Editor’s note:Part 1 of this essay was published on November 29, 2023.
V.
The Omega point has given rise to two other cosmic theogonies that are worth reviewing here: first, a loose family of ideas that might be grouped together under the heading of the “selfish biocosm” hypothesis and, secondly, physicist John A. Wheeler’s theory of a “participatory universe.” Each of these concepts is far enough removed from the Christian connotations surrounding Teilhard and Tipler that—like the simulation hypothesis—they have won visible followings among mainstream intellectuals and can swim comfortably within the greater milieu of “Silicon Valley religion.”
The term “selfish biocosm” was coined by science writer James Gardner to refer to a particular explanation for the apparent fine-tuning of the universe. In general, “fine-tuning” refers to the fact that, in Freeman Dyson’s words, the particular conditions of the Big Bang seem to suggest that our “universe knew we were coming.”
While examples of apparent fine-tuning are well-known in both physics and contemporary religious apologetics, one powerful example may help introduce the general phenomenon. Physicist Martin Rees has suggested that perhaps the most striking example of fine-tuning is the universe’s “critical density”: that is, the balance between the universe’s rate of outward expansion and the inward pull of gravity. Tilting this ratio ever-so-slightly in either direction would have caused the universe to dissipate or implode before stars could form. In Rees’ words, the early universe looks like someone was “sitting at the bottom of a well and throwing a stone up so that it just comes to a halt exactly at the top.” Anyone who played with a Hoberman kinetic sphere as a child might also imagine a person tossing the sphere into the air so that it opens to some carefully-specified volume. Rees says the critical density reflects a “very finely-tuned impetus” balancing acceleration and deceleration: it cannot have “differed from unity by more than one part in a million billion.”
Long before James Gardner wrote his 2003 book Biocosm, many secular physicists—including Fred Hoyle, Edward Harrison, and Andrei Linde—had suggested that the explanation for fine-tuning could be an ostensibly nontheological designer. Paul Davies writes that, because physicists often acknowledge that we could in principle create a universe in the far future, “it is but a small step to the speculation that [our own] universe is the engineered product of an intelligent designer who evolved naturally in an earlier universe.” Davies compares this putative creator to “Plato’s demiurge.” This willingness of secular physicists to entertain some kind of “demiurge” hypothesis has given rise to atheist Michael Shermer’s self-titled epigram “Shermer’s Last Law”: “Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God.”
James Gardner’s influential Biocosm helped to formalize and popularize one coherent “demiurge” theory. His “selfish biocosm hypothesis” imagines that our universe is the outcome of an evolving chain of universes, with intelligent life serving as the mechanism of cosmic propagation. Gardner’s formulation incorporates a 1997 proposal by physicists J. Richard Gott III and Li-Xin Li, who argued that a series of demiurge-engineered universes could exhibit a causal “looping configuration” as a result of a “closed timelike curve.”
In Gott and Li’s words, their scenario supposes that the “first universe simply turned out to be one of the infinite ones formed later by intelligent cultivations.” Gardner somewhat begrudgingly acknowledged his own intellectual debt to Teilhard and Tipler, noting that his own hypothesis predicts that each successful universe will reach an Omega point.
Gardner’s hypothesis has been discussed with interest by figures from Paul Davies to futurist Ray Kurzweil, who promoted the concept in his famous 2005 book The Singularity is Near. The success of Biocosm has likely been helped by the great pains that Gardner took to distance his ideas from the whiff of theological incense surrounding Teilhard and Tipler.
On examination, however, Gardner’s emphatic protests that his own Omega point was not “God” were curiously underdeveloped. At the end of the day, he could do little more than point to his strong sense that any being who would permit “horrors like Auschwitz” is not a “loving creator” worthy of worship, dismissing any suggestions to the contrary as “delusions from which we may occasionally draw comfort and consolation.”
VI.
Physicist John Archibald Wheeler took the concept of an Omega point in a different direction. After suffering from a heart attack, Wheeler decided to focus what remained of his life on the ultimate question: “Why existence?”. The result of his inquiries was his famous slogan “it from bit”—that is, “matter from information”—and his concept of a “participatory universe” or “Participatory Anthropic Principle.”
