Introduction
To understand both “Worthington’s World” website and my book “Cascading Universe”* it is essential to know my basic assumption: to wit, that the forces and particles continuously in motion that constitute the universe and known as “Nature” behave at all times in an orderly fashion according to inherent Natural Laws. This is a very important assumption since it leaves no room for the intervention in human affairs by God.
The particles and forces emerged at creation in a burst of energy which is being expended continuously as the universe winds down. Humanity plays an integrated but very minute role in the cosmos. We are aggregates of particles (atoms and molecules) embedded within a sea of particles and forces as are fish within the ocean. It is thus that one’s simple movement is reflected throughout the universe.
The assumption of an orderly universe is essential for the accumulation of all knowledge and is basic for scientific research. Though there may be diverse interpretations of new discoveries and inexplicable phenomena the essential unity of all fields of hard empirical science is not to be disputed. In no way intellectually can there be supernatural or unnatural phenomena. If there were such a thing the very basis of scientific endeavor would be destroyed.
The most puzzling phenomenon is consciousness. Neurologists have established beyond doubt that biochemical activity in the brain is manifest as thought and feeling. This being the case it would follow that our personae, our ego, is a continuous cascade of particle activity. As the leading philosopher of empiricism, David Hume (1711-1776) noted: human beings are nothing but a collection of perceptions which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity and are in continual flux.
REALITY
Most thoughtful people are unable to acknowledge that the rampant suffering throughout the world is due to the innate, avaricious nature of humanity. Only a few aspire to understand the glory of God and to be at peace with Nature. Humanity is thwarted by limited imaginations, and the machinations of dehumanizing religions abetted by narrow-minded theocratic politicians and “do-good” liberals.
How has this come about?
We must turn to science to elucidate the most wondrous creation of God: the human mind! Only by appreciating the compelling reasons for our behavior can we seemingly modify it.
In the beginning, some fourteen billion years ago, God initiated a tremendous explosion of particulate energy, a seething plasma at a temperature of trillions degrees which, as it cooled became our universe.
The colliding particles were and still are in a constant flux. When cohesive forces of these particles of energy are stronger than repellent forces atoms and molecules are formed. Atoms are complex units in themselves having a nucleus within a cloud of vibrating electrons. The nucleus being of a size comparable to a tennis ball in Shea Stadium. It is thus that solid matter, including human bodies, is mostly empty space except for gravity and electromagnetic forces.
About four billion years ago life appeared by random conjoining of certain self-duplicating molecules and living cells evolved. Fossil remains of the first hominids have been dated at circa five million years ago.
It is important to bear in mind that throughout evolution of the cosmos and the aggregation of particles into living cells and their combination into complex organisms, the direction of change has always been toward lessening differences of energy in the particles of the original Big Bang.
“Entropy” is a term physicists use as a measure of the dispersal of energy as the universe winds down. Entropy is continually increasing as we approach the nothingness of absolute zero.
Although living cells create order from chaos, which would seem to entail a decrease in entropy, they derive external energy from the breakdown of foodstuff, absorption of solar energy as heat and by photosynthesis and warmth released as Earth’s core solidifies. Thus life continues at the expense of its surroundings.
IT IS ENTROPY THAT DETERMINES THE EQUILIBRIUM STATUS OF ALL CHEMICAL REACTIONS, INCLUDING THOSE WITHIN OUR BRAIN.
The world is a product of the immutable orderliness of the universe; a function of the laws of nature established by God at creation.
Though Earth is a mere speck in God’s grand theme it is part of nature and obeys the Natural Laws upon which our scientific knowledge is based. Scientific knowledge, unlike spiritual knowledge, is objective and empirical, available to all persons throughout the world. It is growing exponentially as our horizons broaden.
By the same token, no event can be “unnatural”. Some phenomena may be inexplicable but the fundamental behavior of subatomic particles is invariable.
UNLESS NATURAL LAWS ARE UNIVERSALLY APPLICABLE AT ALL TIMES, SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE — All KNOWLEDGE — WOULD BE INVALID. There is simply no room for contingency or divine intervention that could willy-nilly alter the energetic path of increasing entropy that God set in motion some fourteen billion years ago.
CONSCIOUSNESS
Moment to moment living is the continuous integration of biomolecular reactions whereby vision, taste, smell, hearing, pain and proprioception are harmoniously blended together with one’s a priori instantaneous neural state i.e., the accumulated memory structure, of all past stimuli from a point of origin, at the fertilization of the ovum, thence back to creation.
It is important to remember: 1) You do not add two and two, the addition is you at that instant, and 2) There is no time but the present. The past is either in a written record or present as one’s neural network.
That you are your thoughts has been pointed out by many philosophers and neuroscientists. Nobel Laureate Sir Francis Crick asserted in The Astonishing Hypothesis: “‘You’, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and freewill, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
Consciousness and unconsciousness are but two aspects of the brain’s continuous neural activity.
