Is there a God?

[HAL9000]

The earth travels through space at great speed; at least hundreds of thousands of miles an hour.

A biological neural network generates a electrical field that 'modulates' the space-time substrate rushing through it. By analogy, that is like a tape recorder (a brain) imprinting signals on to a tape (space) passing through it.

Thus, 'thoughts' generated by living neurons are permanently etched into the fabric of space-time.

In theory, it should be possible to tune in to and replay those cosmic imprints.

Is it just coincidence that modern physics allows something like the biblical 'Book of Life' to exist within a scientific framework? Could the cosmic imprint be the biblical 'soul'?

[Peckhamgatecrasher]

Curly, this is the interpretation from the NIV Study Bible, written by a consortium of over 100 scholars working for the International Bible Society.

Ecc 9: 5 & 10

"When Solomon says the dead know nothing and that there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in death, he is not contrasting life with afterlife, but life with death. After you die, you can't change what you have done. Resurrection to a new life after death was a vague concept for OT believers. It was only made clear after Jesus rose from the dead.

Anyhoo - how does talking of an eternal soul or not prove that God exists which was the original poster's question?

[Jeremy]

HAL9000, that is certainly an imaginative theory!

This is not a physics thread so feel free to PM me if you wish to discuss this... but after you factor in interference from almost infinitely stronger sources, it's totally impossible... almost beyond the wildest realms of science fiction!

[Curly]

It's an interpretation that doesn't fit with Ezekiel 18. or that Adam & Eve's punishment was death (not afterlife) or that Jesus described death as a sleep-like (unconscious) state John 11:11-14.

[silverfox]

Yes Peckhamgatecrasher, talk of a soul is starting to veer off topic except perhaps in the sense that if it could be 'proved' that there is another dimension to humans, ie, while we're part of nature and live in the natural and physical world we also have a 'spiritual' element to ourselves (an essence that transcends the physical) then it opens up the possibility of the existence of a supernatural realm, and hence the possibility of a God.

(By the way, an amazing idea Hal9000. Although still dependent on the physical world of electrical fields it does allow for our continued existence after our death due to the way we affect space-time physically and mentally)

[HAL9000]

Jeremy & Silverfox

The hypothesis outlined above is part of my own work in the field known as Quantum Mind (or sometimes Q. Consciousness).

The disturbance in space-time posited is not electromagnetic but rather a quantum-scale electro-gravitational entanglement postulated by, for example, the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction) theory of consciousness.

My principal interest in the subject is to determine whether Judaeo-religious scriptures contain elements that appear to anticipate modern scientific understanding.

One striking example is the apparent congruence between the QM paradox known as Schr?dinger's cat and the alleged events that took place in Jesus' Tomb (i.e. resurrection of the dead). I've already mentioned the 'Book of Life' example above.

I'm not sure whether this tangent is entirely off topic in this thread, since this area of scientific research could eventually settle the question of whether a God-like entity exists or not. I'd welcome the opportunity to discuss this elsewhere if the Chair decides it is off topic.

[Jeremy]

Hal... that's pretty "out there"... I didn't realise you were so involved with this stuff. (Are you mentioned in the wiki article at all)?

I remain deeply skeptical, but give me a while to digest the info and I will relay my thoughts...

[silverfox]

Hal9000, why not start a new thread on this. It sounds as if a fair understanding of science/quantum theory may be needed to follow your idea but I'd be interested to try and to see what others think. On the other hand you could be pulling my leg with the reference to Q Consciousness and it's Star Trek associations.

[HAL9000]

Silverfox:

As bizarre as it appears at first sight, this subject is a major field of serious (albeit esoteric) scientific research.

A plain language overview is available here: Quantum Gravity and the Ontology of Consciousness.

Leading theorist Stuart Hameroff actually registered Quantum Consciousness Org for his own website. (I wish I'd thought of that first!)

I realise that you're pulling my leg here, but Star Trek's writers often borrowed from esoteric science papers for plot themes such as the Enterprise's Bussard nacelles, the episode about the Dyson Sphere and many more. One example: Raymond Kurzweil's and Kim Eric Drexler's ideas about human 'singularity' and ?nano-technology? (respectively) were undoubtedly the inspirations behind the Borg's hive mind and their assimilating nanites.

I'm not sure about a new thread though, sounds too much like hard work!

[silverfox]

Fair enough Hal9000. Thanks for the references. I'll try and keep up with you as you develop your idea and how it might go some way to answering the question whether a God-like entity exists.

(edited for typo)

[mockney piers]

Isn't the apparent congruence simply a consequence of taking an illustrative example of how the paths of electrons cannot be determined until observed, just a little bit too literally?

As far as I know it's not really to do with feline ressurection is it?

[HAL9000]

mockney piers

Quite right. But it's a useful literary device. Theorists often test rival QM interpretations against well-known paradoxes that have come to serve as benchmarks.

The resurrection 'miracle' can be described in terms of various QM interpretations that can be formulated, as it happens, into resolutions of the Schr?dinger's cat paradox.

The box/tomb element provides the necessary isolation for those theories that depend on decoherence, which is more difficult to model using, for example, the double slit paradox.

[mockney piers]

I'm not sure how formulating parallel interpretations of disparate concepts or phenomena is in any way useful other than in a sort of navel gazing intellectual excercise.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that per se, it can certainly be interesting and fun

But lending it any credece only results in theories like homeopathy, whereby the correlation between symptoms of a poison and those of an accident or illness, are conflated with classic vaccination theory. The ideas may have some confluence but theres nothing useful that emerges in the end is there?

