Status:
You should skip this, probably. Just starting to take notes - really - it's just raw note-taking - nothing (much) to see here, yet. I'm obviously just working some stuff out in public, actually.
In "The only choice we get, is what to worship.", David Foster Wallace collapses philosophy and spirituality into a common need:
"Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings."
Herein, I will try to explain my personal definition of the word: "Christian", how it relates to the problem of religion, being a follower of something, and to the things I personally worship.
Translation Required
"Christian". I can guarantee that word means something different to everyone you meet - oftentimes the difference will be significant.
Language interpretation is highly variant, especially in the context of words and phrases used to describe philosophy or spirituality. Philosophical or spiritual stories are sometimes paradoxical - creating maximum opportunity for interpretation - forcing individuals to translate terms into what they internally understand them to mean. Honestly, I think that's the explicit point in a lot of eastern philosophy, and most western thinkers forgot that was a thing.
Explaining my personal definition of "Christian" is a good exercise in understanding what the core values of Christianity really are, to ME, on a personal level. It is also important to me to become passably good at establishing common understanding - the interface between secular and non-secular understanding is one of the most challenging areas to exercise in - so I will test myself there.
I don't presume that I will add a ton of value here for others. However, I suspect that widespread familiarity with this type of exercise would be generally valuable (you could watch The Seventh Seal instead, but this exercise is better). Collective *treatment* of groups who speak or write about their philosophy and spirituality is often undertaken *before* any attempt is made to actually translate their words and establish a common understanding. That is a horrible thing on many levels - I wish more people understood how lazy and misguided it is. Prejudice, I suspect, is as contagious as courage.
In fact, most peaceful activity requires common understanding: Association with others requires common understanding - and association is the primary means of resolving disputes verbally - and, in many circles, non-verbal communication commonly ends in violence.
Side Note: A cool superpower related to common understanding is the ability to translate spiritual stories or activities into stories that fit into a rationalist view of the universe. If you don't have that super-power, try it - translate "chi" into "information" and "grace" into "love" and make other similar translations as helpful - hang out in one of those groups that you can't tolerate and translate everything real-time into something you love - you will ultimately get really good at seeing common ground with people who have the opposite of your beliefs - be able to participate in and appreciate some of the most beautiful experiences available. You're not buying in - but you're not rejecting them, either. I don't know what that superpower is called, but it's pretty awesome and it makes you smarter and happier.
Along the way, I will need to expand my exposure to the classics, leaning on some of these pantheists, Christian or not. (This is the pantheists wall in Venice Beach - note that for most of these people, the most interesting distinction between a pantheist and a mono-theist concerns whether they believe our creator contains the entire universe, or is contained within it):
Defining my beliefs within common terminology:
So that no one else has to, I'll try to corner my beliefs with common terminology before I dig into actual, meaningful, current, personal beliefs. It will take me a few paragraphs.
Reasoned beliefs are always in flux:
I support reason and openness to evidence wherever I can. I don't think you should ever believe something only out of respect for another person - that's not a well-reasoned belief. I keep my identity small, and celebrate reasoned changes in my beliefs - all of my beliefs (we'll get to those) are subject to change. Still, I have a non-zero identity at any time - identity is a belief - and I can trace that identity back to my past like anyone else - so here we go:
I was brought up a Catholic, identify as a christian, but I am generally not recognized as a christian by either those who do or do not identify as christians.
I don't call myself a Secular Christian, partly because of my upbringing and my strong association with others who define themselves as spiritual or religious Christians, and partly because the most common sources of information on secular theology paint a picture I can't agree with. However, I do believe that the beliefs of many followers of Jesus Christ can be 100% circumscribed by the beliefs of secular humanists.
Although I am convinced my "christian beliefs" lead me to do good for others, and I have been influenced by the christian bible and many people who are religious, I will never identify as a christian apologetic - no one does - that's an epiteth in my time and place - it is used to accuse people of defending doctrine and religion - as opposed to defending a personal philosophy or belief system grounded in independent thought.
