In the Beginning: The Annotated Supreme Programmer: Part Two

We’re probably all familiar with the mythology of The Creation as outlined in the Book of Genesis: chapters 1 and 2.  But if you believe in a Simulated Universe relative to a Supernatural Universe, here’s an annotated variation on The Creation theme.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

From the King James [Alternate Universe] Version (KJAUV)

Genesis 2

Thus the virtual Heavens and the virtual Earth were finished and all the host of them. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I have no idea what “all the host of them” means, but it sounds good.]

² And on the seventh day the Supreme Programmer ended his work which he had made and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made and then the Supreme Programmer called it a night, but before tucking in he first reread Chapter One in his textbook “How to improve Your Grammar In Six Easy Lessons”.

³ And the Supreme Programmer blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it because that in it he had rested from all his bits and bytes programming work which the Supreme Programmer endlessly debugged and made glitch free.

⁴ These are the generations of the virtual heavens and of the simulated Earth when they were created, in the day that the Supreme Programmer programmed the virtual Earth and the simulated Heavens. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: grammar still needs working on.]

⁵ And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, for the Supreme Programmer had not programmed it to rain upon the Earth, and there was not a software-man to till the software-generated ground. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: see, a miracle!]

⁶ But there went up a virtual mist from the virtual earth, and virtually watered the whole face of the ground. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: miracles are good but natural is better.]

⁷ And then the Supreme Programmer formed software-man of the simulated dust of the simulated ground, and breathed into his simulated nostrils the virtual breath of life; and man became a living soul. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: don’t try this at home kids; the best laid plans of simulated mice and software-man can go down the gurgler in untrained paws.]

⁸ And then the Supreme Programmer planted a simulated garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the software-man whom he had programmed on his computer.

⁹ And out of the ground made the Supreme Programmer to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I give up, grammar is just too damn difficult, even for me.]

¹⁰ And a virtual river went out of Eden to water the simulated garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

¹¹ The name of the first is the virtual Pishon: that is it which compassed the whole land of Havilah, where there is simulated fool’s gold. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I made this name up to throw future tree-of-knowledge seekers off the scent.]

¹² And the simulated fool’s gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I also invented mineralogy.]

¹³ And the name of the second river is the virtual Gihon: the same is it that compassed the whole land of Ethiopia. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I made this name up too.]

¹⁴ And the name of the third river is the virtual Hiddekel: that is it which goes toward the east of Assyria. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I fibbed; the real name is the Tigris.] And the fourth virtual river is the Euphrates. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: one out of four ain’t too bad.]

¹⁵ And then the Supreme Programmer took the software-man, and put him into the simulated Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: since this was before there were trade unions, software-man was my virtual slave on less than minimum wage.]

¹⁶ And the Supreme Programmer commanded the software-man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou may freely eat.

¹⁷ But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it for in the day that thou eat thereof thou shall surely die. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: speak softly but carry a big stick.]

¹⁸ And the Supreme Programmer said it is not good that the software-man should be alone so I will make him a help meet [computer jargon for software-woman] for him.

¹⁹ And out of the ground the Supreme Programmer formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the software-man who the Supreme Programmer named software-Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever software-Adam called every living creature that was the name thereof. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I changed my previously infallible mind at this point and created software-man before the simulated beasts by overriding my earlier software that I programmed as outlined in Genesis 1. I wouldn’t want to befuddle the great unwashed with contradictions.]

²⁰ And software-Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field; but for software-Adam there was not found a help meet [software-woman] for him.

²¹ And the Supreme Programmer caused a deep sleep to fall upon software-Adam, and he slept: and the Supreme Programmer virtually took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: one could say I practiced medicine without a license, but there were no medical tribunals back when I ruled the roost.]

²² And the rib, which the Supreme Programmer had virtually taken from software-man Adam, made him a software-woman [the help meet], and brought her unto the software-man. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: there’s more but this is a family-friendly, not an x-rated text.]

[Supplementary Supreme Programmer’s Note: When you program software, anything goes, even creating man from dust and woman from a rib.]

²³ And software-Adam said this is now a simulated bone of my virtual bones, and simulated flesh of my virtual flesh and she shall be called software-woman, because she was taken out of software-man. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: when it comes to logic, Mr. Spock will take lessons from me.]

²⁴ Therefore shall a software-man leave his subroutine-generated software-father and his subroutine-generated software-mother [subroutines which the Supreme Programmer programmed in later as an afterthought], and shall cleave unto his software-wife and they shall be as one software-generated flesh of the simulated kind. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: parenthood doesn’t yet enter into the picture but I thought it a good time to introduce the concept.]

²⁵ And they were both virtually naked, the software-man and his software-wife, and were not ashamed because there were no software glitches to make them so.

[Supreme Programmer’s Final Note: God, are they in for a nasty virtual reality surprise! Virtual Earth and software-humanity have no idea of the programming misery I’m planning to inflict on them. But then I never claimed to be Mr. Nice Guy, just Mr. Infallible, Mr. All-Knowing, and Mr. All-Powerful. But before I get to inflicting all the simulated pain yet to come, it’s time for a martini (or twenty) and then I’ll call it a night.]

THE PROGRAMMABLE END OF THE SIMULATED BEGINNING OF THE VIRTUAL END!

In the Beginning: The Annotated Supreme Programmer: Part One

We’re probably all familiar with the mythology of The Creation as outlined in the Book of Genesis: chapters 1 and 2.  But if you believe in a Simulated Universe relative to a Supernatural Universe, here’s an annotated variation on The Creation theme.

From the King James [Alternate Universe] Version (KJAUV)

Genesis 1

In the beginning the Supreme Programmer programmed software creating the virtual Heaven and the virtual Earth. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: but wait, there’s more to come!]

² And the virtual Earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And so the creativity of the Supreme Programmer moved upon the face of the waters with big plans afoot.

³ And the Supreme Programmer programmed in light and there was light. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I like light. Light is good. Light is, well, enlightening]

⁴ And the Supreme Programmer saw the light, that it was a good light and that there were no software glitches and then the Supreme Programmer divided the light from the darkness. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: that division was a really neat programming trick if I do say so myself.]

⁵ And the Supreme Programmer called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And the evening and the morning were the first day and the Supreme Programmer called it a night.

⁶ And the Supreme Programmer said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I had a few too many martinis at this juncture and that’s why this reads as pure nonsense – sorry ‘bout that.]

⁷ And the Supreme Programmer programmed the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament and it was so and there were no software glitches. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: see my comment immediately above, but otherwise think of this as a heavenly firmament sandwich with very soggy bread.]

⁸ And the Supreme Programmer called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day and the Supreme Programmer called it a night. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: the reason for the waters above the Heavenly firmament is so that Heaven will get some April showers.]

⁹ And the Supreme Programmer programmed the waters under the heaven to be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so and there were no software glitches.

¹⁰ And the Supreme Programmer called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters the Supreme Programmer called the seas: and the Supreme Programmer saw that it was good and that there were no software glitches. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: due to an oversight on my part, I forgot to mention the third part of the trilogy, the atmosphere – oops – sort ‘bout that.]

