by Charles Kluepfel
13/13/. What Am I?
My Personal views on God and reality -- Charlieism
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. — Thomas Paine
Why is there Something rather than Nothing?
How can there be different minds?
Summary
- I believe that spirit is different from matter, and in fact, the former takes precedence over the latter, which can only exist if it is sensible (capable of being perceived) by the former. A thousand fairies dancing on the lawn are not real, for they are in no way capable of being perceived. That's what we mean when we say they are not there.
- There is one spirit responsible for all of reality.
- We are all incarnations of God, the way Christians posit only Jesus to be so. We are not omniscient of course, individually, but neither do Christians believe the babe in the manger was omniscient. It is only in differentiating God from us that it is a mistake to single out Jesus as being God. Insofar as being the totality of God, none of us individuals is that, and that includes any hypothesized "Jesus".
What do I Believe?
Steve Allen has said that "To think that there is a God is absurd, but to think that there is no God is even more absurd." I concur with this idea.
While I put no stock in "new age" channeling, clairvoyance, remembrances of past lives, etc., I do recognize that the deterministic physics of Newton has been replaced by the non-deterministic field equations of quantum physics. Where before, there was no room for free will, now, depending on one's interpretation of quantum physics, there is room. Therefore, I imagine booksellers would classify me as new age, as they had Heinz Pagels book The Cosmic Code, though he, as I, had no beliefs to speak of in common with Shirley MacLaine.
Before Frank Tipler wrote his problematical Physics of Immortality, he collaborated with John D. Barrow on the much better received The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, which points out the extraordinary fitness of the physical constants of the universe for the development of sentient life. While the authors feel that even so, such life is extremely rare in our universe if not unique, requiring extraordinarily special circumstances. While the multiple-universes interpretation of quantum mechanics' credo that "everything that can happen will happen" in one universe of the multiverse may explain in its own context why some such universe as is needed to support our life exists, it does not explain why it itself exists. To phrase it in classical philosophical terms, it is a mystery why there is something, rather than nothing. And, I myself might add, in agreement with Berkeley, that the necessary something must needs be mind, not matter, as matter cannot be conceived existing without mind, while mind can be conceived existing without matter. If you claim fairies are dancing on the lawn, but are merely not accessible to any of our ways of knowing, I say to you What does that mean? Things are only real insofar as they impinge on our knowledge.
From introspection (which I know is suspect to most skeptics) I can see that what reductionist philosophers such as Daniel Dennett call "consciousness" does not fill the bill for what I perceive as the ineffable "myself." Over the years many have wished to express this inexpressible and their earlier efforts have indeed led people astray, as metaphors were taken to be reality as we have seen in how the Bible was written.
Is there life after death? Does "after" make sense in regard to the set of conscious lives, or is time an illusion? Are we all one? Does it make sense to love the other as you love yourself because each other is yourself? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, because you will come back as each other person?
I just don't know. And that is a more courageous admission than some atheists allow. Agnostics are derided as being indecisive by atheists. But who really knows even a tiny amount of the truth about the universe? I am, however, convinced that no one has memories of past lives. Our memories and actions can only be consistent with the physical makeup of our bodies, including our brains. Yet somehow there is a true consciousness, different from any mechanical physical thing. And no amount of physical complexity can result in this utterly different thing. Rather the other way around—the physical universe is the product of mind.
That we are all pieces of a universal being, God, who has created our universe to relieve infinite boredom, is a philosophy, expounded by, among others, Alan Watts (Click here for a sample lecture by Alan Watts). This philosophy has great appeal to me, as I find it difficult to imagine how consciousness can be multiple. A God who has divided himself gets around this difficulty somewhat. In this system, mind is paramount as in Berkeley's philosophy, and God has restricted communication between his parts (our individual minds) to certain modalities, which we call the laws of the universe or the laws of physics. Clearly, the evidence shows ESP is not part of this set, and memory has been made dependent on the physical structure of things called brains, which show no traces from "past lives." Descartes and Berkeley both noted that all existents are mind and matter, or minds and their contents, respectively, which amount to the same thing, and by this isomorphism, dualism and idealism are equivalent.
To say that all persons are but parts of a universal God raises the notion of solipsism:
Fear of Solipsism
In the first Chapter of The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, Martin Gardner notes that solipsism, the belief that only one's self exists, is insane, held by only those in mental institutions or considered mad. He likens it to declaring one's self to be God, which of course is indeed the equivalent of solipsism. The idea that we are each aspects of one being, God, is similar, but does allow that each of us is indeed a separate part of God, with different memories, dependent as they are on physical configurations of the separate brains. However, to think as a true solipsist, as Martin Gardner describes, would indeed drive one mad: to consider one's self to be the only being in the universe would offer nothing but an infinite loneliness, one that can easily lead to a belief that a God suffering from it would split himself into parts to relieve it.