Like the theorists behind other cosmic theogonies, Wheeler saw a central role for mind in the cosmos. He understood the universe’s fine-tuning as one line of evidence for the cosmic importance of mind. Wheeler also saw a second line of evidence in the way in which the act of observation enters into quantum mechanics. Wheeler’s theogony builds upon the concept of an Omega point to draw both lines of evidence into a single coherent explanation.
To students of popular physics, Wheeler may be familiar as the inventor of the “delayed choice” variation of the famous double-slit experiment. To put it briefly, delayed-choice experiments appear to show that the act of observation can exert a backwards-in-time effect on the location of particles. In Paul Davies’ words, the experiments suggest that “spur-of-the-moment decisions made by the experimenter affect the nature of reality… as it was, in the past.”
Wheeler, accordingly, explained the fine-tuning of our universe by suggesting that space-time is being observed by our Omega point: a far-future cosmic sentience which, through a causation beyond time, is coalescing and shaping our universe into a place suitable for mind to develop. Through this process, our Omega point is bringing itself into being. Paul Davies says that “my own inclinations… lie in the direction of [Wheeler’s theory].”
The participatory universe may be familiar to students of Christian idealism. A limerick on George Berkely, attributed to the theologian Ronald Knox, prefigured Wheeler:
There was a young man who said “God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there’s no one about in the quad.”Reply:
“Dear Sir: Your astonishment’s odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.”
These cosmic theogonies are not mutually exclusive. We might imagine that our universe exists within a computer substrate, that our future Omega point is required by the laws of physics, that our Big Bang was engineered by the Omega point of a preceding universe, and that our future Omega point shapes our current space-time reality through observer-participancy. If any one of these cosmic theogonies were true, central aspects of historic atheism would be false. If more than one of these theories were true, Western naturalism could be false with respect to every one of its fundamental claims. Mind and purpose would be interwoven into the foundation of the world along multiple dimensions of reality.
The Omega point theogonies we have just discussed are more than philosophical and mathematical conclusions: they also make a range of falsifiable predictions. According to Tipler, Gardner, and Davies, their theories all predict that our universe is coded with a “cosmic imperative” to create life and mind. Omega point theorists have accordingly claimed that their theories predict the existence of extraterrestrial life, the discovery of an alternative form of microbial life on Earth, convergent evolution towards sentience in non-primate species, and the eventual creation of artificial general intelligence. At the time of this writing, the latter possibility looks increasingly inevitable.
VII.
Consider some of the ways that cosmic theogony is significant for Christians in the secular West. To begin with, the advance of cosmic theogony should nail shut the coffin of fideism and end the recent death-grip of fideists on the mind of Christians. In this context, I am using “fideists” to refer to Christians who believe that it is futile or counterproductive to present secular people with arguments and evidence that theism is true.
Ur-fideist Blaise Pascal wrote that “metaphysical proofs of God are so remote from the reasoning of men, and so complicated, that they make little impression.” While fideists have long dismissed personal stories that contradict this premise, the march of cosmic theogony has decisively exposed it as false.
Defenders of fideism might leap up to protest that cosmic theogony is a long way from Christian theism and, in many cases, will be flat-out incompatible with some of Christianity’s hard-fought historical claims. Yet this objection is shifting the goalpost.
It is true that fideists object to natural theology on the grounds that convincing an atheist of Plato’s demiurge would be a job half-done. Yet Pascal—and his more recent followers—have also claimed that reason cannot bring a secular person to theism. Pascal wrote that it is impossible to demonstrate “by natural reasons either the existence of God, or the Trinity, or the immortality of the soul, or anything of that nature.” As we have seen, even professing atheists now disagree.
You may think that cosmic theogony is inherently anti-Christian, or—like Stoicism and the Roman Cult of Sol—a kind of porch or gateway drug to true religion. What you cannot deny is that, when Neil deGrasse Tyson suggests that humanity’s dramatic history is evidence of design, this is a form of theism.
Nor is the idea of cosmic theogony “so complicated” as to make “little impression” on people. The film Interstellar, judging from box office and home video sales, was at least 70% as accessible as the Hobbit film released the same year. YouTube videos on the simulation hypothesis have millions of views. Cosmic theogonies also count upon adherents who, like Elon Musk, are among the most powerful and influential people in the world.