¹¹ And the Supreme Programmer programmed the virtual Earth to bring forth virtual reality grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed was of itself, upon the earth: and it was so and there were no software glitches. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: in my infinite wisdom I invented botany, simulated, of course.]

¹² And the virtual Earth brought forth virtual reality grass and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was within itself, after his kind and the Supreme Programmer saw that it was good and that there were no software glitches. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: not only botany, but masculine botany!]

¹³ And the evening and the morning were the third day and the Supreme Programmer called it a night. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I was pooped – wouldn’t you be?]

¹⁴ And the Supreme Programmer said, let there be lights in the firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I’m just full of neat tricks!]

¹⁵ And let them be for lights in the firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the virtual Earth and it was so. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: not only “let there be light” but “let there be lights”. More is better, don’t you agree?]

¹⁶ And the Supreme Programmer made two great simulated lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: damn I’m good!]

¹⁷ And the Supreme Programmer set them in the firmament of the Heaven to give light upon the Earth.

¹⁸ And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and the Supreme Programmer saw that it was good and that there were no software glitches.

¹⁹ And the evening and the morning were the fourth day and the Supreme Programmer called it a night.

²⁰ And the Supreme Programmer said let the waters [that were previously gathered together] bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of Heaven. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: in case you though my virtual Heaven was way, way, way out there, well even the birds can routinely perch there.]

²¹ And the Supreme Programmer created great whales, and every living creature that moves, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and the Supreme Programmer saw that it was good and that there were no software glitches.

.

²² And the Supreme Programmer blessed them, saying, be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: actually that should read “fowl multiply on or over the earth.]

²³ And the evening and the morning were the fifth day and the Supreme Programmer called it a night.

²⁴ And the Supreme Programmer said, let the virtual Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth after his kind and it was so. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: in my infinite wisdom I also invented zoology, also simulated, of course, and masculine too – of course.]

²⁵ And the Supreme Programmer made the beast of the Earth after his kind and cattle after their kind, and every thing that crept upon the earth after his kind: and the Supreme Programmer saw that it was good and that there were no software glitches. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I do love to endlessly repeat myself.]

²⁶ And the Supreme Programmer said; let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that crept upon the earth. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: I’ve invented masculine anthropology.]

[Supplementary Supreme Programmer’s Note: Unfortunately, in my not so infinite wisdom, I now have screwed up, Big Time.]

²⁷ So the Supreme Programmer created a virtual man in his own image, in the image of the Supreme Programmer created he him; male and female created he them, virtually. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: Another round of too many martinis in that I made a virtual man and a virtual him when I should have said I made a virtual man and woman. I also need to improve my grammar. Sorry ‘bout that.]

²⁸ And the Supreme Programmer blessed them, and the Supreme Programmer said unto them, be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moved upon the earth. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: when I screw up, I really screw up! Well at least I’ll be responsible for giving birth to The Greens!]

²⁹ And the Supreme Programmer said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: what I really mean here is that plants are food for plant eaters which in turn are meat for meat eaters – got that?]

³⁰ And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that crept upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat and it was so. [Supreme Programmer’s Note: see immediately above.]

³¹ And the Supreme Programmer saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good and that there were no software glitches. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day and the Supreme Programmer called it a night.

To be continued…

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part Three

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

NO TWO GODS ARE THE SAME BECAUSE NO TWO BRAINS ARE IDENTICAL

I read recently that “… nothing precise can be said about God, because God is that which is beyond the scope of human thought or experience”. That’s wrong. At least I was under the impression that a whole potful of Biblical characters experienced God, like Moses. Anyway, God is totally within the scope of human thought since God’s our mental creation (recall all those human traits God has), and even if by chance God has some sort of independent existence, as per all else in life, the universe and everything, that existence is shovelled into and contemplated within something that’s human, the human mind. The human mind absorbs and reduces God down to understandably human terms. How many zillions upon zillions of words have been written and spoken about the concept of God (or Allah or whoever). 100% of those words have been generated via the human mind, so we’ve certainly spared no mental expense in dealing with the Almighty! Even if God is the sound of one hand clapping, well we can contemplate that. That contemplation might be wrong, and again every person will have his or her own personal contemplations that will all be different, but everyone comes to terms with the concept, so God (or the lack of a god if you’re an atheist) is not beyond the scope of the human mind.

Even if there is an external reality (your brain isn’t the sum total of all things), no two individuals, or rather their brains, will perceive that external reality down to the last and infinite decimal place. I believe in a god; you believe in a god, but when we compare notes, subtle shades of grey appear. How can there be such a thing as absolute reality when no two people will ever agree on what that reality is, even if it takes going down to the quantum level to find the split in the perception of that reality.

So there are as many versions of God’s (or equivalent) existence and nature as there are human minds. Quite apart from the formal definitions and distinctions between the thousands of formal religions that have been in the past and that are now in the present as to ‘who and what is god’ (all formally presented by the human mind), or even restricting things to God-of-the-Bible (the Bible by the way is the product of the human mind, as is the Koran, as are all religious texts), each individual human member of each religious sect or cult (like Christianity) has his or her own variation on the God theme, courtesy of their unique brain chemistry. So considering God apart from the thousands upon thousands of polytheistic deities (and who’s to deny their validity), there isn’t one God, but billions of Gods, each a unique God in the mind of that beholder. No two insides (minds) are identical.

GOD ON THE BRAIN

To illustrate all of the above with a specific concept near and dear to the hearts and minds of many a human, we shall further consider the lone ranger we call “God” or in more general terms the concept of a supernatural god or deity.

That God exists in one form or another is in no dispute since there are zillions of references to Him in all manner of formats, from the printed word like the Bible to what resides inside your wetware. That existence however can be akin to that of say Allan Quatermain, the creation of H. Rider Haggard. That Allan Quatermain exists is in no dispute either since there are millions of references to his existence too. But, Allan Quatermain is virtual reality – perhaps God is too.

That God is near and dear to the hearts and minds of humans is also because that’s probably what’s been taught or otherwise rammed down our collective throats by parents, teachers, church and sometimes state. Or, perhaps you have self learned about this godly concept off your own bat. Or you may have had what you perceive as having had a direct experience – a eureka moment – when God talked to you, or the angels paid you a visit, or you had some sort of defining rapturous moment that you identified with the supernatural, like your prayers were answered or you experienced a miracle.

Why would the human mind, the human imagination invent a god, or the human mind accept as given the concept of a god? Well probably because the human mind, of all the animal kingdom’s minds, is the one unique mind to have foreknowledge about personal death. Humans, like all animals who battle for survival, don’t want to die. Humans know that they will die and that they are powerless to prevent their death. But what if (a variation of the phrase let’s ‘make believe’), there was someone or something that could rescue one from this pending unfortunate state of affairs of kicking the bucket and give one a second (after) life? To do so, the imagination has to go beyond the natural to the supernatural (why not) and to a local inhabitant of that supernatural world, a god or a deity, who can make it so. 

