I'm hoping people can help me by engaging with this idea I've been toying around with, either by poking holes in it, seeking elaboration on certain points, or pointing me to places where this concept (or something similar) is already being discussed and developed.. The idea is simple: "Time is the blink of an eye in which the creator experiences itself in all its chosen possibilities." My thinking is this statement and it's elaborations can be foundational and/or encompassing to all religions and philosophies including atheism.
If "creator" is synonymous with god, then by default it's not encompassing atheism. I'd go on to question... How do we verify that all chosen possibilities are accounted for? Since you have already insinuated the limitation of time, How do we verify that the creator is not regulated or bound by other factors?
I've heard that phrase used a few times in various settings. By people of very different spiritual backgrounds even. It wasn't until I read it here that it really blew my mind. Maybe the first time seeing it in writing. (err typefont)
Thanks for the response guerillabedlam. Yes, Creator is synonymous for God, Allah, the universe, or any other iteration that you choose to use. It encompasses atheism, not because atheists will agree with it (they won't), but it accounts for their experience. Within the realm of possibilities that can be chosen the creator can choose to experience a life without belief in a higher power. As for a limitation on time. I argue the contrary, the "Time is a blink of an eye" metaphor I use is to convey the fact that time doesn't exist, is linear, is cyclical, and is infinite, depending on one's perception. Perhaps it is an inadequate metaphor, and if someone can come up with one that is more descriptive of the concept I am trying to convey, yet still concise I would be happy to use that instead. Now if time is infinite and cyclical, so are the possibilities. There is no "accounting" for possibilities. That is impossible. One cannot account for something that is infinite. My original wording was "in all its possibilities" without the chosen. I like that because it's neater and avoids the issue you bring up. I reluctantly added the chosen for the reason that someone with maliciousness in their heart could use that statement to justify any action, ie. genocide, rape, and whatever other possibility you can dream up. The justification being that they are simply enacting one of the possibilities of the creator. Maybe the word chosen doesn't change this though. I'm very curious about what others think about this. I recognize the word "chosen" also creates a limitation to the possibilities, which are then not infinite. Though, even if that's the case I still see no way to attempt to account for all the possibilities that fall within the purview of the statement as they would still come so close to infinite as to be immeasurable. The word "chosen" also accounts for redundant possibilities. An example of which would be in on possible experience I misspell the word "misspell" and then correct it and in another possibility I type it correctly. I suppose with infinite time there is no reason to not experience all the possible redundancies, but my question is why would the creator do that? If the creator is powerful enough to create everything, it is surely powerful enough to not choose to live lives that are completely redundant except for the tiniest of variations. I hope this answers your questions guerillabedlam. If it doesn't please show me where I can elaborate more. I would also like to hear the thoughts of you and others to what I've written above.
I don't follow how it can be asserted that possibilities are infinite but we cannot account for them. Then you go on to account for a bunch of malicious possibilities anyways. Sounds fluffy to me.
It seems to take away any idea of free will or intellectual integrity if an atheist is an atheist only because God chooses to make them that way. Taken all the way, such a view would lead to a kind of absolute fatalism where everything is preordained by God. We would be mere robots. Our actions would have no meaning because they were all laid down by an external agency.
another one adept at using lots of eloquent sounding words and phrases but really says nothing of substance. it seems one fatal flaw that lots of folks make is you appear to be ascribing a lot of anthropomorphism into you conception of God, such as quantifying actions as "good" or "bad". If the creator is manifesting/experiencing itself in all possible forms/ways, than choice is not an issue whatsoever because all possible choices are encompassed in the experience. then you say time doesn't exist and then go to say it is infinite and cyclical. got news for you, time is a human construct that more or less doesn't exist outside of the human mind in the manner you imply.