The belief that natural theology cannot fire the human imagination or change minds about the nature of reality has been exposed as a kind of lazy rationalization and psychosomatic illness. It turns out that, if Christians continue to forsake our philosophical heritage for sappy anti-intellectualism, secular people will simply do their own natural theology without us.
VIII.
Cosmic theogony also shines a blazing light upon the deepest sociological wiring of secularism. This light illuminates important opportunities.
The ideas we’ve discussed have led many secular people to embrace traditionally religious conclusions—for example, that conscious design might explain certain properties of our universe—that these same people might otherwise reject as a priori false, silly, and abhorrent. It’s as if someone has found a way to jailbreak the software of the secular mind. How has this happened?
Even atheists who are basically dismissive of cosmic theogony, like Richard Dawkins, are nonetheless willing to discuss it as a relatively serious proposition. I don’t imagine that anyone has ever accused Hans Moravec, for example, of believing in a “magic wizard in the sky.”
Philosopher David Chalmers has observed that, while the Engineers of the simulation hypothesis have some of the properties of the traditional God, many atheists believe that “the possibility of a creator… suddenly seems somewhat more naturalistic and somewhat less spooky and metaphysical than many of the traditional views.” But what “spooky” property of traditional religion might account for this sudden difference?
Other secular thinkers have sensed this distinction but struggled to articulate it, faring little better than Chalmers. Andrei Linde has asked if “our universe was created not by a divine designer but by a physicist hacker.” James Gardner pitched his biocosm hypothesis as “a nontheological explanation for the origin of the laws and constants of nature.” Mathematician Louis Crane has suggested that, under a version of the biocosm hypothesis, it may be that the “traditional spheres of religion and science will fuse, but on a new basis, and with no mystical illusions.”
When secular proponents of cosmic theogony wish to distinguish their views from religion, they generally help themselves to vague concepts such as “spooky,” “metaphysical,” and “nontheological.” Readers of these theorists are apparently expected to share their intuition that a “physicist hacker” who created the universe is palatable in some sense that a “divine designer” is not, even though it is not obvious what the conceptual differences between the two would be.
This veil of “spookiness” can be seen in the musings of Albert Einstein. Einstein believed that physics revealed “a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit superior to that of man.” Yet Einstein also disdained the idea of a God involved in our personal affairs as a mere “reflection of human frailty.”
Einstein himself was shy and introverted, preferred to sleep apart from his wife, and often withdrew into equations to escape from his personal problems. Einstein apparently did not ask himself whether the disinterested demiurge-mathematician of his personal metaphysics might have been a reflection of Einstein’s own personal frailties. Something similar could be said of secular thinkers—like Nietzsche or Olaf Stapledon—who have entertained a fond hope that the foundation of all things is evil.
Secular thinkers like Sigmund Freud have seen the common thread uniting great scientific revolutions as the defeat of human arrogance. Yet what Freud saw as arrogance was actually an optimistic humility: a belief in God’s love for human beings in spite of our limitations. In this sense, a son’s arrogance does not consist in his own hubris, but in trusting in the unmerited love of his parents.
Is divine love implausible? Freeman Dyson suggested that minds at the time of the Omega point will have thoughts “as inaccessible to us as our thoughts and feelings are inaccessible to earthworms.” Yet I can distinctly remember helping my elementary school classmates save earthworms after a rainstorm. How many more earthworms might we have saved if we had possessed qualitatively infinite minds?
This is, after all, well-trodden ground. If the only lingering intellectual objection to religion is that a divine mind cannot love, or that a good God would not allow evil, then secularists will find that they have simply become novices in the cathedral schools of the High Middle Ages.
Alternatively, “spookiness” could be understood as a much shallower expression of mere tribalism. In other words, the beliefs of a Mormon or a Sufi about the origin of the universe—whatever they might be—are by definition “mystical illusions.” It is only if a Western academic or scientist arrives at ontologically equivalent beliefs that those beliefs are “naturalistic.”
