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Post 11. 01/24/2018 continued . . .
Theory of Everything
All Is Mind
Langan calls the source of being, the UnBound Telesis, meaning something like an infinite intentionality, or eternal Will. UBT sounds equivalent to my notion of eternal Chaos, an infinite unformed pool of potential, which like Plato's ideal Forms can become realized into physical things or processes. But, Actualization requires Causation, which is an act of creation. My own term for the old Greek concept of “the ground of being” is simply BEING : the power to exist. So that's another way to describe G*D functionally without defining the deity phenomenologically.
He addresses the “something from nothing” question by viewing “nothing” as “unconstrained potential”. Which is similar to my own notions of Chaos as infinite unformed “substance”, and EnFormAction as eternal divine creative power. Physicist Lawrence Krauss recently asserted that the Big Bang burst of nothing-into-something was not a divine magic trick, but merely a random fluctuation in the eternal quantum field, assumed to exist a priori by otherwise a posteriori physicists. Perhaps an infinite series of fluctuations of positive/negative potential would eventually produce a particle of "something". But the question remains, who created that field of fecund possibility? Could it be . . . God?
The CTMU theory also supports a scientific version of the old philosophical notion of Panpsychism, in which reality is “all mind”. Langan proposes three levels of “self-cognition”. As I interpret his jargon : 1. Passive "Subordinate" objects, like atoms, interact without adding complexity (energy exchanges) to the information. 2. Active“Agents”, with various levels of consciousness, pass incoming energy/info through reflexive feedback loops, thereby creating novel forms : new bodies, fresh ideas, original inventions. 3."Global" Mind is the evolving Enformation system itself, of which human minds are creative but constrained parts. Taken together, these characteristics sound more like Spinoza’s Pandeism, or PanEnDeism, than a description of the heaven-dwelling bible-god.
As in my own thesis, Langan describes reality in terms of “the mind of God”. But he shows much more self-confidence that his theory constitutes “absolute truth”, because it is founded on indisputable tautologies and mathematical reasoning. But where I only claim to show that the axiom of a transcendent creator is a reasonable assumption, he thinks his argument proves the existence of God. Whereas my tentative and open-ended thesis presentation is intended to solicit constructive criticism1, his impetuous persona and pugnacious posture tend to polarize his readers and reviewers.
According to Wikipedia, << Online discussion-board participants range from supporters hailing the CTMU as a major breakthrough and praising its author for his brilliance, to critics hurling scorn and invectives at Langan and pronouncing his theory incomprehensible or utterly incorrect, to neutral bystanders preferring to reserve judgement until the publication of Design for a Universe.>> So, although I appreciate Langan’s unintended support for my own theory, I will also refrain from formally supporting his, until the dust has settled from the brouhaha he has brewed-up by challenging the sacred paradigms of both Science and Religion.
End of Post 11
Chaos = Infinity
In Greek cosmogony, Chaos was the formless or void state preceding the creation of the Cosmos in their creation myths. Like the Abysss in Genesis, it was “without form and void”.
In modern mathematical cosmology, real numbers are values between 0 and 1. Those values define a specific position on the number line. On the Quantum scale though, numbers fade into an infinite void, a continuous quantum field with no defining boundaries, no physical limits, just one big all-inclusive range of potential values, extending without gaps from 0 to 1.
Infinity also cannot be ordered into specific values or categories. So, it seems random to the observer, disorganized, formless, and chaotic. Hence, the Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg, which applies to the superposition state of virtual particles, existing in limbo between space-time-bound reality and unconstrained infinity.
Chaos, then, is no-thing-ness, while Cosmos is the realm of physical things. But Chaos is also the infinite pool of potential from which virtual particles and Platonic Forms emerge. The Big Bang Singularity could be construed as the point of contact between Chaos & Cosmos, between Ideality & Reality. It funnels creative codes from omni-potential to actual.
In a modern mythical sense, Chaos is equivalent, both to an infinite Quantum field, and to an eternal provident deity, “from which all things flow”. And Cosmos is essentially the Creation of that deity. Such a transcendent deity has no discernable attributes, other than those of its mundane creation.
Tautology :
A universally accepted statement, true by definition, which cannot be denied without contra-diction. (e.g. God is divine; 1 + 1 = 2)
Note 1 :
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