Replace connotations about the word god with anything that's beyond the precipice of the known, and atheists still fall comfortably within the category of being familiar with the unfamiliar. We may not punctuate that endlessness with a rigid conception of "God", but the limitations of knowing remain. I also struggle to see the relevance of analysing phenomena that exists outside of human experience, other than to keep things in abstract proportion by finding out where the edges are. Time is a human construct but we also happen to be human, so it's relevant to our condition and from that point of subjective objectivity we can quite safely assume that it's infinite since there's a good chance it'll extend far beyond our lifetime, and by noticing various repetitions also assume its cyclical nature.. example the changing of seasons. This isn't to say that time creates the cycles, but it most definitely leaves the Experience of complex repetition firmly in its wake. To bounce off the choices point, I feel emotions and empathy play a role in narrowing the channels of possibility. I tend to lean into the role of shock tactician, I like to think of it as a bit of a comedian but a lot of the times I find people miss that element and get somewhat offended, but hey, if you receive a song it'd be a crime not to play it. How it plays out and how the audience responds is always a gamble. It also gets interesting delving into the realms of psychopathy.. if someone's desensitised, what can be used as a means for moral navigation other than rational deduction based on subjective axiomatic reasoning. Boil it down to the human dilemma of "to do, or not to do". Very wordy, sorry about that.
This is very similar to a philosophy I have been working on for quite a few years now. It incorporates Einstein's theories and quantum mechanics, and other theories from modern cosmology. It is a phenomenalist philosophy, but it ties together quite a few opposing philosophies---first and foremost, existentialism and essentialism. Also very significant is that it ties the foundations of Anglo-American philosophy with continental philosophy. It is Kantian in nature but I also tie together the chasm that Kant created between empirical sciences, and the abstract sciences that are more within the mind (e.g. philosophy, religion, etc)----a chasm that was very important to getting the Modern Age in motion, but has outlived its usefulness. It is my response to the Post-Modern Crisis. I put heavy focus on the subjective, and it is therefore fairly anti-Cartesian, but it follows Cartesian skepticism and begins with Descarte's 1st Principle, 'I think therefore I am.' But instead of using this to validate objective reality, it keeps the focuse subjective with 2 more subjective principles. (The first 2 principles are natural a priori, while the 3rd principle is a synthetic a priori, solving Kant's problem that must be resolved before any valid metaphysics can be undertaken.) I call it Archephenomenalism. Concerning time, at the speed of light, time does not exist. The life of the whole universe is but an infinitely small flash. Consider a distant galaxy 400 Million Light years away. From our perspective, the light of that galaxy has traveled 400 million years through space before entering our eye, and being absorbed by an atom within a vision cell of our eye. BUT from the perspective of that light, it is leaving that distant galaxy at the same time it is being absorbed in your eye, at the same time it is with all other light of the universe within the big bang (after which light and physical particles as we understand them separated). At the same time it is leaving the universe the death of the universe, and possibly a new big bang. Not only is it all happening at the same time, it is one continuous wave. A wave passes through space-time (i.e. all time and space) simultaneously without beginning or end. Of course, we do not experience reality in that way. We live life at a 'relative' velocity near zero---even our fastest achieved speeds are, based on the speed of light, practically zero. From our perspective, there is the experience of time. But physically speaking, there is only the now----all we can know for sure is that only the present exists in a physical sense. We understand time (and therefore transcend physical existence) because we can not only perceive the present, but can also remember a past and anticipate a future and demonstrate volition. Therefore the 4th dimension---that which Einstein and his math professor labeled as time---is actually a timeless dimension of light, while the physical 3 dimensions exist only in the present. If we consider that the 3 dimensions exist within the 4th dimension, we must conclude that all of space-time exists only within the present, which is an infinitely small view of the 4th dimension (just as you would have an infinitely small peek of the 3rd dimension if you lived in a 2 dimensional world within our 3 dimensions.) So how big is the present? I label it as the smallest measurement of space-time before the contradictions of Quantum Mechanics, and the theories of relativity break down and physical reality cannot exist: 1 Planck distance at 1 Planck time. This is as good as infinitely small----1 Planck length is about 20 Quintillion times smaller than the diameter of a proton. 