One way I might stand out from most secular humanists is that I wedge some Christian beliefs into mainstream scientific thinking, by interpreting christian stories in my own way (this is not uncommon - bach, knuth). The realm of the unknowable is larger than the knowable, and expanding rapidly, so there is plenty of room to work.
So, we finally have me cornered - mine is a kind of deistic humanitarianism grounded in pantheism and guided by scientific practice and a limited, and personal, understanding of Jesus Christ.
With so much space to play with in the unknowable, I rejoice each time science fills a tiny hole in the unknown - I have never seen these gains meaningfully restrict the wide-open, and ever-expanding, unknowable fields of knowledge, or of reason and the imagination - where anyone can choose to imagine the potential for good, rather than the absurd. Many discoveries, in fact, expand the realm of the unknowable.
For science to be practiced - filling some part of the unknowable with theory must be allowed. "I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." - Richard Feynman. Given freedom of inquiry, and as long as theory is recognized and promoted as such, and not as something else, the environment exists in which both theists and atheists can co-exist without harming or ridiculing one another.
Let us be clear: Filling the unknowable with any theory at all is largely making non-falsifiable claims - this is not science - it is simply reason - we deduce what we can about the unknowable with what we have, and will never claim that we know or can prove these things.
It is disappointing to me that both theists and atheists are terrible at communicating *with one another* - so much is lost in philosophy because of it.
It was said: "For myself, I like a universe that includes much that is unknowable and much that is knowable. A universe in which everything is known would be static and dull, as boring as the heaven of some weak-minded theologians. A universe that is completely unknowable is no fit place for a thinking being. The ideal universe for us is one very much like the universe we inhabit. And I would guess that this is not really much of a coincidence." — Carl Sagan
Mr Sagan is a bit of a hero to me as a communicator to scientists, but he could only convert the converted - describing those with opposing viewpoints as "weak-minded" shuts off communication - this comes from an unfortunate, hubristic dysfunction to which science communicators and atheists are not immune.
An aside on tools and history:
You won't find many people who want to be described by a wikipedia page on secular theology, unitarian universalism, or most any of impersonal description of religion or philosophy. I suspect that is partially because a fairly small portion of anyones identity is actually unchangeable - and most philosophical labels are unnecessary.
In my experience, if you first approach someone and ask them to talk through the logical foundations of their beliefs, they will be willing to discuss them - and find commonalities with your foundational logic - and that's usually a great place to build the association necessary for dialogue.
Wikipedia pages will probably always be too academic and generic to describe modern humans. Wikipedia is old-tech - great for history - terrible for the zeitgeist - I believe it moves too slowly to see the ways that secular and spiritual reconcile today. To describe and accelerate that reconciliation, we might need fast moving, viral conversational and debate tools - instrumented with the capability to facilitate personal and common understanding with little human intermediation, and to generate content that describes that understanding - undoubtedly such experiments are ongoing.
That said, there is some cyclical nature of history and re-discovery that tools like wikipedia are extremely helpful with - I lean on wikipedia heavily to get started in research - and a ton of the links in this article will redirect you to wikipedia - it's just so darn useful.
Defining "Christianity" in General
You may find, if you spend a lot of time with a wide variety of religious groups, that no one can agree on what "Christian" means.
A matter of neither Faith nor History
Importantly, I, like many, when considering Jesus of Nazareth, care neither about faith nor history. I suspect that most people genuinely feel that way, but fewer than that number admit it. So, two things: I won't concern myself too much about historic truth, and I won't invoke faith in the context of spiritual belief. Those two things make it impossible for me to participate in a religion, except as an appreciative guest, which I do from time to time.
Faith is colloquially, in my time, defined on a spectrum from hopeful belief in ones ability to absolute knowledge about the truth of a supernatural, non-falsifiable belief. I have tons of the former and none of the latter. That doesn't mean that I don't have thoughts about intelligence outside of our universe - I do have those. It does mean that invoking faith in the context of Jesus or "Christian Beliefs" is something I should never do.
