There was some excitement at the Tevatron collider site in the U.S. recently, not because they had found what has been mischievously referred to as the "God particle," but because they had ruled out a quarter of the energy range where the Higgs particle is said to exist. Meanwhile, the contest of the colliders is still on, with researchers at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland reasonably confident that they will be in a position to be much more definitive about the all-important particle somewhere in 2013.
The Higgs particle is so important because if found, it would resolve the great mystery that clouds our understanding of how energy gains mass on the way to becoming matter. It has been described as the molasses that acts as the sticky stuff in the universe, serving the formation of matter's atomic building blocks.
Could it be that materialists are waiting to say that the Higgs particle will now replace God? Or that more people will turn to atheism at the realization that God is not sitting there as an instrumental agent who turns invisible forces into stars and planets? Having declared that the Hand of God is really a sticky particle, it will be one more nail in the coffin of the Creator and one more challenge to the idea that consciousness is the first cause, primary field or ground of being out of which everything arises!
"Well, not so fast," says Plato. In his own way, he saw this coming. In his day, he complained that some of the philosophers were beginning to surmise that the universe was chiefly comprised of rocks and gases. He reminded them that the universe has not only measurable quantities but also qualities. These qualities were the progenitors of form: truth, beauty, love, justice, harmony -- all these qualities combined in different degrees to give birth to ideas and to interfuse and give life to diverse forms.
I was recently at the annual Language of Spirit dialogue, instigated 18 years ago by the physicist David Bohm and his Native American counterpart Leroy Little Bear. We are all familiar with the native sense of "all my relations" -- the relatedness of every form in existence. What struck me at this last dialogue was how much the native elders stressed being known by place. They quipped that Westerners are always on the move, and moving into other people's territories, because they never stay long enough to know and be known by place. I found it a startling idea that I could enter a relationship with place to the degree that it became a field of mutual appreciation: maybe that finch on the tree and I could commune rather than its being simply admired by me; perhaps even the qualities in the tree itself could mentor me, or the rocks, stones and crystals could reflect qualities beyond the spectacular geometry of their formation. Is all life looking at itself and its relatives as a reflection in a mirror we call consciousness?
Bohm was so interested in dialogue because it helped open us up to the deep mirror of consciousness itself. He saw the manifest aspect of the universe in space and time as part of an explicate order, and that underlying the substrate of matter is an implicate order, which is generative and holographic. He suggests that there is a "proto-intelligence" in matter because it arises out of an implicate order that is a seedbed of consciousness. "The separation of the two, matter and spirit, is an abstraction," he said.
Meanwhile, the colliders are busy searching the energy range, measured in gigaelectronvolts, where the Holy of Holies, in the realm of physics, may have hidden itself. And even if they manage to nab it, what will it really mean for those of us who believe that as long as spirit is denied, science will continue to live its current schizophrenia as both evocateur of human possibilities and enlightenment and servant of a frighteningly reductionist materialism?
It will mean the difference between whether we see ourselves in a living universe or one designed for machines, for consumption and competition over ever-increasingly limited resources. It will mean the difference between continued rebellion against the Holy Order of Nature or the re-emergence of Nature as our greatest teacher. It will mean the difference between biophilia and necrophilia -- that is, love of life or love of dead things. Loving your right to a gas-guzzling car over protection of the ecosphere is a form of necrophilia. It goes with a consume-junk-and-dump approach, because it's all dead stuff, anyway. With such necrophilia comes the loss of one third of earth's species since 1970 and looming ecological and climate-related catastrophes.
But the lovers of life look for the re-marriage of science and spirituality, where we explore the ground of all being, seek to know it better, appreciate the many ways to understand it and come in some humility to feed from a Holy of Holies that resides inside the Great Mystery. Such knowing opens us to profound states of unity and ecstatic awareness, which no sticky little particle, however brilliant, is capable of delivering on its own.
An invited contribution to the Ervin Laszlo Forum on Science and Spirituality.
Follow James O'Dea on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jamesodea
Uhhh no.
And AFAIK, no physicist would say that the Higgs particle would replace God.
Is it possible that this Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (like psychic abilities, spoon bending, human consciousness after death, etc.) is blowing smoke at real science.
Yes, absolutely.
Thank you very much, but I don't want the marriage of science and spirituality. Moral conduct, belief in God, reverence for life is all very good. I'm a Christian, and I'm all for trying to do the right thing by others and remembering that there are things we will never attain to or understand.
But to have science explained in the context of mystic mumbojumbo? No thanks. I'll pass.
Wherever we see life, we see Chemistry in Action. The atoms are just the same as the atoms of "dead stuff". Perhaps our universe is suitable for both machines and living things (biochemical machines). The duality insisted on by the mystical mugwumps doesn't exist.
Unlike most of the drivel found in this HP section, this article did not enlist the interest of the usual religious people. Perhaps because it neither defends nor condemns the major tenets of organized religion. Or, maybe because so few religious people know what a collider is? Or, more likely, most religious people are uninterested in theistism.
