The God Paradigm

The God Paradigm

—by Robert Arvay

 

Introduction and Summary

Preface:

The Soul of Nature

      In seeking for scientific truth, science is ignoring the scientist.  Thus, the search is self-contradictory.  To natural materialists, the scientist is only a physical happenstance.  His life is considered to exist only in its chemistry.  The scientist's consciousness remains an unexplained mystery.  His volition (free will) is regarded as impossible, a violation of causation.  Materialists fail to see the obvious, which is that the scientist is a living, conscious, volitional creature unexplained by physics alone.  The natural materialist therefore, is seeking after his inner self, but seeking only outside himself. 

      Scientists understand a great deal about nature.  They have peered through telescopes at stars unfathomably far away, and through microscopes into the secret chemistry of life.  They understand what fire is, and they understand the nuclear furnace that is our sun.  Indeed, as astonishing as it is, it seems that scientists are well on their way to discovering the unifying “theory of everything,” the key to all of existence.

      There is one major problem.  Amid all this discovery and learning, too many scientists have adopted a philosophy called natural materialism.  According to this paradigm, or world view, all of material nature can be explained in terms only of material nature.  Nothing more is needed.  Indeed, nothing more exists, or if it does, it plays no role in nature.

      Natural materialists describe themselves (and you, and me), as being nothing more than phenomena of an all encompassing physical nature, a nature which as they would have it, is all sufficient unto itself.

      To them, the great tapestry of the universe is a work of art with no artist, a clockwork machine with no purpose, and a never ending roll of dice in which all possibilities must happen.

       In doing this, natural materialism sees only one side of the coin.  The other side is forever hidden from that dismal philosophy.  It hears the notes of the symphony but detects no melody.  It reads the words of a novel but discerns no plot.  It beholds the physical human being, but not the person. 

      It seems axiomatic that nature must have a single basic principle, a unifying law that ties it all together.  If so, then the supposition that this grand essence of all being is an accidental product of nothing, seems so absurd as hardly to be considered at all.  Yet, this is the direction in which natural materialism is leading science.

      It is a path to destruction.

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The basis of physical reality
is not physical.
That would defy logic.

 Until science explains consciousness,

it has explained nothing.
 

Life, consciousness and free will

give rise to physical reality.

 

Science has faith in an ordered universe.

It has no idea what is the basis of that order.
How then, can any scientist doubt God?

The question should not be, does God Exist?

God is bigger than existence.

 

T

he assertion that there is a God fits the facts, the logic, and human experience.  Indeed, when all the relevant factors are examined, one finds that the assertion that God exists is by far the most reasonable proposition, and the most supportable.  Some people disagree, including some of the world’s premier scientists.  We shall examine both sides.
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The Nature of Reality, and the Reality of Nature

It is generally accepted by scientists that nature exists in and of itself, independently of conscious perception.  According to that view, the Big Bang happened before there were any humans to perceive it, and the universe will continue to obey natural law long after there are no more conscious, living entities in existence.  Indeed life, and conscious thought, are regarded as physical phenomena of an objectively existing universe.

Quantum physics, however, introduces some challenges to that view.  According to some interpretations of the evidence, reality exists in a probabilistic state of potentials.  These states of potential may become actualized, but only under certain conditions.  These conditions are known by various names, including “measurement,” collapse of a probability wave, and according to some, conscious perception.

Already, one can see that our terminology is insufficient to grasp the underlying concept of what makes reality real.  Terms such as “measurement,” tend to suggest conscious perception.  Terms such as “collapse of a probability wave,” are imprecise, and thereby subject to interpretation.

 

The term, “conscious perception,” involves a concept totally unexplained in physics.  It is the ineffable concept of inward awareness, awareness of both the external world, and of one’s own internal state of being.

Consciousness, while unexplained in physics, is an undeniable phenomenon.  It would be absurd for a physicist to claim that he is not conscious.  (Footnote:  were it not absurd, I am convinced that many physicists would indeed deny its existence, and logically so.)  Despite the inability of physics to explain consciousness, it is generally assumed that consciousness somehow “emerges from” complexity.  This is another way of saying that consciousness is somehow a byproduct of the way in which atoms become organized.

The term, “complexity,” however, is itself subjective.  Nature makes no distinction between complexity and simplicity.  It does not perceive any objective difference between a house and a pile of rubble, the laws of thermodynamics notwithstanding.

It therefore seems a more fruitful approach to physics to consider whether consciousness might be, not an emergent phenomenon of physical reality, but a fundamental basis of it.

If it is, then two other phenomena are so closely related to it that they, too, must be fundamental.  These are life and volition. 

While the chemical process of life is well explained by physics, life requires a degree of fine tuning that can be explained only by the speculative, mental concoction of a multi-universe.  That concoction does not, however, explain anything, since the multi-universe itself must also be finely tuned.  From where does this fine tuning come?  If, however, life is fundamental to physics, then the fine tuning goes hand in hand with it.

Volition, on the other hand, involves a concept that is an even more radical departure from natural-materialism, so radical in fact, that that it is forbidden.  Volition violates both causality and quantum probability.

Yet, without volition, there can be no science.  Without volition, scientists are preprogrammed entities which discover only those laws of nature which they are predetermined to discover, whether or not those discoveries are truthful or false.

The nature of reality explains the reality of nature.  That may seem a circular statement.  Perhaps it is.  But it deserves some thought. 

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