Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

   Post 90. July 4, 2019 continued . . .

  Nontraditional God Model

   Spiritual Physicist

 When Muller says his belief in God strengthens him, that might sound like the faith of a Judeo-Christian-Muslim true believer. But I suspect he means that the notion of a reliable, logical, mathematical system for the world gives him a strong foundation for personal character and social morality. He explains, “Mine is not the traditional God, but I believe (here the use is correct) that my God is the basis for the worship found in most other religions. People desperately try to understand the nature of the spiritual world, and organized religions try to help them, but they do it mostly by creating stories and myths. I have never found an “organized” religion that expresses my own observations of God and the spiritual world.” That’s also how I view my own non-traditional deity concept. It’s not the parochial deity of a self-chosen people from a tiny backwater of the world, but the general concept of a creator & sustainer of the whole cosmos. All religions probably began with such a generic “Great Spirit” notion, but over time encrusted it with myths, legends, & taboos peculiar to their own ethnicity and ethos. That’s why the organized religion of one tribe will seem strange to those from another historical path.

As a physicist, Muller may also have a non-traditional inter-pretation of the conventional term “spiritual”. The ancients inferred the presence of invisible human-like agents in the world that had effects with no obvious cause. But today physicists have more practical & predictable concepts of invisible Energy3 as the local cause of macro effects, and of a mysterious intangible sub-world of subtle quantum effects. Nevertheless, he uses that archaic term in a philosophical sense rather than that of most ancient religions. “One point is absolutely obvious to me. The world of the spirit exists clearly as does the world of physics. I write about this quite a bit in my recent book “Now”. I believe it is what Jesus meant when (according to tradition) he said that the world of God is here, now. He was not referring to himself but to the spiritual world, the world of the spirit and of the soul, the world in which the words good and evil make sense.” In the Enformationism worldview, the “spiritual world” is the realm of abstract information that flows through the physical sphere in the form of energy and mind. And the Self/Soul is the information pattern that encodes the real You. Since the 1940s, the world of immaterial Enformation has been shown to exist just as surely as the classical material world of Isaac Newton. But, I doubt that Jesus had fore-knowledge of that kind of modern spirit.

If the creator is omnipotent and omniscient, then why is the creation so flawed? Why should the dichotomy of Good versus Evil “make sense”?4 Traditional arguments attempting to justify our Yin/Yang situation, have not been convincing to atheists, who find the existence of Evil to be evidence against the biblical portrayal of God. That’s why my PanEnDeist god-model is assumed to be “beyond good and evil”. Logically, an eternal-infinite entity must encompass all possibilities, from best to worst. Those potentialities are like Plato’s Forms, in that they are abstract & ideal until actualized into reality. Presumably, the deity for reasons know only to H/er, decided to “empty” He/rself of immaterial immortality5, and take on the form of a material world of sin & death. In that sense, my non-traditional deity has some correspondence to the conventional notion of a self-sacrificing god. 

  End of Post 90                  

The God
of
Physicists

3. Energy = Enform-action :
   Energy is not a thing. It’s a relationship between things. It’s a ratio like 1 : 2, or hot : cold. As such, energy is essentially one of many forms of generic Information.
http://blog-glossary

4. Good vs Evil :
   Theologians have for centuries struggled with the paradox of an all good god who created an imperfect world. Their arguments tend to put the blame on flawed humans, but who made them imperfect? Another excuse is that the devil made him do it. But who created the incarn-ation of Evil?
http://bothandblog2.

5. Kenosis :
  Renunciation of divine nature. Many religious traditions have myths of immortal gods who took on the form of mortal flesh.

“Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8).

Gnostic Gods :

   Muller said that his personal god model was similar to that of ancient Gnosticism. I can see the relation in some of its philosophical cosmic con-cepts, but not in its religious applications, with good & evil gods. It was essentially an esoteric mystery religion, where access to secret wisdom is the key to salvation and to magical powers. It was also intimately intertwined with astrology.
   But secrecy & magic & destiny in the stars are the antithesis of science. So, while I can appreciate some of the Gnostic philosophical insights, I am wary of their cultic beliefs & practices.