Unless, of course, one wants to try to argue that X-rays and other forms of radiation weren't "real" and didn't exist until the 19th Century when we developed the technology to percieve them.
If one truly holds to the discipline of Science (and the Scientific Method) all one can do is demonstrate that the Universe did not come into being by any of the (literally interpreted) creation myths of the traditional religions. It cannot prove the existence of God...and it cannot disprove God's existence either.
So, imo, there is no conflict between Science and Religion. There is simply a conflict between those who hold to fundamentalist religion, and Rational Materialists.
...IOW, yet another religious squabble in a long history of religious squabbles.
Words mean something and if you are going to call Atheism or Science a religion, you then EVERYTHING is a religion. And, for that matter, NOTHING is a religion because the term is meaningless.
Eventually, you go back to what you know. If you don't have any proof of something, You can't make the claim.
When there's NO EVIDENCE. there's NO PROOF. When ALL evidence points to there being NO EVIDENCE...NO GOD. PROOF.
If one says that they have a cure for cancer and can't actually prove it, THEY HAVE NO PROOF.
2. Whether or not something cures cancer or not is an objective situation that can easily be demonstrated within the known laws of Physics...and can be easily DISPROVEN.
Now, I DEFY you to---within the known laws of Physics---demonstrate conclusively that a Supernatural being who created the Universe and has the power to suspend its laws does NOT exist.
In short, you can't. It is the wrong instrument for the job. You can neither prove that this Being does exist, nor can you prove that this Being does not exist. Because you can never conclusively show that this Being is not manipulating physical laws specifically to keep you from demonstrating His or Her existence...and you cannot demonstrate that your instruments could even detect Him or Her, even if such manipulations were not going on.
In short it is a logical fallacy to equate an Abseence of conclusive proof of Existence, with Conclusive Proof on Non-existence. I cannot prove that Intelligent Life exists on the third planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, that is not the same as proof that such life does not exist.
"It will mean the difference between whether we see ourselves in a living universe or one designed for machines, for consumption and competition over ever-increasingly limited resources. It will mean the difference between continued rebellion against the Holy Order of Nature or the re-emergence of Nature as our greatest teacher"
But perhaps this isn't the problem after all? Perhaps our sins against nature stem not from false consciousness but rather from political considerations, desperate people or greed that would be much the same if people shared his views? Seems to me he takes a big leap without a safety net.
I don't share that belief.
I think it is perfectly possible (and indeed increasingly necessary) for us to respect the earth we live on. But that respect is nothing to do with anything sacred. You can respect it just on the grounds of common sense.
"It will mean the difference between whether we see ourselves in a living universe or one designed for machines, for consumption and competition over ever-increasingly limited resources."
Here the author assumes that the living and the machine are mutually exclusive. Rather, the nature of the living is such that consumption and competition is the nature of the living and essential for their survival and evolution. Machines are their tools. Resources are in no way limited. The entire Universe is the resource.
"It will mean the difference between continued rebellion against the Holy Order of Nature or the re-emergence of Nature as our greatest teacher".
I fail to see a rebellion against Nature. Nature is our environment, our teacher, our means of survival and us. Thus humanity is always mindful. Yet Nature is consuming, competitive, changing and evolving. That's Nature, that's us. Politics, desperation and greed is also Nature and demonstrated not just by humanity but also by animals, birds, fish, insects and perhaps plants and bacteria, expressed in their own unique way.
"Holy Order of Nature"???? I am Nature. Worship is unnecessary.
And the only theory that can do that is one that is complete, consistent, unfalsifiable, empirically consistent, and testable. Only a matter of time now.
Peace,
Ik
All that is required to resolve the "split" between science and religion here in the West is to resolve the split between the Rational and the Non-rational. To heal, as it were, the Cartesian split of dualism. Science--especially in the subatomic realm---is well on is way to doing so. That is getting away from this "either-or" way of looking at the Universe.
But the rest of Science still has not caught up yet. Because it still wants to see the Universe in Newtonian terms. As a "machine" whose behavior is determined (and therefore predictable) by natural laws, and definable conditions...that you understand by getting better at taking it apart.
The problem with such assumptions is that it can box you in and keep you from seeing what is literally going on right in front of you.
For example, if you are clinging to the idea that consciousness is an "effect" of neural activity in the brain it will control what type of questions you ask....and what kind of answers you accept.
IOW, you will never figure out how you get the PROGRAMMING you hear on the radio or see on TV, by getting better and better at taking apart TV's and Radios. Until you accept the possibility that something external to the mechanism (TV and radio waves) is an inextricable part of the overall phenomenon, you can dissect TVs and radios from here-to-eternity and never understand what is really going on.
I may be wrong (something you will not hear creationists say) and there may be some creator actively participating, so scientists need to keep exploring and discovering the universe from a scientific standpoint, philosphers from a philosophical perspective, but we should not resort to superstitions to define the Creator if there is such an entity.