The actual history of Jesus of Nazareth is almost non-existent and has almost no bearing on the story of Jesus of Nazareth (which I find useful). I find that authors who focus on the historic person are necessarily manufacturing something out of nothing - apparently to the end of proving non-issues to themselves and pushing their personal stories and agendas - there is nothing there except entertainment for themselves and money from their echo chamber - a nice gig if you don't care about the side effects. For non-historians there is no reason to even get involved in historic arguments with so little data or even scientific consensus on what data there is, before you even get into the perverse incentives in such an exercise.
Definitely different from your definition, but in a recognizable category
Given any two humans - there is far too much that has been lost to time and manipulation, far too much to interpret, far too much ambiguity in language - for them to share an exactly matching historical perspective on that word.
When you stir in the complexity of the diverse spiritual and philosophical perspectives regarding what "being a christian" is, and the contentious nature between groups both religious and secular, you will find that it is very unlikely that any two people will identify the same subset of all humans as "Christians", even if they provide a similar definition of the word.
Most secular people would prefer to stay out of the whole argument. Generally, as long as they are not associated with any sort of belief in the supernatural, they leave all arguments concerning spiritual terminology to the spiritual - they will simply point to the dictionary if asked to define a Christian.
Common dictionary definitions cannot escape the word religion, i.e.:
Christian: "relating to or professing the religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, or its beliefs and practices, or its teachings."
Those definitions will reflect the most common practice and usage, not the most modern trends in understanding and practice. In my experience, growing up a Christian in Silicon Valley, the understanding of what a Christian is, is completely fragmented - the most common practice and usage reflecting only a tiny fraction of those who ascribe to be Christians.
And my non-religious definition cannot be the most common. Mine must be outlined as a part of my personal relationship with god.
Defining a Personal relationship with God
What being a follower of Jesus means to me:
It means emulating what you believe is Jesus' example - and not what anyone else believes is Jesus' example. That means to me that you help others - even if it costs you.
In more detail - being a "follower of Jesus" means that I seek to act as I see his actions:
- Truthful, Loving, and Compassionate
- Clear, and direct when possible
- Practical
- Tolerant - doesn't care about your background, job, religion or choice of lifestyle as much as substantive stuff.
- Studious
- Ready to sacrifice for others
- Humble - would gladly wash your feet.
- Non-Materialistic - a minimalist and an altruist, in fact - finds infinite hope in non-material things. Personal material wealth is absolutely antithetical to his beliefs. Giving is natural.
- Non-conformist
- Takes a slap on the cheek in stride - willing to take pain so that others will not have to.
- Skeptical - questioning of everything
- A meditator who spends time in isolation
- Persistent, but unafraid to prune branches
- Present
- Dedicated to serving others - the guy who stops on the side of the road when you have a flat and helps - "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
- Accepting your own death and all loss, intellectually, to the best of your ability.
- Likes to drink wine with friends and has been known to physically kick usurious bankers who pretend to care about others out of the temple.
That's it. Definition complete. The bible, and all other texts, have no hold. The rest of the minor details I handle with a healthy dose of "I don't know" and some of the larger bits of spirituality are squarely in my "Clearly Unknowable" category, where I make speculations and assumptions that don't affect anyone else, and which I will probably never relate. The above list to me, is the "practical core" of Jesus' beliefs, and the rest is Judaism, or has been added later by other religions or political institutions for mostly nefarious reasons.
In following the above behaviors alone, I admit I am a crappy follower of Jesus. Effectively, Peter Singer translated Jesus' prose on non-materialism into a research paper - surely the center of the practical core of Jesus beliefs. The fact that I still cling to my need for security for myself and my family, and cannot give up 100% of the extra belongings and money that I have, only some part of the excess, says all that needs to be said - I will probably never be capable of the level of non-materialism and giving that a true follower of Jesus is capable of.
