All human knowledge is relational. What is light without dark? Good without evil? Perhaps free will and determinism, order and chaos, something and nothingness, are simply different sides of the same circle of scientific logic. As science has penetrated the atom, we've discovered that solid matter consists mainly of empty space. We've discovered that inert objects, such as rocks, consist of particles whirling round each other trillions of times a second. Likewise, believers and nonbelievers in God may both be right, just traveling the same circle in opposite directions.
Of course, there have been myriad conceptions of God since the dawn of civilization. There are the Abrahamic conceptions of God, including the monotheistic God of Judaism and the trinitarian God of Christians. In Buddhism, God is almost non-theist. In fact, conceptions of God vary so widely there's no clear consensus on the definition of God. In short, believers believe God has an incorporeal (immaterial) existence, and that there's an afterlife. Atheists believe in a strictly corporeal (material) world, and it's bye-bye when you die.
According to biocentrism, a new "theory of everything," the material and immaterial worlds are co-relative. Life and consciousness represents one side of the equation, matter and energy the other. They can't be divorced; split them and the reality is gone. Although the current scientific paradigm is based on the belief that the world has an objective observer-independent existence, a long list of experiments shows the opposite. Consider the double-slit experiment: When scientists watch particles pass through two slits in a barrier, they behave like bullets and go through one slit or the other. But if you don't watch, they act like waves and go through both slits at the same time. How can a particle change its behavior depending on whether it's watched or not? Biocentrism maintains reality is a process that involves our consciousness.
We think life is just the activity of atoms and molecules â- we live awhile and die. But biocentrism shows that if you add life to the equation, you can explain some of the biggest puzzles of science. For instance, it becomes clear why space and time -- and the properties of matter itself -â depend on the observer. How can entangled particles be instantaneously connected on opposite sides of the galaxy as if there's no space or time between them? And how can events in the present affect those in the past? Recently, scientists sent particles into an apparatus and showed they could retroactively change something that had already happened in the past (Science 2007). Biocentrism says these phenomena occur because space and time aren't just "out there," but are tools of our mind. Remember you can't see through the bone surrounding your brain -- everything is woven together in your mind.
In the end, life is motion and change, and is only comprehensible through a biological concept of time. Motion is possible through the representation of time. "No concept, no matter what it might be," said Immanuel Kant, "could render comprehensible the possibility of an alteration ... for instance the being and the not-being of one and the same thing in one and the same place." God, too, lives in action and is a relational concept, both existing and not-existing at the same time. "Discordant opinions," said Emerson "are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision."
Those who believe in God believe in an afterlife. Nonbelievers believe death is the end. Biocentrism reinforces the primacy of consciousness found in the work of Kant, as well as Descartes, Berkeley, Schopenhauer and Bergson. Without consciousness, space and time are nothing. At death, there's a break in the continuity of space and time; you can take any point as your new frame of reference and estimate everything relative to it. Like the particles that can pass through two holes at the same time, you can consider yourself both alive and dead, outside of time.
According to nonbelievers, you simply die and rot into the ground. The universe continues to tick along like a clock; and in a few billion years, the sun will expand into a red giant, devouring all the inner planets, including the Earth. In one scenario, the universe will reverse its expansion, growing hotter until everything is crushed out of existence. Some theorists say the universe may bounce back into expansion in a "Big Bounce," and so on indefinitely. In this view, the Big Bang was simply the beginning of one, say, 20-billion-year cycle time. We might be living in the trillionth universe (or any of an infinite sequential universes). Some say this oscillating model is consistent with the Buddhist worldview. Although speculation, it provides a sense of scale: If it takes a gazillion cycles to be reborn, that's only 70 years out of what (in terms of human comprehension) is essentially infinity -- the mathematical equivalent of materialistic death.
In contrast to the old mechanical worldview, biocentrism maintains that time is a form of animal intuition, not an object that ticks along independent of the observer. Without consciousness, the passage of time is meaningless. From this viewpoint you never die (see "Is Death the End?" and "Does Death Exist?" for development of this idea).
The implications of this were clear with the loss of my friend Bill Caldwell, who died over the holidays of a heart attack after golfing. Bill was CEO of Advanced Cell Technology (where I work), and one of the most decent human beings I've known. He struggled against the last day to cure human disease. When the company almost folded, Bill was the only other officer who didn't jump ship. He refused to give up and believed we could make the world a better place for millions suffering from horrific diseases. Indeed, a few weeks ago we received FDA approval to carry out the world's first clinical trial to use embryonic stem cells to try to prevent blindness. Accepting responsibility for the hopes of patients, Bill said "We do not intend to let them down." My regret is that someday patients will benefit from stem cell therapies, but will never know the sacrifices that Bill and his wife, Nancy, made for their well-being.