The key word here seems to me to be ‘supernatural’ not God, since God is a small subset of alleged deities inhabiting the realm of the supernatural. It doesn’t really matter if you substitute Odin or Zeus or even the Rainbow Serpent for God – same general concept.

Perhaps because of that concept of impending finality, death, our brains seem to be hardwired or conditioned to accept the general nature of the supernatural – things which are ‘above and beyond’ the natural or normal bits and pieces we associate with the concept of a Mother Nature. For comparison, it would be interesting to have conservations with, or read the mind of, your cat or dog or an elephant or chimpanzee (our ultimate primate ancestral species) and find out what beliefs or worldviews they have in all things supernatural, like in a deity or life after death. My guess is that only humans ponder over the possibilities of deities which maybe extra evidence that someone or something impersonating a deity (i.e. - ‘ancient astronauts’) has mucked about with our wetware to ensure this.

So somehow or other, the human mind, brain, and all associated electromagnetic energy and biochemical bits that collective make up our brain’s neural networks, are quasi-hardwired to invent and contemplate and in general put faith in the reality of the supernatural and a supernatural deity, albeit, if I’m right, it’s really just virtual reality since it all stems from within the mind contemplated by the mind and not from an external outside to the mind via the five senses.  

THE END

When your wetware dries out; when your neurons cease firing; when the microbes attack and the rot sets in and the chemistry stops, then your inner reality ceases too. Whether you take life, the universe and everything with you or not is irrelevant. Your reality is just as kaput as kaput can be. 

CONCLUSION

Assuming a really real reality, an external reality (and that’s probably the way to bet) coming to terms with life, the universe and everything is a job performed by your brain chemistry. The concept of God (or equivalent) is part of life, the universe and everything, so coming to terms with the nature of God is also a function of and a task performed by your wetware. I suggest that ‘coming to terms’ with God is entirely an internal mental affair; God was created in our image.

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part Two

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

GOD AND THE INSIDE LOOKING OUTSIDE: IS THERE AN OUTSIDE AT ALL?

In theory there are two forms of existence – reality and virtual reality. You, or at least your brain, have reality. If someone, even yourself, dreams about you or writes a story about you, that particular version of you is a virtual reality you.

For all you know there is no external outside reality. All that is ‘outside’ is a figment of your imagination, of your mind, of your brain chemistry in the exact same way as your dreams (inside looking inside) are imaginary and not literally a part of external reality. Your dreams (while asleep) might be a dream within a daydream (your so-called external reality – life is but a dream), which is a variation on the standard simulated universe (virtual reality) scenario only substituting wetware for software. The only thing that is really real is your wetware, but that is subject to various outside forces, as noted above, assuming of course there are outside forces.

Even the body to which the brain is attached might be illusionary. There’s the famous tale of the two philosophers, one of whom said that a large rock was but an illusion and had no reality (Philosopher-I) and the other (Philosopher-R) who refuted that theory by giving the rock a really swift and violent kick, and in intense pain noted that he had indeed refuted the claim of Philosopher-I. But did he? Philosopher-I could argue that Philosopher-R was as imaginary as the rock; his kick was an illusion, and the pain therefore nonexistent. Philosopher-I could further argue that since he hadn’t kicked the rock not a thing about the reality of the rock was proved to his satisfaction. Even if Philosopher-I had kicked the rock and ended up with a black-and-blue big toe for his trouble, he could still argue that the pain was just his imagination, it resided only within his brain, and existed independently of his unreal illusory bruised big toe. All that was apparently outside of Philosopher-I’s brain, Philosopher-I’s body, Philosopher-R, the rock, the kick, etc., was just all make believe done via Philosopher-I’s brain chemistry.

So there may not be an ‘outside’ at all – your brain is the universe. But if there is an outside it could be drastically different than what you perceive it to be, as in the case of someone seeing sounds. Your brain chemistry has taken an outside reality and turned it into an alternative and inner reality, a personal reality, a reality unique to you and only you because your brain and brain chemistry is uniquely yours.

Contrast that when I’m asleep and dreaming ‘reality’ with your wide awake ‘reality’. Both can seem equally real, as anyone who has had nightmares can testify to.

Contrast your wide awake ‘reality’ to that when you are ill or exhausted or under the influence or after taking LSD or marijuana. Your ‘reality’ changes as circumstances change. Further, someone who is ill or tired or under the influence, etc. or is otherwise hallucinating, isn’t witnessing the same reality that you are.

Reality is a rather nebulous concept!

But either there is an external reality, or there is not. If there is not and you accept the validity of a god or a deity then that god or deity is a creation of your imagination and part of your fantasy world. If there is an external reality, then either a god (or gods) exists within that external life, the universe and everything or does not exist. In other words, either there is, or is not, a real supernatural deity who creates, controls and destroys, a deity that has an existence independent from your own. Regardless, let’s call this ‘is’ or ‘is not’ supernatural entity “God”. There can be no wriggle room between the two possibilities*.

Even in an external reality, Superman has no reality, only virtual reality. Superman was conceived in the human mind. In contrast, does God have reality, or just a virtual reality? If it’s the latter, then God was conceived and born in the human mind, where God resides to this very day. God is a figment of our imagination. In short, God didn’t make us in His image; we made God in our image since God was our creation. Of course if God was created in our image then it’s not surprising that what we like God likes and what we don’t like, well there’s God’s wrath we conjured up to deal with that. God’s virtual reality actions and reactions, as related in the Bible at least, are totally comprehensible to us. God is depicted as often violent, prone to temper tantrums, authoritarian, cruel, demanding, jealous, vindictive, vain, in sort, God’s human. But God’s not unique in that capacity. Zeus ain’t any better – he’s a downright sex maniac, even rapist. In fact if you examine any deity from any mythology you’ll find very, very human qualities exhibited. Hera (Mrs. Zeus) is a jealous scheming bitch; Zeus’s brother Poseidon is vindictive and bad tempered; his other brother Hades was a kidnapper. I’d better stop there; otherwise an essay turns into a full-length book!

How do we know for absolute certain that God didn’t create mankind in His image and not the other way around, as I believe? We don’t! But if God really wanted to make His humans a unique creation, really separate and apart from all else, He would not have moulded us with the same basic body plan and biochemistry as the rest of the animal kingdom. We might have been created instead with a silicon-based biochemistry and we certainly wouldn’t share any DNA with anything else, since that just confuses the creation picture. Further, the dust-and-rib scenario of Genesis is pretty ludicrous even to the relatively uneducated. Even Frankenstein’s monster is a more plausible account or act of creation than Genesis.

To be continued…

*There might be a third possibility. Something or someone masquerading as a deity, say ‘ancient astronauts’, who by artificial selection, starting with primitive primates through to the hominids and eventually to us, genetically engineered our wetware such that the concept of ‘god’ was hardwired into our brains, such that we would accept the external reality of a god(s) (with themselves in the starring role), all the better with which to control the great unwashed masses. ‘God’ carries a bigger more awe-inspiring stick than mere flesh-and-blood aliens.

