to distinguish one’s self from the environment. At one time it was thought that some kind of supernatural force must be behind this. Since we knew nothing of the brain, it was thought that the mind was some sort of manifestation of a soul that was eternal and could live on outside of the body. Today we know that everything about our personalities, memories and behaviors is controlled by our brains, and that the mind cannot survive without the brain.
Now, this does not really rule out the existence of a soul. It merely means that there is no need for a soul in order to explain consciousness. Some might say that since we don’t have a full grasp on what consciousness is exactly, we can’t rule out the existence of a soul. I would agree with this. However, the mysteries behind the mind and brain are unraveling, and the solutions don’t seem to be going in the “there has to be a soul” direction.
So, there we have it. From a scientific perspective, we don’t need God in order to explain the universe, and we don’t need a soul to explain human consciousness. If we don’t need them, then they are just as good as unicorns and dragons. We can’t really disprove them, but it doesn’t matter whether we do or not.
Consciousness II: The Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts
In a world of atoms and big bangs it may look like everything is mechanical in nature, without an ounce of divine guidance. Here is where we go back and look at consciousness again. We know that memories are electrochemically stored in our brain’s cerebral cortex. Habits and behaviors emerge from a combination of these memories and the pathways formed by learning. Emotions and decision making are handled by electrochemical processes within the lobes, and these are influenced by genetics. The entire kit and caboodle is controlled by DNA and the environment. Consciousness requires parts that make up a whole, right? So if there is a God, where are his parts? What makes him up? What enables him to be? Again, all signs point toward the necessity of physical being in order for a mind to exist. We don’t see this physical being. Therefore, he must not exist.
But not so fast. We are accustomed to looking at the universe and thinking of it as mostly emptiness. But that isn’t really true. Space is “stuff.” In fact, it may very well be the most basic form of matter. It has been demonstrated that virtual particles can be pulled from the very fabric of space itself. The entire universe is comprised of a physical material. This means there is no such thing as nothing—there is nowhere we can go where physical material doesn’t exist.
The universe has definite behaviors. There is no DNA behind these behaviors—instead, we have the laws of physics. Galaxies that are millions of light years apart interact through gravity and light. Thermal energy is constantly being moved around. Yes, the universe even has a memory, in the form of background radiation. This background radiation stores the information about the birth of the universe, the Big Bang. Causal connections, similar to neural connections, occur via something called the light cone. (I recommend doing some Google research on the light cone. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.)
Pretty much any object acts as a computer, in the strictest sense. Objects absorb thermal energy (input), store it, somehow modify it, and then output it. While a rock may not seem like a computer, in the strictest sense, it is. One single rock, although able to store and modify information, may not possess consciousness, but millions of rocks close to each other might, for the same reasons that collections of neurons possess consciousness.
The Quantum Mind
Aristotle once said that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. He was referring to the human being. What he meant was that there was something to human existence beyond the materials we are made of. He very well could have meant the soul, but Bernard Haisch, whom I’ve mentioned before, has his own idea. He suggests that the quantum mechanics of the brain introduce a degree of uncertainty to human thought. Let me clarify this: all particles have some degree of uncertainty as to their momentum or position, but this uncertainty only becomes a big deal when you get down into the subatomic world. When you look at the behavior of an electron, you can’t nail down its position or its direction of motion unless you use some sort of detector, and at that point the electron changes its behavior to act like a normal particle. The reason for this is that a single electron actually occupies many positions and moves in many directions at once, something inconceivable in the macroscopic world. As I’ve stated before, this is something that occurs with all objects, and we can even observe the same effects in atoms that we see in electrons. It so happens that signals jump from neuron to neuron via potassium and sodium atoms. Not only that, a variety of chemicals make their way across the brain, and these chemicals are highly dependent on electron activity. These chemicals have a huge influence on our behavior. There is no escaping the quantumness of the brain. The operations within the brain have a degree of uncertainty that take away from the definite mechanics we might expect. What this means is that we can never fully predict a person’s thoughts or behavior, no matter how well we are observing that person (or his/her brain). There’s always a degree of randomness.
The Great and the Small
So if something as small as a human being possesses consciousness, why not something as grand as the universe? The universe seems limitless in its mystery. The universe is at least as complex as the human brain. It has all the same ingredients for processing and storing information that the human brain does. If the universe has some sort of rudimentary intelligence, it may have a way of distinguishing itself from its environment and therefore be conscious.
Oops… the Environment?
By now you are saying “the universe IS the environment!” Well, to us it is. Theorists have shown that the universe may be one of many. It’s possible that each universe is some kind of “bubble” on some kind of surface of unfathomable dimensions. If that is the case, then other universes are the “environment” from which it might distinguish itself (and assuming that I’m right and the universe possesses consciousness).
Conclusion
We have covered several points of relevance here:
- Empiricism has removed the necessity of God in nature.
- Consciousness is the condition of being aware of the environment, aware of itself, and being able to distinguish itself from the environment.
- Consciousness requires physical mechanisms that support intelligent “thinking.”
- The human brain has these physical mechanisms.
- The universe is so complex that it, too, may have these required mechanisms.
- The brain, and the universe, are affected by quantum processes that add randomness.
· There is (possibly) an environment greater than the universe itself, so the cosmic consciousness has an environment from which it can distinguish itself.
These points show that MAYBE the universe has some kind of unified consciousness of its own. I choose to call that consciousness God. Maybe you don’t. Empiricism has challenged the idea of a God in the traditional sense. I have shown that maybe God exists in a different sense.
I’d be happy to discuss it with any of my readers, whether they agree with me or not. Please comment!
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