At the viewing, Nancy leaned over the casket, tears streaming down her face. She was with Bill at every step. When the company couldn't make payroll, she used her own money to pay the employees. It seems like yesterday I was at their wedding dancing with Nancy under the stars in her flowing gown. As Nancy guarded over Bill's body, surrounded by majestic floral arrangements, I recalled the words of Loren Eiseley: "There remained in his garden only the dried husk of an old plant among flowers reaching for the sun." But I knew that God or no God, that somewhere outside of our primitive thinking â of any particular spatio-temporal possibility â that Bill missed yet another golf game, and that he, Nancy, and I were sitting on the beach with a bottle of Champagne celebrating our recent success.
'Biocentrism' (co-authored with astronomer Bob Berman) lays out Lanza's theory of everything.
Follow Robert Lanza, M.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RobertLanza
Robert Lanza, M.D.: Why You Will Always Exist: Time Is 'On Demand'
Biocentrism (cosmology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Lanza » Blog Archive » Biocentrism: How Life and ...
'Biocentrism': How life creates the universe - Technology ...
What is the source of your question: âHow can a particle change its behavior depending on whether it's watched or not?â If it isnât observed (or recorded) how would you know of change? âa quantum particle will act as a wave when we do an experiment to measure its wave-like properties, and like a particle when we do an experiment to measure its particle-like properties.â (wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics).
âWithout consciousness, space and time are nothing.â Space and time existed before (scientific) man, it just wasnât quantified.
There is a thing called the game of life, invented by a mathematician. It is an infinite grid and the cells turn on or off based a set of rules in discrete increments. This leads to, among other things, patterns of lit cells that move diagonally retaining their shape. They are dubbed "sliders". We can make higher level rules that sliders follow without fail. I think it's an interesting question whether sliders "exist" in exactly the same sense that the lower level cells turning off and on "exist". Does the existence of the slider depend on consciousness, while the lower level cells in there state of on or off just are?
Ask any university professor of political science and you will discover that they too believe an
object CAN occupy two places simultaneously. They will tell you that your life is ruled by others
and 'signs' are the evidence of their argument-- PUSH, STOP, ENTER, DO NOT ENTER, USE
OTHER DOOR, SIGN HERE, 4 WAY STOP, and on and on.
Now, obviously, 'signs' are following the law that two objects cannot occupy the same space at
the same time, not political theory or opinion. They are the laws of corporeal existence--your
physical body, any physical bodies.
The electrons are following the laws of the universe. The problem is that there is no 'law' in the
universe that says that an electron cannot be in two places at the same time (for that matter, there
is no "universal law" that says that YOU can't be in two places at the same time)..... except the 'law'
that man creates to explain his universe.... as he sees it ......at any one point in time. Time, another
creation of man, to explain his universe.... as he sees it.....at any one point in time, and CONVINCES
OTHERS TO SEE IT THE SAME WAY.
Not by a long shot.........
And as long as organizations promoting one religion or another retain tax exempt status.
Religious and non-religious intolerance is a disease to mankind. Fact is, if someone believes in something, you can't force this person to act against his/her beliefs. Be they religious or non-religious. In that sense, you will ALWAYS have religious influence in society, law, the financial system and politics.
Nobody complains about this except the few non-religious people who think they know the absolute truth.
There is no God in Buddhism. Buddhism utterly refutes the notion of both a god and the soul.
I don't think so. Good and evil aren't intellectual sides of anything and certainly not logically scientific. They are gut moral reactions created by our brain and our body. Determinism is what a rational model of physical reality looks like, regardless of how correct or incorrect or intuitive or non-intuitive or quantum or traditional the model. Free will is an experience created by the brain, and cannot exist by any standard of science. It is also a delusion that every rationalist harbors, for it is the rationalist's god, the rationalist's leap of faith. Life is meaningless without our agents, and they only exist in our head. In their book, "The Grand Design", Hawking and Mlodinow just say it... "Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws." Now that is scientific integrity.
We wouldn't know green from chopped liver it we couldn't reference it to a spectrum of other colours.