Quantum Free Will
Let me reiterate what it is that quantum mechanics has provided — and what it has not: the "quantum connectedness" of particles in no way implies a "holistic" quality to the universe in the sense that all is in communication with all else. Demonstrable failures in parapsychology make clear that we do not communicate telepathically — if we did, the social world would be a whole lot different from what it is. And this can be easily explained in the fact that the complexity of the physical world completely confounds any two-particle interaction that maintains a pairwise relationship between the two particles. Those particles later interact with other particles outside their own system, and form no means of communication, at extra-luminal or any other speed.
What quantum mechanics does provide is a world whose actions are not completely determined by its past and determinate physical law. A given atom has only a probability distribution for the time in which it will decay; there are no hidden determinate variables that already hold the future in lock step with the past. Quantum tunneling likewise takes place with a probability distribution. Then these effects are magnified into macroscopic results, much like Schrödinger's cat, by the world's sensitive dependence on initial conditions. This leaves room for free will, but does not prove it. That comes from introspection, in which I do have faith, as Descartes and Berkeley before me.
In essence, there is no such thing as "what it feels like to be a" rock, for example (at least I think not), while there definitely is a "what it feels like to be a" person, at least a "what it feels like to be" Charlie Kluepfel — of that I am sure. In the area of morality, as delineated in my chapter "But What About Morality?", the essence of increasing happiness and decreasing pain makes sense only in a universe in which feelings as such exist — not mere configurations of atoms. No matter how complex, there can be no morality which says that one configuration of atoms is "better" than another. Only feelings make actions good or bad.
What About the Bible?
At this point it goes without further saying that I consider the Bible to be essentially just another piece of the world's great literature. However it is the piece of literature that my Catholic upbringing had given me great familiarity with, with pieces being read at mass each week, repeated year after year. Of course the incestuous rape of Lot by his daughters in Genesis 19:30-38 was not then and is not now part of the old testament readings during mass. Nor is chapter 11 of Judges, in which Jephthah makes a foolish vow to sacrifice to God whoever greets him from his house after he returns from battle victory, in thanksgiving for that victory. It is his virgin daughter whom he slaughters in order to keep his vow.
The Bible would not be great literature if it were all bad. It does have inspirational lines, but the inspiration you draw out is fundamentally only the inspiration you put in. I make no pretense that it holds the answers to life's riddles. Skeptics would say that my pretense is that I have not been swayed by it despite my protestations, but I do not pretend that either. I know that my life and philosophy have been influenced by Christianity. All I can say is that I try to be as objective as possible. I cannot throw away the baby with the bathwater, merely out of indignation at the crap that I find in the bathwater. Yet still, I realize that the good parts of the Bible are the product of people who have felt some of the same ineffable awe at the universe and at the human spirit that I feel, and that the review of that writing is an aid in sustaining that feeling of awe:
Psa 139:1 O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
Psa 139:2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
Psa 139:3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
Psa 139:4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
Psa 139:5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Psa 139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Psa 139:2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
Psa 139:3 You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
Psa 139:4 Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
Psa 139:5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
Psa 139:6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.
Psa 139:7 Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?
Psa 139:8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
Psa 139:9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Psa 139:10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
Psa 139:11 If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,"
Psa 139:12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Psa 139:8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
Psa 139:9 If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
Psa 139:10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.
Psa 139:11 If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,"
Psa 139:12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.
Psa 139:13 For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb.
Psa 139:14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
Psa 139:15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Psa 139:16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
Psa 139:17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Psa 139:18 I try to count them--they are more than the sand; I come to the end--I am still with you.
Psa 139:14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
Psa 139:15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Psa 139:16 Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
Psa 139:17 How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
Psa 139:18 I try to count them--they are more than the sand; I come to the end--I am still with you.
Ancient man, looking at the awesome universe and the people in it, were so struck that they made up stories of "heaven" and "Sheol" mentioned in the above quote. Today we no longer look upon God as physically having taken a breath and put life into some clay to make a man. But today, I, personally, can feel the awe at a universe whose physical laws are so fine-tuned as to allow the evolution of sentient beings (see Tipler and Barrow's The Anthropic Cosmological Principle). However this came about, whether it be through multiple universes which instantiate every possible set of physical laws, or any other way, with foldings of 8 or 10 dimensions into three of space and one of time, there is wonder in the mere question, as Martin Gardner and others have pointed out: Why is there Something rather than Nothing?
But getting back to the Bible as literature, we can see that Psalm 139, begun above, includes verse 6's recognition that we can never understand everything. But it ends on a less salutary note, exemplifying that all is not goodness and light in the Bible:
Psa 139:19 O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me--
Psa 139:20 those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Psa 139:21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
Psa 139:22 I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.