[HAL9000]

As mentioned above, modern scientific reasoning can be used to resolve questions such as whether the biblical God exists.

As far as I am aware, no 'rational empiricist' has previously attempted to resolve this issue in terms of a Relativistic and/or Quantum Mechanical context - which is why I chose this area of 'blue sky' research.

If the biblical God created a Universe that behaves consistently in terms of Relativity and QM, those parameters may also apply to His own actions (i.e. miracles).

If the bible were written by people who knew nothing about QM then the miracles therein either shouldn't be resolvable or their resolutions should be randomly distributed across various interpretations.

The investigation so far has yielded an unexpected result: the NT 'miracles' analysed so far can be resolved by one particular QM interpretation.

What does that mean? Does God exist or did the ancient authors fabricate their miracles according to a coherent blueprint of the universe that has only recently been rediscovered?

Maybe I?m just weird, but I find this subject quite fascinating.

[Brendan]

Would it be remiss of me to draw parallels with Egyptian tombs, mummification, the importance of cats and the belief in the resurrection of the body?

The inhabitant of a sealed tomb, according to Schr?dinger, will be both alive and dead until the final day at the end of time when the dead are called on to rise. This is why the Egyptians went to such great ends to ensure that the dead were sealed in undisturbed and had a good supply of cats so that they could emerge unscathed on judgement day.

Schr?dinger's thoughts on quantum mechanics were obviously well known to the ancient Egyptians.

The Egyptian idea of the resurrection of the body is widely accepted to be the source of the Judeo-Christian belief in the resurrection of the body, still recited in the catholic creed. So there we have at least one major tenant of Christian faith that has a solid grounding in science.

Well in a quantum mechanics thought experiment at least. That?s kinda like science.

[HAL9000]

Brilliant! :)

[mockney piers]

That's really intereting. Thus the act of 'raiding' a tomb is actually a murderous one, as if it had remianed sealed they wouldn't be dead.

That lara and Indiana have a lot to answer for don't they.

[HAL9000]

Hence all the apparently lost cats in East Dulwich are actually victims of the double cat flap uncertainty principle. They remain in a quantum lost/found state until an observer collapses their wave function. Simples!

[silverfox]

Right, let me try and get my head around this.

A quantum superposition is the combination of all the possible states of a system (for example, the possible positions of a subatomic particle). The Copenhagen interpretation implies that the superposition undergoes collapse into a definite state only at the exact moment of quantum measurement.

Okay - if I understand this - it's only when the observer checks that you can tell what state the object (state) is in and according to Schr?dinger's Cat experiment it can't be both alive and dead at the same time as that would be a paradox. It has to be either alive or dead.

The problem I have in applying this to a Jesus in the tomb, Egyptian mummy resurrection example is can his example work in reverse? Eg, Schr?dinger's Cat experiment puts a live cat into a box with a flask of poison that may or may not have killed the cat which will only be known when the observer opens the box. Schr?dinger could not have put a dead cat into the box because he would have had to put something in the flask to bring the cat to life for us to ascertain whether it was dead or alive at the time we open the box, so it would always be dead when we open the box (although the theory seems to say the dead cat could be both dead or alive while we can't observe it in the closed box).

The Jesus/Egyptian mummy tomb example is similar in that the bodies placed in the tombs are both dead. There is nothing in the sealed tombs that can bring them back to life. Whatever force/power that may or may not have caused the resurrection of Jesus must have been an external source which would contaminate the possible states (quantum decoherence).

[Moos]

It certainly explains the infamous reluctance of a certain East Dulwich catflap fitting firm actually to do any catflap fitting.

[HAL9000]

Don't forget: Schr?dinger's thought experiment was intended to ridicule the Copenhagen interpretation.

QM does not recognise the arrow of time therefore alive/dead and dead/alive are equivalent: it's just the change in quantum state that is important.

The 'force/power' is God.

The biblical God is omnipresent therefore not necessarily outside of the box. (In fact He chose to 'reside' in a box: the Ark.)

One needs to make some assumptions: is God an 'observer' (i.e. does He collapse wave functions)? Does God play dice (hint: Einstein didn't think so)? Is God subject to the Uncertainty Principle? Does God cause decoherence? Is God local or non-local? Is God a hidden variable? Is God the father, the Son and the Holy Spirit an entangled trinity or three superpositions of the same entity? etc, etc.

Oh dear, I can't stop laughing....

[silverfox]

I suppose the answer to your questions is that I, in my live state (or is that my dead state?), don't know.

[HAL9000]

HAL9000 Wrote:

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> Oh dear, I can't stop laughing....

I've just realised that my last post is missing a few lines. What made me laugh this afternoon was the idea of applying for a research grant to resolve Schr?dinger's paradox using real cats based on Brendan's theory about Egyptian resurrection and mummified cats - well, it seemed funny at the time.

[silverfox]

Picking up on one of your earlier points Hal9000, what does Quantum Mind theory say about consciousness that may point to the existence of a God-like entity?

[Brendan]

Does QM stand for both Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Mind simultaneously until someone explains it to you?

Moreover the next time some non-speaker at work tells me to ?think outside the box? can I confront them with the existential dilemma that idea actually poses?

Or at least accuse them of cruelty to cats.