Perhaps cosmic theogony has avoided connotations of “metaphysics,” not because it is actually less metaphysical than traditional theology, but because secularists do not perceive it as a challenge to the values of the contemporary West. A theogony may be “nontheological” for no other reason than because it does not seem to endanger the sexual ethics of the time and place where secular people happen to be born. If spookiness really is mere tribalism, then secular Westerners might become hostile to cosmic theogony if more secular people follow Tipler in progressing from cosmic theogony into a traditional religion.
Could this tribalism be all that remains of the West’s once-proud denial of God? In 1903, Bertrand Russell articulated these arkan al-Islam of atheism: that man is the product of causes without purpose, that love and hope are nothing more than accidental collocations of atoms, that all things are destined to extinction in the void, and that we must therefore build our habitation “only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair.” Today, the “religion of Silicon Valley” has knocked down every cold and haughty pillar of Bertrand Russell’s temple of death. Bertrand Russell is dead and we have killed him.
In conversations with curious but intransigent secular friends, I have raised cosmic theogonies as a point of comparison, metaphor, or thought experiment and have seen hidden defenses come down. The spookiness—whatever it is—of traditionally religious propositions can often be removed or lessened simply by discussing cosmic theogony. Even where cosmic theogonies lead to something very different from traditional religious ideas, they can help secular people to assess orthodox Christian claims in a new light and with the veil of spookiness parted or lifted away.
Cosmic theogony is not the light, but it reflects some light through a glass darkly. It has already begun to drive a certain kind of occlusion and darkness from the secular mind. As its variations multiply, it collapses the probability that our reality is a mindless and purposeless collocation of particles in a void. At the same time, it compels secular people to think in traditionally religious terms about God, providence, and the soul.
This is, of course, not the whole story. Like Stoicism and other analogous pre-Christian beliefs, cosmic theogony contains both truth and dangerous falsehood. Yet its falsehood should not be an excuse for continuing to underestimate and ignore it any more than its truth should be an excuse for passively welcoming its triumph. Without engagement from traditionally religious thinkers, its insights will not be brought to their fullest fruition and its dangers will not be wholly discovered and disclosed.
Cosmic theogony is, after all, an entrance into a landscape which traditional religion has been mapping for thousands of years. If Christians enter into its unfolding journey, secular travelers may look back and realize the veil of spookiness is suddenly behind them. Then they may hear a voice saying—as Herbert imagined—“You have traveled far to see this.”
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Yours truly is eager to reread this piece, but my question will be how is cosmic theogeny any different from Monism? So, here (drawing from a CWR comment in 2020) are some thoughts about the mentioned extraterrestrials, as compared to the extraordinary uniqueness (yes?) of what is truly human (despite 100 billion galaxies each boasting and average of a 100 billion stars, and a whole bunch of planets).
Something about the divine nature and the human nature—not a hybrid but totally both—subsisting/existing within a Person who at the same time (!) is eternally at home within the Triune One.
(1) Have any possible and technologically advanced civilizations in the cosmos also been GIVEN by God—both immanent and transcendent—a different key for the Beatific Vision? Or, is there a glass-ceiling for this kind of image-ness of “intelligence” and “will,” GIFTED (!) irreducibly from above rather than theogenized from within and below?
(2) Or, how might any cosmically-multiple polygenesis in the “image and likeness” of God (nothing less) square with our terrestrial Original Sin (and original innocence), then plus the SINGULAR redemptive act of the unique Jesus Christ? Is our familiar, universal, and creaturely capacity to sin against and betray God (!) a worse-than-unevolved detail, then healed by a freely given, alarming, and particular Redemption (say what?) by the Creator?
(3) Or, is any such Redemption and even deification multiple-across-space-and-time, and yet still ONE ACTION (not an assembly line product)? Just as every Mass (capital M!) around the “world” and across time IS both the unbloody “renewal/extension” of the singular Calvary, while also “numerically distinct”? Or, does the heart of God expose itself only here in a backwater galaxy and backwater Jerusalem—perhaps because none of those other intelligences ever “fell,” or were even given the capacity to fall? Scientia, but not Sapienta?
(4) Or, instead, and because Christ is not a myth, and with Blessed Duns Scotus, might He have become incarnate here (and even elsewhere, simultaneously?), despite the possible absence of our particular need for salvation history. By an action of overflowing of divine charity (more than love) which embraces, but is not limited to our self-inflicted (not evolutionary) need for damage control?