Psa 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
Psa 139:24 See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
The Christian would say that this was merely the Old Testament, pre-salvation way of looking at things. I would say it was just a different genre of literature — a spiteful, politicized literature, that detracts from the awe-inspiring nature of its preceding verses, how mankind is "wonderfully made," and the notion of the unity of mankind. Needless to say, anger is a valid feeling in this real world, but no one is completely bad, nor is anyone (or any book, or any organization of people) completely good. So while not throwing the baby (the good parts of the Bible) out with the bathwater, we realize that not only are there other babies in the world, just as valuable, but also this baby is not the savior of the world. And if this baby were to die, we would mourn the loss, but life would go on.
Psa 139:20 those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil!
Psa 139:21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
Psa 139:22 I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies.
Psa 139:23 Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts.
Psa 139:24 See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
A similar admixture was alluded to in my chapter on morality: the second of the following two verses, taken out of context, as it often is, represents an admirable and respectable philosophy; taken in context, it is less admirable:
John 8:31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples;
John 8:32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
In Sum
Outlooks on religion in this country span all the way from the ultra-religious Christian Coalition to the adamantly atheistic Madelyn Murray O'Hair. The correct views are undoubtedly far from these two extremes: Martin Gardner and Steve Allen are examples of moderate Theists. I probably stand near that middle ground, but slightly off at a right angle to the straight line, in the direction of Paul Davies. In recent years, the term Sheilaism has come into use for particular religious beliefs, named after the beliefs of someone named Sheila, who was asked to describe her beliefs. I could say I believe in Charlieism. Or a better categorization might be Skeptical Theism, because "Charlieism," by its very nature, is not a categorization, except on the lowest level possible, representing the changing views of one individual.
A recent issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies (vol. 3, no. 5/6, 1996) contained an article, "Physics, Machines, and the Hard Problem", by Douglas J. Bilodeau, of the Indiana University Cyclotron Facility, which contains what is in my estimation a marvelous statement on Being that accords with my views:
Consider the following myth as an alternative to the familiar myth of God the Clock Maker. The words are chosen carefully to be suggestive, but are not meant to convey any technical (much less literal) meaning.
What could be meant by 'nucleation of Being'? I don't have the slightest idea. But it expresses my intuition that consciousness must be closely related to existence itself, that it is vastly nearer to the 'basic level of reality' than anything signified by physical concepts. The fate of the individual ego-consciousness is obviously linked in some way to its physical expression in the body, but consciousness itself as a category and as a possibility is something more basic. We make machines and we analyse natural objects in terms of machine analogies because it is natural for us to think in that way. But we can hardly expect that that which the mind readily produces is the same as that which produces the mind. Mind is surely not epiphenomenally superimposed on a pattern of information-processing the brain happens to enact. It is far more plausible that brain and mind are both manifestations of an underlying process, and that our own ego-awarenesses are merely the tip of an ontological iceberg as yet unknown to us. If so, the concept of 'information' is not likely to be a useful guide. Information is an enormously useful idea, but it is an abstraction of an abstraction. The immediacy of consciousness lies in the opposite direction.
There is Being. Being is aware. Being acts. The action of Being (from our perspective as participants) represents itself (in part) as the physical universe in historical space and time. The universe enacts a pattern of evolution in which accumulating action propagates as continuing process. Evolution results in a nucleation of processes into complex process-structures which are the physical representation of the nucleation of Being into individual centers of awareness and action.
What could be meant by 'nucleation of Being'? I don't have the slightest idea. But it expresses my intuition that consciousness must be closely related to existence itself, that it is vastly nearer to the 'basic level of reality' than anything signified by physical concepts. The fate of the individual ego-consciousness is obviously linked in some way to its physical expression in the body, but consciousness itself as a category and as a possibility is something more basic. We make machines and we analyse natural objects in terms of machine analogies because it is natural for us to think in that way. But we can hardly expect that that which the mind readily produces is the same as that which produces the mind. Mind is surely not epiphenomenally superimposed on a pattern of information-processing the brain happens to enact. It is far more plausible that brain and mind are both manifestations of an underlying process, and that our own ego-awarenesses are merely the tip of an ontological iceberg as yet unknown to us. If so, the concept of 'information' is not likely to be a useful guide. Information is an enormously useful idea, but it is an abstraction of an abstraction. The immediacy of consciousness lies in the opposite direction.
Those who would say I have no religion, just because I do not belong to an organized religion, would then have to say that Abraham had no religion; Mohammed had no religion; Prince Siddhartha had no religion; Paul had no religion. They all started by abandoning the religions of their times. Some may proselytize more than my religion and thereby gain more converts, but my religion is at least as valid.