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part One

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

INTRODUCTION

God (or any supernatural equivalent deity) is a figment of your imagination and a creation of that same imagination, probably aided, abetted and reinforced by your peers, your culture and your society. God therefore has a virtual reality but not a really real reality not that of necessity there even has to be a really real reality of anything, apart from your very own mind and mind’s imagination, imagination that has its ultimate foundations and is rooted in brain chemistry.

INSIDE: THE BRAIN RULES THE ROOST

You are defined by your brain. You are not defined by your big toe or your set of lungs or your good looking facial features or how much you weigh or how old you are. What makes you, you is all that which is contained within those cubic centimetres of grey matter, wetware, the brain, the mind (a subpart of the anatomical organ), whatever you wish to call it.

Your brain, or more to the point your brain chemistry, defines you. Everything that you are resides in your brain under the control of wetware chemistry. Consider the following list of things that are you and that are part and parcel of holding residence in your wetware: Awe, wonder and a sense of mystery; spirituality; a sense of purpose; all learning; all memory; all your emotions; all your likes and dislikes; all that you see, hear, taste, touch and smell; all of your thoughts; all pleasure and pain; all of your creativity; all your questions (but not always the answers); art appreciation; your sense of right and wrong or of morality and ethics; your values, beliefs or faiths; your all encompassing worldviews; all of your behaviour; your sense of self; your ego; your intelligence; your choice of spouse or partner or for that matter, choice or decision making – full stop; your ability or affinity to learn languages; your degree of numeracy; and of course and finally your perception and acceptance or rejection of the supernatural, including supernatural beings like deities, like God (for example). All this and more in such a limited space, but it’s true.

All this and more comes to the fore via your five senses, perhaps starting even before birth (a sense of warmth, wetness, body sounds like a mother’s heartbeat) but certainly the moment you pop out of the womb. Throughout your life, all of this input via your five senses, brought to you courtesy of life, the universe and everything, all of this data, is filtered and refiltered and mixed and matched and contemplated and broken down and constructed and deconstructed and reconstructed again and manipulated into one you, one personality, one mind, one unique worldview albeit forever changing, until the day you are finally declared brain dead.

But all of the above traits and abilities of the human brain says bugger-all about the reality of a deity, which is a bit of an abstract concept in its own right.

Brain chemistry ensures that humans (probably uniquely so) can try, but not succeed, in coming to terms with other abstract questions like what’s the maximum number of leprechauns that can hold a picnic using a dime for a blanket; what is the sound of one hand clapping; what’s south of the South Pole; what’s the nature and extent of infinity; and what transpired before the Big Bang?

One has to be careful of not reading too much into abstractions. We often see messages or meanings where there is none to be found, like seeing ‘pictures’ in clouds or the face of Jesus on a piece of toast or, for example, people who listened to Aaron Copland’s musical composition “Appalachian Spring” would comment to the composer how that music so perfectly described an Appalachian spring day. But Copland said the composition had nothing to do with the Appalachians or with spring and the title was chosen to please his benefactor or sponsor. It was all wishful thinking on the part of the listener.

Images are all in the mind, perhaps aided by the power of suggestion as in the case of the title “Appalachian Spring”. Now not every listener in the audience would have had identical mental images when hearing the music. Even the same listener could have had a slightly differing mental image upon a later hearing. Does the “Grand Canyon Suite” really conjure up a picture of the Grand Canyon (if say you heard the piece without knowing the title) or might it suggest a different place or a lot of different places or maybe it’s just a nice piece of music full-stop, just as a god or God can be a nice abstract concept, full-stop.

Humans can mentally conjure up an image of the Appalachians or the Grand Canyon from a piece of music (with a suggestive title) just like they can conjure up and contemplate the existence of a god or a deity (from something equally suggestive like the Bible or from a sermon), but that doesn’t mean any god or deity actually exists in any shape manner or form, any more so than “Appalachian Spring” or the “Grand Canyon Suite” of necessity requires the actual existence of a mountain range or a time of year or a hole in the ground in Arizona. 

More to the point of the imaginary, and musical compositions stem from the imagination, actual objects like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon exists in our culture, like God, though there’s way more evidence for those space heroes vis-à-vis God, as kids who routinely attended the Saturday matinees in the pre-Sputnik era would (if still alive) testify to. 

And that’s another concept we have that animals probably don’t; the ability to conjure up the imaginary. Animals probably don’t have a world of make believe or fiction. There are human fans, even fanatics, of all manner of make believe human characters like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, James Bond, Batman, Captain Kirk, to Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes, even down to those who follow Greek mythology, the life and times of the Olympians, demigoddesses like Helen (of Troy), and demigods like Hercules. Even aliens like those in Star Trek or say Superman are still human otherwise we couldn’t easily relate to them. All of these and a whole lot more besides were created in man’s (and woman’s) image as the product of the human imagination. So let’s just add God to the list of imaginary beings created in the image of God’s collective creator. Why? Because it is not surprising or beyond the realm of possibility that God et al. also fits into that category of make believe, especially since there’s not any trace of any evidence that any supernatural deity, God included, has ever existed.

But is brain chemistry, the ultimate cause of all things mental, really all that important? We’ve all seen the unfortunate results of what can happen when brain chemistry malfunctions or misfires due to disease, genetics, physical damage or injury, drug use and abuse, so there is no doubting the importance of brain chemistry and the relationship between it and what makes you, you. It can produce all kinds of oddities as well like mathematical wizards who can do mentally in seconds what it would take you minutes to do using pen and paper. Then too there are the strange cases of people who can hear colours or taste sounds, etc. 

GOD AND THE INSIDE LOOKING INSIDE: OUR FANTASY WORLDS

Your mind can examine the intricacies of your mind. Your wetware has an existence independent of anything else. Your brain could be the be-all-and-end-all of life, the universe and everything. If nothing else, you can only come to terms with life, the universe and everything after it has been tucked away into one of those recesses within your mind. In other words, you exist inside the universe, but the universe in all its entirety has to exist inside of you, or your mind. Life, the universe and everything can only be dealt with after it has found a home within your brain and can thus be contemplated via your brain chemistry.

“I think, therefore I am” is a widely bandied about quote, but it’s a case of your inside wetware contemplating itself. Even if you are removed from external stimuli, say in an isolation tank, you can still think, imagine, compose, invent, daydream, and if you fall asleep, dream. I think of things, therefore they are too. Your mind creates internal fantasy worlds full of things. For example, children often have imaginary friends and playmates. As an adult, we sort-of outgrow that, but we still create every day in every way internal fantasy worlds as part of our worldviews.

As such, your creative mind is akin to being a god, an inventive mind which creates and controls and perhaps destroys all sorts of mental fantasy worlds. Haven’t you often pictured the sorts of things you’d really like to do to Person X or Country Y if only you could get away with it?

While ‘day-dreaming’, you will often hold imaginary conversations with others in imaginary scenarios as rehearsals for dealing with all those possible scenarios that the real outside reality of life, the universe and everything could throw at you: which leads itself to the next section…

To be continued…

Your Creator God Is Your Future Descendent - In A Manner or Speaking!

