Speaking about beliefs and belief networks, today being an appropriate reminder (both at MIT, and in a facility near you) - there was a post from a few days ago which deserves comment:
From: Blaze Spinnaker
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/20/does-the-big-bang-breakthrough-offe
r-proof-of-god/?hpt=hp_t4
Is the Big Bang even remotely "proof" of God?
Very doubtful... or definitely... depending on POV. The "proof" claim is
beyond anything scientifically relevant, other than showing how years of
indoctrination bleeds over - but this subject does tie into an expanded
notion of the "sim meme" in a more basic (natural) way, which is the
self-imposed sim.
Anyway, to dispense with the article's claim - a steady state Universe
(succession of little bangs) may offer more evidence of Divinity to logical
thinking than does a Big Bang... since the latter implies annihilation of
everything - physical and spiritual, between long cycles of expansion. A
steady-state implies a persistent kind of continuity, one that true
believers demand, at the top....In this perspective "universal expansion" is
no more than a temporary blip in the local frame (local contraction). And
yes, gravity waves can be better explained from the steady state POV.
Surprisingly, from the sim perspective, one can certainly define Divinity
itself as a gigantic sim in which the programmer or "player" is always the
same old dude :-) If that characterization sounds disrespectful then, it is
further proof that religion should be divorced from science - for this and
almost every other reason.
However, the sim-meme discussion, and the distinct possibility that some or
us (or all of us) can be living in a "special" or computer generated reality
(or alternatively a natural kind of information-processed reality)... in
which individualized happenstance is based to varying extents on nonrandom
input and even whim ... that discussion always breaks down to religion in
the end- and to identifying the source of whim, karma or capriciousness in
the behind-the-scene players (assuming the players are less than divine).
Anyway, despite the possibility of one kind of natural sim being the only
relevant reality, religion is not science, anti-science or anything in
between - it is more the result of a human biological genetic trait, which
goes back in prehistory to a "pack mentality." It is based on a survival
imperatives from an earlier time where the pack (tribe, clan, or whatever)
had to identify with leadership skills of the alpha male (as politically
incorrect as that fact may sound to you in 2014).
There is no fact or experiment - in all of science which cannot be
rationalized either way - for or against the reality of God. Get over it.
Darwinian evolution is fully compatible with Divinity, perhaps even better
adaptable than the silly biblical pronouncement. Evolution represents the
strategy of a God who simply chose this modality as a better way to created
sentient beings than by fiat. He knows a thing or two about cars as well
(Latin: "Let there be" as in Fiat Lux, "Let there be light" in Genesis).
In the end, each human is either spiritual or not - and science cannot help
much to alter that, nor can it hinder the basic orientation. The spiritual
scientist has no problem at all with Darwinian evolution, nor even with an
"evolved Divinity" in the sense of the Buddhist/Jainist notion of the sum of
all souls. In this view, God evolves just as the sum of souls increases. Yet
this is a state which is always "perfection" of a sort, at any single point
in time.
As a matter of coincidence, yesterday Mark Iverson sent me this video, which
has a bit of deeper meaning over and above the obvious. It relates to one of
the judge's comments (that this 9 year old girl is an "old soul"). It is
just an aria, but it brings many non-opera aficionados to tears.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZWpLfncliwU?rel=0
Can this kind of prodigy happen in anyone's personal reality-frame without
some notion of the primordial "natural sim" (the one called karma, fate or
reincarnation) which is espoused more in Buddhism, but which many Christians
incorporate into their own spirit-package ... and in which the present life
is somehow merged with a progression of former lives?
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