Work being done in Pandeism

I realize I ought to be blogging more on Pandeism, as there is so, so much to discuss about it!!  I tend to slowly wend my way through big pieces, but I'm going to try to keep up more here on a day-to-day basis.

Today I'd like to shout out to other Pandeists, and others who, whether themselves Pandeist or no, have made interesting strides in the study of Pandeism.  First up, Nick Tafacory has consistently posted interesting ideas on Pandeism on his own (better kept-up) blog, Conflicting Thoughts.  These include, to be specific:

• Beginning Work(s) on Pandeism
• Pandeism Revisited
• Pandeism Once More
• More Notes on Pandeism

The last one of those happens to contain links to scans of seven pages of handwritten notes -- I've been promising to provide my thoughts on those, especially with respect to many questions raised which are deserving of answers, and will have them!!

I have, as well, been privileged to meet Personified Music, a new YouTube friend (naturally through the Official YouTube PanDeism Channel.   Personified Music wrote to me (and has kindly permitted me to reproduce) the following:

Hi fellow pandeist!
Hello!
I've been seeking someone who had the same beliefs as me! At last someone who understands the true nature! Since you seem to have a great grasp of logic, I'd like for you to examine my argument in favor of this belief.
1) The universe has a creator
- Premise 1: The universe is finite
Considering that the Big Bang is considered to be the beginning of time, this universe is finite
- Premise 2: All finite things have a beginning and an end
Basic definitions:
Infinite means without beginning or end. Finite is the opposite of that.
- Premise 3: Finite things must be created
To begin, one must have a cause, and that cause must be initiated by something.
- CONCLUSION 1: The universe was created
2) To create the universe, one must be omnipotent.
- Premise 1: All things that exist must be perceivable in space
If not perceived, one cannot be comprised of matter. If not comprised of matter, one cannot exist.
- Premise 2: Through premise 1, we discover that the universe and all its contents is everything, as it is the only thing perceivable in space and time,
- Premise 3: To create everything, one most be able to do everything.
Explains itself
- CONCLUSION 2: That creator is omnipotent
3) To be omnipotent, one must be omnipresent.
- Premise A1: To be omnipotent, one must be able to execute every action
- Premise A2: Instantaneosity (to do something instantly) is an action
- Premise A3: To execute something instantaneously, one must be the action in itself, as being next to something, or even its immediate vicinity would require a given amount of time
- Premise B1: Matter occupies space
- Premise B2: To be omnipresent, one must occupy all space.
- CONCLUSION 3: To be omnipresent, one must be the matter
Summary:
- CONCLUSION 1: The universe was created
- CONCLUSION 2: That creator must be omnipotent
- CONCLUSION 3A: To be omnipotent, one must be omnipresent
- CONCLUSION 3B: To be omnipresent, one must be matter.
FINAL CONCLUSION: God is the universe

This is an interesting and fruitful series of propositions.  I would be cautious to discern relative omnipotence (the ability to do anything which can be done) from the absolute omnipotence proposed by some theists (the ability to do anything, including logically impossible things). But, indeed, the comment relating omnipotence and omnipresence brings to my mind the proposition of Duke University PhD Physicist Robert G. Brown in A Theorem Concerning God, and especially in the core of that work, The Pandeist Theorem -- recommended reading for all!!

Blessings!!

Temporal fortuity in light of the End of Cosmology

In 2007, astrophysicists Lawrence M. Krauss and Robert J. Scherrer published The Return of a Static Universe and the End of Cosmology, wherein they made certain remarkable projections about far future cosmology. Chief among these were the observations that the radiation remnants of the Big Bang were slowly evaporating, and that at the same time, the process of generation of new stars was working towards obscuring the initial chemical composition markers of our Universe. Most remarkably of all, they proposed that the The expansion of the universe is speeding up|expansion of our Universe was possibly accelerating, and that such would continue to the point where the rate of expansion of distances between galaxies would outpace the speed of light itself!!