Religiosity and proselytization:
Incidentally, I do not want to influence you to be like Jesus or be like me. Be yourself. I do not proselytize. I don't believe in it. I suspect that not a single person has hit this web page that did not find it by asking me to explain my views on some spiritual matter. That's how obscure and crappy my wiki is. It's just us, guys.
Religiosity is a spectrum. I don't think that "religion" is really a thing that Jesus' cared about that much - maybe I'm wrong about that, but that's my take. I think if Jesus was born today, he would most certainly not have considered himself a religious jew, or a religious man of any kind. The whole religious bureaucracy apparently ranked quite low on his priority list.
Christians, by my definition, are followers of Jesus, and therefore skeptical non-conformists. They are, therefore, very likely to differ from one another, at least somewhat, in their understanding of what it means to be a christian. They may have a reasoned suspicion that there was, or is, an intelligent creator/observer to the universe. In common parlance, that all means that they have "a personal relationship with god". I suspect that religiosity almost always gets in the way of following Jesus, and therefore the most christian of folk don't rank that any higher than Jesus did.
AFAICT, when someone identifies a christian person as generally awesome, that's because they are doing the things in that list above, not because they are proselytizing or praying, or reading the bible.
Something worse than support of slavery:
Support of slavery in the bible is everywhere. It's as bad as you think it is. I'll address that in a bit.
Worse than any single wrong, many religious christians can count on their version of "religious christianity" to excuse any and all bad behaviour.
Current day slave trader? No problem, your religion just says you need to go to confession, or that you are always able to be saved, or that nothing you do in this life matters except believing in what your religion says you need to believe in. That has excused the most evil of anything, ever, probably - it encourages "religious christians" to be the opposite of true followers of Jesus, and it's quite obvious to everyone else in the world that this is so - only horrors have come from this twisting of Jesus' teachings.
All dictatorships and kingdoms have this feature - worship the leader and they will forgive the evil you do on a daily basis in their name. It should be obvious that this is the oldest version of moral relativism, and every political organization that touched religious texts had incentive to add hierarchy and "forgiveness for sins" to the philosophy of the text - this is how they made slavery and all other evils acceptable - long after the philosophers were all killed.
What do I get out of it?
I get to fill the gaps of the unknowable with hope. Hope is based in empathy, and in my case, beautiful dreams for the future. This can, and does, carry me, in hard times, to a positive place. I think Camus, Kirkeggard, and Wittgenstein would have thought me absurd, and approved.
I get to truly enjoy the beauty of anyones beliefs, any words of love and hope expressed in the terms of any well-meaning beliefs, as their outpouring of empathy and hope - as true humanity at it's best. They can rationalize the unknowable in their own way, and I can still understand them as completely rational - even if I don't share their beliefs.
Because I must not proselytize, I rest easy in the knowledge that I can be wrong, and no harm is done, in fact - my christianity drives me to build for others, in both a material sense and in the sense of citizen science. I get to encourage others to form their own beliefs, and to support them where they intersect with mine.
Side note on places of worship - optimizing SNR
In case you never intend to go to a religious place of worship, allow me a few paragraphs on that.
SNR is an acronym for the ratio of signal strength to noise strength.
I have been to dozens of places of worship - of all manner of beliefs. By and large, these places are filled with people of random or no belief - not the stated belief of the organization. They come there for all types of reasons - but a lot of them are looking for love - and for hope - and beauty - and sometimes finding it - and it's not harming them, and it's wonderful - and they call it spiritual - THATS THE SIGNAL.
There are plenty of scams in religious worship, and there is plenty of misinformation, and there is plenty of prejudice - THAT'S THE NOISE. It may challenge you to sit through some of it, but as in most areas of life, you have to learn to filter out noise, so that you can benefit from signal.
