Not long ago I was repairing a leaky water tank. At first, I imagined that the job would be straightforward: find the leak, and patch it. But after trying everything I could think of, the leak persisted. I soon reached the point where I thought, half seriously, that I had encountered the physically impossible. There seemed to be no possible way that the water could just disappear from the tank at the speed it was doing so.
I finally was forced to consider the impossible, which involved the one component of the tank system that I had ruled out from consideration from the very beginning. That component was the input valve. It was not possible, of course, for an input valve to function as an output valve, but just to make sure, I had to carefully inspect it, to prove that the impossible was really happening.
As you have already guessed, the input valve was indeed causing the leak, but not in a way that was physically impossible. It simply involved a complex siphon effect, whereby the leak could “work around” the input system, by means of what I now consider to have been an ingenious, unintended “trick,” or a defect, in the system. Once I addressed the siphon effect, the leak stopped, and the universe became, once more, possible. Of course, I laugh at myself for having ignored it for so long.
Science has been doing something like this for a long time. It is not that science itself is defective, but rather, that we as humans are—including scientists—able to overlook the obvious. Science, when confronted by mysteries, attempts to solve them, and frequently succeeds. Yet there do remain some profound mysteries about which science can only speculate. These mysteries will never be solved by the methods which have always worked in the past. We have to look at the obvious, and investigate new ways of studying them.
One of the most obvious facts, indeed the most obvious fact, that all of us encounter, is the fact that we are living, conscious beings. Yet there has been found no possible manner in which the inert atoms of the universe can form conscious creatures. Have we ruled out the (so to speak) input valve?
Let us propose a new paradigm, one which incorporates the following idea:
Life, consciousness and volition are
fundamental realities. They do not arise
from physical reality, they are an integral part of it. This is the new and necessary paradigm that is
emerging from science.
Life, consciousness and volition are physically detected phenomena that defy purely physical explanation, but which can be better understood in terms of the new paradigm.The current paradigm, or philosophy, upon which modern science is based, is called physicalism. Physicalism declares that everything in the physical universe can be described by, and only by, other physical things. It is circular logic.
Simply stated, physicalism finds that it is handy to think of the physical universe as an intricate composition of its fundamental constituents. It declares those fundamentals to be space-time and energy-mass, along with basic forces and mathematical constants, all of which are governed by natural law. This is the natural-material, or physicalist, universe. Science has found no practical reason to look outside of, or beyond, any physical explanations for physical phenomena.
Until now.
Currently, the science establishment regards life, consciousness and volition (free will) as arising from physical reality. They do not. Instead, they are at its core. If anything, physical reality arises because of them. The failure to recognize this, is a serious error which limits the potential of physicists to comprehend how nature really operates.
Among its errors, physicalism denies that true, free will can exist. In addition, it fails utterly to explain inward consciousness, and it incorrectly defines life as merely a chemical process. These errors have profound consequences, as demonstrated in the following:
1) If there is no free will, then there is no true science, because without volition, scientists could draw only those conclusions which nature forces them to draw, regardless of their accuracy or inaccuracy. Free will is forbidden in the physicalist paradigm.
2) Inward consciousness permeates our entire waking lives, and yet it is a total and complete mystery to science, not only as to how it arises, but even as to what it is.
3) Life, although it is the most studied and best understood of the three, is considered to be only a chemical process, nothing more. Its intricate connection to the very foundations of the universe is considered to be nothing more than happenstance. The false perception is, that life is the chance byproduct of an unknowing, uncaring cosmos. It isn’t.
The current paradigm, known as natural materialism, or physicalism, explains physical reality only in terms of itself. Any evidence that cannot be explained in physical terms is disqualified, based on the rules of physicalism. The physicalist paradigm admits of no plan, no purpose, and no objective standards of morality underlying nature.
The circular rules of physicalist science define physical things only in terms of themselves. Therefore, they automatically exclude, or at the least discourage, investigation into avenues that could otherwise help explain certain experimental results that are currently puzzling scientists. They do nothing to explain inward consciousness. They deny that true volition even exists at all. A new paradigm will, at the least, free scientists to consider possibilities that are currently forbidden to serious investigation.
The new paradigm might be called “Cosmic Intent,” but let’s not play with words. The clear implication is that physical nature was created. The Creator cannot be adequately described, except in terms that recognize it as God. The new paradigm, then, is best termed, “The God Paradigm.” It rejects the old idea, the idea that the universe is the product of an unknowing, uncaring complex of chance and purposeless natural laws. The arguments against the old idea are so numerous and systematic that one must be chained to a physicalist ideology to believe it.
God is alive, conscious, and exercises divine will. He does so with a plan, purpose and meaning that we are given the power to investigate—by means of our own life, consciousness and free will, with which He has endowed us.The God Paradigm Incorporates Life, Consciousness and Volition, Not Random Chance, as the Underlying Principles of Reality
The universe was created. It did not create itself, nor was it created by blind, indifferent forces, nor by chance.
If chance is invoked to explain our unlikely existence, then we must consider the most likely outcomes of chance, before relying on the least likely. Were we the product of chance, then the overwhelming likelihood is that we would exist in a universe that is far less elegant, and far less ordered, than ours. We ourselves would be far more primitive, and far less likely to have produced the arts, the technology, and the systems of ethics and law, that we have.
The chances of these things occurring, the likelihood of the conditions in which we live, are so low that they cannot be explained by the random interactions of atoms and energy that physicalism relies upon to describe our existence.
We have barely scratched the surface in debunking chance. Planet earth is not merely suited for life; it is prime real estate for the development of a civilization that can reach for the stars, while at the same time, asking why we reach for them.
Far more likely it is that we should live on a planet that barely supports life, that allows us to eke out a meager existence, the atmosphere of which conceals the stars with clouds, and on which none of the minerals and metals exist from which technology can be built. It is overwhelmingly more likely that by chance alone, a planet would produce a society in which people are mere slaves to tyrants, people who never yearn to be free.
Those are the overwhelming odds which would decide who we are. Instead, we have not merely technology, but also poetry, the Golden Rule, and the ability to appreciate the beauty of nature.
-
No comments:
Post a Comment