(5) Or, despite any technical superiority from elsewhere (space travel), is our own access toward the Beatific Vision still a most singular gift, in-but-not-of any Monism or cosmic theogeny? Pope St. John Paul II proposed a distinctive “ONTOLOGICAL LEAP” (sometimes fatally mistranslated as only an “evolutionary” leap?). Ontological as from a higher level, above and before any more horizontal Omega point?
(6) Now, an ANALOGY rather than a fusion: Of the physical universe, we learn of “particle entanglement” whereby a particle in one galaxy can affect another particle across “space” and “time” in another galaxy even at the other end of the “universe”—simultaneously! As if the extensions of “space and time” do not even exist apart from “particles,” except in our humanly finite imaginations. Particle entanglement on the small scale, and cosmic theogeny on a large scale….
But, are there still LEVELS of distinction, in the same way that a curved parabola approaches a straight vertical axis but without ever quite touching?….Touching? Rereading, yes. But what of the not-quite-touching finger of God on Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling?
Very well written article that leads the reader up to the portico of Wisdom without actually entering. To make those final steps, one needs to realize that there is a strong antipathy to any Christian notion of Creation or a loving-triune God as evidenced by Weinberg’s comment this the standard model is the best because it is the one that “least agrees with Genesis” as well as the countless assaults on the Big Bang (discovered by a priest no less) with a theory of cyclical inflation. I’ll leave it to the intelligent to figure out who is leading the charge and the underlying motivations but a cursory review of the leading proponents of string theory, i.e., a theory with no testable hypotheses, offers some clues.
Dear Ian Huyett,
Wynnie O’Neil, your loyal supporter, said she cried when reading the conclusion of your two articles. Me, too, am almost in tears at the realization your presentation on ‘cosmic theogony’ (that materiality generated God rather than the Catholic revelation of God generating materiality) demonstrates your eternal soul is in peril.
We’ve been waiting for a cogent declaration of New Testament Apostolic faith in the absolute & unchallengeable authority of King Jesus Christ in all matters spiritual & physical. That has not materialized – maybe you have a Part 3 that will show you are a fair dinkum catholic Christian?
Yours is a wonderful example of far-out scientistic speculation with a patina of deistic naturalism utterly dependent on ‘clever’ human speculations & their desire to avoid acknowledging who Jesus Christ was ‘pro kataboles kosmou’; who He is right now; & who He will be through to the end of this universe.
Many are mystified as to why CWR has published such anti-Apostolic scientism, devoid of any interest in knowing, loving, hearing, & following Jesus Christ, our creator, sustainer, only teacher, savior, resurrection, & eternal life.
Contra dear Wynnie O’Neil’s promise, your Part 2 has merely, somewhat repetitiously reiterated a common deistic heresy worse than atheism.
Are you aware of the considerable scholarship dealing with interdisciplinary science and theology. For example, check out CTNS at Berkeley and their well-established journal ‘Theology & Science’.
I mean, you need to show that you are au fait with the frontline thinkers, not swept off your feet by pseudoscience. As it stands, the syncretist, unitarian, universalist, mechanicalism of both your articles is redolent of freemasonry and its arch-deceptive ‘Great Architect of the Universe’ attempting to counterfeit our lovely God.
Dear Ian Huyet, you’ve been hooked by speculative, deist cosmologies that cannot be lived as the creeds of Catholicism allow, that is in highly experiential relationship with our beautiful, humble, always with us, omnicompetent, omnibenevolent God & best friend, Jesus Christ.
If you would like to be restored to genuine, everlasting relationship with God in Christ you need to find help. There are many brilliant faithful Catholic clergy & lay who could put you on the right track. I’m prepared to humbly assist with that if you want (martyjrice@msn.com).
Ever aspiring to hear, lovingly obey, & follow Jesus Christ; blessings from marty
The fact is that God is God and man is man and He knows and we don’t. We live on a planet and we can look at it and out at the universe that it is part of. We have very very limited brains and senses to observe and cogitate our observations and draw conclusions, but these conclusions are merely hypotheses at best; and in a way we could say one man’s guess is as good as another. God has also given us a few revelations to consider, but these too are very murky and subject to various interpretations. In the end we must conclude that He knows and we don’t.
by your logic, we could also say that one man’s god is as good as another’s, and to that point, a scenario where one has died and faces “judgement”, potentially for having misplaced their faith in THE WRONG VERSION of god, is nonsensical. if the bar for confidence is so low that “faith” qualifies, all bets are off, in the most literal sense possible.