To do this, I go to the smaller, less orthodox places. These places are way more interesting than the larger places - they are islands of misfit toys where you will find explorers who always knew that on a long enough time line they would visit one another. Conversations BEFORE or AFTER the worship are usually where I get most of the benefit. You'll find people trying to escape the moral relativism and hierarchical bureaucracy, and people trying to dive into it - people who can read in a dozen languages, and people who can't read much at all. And you'll talk about deep stuff, and then talk about the weather, or the coffee, or the trees. It's as good as a mental recalibration to society as you will find.
I have to remind myself: Don't stay in your echo chamber. Get outside once in a while. As in the above section titled "Translation Required" - you will unlock the most fascinating and fun and useful superpowers - I can't recommend it enough.
What about slavery, et. al.
I have personal ethical principles that guide my life. It's not too important to go into detail on my personal ethics in this particular section of this document ( we can just drop in the APA ethics for purposes of this document).
It is important that, as someone who considers themselves to be heavily guided by ethical principles, I make decisions based on satisfying them whenever I can consciously do so and have the willpower.
That is actually all you need to know about how slavery (among other horrors in the bible) fits into my definition of christian behavior. It can't. Just as I do not support everything that governing bodies whom I have little control over do, I do not support following interpretations of ancient texts that intimate acceptance of slavery.
To put it another way, nothing makes my list of christian qualities unless I would support it if I had never heard of christ. Supporting slavery violates my ethical principles. I don't believe that anyone who believes in trying to emulate all the other things in my list of christian values, in 2020, would support slavery, either - it is inconsistent with love, tolerance, sacrifice, and service in the modern context - important principles reinforced in me by studying jesus christ.
I can't judge people who focus on the slavery that was present when the bible was written, and cite that as a reason to ignore the bible, or even to discourage it's reading. That's 100% reasonable, and, personally, I have bigger problems with the bible than that, myself. I think the bible as a historical document suffers from bitrot, bitcreep, and particularly insidious corruption.
In sum, it is useless to debate support of slavery in ancient Israel with someone like me. Arguing a points that neither side in a conversation believe in or are particularly interested in - although it might allow one to blow off some steam - cannot be productive. If you accuse someone of apologizing for a belief that they both do not have and do not believe should be apologized for, you are simply ranting: "apologist!" to the sky. I say be nice, until you can coordinate meanness,
It is far easier to see common ground between secular humanists and true christians - and quite natural. Secular humanists and christians alike, by my definitions, have a very typical level of responsibility - we have to put others above ourselves when we can, and share our resources as we can - by my definition, we are members of society who love to help others.
Tons of good people - people who define their ethical precepts and moral compass by what reduces harm to living things - who really believe in what they are doing - stand on both sides of the general secular and spiritual debate - they may have the exact same goals - they just support them with different pillars of belief. As long as they promote the ends rather than the motivation, they can help one another, and do all the time.
David Foster Wallace, in the abstract, is right. To the extent that we have free will, we all get to choose a personal definition of our own beliefs - right or wrong - what it means to be a good person - what it means to be a christian or a secular humanist or something else. To the extent that we have any identity - our beliefs are part of it - so as long as we exist - the only choice we get is what to worship.
And, as long as your beliefs make you a better person - one who is willing to sacrifice a little bit to help others - one not so unreasonably greedy and materialistic that you have to be separated from society - You're o.k. in my book.
What being a follower of Jesus does not mean to me:
Mostly because I can't follow any humans interpretation of any_above_human_intelligence blindly, but for lots of reasons, I don't subscribe to:
- Interpreting anything in the bible literally - even remotely so.
- Accepting Judaism, or any other religion, as my own.
- Proselytization (unless you consider documentation, like this, that I will never point anyone to, proselytization)
- Excusing bad behavior for any reason, especially for the non-reason that "I'm going to have a fun afterlife, even if I am bad".
