Pre-Singularity Evolution

[metis]

Would not a God which truly existed necessarily be 100 percent natural? It is true that we can only know what can presently be known, but we may not be interpreting the data we have correctly.
We may have enough to prove that forethought was necessary -or something like that -but not realize it.

I imagine everything that is to be "1" -which is subdivided and rearranged -perhaps infinitely (I was thinking about the statement "God is one", etc... in mathematical terms.)

It just seems to me that "everything" needed to be arranged as an overall intelligence before our universe and ourselves were possible.

OK, back to finish my last post:

In regards to a single deity creating all from nothing posits a some problems. To dramatize the point, let me make a rather absurd comparison with God being compared to "Joe Artist" who decides he's going to paint something. OK, what's involved, so here's the steps Joe is going to go through:
1.Joe decides to paint.
2.Joe collects materials to paint with.
3.Joe paints.

OK, notice that all three of these steps involve a change in Joe, but this change logically has to come from the outside because what we experience daily is that if something is thought of and/or if something happens, there must be a cause. To put it another way, why would Joe suddenly decide to paint if Joe always existed and was unchanging? On top of that, a closed body uninfluenced by anything should not change because nothing is causing it to change.

If Joe is alone as a creator, what materials could Joe gather from?

And finally, painting is a process of change whereas Joe changes and so does the canvas Joe is working on. If Joe is unchanging, then how can Joe change? If Joe is changing, what causes Joe to change, which logically must be from the outside if Joe is to change?

To put it another way in few words, what changed to change Joe?

The above is not my idea but is from the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, who used to be a notable scientist in France when he chucked that and now lives with the Dalai Lama in India. I've read several books by him, and this guy is amazingly brilliant, even if one were not to agree with him. "The Monk and the Philosopher", which he co-wrote with his father who's a philosopher, is the most thought-provoking book I have ever read.

Ricard's point is something has to cause change, going by what we experience, therefore a creator-god must change but also cannot stand alone as an uncaused cause, the latter of which defies what we do know and experience on a daily basis.

 

[metis]

... and then there's Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

Thanks for this as I had run across this before but never checked it out.

 

[metis]

It would be awesome to find life constantly evolving and changing on many other planets -but it is interesting that humans imagine not being subject to evolution one day.
Constant adaptation -life and death cycle -has its uses -but not needing to adapt or adapting as individuals is not an impossibility.
Permanent life forms/immortality would allow us to move on -and to provide a stable environment for future immortals.
If you think about it, one of the main problems with humanity is successive generations needing to learn the same personal lessons over and over -even given the amount of recorded knowledge.
Our minds can conceive of immortality.
It seems logical that it will follow somehow.

The evidence suggests that we and all life forms are continuing to evolve. Change not only is inevitable, it's basically necessary for survival's sake.

Nor am I convinced that immortality is real, but then what do I know?

 

[Zosimus]

OK, back to finish my last post:

In regards to a single deity creating all from nothing posits a some problems. To dramatize the point, let me make a rather absurd comparison with God being compared to "Joe Artist" who decides he's going to paint something. OK, what's involved, so here's the steps Joe is going to go through:
1.Joe decides to paint.
2.Joe collects materials to paint with.
3.Joe paints.

OK, notice that all three of these steps involve a change in Joe, but this change logically has to come from the outside because what we experience daily is that if something is thought of and/or if something happens, there must be a cause. To put it another way, why would Joe suddenly decide to paint if Joe always existed and was unchanging? On top of that, a closed body uninfluenced by anything should not change because nothing is causing it to change.

If Joe is alone as a creator, what materials could Joe gather from?

And finally, painting is a process of change whereas Joe changes and so does the canvas Joe is working on. If Joe is unchanging, then how can Joe change? If Joe is changing, what causes Joe to change, which logically must be from the outside if Joe is to change?

To put it another way in few words, what changed to change Joe?

The above is not my idea but is from the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, who used to be a notable scientist in France when he chucked that and now lives with the Dalai Lama in India. I've read several books by him, and this guy is amazingly brilliant, even if one were not to agree with him. "The Monk and the Philosopher", which he co-wrote with his father who's a philosopher, is the most thought-provoking book I have ever read.

Ricard's point is something has to cause change, going by what we experience, therefore a creator-god must change but also cannot stand alone as an uncaused cause, the latter of which defies what we do know and experience on a daily basis.

First of all, this is a bad metaphor. Assuming that God created everything ex nihilo, a claim that is not accepted by everyone, it is far more comparable to writing a Word document on a computer or writing a complex computer program, an act requiring no specific materials. For example, if I decide to create a chess program, it does not require me to gather materials to do so.

Second, there are two distinct options when it comes to God. If God does not experience time as we do, and everything is one eternal now for him, then there is no change occurring in him because this Earth project is just one of zillions of projects that he started, is working on, and has already finished in his eternal-now state. Under this scenario, past, present, and future are to God like physical distance is to us, and he can know the future or the past as easily as you can read the next or the previous sentence in a book.

