G-d Notes continued....
As posted
on the Policy Think Site – LINK: http://jaygaskill.com/IfThen.htm
INTERVIEWING
EINSTEIN’S GHOST
Who is the Face under the Ice?
By
Jay B.
Gaskill
As Published On
→The Policy Think Site: http://www.jaygaskill.com
All contents, unless otherwise indicated are
Copyright © 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2009 by Jay
B. Gaskill
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discussions is almost always routinely given.]
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Icy Deism
Einstein was a closet deist. I should explain here that “deism” is
distinguished from “theism”. The first
is a theological description of deity as remote designer and the second is the
classic active, present and involved G-d of the universe. Einstein saw what other scientists have
called the “mind of God” in the order of nature and its rational accessibility
and organization.
Albert Einstein understood nature as a
masterwork of brilliant predetermination, a vast clockwork mechanism to which
science was the key. Einstein didn’t
live long enough to really address the implications of the discovery that the
universe is not as predetermined as he and others thought.
In another set or articles I have advanced
the notion that the so called random processes and indeterminate elements in
reality operate as a sort of portal through which creative innovation emerges
into what otherwise would be a rigid, innovation unfriendly deterministic
regime. If a degree of indeterminism and
inherent unpredictability are the necessary features of a universe that is
capable of growth, then the downsides, the disasters and evils of the world can
be accepted as a necessary price of a universe open to ongoing creation.
The theistic understanding is about a
personal deity, the creator being to whom we might turn for solace (and even intervention).
Theism or “a personal god” was ruled out
by Einstein’s monistic, deterministic world view. I should explain that strict theological
monism fails to separate God from the natural world. In one form, it tends to deny the possibility
if true evil because, after all, “all is of God.” This view of deity was
essentially that of Baruch Spinoza (1632-76), the Jewish lens grinder and
philosopher.
Einstein and Spinoza shared the world-view
that God is revealed in nature, but otherwise remains essentially unknowable. For those who share the deistic perspective
of Spinoza and Einstein, God is little more than the remote architect of
nature.
I find an over-the-top materialism lurking
within this perspective. The
philosophical doctrine of materialism
holds – in its extreme form – that everything, absolutely everything, is matter
and energy and the space-time regime within which matter and energy operate to
cause events. There is no real room in
this account for moral judgment, a human soul, nor – really – any basis for
valuing life itself (except as our own inclinations to want to live lead us to adopt
pro-life coping strategies based on a calculation of advantage). The bleak implication of full-on materialism is
that all of us who must live in the “real” world of matter and energy can
admire the grand design of everything but we can never expect to extract moral
information from its designer, much less any help or solace.
But Albert Einstein was also a passionate
humanist whose writings about public affairs convey the unmistakable impression
of someone who believed in an underlying moral law. This important insight takes him out of the
camp of the arch-materialists, and – as I will attempt to develop here – places
him on the very threshold of theism, that of the very “personal god” whose
existence the scientific world view compelled him to leave behind.
I remain utterly convinced that arch-materialism
cannot be the final, complete model of “all that is, seen and unseen” because materialism,
itself, must accommodate to the reality of information as an essential
operating element in nature. It doesn’t
stop there. Information must in turn accommodate the necessity of meaning, in turn the reality of value and in turn the
existence of a moral order which is the rational ordering of meaning and value.
This is the sort of moral order that is
both real and beyond human whim and invention, one I believe that animated
Einstein himself. When an alarmed Albert Einstein witnessed the Nazi juggernaut
rolling over German civilization, his essays and letters virtually shouted the
truth that power does not dictate moral truth.
At core, he never lost his baseline faith in the overarching moral law
of his childhood Judaism.
I remain personally persuaded that the
current century will chronicle the demise of strict materialism.
Talking to Einstein’s
Ghost
I want you to imagine a conversation with
someone whose enlightened scientific mind is at least willing to entertain the
possibility that there is more to life, the universe and everything than the
merely material. Let’s call this person
Einstein’s Ghost, a great mind resurrected and brought up to date with quantum
physics and the information revolution:
[][][]
Albert’s Remarks:
“Well, you might have persuaded me that
strict, comprehensive materialism is an incomplete view of things. After all,
there must be a better explanation of my own mental, moral and esthetic states
than biochemistry, electronics and physics alone can alone provide.