And can’t
Right on, dear James Connor, intellectual humility preconditions us to receive:
“But when The Spirit of Truth comes, He will lead you to the complete truth, since He will not be speaking as from Himself but will say only what He has learnt; and He will tell you of the things to come. He will glorify Me [Jesus Christ], since all He tells you will be taken from what is Mine. Everything The Father [God] has is mine; that is why I said: ‘All He tells you will be taken from what is Mine.'” John 16:13-15.
“- still, for us there is one God, The Father, from whom all things come and for whom we exist; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things come and through whom we exist.” 1 Corinthians 8:6.
“The unspiritual are interested only in what is unspiritual, but the spiritual are interested in spiritual things. It is death to limit oneself to what is unspiritual; life and peace can only come with concern for the spiritual. That is because to limit oneself to what is unspiritual is to be at enmity with God; such a limitation never could and never does submit to God’s Law.” Romans 8:5-7
“The Holy Spirit of God bears united witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if we are children, we are heirs as well; heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, sharing His suffering so as to share His glory.” Romans 8:16-17
Ignorant of what is truly real, obsessed by what is destined for destruction, with brains steadily shrinking, there’s no hope for Homo sapiens – EXCEPT for the promise of Christ’s Word to instruct us, Christ’s Blood to cleanse us, and Christ’s Holy Spirit to counsel us, comfort us, & guide us into eternally unshakeable reality.
The material ‘glories’ of this universe & of quantum cosmology fade into obscurity in the Light of the spiritual realities revealed to us Catholic Christians; realities we can choose to experience everyday. Let God, the Uncreated One, be glorified forever!!!
Ever in the grace & mercy of Jesus Christ; love & blessings from marty
From the article “Yet Pascal—and his more recent followers—have also claimed that reason cannot bring a secular person to theism.” A principal of secularism is that there are no principals, no objective Truth thus every truth calm, irrespective how irrational, is subjective in violation of the principal of non-contradiction. A guiding tenant of modern secularism is certainly atheism that in concert secular irrationality precludes effective reasoning with the materialists. Having rejected first principals a simple transition to the rejection of Catholic Dogmas in their relentless pursuit of novelties as the author illuminates in this article. In closing, I would suggest the author read the Edward Feser’s “Last Superstition” and “Aristotle’s Revenge”.
Back in the late 1970s and early 80s, all science majors first had to take a course on how the universe still exists when man is not looking at it. This was actually a brutal attack and cover up, by the atheists, on proof that God exists. Once you have dirt, meaning the complex structure of how subatomic particles work, only then can puffed up pride, atheist scientists go to work on showing how smart they are and how they no longer need God. Dirt, simply popping into existence from nothing, simply because a conscious observer looks at it, which only God can do, is very problematic for atheists to explain. Thus, all of science switched from following the proven science of the double slit experiment, to relying on Albert Einstein’s philosophy of ‘Realism’, which is basically Einstein saying we will just wait until someone smarter than him comes along to explain how dirt pops into existence from nothing physical to become a physical subatomic particle, with specific properties, in a specific location, with a specific path of travel, governed by specific laws of nature.
The double slit experiment is up to sending 800 atom molecules through the double slit experiment. If you look at the 800 atom molecule go through the double slit, it goes through as an 800 atom molecule. If you do not look at the 800 atom molecule as it goes through the double slit, it goes through as simply a wave of all possible properties, in all possible locations, taking all possible paths of travel, and obeying all possible natural laws of nature. Only our All-Powerful God can do this. Not a false god Alien hacker who does not exist when a God Created Soul/Conscious Observer, is not looking at it.