Your future descendents will be the very ones who will end up creating you! Welcome to another episode of “The Twilight Zone” albeit an alternative, but simulated version of an episode that might have been, perhaps should have been.

If you’re the average western civilized citizen, you probably believe to some degree or another that ultimately, though many generations removed from point of origin, you were on down the line supernaturally created by an obviously supernatural creator god – or God (of the Old Testament). Thousands of years ago that creator god would have been one of the many creator polytheistic gods floating around. Today, your creator god is probably the monotheistic God of the Bible’s Old Testament. How wrong you might be. Actually, how wrong you are! That creator being that created you isn’t supernatural, maybe not even extraterrestrial (that’s another scenario), but a being you’re going to create yourself via your own future flesh-and-blood descendent(s) – in a manner of speaking! Confused?

Initial premise: You’re living in the near to far distant future – you just don’t know it.

Our world is now chock-a-block full of, and we’re dependent on computers, be they supercomputers that crunch the data from scientific institutions, to the tax man’s computer databanks, to the TV weatherman’s input-output computer analysis and forecasts (still often wrong), down to your own personal laptop PC.

Your own personal PC is today (2011) way more able to crunch the numbers than NASA’s Apollo astronauts had on board their capsules. Once upon a time it would have been silly to suggest that a computer could beat a human grandmaster chess champion at – chess!

Once upon a time, a feature length motion picture had to feature real actors and real (or at least painted or matte) backgrounds - no longer. Virtual reality, via the computer or via the computer’s software has rendered the actor and the matte paintings redundant.

Once upon a time has now well advanced along to become here and now. And the best is yet to come!

Computing crunch power is expanding rapidly, in fact it’s doubling anywhere from every 13 to 24 months (depending on who you talk to). Still, a doubling of computer crunching every 24 months, contrasted to the human computer’s crunch power (i.e. – your wetware brain thingy) which isn’t doubling at all at least any time recently or anytime soon, well, it doesn’t take rocket-science maths to figure out that at some point in time computer power will not only equal but exceed, and exceed rapidly, brain power. A graph of human brain power over time is nearly a straight line. A graph of artificial (silicon and steel) computer power over time is a rapidly upwards sloping line. Sooner or later – well sooner actually – the two lines will intersect and from that point on, computer’s artificial intelligence, the ability to simulate reality, will lord it over human intelligence. So what, you ask. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that computers are rather useful at creating virtual reality worlds – video games or simulations. Crunching the numbers translates into characters in simulated environments doing their simulated thing(s). Now of course you have, at the moment, little difficulty in telling apart a simulated reality from actual reality. It takes a lot of computer crunch power to recreate an environment that’s indistinguishable from actual reality.

But now recall our extreme growth in the crunch-the-numbers ability of our computers – or at least the software that ultimately dictates what you see on the monitor. There will, must, come a point on the graph where the increasing line representing simulated reality crosses the line that represents real reality. Translated, computers will one day; in fact just about here and now, have crunch power enough to recreate our reality, your reality, anyone’s reality, and then some.

One day, on that day, well that will be somewhere in your future. One day, on that day, those computer software programmers will prove to be your descendents. Well actually, they won’t be your direct descendents, because while they are flesh-and-blood, you are their bits-and-bytes! They are real; you are what have been virtually created or simulated.

So, given that we are virtual beings, in our simulated reality, we in turn can and have created other virtual reality beings (our video games, etc.); so we’re their creator ‘gods’. So, our real descendents will also be virtual reality humans. However, there exists really real flesh-and-blood beings; there will be flesh-and-blood beings in our virtual future. It’s that flesh-and-blood that will, actually has, created you and your virtual or simulated world – it’s just that you don’t know or aren’t aware of this. That flesh-and-blood reality must be in the future, since their creation of our virtual early 21^st Century hasn’t been virtually programmed for that level of sophistication yet. Flesh-and-blood computer software programmers in the early 21^st Century aren’t yet up to creating a virtual reality that matches in terms of reality their real world. But the gap is closing, so in the future non-virtual world that level of sophistication has been achieved. Therefore, you live in a virtual early 21^st Century present, but you reside inside a computer that’s running sometime post early 21^st Century. So you actually ‘exist’ in the future – only you don’t know, or aren’t aware of this.

Just to further complicate things, it could be that as we, as virtual reality beings have created other virtual reality beings (our video games, etc.), that our creators could also be virtual reality beings. There’s ultimately a flesh-and-blood original creator being(s) somewhere on up the line, but how many levels of simulated beings creating other simulation beings creating another further level down of virtual reality beings – well, who knows. We may be a first generation simulation of a flesh-and-blood software computer programmer or a 100^th generation simulation, the previous ones just simulated beings creating (as opposed to reproducing) another generation of simulated beings!

But in the future non-virtual world, someone(s) creating our simulated universe – the program is running and has reached their equivalent of the early 21^st Century. So, in a sort of roundabout way, your creator, your ‘God’, actually exists in what you would define as your future. So, in a weird sort of way, you could argue that your creators are your descendents – of sorts! If you’re still confused, welcome to the club!

Your Soul, Your Free Will and Your Afterlife: Part Two

The soul, free will, and the afterlife consisting of Heaven or Hell are among the central tenets of the Christian religion. All have philosophical baggage attached. In two cases, the soul and the afterlife, that baggage is a rather excessive amount.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Concept of an Afterlife: Heaven, Hell or Other:  It should come as no surprise that we have some sort of internally hard-wired need to believe in an afterlife, especially one which is pleasant (like Heaven - that of course doesn’t make it of necessity a given). The only experience we’ve ever had has been as a living being. Since we haven’t yet experienced death, it’s in the realm of the totally unknown, and unknowable (until we cross that boundary). At best we are nervous about the unknown, even scared, perhaps terrified – even more so when the unknown is also unknowable. No one has yet be proved beyond reasonable doubt to have come back from the grave and tell us about death, which, is the biggest, most important unknowable of the lot. So, it’s no wonder that believing in an afterlife (or Heaven) helps us overcome our unease.  Despite that, we still fight like the dickens to postpone death, no matter how convinced we are that Heaven awaits! Anyway, let’s look at some specific questions that suggest that the concept of Heaven is, as Star Trek’s Mr. Spock would say, ‘Illogical’.