1 Planck time is the time it takes a photon moving at the speed of light to travel 1 Planck length. Now what is the significance of this short moment of now which I call the Quantum Now? In order to answer that, we must consider wave-particle duality. Remember, a wave exists clear through time and space without a beginning or end. A particle, on the other hand, only has a single position in time and space. Science holds that both the particle and the wave are physical---I define the wave, like light, as part of the non-physical 4th dimension. Consider how all that exists is dependent on light---electromagnetic energy---yet we can never experience the wave. We only experience the particle. An atom within a vision cell of your eye absorbs light as particle, which thus enables it to emit a photoelectron. As a wave, light has no effect. Consider if you were in deep space and there was no dust or anything to reflect off of, and you turned on a flashlight---would you see the light moving away from you? No. The only light you ever see is what manifests as a physical particle absorbed into an atom within your eye within the present moment---that is all. When we think we experience the wave, we are experiencing the phenomena of the wave as it is given to us in the Quantum Now as a particle. Now the paradox of wave-particle duality is that at the quantum levels of reality, all particles, and even the subatomic particles they are made of, in other words, all quanta are super-positioned. This means that they exist as a wave, and they are everywhere----and by everywhere I mean that each quantum is everywhere in time and space. An electron, for example, circling around an atom in the middle of your computer screen, is at all infinite positions around that atom, and at the same time is all around your room, and deep in space, and on the other side of the universe. And it is a wave and therefore through not only all of space, but also all of time. Superposition is a difficult reality to rationalize from our Newtonian perspective of reality, but it is a part of quantum mechanics. Within that quantum though, there is an encoded probability----quantum information (which can never be lost according to quantum physics) and that probability determines that if we were to identify its position (because the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that we can never know simultaneously both position (as a particle) and momentum (as a wave)) that it would probably be at the point where we expect it to be, somewhere around that atom. And the same is true for every other particle and subatomic particle within that atom. I therefore place the wave in the nonphysical 4th dimension-----in other words, from our physical perspective----light, and all waves, as a nonphysical, is a non-existent in terms of our physical reality. It is nothingness. Only the particle has physical existence. But even as it is non-existent in our reality it is of a higher dimension. And here is how it happens that a wave becomes a particle----there is a probability wave collapse----the superposition of the wave collapses into a single position of the particle. But the wave exists throughout all time, so once it has collapsed it returns again to its superposition. And all of this happens within the present. At any given time, the Quantum Now therefore represents all probability wave collapses clear across the universe----a 3 dimensional hologram with the appearance of 4 dimensions (space-time---the three physical dimensions with the appearance of time.) You might point out here that a hologram is 2 dimensional with the appearance of 3 dimensions----but that is a hologram within a 3 dimensional reality---I am speaking of a hologram arising from a 4 dimensional reality. This hologram---the Quantum Now---is only 1 Planck length for 1 Planck time. If you are paying close attention, you might say, wait a minute, you said the diameter of a proton is not a billion, not a trillion, not quadrillion, but 20 quintillion times bigger than 1 Planck length---so how can even a proton exist if the Quantum Now is so small-----because, after all, could a proton exist in any hologram? (And a holographic universe solves so many problems between relativity and Quantum Mechanics). We don’t need a whole proton to collapse in order to generate the phenomena of a proton. If we did for whatever reason, for example if science could actually take a picture of a proton---it would happen over roughly 20 Quintillion Quantum Nows, more or less---or about the length of time it would take for a photon to cross the diameter of a proton. But really----it is the phenomenon that is important. Archephenomenalism is a phenomenalist philosophy, therefore, esse est percipi----‘existence is perception.’ But that is a nutshell description of the ontology of Archephenomenalism----all that physically exists is being only for a brief moment, but we transcend physicality so we experience reality that is, at an absolute level, a continuous movement of being and nothingness. Arche is the First Cause, and the first cause is consciousness, or mind. My philosophy is therefore an Idealism. But I emphasize the universe is structured for and to the subjective—the individual. The human mind is therefore subjective as all other mind is. But to the individual mind all other mind is the objective Other (therefore from a deconstructionist perspective the subjective is simultaneously both the subjective and the objective). The universe itself is an undifferentiated mind (though personally I stray from the Eastern Philosophical implications of this), but I do not label this cosmic mind because that would be reductionist and goes against the Archephenomenalist response to the Post-Modern Crisis. If I were to label it---I prefer, The Great Mystery. And even as the universe is undifferentiated---each quantum carries quantum information---a subjective reality of history (because if there is no physical past, there is no physical history---only what Sartre called, historicity); the quanum is a subjective with a history and a potentiality---it is differentiated mind. Later I will give a nutshell account of its Post-Modern response.