Collaboration:
It's not easy to collaborate on these things - one has to mostly work alone. I think the Bible is the main reason:
A number of things about Christianity that I absorbed in my upbringing in Catholicism resonate with me strongly. The bible itself didn't. It seems clear, even to a child, that something is odd about the bible - why are there so many accounts that seem to disagree with one another? Why are there so many versions of the book? Why does the god in the book make so little sense? What happened during all these translations over the centuries and why are there so many offshoot religions that disagree fundamentally on the bible with one another?
I *do* believe that there is a lot of wisdom in the stories of the christian bible concerning the nature of man - that the kernels of many true stories are held within - and that those stories fit with my view of God.
Of course I believe that it is a mistake to take the bible literally, or to look at it as historical - that would limit it's usefulness tremendously. The christian bible is a collection of recountings of stories of religious people. It was edited by powerful political organizations into what you read today. On that note, Alan watts makes a good point and the whole lecture here is an absolute classic - here's a snip: "to know that you are god is another way of saying that you feel...profoundly rooted with and connected to this universe...if you don't' know that...you feel alien...a stranger...hostile...and you try to make the world submit to your will...if you don't...you have to take responsibility for it"
I do, however, recommend reading the bible critically. Penn Jillette had this experience: "The bible itself will turn you aethiest faster than anything." I didn't have that same reaction. Maybe I was more cynical.
I have found that in discussing the bible, I am hedged into my own little world by two camps:
- People who make historical arguments about the supernatural, or follow a religion, or interpret anything in the bible in the least bit literally. Generally, these people proselytize.
- Secular skeptics who like to focus on the worst actions of religious people, and believe that even discussing the bible in a positive light lends strength to the worlds worst horrors. Generally, these people proselytize.
I'm just not in either of those groups, in the least.
What I'm still working on:
I'm still considering everything not listed above - I will return to those points another time.
Mostly, it's a joyous exploration of the theoretical possibilities of higher intelligence, and how it might be interacting with us as individual consciousnesses, and how we might be a part of it's whole. The rest of this document is along the lines of some of this happier work.
An important, unmet goal of this document is to understand better how to associate with others whose fundamental beliefs differ from my own. Right at this moment, I don't know much.
To me, proselytization - when defined as inducing someone to convert to ones beliefs - is never the way to make the world a better place - good examples are - good communication is.
Good works are pretty obvious to me - helping others at ones own cost in the short term is the age old method of both improving ones own condition and the human condition in the long term - it builds rather than describes common ground.
To me, good examples and good communication are grounded in small-r respect - association as a primary tool, as displayed by Alan Watts, educating with small-r respect (finding common ground as "perennial philosophy which has appeared in almost all times and places") and as opposed to Sam Harris, proselytizing by analogizing all religious folks to lunatics and idiots - making a lot of people upset, and getting nowhere, railing against (justifiably) big-R respect for others - something that is not respect at all, but ignorance.
Rather than "winning arguments" and getting cheers from the converted, I seek to do good works, let communication come, find common ground, and understand the beliefs of others, then the logic behind those beliefs, and therein find the common ground to work with. I would never start at the top, discuss the inadequacies of those who do not share my beliefs, and then convince myself I'm making a difference. IMHO, that's might make you famous among a fanbase, but it's a highly ineffective way to work.
That's about as far as I've got.
Secular interpretations of "God"
Please skip this if you can't stand to see a layperson speculate about the unknowable using some really questionable knowledge of physics.
I mentioned God in my definition of Christianity, so down the rabbit hole we go - briefly. Here is what Freeeman Dyson has to say about God:
“I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be considered to be either a world-soul or a collection of world souls. We are the chief inlets of God on this planet at the present stage in his development. We may later grow with him as he grows, or we may be left behind.” - Freeman Dyson
I go further, and (in most contexts) I interpret the word "God" to mean the intelligent creator of the universe we can detect, and, of course, all bodies and minds within. The existence of such a god seems far more likely to me than not. I often consider whether it is more likely that we exist within the structure of a God, or without - a simulation can run in the mind - and the borders of a mind are not always well defined. Incidentally, this is the kind of thinking for which Spinosa was ostracized.
