The Journey to God, Starting From the Bottom

Yesterday's post ended with my description of the structure of my imaginary forthcoming book, which will 

begin at either end and meet in the middle, where God or ultimate reality is situated. Reading it from front to middle would represent the upward arc (↑) from manifestation to Principle, whereas middle to back would constitute the downward projection (↓) of creation from Principle to manifestation. 

In response to this description, Gemini wonders "What kind of content would each half contain? Would they be narratives with characters, philosophical explorations, poetic reflections, or a combination?"

No narratives. I'm not a novelist. And if there are any characters, it would be just me and Petey, with lots of philosophical explorations but I don't know about poetic reflections. That might be nice, but poet? That's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. 

As we review last summer's batch of poestry, I was looking for an example of one that starts from the bottom, and this one will have to do. It's in the context of a discussion of Robert Spitzer's Science at the Doorstep to God: Science and Reason in Support of God, the Soul, and Life after Death. 

Clearly, in beginning with science, Spitzer is starting at the bottom, i.e., with the material world. But, as indicated in the title, the bottom turns out to be a doorstep to God. Or a window in the ceiling, i.e., a skylight. Better yet, a sunroof. Of course, it is up to us whether we drive with it open or closed. 

But if it is closed, then there goes the (↑) from manifestation to Principle. Our journey is over before it has begun. We're on the doorstep but the door is locked. Frankly it's not really a door at all, and not even a ceiling, because that would at least imply verticality. Rather, it's a wall, and we are just bricks in the wall. 

However, in examining the material cosmos, we can trace it backward in time to a "beginning," at which point the screen goes blank because there is no before. I myself don't buy that, but a physicist (with no recourse to metaphysics) must, because that's what the physics says.   

Of course, we can never prove with absolute certitude that "God" is responsible for the Big Bang. However, we can say that, whatever alias he goes by, our leading suspect is an immaterial personal being with an intellect infinitely superior to ours, so we've put a tail on him and are attempting to tap his line.

As Spitzer says in the Introduction, the unimaginably unlikely fine-tuning of the Big Bang makes "the idea of a transphysical, transuniversal intelligence a most compelling explanation" for these improbable coincidences. 

And when we say "improbable," we mean something like a raccoon typing randomly and coming up with the text of Macbeth on the first try.

So, you're telling me there's a chance atheism makes sense?  

I no longer spend much time thinking about how to harmonize religion and science. Rather, I just try to comprehend the metaphysics of it all, and let the harmony take care of itself. 

What I mean is that some things are true regardless of what science or religion say, because common sense -- or, let us say, rudimentary logic -- trumps both. 

If this sounds impertinent, even God cannot, for example, violate the principle of non-contradiction, i.e., simultaneously exist and not exist. Indeed, to say I AM WHO I AM is to validate the principle of identity. It cannot be simultaneously true to say I AM NOT WHO I AM, or I AM WHO I AM NOT. Remember, "is" is the soul of judgement, even -- I would say especially -- for God. It is only because I AM that HE IS and we are too.

Spitzer puts forth a sophisticated argument for why science not only cannot disprove the existence of God, but actually makes a transcendent intelligence the most probable explanation. But even an unsophisticated argument will do. No need to rub it in. 

Likewise, there is much argument that the cosmos must have a beginning, and that this beginning is the Big Bang. However, even absent the Big Bang, we can again prove via metaphysics that the cosmos must have an uncaused vertical source. In short, the cosmos -- like any other contingent entity -- cannot explain itself.

One of the most simple but compelling arguments for a beginning is from the law of entropy, meaning that the existence of disorder necessarily increases in the cosmos with the passage of time. Once maximum entropy is reached, no activity can occur, and the cosmos will be functionally dead. In short, "the entropy of the universe must increase until equilibrium is reached."

Unless this turns out to be an open cosmos, more on which as we proceed. But it certainly appears to be open to a transcendent source, clearly so at the beginning, so why not at the end, and at every point in between?

Anyway, let's complete our gedankenexperiment with entropy. If maximum entropy is the inevitable end of the cosmos, then it is  

clear that if the universe had existed for an infinite time, then that equilibrium would have been reached, and if it had been reached, the universe would no longer be able to undergo spontaneous change and would therefore be dead. 

Right. Therefore, the cosmos not only had a beginning, but there is necessarily more order at the beginning, indeed, an inconceivably vaster amount. And this is precisely what we see with all of the fine-tuning packed into the Big Bang.

