Does the universe need intelligence to order it?

[The Hammer]

Yes, I can relate to that from experience of Buddhist meditation. Some of these meditative states come with a physical aspect, one I often get is rather like a mild electric shock. Also a strong sense of the mind expanding. Interconnectedness is a feeling I can also relate to.

I know that some of the responses are physical. But I am not above relating physical experiences with supernatural/religious experiences. .

 

[Rick O'Shez]

But I am not above relating physical experiences with supernatural/religious experiences. .

It's something I'm still trying to work out to be honest. I do have an open mind on it though.

 

[Robert.Evans]

That's no answer at all. Last time you said it I asked if you could explain what exactly that means, what exactly is God given. No response, no attempt at an explanation or clarification. Just repeating these bland stock phrases is no use at all.

Me: "Space aliens are among us"
You: "How do you know?"
Me: "I just know, it's a matter of space-alien discernment"

See the problem?

It is understood within and that is God given. Can't help you other than that. It is understood intuitively. It will never be something that is seen so that people who are not enabled can understand.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

It will never be something that is seen so that people who are not enabled can understand.

So how are people "enabled"? Please explain what that means.

The problem is that ( like another poster in this thread ) you keep making claim to some higher knowledge, but you consistently refuse to explain it or describe it, or make it in any way intelligible to the rest of us. I'm afraid it looks increasingly hollow.

In terms of the OP I'm pretty sure that nobody here has any idea what the answer is.

 

[godnotgod]

 

[godnotgod]

from a conversation on Twitter/Deepak Chopra:

"Only an intelligent universe can be intelligible to the rational mind"
Deepak Chopra

11:17 PM - 10 Aug 2013
Tweet text

Frank: I am not the universe like the letter a is not the alphabet.

Aurora: but the alphabet is the letter, the ocean is the wave, universal intelligence is human intelligence...

Frank: No it's not. The alphabet is the collections of letters not just a single letter. You've lost me I think

Aurora: you think, that's why I lost you. You think you are a letter, so you forget your alphabet-ness

Frank: In your way of thinking neurons are brains, tires are cars, bits are bytes, and boards are floors.

Aurora: I'll try to explain. On the surface of life distinctions are clear and important- but that's just the flat surface. It's not all there is. To know wholeness we need to look in depth.That is when we discover what unites different forms. We also discover that perception & thought is what separates different forms. So we perceive different forms&phenomena,but when we transcend (go deeper/higher than) our own perception &thought, we find that the world of differences arises in consciousness. Neurons, brains, cars, tires- all arises in the same consciousness of the Observer. All is made of the same stuff: mindstuff as soon as we go deeper than matter. Physics tells us that all things are made of atoms which are- waves of possibility. In what? In consciousness. The neuron is atoms in the consciousness observing it, just like the brain & the body & the society. No matter where you go on the surface, from atom to brain to societies & galaxies- it is still in the one consciousness of the Observer.

Frank: Two quick questions for clarification: why "one" consciousness and why observer with a capital O?

Aurora: Because observers are as many as there are perceiving systems while Observer is essentially one and undivided (consciousness)

Frank: I think I understand how everything is perception in consciousness. But my consciousness is still separate from yours?

Aurora: Consciousness is not separate. Its content varies depending on background, context, POV. Consciousness itself is the same.
There is a personal level of mind (your and my thoughts differ even if they circulate & combine in a collective mind) and there is a universal level of mind (containing all perceptions & thought activity on all levels of life). The ground of both is pure consciousness- mind devoid of all content, or pure transcendental awareness. Being. Existence. No name contains it.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/366443244973862913

 

[Rick O'Shez]

GNG, you have posted this in two threads now, and I think not for the first time. It looks to me like you are more interested in evangelising than having a genuine discussion. Many of your posts look more like preaching than an attempt at dialogue.

Anyway, it's interesting to hear the views of various gurus and teachers, the problem is of course that they all say something different, so it takes us back to square one.