Dr. Quantum Explains Double Slit Experiment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q4_nl0ICao
PBS Space Time, The Great Bohr – Einstein Debate
https://youtu.be/tafGL02EUOA
Battle Over Quantum Mechanics Albert Einstein VS Neils Bohr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBgC0PyIomU
A Quantum Experiment Suggests There is no such thing as Objective Reality.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/03/12/136684/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/
How the Quantum Eraser Rewrites the Past | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ORLN_KwAgs
The Miracle of the Sun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4IbOzuNlmE
Can you imagine Bilocating to witness the actual Birth of Jesus?
Jesus teaches that even, “the life and actions of his (Jesus) own Humanity”, “exists in the present”, living in the Divine Will. Jesus says, “Since God exists outside of time – everything in the Divine Will exists outside of time.”
Merry Christmas Everyone! I can’t wait to get my ticket!
“Jesus told Luisa how everything is contained in the Divine Will: the life and actions of his own Humanity, and everyone’s life and actions which have been perfected by him. Since God exists outside of time – everything in the Divine Will exists outside of time. So in effect, we say that it exists in the present. For example, think of last Saturday and realize that all your actions – whatever you did – still exist in the Divine Will.”
Quoted from: “Luisa Piccarreta and the Divine Will – Teachings of Jesus”, by Susanne James, published 2020
Jesus took Catholic Mystic Luisa Piccaretta (1865-1947) around the physical multiverse, and to different gatherings of people anywhere in the world, while other people observed her body, “in a death like state” in her bed at home. Luisa lived in the ‘Divine Will’ with the Holy Trinity for sixty years (Luisa was only the fifth person to live in the Divine Will, after Adam, Eve, Mary and Jesus). Subatomic particles are all set up to scientifically make physical Bilocation possible.
Living in the ‘Divine Will’, is the future of State of Grace Catholics, who will live in Jesus’ “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, ‘New Jerusalem’, ‘Holy City’, post apocalyptic Catholic Church. Scientifically, subatomic particles, with the capability of building any, out of all possible multiverse physical ‘Realities’, around our Consciousness/Soul (only when we are looking at it), makes physical ‘Bilocation’ of the physical multiverse, scientifically possible.
‘Luisa Piccarreta and the ‘Divine Will’ – Teachings of Jesus’ by Susanne James copyright 2020.
“All her adult life Luisa manifested particular strange symptoms – which confused the clergy in the early years. What happened was that at night she would go into a death-like state. Completely rigid and immovable. In the morning she could not rouse herself, not until she was blessed by a priest. Luisa’s early writings give an account of this unusual experience. She was not asleep, in fact she slept very little.
Luisa tells us how her soul would sometimes leave her body at night, and she enjoyed blissful freedom when Jesus took her around the universe. He used these occasions for teaching her (she does not describe the universe). Luisa also had various mystical experiences at night, including visits to Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. She would consistently experience the Passion of Jesus – in limited forms, for as mentioned she was a victim soul. Such people have a very rewarding relationship with Jesus, and their suffering is balanced by wonderful blessings. (page 22)”
Thank you Ian!
Yup!
Participatory bringing into being by our intent to notice the previously unknown and other after the fact presumptions delineated by Ian Huyett reverts back to reality as consciousness – rather than consciousness of reality.
There’s an erie semblance to the Synod on Synodality [SOS a proper acronym] unfolding layers of revelation, cannily alluded to, “If Christians enter into its unfolding journey” [Huyett] the possible existence in metaphysical terms may eventually be less spooky. Huyett’s closing lines, if we refer it to the SOS, is hopeful thinking. Theogony as Huyett warns contains truths and dangers. The reason, of course, is that this SOS nouveau search for God departed from that revealed truth.
My initial comment is a preliminary assessment of Huyett’s investigative work, requiring further reading and thought, largely because of the complexity contained in assessing a “cosmic theogony [that] contains both truth and dangerous falsehood”.
Primary falsehood is the failure of thinkers critiqued by Huyett to distinguish mind from matter, who “revert back to reality as consciousness – rather than consciousness of reality”. A failure that underscores sensible perception as the first principle of all knowledge, the perception by which the reflective intellect, becoming conscious of self from what is known, is initially actualized. From that error of epistemic cognition the distinction between the knowing person and what he perceives become indistinguishable, unleashing all the errors including Monism cited by Peter Beaulieu.
