Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

Post 36. 05/15/2018

The G*D Concept

A Human Creation or the Creator of All?

The Enformationism thesis imagines our world as a Great Idea, composed primarily of Information (primal substance) and evolving via a process of EnformAction (creative power). All things in the real world are products (outputs) of that cosmic information processing, imagined metaphorically as a computer program. In that case, we must also imagine a Great MIND (the Programmer) to create & sustain the ideas and the process. Since the Enformer of Nature necessarily existed prior to the emergence of Space-Time in the Big Bang, it is literally Enfernal & super-natural. But, to avoid confusion with other traditional god-concepts, I chose the intentionally ambiguous name G*D. This existential deity concept is closer to Oriental philosophical notions of impersonal Brahman or Tao than to Occidental religious imagery of personal Jehovah or Allah.

  The asterisk in the spelling is intended to convey that this is not your traditional notion of a monotheistic deity. It's an abstract philosophical concept, not a concrete cultural myth. Instead of the usual humanoid characteristics (e.g.  muscular white haired king on a throne) that make the gods easier to relate to, the presumed deity of Enformationism is more like an immaterial mathematical principle, or like the collective myth of a Nation. We can only see the physical parts, so must imagine the metaphysical whole. For example, the United States is not just a geographic entity, or a collection of people, but an ideal unifying concept held by those loyal to its constitution. Americans are born into the United States, and then buy-into the national notion. Likewise, G*D is both the temporal physical world, as a cybernetic system1, and the eternal metaphysical logical structure of existence, which I call BEING.

  The simplest form of this god-construct is PanDeism, in which the deity is essentially the invisible soul of our tangible universe. That god-model may assume that the deity is a product of the physical world, as the human mind emerges from operations of the brain. Which makes sense, but doesn’t explain where the physics came from2. So my definition of deity is more comprehensive than that. It's not “the universe” but “the Universal”. It's the Whole of which we are the thinking parts. It's not even the physical “process” of evolution, but the “Purpose” of that creative progression of events. So my notion of the deity is closer to PanEnDeism, in which our universe is an idea in the Mind of G*D. The unbounded Mind of G*D could conceivably imagine an infinite array of worlds, but we won’t worry about that in this essay.

  Of course, such metaphysical distinctions make little discernible difference in my reality, but that amorphous god-concept is the axiom upon which my guiding worldview is constructed. So it makes a lot of difference to my attitude toward the physical world and its meta-physical properties. For example, if you look at the apparently aimless heuristics of Darwinian evolution from an appropriate objective distance, it seems to be coming from somewhere over the horizon of human understanding, and going who-knows-where. What lies beyond the horizon is still a mystery, even to 21st century Science. But, like an arrow shot from beyond my view, I can infer if it was intended for me, and take appropriate action, before the next one comes my way.  

Post 36 continued . . . click Next

Did God create man?
Or did men create god-models in their own image?

1. Cybernetic System :
The universe is a self-governing, self-organizing entity with feedback loops of information & energy that create novel subsystems, such as human beings. Once set in motion at the Big Bang, it evolved into a living, thinking organism, at least in one tiny spec of dust. The governing program consists of inform-ation in the form of natural laws, and energy states that flow from order (hot) to disorder (cold), with pockets of very high organization (Life, Mind).

Cybernetics & Panpsychism : <<Gregory Bateson was an anthropologist who applied cybernetics to the social

sciences. . . . His goal was an overarching cybernetical systems theory embracing all the world from an ecological perspective. . . .In each component system, he saw feedback mechanisms maintaining homeostasis,

and semiotic messaging systems traveling in pathways between all the subsystems.

His supreme cybernetic system includes all the smaller systems, including all

individuals. He variously identified this system as Mind or God, a sort of panpsychism. The supreme system he thought was a whole, not divisible into parts.>>

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/bateson/

2. Why is there something?
The Big Bang theory ex-plained why the universe appears to be expanding into the void, but it raised new questions about where it came from, and why. Either our some-thing world sud-denly appeared from out of nowhere, or there is some eternal “thing” that has the power to produce worlds out of infinite potential.  
   One theory for such un-created creative potential is “Quantum Vacuum” which is empty space containing nothing but virtual energy and logical laws. If that is too abstract and counter-intuitive, we can imagine an eternal regress of physical worlds within worlds, known as the “Multiverse”. But that is merely a form of the “turtles all the way down” argument.  
   Since, both of those scientific theories sound like myths, I have proposed a philosophical myth of my own. It draws inspiration from the ancient Greek notion of our orderly cycling Cosmos emerging from random eternal Chaos. Which sounds similar to the modern Quantum Vacuum myth.
   Since none of those other theories answer the “why” part of the original question, my theory assumes that the infinite potential of Vacuum or Multiverse includes the creative power of Intention. Which is an essential attribute of a creator G*D.