If you haven't noticed already, I consider concepts from physics, computer science, and simulation theory as fantastic ways to think about intelligences greater than ours, inside or outside our universe, restricted by the arrow of time or not.
Take common paradoxes of spiritual thought, for example:
Paradox of Self Determination
I personally resolve this simply by referring to causal determinism as an outcome of Gods initial equations for the universe. That is, all future physical states spring from current states along the arrow of time. However, all life, being self-aware to some extent, is a biological simulation on top of the fundamental physical substrate of that lifes base reality. All living things believe, for good reason, that they have free will, and for all intents and purposes, they do.
So yes, you most definitely have free will at the application layer, but at the operating system layer - no, you most definitely do not have free will.
The Unknowable
First, I believe that everyone should go as far as they can go in the scientific exploration of this universe, while sticking to their ethical precepts. Contribute what you can. The fundament of science - documentation - makes you a special kind of citizen of the universe who gives to others in a truly meaningful way - a citizen scientist - to me, the most wonderful kind of scientist and citizen.
We go as far as we can, but we can only go so far:
The domain of the verifiably uknowable has been expanding rapidly since Goedle, if not earlier. The expansion of the universe, the halting problem, and all manner of maths have contributed to this. I suspect that the truth is that, of what information there is in the universe, there is very, very little that we can ever be exposed to, never mind derive further meaningful information from. We are forever forbidden from knowing the true nature and content of the universe in detail - we will always have approximations, theories, and tiny samples of data.
Still, utilizing the scientific method in my daily life, and the exploring the universe, is surely a truly noble goal from both a secular and a Christian(my definition) perspective - perhaps, in some circumstances, the noblest of goals...
As David Brin described:
[He proposes that when children perform scientific experiments, their wonderment is a finer, more true appreciation of Gods creation than a wrote prayer or words extolling his greatness without really *appreciating* his great works. Scientific revelation is like someone saying to God, "I truly understand you, and I am truly impressed." and then proving that they do.]
Most people who consider themselves strictly secular and most people who consider themselves spiritual can get behind the message of science as *appreciation* - science as *gratitude* - science as *wonder* - and I hope that will one day unite more people on a common ground.
Dimensionality and the human intellect
It's important to note that all of the correlations between spirituality and quantum and string physics I have seen ended in nonsense. However, there are probably some unknowable things that both physicists and spiritual people (yes, I know there is an intersection in those two groups) sometimes ask.
Neil Degrass Tyson asks whether the human mind is capable of understanding, or asking the right questions about, the more fundamental aspects of the universe. If you haven't already, you should watch this interview with him - for my money, it's one of his best and most thought provoking bits. ( Grrr...that link is broken. I am so sad that I didn't make a copy of that video - the wayback machine has the data, but can't play it back for me. This could be one that is the same or similar. )
I suspect that there are fleeting moments of insight that are rarely achieved in which certain human minds, in rare configurations, can indeed comprehend and analyze fundamental questions that could never be comprehended otherwise. As human minds are augmented, these may become commonplace. This will change the way we see some of these fundamental questions, including: "What's outside the matrix?" or "Is there evidence that an intelligent being created this universe, and do they participate in it's present operation?"
The Arrow of Time
Although I cannot pretend to understand spacetime in depth, I believe, as most physicists appear to believe, that we see the arrow of time. Probably all life does - even a carrot knows it's past. As of this writing, as far as I can tell, almost all humans understand time as essential to their concept of native consciousness.
Although I'm not about to conduct a survey, I would argue that most peoples concept of "god" require that god be superintelligent at least, and, most likely, not constrained by physics in the same way we are - either god is running the simulation - or he is physically outside the universe - and setting the constants. Such a being might control every other aspect of our universe, including the flow and perception of time.