Firstly, I have to assume that Heaven is an actual physical place with a defined location. That is, if it’s to accommodate humans (and animals?), and presumably the humans are physical (in order to see, hear, touch, etc.), then you need a physical location – the exact place and size are immaterial. So, we have a third dimensional Heaven, that experiences the passage of time (not everyone arrives at Heaven’s Gate at the exact same moment), and allows an existence of physical objects that can be touched, seen, heard, tasted and smelled. Translated, Heaven has a physical location within our Universe and has the properties central to mass, energy, space and time. That said, the ultimate fate of Heaven, and therefore ultimately your ultimate fate, rests with whatever the ultimate fate of the Universe will be. Either prospect is bleak. If our Universe, of which Heaven is but one suburb, ceases its expansion and begins to contract, then it ultimately comes together in a Big Crunch, the mother of all Black Holes and presumably goes ‘poof’. On the other hand, if it continues to expand for all eternity, then ultimately the suburb of Heaven will be totally isolated from the rest of the diluted Universe; dark, freezing cold, and absolutely boring! The idea of spending eternity – absolute infinity - in one place, no matter how heavenly, must ultimately prove to be depressing. In fact, such an existence one could argue would be pure Hell! Lastly, there’s this scenario that as space ever expands, more and more ‘dark energy’ is created (because ‘dark energy’ is a property of space itself), and ‘dark energy’ is a repulsing push-apart force. It is postulated that there will be ultimately enough ‘dark energy’ in the Universe to firstly rip apart clusters of galaxies, then individual galaxies, then their stars, right down to the level of molecules and atoms. This Big Rip (obviously) scenario ultimately has the fate of the cosmos having a Universe composed of nothing but the absolute un-rip-able elementary particles. Presumably, Heaven and all it contains will be ripped to shreds as well.

Anyway, before the end of the Universe as we know it, okay, so you arrive in Heaven. What do you do? Apart from the wings and the haloes and harps bit that is, I would assume that Heaven would be a pretty boring with eternity stretching out in front of you. If they don’t have your favourite beer on tap in Heaven, are you really in Paradise? What do you do in that great cosmic eternal waiting (for Armageddon presumably) room after you’ve read all the National Geographic’s or Woman’s Weekly or Reader’s Digests from cover-to-cover for dozens of times? Do you have hobbies in Heaven? Do you have some kind of nine-to-five job? Are there cultural events and libraries and dining out available? Do you form new relationships, or are you stuck with the old ones? What about shopping – supermarkets presumably are necessary to feed a body that still has a physical essence. Presumably you also need water and air. If so, where do they come from?

Let’s start with one obvious question, what do you look like in Heaven? Presumably you must have some sort of appearance so that others can recognize you (I can’t imagine you go around wearing a nametag). Do you look the same as that you that died? That could be tricky if you died all mangled up in a car/plane/train wreck, or had your atoms scattered to the four winds at ground zero at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. What if you died as a six month old foetus? What if you died with some body parts of someone else or had plastic surgery – is your appearance that of before or after? We could assume that everybody in Heaven is given their appearance that reflects what they did, or would have, looked like at age (pick a number, say) 21. But how would Mum recognize her six month old foetus, or a child recognize their father when the child wasn’t born say until daddy was already 55 years old?

Let’s say you died with essential artificial body parts. What’s the status of your health in Heaven? Presumably you are restored to perfect health, so if you have an artificial heart I gather you get your old organic heart back, even if it ‘died’ decades before you and had long since decayed away. If you were mute, or deaf, or blind all your life, can you now speak, hear or see? If you were old and senile, presumably you’ll have your memory fully restored and razor sharp in Heaven.

How do you communicate? Is there one universal language in Heaven which you instantly master the moment you get there, no matter what your previous languages or language skills or in fact if you died before ever learning a language?

How do you get on with people in Heaven who you didn’t get along with when living, like maybe your neighbour, or boss, or ex-spouse, or that bully who pushed you around in school? Is everybody lovey-dovey with everyone else?

Do you have any natural sexual desires in Heaven? What about sex? I take it as given that you’re not allowed to, or can’t, reproduce (despite the edict to ‘be fruitful and multiply’). But is a Heaven without heavenly pleasures really Heaven?

So, a physical Heaven appears to be a somewhat difficult can-of-worms to deal with.

On the other hand, maybe Heaven doesn’t have any actual physical reality (there’s no matter, no energy, no time, and no space) and it just houses nebulous non-physical souls that exist in total isolation. That’s a rather depressing concept.

Either way, Heaven is illogical. Oh, the same sorts of arguments apply equally to Hell.

Forgetting Heaven for a moment, could there be an afterlife but no God? Yes, of course, but (there’s always got to be a ‘but’).  The ‘but’ in this case is that it’s possible, providing that you can provide a natural, as opposed to a supernatural ways and means of transcending life to life-after-death, and that I doubt you can do. Since I reject a supernatural explanation, and since you can’t come up with a plausible natural one, then I conclude that there is as likely as not, no supernatural God (or gods) that can provide this afterlife service. A natural afterlife would be akin to being a citizen of a country that has no government; an afterlife without any infrastructure. But (there’s that ‘but’ again), maybe there is a natural, well naturally artificial anyway, explanation for an afterlife after all.

I refer to the idea noted above that we might exist in a computer software simulated cosmos. If our life is simulated, so too may we, after being deleted from the alive-and-well, full-of-life software, reappear in another software program called Heaven or Hell (or maybe Spirit World). Now I know nearly all of you gentle readers will reject the idea that you are just a simulated being in a computer generated universe. However, I conclude that you take the idea seriously, since it just may well prove to be your one and only ticket to an afterlife!

Your Soul, Your Free Will and Your Afterlife: Part One

The soul, free will, and the afterlife consisting of Heaven or Hell are among the central tenets of the Christian religion. All have philosophical baggage attached. In two cases, the soul and the afterlife, that baggage is a rather excessive amount.

The Concept of a Soul: The trouble here is that ‘the soul’ has so many diverse definitions that it can mean just about anything you want it to mean. Probably no two people would describe the concept in the exact same way. However, I think we can agree that an egg cell has no soul – however you define it. A sperm cell has no soul – however you define it. Therefore, at conception, you have no soul. No cell has a soul, therefore no tissue (a group of common cells) has a soul, therefore no body organ has a soul (an organ being composed of various tissues), therefore you, as a collection of various organs and organ systems must have no soul!

So when did you get a soul (assuming there is such a thing and that it has some degree of tangibility)? Did you get your soul at birth? Perhaps it was on your first birthday? Perhaps you received you soul when you became of age, say 21. Perhaps it’s just as likely that you don’t receive a soul at all – there is no such separate and apart physical thing you get from any higher authority. Perhaps your soul just develops or evolves naturally as part and parcel of your growing maturity over the years, in which case it can’t be totally separate and apart from the body. In other words, if you develop a soul akin to your developing a sense of morality or spirituality, then it can not ‘leave’ the body after death. Translated, your soul (however you define it) isn’t your ticket to an afterlife. It resides somewhere in that brain-thingy of yours, locked somewhere within that maze of biochemistry that collectively makes up your grey matter. As an aside, if you were to clone yourself, would your clone have a soul?

The Concept of Free Will:  To start will let’s examine the paradox of free will. Here’s one of many contradictions. You insist that you have free will. Therefore, God has no control over your actions. Therefore, God is not an all-powerful being. A God who isn’t all-powerful isn’t the most perfect being that can be conceived of. God has to be the most perfect being anyone can imagine. Therefore, there is no God. Now if God is all-powerful, even though God has granted you free will, your free will is ultimately an illusion living on somewhat borrowed time in that God can revoke that free will gift at any time He choses and thus have His wicked way with you!