“I can also agree that the realm of
information is something real, in the sense that it represents some level of
existence beyond the narrow mechanical realm. I can even conclude that this realm exhibits
rational order (after all, how else do our rational minds that understand it);
and that it exhibits a form of beauty because we scientists and mathematicians
agree that the notion of theory “elegance” or beautiful explanatory power and
economy is a powerful indication that a particular theory is giving us a true
insight into Nature.
“I might even agree that the realm of
information might hold design archetypes, in the sense of optimal engineering
solutions (I think of the streamlined teardrop, fish and rocket shapes). It is a stretch, but I also am willing to
concede that these design archetypes could well include the master blueprints
of conscious intelligence, again in the same sense that there is probably a set
of ideal designs for cognitive processing, awareness, and so on.
“But all this can be said about any data base, can’t it?
“After all, a hard drive might contain the
plans for a concert hall, the design parameters and specs for a hundred musical
instruments, texts on music theory and appreciation and the scores for and best
recording of all of Beethoven’s known musical output. But the data base remains a data base. It is not conscious. It is not alive. You and I can use it because we are conscious and alive. But we can’t pray to it (except as a self
delusional game) and it can’t love and nurture us in the way that a living
being can.”
[][][]
The view I’ve just sketched essentially is
one version of classic deism, the watchmaker God, who set things in motion,
then becomes essentially non-involved and therefore irrelevant. In this view,
it is as if the realm of “heaven”, i.e., of pure information or Platonic form, exists
behind a barrier of translucent ice, in a pond we can remotely study but never
swim in nor taste. There under the ice lies the “fossil god”, the
unknowable designer that is only the master design itself, stripped of all
personhood.
What is the core problem with this
view? The answer is imbedded in our
particular vision of what is truly real. It matters greatly whether you see reality as
primarily material, primarily non-material, or – as now I do – as a perfect integration
of all relationships that ultimately includes the entire realm of matter and
energy as a transient subset of the whole.
Now back to our ghost’s main point:
[][][]
A Reply to Albert:
“Granted, the hard drive is a thing
constructed of matter and energy that holds information. But I believe that the information that it
holds (here the product of great art, the understanding and appreciation of
which imports an entire context that distils values and human experiences from
several centuries) is a reality that enjoys a multi-ontological status. By “multi-ontological” status, I mean that the
information exists in our conscious minds and it occupies and gives form to what we
call physical reality and it fills (indeed
constitutes) the infinite realm of relationship and form that contains both our
minds and the physical reality in which they enjoy that special state of
existence we recognize as mortal life.
“The deist hard drive metaphor is spoiled
by the fallacy of reduction. Unlike a material
hard drive, the ultimate realm of information has no bandwidth limitations
whatsoever. It can hold and I believe
does hold and prefigures everything event, including the complete conscious
narratives of every thinking, feeling creature who has ever existed or can
exist and the ultimate basis for those feelings.”
[][][]
I’m hoping that, on deep reflection, you will
be willing to make the metaphysical leap represented by such a vision of
universal information and a reality of which the material is but an important
subset. If so, you will have overcome
the strict materialist fallacy. By
itself, this doesn’t necessarily drive you into a deistic or theistic belief
system, but it does clear away some of the most important mental obstacles to a
deeper understanding of ultimate reality.
Please stay with this proposed metaphysical
leap for a moment longer.
Assume that ultimate reality, at its core
essence, really is wholly relational in nature.
If so, then what we experience as space-time materiality is a particular
set of relational loops, carved out of the whole as it were. The mind spaces of every own conscious being
are examples or expressions a special relational state that necessarily
touches, incorporates, and includes relational reality aspects both within space time and outside it.
Anyone who has experienced mind space,
that sense of soaring beyond the mundane limitations of time and place, enjoys
a fleeting but profound insight into the very nature of mind: I submit that we
are ontological amphibians; that our minds exist partly submerged in the purely
physical but partly emerged into the non-physical realm of information.
I suspect that if you are able to pause long
enough to think through the essential questions at this stage, one further
insight --that all reality is integrated – might open the door to the solution
to the whole puzzle. Here it is: Information constantly changes phase
between the relational regime we call physical reality and the meta-reality
from which the physical (finite) realm of being is continually abstracted. Conscious being is the venue in which that
phase change takes place in space-time material reality.