Here is some more going beyond the ontology: [SIZE=medium]We live in the Age of Nihilism---facing the Post-Modern Crisis. As a culture----which is now global---we have no meaning, no value, no truth. We have no Unifying Myth which gives meaning to the culture, and to those living within that culture. As far as we know, cultures die without a Unifying Myth, which we refer to as myth, but it is the metaverse that is the ‘truth’ to that culture. We have a pseudo-Unifying Myth---consumerism, but the value and truth it gives is shallow, temporal, and inauthentic. It was thought at one time that science would provide the new Unifying Truth to Modern Culture, but instead we got two World Wars, the atom bomb, eugenics, and technology that Orwell warned us about in his book, 1984. But even if science tried to be the model unifying myth we need, its adherence to materialist dogma and reductionism would prevent it from providing any culture-wide meaning. Meanwhile, philosophy is basically dead, as Analytical philosophy (the Anglo-American tradition), for example, is basically playing word games.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]But we also cannot return to the church (our long lost Unifying Myth), or any specific religion as a Unifying Myth. Modern Man views reality through post-Enlightenment eyes, so while one religion may provide meaning for some people, it will not provide meaning and a unifying force for a whole culture. This is complicated by the fact that Modern Culture today is a global culture filled with many traditions, and even unique regional interpretations of what that culture is. Then there is the fact that Modern Man, in his post-enlightenment frame of mind, is overly obsessed with the rational and the objective.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]It is for this reason that I feel that it is time to close the Kantian split between metaphysics and science. Modern Man needs a new truth to come from both science, and philosophy—one that will empower and support all the diverse belief systems, that at the same time is structured within a strongly rational scientifically based framework in order to give it culture-wide credence. (Archephenomenalism provides the empirical reality of the Quantum Now, and the metaphysical reality of the non-physical 4th[/SIZE] Dimension (and a higher dimensional consciousness) to metaphorically resolve this Kantian split at an ontological level.) [SIZE=medium]The ontology of Archephenomenalism therefore set out to do just that. The cosmological model I have suggested even provides answers to such problems as quantum entanglement, the paradox of the time sequence in the Wheeler Delayed Observation experiment, the direction of cosmologic entropy, and so forth. And just as religious people found meaning in the non-essentialist philosophy of existentialism, I believe there are also atheistic interpretations of Archephenomenalism (namely, either a Sartre-like interpretation of the philosophy which would reject much of the idealism, or a Buddhist-like interpretation that some atheists interpret and find meaning in with an Idealism that is merely of a non-descriptive void).[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]But the Post-Modern problems run deeper than just trying to find a new Unifying ‘Truth.’ There are various dynamics and ethics that we have carried down from our Post-Planter Culture ancestors. By Post-Planter, I am referring to late Planter cultures where the institutions of civilization became firmly cemented into the culture, and the key ethics that developed during the planter cultures and their evolution from Goddess cults to male dominated religions and social hierarchies, became the dominant feature of the zeitgeist (spirit of the times) and weltanschauung (world view) of civilization itself.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]These ethics include a strong group ethic which is still very much alive even in the supposedly individual-oriented American culture (which is today’s model for global culture and the leading force in the consumerist invasion, so to speak). But I argue that our so-called individualism is really just a mask over an elitist group ethic. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]As the planter cultures began to understand group ethic and the in-group, they began to see the world in terms of duality; they became more objective and rational. The rise of the male god and the advent of writing only strengthened these ethics (for example, the male god placed more emphasis on objective reality and rationalism and an Apollonian dynamic, while writing forced man into a more linear thought pattern). This was all very different from our hunter-gatherer and early planter culture ancestors who understood reality in multiplistic terms, and placed more emphasis on the individual.