Observe that, though the speed of light is an absolute limit, faster-than-light expansion is permissible in physics because it does not describe the speed at which anything actually 'travels,' the increasing distance between galaxies resulting from the increasing size of space itself, and not anything happening 'in' space. And so, concluded the paper, astronomers coming to the fore a few trillion years in the future would find no signal that a Big Bang had ever happened, either through telltale Cosmic Microwave Background, or through the chemical signature of our Universe pointing to such an event, or even through the observation of cosmic expansion visible in the continuing movement of all galaxies (or galactic clusters) away from every other.



In fact, once expansion of our Universe overtakes the speed of light, and the last light emitted leading up to that moment passes by the reaches of our world, all of our Universe from beyond our own galactic neighbourhood will disappear. Undetectable, it will be as though it never was. And the astronomer born in such a time will have no reason to imagine that anything ever did exist beyond the borders of our own galaxy (and perhaps one or two close companion galaxies tied to a common centre of mass, though it is predictable that in sufficient time, all galaxies locally attracted in this manner will collide and merge into one). They will live in what the authors describe as an 'Island Universe,' wherein they shall forever remain "It's the End of the World as We Know It|fundamentally incapable of determining the true nature of the universe, including the existence of the highly dominant vacuum energy, When we have reached the end of time and light|the existence of the CMB, and the primordial origin of light elements."



An Element of the Pandeistic:



Now, though Krauss is an outspoken critic of the idea of Intelligent Design (and perhaps rightfully so in respect to the ham-handed wholesale-plopped down life forms model of that theory), let us consider this circumstance in the light of the pandeistic model. Pandeism propose that ours is a created Universe, and that Creator became our Universe -- and, naturally, not just any sort of Universe, but one possessed of careful balances of fundamental constants, governing dynamics designed to bring about complexity. Such complexity would, in turn, eventually yield self-replicating molecular structures -- the building blocks of life itself. And life, once brought into existence, seems to find a way to continue in existence, including adapting copying errors -- mutations -- to its advantage by promoting those which are advantageous, a process which is inclined to bring about more and more intelligent beings.



But another aspect of our Universe which would be of vital importance to such a designer would be the capacity of intelligent life to go beyond this slow and steady natural process, and instead use that intelligence to 'crack the codes' of our Universe. Intelligence, once achieved, must be usable to figure out how and why electrons and atoms and DNA ribbons work as they do, and to use that knowledge to self accelerate. By this, we mean that intelligent life ought to be able to accomplish things like building machines capable of performing quick and massive calculations, and crafting substances capable of fighting disease. Eventually, such knowledge will rise to the point where the calculating devices may be integrated directly into our brains, and where the new disease fighting methods will be addended directly into our immune systems, possibly even through DNA modifications permanently affixing them to our species. But, more than that, Pandeism predicts that we ought to be able to crack the code of the origin of our Universe, to come into possession of the ability to detect the proofs of its age and state before those become obscured from perception by time and space.



Now then, it is possible to conceive a Universe wherein certain chemical reactions necessary to our evolution progress three-hundred times slower than our experience; in such a Universe, intelligent life might arise in four trillion years, instead of the 13.5 billion years which passed before this happened (that we know of) on Earth. A civilization arising in that era would see no signs that our Universe had a singular point of origin, a particular age, or even that it existed at all outside of our galaxy and perhaps one or two others positioned nearby. Atheism offers no explanation of why this ought not to be the case; and for theistic faiths, our current circumstance is positively anathema to such a Universe. For the theist who believes in a special and wholesale Creation of life on Earth especially, out of all the Universe -- and in young earth creationist
|a Creation of a relatively recent duration -- there is simply no reason that the nature of our Universe ought to be able to contradict their theistic account. There is no reason that massive stellar gravitational wells ought to have bent and tugged the light of stars billions of years distant into our view, no reason for us to be able to observe cosmic background radiation or distant stars midway through multi-billion year stages of development. Indeed, no reason at all for us to not exist in an 'Island Universe.'