It would seem, from the point of reference for the Church (Aristotelian-Thomism and therefore Classical Theism), that the essay draws from the alternative, representative Greek for whom nature was “inscrutable and chaotic” (Liebeskind, “Einstein in Athens” for “The New Atlantis”) grasped darkly through Hesiod’s “Theogony”, e.g., and reflecting not an analogous explanation of creation for us today, but man’s incapacity for doing so. As Liebeskind states, “In the ‘Theogony’, the first thing to come into being, the source of all that comes after, is Chaos”. In contrast, there were philosophical schools that argued for reason and science regarding the understanding of nature.
To the Aristotelian-Thomist, the historical trajectory seems clear. The rejection of form and teleology, etc., by the Early Moderns in favor of mechanistic, quantifiable-only conceptions of nature has left moderns like David Chalmers mulling over the interaction of physical brain functions, with subjective experience (pain, smell, color, taste, etc.) which much of modern science claims is not a real property in the physical world (including the brain itself, i.e.). He has resorted to panpsychism, mentioned as one of the openings to the consideration of theism in the essay, (minimally, all matter is conscious to a degree, such as the pixels in your monitor) presumably to evade a personal God.
For myself, the hope that some resistance to theism is lessened or eliminated via cosmic theogony seems like a concession to the mechanistic, rather than metaphysical view of nature, and the long way home for individuals whose commitment to materialism has heretofore prevented them from recognizing intelligence and purpose in nature.
This article (and Part I) seems to be (in the most charitable assessment) a consideration of the philosophy of science, rather the philosophy of religion. It seems to be based more on a consideration of the implications of science and scientific hypothesis than a true quest or method for a natural understanding about God, a consideration that still appears to strongly restrain the modern scientific mindset from a life of faith. The once-atheistic, scientifically-minded (in conversation with the technological and fantastical-minded) might find it an interesting debate amongst themselves, but it is unlikely to significantly raise the percentage of Catholic converts. Chesterton once wrote (of Spiritualists), “Modern people think the supernatural so improbable that they want to see it.” We might say that the “simulationist” or cosmic theogonist thinks the supernatural so improbable that he just always needs to explain it. But explain it in his own terms and at variance to orthodoxy. I am sure that a certain number of people throughout history came to faith in God and Christ through the argument from design (inspired by grace); however, I would think that many more just lingered and petered out in deism. To think that this boutique philosophy is going to be used for evangelizing goes against everything we know about the history of the propagation of the faith, all the way back to St. Paul in the Areopagus, when the crux of the matter, Christ rising from the dead, is finally proclaimed. I won’t be critical of CWR for posting this series in that it was illuminating for understanding that such notions are circulating in the world. However, it seems a notion less to celebrate than to protect against; for any religion of the technological oligarchy will eventually require in the Church more defenders of the faith (and martyrs), than RCIA coordinators.
I’ve read that some resent the inclusion of this pair of articles in CWR. I don’t for reasons not important to anyone but myself. Instead I thank CWR for publishing this.
Having said this and adding that I understand much of what is discussed in the article, I must say I prefer the infant Jesus as our Lord to some omega point mostly because He really is God.
Exactly, dear ‘Fulco One Eye’. “What Babe Is This!” resounds thro’ our whole universe.
There’re much New Testament wisdom relevant to this article & comments. A pericope that’s rare in sermons [but should be common) is 1 John 3:8b –
“The Som of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the works of the devil.”
As we celebrate Christ’s birth this Christmas let’s recall how this gentle Child comes with a comprehensive cosmic mission – to destroy the works of the devil, Satan, Lucifer, the ancient serpent, the red dragon, father of lies & evil, robber, murderer, destroyer. Ref. Catechism of the Catholic Church # 392 & # 394.
When someone bows their knee to the devil and/or his works, they state they’re opposed to the Incarnation of Blessed Mary’s Son, The Son of God, Christ, The Messiah.
Knowingly or in ignorance those who dally with the devil in freemasonry, witchcraft, spiritism, occult, & theogony are inherently opposing the birth of Christ.
This is a wake-up call for them to discern the solid content, amidst the pagan fluff of ‘the festive season’, AND repent, renounce evil, & serve God in Christ alone.
Happy Serious Christ-Mass everyone; love & blessings from marty