Likewise, the deterministic view relies on observation and interpretation. It is therefore relative to the views, beliefs, biases and expectations of the observer.
My field intersects strongly with natural history - the scientific explanation of how the world (universe, really) came to have its present form. From that perspective, biocentrism as I understand it is highly problematical -- there was a world before creatures evolved, and things happened in that world without any consciousness to record it. Biocentrism seems to attach magical properties to consciousness, which in all probability appears to be an emergent phenomenon of material. I just don't see how biocentrism can confront the natural, non-living world.
Ant colonies that act as a single organism in accomplishing goals, while not a single individual is aware that it's an ant, let alone part of a group, talk about magic.
Huh? The probability that my non-belief in the god of Abraham = person Y's belief in the same god is zero....Only one of us is absolutely wrong.
Don't we always look at this in a linear fashion, and therefore there must be a Prime Mover?
FSM=Big Bang=Universe=Galaxies=Suns=Planets=Us.
God=Firmament (you know the rest) ...=Adam.
There could be a cyclical explanation. Now I know that someone wrote here that the Dark Matter thus far analyzed suggests not a Big Crunch, but a slow Whimper and Phhhhtttt.
But instead of making the need for a prime mover, how else? ;0)
BZ.
Interesting....
BZ.
I prefer the "Big Bounce"(endless bangs) " theory. It has no discernable beginning and no end. It gives me a lot more time to get everything I want to do, done. ((;
Anyway, "Without consciousness, space and time are nothing", is solipsism, and has been proved wrong many times in many ways, but Schrodinger's cat is probably the most famous. For someone spinning quantum-yarn into their myth-quilt, I don't see how you could miss such a thing. but then, " As science has penetrated the atom, we've discovered that solid matter consists mainly of empty space. " No, we have discovered that what we though was empty space is actually a boiling mass of particles popping in and out of existence at almost the speed of light, that are 13 trillionth the size of a micron. There is no such thing as "nothing", it's a logical fallacy. Zero represents "everything", not "nothing", most Westerners don't get that though, Because Western thought is the universe was created out of nothing by God, so everything is broken down into something/nothing. Hindus, who invented numbers as we know them, don't have that problem. There is only everything undivided, and everything divided.
"When we die, we are freed from time/spaceÂÂ, and anything goes, really."
That's a positive assertion ... based on what?
Your next few sentences of "maybe, maybe, maybe", ending with "but there are always rules to follow", are just bizarre. You might as well have said ... "there may or may not be fairies in my back yard, and if there are, they're subject to the laws of physics".
"solipsism ... has been proved wrong many times in many ways, but SchrodingeÂr's cat is probably the most famous."
Solipsism has never been "proved wrong". I think solipsism is as ridiculous as the idea of god/s ... but, solipsism (like god/s) is not falsifiable. And, SchrodingeÂr's cat certainly "proved" nothing.
I have more problems with the rest of your comment ... but, not enough time now ... will check back later.
Because nothing like a "soul" has ever been found, if there is one, it is either non-material, or smaller tan an atom. Either way, the consciousness is freed from our time/space continuum when the meat dies, whether it is into various forms of energy which dissipate, and the ego/persona is lost, or whether there is a soul which retains said information, that which makes you, 'you' , will no longer be bound to the space/time continuum you once were. But what exactly happens is unknown, for now. so the only things we can say for %99.99 certainty is that we die, and when we do that which is, 'us', is no longer around. It's called agnosticism in the face of a death which is not assured but %99.99 probable. You have to remain open minded, but at the same time you have to make some decisions. I
Yes, a Skeptic could doubt the existence of the back of his own head for lack of a mirror...I'm not about to try and prove anything is 100%, not that solipsism is false, not that evolution is a fact of nature, not that the Biblical god is real or not...the only thing certain in this world is uncertainty. Schrodinger's cat may not disprove solipsism, but it makes it look very silly, especially as a scientific principle. Sodoes Einstein's mouse.
Well that's a nice-seeming viewpoint. Except you've built a nice illogical circle there. Time exists while you are conscious, but doesn't while you are unconscious. But for time to stop, your consciousness has to stop--so what is death except the cession of consciousness?
Also, if someone knocks you out, why have things changed in your absence? Because other conscious beings are about, you might answer. Okay, so if that's true, then you really do die, because time is dependent on the total consciousness, right?
I'm pretty sure we've figured out that there isn't enough mass in the universe to reverse the expansion.
BZ.