Pandeism: An Anthology of the Creative Mind -- title page

Pandeism: An Anthology of the Creative Mind is coming soon....

Here is the title page:

Authors who have written or released materials for this book include an outstanding group of contributors to a variety of areas of philosophical thought (alphabetically, by surname):

• Jimmy "Ninja" Chaikong (musician and mixed martial artist, Texas)

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• Chris Fisher (Stoic philosopher, United States)

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• Walter Hehl (physicist, Germany)

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• William C. Lane (lawyer and philosopher, United States)

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• Knujon Mapson (Pandeist theologian, United States)

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• Michael Minogue (student submission, Illinois)

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• Amy Perry (transcendental poet, United States)

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• Roger Price (Jewish scholar, Illinois)

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• Varadaraja V. Raman (physicist, India/New York)

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• John Ross, Jr. (professor of communications, Illinois)

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• Scott Somerville (student submission, Canada)

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• E.L. Sudworth (author of "Creation in Stasis")

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• Max Bernhard Weinstein (physicist, Germany; translation by Deborah Moss)

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• Julian West (mythohistorian, Illinois)

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• Jayson X (World Union of Deists, United States)

Is Reality a Simulation?

Our brilliant friend Antonin Tuynman has recently put together a quite masterfully assembled anthology of articles on the question of Simulation Hypothesis -- the proposition that our Universe is in fact possibly simply a simulation being run on the system of somebody else's Universe.  With contributions from Dante Rosati, Tim Gross, Knuje Mapson, Eva Deli, Alex Vikoulov, Donald King, Sean Byrne, Dirk Bruere, Matt Swayne and, naturally, Antonin Tuynman -- it is available in print form via Lulu.com, and in electronic form via Amazon.com.

And here is the first page of the Pandeism chapter -- which chapter actually covers a great deal of ground beyond Pandeism -- love to see how it plays out across the printed page!!

This is not a sphere.

This is not a sphere.

This is, instead, a 2D representation of a 3D collection of points, arranged in lines, which themselves would not constitute any single solid surface. On close enough inspection, the lines themselves are neither solid nor consistent in their architecture. And yet we perceive it as a sphere.

This, then, is a reminder that not everything need happen for all experiences to be approximated. A Creator need not set forth a Universe in which every possible thing happens to learn about what sorts of things might happen. What we have, instead, is a Universe which generates trillions of actual experiences (consider all our experiences, every day of our lives, across all the lifetimes ever lived) and trillions of trillions more possible extrapolations of experience. Blessings!!

Chris Fisher - Traditional Stoicism And How It Fits With Pandeism

Excellent interview -- achieving truly great depth in discussion of some very deep concepts -- well done!!

Stephen Hawking, and Pi Day

I wish that I'd had the opportunity to share with Stephen Hawking the evolutionary theological theory of Pandeism -- a theological model which proposes that the Creator wholly became the Creation at the outset, and all of its physical laws, so that all that is discovered by science is not in contradiction with religion, but explains the mechanisms by which our Creator was able to bring forth our Universe as we observe it. Pandeism fully accounts, and I would love to think that Hawking would find it to be an elegant and parsimonious solution, even if not one he would have personally believed.


But I do think it is perhaps telling that Hawking died on a day which happens to be of significance to Pandeists and mathematicians alike -- March 14 (3.14....), Pi Day. May the Universe bless us all on this day.

Is Intelligence an Algorithm?

I've recently read Is Intelligence an Algorithm? by Antonin Tuynman -- an excellent book with many pandeistic overtones.

Tuynman brings two gifts to bear on this topic -- a creative mind capable of making insightful connections, and a facility with communicative language with which to explain these connections in the most fluid of terms. Combining these, this book does an outstanding job of introducing ideas like the progression of complexity through stages both observed and rationally projected to come in the future, of the cognitive processes which arise during these steps, and of the reasoning processes which arise from these cognitive processes. Notably, the idea of the fundamental physics of our Universe inevitably bringing forth these levels of complexity (and perhaps being intended to do so) is a key thought in Pandeism. 

He dives therefrom into straightening out dizzying further implications of how these might manifest in the coming technology of artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness (especially in a potential quantum computing environment). Throughout, the book ties together the ideas of a world class selection of theorists on the grounds of reality and consciousness, and rises up to be much greater than the sum of its parts.

Quantum beer

The concept of quantum foam has bubbled up in scientific circles for over half a century, ever since physicist John Wheeler figured that quantum mechanics, at the really really small scale, would yield a Universe where nothing was ever static, and instead bits of matter (or, at least, the fundamental particles constructing them) popped in and out of existence all the time. And this foamy sort of science has long inspired all sorts of ideas as to what sorts of things might arise in a Universe so made.

But the thing which seems to be overlooked in this examination is the question of what all that foam is topping off. Now there are many kinds of foam out there in the world -- foam from shampoo, the foam in foam rubber, sea foam, and what used to be called shaving foam (but for some inexplicable reason is now more popularly called shaving cream). But come now, everybody knows the best, most satisfying kind of foam there is, is the foam that rises atop a perfectly poured down the side at an angle glass of beer. The kind of foam which tickles your nose as you drink that first draught, the kind of foam which is crisp and sweet and slow to settle.

Beer is one of man's first inventions. The ancient Egyptian pyramid-builders were paid in beer. Beer is liquid gold, and liquid bread (and bread baked with beer has a most wondrous foaminess to it, too). Beer even figures into physics -- physicist Donald A. Glaser, for his Nobel Prize-winning invention of the bubble chamber, used beer to fill early proptotypes of the chamber (though he denied that beer inspired the invention).

An old quote floating about which has been attributed to Werner Heisenberg (apparently wrongfully), tells us that "The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you." Now this has been interpreted to mean a lot of things ranging from "the more fully understood our Universe is, the more intricately designed it appears" to "you start seeing fantastic things once you get drunk enough." But if the glass is of the quantum beer from which the quantum foam fizzes forth, then surely it must mean, once you get down to the bottom of things, you find that there's something beneath the bottom, and that it's that we're all connected, all manifestations arising from a single oneness. Perhaps even like the oneness described in the evolutionary theological theory of Pandeism (pantheistic Deism). And an amber-hued, rich, tasty, all-loving oneness, at that!!

Quantum beer probably looks something like this....