The low entropy of the universe is so improbable that its occurrence at the Big Bang is virtually impossible.  

I won't bore you with mathematical figures and comparisons. Well, just this one: out of all the possible universes, given the free range of various parameters governing it, the "right answer" for a cosmos capable of sustaining life comes down to one in 10 to the 10th to the 123rd, a number so large that "if it were written out" in 10-point font, "our solar system could not contain it."

There are numerous other comparisons, but they essentially equate to impossible, "which screams out for an explanation, a cause." And Spitzer easily bats down such desperate pseudo-explanations as the multiverse, string theories, or cyclic cosmologies. 

In chapter 3 Spitzer moves on to a more purely metaphysical argument. Lotta ins & outs, but it basically comes down to the reality of an uncaused and unrestricted intellect behind it all, which is the source and ground of the "profoundly intelligible existents filled with information that can give correct answers to the full range of questions." 

In other words, a Talking Universe ordered to our unrestricted desire to listen to and know about it, for "observable realities are shot through not only with contingency but also with intelligibility." 

Knock knock.

Who's there?

An unrestricted desire to know who's there.

I AM.

I don't get it. 

Not sure I do either. Let's just move on.

At this point, science has opened the door to the likelihood of a transphysical-transuniversal intelligent creative powwhose nature is not fully known.

Science is enclosed in the circles of quantity and materiality, but 

If we do not fall prey to scientism, we may now enter another door to the realm of necessary truths through metaphysical method. 

Which is to say, leave the smaller circle for the larger, into a realm of truth that is "applicable to the whole of reality," not just to the empirical world at the periphery of the intelligible. 

Again, a complementarity between science and metaphysics can fill in a great many gaps inevitably left open by science -- for example, the gap between intelligence and intelligibility, which is more like an unbridgeable abyss if regarded from the perspective of materialism.

But instead of proceeding through this wide open door, the next chapter reverts back from metaphysics to science, reviewing all of the medical and scientific evidence of a transcendent soul, mainly from near death experiences (NDEs) during which the person is clinically dead (i.e., no brain activity, fixed dilated pupils, no gag reflex, and voting Democrat). 

Some of the stories are indeed remarkable, including those of people blind from birth who can see exactly what's going on around them during the NDE, and later describe it with perfect accuracy. 

The majority of people describe blissfully positive experiences during NDEs, but a significant minority undergo hellish ones. It would be nice to know if these are a result of hellish personalities, but Spitzer doesn't say. 

Despite their plausibility, it is difficult to know what to make of NDEs unless or until I personally undergo one. Nor am I in any rush to do so. Analogously, some people have taken psilocybin and come back convinced of the existence of God, and good for them, but I hesitate to venture down that path either.

The next chapter is more our style, going to the literally infinite -- and again unbridgeable -- gap between the lowest man and the highest ape. Spitzer shows that we cannot be "mere extensions of a bio-physical animal kingdom," but "are categorically distinct from other species." 

Here again, there are a lotta ins & outs, so I'll do my best to bottom line it for you. If we consider language, for example, the best a chimp can do is communicate via concrete perceptual signs corresponding to, say, a banana. But they cannot abstract from this to the idea of "fruit," nor relate one higher order concept to another, something we easily do. 

Indeed, "about 3 percent of our words signify perceptual ideas, and about 97 percent, conceptual ideas" that are quite remote from images, instincts, or objects, or in other words, wholly immaterial. And

If the content of an act of awareness is transphysical, so also must be the act of awareness on which it depends. This act of awareness must therefore be substantially transphysical, implying a soul.

Concepts are abstract enough, but what about relations between concepts? These are even more remote from any material content, nor can one get there from any experience of the perceptual world. 

Again, this gap is unbridgeable, for "how could we ever have learned those higher-order concepts from the perceptual world? It is clearly impossible." If the capacity weren't already there, we could never have acquired it. 

Which Spitzer describes as "the preexperiential conditions necessary for abstracting conceptual ideas (derived from the perceptual world)." 

Yada yada, there is simply no scientific explanation of the soul's capacities, because any such explanation presumes the conceptual capacities of the immaterial soul. 

There's much more, but this is as far as I've gotten in the book. Let's just say there must be a bridge over the abyss, only not from the bottom up but from the top down.