I agree that this is a great deal to take
in. The whole perspective I’ve just introduced took me years to gestate. It required reflection, introspection and
self-testing. You undoubtedly will want
to come back to this later. But don’t let anyone ever tell you that someone’s belief in a Supreme
Being, G-d, designer of the universe, source of all that is, necessarily
represents the results of a weak mind or a poor education.
Please stay with me a bit longer. If the ultimate realm of reality is filled
with or is constituted of ultimate information, it still cannot be less real than the transient, time bounded universe of events in
which we live our lives. I personally
find it satisfying, both as explanation and as a plausible model, that the ultimate
realm of information exists alongside our immediate experience, and that realm
of information and our innermost thoughts and feelings are at least as real as
the material realm to which our minds and experiences relate.
And I confess that I’ve long been gripped
by a powerful intuition here: The
ultimate realm, the ur-source if you will, of all information,
cannot yet be fully expressed in the reality we experience at the moment, yet it is necessarily more real than the transient material world of our
experiences. Moreover, it contains the master form of conscious being. Such a master form, design, plan or being cannot be
space-time limited. In the classic
biblical sense, it is eternal, yet present.
These considerations have led me to the
place where I am able grasp how all states of conscious being that take place
within space-time bounded physical reality, mine, yours, our predecessors and
descendents, are local venues of value
assertion and creation-innovation. This can be trivialized as just another way
of saying that we may value rocks but they don’t / can’t value us; of that we may
invent a sling with a rock but the rock invents nothing. But it is also a statement about the source of our values and creative
inspirations. They do not originate with
us, as material systems, but as information from the ultimate source; we merely
express them as we live out our lives in this universe.
Once I accepted that the ultimate
information is a source of value, and that the information-source of creation exists
outside space-time as well as within it, I was strongly drawn to the
implication that the forms and patterns and designs of value and creation
themselves came before life emerged in the universe.
The emergence of the processes of the material universe that worked over
the eons to give birth to life, then to intelligent life then to our very selves
was a carrying out of the blueprints, designs, forms, archetypes and plans of
the reservoir of ultimate information.
Which then bought me to the ancient
religious insight: We conscious, feeling
beings must resemble a divine being or archetype to the end that a divine-local
correspondence of the contours and nature of being is a simple core truth of
existence, much like the observation that a bird’s wing resembles a particular
elegant, universal solution to the problem of achieving flight in atmosphere
under gravity.
Naturally, the human mind does more than
operate in a purely mechanical way. We
conscious, living beings have the value-making faculty, and we make decisions using
that faculty. Hence we may reasonably
expect to locate the ultimate value-source of the universe within the nature of
ultimate being, whether understood as person (the theistic model) or design (a
quasi-deist model). This took me back to
that deist-theist question. Is ultimate being a mere archetype or
innate design, or is ultimate being alive?
I first considered what it means to be
alive. We living beings generate
values. Our most powerful values, as
living beings, inherently subordinate non-life to life. When living creatures
first appeared in the universe, other parts of the universe became food. When
life developed the cognitive faculties of self-aware intelligence, life began
to experience the will to live. Non-conscious life became subordinate to
conscious life. This is why as a general rule that animals consume plants and
not the converse. Put another way, the
value faculties of living conscious intelligence necessarily placed the mind at
the top of a hierarchy of biological functions for our bodies (the executive
function of organism) and as our civilizations emerged as expressions of our
combined values, humanity was placed at the apex of a normative hierarchy of
our surroundings (society dominating ecology).
This is another way of saying that the
beings capable of caring are the enactors
of the value hierarchies of reality contained in and originating from the
ultimate realm of information. I am now
persuaded that it was no accident that the conscious, intelligent mind has developed
three closely related faculties that further the agenda of individual life and
beyond that, of life itself: conscious foresight, conscious empathy, and conscious
creative innovation. [In other articles,
I spin out how these core orientations generate the natural moral law.]
The notion that an archetypical
meta-conscious being (or its design/form) and our own individual, separate
conscious beings occupy parallel hierarchical normative positions within their
respective environments/milieus is compelling.