Extrapolation:



I grant that, in light of this it remains conceivable that at some past point, perhaps mere millions of years after its birth, our Universe was at the centre of other companions, other Universes which quickly faded from our ability to detect or even contemplate them. Such other entities may have become invisible to us in the same way that the galaxies we current observe might become invisible to cosmologists of a far-distant future. But if so, then at least our capacity to gauge the ultimately transient nature of our own cosmic observations ought to inform us of the possibilities to be modelled, if not actually observed. And it remains with us, in our generations of advancement yet to come, to leave such signals as may be found by far flung future inhabitants of our galaxy, informing them of that which they are no longer able to observe. Indeed, such ought to be the responsibility of intelligent life arising in any galaxy, once this potentiality comes within the grasp of their knowledge. And so, in addition to the fortuitous circumstances of properties of matter and energy which suggest our Universe to be one designed to bring about life through a random-wandering billions-of-years process, we may now add temporal fortuity. For ours is a Universe wherein the capacity of intelligent life to gauge its own cosmic pedigree indeed balances upon the edge of a knife, thanks to the speed of evolution so far outstripping the speed of expansion of our Universe.



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For those who are interested, here is an hour+ lecture by Krauss (minus two minutes of introduction delivered by Richard Dawkins), intriguingly outlining his entire cosmological schema from beginning to end....

The Astronomers--an inspiration to Pandeism

Astronomy has always had a role to play in theological discourse. From the time of the earliest records of the ancients, it was supposed that the lights in the night sky represented mystical forces. And, once it was understood that there were distinct forms of objects beyond our horizon, elaborate systems were imagined to explain their significance, and their supposed influence on human affairs.

Ptolemy of Alexandria devised a model of the sun and planets which placed the Earth at the center of our Universe, orbited by the Moon, then Mercury and Venus, then the sun and the rest of the known planets: Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. All of this, in the Ptolomeic model, was surrounded by a moving sphere of fixed stars. We now know that Ptolomy's model was wrong, but not for any lack of intellect on Ptolomy's part. Instead, it was a well-thought out model that largely accounted for what could be observed in that age, and with the prevailing theological supposition, of our Earth sitting at the center of our Universe.

Nicolaus Copernicus pioneered the next great leap in astronomical knowledge. Copernicus published his heliocentric theory, placing the Sun at the center of our Universe, shortly before his death. This was necessary due to the prevailing religious sentiments of the time. Although we now know the heliocentric model to be true, the monolithic Christianity of the era required the Earth to be at the center of the Universe, and so, truth was suppressed in the name of religion.

Following the work of Copernicus, Galileo Galilei determined, as well, that the Sun, and not the Earth, was the central point for the planets. His work was based on the most practical level of research, improving the design of telescopes and then observing the sun, moon, and planets through them, and reporting his observations. For his discoveries, he was condemned by the Church, which famously declared the theory that the Earth orbits the sun to be "false and contrary to Scripture." But, it is not so widely remembered that he was equally condemned for discovering spots on the sun, craters on the moon, other moons circling other planets, and that the planets themselves were not perfect orbs, as the church required. Under threat of of torture by religious officials, Galileo recanted -- but, naturally, recanting what is a true has never worked to make it untrue.

Johannes Kepler, lived in the same era as Galileo, but in a place less dominated by religious oppression. Working in the observatory of another great astronomer, Tycho Brahe, Kepler sought to solve the riddle of the apparent retrograde motion of Mars -- that is, the tendency of Mars to sometimes appear to move backwards in its orbit. In doing so, Kepler hit upon another great discovery, that the planets did not orbit the Sun at a uniform speed, or in perfect circles, or with the Sun at the exact center, as the religious leaders required. The planets instead orbited in a-centric ellipses, with orbital speed changing in conjunction with the distance from the Sun, which was simply a focal point, and not at the exact center of their orbit.