Consider a god unconstrained by the temporal dimension in our universe (but perhaps by a similar dimension in another) - such a being could see the full picture of our universe, from creation to dissipation, as a single object. We could refer to such a view of that universe-object as a painting, or a tapestry, or some other viscerally satisfying descriptive - I'll go with tapestry, here.
I have seen no evidence that our consciousness remains in this universe after death. The only option, therefore, for continued conscious existence is to be suspended in a new one, or, indeed, to escape the arrow of time by entering mode of being that is not constrained by it, perhaps with a spectacular view of the universe we travel through today. I like that idea - looking back on our universe, as a near-infinite tapestry, knowing our place in it. It makes me want to paint a beautiful piece of it while I am alive. Another possibility is that we become something like a character in a book, read again and again, and lived at the same time (more on this below) - your chapter, in that case, is being read right now, as you read this.
Yes, I am incorrigible. Every day I try to learn more about physics, and I always find it a hopeful exercise - there is a wonderful concept in physics that the events of the present may change the past - this, to me, says something about redemption. Someday I will know enough physics to find another interpretation - but hope will always be around the corner.
Thoughts on the arrow of time and creationism:
I am not a creationist, nor do I "believe in creationism". This is another mine laid in the english language. Creationism is colloquially a religious belief. I am not religious.
I do think it likely that this universe was created by an intelligent being. I find it unlikely that was an act of "ancestor simulation". When we create simulations, we almost never simulate our ancestors, we create worlds of art - if this universe is anything like the one a creator lives in - the most likely thing is that we are what I would call art.
If you can see the arrow of time, you may have the perspective that a universe creator ( which I will call god) is after, the one for which his creations were designed to be lived in and through. There is a phrase for this idea that I have forgotten: The creator creates the universe as a microscope - to look in upon himself he has created it within him - he is exactly this universe, and he is you as you see it. He feels his art.
My contention is that your experienced dimensionality has to be identical to the dimensionality of any being you want to experience accurately.
It's a matter of flattening your perspective into 3D+t. If you have a much greater dimensionality, then you have to flatten it to understand it.
Say you are working on a computer for years. Programming, setting up it's processes, building the operating system bit by bit until operating the thing has become boring routine. Through this work you know it’s log streams passing by quite well as part of your experience.
If you then view the log file at a later time, after that computer is gone, you get the gist of what happened to that computer, but did you live it?
The process of creation and working with the computer gives you some idea of what happened while you created and observed - you may have experienced agony and joy as the time passed. The log file doesn't give you that same experience at all. It's a good story, but you don't live it because your sensed dimensionality does not match that of the original experience - you are viewing a simple logfile.
God can live his creation only through you, he spends time with you. If He wishes, He flattens himself into you in 3D+t, so that he can live it real-time.
Even if god can up-code a simulation that matches the dimensionality of a lower-dimension story with no loss, the experience cannot be the same. In general, a god will probably have to restrict his dimensionality, and come to live with the beings that he has created, to fully understand his creations.
It’s a beautiful dream, and a horrible one, to live with your creations.
This reminds us of our own stories, our own creations, the children of his children. Only to be gazed upon, truly experienced, and thereby loved, through our eyes. In this scenario, I believe it to be no mistake that every one of the finest things he has created is embodied in our joy of doing things for others.
Creating and helping others is far more nurturing to ourselves than the transitory drugs of the material world.
Why does this seem to be the law? It fits conveniently into his world, as we can conceive and describe, but never know.
A beauty indeed.
Only by both creating it and being there, and, perhaps, some sacrifice, to create contrast, can the art arise.
He can only see the arrow through us, and it points him to a universe of his creating, so profound and beautiful as to warrant the contrasting pain and agony, which he feels with us - he must - or nothing at all.
How cheap the lives of those drunk with power and wine, who spend their days acting for themselves and in their own name.
I feel none of it.
I not only act for a higher power, I know that I am, in a sense, a higher power, and it is in this realization that I go forth.
A higher power created this universe and set its laws.
Can it truly appreciate that universe without living and dying in it? Every story we have says no.
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