So who do we believe? Naturally people favour teachers who agree with them, but it's really just another example of confirmation bias. "Look, this guru agrees with me, so that proves I am right!" Well, no, it just means you have found somebody who agrees with you.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

 

[metis]

Likewise, if one doesn't use the Dancing Cave Wall Shadow method to ascertain Reality, and claims the existence of a Sun outside the cave, he too would be ostracized, and probably hunted down and executed for heresy.

The scientific method is neither infallible nor the only way to knowledge!

Facts are not Reality!

Sorry, but facts are reality. If there are no facts, there logically there cannot be any reality. And I never stated that the scientific method was the only way to knowledge.

 

[metis]

It's not that nothing exists; it's that the material world is not 'material'. Not being material, it is just the illusion that it is material, especially as what seems to be material also has form. The mystics have been telling us all along that 'form is emptiness; emptiness is form', and that the material world is but a projection of consciousness. So contrary to the nihilist view, consciousness is very real. Consciousness is being, ie; 'I Am', whereas the world of 'material' forms is 'existence'. The former is uncaused, unborn/deathless, and outside of time and space, the latter requiring time and space, as it arises and subsides, merely a manifestation of pure consciousness.

You have't provided one shred of evidence for the above, and you're conflating belief with reality, and the two are not synonymous concepts. There simply is no objectively-derived evidence for any kind of cosmic consciousness.

 

[Andywelikandy]

This is a question that Physicist G. Schroeder asks:

Q: Very occasionally monkeys hammering away at typewriters will type out one of Shakespeare's sonnets.

