This article is a response to Sketch, an atheist who I met through the StumbleUpon website. He asked me where my convictions actually lie in relation to religion. It's a good question, because I say I'm not an atheist, but I clearly consider atheist my allies. I get along atheist because they rely on logic rather than dogma, and they lean on science rather than holy books. Saying that I am not atheist implies that I believe in god, but I don't believe in god in the way that most people would imagine. God is a word that has been very misused, but rather than accept or reject the definition that they tried to force on me I redefined the word.
Actually to call it a definition is a little bit of an understatement. It's more like a logical construct. It usually takes me several hours to give my full thesis, and I won’t put you through that, but will give a short sumary.
Everything hinges on time. In the big bang explanation they say that in the "beginning" there was a singularity that was so dense that no movement, no light, and no time could exist. "Then" there was the big bang and from that time came into existence. The problem right there should be pretty evident. If there is a moment when something is not in time, then that moment cannot be "before" and nothing can happen "after". The only state that can exist timelessly is NOW. If you think about it, NOW is all that really exist anyway. It's always now, now, now. The past is just memory and points of reference. The future is just projection from those memories. Science already shows us that time is not linear. The majority of the public has a hard time swallowing this, but it's true none the less.
If that singularity has no time, then that singularity exists right now. All possibilities coexist in one moment. When you watch a DVD it appears to have time and space, beginning and end. But when you remove the disc from the player it is clear that all of those points of time are actually coexistent and any of the moments of that movie can be accessed directly if you know how the codec works. The singularity is the same. While it is being interpreted by conscious entities such as ourselves, the universe seems to have a linear time line; before, after etc… but in reality, all points of time exist in the same moment.
I like to think of the universe as a field of probability, like a computer screen but three dimensional. Like a computer screen this field of probability is made up of a grid of points, only the universe has an infinite number of these points, while a computer screen is finite. When you watch a movie on a computer there seem to be objects that move from place to place, but in reality all the pixels were already there just waiting to be lit up. The code for determining which points light up is binary; on, off, on, off. I propose that objects that appear to move through the universe do the same thing. They light up points in the field of probability; points that are already there.
That field of probability, that singularity is what I call god, and by that definition everything is part of god. You might wonder why I call this god instead of “the matrix” or the universe or something like that. Well, that’s where the second part of the logic comes in.
What all this implies is that everything is one. The universe is a single entity that only maintains the appearance of duality through the perception of time. If everything is one, then we are part of that one, and no part can ever contain something that the totality does not.
This naturally brings us to the question of consciousness. Biologist and physicist need to put their heads together on this one. Look at biology through the eyes of string theory and you’re in for a revolution in thinking. We are not conscious objects. We are conscious fields of energy. Energy is capable of awareness! If our energy is capable of being self aware, and we made up of the same vibrating strands of energy that make up the cosmos, and we are in fact just fragments of that totality. The implication is should be clear... Awareness is a fundamental characteristic of the totality. We cannot have a quality that the universe does not have. We are a piece of the universe. Therefore the universe is aware.
So that’s god to me, and my religion is my understanding that there is only one. It’s a simple religion. Everything is god, and so are you, there’s no hurry to get anywhere, no hell to avoid. This is the universe dreaming, we are thoughts in the cosmic mind… characters in the cosmic video game. It doesn’t mean that nothing is real. Of course there is something real. Just like there is a reality that makes the video game work. Our universe is made in binary code; patterns of on and off, and its algorithms exist in and of themselves. Human math is not invention but rather a reflection of that cosmic mathematics.
Our mistake is when we assume that our subjective interpretation is the absolute. Mario and Luigi could study the bricks of their surroundings and form great fields of knowledge based on their observations, and that knowledge would be truth in some relative sense, but they would be missing something. Mario and Luigi would never truly understand their world unless they took into account the computer that they are running on. What I am proposing is something like Mario stepping back and realizing that he isn’t a little man in a world filled with killer turtles, but rather that he is a part of a bigger code that is running. What if he were to realize that his sphere of awareness didn’t have to be limited to that one character, but could move on to other perspectives? Sadly for Mario, the code that makes him up isn’t advanced enough to allow for self awareness, but ours is.
If all this sounds like eastern philosophy or something from Star Trek to then you might want to listen to what modern physicist are saying. Then maybe modern physicist should listen to what yogis in India have been saying for thousands of years. The more advanced our science becomes, the more these two seemingly disparate paradigms approach each other. I hope that in some future, our species will reach a point where we are capable of approaching the frontier of consciousness with the mind of scientist rather that the mind of religion. Maybe then we will have a chance to see what we are really capable of.
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