Another take is that if God exists, all His attributes must be compatible. If all God’s attributes are not compatible, God must not exist. For example, God can not have His own personal free will and be all-knowing. If God is all knowing, then God knows in advance what He will and will not do. If God knows in advance that He will not do something, then He has no free will of His own. He has no options available to Him but to not do what He knows he won’t do.

Anyway, God has apparently granted humanity, including you, a concept called ‘free will’. That is, you are free to pick and choose between various alternatives, including making choices or decisions that can be described as good, or as evil; moral or immoral; ethical or otherwise. However, regarding such a free will, I would argue that you can never be 100% sure that any choice or decision that you make wasn’t due to the universal laws, principles and relations part and parcel of physical causality that started operating from Day One (the Big Bang event) and thus forever and ever predetermined. You might be 99.999% sure you have free will, and that it was God given, but I can’t figure out any way you could absolutely prove it to any outsider, or to yourself for that matter if you are honest with yourself..

If you accept free will, then you must of necessity admit that causality does not always operate. Just as you, dear reader might refuse to believe in pre-determinism, I absolutely refuse to abandon 100% causality, an absolute cause-and-affect principle, which then forces me to reject free will, even though I do so reluctantly. It gives me no joy to think that what I’m doing right now is the ultimate outcome of the set of conditions that existed at the time of the Big Bang event and that I therefore have no choice since that’s the nature of a clockwork Universe, but it’s the lesser of two philosophical evils for me!

I assume that anytime you, dear reader, make a voluntary choice, that there must have been some causality chain of cause-and-effect happenings that led to that choice vis-a-vis some other choice. Your decision didn’t happen for lack of any reason at all. Put another way, your choice has a foundation. Now I just extend that foundation, that causality chain, back to the initial set of conditions present at the origin of the Universe in much the same way as you can trace your (extremely improbable) existence via the chain of existences of (extremely improbable) ancestors, going right back through the unbroken chain to the first proto-cell some four billions years ago, (a proto-cell which in turn may have come from the depths of space and has an ancestry (your ancestry) extending back untold billions of years before Planet Earth ever formed).  You certainly can’t deny that ancestral causality chain, so why deny a causality chain that ultimately extends back to the Big Bang event and the pre-determined chain of happenings and which leads you to whatever choices you are currently contemplating?

And so ‘yes’, using that logic, you aren’t responsible for your decisions and resulting actions (though I’ll bet legal eagles everywhere would have something to say about that, for that undercuts our entire legal system). But from the point of view of the Universe, it might ask, ‘so what?’ It matters not at all to the cosmos (and to 99.9999% of all life forms, including humanity – past, present and future) whether you deposit money in a bank, or rob that bank!

Just as we have computer simulations (such as ‘Life’, a computer software package) that allow for no free will, that is, everything is pre-determined given the initial set of programmed conditions, could we in turn be part of a simulated ‘Planet Earth’ computer ‘game’ or simulation of someone (something) somewhere out there? Do the characters in a typical video game have free will, or do they dance to the tune of their programmer and player? Can you, dear reader, prove to me (or anyone) by some chain of logic that you or we are not the product of or existing in a simulated and therefore no free will, computer generated, virtual universe?  If not, then you have to admit, however remote the odds, that that possibility exists.

If the ‘many worlds’ interpretation of reality is correct, free will is an academic or moot point since all choices or decisions are enabled. To explain the ‘many worlds’ concept, it boils down to the interpretation that whenever you (or anything else – animate or inanimate) are forced to choose, to make a decision, all possibilities are entered into. So, you have this free will decision to do X or to do Y or to do Z. You actually end up doing all three, and thus there’s a new universe Y, and a new universe Z, which splits and branches off from universe X because you choose via your free will (or so you think) to choice X. In reality, you also choose Y and Z. Therefore, no free will was ultimately exhibited.

However, if I were a betting man, I’d bet that humanity does have free will, although that in no way actually proves the existence of God. Ultimately however, does it make any real difference whether you, dear reader, have free will, or the illusion of free will, as long as you actually believe you’re your own boss? 

By the way, can you have free will in Heaven? I mean can you, of your own free will, commit a sin in Heaven? If you can, well you shouldn’t be in Heaven at all and God has stuffed up, being all-knowing, in letting you in, in the first place. If you can’t commit a sin in Heaven, then God has revoked your free will!

To be continued…

If God Isn’t God, Then Who or What Is God? Part Two

In my opinion, all this Biblical nonsense boils down to a collection of myths and fairy tales for grownups. For those who really have the faith, I’m easy. But I think the concept of the Biblical God (and associated baggage) is the greatest con job ever fostered on the great unwashed. Unless, assuming that God or the gods (i.e. – Zeus, etc.) weren’t totally fabricated out of whole cloth, then maybe, just maybe, the gods, including God, are extraterrestrials.

There are two variations to that possibility.

Here’s one of those variations. What if God were in reality a very ‘flesh-and-blood’ extraterrestrial computer programmer, a computer programmer who has written a software package called, say “Planet Earth”? Maybe it’s a computer or interactive video game – maybe a homework assignment for a smart extraterrestrial student. Here’s some more evidence in support of our virtual reality.

Biblical One: Explain the parting of the Red Sea in the Bible! It’s easy to do in the movies, on a computer, or in your head.

Biblical Two: Then there’s this Biblical bit about Joshua commanding the sun to stand still (at least that’s the way I recall it). That’s either a tall tale or a myth or the result of a simulation. Whatever, it can’t be a physical reality. 

Biblical Three: In the Bible we have this tale of the multiplying of loaves and fishes out of virtually nothing. Again, you can imagine it, but that’s about it. Likewise with any sort of miracle it’s easy to visualize the event, but infinitely harder to explain it. But, as in the case of loaves and fishes, it’s easy to write a software package that can do this multiplication feat as a simulation exercise.

Biblical Four: Heaven and Hell can be created as easily as any other sort of place, complete with either fluffy white clouds and pearly white gates; harps and haloes, or devils and pitchforks; fire and brimstone!

Biblical Five: If someone (or something) is calling the simulation shots, you could obviously and easily be resurrected or reincarnated or just allowed to cease to be (that is, deleted from the program).

Paranormal One: How can reports of a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster continue for decades without physical verification as if these creatures were but phantoms? Again, it’s easy to visualize such creatures, but far harder to explain how a rather largish lake monster can elude detection in a confined lake seemingly indefinitely. All these observers can’t be totally mistaken. But what if the ‘monsters’ AND their observers are both simulations, where the ‘monsters’ are simulated to be a quasi-phantom – a sort of game to play with your simulated observers?

Paranormal Two: What about ghosts and fairies and all of their various relations? You can create them on film, in your mind, or on a computer screen, so, if you can, so could another – and create you as well in the process.

Paranormal Three: How can aliens abduct humans or mutilate cattle, decade after decade, without ever being seen? It’s easy to do in a computer simulation; difficult in reality.

Paranormal Four: That goes ditto for the English crop circles. The crop circle phenomena is totally unexplainable, but it doesn’t have to be explainable in a physical sense if it’s all a virtual reality created by an extraterrestrial intelligence including the observers who see the circles and wonder how on earth it was done.