Our own, innate value assertions-- the survival imperative, life
affirmation, the creative drive, and the innate predisposition to employ
conscious intelligence to foster these innate affirmations combine to produce a
natural normative hierarchy: me over the inanimate; me over my food; my
creative activities over stasis, and so on. There is every reason to expect
that the meta-archetype of all conscious, living being would be similarly
organized vis a vis its
universal milieu, ruling over the realm of information and the realm of the material universes alike. In relation to this ultimate realm, the
universal being (or archetype) would necessarily stand at the apex of the
normative hierarchy. From our frame of
reference, universal being (however we choose to name or not name) is the
source code, if you will, of the natural moral law.
This is consistent with the observation
that the value function of conscious intelligence produces normative hierarchy
in a sort of cosmic bootstrap; that life and consciousness-affirming value
trumped the contrary value orientations in the pre-Darwinian orientation of
pure form provided only that one principle was allowed to dominate: fecundity
trumps sterility. This quickly led me to
the idea that there are necessary parallels between the properties of the
drives and motivations of any biological intelligence and their originating
archetypes in the realm of information.
None of this makes a tightly logical or
necessary case for the existence of deity, of the existence of actual universal
being as opposed to, say, the inchoate design of being qua being. But it is a
coherent and reasonable case for the existence of universal conditions that are
consistence with a deity-model that is very close to the original Judaic insight
of Genesis: Man made in G-d’s image translates to hu-man-s
(i.e., as intelligent, biological conscious beings) made (as evolved from
archetypal forms) in the image (i.e., in the design-form) of G-d (as the deity/meta-being
resident within and outside the realms of information and materiality).
No one is going to be able to demonstrate
the existence of G-d (however described or named) in mere words. No argument,
however structured, can substitute for authentic experience. Which brings me to a point I’ve made in other
articles: We are not without field data on this most important of all
questions. The human experience of the
numinous is so profound and so common that reports permeate the human narrative
from the very beginning.
A compelling sense or experience of
contact with a benign meta-personality occupying a deep, ultimate level of
existence is so common to the human condition that reports of the encounter would
fill an entire library. These reports, which share a remarkably similar
signature, once the cultural differences are accounted for, go back to the very
earliest of all recorded human experiences.
These are not reports of an abstraction, or a purely intellectual
inspiration. They are chronicles of individual encounters with a being
(sometimes described as a state of being) worthy of worship, one with the
unmistakable signature of a caring persona.
These are not described as casual “buddy”
or “guardian angel” encounters. The witnesses tend not to describe a visible
person or being. These encounters tend to be life altering moments. The witnesses encounter a presence, begin to
apprehend the nature of the occasion, then a sense of awe and wonder follow.
Whenever doubts don’t intervene to cloud someone’s ability to apprehend the
experience, witnesses find themselves flooded by a benign, piercing
illumination.
In a reality constructed of information
and relationship, the encounter with the numinous level of experience is the encounter with the numinous level of
reality. Moreover, an ultimate
source of order that is also the source of caring implies that the source cares. Caring, value-generation, a hierarchy that
elevates life over non-life, consciousness over its absence, and caring-consciousness
over its absence, is a description of attributes of personhood not of mechanism.
I believe that we are making a mistake when
we dismiss the numinous experience (when we personally encounter it), when we
deny it (after for example we are told about it by someone whose word we can
trust) or we you marginalize it (as when we have accepted the account as
someone’s sincere witness, but dismiss it). Whether such experiences are
discounted on nominally rational, materialistic, or arbitrarily skeptical
grounds, we are sophisticated moderns are rejecting primary information of
great value.
Now, let me return to the image of a
scientist peering through the milky layer of ice, trying to see the outlines of
the “fossil God” inside. I want you to
really look at that face under the ice. Take your time….
That face is you. It is God who is trying to break through.
A footnote -
Maybe am making
the simple over-complicated. Maybe it
all boils down to this: If G-d is, then G-d knows. And if G-d knows, then G-d
remembers. If G-d remembers, then G-d saves
the good memories. And if G-d saves the
good memories then G-d saves the good forever, because G-d’s memories are more
real and complete than our own experiences.
So G-d is. All the rest is commentary....
JBG