Sir Isaac Newton's theory of gravity was initially set forth in great measure to explain the means by which bodies in orbit were maintained in that way. It paved the way for the theological theory of deism by demonstrating that the constant hand of the Creator was not at all needed to explain the motions of the planets, but that celestial bodies could instead be maintained in their angular momentum entirely by the clockwork operation of celestial mechanics.

It was astronomers who, centuries later, insured the upending of Newtonian physics when they confirmed Einstein's theory of relativity by observing the predicted gravitational lensing of light passing distant stars. It was astronomers who gave us the key to the age of our Universe. Edwin Hubble discovered that ours was not the only galaxy, and by examining the redshift of other galaxies moving in relation to our own, that the Universe was expanding. It is somewhat remarkable in itself that up until 1925, it was not known that a single other galaxy existed, and after that date, that countless numbers of them did.

Hubble's discovery of universal expansion was disturbing to those who, for both scientific and theological reasons, believed the Universe to have existed forever, in much the same state. Astronomer Fred Hoyle was among those who developed the steady state theory, which proposed that the expansion of our Universe was fueled by a constant infusion of new material from some central point, so that it had always appeared, and would always appear, much as it does today. But this theory was disproved with the discovery of very old quasars and similar very old and very distant structures, which are not found in the neighborhood of younger galaxies which are farther along from the point of the initial expansion. It is somewhat ironic today that the Big Bang proponents were largely religious, championing the theory in part for its assignment of a point of origin to the Universe which accorded with Creation mythology, while the steady state proponents tended to be atheistic.

Once the Big Bang theory was confirmed, this knowledge, refined over time, allowed man to at last pinpoint the age of our Universe to approximately thirteen billion seven hundred and thirty million years. Later astronomers like Carl Sagan, Paul Davies, and Timothy Ferris would continue to do more and more to not only advance our understanding of our Universe, and the continuum of physics governing objects within it, but to profoundly effect the validity of theological models as well, making it impossible to rationally believe in a Creator for whom human beings were at the center of our Universe.

As astronomical discoveries have taken us farther and farther away from our initial imagined posture in the center of our Universe, theological systems have reacted in different ways. Some have simply shifted the vanity and self-centeredness that led us to believe ourselves to be the center of a perfectly ordered Universe away from the astronomical realm, insisting that even as we are seen to occupy an insignificant position in space, we remain the object of adoration for the Creator of that vast space, so richly occupied in places beyond our very imagination. Other theological models have strengthened in their grasp of a theology in line with astronomical reality. Pandeism is one such theory, demanding that any theological explanation must accord with the nature of our observed Universe. And so, the astronomers, in their generations of work advancing our understanding of our place within our Universe, have provided an inspiration to pandeism, and to all theological theories recognizing the grandness of a Universe in which we are so privileged to play even the most minute role.

Conscious energy? Pandeism says yes!!

Can energy unbounded by a "physical form" be conscious? Pandeism says yes!! The physicality of our brains, after all, is merely the illusion of energy bound up and appearing to be solid stuff.

PanDeism and Faith: the big question!!

Studying Pandeism naturally leads eventually to studying the tenets of both theistic faiths (such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), and non-theistic faiths( such as Buddhism and Hinduism).... all of these share some very similar attributes which, interestingly, are best explained by a pandeistic Universe.... for example, all different faiths report miracles and visions of God.... Buddhism/Hinduism report visions of nirvana, from which the world is seen as an illusion, although that can also be understood as seeing the world for the mere collection of God-particles that it must be.... if there were only one true "God" then such miracles and visions should be confined to one faith -- and all of the different faiths can not be correct, because they contradict each other and present incompatible rules and visions....

We are left to ponder a spiritual force in the Universe which is apparently accessible to people from all over with a common denominator of an externalized faith, or some belief system with a spiritual aspect something to substitute for it.... Paul Davies and Karen Armstrong both report some instances in which even some atheists tell of moments which, but for their rejection of theistic-type Gods, they would be tempted to call miraculous!!