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Dualism, objectivism, rationalism, a strong group ethic, and a male dominance--all of this played very well in man’s development. It all culminated in the Modern Age, and enabled us to invent and create great things. But it placed man in a world of cold lifeless objects (including those living with him) in a dead world---an existence where man was alienated from not only his own subconscious, but even life itself. The value that determines everything and everyone is an abstract market-based value. Price tag or not, everything is subjected to market value (and even Marx thought he could save man from that, but the market prevailed and exacerbated the suffering brought on by his cold rationalist-objectivism). The church was a big part of this, but as Nietzsche said, “God is dead, and the very ones who were to protect him, killed him.” The logical end conclusion of Western Culture, as it evolved with this Post-Planter culture ethic is the Age of Nihilism we find ourselves in today. So there should be no surprise that Presidential candidates insult each other about the size of their penis, or that Christianity, under the name ‘religious freedom,’ now represents the moral and righteous way of creating xenophobic, bigoted, and racist laws. Religion as an institution no longer has a place as a unifying truth to our culture. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]We are rapidly approaching a crossroad, and depending on how we take it, we will either see the demise of mankind, or we will move on to the next step of development. I speak of a lot of trends that are helping us move to the next stage. The rise of the feminine is one such trend. As gender equality becomes more entrenched in our culture, and the deconstruction of the binary opposites of gender dominance plays out, we will see a psychological evolution occur over time----mainly a breakdown of the inflated ego-shadow complex that is characteristic of civilized man’s psyche. This is key to breaking down the dualistic nature we force on the world, and the destructive shadow projection that is so blatant at individual, group, and national levels. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]As Einstein’s theories of Relativity gained hold and we began to see reality in relativistic terms, truth itself evolved further into relativism. This contributed to the nihilism we see today, but it also is a part of the dynamic of deconstructing and destroying our dualistic zeitgeist. As the Quantum Age takes hold, our reality will become, not only relative, but that befitting of a quantum universe---multiplistic and heavily subjective.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Archephenomenalism is a multiplistic philosophy. That is why I suggested that even atheism could find a home within it. I mentioned earlier that I stray from the conclusions of Eastern Philosophy in regards to a cosmic consciousness, but the philosophy can fit very well with Eastern belief systems, though they would have to overlook my emphasis on the subjective. It is very Taoist in the sense that Archephenomenalism posits that there is a natural path that nature takes—physicality manifesting unaltered through quantum decoherence. This is essentially the Tao. Archephenomenalism, because of its multiplicity, can serve as a rational model to validate just about any religion, spirituality, and idealism, as long as one is able to overcome the duality of organized religions, and work with the subjective nature of Archephenomenalism. Though, you see this evolutionary dynamic happening in churches and other belief systems anyway—I think they sense, or even realize, that their survival over the longer term is dependent on their breaking away from the divisive dualism and their traditional objectivistic and reductionist institutional dogma.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Speaking of spirituality, part of my own impetus in developing this philosophy, was an attempt to come to terms with the irrational, but very real, spirit world of indigenous spirituality, which destroyed my own rational assumptions programmed into me by Western culture. As far as Idealism is concerned, I am often amazed how this mirrors the metaphysics of Aristotle, for example, or the Absolute Idealism of Hegel. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Archephenomenalism is an essentialist philosophy, but it does not fall into the trap of traditional essentialism, by validating that an existent is subject to an unchangeable essence. In other words, it does not support racial prejudice, xenophobia, gender discrimination, or any other kind of discrimination. It does not say that poor people will always be poor, or African Americans tend towards criminal activities, or that illegal immigrants are rapists, or even that Asians are smart. There is no actual essence of nature that determines such.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Instead, each individual has his/her own unique essence: mind; and that mind represents great potentiality. Yes, we do have the potential to shape our own reality in Archephenomenalism, and this is the source of our own existential freedom. We alter reality all the time by the choices we make. However, we have a greater ability to physically alter reality directly through intention, but this ability is effectively dependent on volition and therefore on our own belief (or faith as it is referred to in a religious sense). At the quantum level we see this within all the variations of the double slit experiment, and in the recent experiments on the Zeno Effect. At the more common level of Newtonian reality, we see this demonstrated by the well documented experiments on ‘intention’ done at MIT. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]But as much as we, as individuals, have the ability to alter reality, so does everyone and everything else. There exists at every physical point, in the Quantum Now an intentional object (as consciousness is always consciousness of some thing). There is the natural course of nature I spoke of, and this is presented to us as Nature as the Other. But each person around us is also able to alter reality. They too are an objective Other to one’s own subjectivity. The problem is that even if they are unaware of their own ability to change reality, they collectively with many others alter reality through the collective unconscious. This is the tragic reality of racial, ethnic, gender, and other stereotypes. It potentially destroys one’s own potential. Fortunately one’s own belief in him/her self can be more effective at changing his/her direct reality, than much of the universal Other, because he/she is his/her own universal center. Consciousness, after all, is of a higher dimension as well. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Therefore each individual can be empowered to change his/her own reality, to shape his/her life. But this requires individuation, to take control over one’s life; to become, as Kierkegaard said, an authentic individual. Man all too often is afraid of his own existential freedom.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]While physical reality, in the sense that we perceive it, is an illusion according to Archephenomenalism, it is our existential reality. And rather than Sartre’s superfluity, where existence becomes absurd, we are here and now, trapped in this physical reality by a Jungian ego, and our reason to be is to experience. Life is valuable, not because it has finality, as in the existentialism of Heidegger, but because it is life, and all the joy and pain we go through removes us from the mundane.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Because everyone and everything is subjective, life, and those around us regain their true intrinsic value. Life is valuable because it is life. The people and things around us no longer exist as mere objects in a cold objectivist world. This therefore provides a unifying ground to Modern Global culture that each individual can subjectively bring his/her own spiritual or religious beliefs and values into, providing a diversity that mirrors the diversity and subjectivity of the Information Age, and more importantly, the diversity and subjectivity of the quantum world.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Of course, what I am talking about would require more than just a new philosophy. It involves social shifts and trends, such as a continued rise of the feminine, with all its cultural and psychological implications. But just as a lack of social change, would make this just words on paper, such a social change without such a philosophical backing would undermine the meaning we could potentially gain from such change. But philosophy has an odd way of playing out in the culture at large. Existentialism, for example, is a continental European philosophy that saw its heyday the years after World War II, as Europe faced its own postwar existential crisis. Despite the fact that it has probably been the most effective response to Modernism, it has long been replaced by Structuralism and all that came after that (representing a move back towards objectivism and once again a decline of the individual ). Yet existential philosophy is definitely appearing today in America as a pop-cultural theme. Its influence is loud and clear.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium] But it is more than just an existentialist theme. A phenomenological study of pop culture today will clearly demonstrate a cultural need or desire for, among other things, a return to the subjective---a rise up of the individual over objective reality-----consider for example, The Hunger Game franchise, The Divergent franchise, The Lego Movie, and so forth. This may also be metaphorically represented in the pop cultural theme of the superhero, which has become significant in music as well as in the movies and on TV. I could go on with other examples of social dynamic, such as the new show on FOX: Lucifer, which has a story line that is clearly deconstructing the traditional good-evil duality.[/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]Finally, I want to point out that Archephenomenalism in no way represents a Utopian philosophy. Utopianism inevitably leads to a dangerous reductionism, and this would undermine the multiplistic nature of my philosophy. Utopianism is an Industrial Age fantasy. Life will always have problems, and as we solve those of today, they lead into new ones of tomorrow. [/SIZE] [SIZE=medium]This covers quite a bit without getting too technical.[/SIZE]