The other option is that God does experience time, and thus is more of a putterer. He could be compared to someone whose library is already perfectly sorted alphabetically, but who is going to resort it by book size this week, and then by book weight next week, as kind of an amusing activity rather than something imperfect that he wants to fix. In this scenario, God's "changing" is nothing more than a fixed cycle that he regularly and invariably performs in the exact same way.

 

[sandy whitelinger]

If it is believed that the universe essentially evolved from that which preceded it, do you think it possible that pre-singularity/pre-elemental life forms could have evolved -or do you believe that life must be based on the specific elements formed by/by what followed the singularity?

We are now doubting the belief that life must be based on carbon -so might it be possible for life to be based on that which preceded the formation of any of the elements?

Apparently we are unable to know anything about what the pre-universe was like. We are only geared to know this universe.

 

[Etritonakin]

OK, back to finish my last post:

In regards to a single deity creating all from nothing posits a some problems. To dramatize the point, let me make a rather absurd comparison with God being compared to "Joe Artist" who decides he's going to paint something. OK, what's involved, so here's the steps Joe is going to go through:
1.Joe decides to paint.
2.Joe collects materials to paint with.
3.Joe paints.

OK, notice that all three of these steps involve a change in Joe, but this change logically has to come from the outside because what we experience daily is that if something is thought of and/or if something happens, there must be a cause. To put it another way, why would Joe suddenly decide to paint if Joe always existed and was unchanging? On top of that, a closed body uninfluenced by anything should not change because nothing is causing it to change.

If Joe is alone as a creator, what materials could Joe gather from?

And finally, painting is a process of change whereas Joe changes and so does the canvas Joe is working on. If Joe is unchanging, then how can Joe change? If Joe is changing, what causes Joe to change, which logically must be from the outside if Joe is to change?

To put it another way in few words, what changed to change Joe?

The above is not my idea but is from the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, who used to be a notable scientist in France when he chucked that and now lives with the Dalai Lama in India. I've read several books by him, and this guy is amazingly brilliant, even if one were not to agree with him. "The Monk and the Philosopher", which he co-wrote with his father who's a philosopher, is the most thought-provoking book I have ever read.

Ricard's point is something has to cause change, going by what we experience, therefore a creator-god must change but also cannot stand alone as an uncaused cause, the latter of which defies what we do know and experience on a daily basis.

That's all kind of my point. The single, overall deity would BE everything -and everything that could be -not unchanging in the sense you are talking about.
The God of the bible states "I change not" -but that does not refer to configuration (for example: the being who became Christ was regularly changing in body).
An overall creator would be both that which could create and that from which it could be created. -and necessarily so in order to be all-powerful.
Col 1:17 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.
(not exist)
Ourselves and our environment would essentially be part of the whole of "God."
That is essentially stated here....
Joh 14:20 At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

As for an un-caused cause -we can reasonably say that something cannot come from nothing -so "everything" just was -but obviously changes in configuration.
We either accept that something came from nothing -or something always existed which could become this.
(Whether Joe was an intelligent creator or Joe was "nature" -we are absolutely certain that Joe exists and that Joe changes!
We also know that the whole of Joe includes both intelligent creation and some "natural" medium/material)
This is essentially saying that God -everything -evolves -or, more correctly, IS EVOLUTION -but not in the same way as element-based life forms evolve.
He is not SUBJECT to element-based evolution. He simply changes.
[Element-based evolution as we know it -relying on a life and death cycle and recycling of material (which seems to be a program that can be altered or reprogrammed) -is logical to produce adaptation and variety within an essentially-isolated microcosmic system with a limited number of atoms to go around. An overall being would be the macrocosm -and all things would be subject to him]
If God created more of himself -and of the increase of his government there will be no end -it all must be composed of the same stuff which has always existed.

For an overall intelligent designer to exist, it seems that it must -itself -be of a certain design of a certain medium/material.
It is not logical -at least from our perspective -to believe that an extremely complex creative mind would have simply existed -but more logical to think it developed somehow.
Certain things must be true to allow for an intelligence to develop (the most simple intelligence/interaction which could become more complex) -and certain things can only be true after an intelligence develops to a certain point.
When we consider "God", we tend to think of a "man in the sky" who somehow existed in that configuration forever -and suddenly decided to pop everything we know into existence.
However, that is not actually consistent with what is written in the bible.
God did not HAVE a beginning. God IS the beginning AND the end -meanwhile there is reconfiguration.
God would be the mind able to affect all things -but perhaps the overall mind and all things became increasingly complex together. The more complexity, the more to consider and process, the more memory allocation and processing power necessary, etc., etc.

That would essentially mean that God was possibly once less complex than we are born as individuals -but that actually makes sense -and really wouldn't matter at this point, would it?

God would still be "eternal" -all powerful -the beginning and end, etc., etc.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Thanks for this as I had run across this before but never checked it out.

Read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. It's an outstanding book!