FREEWILL
One nagging question about determinism concerns freedom of will. John Searle, professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, asserts that freedom of will is an illusion; but that it is necessary and innate for all humans to believe that their decisions are their own. How otherwise, can the course of human behavior be seemingly altered if we believe that our fate, like that of the universe is set in stone?Most people’s thoughts are based upon self-evident perceptions, (i.e. intuition) and are not given to asking how or why those perceptions are self-evident. How does a devout Christian know that the Bible is the true word of God or a Muslim know that the Koran is the word of Almighty Allah? The experience of truth is one of resonance.
Truth and falsity, good and evil, amity and hate, beauty and ugliness, are manifestations of neural activity: resonance/dissonance; a comfortable feeling or one of unease. Experienced natural phenomena, one’s life, may be ascribed to the dance of primordial energy particles. Since every person is a world unto him or herself it is obvious that there cannot be any absolute truth regardless of theological and ethical argument.
All cerebral animals have four basic drives: for food, sex, shelter and most important of all, peer recognition. It is this latter hunger that is responsible for much of the beauty that man has created as well as all the wars and most of the suffering in the world. The avaricious, dominating “alpha male” is leader of the pack! Be it wolves, street gangs, politicians or religious leaders, it is characteristic of humankind and all animals, that the strong, either physically or rhetorically, dominate the weak in all categories of society. “Ambition” is a valuable attribute but one that leads to the contention which plays such a leading role on the human stage.
It is my thesis that our overcrowded society has become misdirected by the dominance of dysgenic morality caused by the exponential propagation of the intellectually challenged and their cosseting by misplaced humanitarianism.
RELIGION
Why is belief in a god ubiquitous? Because early on, slyer, stronger and more articulate members of a social group, seeking recognition and power, claimed to have an in with all-powerful governing spirits. They became “prophets” and established religions with all the necessary laws, accouterments and rites on which humanity seems to thrive. Ordinary, naive people, like most today, believe in the “prophet”, pope, ayatollah, televangelist, holy man, whatever, and are happy to have such guidance, be it government or church, even though it means invasion and yielding control of their private lives. Lacking self-confidence and thoughtful intelligence they prefer not to think for themselves and so tolerate an over-bearing government and interfering religious leaders who are vociferously supported by the uneducated, misguided majority.A common religion has always contributed to the social coherence of a group, a stable polity and traditions that make for a more meaningful life. Iconoclasts, persons of independent thought and agnostics, from early on, were either expelled or killed as heretics. In either case, the genetic patterns necessary for independent thought and action seem to have been mostly lost as humanity evolved into the sorry state we find ourselves in now. Soldiers and civilians are needlessly killed fighting unnecessary wars at the behest of unintelligent leaders seeking personal glory and world-wide dominance over other societies.
The proclivities for both organized religions and humble subservience to “Big Brother” governance are dysgenic accretions of evolution.
Though nature is cyclic and characterized by built-in self-destruction mechanisms, it would seem that utilizing our knowledge of humanity and what makes us tick, we could make our lives far more satisfying by living more in harmony with Earth. Recall that just as our destinies were fixed fourteen billion years ago so was our need to make decisions as if by choice.
I recognize that just as my advocacy for people to behave more rationally is a product of the seething particle mass at Creation; so is the reader’s reaction to it. We are as little robots, scurrying around like the mote’s activity displayed by the Brownian movement of high school physics.
The reality purveyed by WORTHINGTON’S WORLD is being bypassed by civilized humans even though it should be apparent to an open mind. The empirical knowledge of science does not supplant God; rather it elucidates the wondrous creation of God.
The science in the above paragraphs is in accord with most recent neuroscientific findings. For those readers interested I would suggest: Cosmic Legacy: Space, Time, and the Human Mind by Greg F. Reinking, 2003, Vantage Press, N.Y. The Astonishing Hypothesis by Nobel Laureate Sir Francis Crick, 1994, Charles Scribner’s Sons, N.Y. On the Contrary by Paul M. and Patricia S. Churchland, 1998, MIT Press. Cambridge, Mass. Minds, Brains and Science by John Searle, 1984, Harvard Univ. press. wider than the sky by Gerald M. Edelman, 2004 Yale University Press
In my libertarian world, our human hungers would naturally be present. What fun would there be without sex, ambition and contention? Humans of course would be the same, only fewer of them and ALL WOULD BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR AT THE RISK OF THEIR LIVES! There would be no stupid excuses for criminality like insanity, being a product of childhood abuse or physiological dependency on drugs which, incidentally, should be freely available.
MAN IS NOT HIS BROTHERS KEEPER!
John Stuart Mill, British philosopher and economist of the 19th centurty wrote that the state had no right to intervene or to prevent individuals from doing harm to themselves if no harm is thereby done to the rest of society.
* Cascading Universe by Charles C. Worthington, 2004, Dorrance Publishing Co. 701 Smithfield St., Pittsburgh, PA 15222-1786, 1-800-788-7654
The URI to TrackBack this entry is: http://worthingtonsworld.com/trackback/
