Consequences of a Dream World



A Mind is Always Present: Materialism’s Fatal Flaw

Materialism, the doctrine that the entire cosmos and all living things can ultimately be reduced to mindless stuff, has many fundamental flaws.  Here is one of them: Even in the mindless, God-less, designer-less worldview of materialism, a mind is still present.  Where is this mind?  In the head of a scientific theorist who imagines that the intelligence and organizational ability of dead and dumb matter is much more creative than this matter could ever be on its own. Let me provide a bit more detail. At bottom, material scientists believe they can explain the entire universe using only matter and the laws of nature.  The laws of nature are necessary to give order and regularity to the dust that would otherwise scatter in the wind.   For example, the laws of gravity, chemistry, quantum theory, and nuclear fission are considered among those forces responsible for sculpting the large-scale structure of the...

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Einstein’s Moon

Albert Einstein famously said that, “belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science.”  This statement has become the governing principle of modern science and, in fact, the very definition of reality. It is echoed by leading modern scientists such as Lee Smolin, who writes in the The Trouble with Physics (p. 6-7), that “Physicists have traditionally expected that science should give an account of reality as it would be in our absence. . . . It cannot be that reality depends on our existence. . . . Philosophers call this view realism. It can be summarized by saying that the real world out there . . . must exist independently of us.”  Similarly, the late Stephen Hawking writes in The Grand Design (p. 43)(with Leonard Mlodinow) , that “[c]lassical science is based on the belief that there exists a real external world...

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The Realization That Together We Dream the World

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines the term “radical” as “marked by a considerable departure from the usual or traditional.”  In our modern world, the “usual or traditional” takes many forms, including “what most people think,” “what you grew up believing,” “what your religious teachers say,” or, on a grander scale, the governing scientific worldview.   It is my premise that the governing scientific worldview underlies and propells all other beliefs.  It is the foundation from which the other fields flow, from politics and economics to medicine and cosmology.  So if we want to truly change the world, we must change it at the root, we must shake the foundation, and then see how the other fields change to align with this new way of thinking. So what is the “governing scientific worldview?”   It is simply the belief that a massive world of matter, composed of tiny little particles, exists independently of human consciousness.  This...

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Why Mathematics is Unreasonably Effective at Explaining the Physical World

In his famous article, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics, physicist Eugene Wigner pondered how it is that mathematics is so effective at explaining the workings of the physical world.  This is the same topic of the recent NOVA special, The Great Math Mystery, which offers a very well-done and interesting account of how mathematics governs the universe from the smallest particles to the sweeping spiral galaxies of the heavens. The effectiveness of mathematics in mapping the workings of the universe, however, should also give pause to anyone who believes that materialism is the final word not only on how the world works, but on science itself. Today, in science, we see highly educated people  pondering the intricate machine-like precision of physical reality yet science has no mechanism to account for how this is possible.  Simply put, since materialists have drained mind, spirit, God, and intelligence from the physical world, they have no...

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Parallels between the God Particle and the Hard Problem of Consciousness

The cover of the new issue of New Scientist highlights the improvements made to the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, not only the world’s most advanced atom-smasher, but the most sophisticated piece of technology ever built by humankind.  The cover says, “Forget the Higgs, Now we’re searching for the root of reality.”  Meanwhile, at the other  end of the scientific spectrum, neuroscientists remain lost in the quagmire of solving the so-called hard problem of consciousness, which, according to David Chalmers is “the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences.” So with the Large Hadron Collider, the question is whether physicists will find the answer to the mystery of the universe in computer-generated images of colliding subatomic particles.  With the hard problem of consciousness, the question is whether neuroscientists will find the secret to the vivid, three-dimensional awareness we call consciousness in the firing interactions between brain...

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Scientists Discover the Universe is a Hologram, but Misplace the Projecting Source

A hologram is an illusory three-dimensional image formed by the interference of laser beams.  The key feature of a hologram is that it is an illusion; the thing depicted as occupying three-dimensional space is not solid or “real,” but it has the appearance of being real.  Scientific American provides a helpful short video of the concept here. As strange as it may sound, the notion that the entire Universe is Really a Hologram seems to be picking up steam in the scientific community.    In an August 2003 article in Scientific American,  Jacob Bekenstein, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes “our universe, which we perceive to have three spatial dimensions, might instead be “written” on a two-dimensional surface, like a hologram.  Our everyday perceptions of the world as three-dimensional would then be either a profound illusion or merely one of two alternative ways of viewing reality.” Continuing this line...

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A Metaphysics for the New Age

“Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically connected.” Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose “From your thought springs your reality. From your ideas your future emerges.” Neale Donald Walsch, Tomorrow’s God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge   Thoughts become things. Radiate positive vibrations and watch the universe reverberate in kind; we create our own reality; think high thoughts and your world grows brighter; focus on the negative, and your fears materialize. Thoughts inside attract things out there. Tomorrow’s God will come down to earth and be part of us, as humankind awakens to find that its concept of a supreme being wrongly reflects the real deity. Life is God acting out its purpose, becoming real in physical form. A universal mind underlies the world; speak to it and it will supply an answer. Make up your mind; think positive thoughts; enrich yourself; leave your...

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The Real Scandal of Quantum Mechanics

In a short, but important, article in Nature magazine, Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at John Hopkins University, concludes that in light of the findings of quantum theory, the universe is entirely mental. Continuing this theme, Professor Henry, in a letter to the editor of the American Journal of Physics, entitled, The Real Scandal of Quantum Mechanics,  writes that the “real scandal of quantum mechanics is that so many physicists still insist on thinking about quantum phenomena with classical ideas.” Professor Henry is exactly right.  Quantum theory teaches that the physical world is not made of things, but of dream-stuff; yet, we still are taught to view the world as consisting of “things” as if we are not quite ready to accept the reality that we dwell in a world of the mind, also known as a dream. In this blog, however, I want to comment upon a...

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Are we Spiritual Beings Having a Physical Experience?

Our modern mindset conditions us to look at the world as physical beings, collections of matter and dust; advanced robots; machines with a brain.   Into this materialistic framework, we have a hard time fitting spirit, the notion that there is something more than mere inert, lifeless stuff at the core of existence.  Spirit and matter have never gone together well, like a light breeze blowing through the Grand Canyon, spirit does not affect matter, and may be simply an illusion. But this attitude leads to a big what if?  What if we are in fact spiritual beings having a physical experience. who have fooled themselves into thinking that our essence is matter, rather than spirit?  In his controverisal book, The Phenomenon of Man,  French Philosopher and Jesuit Priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote that indeed, we are spiritual beings having a physical experience.  Suppose we take this as our starting point, and...

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The Trouble with Physics and Realism

The mind calls out for a third theory to unify all of physics, and for a simple reason, Nature is in an obvious sense “unified. .  .  But in both quantum theory and general relativity, we encounter predictions of physically sensible quantities becoming infinite. This is likely the way that nature punishes impudent theorists who dare to break her unity.                                                                          Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics              In The Trouble with Physics, Lee Smolin presents a powerful critique of the state of modern physics.   http://www.thetroublewithphysics.com/  The cause of the “trouble with physics” is that the two leading theories of physics— quantum theory and the general theory of relativity (i.e., gravity) — are mutually incompatible.  The standard explanation for this incompatibility is that quantum physics, with its wave-particle duality and uncertainty principle, governs the world of the very small, while gravity, which by definition is proportional to mass, governs the...

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