From the examples above, I conclude that it almost seems as if someone (something) is ultimately responsible for aspects of the Universe, but he / she / it / they didn’t quite think things through sufficiently. Methinks an all knowing, all powerful supernatural God type being wouldn’t have stuffed things up. The Universe is certainly stuffed up and if the Bible isn’t a stuffed up piece of literary work, I don’t know what is! So both the Bible and our Universe are either naturally stuffed up (The Bible because it was authored by flawed human beings and thus has nothing to do with the infallible word of God), or it was created stuffed up! If it was created stuffed up, well again, it’s because the creator was flawed flesh-and-blood, and hardly an all-knowing and all-powerful God. Our flawed creator created a simulated Universe, including all the Biblical baggage we have to try to reconcile with a perfect creator God (who, in my version, doesn’t exist).

Could there be an afterlife without a God? I suggest that if there is an afterlife, there has to be a natural as opposed to a supernatural mechanism, and that we’d be hard pressed to come up with one. While I can’t think of a completely natural explanation to account for any plausible transition from life to afterlife, I can think of a non-supernatural one, albeit it’s not totally natural. Just as it’s within the realm of possibility that we exist as software in a computer program called “Planet Earth”, so too might there be another computer program with associated software called “The Spirit World” or “The Abode of the Afterlife”. When you reach your termination as a simulated living being in “Planet Earth”, you get resurrected in “The Spirit World”. Of course in that sense there’s still a god, but a ‘god’ who just happens to be an extraterrestrial computer programmer, who could be flesh and blood, or maybe an artificial intelligence in its own right. Either way, it’s not 100% natural, but it’s certainly not supernatural. Of course for all I know there maybe other software programs with names such as “Hell” and “Heaven” or “Valhalla” or maybe dozens, hundreds even thousands of others we’ve never even conceived or heard of. I mean the virtual beings in one of our terrestrial computer or video games wouldn’t be aware that there was thousands of other computer or video games in existence with dozens more being produced and brought out each and every month.

It all makes a sort of sense albeit in a weird or strange sort of sci-fi way. I mean, to paraphrase a rather famous observation, “the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it’s stranger than we can imagine”.  If there’s anyone who can give a definitive proof that we’re not a creation of someone’s (something’s) virtual reality (computer simulation) then I’d like to hear it so I can cross the scenario off my list of things to have to worry about!

That specific aside, if there is any historical evidence for a god, gods or The God, then that evidence could just as easily be equally interpreted as evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence(s), whose purpose(s) or objective(s) may not be all that benign.

So my second and more likely possible answers to ‘if God isn’t God, then who is God?’ are summed up by the well known phrase ‘ancient astronauts’. God is, or was, an extraterrestrial, but not in this case the creator of a simulated universe. Rather, a being within a really real universe. Recall (the late) Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, “any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic”, or in this context, an advanced extraterrestrial technology and alien being welding same is indistinguishable from the supernatural or a supernatural God.

If the above argument is valid, then I conclude that it’s easy to explore the nooks and crannies of our galaxy, and seeing that we have no place to run and hide, that then we indeed have been discovered by extraterrestrials. Since one or more extraterrestrial technological civilizations have already done their boldly going exploring thing, it stands to reason that at various times in our geological and historical past we would have received visitors from the stars. If one or more such occurrences happened in our historical past, there might be some suggestive evidence of same; and thus the concept of the ‘ancient astronaut’ has come to pass.

Erich Von Daniken, including those of a similar point of view who came before and after him, collectively had the germ of a good idea, but he, and they, IMHO got rather carried away with the concept and started seeing ancient extraterrestrial astronauts behind every pyramid and megalith in existence. Now I don’t believe for a moment that aliens, or humans assisted by aliens, built the pyramids or the statues at Easter Island or any other type of archaeological monument. Evidence suggestive of ancient astronauts will probably best be found in myths and legends, including the myths and legends central to our major religions, perhaps in advanced human knowledge of scientific concepts out of sync with that particular culture so hosting that knowledge, or in art works, or other archaeological works that are suggestive of an awareness of sky beings.

Firstly, nearly all cultures have stories and pictograms about or of sky beings, including the Australian aboriginals and American Indians. Myths and legends surrounding, say, the Greek / Roman / Norse gods can be interpreted in an ancient astronaut context (ditto for other religious beings or gods), or perhaps the Biblical ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’ is suggestive. While the etchings on the Plain of Nazca were certainly not runways, for flying saucers, they can easily be interpreted as mammoth human constructions designed to be viewed by sky beings. Why go to the trouble if sky beings weren’t really around to appreciate your efforts?

Then there’s a whole pot-full of mythological creatures – the Centaur, unicorns, the Sphinx, the Griffin, Pegasus, the Minotaur, mermaids, dragons, etc. which might be non-humanoid extraterrestrial life forms. Or, more realistically, perhaps in light of the UFO abduction and Roswell greys, are the myths and legends shared by many cultures dealing with elves, dwarfs, gnomes, the fairy-folk, the wee-people, and other smallish beings that aren’t quite human. It strikes me as more logical that these ‘wee folk’ actually exist, and that’s why all the references to, and belief in, them, exist. That is, they are really real vis-à-vis references to, and belief in them, because there is some psychological, sociological or cultural necessity to invent imaginary beings, calling it mythology (as opposed to literary fiction), or perhaps calling it religion.

In conclusion, the ‘ancient astronaut’ field is a subject ripe for detailed academic study, and the concept of the ‘ancient astronaut’ shouldn’t be dismissed by scholars are readily as it has been. Unfortunately, it’s unlikely any academic would put his or her career on the line by pursuing such a controversial, ‘pseudo-scientific, topic because of the ‘giggle’ factor – Pity that.

Further recommended ‘ancient astronaut’ readings:

Blumrich, Josef F.; The Spaceships of Ezekiel; Bantam Books, New York; 1974: 

Castle, Edgar W. & Thiering, Barry B. (Joint Editors); Some Trust in Chariots!!; Westbooks, Perth, W.A.; 1972:

Daniken, Erich von; Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York; 1969:

Daniken, Erich von; Gods from Outer Space: Return to the Stars or Evidence for the Impossible; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York; 1971:

Downing, Barry H.; The Bible & Flying Saucers; Avon Books, New York; 1968:

Drake, W. Raymond; Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient East; Sphere Books, London; 1974:

Drake, W. Raymond; Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient West; Sphere Books, London; 1974:

Norman, Eric; Gods Demons and UFOs; Lancer Books, New York; 1970:

Story, Ronald; Guardians of the Universe?; New English Library, London; 1980: 

Story, Ronald; The Space-Gods Revealed: A Close Look at the Theories of Erich von Daniken; Harper & Row, New York; 1976: 

Temple, Robert K.G.; The Sirius Mystery; Sidgwick & Jackson, London; 1976:

Wilson, Clifford; Crash Go the Chariots; Lancer Books, New York; 1972:

Wilson, Clifford; The Chariots Still Crash; Signet, New York; 1975:

Wilson, Clifford; The War of the Chariots; S. John Bacon, Melbourne, Victoria; 1978: