Church of the Churchless

Knowing that you know: impossible

It's strange, but the most familiar sensation we have also is the most mysterious: knowing. I know this. And yet, I don't.

Just like everything else that I know. Or you know. Or anybody knows.

We don't know how we know. Which means we can't trust what we know – not with 100% certainty. So this should squash fundamentalism of every variety.

Except…people can't control their knowing. Reason, facts, information, persuasion: our sense of knowing isn't influenced by any of that.

Our knowing can't be trusted. Yet it's what we rely upon at every moment. Go figure. (But you can't, because knowing isn't capable of being figured.)

I've finished reading Robert Burton's "On Being Certain," the subject of a previous post after I'd read an article about the book. It's been quite a ride.

Loopy. That's the best word to describe it. Over and over, I'd find Burton pulling the rug out from under a viewpoint that I'd thought was solid. And believed in myself.

So I'd be thrown for a loop, experiencing some mental vertigo, turned upside down, searching for another certain spot of ground.

I'm still digesting the book. I don't quite know how to talk about what I've learned about not knowing – as the subtitle puts it, "believing you are right even when you're not."

This is a first stab. More posts will follow, probably. Can't say for sure. Uncertainty rules the day. Every day.

One of Burton's central points, which seems as certain as anything can be (he's a neurologist), is that human awareness – including our sense of knowing – is mediated by a hidden layer of brain activity.

The hidden layer, a term normally considered with AI [artificial intelligence] jargon, offers a powerful metaphor for the brain's processing of information. It is in the hidden layer that all elements of biology (from genetic predispositions to neurotransmitter variations and fluctuations) and all past experience, whether remembered or long forgotten, affect the processing of incoming information.

It is the interface between incoming sensory data and a final perception, the anatomic crossroad where nature and nurture intersect. It is why your red is not my red, your idea of beauty isn't mine, why eyewitnesses offer differing accounts of an accident, or why we don't all put our money on the same roulette number.

What this means is that stuff we're absolutely, completely, supremely confidently sure about, we can be wrong about.

Because we only know what pops out of the hidden layer into our conscious awareness. We can't know how the incoming data were manipulated by the hidden layer.

Thus those moments of intuitive, mystical, spiritual, unitive insight, where we feel "Ah, so this is what life is all about!" – those moments also are states of knowing that pop out of the hidden layer.

Being hidden, the insight can seem like an act of grace, a gift from God, an unquestionable revelation. Burton quotes William James:

Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.

Burton then comments:

This is a brilliant observation, equating religious and mystical states with the sensation of knowing, and with the further recognition that such knowledge is felt, not thought…James' description is perfectly straightforward – with mystical states, people experience spontaneous mental sensations that feel like knowledge but occur in the absence of any specific knowledge. Felt knowledge. Knowledge without thought. Certainty without deliberation or even conscious awareness of having had a thought.

But there's that hidden layer…

Just because we have a feeling of inerrant knowing doesn't mean that feeling is accurate. What pops into awareness is sort of like picking up the phone and hearing someone say, "Congratulations, you've just won a million dollars."

You don't know who is on the other end of the line, whether they can be trusted, what their motivation is, where they're calling from. Everything we're aware of, Burton says, is like this. Including the knowledge that we're aware.

Think about it. Or rather, don't think about it. Just be aware of being aware, of knowing your knowing. It's something we usually don't pay any attention to.

How I simply know what I want to write, and how my fingers type out that knowing. How you simply know whether what I've written makes sense, is understandable, means anything to you, is just gibberish or profoundly insightful.

But what the heck is that knowing? Is it a feeling, a thought, a sensation, none of the above? Is it under our control? Can you intentionally change your knowing? Or is that mysterious perception outside of our control?

Burton:

The feeling of knowing is universal, most likely originates within a localized region of the brain, can be spontaneously activated via direct stimulation or chemical manipulation, yet cannot be triggered by conscious effort.

These arguments for its inclusion as a primary brain module are more compelling than those postulated for deceit, compassion, forgiveness, altruism, or Machiavellian cunning. One can stimulate the brain and produce a feeling of knowing; one cannot stimulate the brain and create a politician.

What a predicament. The idea of a thought being created by more specialized modules, some operating outside of our control and awareness, seems both intuitively obvious and antithetical to how we experience our thoughts.

That's because we have a mental circuit breaker. It allows us to function without paralyzing indecision. Problem is: it can be wrong, and there's no way we can know that we don't know what we are sure we know.

As an isolated system, thought is doomed to the perpetual "yes, but," that arises out of not being able to know what you don't know. Without a circuit breaker, indecision and inaction would rule the day. What is needed is a mental switch that stops infinite ruminations and calms our fears of missing an unknown superior alternative.

Such a switch can't be a thought or we would be back at the same problem. The simplest solution would be a sensation that feels like a thought but isn't subject to thought's perpetual self-questioning. The constellation of mental states that constitutes the feeling of knowing is a marvelous adaptation that solves a very real metaphysical dilemma of how to reach a conclusion.

I love it. And, I hate it.

I love it because I can't tell you how many times I've been told by true believers, "Brian, you think too much." They say this because they just know what the truth beyond thought is.

Why? No why. They just know that ultimate truth isn't a thought. And since my metaphysical beliefs seem to be founded on thinking, and their knowing isn't, then obviously their knowing trumps my thinking.

Which is ridiculous. Because Burton's book presents lots of evidence that every sort of knowing, even the kind that doesn't seem to be based on anything but direct awareness, actually flows out of that hidden layer of brain functioning.

So I hate it. Because my knowing is just as unreliable as a true believer's, who I don't believe knows the truth. How to balance this loving and hating?

That'll have to wait for another post.

Being absolutely right, you’re wrong

You can't have "right" without "wrong." So if what you say is absolutely 100% certain, no doubt about it – that can't be true.

The Taoists figured this out a long time ago. Yin requires yang. Up needs down. Truth depends on falsity.

Much more recently, Karl Popper made falsifiability the cornerstone of what distinguishes a scientific theory. I echoed his ideas in "If a religion can't be wrong, it surely is."

I keep coming back to this notion, because both intuitively and logically it appeals to me. Sure, something may be real, yet improvable or indescribable.

Existence, for example. "What is, is." That statement sounds marvelously correct. And it is. But it doesn't mean anything. Not really.

"The Dream Weaver," a book I'm reading now, talks about words without meaning.

Basically, when you use a word, it needs a criterion. There must be a way to use the word incorrectly. It can't be the case that everything is selfish, or that everything is natural. If that were the case, then the word would become meaningless. If everything were considered natural, what would be the point of asking, Is this thing natural? It's sort of paradoxical in a way: I create a word that means everything and, in doing so, it means nothing.

Now, I'm fine with indescribable meaninglessness. That could well be the most meaningful thing in the world. Lots of experiences just are what they are – incommunicable to anyone else, but filled with Wow! for the experiencer.

Like the Greeks, we need to distinguish Truth from Beauty. A rose is a rose is a rose. That's beauty. Water is two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. That's truth.

A rose can't be anything other than a rose. Several molecules can be something other than water.

Similarly, much religious or metaphysical dogma can't be wrong because words are used in a way that defy falsification.

"God is everything."
"Consciousness is all."
"Whatever happens has to happen."
"A perfect guru never makes a mistake."
"Everything is destined."
"The world is illusion."
"Jesus is coming."

In each case, someone making the statement can't be pinned down if you try to show they could be wrong. They always have a way to wriggle out from skepticism because there's no "there" to what they're saying.

As I noted before, Eastern philosophies and religions are as prone to this as Western ones are. The Bible is true because it says in the Bible, "This is the word of God." The guru is perfect because his predecessor was flawless, and perfect gurus can't err when they appoint a successor.

Whenever I run up against words that can't be wrong, I start to lose interest in them – since they can't be right.

This explains why I've found myself gritting my teeth and filling the margins with question marks as I make my way through the last chapters of "Consciousness is All," a book that started off more interestingly than it is ending up for me.

In the beginning I liked how the author directed my attention to how awareness works. But when he turned to saying (over and over, in various ways) that everything is consciousness, it sounded just the same as "God is love."

Religious. Dogmatic. Meaningless.

Yet those words sound so wonderful. They explain it all! Karl Popper writes:

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appeared to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, opening your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated.

Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirming instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. This its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refused to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still "un-analysed" and crying aloud for treatment.

Recently there's been quite a bit of discussion on this blog about awareness. This can be another example of a word that doesn't mean anything, yet can seem deeply meaningful.

Yes, without awareness we can't be aware of anything. And without existence, nothing exists. Nor would life be lively if we weren't alive.

These are realities – awareness, existence, life. But they're not truths, not in any sort of scientific, logical, or evidentiary sense, because there is no untruth to which they can be contrasted.

How could I be aware of unawareness, or exist as nonexistence, or live a non-life? If such were possible, then speaking of these contraries would have some purpose.

As it is, discussions of these subjects can end up sounding to me like the oft-heard quote on sports radio: "It is what it is." (frequently spoken after a devastating loss or embarrassing athletic moment)

Don't get me wrong: there's nothing more interesting to me than awareness, existence, and life. That's because I've got a huge interest in being aware of existing after I stop living my life.

It's just that when I hear talk of "awareness never ends" it strikes me as no different in kind from "Jesus saves." Namely, a belief that can't be tested. At least, not in this life – which is the only life I can be sure of.

While I have a fondness for philosophies that assure me life is just fine exactly the way it is, and I don't need to do anything about it, I'm skeptical about whether there's any meaning to these assurances beyond the warm, fuzzy feeling they produce in my often-anxious soul.

Zen tells me, "first there is a mountain; then there isn't; then there is." I also have heard that the world appears just the same to an enlightened sage as an unenlightened fool. So why not remain a fool if there's no way to tell the difference?

In the end, there could well be no beginning and no end. But so long as we're not there, isn't there a "here" as well as a "there"?

[Note: Popper's proposition that falsifiability is what distinguishes science isn't universally accepted, for sure. See here and here (scroll down to Goldstein).

But even though I don't claim to fully understand the objections to his view, one reason seems to be that falsifying isn't what scientists really do, mostly. They set out to prove rather than disprove.

Fine. I'd be just as happy if metaphysical propositions could be proven to be true, rather than capable of being shown to be false. Sort of seems like the same difference to me, but someone more knowledgeable is free to prove me wrong.]

Update: This blogger has a nice take on falsifiability, viewing it as a necessary but not sufficient condition for a scientific hypothesis.

Which raises the question…if you hold to a metaphysical, spiritual, or religious belief, what would it take for you to admit, "I'm wrong"?

If you can't come up with an answer, that belief either is blind faith or not really anything capable of being believed (as noted above, awareness, existence, and life are outside the arena of belief, being pre-requisites for playing the game).

Brain damage = enlightenment?

Jill Bolte Taylor had what she calls a "stroke of insight." In her case it was an actual stroke – which produced a blood clot the size of a golf ball that pushed on her language centers in the left side of her brain.

Watch the nineteen minute video of her talk about the experience. Or read the transcript. It's fascinating and moving.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

Taylor's central theme is that the analytical left side of the brain cuts us off from the marvelous oneness revealed by the intuitive right side of the brain. As she lost her left brain functions, she felt pretty darn good.

However, it took her forty-five minutes to figure out how to call for help. And she went through eight years of post-stroke therapy to recover her left-sided capabilities. If her brain damage was as enlightening as her talk suggests, why wouldn't mystics destroy part of the brain instead of meditating for umpteen years?

The many comments on Taylor's video and transcript are as interesting as the talk itself. Viewers and readers have widely divergent opinions about her experience.

Here's a cynic:

This is a joke, right?

People paid $6,000 to hear this bozo ramble on about a super cliche psychedelic experience?

You can read thousands of very similar (but often much more profound and interesting) accounts at websites like erowid.com (not to mention thousand of books about drugs and altered states of consciousness, and millions of books and movies that have been influenced by them).

… Jeez. Smoke a joint. Drop a hit of acid. Eat some mushrooms, or try any of hundreds of other ways of altering your consciousness... it's a hell of a lot less painful and dangerous than having a stroke.

And here's an admirer:

This is incredible. amazing. beautiful. I happen to be reading the new Eckhart Tolle book right now - A New Earth - Awakening to your Life's Purpose. These two people have walked very different paths but somehow ended up at the same place, and saying more or less the same thing. It inspiring and gives me so much hope for humanity and this place. It is really even difficult to give words to how deeply this talk struck me. I just kept wanting to thank her for sharing herself and her healing with us.

I'm somewhere in between. Which, to me, is the point. We need both sides of the brain. To deny one half or the other is to deny half of human experience.

Taylor says that when she finally reached a colleague by phone, she couldn't understand what he was saying. Nor could she communicate her own thoughts.

Eventually the whole number gets dialed, and I'm listening to the phone, and my colleague picks up the phone and he says to me, "Whoo woo wooo woo woo." [laughter] And I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, he sounds like a golden retriever!" And so I say to him, clear in my mind I say to him. "This is Jill! I need help!" And what comes out of my voice is, "Whoo woo wooo woo woo." I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I sound like a golden retriever." So I couldn't know, I didn't know that I couldn't speak or understand language until I tried.

Yet now she's able to share her experience with audiences, because she has the left side of her brain back. And what is her main piece of advice?

I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.

Yes, it is. There are lots of ways to get more in touch with our right brain – meditation, dancing, athletics, drugs, sex, to name a few. Getting into "the zone" is a good thing. But for sure, it's not the only thing.

Yesterday I felt great in my Tai Chi class. At the end of it we did the long form, 108 moves that should take around 20 minutes to perform (or "play," in Tai Chi parlance).

About a third a way into the form I thought, "I'm flowing today." About halfway through I thought, "There's no way I'm going to stumble or make a wrong move."

As soon as I said that to myself, my analytical side responded with, "Oh no, you shouldn't be thinking that way. You're going to jinx yourself. You're going to talk yourself out of the zone you're in."

But I didn't.

I kept on feeling in the flow. Part of me was in the zone, and part of me could say "You're in the zone." The two parts weren't interfering with each other, as they sometimes do. I didn't have to shut off half of my brain to play the long form proficiently.

And that also is Taylor's message.

So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world.

Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is.

Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me.

Quantum and non-dual consciousness

Ah, intellectual and inspirational bliss.

A free, downloadable, thoughtful, well-written "Course in Consciousness" that moves smoothly from down to earth quantum theory to soaring spirituality.

This is my cup of reading tea. I've only been able to quickly browse through the 242 pages of Stanley Sobottka's writing, but I can tell that there's a lot to like here.

Sobottka is an Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Virginia, so obviously he knows his scientific stuff.

His deep knowledge of, and appreciation for, Buddhist/Advaita teachings is more surprising – though he isn't the only physicist to wade into some deep philosophical waters (Amit Goswami and Shimon Malin are some others).

Check out Sobottka's short "Dialogue in Consciousness" for an overview of his approach. I resonate with almost everything he says, though I can't help repeating my mantra, "What do I know?"

I learned about the Course in Consciousness from a post on the Church of the Churchless forum. It quoted a paragraph on page 184:

Particularly destructive among the self-deluded spiritual teachers are those who teach that only they and their personal power can bring freedom, or that they are the ones best suited for the task. They would merely strengthen the chains of our bondage. No genuine teacher will imply that we need anything or anyone, since we are already free and complete. A teacher's function is to convey this to the student, and to help him or her to see that. A teacher is at best an invaluable resource to the student, and at worst, a "false prophet", the deluded purporting to teach the deluded, the blind trying to lead the blind.

Amen to that.

This passage from page 101 also appealed to me:

In summary, the following is what physics (plus some simple logic) tells us: There are no objects. There is only a series of observations. There is no observer. There is only nonlocal universal consciousness. As we shall see later, these statements are the essence of both Advaita and Buddhism. (In Advaita, nonlocal universal consciousness is called pure Awareness. In Mahayana Buddhism, it is called primordial consciousness, or buddha-nature.) It is remarkable that physics, which is the science of external, objective reality, can tell us so much about subjective reality, and also can be in such agreement with our most profound nondualistic teachings.

I'm a big fan of science. I also am attracted to the nondual teachings that constitute much of Sobottka's course.

It seems crazy that to know reality, we'd have to ignore half of it: objectivity or subjectivity. Consciousness seemingly links the outer and the inner, science and spirit, physics and mysticism – because if we're not conscious of something, it doesn't exist for us.

Here's Sobottka's Chapter 26: "Very short summary"

The following concepts, like all concepts, cannot describe Reality, but, unlike most concepts, they point to Reality.

1. The premise: Consciousness is all there is. Another word for Consciousness is the impersonal, yet intimate, I.

2. The conclusions:

I am not an object or entity.
Objects and entities are never real.
Whatever is supposed to happen will happen. Whatever is not supposed to happen will not happen. There is no doer, so there is no choice.
The entire manifestation is an expression of Love.

3. The practice: Don't believe this—look and see it for yourself!

This interview with Sobottka also encapsulates his outlook.

[Technical note: Sobottka's web site has links to some interesting PowerPoint presentations. If you don't have PowerPoint, you can view them with a free PowerPoint viewer.]

Science unites, religion divides

I've enjoyed the big bang discussion that took off in the comments on my previous post.

In the course of defending science and the scientific method against a man, Rhawn Joseph, who believes the big bang, evolution, relativity, and the laws of thermodynamics are all myths, I've had an opportunity to reflect on why science appeals so much to me.

Pretty simple: it produces common ground on which we all can stand – reality. Religion divides people, because there's no agreement about the nature of what, if anything, lies beyond the physical universe.

So dogmatic arguments over God, soul, life after death, and such continue interminably. There's no way of resolving them.

Science, however, proceeds steadily (though with many changes in direction) toward a unified understanding of what reality is all about. There's no Western science or Eastern science, no American science or Chinese science. There's just shared scientific knowledge.

And that's beautiful.

Which leads to an important point that's so obvious, it shouldn't need saying. But we often forget it, and this leads to unnecessary confusion, arguments, and emotionality.

"I" is different from "It." Subjective reality is different from objective reality. Yet they're both equally real.

Here's how Ken Wilber describes the reality situation. "I" is the realm of the interior individual – me as I know myself. "It" and "Its" (plural) is the exterior side of reality – an objective realm that we all can know communally.

Traditionally, philosophical types talked about the Beautiful, the Good, and the True. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's also in the realm of "I," subjective.

So when someone commented that they enjoyed Joseph's You Tube video, "God & the Myth of the Big Bang," I thought That's fine. Personally, I found it so obnoxious I could only watch five minutes of it. But hey, vive le difference.

If we all liked the same movies, there'd be no point to the Academy Awards. Each of us has different subjective likes and dislikes. That's as it should be, since our interiors are different.

But what about exterior reality, the domain that science investigates? Now we're into a much more objective state of affairs, which is why scientists can come to a consensus about the laws of nature.

Here, truth rules, not beauty. So I asked people who had seen Joseph's Big Bang video to tell me what evidence he had that big bang cosmology, which is accepted by almost all scientists, is wrong and Joseph is right.

I didn't get an answer. I really didn't expect one.

I've read quite a few books about the big bang, quantum theory, relativity theory, and other aspects of what's often called the "new physics." I subscribe to Scientific American and New Scientist. I read all three weekly newsmagazines (TIME, Newsweek, US News & World Report, and two daily newspapers.

If some guy had overturned a big chunk of science through a You Tube video, I figured I'd have heard about it. However, he hasn't. He's presented some imaginative ideas in an artsy fashion, expressing his "I." This doesn't change the reality of "It" though.

The scientific method is an intriguing blend of friendly openness and harsh skepticism. Scientists are open to new ideas, but if you throw out a fresh hypothesis – particularly if it purports to be an improvement over settled science – you'd better bring your best game.

In "The Demon-Haunted World," Carl Sagan wrote:

Again, the reason science works so well is partly that built-in error-correcting machinery. There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or sacred to be probed, no sacred truths. That openness to new ideas, combined with the most rigorous, skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, sifts the wheat from the chaff.

It makes no difference how smart, august, or beloved you are. You must prove your case in the face of determined, expert criticism. Diversity and debate are valued. Opinions are encouraged to contend – substantively and in depth.

The process of science may sound messy and disorderly. In a way, it is. If you examine science in its everyday aspect, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotion, personality, and character. But there's one facet that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism considered acceptable or even desirable.

That's as it should be. Objective reality belongs to all of us. Human knowledge about the universe is our most precious asset, one which must be passed on to future generations intact – not diluted with subjective drivel, religious or otherwise.

So I hope this helps explain why I defend science so strongly. When I see it trashed, I feel the same way as when I see litter along the rural Oregon road that leads to our house. Hey, that's public property! You've got no right to leave your crap there!

If someone wants to mess up their own home, that's their business. Just as what transpires in your "I" is up to you. But when someone ventures into the realm of "it," staking a claim to the nature of objective reality – that's everybody's business.

Our common ground, truth, is too precious to be left undefended. As Sagan said, openness and skepticism are our bulwarks against pseudo-science.

(Here's another post of mine on this subject).

Starbucks coffee and the big bang

I don't know why drinking a latte at Starbucks makes me feel so cosmically strange. But here's what been happening recently.

I sit down at a table, look at my cup, all festooned with the Starbucks logo and a quotation from somebody or other, and it just feels unbelievably weird. So freaking unlikely.

That me, Brian, is existing right here and now, in an Oregon Starbucks, about to sip a warm caffeinated drink out of a cardboard container.

What are the chances of this happening, given our 13.7 billion year old universe that sprang into existence from a speck of pure energy much smaller than a sub-atomic particle, and now has expanded to an incomprehensible size – some 46 billion light years from us, because the universe has been expanding faster than light.

Holding my latte, dumbstruck by the seeming discordance between how mundane this Starbucks moment is and how majestic the cosmos is, I visualize myself whizzing around the Earth at the equator more than seven times in a second – like Superman did in the old TV show (showing my age) but at the speed of light.

Then going that fast for 46 billion years. Mind-blow!

That's how large the observable universe is, courtesy of the big bang. It's filled with wonders that I can't begin to conceive of. And I'm clutching a Starbucks latte. What are the chances?

Well, 100% obviously. Because this all seems perfectly real. Starbucks, me, the table, other customers, the whole earthly shebang.

Yet from another perspective it's all exceedingly unlikely, as physicist Paul Davies talks about in "Cosmic Jackpot: Why the Universe is Just Right for Life," the book I blogged about in my previous post.

The laws of nature, and their associated constants, have to be almost exactly just the way they are or life (including me and my Starbucks latte) couldn't exist as we know it.

This leads religious types to posit a creator who made a universe perfectly suited for us. And scientific types to ponder why, of all the countless sorts of universes a big bang could have fashioned, ours is so peachy-keen for us human beings.

Maybe I've got a philosophical blind spot, notwithstanding my attraction to most other Big Questions About Existence, but I find it difficult to see what the problem is here that theologians, physicists, and other deep thinkers are trying to solve.

Because my feeling of Starbucks' strangeness obviously is part of my subjective psyche, not objective reality. I mean, it's all in my mind – the product of learning a lot about cosmology and our place in the universe.

Speculations abound about why things are as they are.

Davies runs through the main candidates in his book (listed in my post). For example, there could be countless universes of every variety, and we happen to have evolved in one of the few that are suitable for life. Or this all could be a computer simulation run by an advanced civilization, ala the Matrix movie.

Though I've always been spiritually inclined, I seem to be coming around to the first option described by Davies: The Absurd Universe. He clearly doesn't like it, as his description strikes me as slanted.

This is probably the majority position among scientists. According to this point of view, the universe is as it is, mysteriously, and it just happens to permit life. It could have been otherwise, but what we see is what we get. Had it been different, we would not be here to argue about it.

The universe may or may not have a deep underlying unity, but there is no design, purpose, or point to it all – at least none that would make sense to us. There is no God, no designer, no teleological principle, no destiny. Life in general, and human beings in particular are an irrelevant embellishment in a vast and meaningless cosmos, the existence of which is an unfathomable mystery.

Davies goes on to explain seven other possibilities (including "none of the above"), his favorites being "The Life Principle" and "The Self-Explaining Universe."

However, he readily admits there's no solid evidence that favors one hypothesis over another. So the universe remains an unfathomable mystery, just as The Absurd Universe proponents recognize.

"Absurd" doesn't seem to be the right word, though. Davies chose it because he believes, or wants to believe, that the universe is endowed with a life principle of some sort – a quasi-religious conception. Leaving mystery as mystery clearly bothers him.

I used to feel that way also. Now I'm more at ease with the astounding strangeness of drinking a latte on an insignificant planet in a universe that extends 46 billion light years from the Starbucks I'm sitting in.

Absurd. Strange. Mysterious.

Human conceptions. Somehow I doubt that the universe uses these words to describe itself. It just is what it is. Contentedly, if that word – like all words – means anything when applied to the cosmos.

Yes, for us the universe is a mystery. We strive to explain it. And though bits and pieces have come to be understood, the whole remains a mystery.

What's wrong with that? I drink a latte in Starbucks and marvel. Einstein did the same. He said:

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.

It was the experience of mystery – even if mixed with fear – that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves.

Hey, Einstein and me have something in common. I can't conceive of such a God either. Questions – that's all we need to be "religious" in the Einsteinian sense. Answers not required.

Mysteries should remain mysterious. Until they're not.

Physics ventures into the territory of mystics

I find scientific explanations of the universe much more satisfying than religious ones.

Science grounds hypotheses in reality that can be observed, tested, and experimented upon. Religion constructs airy-fairy castles in the sky that are divorced from everyday experience.

But there's a point, way out there, where observing, testing, and experimenting aren't possible – not even in theory. For example, much of the universe is forever beyond human knowledge because it is receding from us faster than the speed of light, so no signal will ever reach us from this domain.

However, we can envision a possibility, remote as it is, that someday, somehow, faster than light travel or communication will be available to humans. Then much more of the universe will be within the bounds of what can be known.

When it comes to ultimate explanations, though, I'm decidedly skeptical that science ever will be able to come up with answers to the questions that mysticism, spirituality, and religion explore with such zeal.

Why does existence exist? Where do the laws of nature come from? Are there other universes besides our own? Does reality consist of more than the four dimensions we're familiar with?

Last November I criticized physicist Paul Davies' new book, "Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life," for claiming that science could supply answers to essentially religious questions.

Davies strikes me as a scientist who brings religion into his work through ungrounded philosophical speculation.

His ideas sometimes sound like what you'd expect from a bunch of stoners sitting around smoking dope and musing on What It's All About. "Man, there could be a whole universe in one molecule of that smoke, and we could just be a puff of hot air in the Big Dude's hookah pipe!"

I admitted that I hadn't read his book, having based my critique on reviews by other people and an essay Davies wrote. I've now finished "Cosmic Jackpot" and haven't changed my mind.

Still, it's a fascinating read. Davies clearly lays out possible explanations for why the universe is as it is, and why living beings (us) have evolved an ability to comprehend, albeit most imperfectly, the cosmos. In a final chapter he lists them as:

A. The Absurd Universe
B. The Unique Universe
C. The Multiverse
D. Intelligent Design
E. The Life Principle
F. The Self-Explaining Universe
G. The Fake Universe
H. None of the Above

Davies says that his inclinations lie in the directions of E and F. Yet he admits that this predilection isn't based on much more than a hunch.

Many scientists will criticize my E/F inclination as being crypto-religious. The fact that I take the human mind and our extraordinary ability to understand the world through science and mathematics as a fact of fundamental significance betrays, they will claim, a nostalgia for a theistic worldview in which humankind occupies a special place. And this even though I do not believe Homo sapiens to be more than an accidental by-product of haphazard natural processes.

But I do believe that life and mind are etched deeply into the fabric of the cosmos, perhaps through a shadowy, half-glimpsed life principle, and if I am to be honest I have to concede that this starting point is something I feel more in my heart than in my head. So maybe that is a religious conviction of sorts.

Yes, maybe. Indeed, probably. Old habits die hard. In Davies. In myself. In everybody.

We're necessarily locked into ways of looking at the world that reflect our animalistic capacities. Our eyes capture a small portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, so we speak of "divine light." Our legs allow us to move from place to place, so we speak of a "spiritual path."

Yet how do we know that the way we relate to the world bears any resemblance to how things really are? Or whether the words "how things really are" possess any meaning beyond what a human being gives to them?

How. Things. Really. Are.

Upon even a slight bit of reflection, every thought in my head, or yours, turns out to be a product of mentality that has evolved upon a single insignificant planet circling one of several hundred billion stars in a galaxy that is but one of a hundred billion or so others.

Yet we think we know what it is all about. Or at least, that we can speculate about where the answers may lie.

Writing about Davies, the Rationally Speaking blog reminds us of Wittgenstein's adage, ""Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

In the chapter preceding Davies' E/F preference, he ends with what strikes me as a more honest and defensible posture than his admitted "hunch."

Both religion and science draw their methodology from ancient modes of thought honed by many millennia of evolutionary and cultural pressures. Our minds are the product of genes and memes.

Now we are free of Darwinian evolution and able to create our own real and virtual worlds, and our information-processing technology can take us to intellectual arenas that no human mind has ever before visited, those age-old questions of existence may evaporate away, exposed as nothing more than the befuddled musings of biological beings trapped in a mental straitjacket inherited from evolutionary happenstance.

The whole paraphernalia of gods and laws, of space, time, and matter, of purpose and design, rationality and absurdity, meaning and mystery, may yet be swept away and replaced by revelations as yet undreamt of.

Yes.

Skepticism isn’t “blind faith”

Religious believers like to say that agnosticism or atheism also is founded on faith – faith that there's no evidence for God. So skeptics are as filled with faith as the faithful.

That's ridiculous. It's the sort of word play that led Donald Rumsfeld, the incompetent Secretary of Defense, to say "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" in reference to Iraq's unfound weapons of mass destruction.

Well, I see no evidence of a unicorn in our living room right now. There's just my wife and our dog, neither of whom looks like a horse with a horn coming out of its head.

But gosh, I guess you could say that this lack of evidence doesn't conclusively prove that there's no unicorn in my house. The creature could be so small, it's hiding under the couch. Or it could be invisible.

The thing is, there's an obvious difference between: (1) surmising that something exists, and (2) surmising that something doesn't exist.

It's the difference between one and zero, presence and absence.

This is why I reacted with a What the heck? when I read a Newsweek article, "Moderates Storm the Religious Battlefield," that included this quote from Rev. Timothy Keller.

I urge skeptics to wrestle with the unexamined "blind faith" on which skepticism is based, and to see how hard it is to justify those beliefs to those who do not share them.

Rev. Keller, skepticism is not a belief. It's a reasonable response to absence of evidence.

I don't have blind faith that there's no unicorn in my living room. It's an open-eyed conclusion that anyone is welcome to refute, if they can show me where the unicorn is hiding.

Similarly, religious skeptics like me are very much open to evidence of God's existence. Problem is, there isn't any.

In a recent issue of New Scientist, A.C. Grayling addressed a related subject in "No, science does not 'rest on faith.'" He was responding to the notion that science's assumption of an orderly and intelligible universe is an act of faith.

It isn't, because the universe obviously is orderly and intelligible, or there wouldn't be notions, magazines, debates over faith, or anything else. It'd all just be misty chaos.

I agree with Grayling:

Making well-motivated evidence-based assumptions that are in turn supported by their efficacy in testing predictions is the very opposite of faith. Faith is commitment to belief in something either in the absence of evidence or in the face of countervailing evidence.

It is seen as a theological virtue, as the story of Doubting Thomas is designed to illustrate. In everyday speech we use the phrase "he took it on faith" to mean "without question, without examining the grounds"; this captures its essence.

So faith isn't a virtue. It's a vice. When we have eyes to see, it's wrong for someone to go about blindly. You cause lots of other problems for other people, and sow unnecessary confusion.

There's a unicorn! And God!

Where? Show me. I'm a skeptic with eyes.

Paul Davies’ “Cosmic Jackpot” comes up empty

Where do the laws of nature come from? Great question. Here's an equally good one: Where do the laws of nature reside?

I've always wondered about this.

Science has found that the universe is remarkably well-ordered. Mathematics describes its fundamental laws (such as gravity and electromagnetism) so perfectly, Paul Dirac said, "If there is a God, he's a great mathematician."

But how does every bit of matter know how to obey the law of gravity? Where's the software, the program, that controls the hardware of the universe? Or are these even meaningful questions?

I used to think that they were. I wondered why science books didn't contain a lot of philosophy.

Instead of just describing the laws of nature, I wanted scientists to ponder whether those laws existed in an ethereal Platonic realm of pure mathematics separate from material existence, or were part and parcel of the physical universe (to name but two possibilities).

Physicist Paul Davies takes the two "where" questions above seriously. That's admirable.

But the big question about those questions is: Can any human being, no matter how wise or intelligent, attempt to explain the source of the laws of nature in any meaningful fashion?

My answer, which is echoed by others more knowledgeable about these matters than me, is "No."

That's why I can title this post the way I did, even though I haven't read Davies' book, "Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe is Just Right for Life." (There needs to be a question mark in the subtitle, for sure.)

A Church of the Churchless commenter pointed me to an New York Times essay by Davies, "Taking Science on Faith." His thesis is summed up in the final two paragraphs :

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

The last sentence strikes me as ridiculous. I have no idea what Davies is talking about.

In the essay he says science has decided on "faith" that the laws of nature exist outside of the universe. That's news to me, as I'm pretty sure it would be to virtually every scientist.

Chad Orzel, another physicist, doesn't find the questions Davies grapples with to be very compelling. Like most scientists, he's interested in the practicalities of how the laws of nature operate, not why they exist.

In his review of Davies' book, Orzel says that it's hard to write about a topic you can't take seriously.

If you ask me what the constants of nature are, that's a well-formed question. I can do a measurement, and find a value. If you ask me why the constants of nature have the values they do, that's not a well-formed question.

There's no measurement I can do to answer that, and as a result, I just don't find it that compelling. If it scratches your teleological itch, great, but as far as I'm concerned, it's vaguely interesting to debate in a casual bull-session manner, but not really worth the effort of writing a three hundred page book.

I have a lot of respect for Paul Davies. I've read quite a few of his books. I included copious quotes from them in my book about mysticism and the new physics, "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder."

Still, Davies strikes me as a scientist who brings religion into his work through ungrounded philosophical speculation.

His ideas sometimes sound like what you'd expect from a bunch of stoners sitting around smoking dope and musing on What It's All About. "Man, there could be a whole universe in one molecule of that smoke, and we could just be a puff of hot air in the Big Dude's hookah pipe!"

For example, Alejandro's thoughtful review of "Cosmic Jackpot" notes that Davies criticizes the anthropic principle, which generally posits a multitude of universes in addition to ours, because he feels it is much more likely that we'd be living in a computer simulation of a universe than in a real one.

Well, I liked The Matrix as a movie. But I wouldn't base a scientific understanding of reality on it.

So I feel justified in calling "Cosmic Jackpot" an empty payoff, even without having read the book. Davies is asking religious questions. For thousands of years people have speculated about how the universe came to exist, and how it is sustained.

Religion hasn't come up with any believable answers.

And while I've got a lot more confidence in science than in religion, I'm seriously skeptical that a scientific explanation of where the laws of nature come from is going to be found either.

I could be wrong, of course. It simply seems that Davies is asking unanswerable questions. To definitively know the source of the laws of nature that formed our universe, seemingly you'd have to get outside of it – the universe.

If you were part of a computer simulation, how could you know about the programmer? If you're wandering in a maze, how would you be able to figure out who constructed it?

Davies believes that it's possible to comprehend the whys and wherefores of the laws of nature, even though we're all part and parcel of those laws.

I can't see my own eyes without the aid of a mirror. Where's the mirror that lets us observe the universe from an outside perspective?

Religions claim that such a "mirror" exists – in revelation, prophets, mystic experience. I doubt it. I also doubt that science ever will be able to get an objective view of the laws of nature, as Davies thinks is possible.

The universe is. So are we. That might be the best answer to the fundamental questions of existence we'll ever be able to come up with.

Arousal and quiescence in the mystical brain

Browsing through my collection of half-read books, recently I came across The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience.

Starting in where I left off quite a few years ago (the book was published in 1999), I can tell that I'm going to be reading this baby straight through this time.

Because the question marks I left in the margins next to statements that questioned whether any mystical experience occurs outside of the physical brain now would have my personal version of exclamation marks next to them (a round dot made with my highlighter).

Back in my religiously devoted days I was resistant to any suggestion that the body is all that we are. After all, my goal was to rise to spiritual regions with my soul – if not now, then after death.

Older and hopefully wiser now about unsupported metaphysical claims, I'm a lot more open to scientific conceptions of spirituality. Which is why The Mystical Mind is more interesting to me the second time around.

This morning I read the first part of Chapter Two about the brain and central nervous system. Fascinating. As a long time daily meditator, for more than thirty-five years, I'd always wondered about the difference between active and passive approaches to meditation.

Some people sit quietly and try to reduce brain activity. Others engage in walking meditation, or dancing – if you're a Sufi.

The authors of this book are both medical doctors, so they're well qualified to explain goings on in the brain, which they consider to be the source of the mind.

The brain is the substantive underlying part of human thought, experience, and emotions. In other words, it is the bodily organ that allows us to think, feel, and receive input from the external world. The mind is generally considered to be the thoughts and feelings themselves. Thus, the mind is the product of the functioning of the brain.

OK, I already knew that. But what Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg then reminded me of was stuff that I hadn't thought about much since high school science classes: how the autonomic nervous system, which helps connect the brain to the rest of the body, is composed of two subsystems – the sympathetic system and the parasympathetic system.

The sympathetic system causes a sense of arousal (yes, the kind you're thinking of, along with opening airways in the lungs, increasing heart rate, dilation of the pupils, and such). The parasympathetic system, on the other hand, maintains homeostasis and conserves the body's resources and energy.

In short, we've got arousal and quiescent systems in our body and brain. And the point of this book, which I know because I jumped ahead and read the final chapters years ago, is that mystical experiences are the product of different sorts of arousal/quiescent states.

Reductionist? Sure. But like the authors say, point out any human experience that occurs in the absence of a body and brain. If that were to occur, the person would be dead, incapable of pointing.

What's interesting is that if you push either the arousal or quiescent systems far enough, they can cause an "eruption" in the other system.

Such a function may occur when one of these systems is driven to maximal activity despite the protective antagonistic mechanism. When this occurs, one can induce a "reversal" or "spillover" phenomenon.

This spillover effect occurs when continued stimulation of one system to maximal capacity begins to produce activation responses (rather than inhibitory) in the opposite system. This state is relatively rare and requires intense driving of one of the systems, beyond its normal capacity and beyond the inhibitory effects of the other system.

They give examples.

The hyperquiescent state "may be experienced as a state of oceanic tranquility and bliss in which no thoughts or feelings intrude on consciousness and no bodily sensations are felt."

The hyperarousal state is associated "with keen alertness and concentration in the absence of superfluous thoughts and feelings. The person may feel as if they were channeling vast quantities of energy effortlessly through their consciousness." (as when athletes feel they're in the zone or going with the flow)

The hyperquiescent state with eruption of the arousal system "is usually accompanied by the sense of a tremendous release of energy. Thus the meditator may experience an 'active' bliss or energy rush."

The hyperarousal state with eruption of the quiescent system may involve experience of "an orgasmic, rapturous, or ecstatic rush arising from a generalized sense of flow and resulting in trancelike states."

They add about the latter:

This experience may occur as a result of practices such as Sufi dancing and marathon running and even occurs briefly during sexual climax.

Ah, finally. A form of meditation that I'm good at.

What reality is really made of

Oh, man, did my philosophical heart flutter when I looked at the cover of the most recent New Scientist magazine and read:

WHAT THE UNIVERSE IS REALLY MADE OF: strip away human notions of reality and one thing remains

I feverishly turned to page 38. Finally, I'd know What It is All About. I had a suspicion. Which was confirmed when I saw the heading, "Reality by numbers."

Yes, it isn't wildly surprising that a science magazine would contain an article by a physicist, Max Tegmark, who believes that the essence of the universe is mathematical.

Surprising or not, the notion makes a lot of sense. For if you want to get beyond an anthropomorphic conception of reality, what's better to take you there than a pure abstract number? Tegmark talks about the search for a theory of everything, a complete description of reality:

My personal quest for this theory begins with an extreme argument about what it is allowed to look like. If we assume that reality exists independently of humans, then for a description to be complete, it must also be well-defined according to non-human entities – aliens or supercomputers, say – that lack any understanding of human concepts.

Put differently, such a description must be expressible in a form that is devoid of human baggage like "particle," "observation" or other English words.

In contrast, all physical theories that I have been taught have two components: mathematical equations, and words that explain how the equations are connected to what we observe and intuitively understand. When we derive the consequences of a theory we introduce concepts – protons, stars, molecules – because they are convenient.

However, it is we humans who create these concepts. In principle, everything could be calculated without this baggage: a sufficiently powerful supercomputer could calculate how the state of the universe evolves over time without interpreting it in human terms.

All of this raises the question: is it possible to find a description of external reality that involves no baggage? If so, such a description of objects in this reality and the relations between them would have to be completely abstract, forcing any words or symbols to be mere labels with no preconceived meanings whatsoever. Instead, the only properties of these entities would be those embodied by the relations between them.

Well, if you're only somewhat confused by this overview of Tegmark's outlook on reality, read his core paper "The Mathematical Universe" to dive into much deeper thought-waters.

I swam back to the surface of my usual mundane ideas after just a few pages. But while there I saw that Tegmark helpfully boils down his perspective to a couple of hypotheses: (1) There exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans, and (2) Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure.

He admits that more than a few physicists (and lots of metaphysicians) disagree that reality exists without observation. Yet if the ERH (External Reality Hypothesis) is correct, it does make sense that the universe wouldn't be founded on human concepts.

After all, the cosmos preceded us by over thirteen billion years. Why would the root of existence be capable of being captured in a word like "God," "quantum," "vacuum energy," or "Buddha nature"?

So I like Tegmark's emphasis on shedding language-baggage. That's what most deep mystical philosophies do. He takes the same concept-less route in pursuing a scientific, rather than spiritual, approach to grasping the nature of reality.

Without words, what would religions rest on? Take them away and you're left with an appealing voidness, empty of dogmatism fueled by a belief that this description of the ultimate is how things really are.

Admittedly, there's more than a little feeling of vertigo – ooh, I'm spinning with no thought place to stand on! – if you embrace Tegmark's hypothesis. It takes some getting used to.

Ultimately, why should we believe the mathematical universe hypothesis? Perhaps the most compelling objection is that it feels counter-intuitive and disturbing. I personally dismiss this as a failure to appreciate Darwinian evolution.

Evolution endowed us with intuition only for those aspects of physics that had survival value for our distant ancestors, such as the parabolic trajectories of flying rocks. Darwin's theory thus makes the testable prediction that whenever we look beyond the human scale, our evolved intuition should break down.

I keep coming back to "don't know" as the wisest idea we could ever have about ultimate reality.

Boltzmann brains can blow your mind

Who needs far-out religious myths – walked on water! resurrected from the dead!— when science is able to come up with equally mind-blowing hypotheses that have the advantage of being plausible?

Take the case of Boltzmann brains. These aren't actual brains, but most likely are free-floating conscious entities that pop out of random quantum fluctuations in the vacuum that pervades the universe.

None have been observed. In fact, a New Scientist article on the subject (August 18 issue) says:

A Boltzmann brain is so improbable, in fact, that there is essentially no chance that even a single one has appeared in the 13.7-billion year history of our universe. But factor in the accelerating expansion of the universe, and the picture changes: it points to an infinitely large space that will last an infinitely long time, with ongoing fluctuations in the vacuum.

This will be a cold, dark and inhospitable place for conventional creatures, but a perfect breeding ground for Boltzmann brains, which would see only empty space around them.

Pretty creepy. From our point of view. However, if you're a Boltzmann brain you've just arisen spontaneously out of nothing. No history. No evolution. No words like "creepy" in your consciousness.

So it's impossible to say how a Boltzmann brain would see things. Which is why the New Scientist article has this sub-heading: Cosmologists are afraid – very afraid.

This is what I find most interesting about Boltzmann brains: how they point to the subjectivity of Homo sapien'ish conceptions of the cosmos. This is what scares some scientists, because our understanding of the laws of nature is necessarily founded on how we go about understanding things.

Cosmology, indeed most of science, assumes that we humans are typical observers in the grand scheme of things…So here's the problem: some well-established cosmological models predict that, trillions of years in the future, Boltzmann brains could vastly outnumber "ordinary observers" like us, who depend on aeons of evolution and life support.

If that is true, then over the lifetime of the universe, they – not we – might be the typical ones. That's scary, because models suggest that their view of the cosmos would be strikingly different from ours.

Well, yeah.

Um, let's see. Would (1) a disembodied consciousness that just sprang into existence from a quantum vacuum fluctuation look upon the universe differently than (2) a human being acculturated by other people, all of whom perceive the world through physical organs? Sure seems so.

Now some people who are skeptical about science likely are going to jump on the Boltzmann brain bandwagon and say, "Told you so! Science is just one way of looking at reality. The so-called 'laws of nature' are just artifacts of human cognition, not how things really are.'"

OK, there's some truth to that.

But to my mind the possibility of Boltzmann brains undercuts a lot more than the scientific method. It demolishes the objectivity of everything – including every defined form of spirituality, religion, and mysticism, which usually are promoted by science skeptics as being more valid ways of knowing.

What I love about Boltzmann brains is how they stretch (or blow to smithereens) our usual assumption that human consciousness is the template for every sort of consciousness. Rather, says the New Scientist article:

What exactly might these things be? In theory, they could take on almost any form, but the larger and more complex they are, the less likely it is that they will appear, according to the laws of probability and quantum mechanics.

They could be disembodied brains with eyeballs, floating in outer space. They could consist of a whole body, encased in a space suit and equipped with an oxygen tank. They could be human brains, animal brains, or an intelligent alien species made of gas.

What matters is that they qualify as conscious – by whatever definition researchers agree on.

Well, if I was a Boltzmann brain I might take issue with that last sentence. Hey, humans! I'll decide whether I'm conscious! Not you. Things look differently out here in the infinite vacuum.

I've enjoyed pondering a cosmos with no consciousness. As well as a cosmos that is only consciousness. Boltzmann brains stimulate the notion of another alternative: a cosmos with a freakingly inconceivably different form of consciousness from ours.

Some attributed quotes:

Physicist Arthur Eddington. "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."

Biologist J.B.S. Haldane: "Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

Sounds like a blown mind is a lot closer to truth than a certain mind.

Science keeps painting religion into a corner

Believers in the supernatural, do you feel a bit more cramped today? Like there's less room for your beliefs to roam unquestioned?

You should, if you've been following the out-of-body news. Scientists have been able to induce out-of-body experiences in healthy people. They didn't need to nearly die on an operating table and look down at their bodies from an external vantage point.

All it took was some virtual reality goggles, a camera, and a stick.

Now, this is just a first step toward understanding out-of-body experiences. It doesn't rule out the possibility that human consciousness is able to exist separate from a body.

And heck, in-body experiences aren't completely understood either – how the brain manages to create a sense of self separate from the world.

Nonetheless, this is one more in a long line of scientific advances that have the cumulative effect of painting religious, spiritual, mystical, and metaphysical belief systems into an ever smaller corner.

Big Bang cosmology explains the universe's creation (though not completely). Evolutionary theory explains how complex life forms arose on Earth (though not completely). Quantum physics explains how all the somethings in existence can be founded on essentially nothing (though not completely).

I had to add the (though not completely) qualifiers to head off anti-science types who would be quick to tell me, "But Brian, there are a lot of gaps in scientific knowledge."

Yes, admitted. By both me and scientists.

However, there's a big difference between the empty spots scattered around the large expanse of Knowledge that's been painted by science, and the utterly blank unfinished corner that Religion has been crowded into.

By which I mean, in case this metaphor is getting too metaphorical, that science has pretty darn good explanations for almost everything that religious belief systems take on faith to be supernatural or metaphysical.

So what's a believer to do? One option is to shut your eyes, put your hands over your ears, and mutter "You don't exist, you don't exist" to scientific knowledge. This is the fundamentalist approach, both Western and Eastern.

After a book I wrote about karma and vegetarianism, "Life is Fair," was published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) I got an email from an anxious RSSB initiate. He didn't like all the mentions of evolution in the book. He said that if evolutionary theory were true, it would destroy his faith in the RSSB teachings.

I found this very strange. Isn't the spiritual quest supposed to be in the direction of reality? How could learning more about what is real be destructive of spirituality?

To me, science is the best friend of someone sincerely seeking spirit. For if you believe that spirit (a.k.a. shabd, in the Indian vernacular) is the essence of the supreme being, it isn't going to be explainable by science – even though spirit/shabd is considered to be the ultimate source of nature's laws.

A similar argument can be applied to Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or any other sort of belief in an other-worldly God. If your God or Supreme Being is reducible to material explanations, then this divinity isn't very spiritual, is it?

Paint away, science. Confine my religious beliefs into the smallest possible corner.

This should be the prayer of every spiritual seeker. For every time a metaphysical belief is explained by science, you've got less room for fantasy, dogma, imagination, and blind faith to operate. You've getting shoved in the right direction: toward inexplicable Mystery.

I wish I could say something about that mysterious corner of existence that most strongly resists science's knowledge painting brush. But if I could, it wouldn't be what it is.

Emptiness. Wonder. Awe. Ignorance. Confusion. Paradox. Not-knowing.

Even here though, science is able to throw hints in our direction. No matter how small that unexplained corner of the cosmos seems to be, almost certainly it's way larger than we can even begin to imagine.

There's plenty of room to roam there, for those unafraid of bursting religious fetters.

Science takes the honest path

For me, science is energizing while religion sucks the life out of my soul. Or whatever the heck it is that makes my life lively.

As I said in a comment to my "Quantum Christian gobbledygook" post, deflating the ridiculous proposition that electromagnetism casts any light on the Trinity was deeply satisfying. I felt so good after writing that post.

Doing my best to look upon reality with eyes wide open unleashes something that could easily be called "mystical" if it wasn't so natural. Speaking truth to bullshit – that brings us closer to the angels.

More accurately: it would, if there were any.

Today I stumbled upon some YouTube videos of Sean Carroll giving a talk at the recent Daily Kos convention. Carroll is a physicist with an engaging sense of humor. He started off his "Hey, I Uploaded a Video" post with:

Just got back from a great trip to Beijing, very enjoyable if a bit tiring, where much musing was done on the Primordial Existential Question, about which more anon. But I also mused a bit about what this blog needs, and I came to the conclusion that must have been obvious to everyone else long ago: more videos of me.

Sean, you'll get no argument here, even though I've only visited the Cosmic Variance blog a few times. I enjoyed your pithy discussion of what the universe is made of.

Short answer: almost entirely not of what we are. You and I, said Carroll, are made of ordinary matter. But that constitutes just 5% of the universe's total stuff.

The rest is 25% dark matter, which hasn't been detected yet (if you want to know how scientists can come up with a precise percentage of how much there is of something undetectable, watch the videos), and 70% dark energy – which is inherent in the fabric of empty space.

That's way cool. And gloriously mysterious. It isn't the false mystery of religion, which posits hypothetical metaphysical entities and then breathlessly proclaims how inaccessible they are.

Well, yes. This is what you'd expect if something isn't real: it'd be unreachable and unknowable.

But science is pretty darn sure that dark matter and energy are real. We just don't know their nature. That's a true mystery.

Near the end of the second video Carroll talked about the movie, "What the Bleep Do We Know?" He said that the film is full of nonsense. It claims that we can change reality into what we want by thinking about it. The people who made it, he noted, must have earned themselves high-ranking jobs in the Bush administration.

David Albert, a physicist and philosopher of science professor at Columbia, was interviewed for four hours by the filmmakers. They took 10 seconds of what he said and completely mangled his meaning.

Carroll said that Albert now is doing his best to communicate how we really should go about trying to understand reality. Which, in Carroll's paraphrase of Albert's message, is:

Look, when you're trying to understand the world, there are two approaches you can have.

One kind of approach is that when you try to look at the world you come with a precondition, you come with a set of demands that the world tell a story that is flattering to you.

The other thing you could do is to come with an authentically open mind and open heart. Expend many different hypotheses and compare them to the evidence. And accept what the evidence tells you. Discard the hypotheses that don't fit the evidence and believe in the hypotheses that do. And that second method is called science.

And I would like to say that it's more than that, that the second method is called honesty. And it's probably a good method to use in all sorts of fields of human endeavor.

Amen to that.

Here's Albert himself on the subject of "What the Bleep Do We Know?" and how we should go about knowing more. Double Amens to this.

It seems to me that what's at issue (at the end of the day) between serious investigators of the foundations of quantum mechanics and the producers of the "what the bleep" movies is very much of a piece with what was at issue between Galileo and the Vatican, and very much of a piece with what was at issue between Darwin and the Victorians.

There is a deep and perennial and profoundly human impulse to approach the world with a DEMAND, to approach the world with a PRECONDITION, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE, that what has got to turn out to lie at THE FOUNDATION OF ALL BEING, is some powerful and reassuring and accessible image of OURSELVES.

That's the impulse that the What the Bleep films seem to me to flatter and to endorse and (finally) to exploit - and that, more than any of their particular factual inaccuracies - is what bothers me about them. It is precisely the business of resisting that demand, it is precisely the business of approaching the world with open and authentic wonder, and with a sharp, cold eye, and singularly intent upon the truth, that's called science.

Not religion. For sure.

Christian quantum gobbledygook

I didn't get a free book. But I was able to write a blog post with gobbledygook in the title, which is a fine second prize. My investigation into how Christians are mangling quantum theory began with an email that arrived yesterday.

The header read:

'God the Final Frontier' - New Book Explains How Discoveries In Science Reveal the Nature of God Even A Child Can Understand.

That sounded promising. I can be childlike. And I want to know the nature of God. Tell me more.

The author's approach is unique because it reveals scientific discoveries such as how quantum physics provides positive proof for the doctrine of the Trinity (one of the most controversial doctrines in Christianity), and how Einstein's Theory of Relativity fit's the Genesis account of creation, in simple, easy to understand language.

Well, I didn't like the apostrophe in "fit's." But the email apparently came from a public relations firm, not the author, and everybody knows PR types can't write.

I wanted to know how quantum physics proves the Trinity. And praise be, the last words of the email were "Note: Review copies are available by replying to this e-mail . Please furnish your shipping address."

Ooh, ooh! I was excited. I replied as quickly as my trembling fingers could type. Then I got another email:

Brian, review copies are available for established publications and media personali