Reductionism does not need to be an end, and there may actually be no such thing as reductionism, because for every question we answer, many more pop up, and the deeper we dig for answers, the more paradoxical those answers are. One only has to look at the very large, cosmology, and the very small, quantum mechanics, to see these paradoxes in action. This seems to indicate that there is less discrete truth in the universe than humans would like to admit, and that paradox plays perhaps the largest role in our existence.
I like your thinking. On the scale where I worked as a geologist, it is amazing to see how thinking has changed to admit life as a geologic agent--the formation of various rocks and minerals by biological action on a large scale. And of course meteorologists have known for some time how organisms were instrumental in the formation of the current atmosphere. Then there is the theory of Gaia from Lynn Margulis wherein the entire planet can be thought of as a living organism. If there is a creator actively participating (I have not totally ruled that out yet), it is probably a field that is evolving by being added to over time by the intelligence that has evolved in organisms. Even modern physics with the role of the observer in wave form collapse, quantum mechanical entanglement, multiple universes and the like at least opens the door for consideration of some sort of creative intelligence. Where the whole discussion goes to pot is the insistence of the religious in falling back on the father god and of course the atheists love it because it is easy to ridicule.
It is indeed possible. But so are many things. Including things that completely disagree with this position. It is all very well making strong assertions to the effect that the universe is in some sense alive, and that our consciousness is special and reflects something profound about the universe etc etc. But it is just speculation. There is no evidence that the role of mind is that special, or that consciousness is essential to the existence of the universe etc etc.
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Consciousness: (n) The active collection and processing of sensory data by means of energy reactions.
Intelligence: (n) The processing of accumulated data by means of energy reactions for desired results.
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There is no greater honor we bestow on Nature and it's humanity than to study it with scientific discipline. That is what we have been doing. Nature's intelligence and consciousness is expressed in the collective of humanity and all things near and remote. Nature is us and all there is. Nature's resources are unlimited, and humanity will survive and prosper by learning, correcting, and evolving as Nature's intelligent consciousness.
Nature in it's purest form is energy. Energy is in flux. It is why this and other Universes exist. Energy can never be created nor destroyed. Energy is the 'creator' of all we know and all we can infer. Energy is our conscience, our thoughts and ideas, our cells, our bodies, our humanity, our environment. We are it. It is us. Our collective humanity is the greatest distributed being we evidence, and a pure expression of intelligent energy. Energy is Nature.
It is reasonable to conclude Intelligence, Consciousness or Intelligent Consciousness requires a first mover, enabler called 'energy' for it's existence and function. God refuted. Worship, rituals not required. Nature is our source, us, our food. Plato might have argued thus, had he known what we know today.
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"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." [Delos B. McKown]
You say, "I assume you acknowledge that energy and matter are interchangeable per Einstein."
Close. Matter is a form, type, expression of Energy. However, Energy has forms other than Matter, such as Photons, Dark Energy, Dark Matter and others we may yet discover. Our understanding of Energy is not comprehensive, conclusive. However, we're learning by leaps and bounds.
IMO, Sheldrake's morphic fields is pseudo-science. It's not corroborated. However, the brain is forms of organized energy and it's function is purely energy based. Under ideal conditions, it's outcome, product is "intelligent energy". Then there is the collective outcome, product, "intelligent energy" of Humanity (which I see as a distributed being that lives on, evolves, even though individuals die). Our individual intelligence is meant to feed, support, grow the perpetually evolving intelligence of Humanity. As we die, what survives is useful work, knowledge and intelligence meant to benefit, enrich Humanity.
IMO, "[o]ur Collective Humanity is the greatest distributed being we evidence, and a pure expression of intelligent energy." Nature is Energy. We are Energy. Collective Humanity is the most intelligent component of Nature. Understanding it is the quest of disciplined Science. Our efforts are Nature's efforts and should not be hampered or threatened by primitive Faith in unsubstantiated deities and pseudo-philosophies intended to subvert such efforts of Science.
I hope we are on the same page here.
encoded on a boundary to the region—preferably a light-like boundary like a gravitational
horizon. First proposed by Gerardus 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by .. ....Leonard Susskind."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
Gravity wave detectors may soon confirm this theory by detecting the necessarily scaled up
Planck length as noise within the signal. Since the volume of the spherical universe is much larger than its outer surface, to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the universe within must be made up of grains much larger than the calculated Planck length.
William of Occam, a 14th century Dominican who also taught at Oxford, first formulated Occam's . . Razor as "Unknown entities cannot be introduced in order to explain other unknown entities".
Knowing because one believes is less secure than believing because one knows. Introducing
God (an unknown entity) to explain the ultimate unknown (why anything exists instead of nothing
at all) is to introduce an unknown to explain an unknown and this has been a known no-no for
seven hundred years. It's simpler to conceive that, for some reason, nothing at all is unstable
and .that a creator is, therefore, a postulate, and not a given.