The Illusion of Religion:

I think all religions are sort of illusory.... lets say a Christian and a Muslim and a Jew each pray for a loved one to heal from an illness, and in each case their prayer is "answered".... does that mean that NT Bible-God, Koran-God, and OT Bible-God are all real? More likely it means that each person doing the praying is actually themselves manipulating the world around them through the power of their own faith.... of course, more likely than that is that the loved one just happened to get better on their own, since most sick people will be prayed for by someone, and some of them will get better....

I think that Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, and many other figures accorded mystical power simply had a talent for reaching and manipulating the underlying spiritual force of which the Universe is composed. I don't believe that this ability is necessarily open to everyone, at least not on the same level, just as not everyone who wants to play in the NBA or master physics will ever have the talent to do so, but every once in a long while you get a Michael Jordan or a Stephen Hawking.... it is easy to see how someone with an exceptional talent in touching the presence of God within us might mistake that for God endorsing their views and biases.... it is even easier to see how someone with that talent and a glimpse of a true understanding of the nature of a pandeistic Universe might have great difficulty explaining this concept to others who lacked that vision, but were used to the concept of anthropomorphized tribal gods.... in fact it is more likely the followers who misunderstand the message and put their own biases into its retelling!!

No Religion Offers the "one true path":

So, I don't think any religion is a true path to God, because each of them tries to cordon God off and project the biases of its adherents onto God.... right-wingers are squeemish about gays, so they envision a God who hates gays.... used to be the same with interracial marriage, the people who didn't like it said God was against it!!

Truth is, the Pandeist God (which is after all logically the most likely model of the nature of God) couldn't care less about gays or interracial marriage or any of that.... why would it? It no longer even exists as God!! Here we are, literally occupying the crust of a dustmote in the Universe, probably one of millions of planets where life exists, probably not more than 2/3 of the way towards evolving to the point where we'd be of any use to God, and 80+% of us think God cares what we eat, what we wear, or whether we work on one of the days that we ourselves have artificially segregated into a seven-day block....

In fact I think that atheists are mostly right -- after all, what is it that atheists are rejecting? 99% of it is Bible-God type stuff: accounts of God's jealousy, anger, blood libel, destruction, and inability to deal with things in a subtle manner; accounts of nature and physics that don't stand up in the face of science and reason.... in other words, most of what atheists are rejecting is unreasonable stuff which should be rejected by any person applying logic and reason to understanding the experience of the world!!

Why Pandeism is the logical end of the inquiry:

Now, I'm not saying that atheists are really pandeists at heart, and will one day wake up and discover "the error of their ways" -- this is as insulting a position as saying that there are "no atheists in foxholes".... there are unanswered questions in the Universe, and atheists, deists, pandeists, pantheists, even panentheists and theists are trying to answer that question using some level of reason.... theists and panentheists too easily get caught up in the impossible task of using reason to justify unreasonable scripture; deists offer a reasonable God, but no explanation why God would create the Universe but not interfere thereafter; pantheists offer a reasonable Universe, but no explanation as to why it came into being.... Pantheism was developed prior to knowledge of evolution or the Big Bang, and so tried to account for a constant Universe, not one with a beginning.... I should mention Panendeism also, which presumes a God that created the Universe as part of itself, but (for no purpose that I can fathom) also leaves part of God separate from -- but not interfering with -- the Universe....

This leaves atheism and Pandeism, both of which address the faults of the other systems, both of which explain the origin of the Universe in terms of logic and probability.... between Bible-God (or a Bible-type God) and atheism, it is clearly more reasonable to choose atheism, and this is as much of a choice as many people think they have.... but to those who understand the immense improbability of a Universe coming into existence at all, much less one that supports life and allows me to post blogs on the topic -- between Pandeism and atheism, it is reasonable to choose Pandeism, and so I choose Pandeism!!