A: Not true, not in this universe. But it is a popular assumption that the monkeys can do it, a wrong assumption that randomness can produce meaningful stable complexity. But let's look at the numbers to see why the monkeys will always fail. I'll take the only sonnet I know, sonnet number 18, “Shall I compare thee to a summer's day …” All sonnets are 14 lines, all about the same length. This sonnet has approximately 488 letters (neglect spaces). With a typewriter or keyboard having 26 letters, the number of possible combinations is 26 to the exponential power of 488 or approximately ten to the power of 690. That is a one with 690 zeros after it. Convert the entire 10 to the 56 grams of the universe (forget working with the monkeys) into computer chips each weighing a billionth of a gram and have each chip type out a billion sonnet trials a second (or 488 billion operations per second) since the beginning of time, ten to the 18th seconds ago. The number of trials will be approximately ten to power of 92, a huge number but minuscule when compared with the 10 to power 690 possible combinations of the letters. We are off by a factor of ten to power of 600. The laws of probability confirm that the universe would have reached its heat death before getting one sonnet. We will never get a sonnet by random trials, and the most basic molecules of life are far more complex than the most intricate sonnet. As reported in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, when the world’s most influential atheist philosopher, Antony Flew, read this analysis of complexity and several analyses related to the complexity of life brought in my third book, The Hidden Face of God, and Roy Varghese’s excellent book, The Wonder of the World, he abandoned his errant belief in a Godless world and publically apologized for leading so many persons astray for the decades that his atheistic thoughts held sway. (Gerald Schroeder Home Page
~~~~~~~

In my own humble way, I could have said that monkeys would not have done that, no matter how much time they had. Time was at one time seen as the ''hero''. But monkeys are monkeys!

Yet time does not always mean there will be sufficient change in order to facilitate the change needed in the first place. Why do we think it does?

So, my question is this: If that is so unlikely for monkeys to do... then, if the multiverse exists, how can we even be sure that they would all be different universes, thus giving us sufficiently correct odds that our universe could develop the way it did. I don't see we have licence to expect such a positive result.

Now there are those who say that this universe might be the proverbial bouncing ball, forever coming into existence and then dying only to be reborn. If so, why should we think that would be any better with the odds?

In other words, if it is so difficult to do, how is time going to help?

A dice with six sides is one thing.... eventually we know that the six will come up. But what of the dice with a trillion sides. Is a six going to come up then?
It is hard to say it ever would, there are just too many chances of it falling onto another number. It might never do! Are we mistakenly thinking it would have to do, just because of an allegiance to some kind of worldly thinking?

And why does probability act the way it does anyway? What drives that?

It appears without intelligence involved in creation, we have no right to expect anything positively happening at all.

Yup. I've had that thought in the past. If reality is brought about by observation, then perhaps God is the Final Observer, rather than the First Cause.

Consider all the balances of nature. Not even one of them could have come into the world of nature, had there been NO intelligent mind behind it. Let me take just one as a good example: All living animals and human beings breath in Oxygen and breathe out CO2. All plant life breath in CO2 and put out Oxygen. If all breathed out CO2 , then, no human being would live. If all breathed out Oxygen, then, no plant life would live. That's a perfect balance. Could such a balance have happened by chance? No way!

 

[Ouroboros]

Consider all the balances of nature. Not even one of them could have come into the world of nature, had there been NO intelligent mind behind it. Let me take just one as a good example: All living animals and human beings breath in Oxygen and breathe out CO2. All plant life breath in CO2 and put out Oxygen. If all breathed out CO2 , then, no human being would live. If all breathed out Oxygen, then, no plant life would live. That's a perfect balance. Could such a balance have happened by chance? No way!

Is God in balance? He/she/it couldn't have happened by chance either. It's a poor argument. Arguing that something must be created by something else only because it seems to be too complex, perfect balanced, fine tuned, etc, are invalid arguments simply because we can't say that nature as such can or cannot be this or that. We are not God ourselves, so how can we say nature can't be in balance by default?

Put it this way, God must be in perfect balance. It's his/her/its nature to be in balance. Like yin/yang. This means that it's a fundamental principle of existence rather than something created. The creator's nature must be in balance, just as nature must be in balance. Existence and reality always is. It's not something that is created, but something that is by default.

Another balance in nature is, nature produces intelligence and intelligence can observe and reflect on nature. It's a beautiful balance.

 

[Looncall]

Consider all the balances of nature. Not even one of them could have come into the world of nature, had there been NO intelligent mind behind it. Let me take just one as a good example: All living animals and human beings breath in Oxygen and breathe out CO2. All plant life breath in CO2 and put out Oxygen. If all breathed out CO2 , then, no human being would live. If all breathed out Oxygen, then, no plant life would live. That's a perfect balance. Could such a balance have happened by chance? No way!

This tired old creationist balderdash again! What happens is just the outworking of the properties of the universe and the things in it. Some things that happen have a measure of chance but by no means all.

Life existed on this planet for a very long time before the atmosphere had much oxygen in it. The oxygen was added by living organisms to boot. Other organisms had to adapt to avoid being poisoned by the oxygen. Your example could hardly have been more ineptly chosen.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Could such a balance have happened by chance?

Not by "chance", by evolution.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Another balance in nature is, nature produces intelligence and intelligence can observe and reflect on nature. It's a beautiful balance.

Consciousness looks like an emergent property of biological life, so I don't see how it's a matter of balance. The universe is vast and impressive and wouldn't care in the slightest whether there are primitive species like ours to gaze at the stars.

Thinking otherwise is just a variation on believing that the earth is at the centre of the universe, and it was all made just for us. Human arrogance really.

We are like bacteria on a rock pretending that we understand the world.

 

[YmirGF]

Not by "chance", by evolution.

Given the poor quality of the arguments in this thread, one can assume that this "universal intelligence" isn't as universally intelligent as our proponents would suggest. Theoretically, their arguments would if better if things were otherwise. Just sayin'...

 

[YmirGF]

Consciousness looks like an emergent property of biological life, so I don't see how it's a matter of balance. The universe is vast and impressive and wouldn't care in the slightest whether there are primitive species like ours to gaze at the stars.

Thinking otherwise is just a variation on believing that the earth is at the centre of the universe, and it was all made just for us. Human arrogance really.

We are like bacteria on a rock pretending that we understand the world.

I think that, as a somewhat insignificant species, we simply have to accept the fact that we are still a fairly primitive race. Though that is the sad reality, it is still no reason for some human animals to go off half-cocked on wild assumptive tangents that are not particularly persuasive and unlikely to contain much validity. It is because of this that the only reasonable position to take is the one that can be objectively validated. Talk is cheap, proving things is a bit more complicated.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Talk is cheap, proving things is a bit more complicated.

Preaching is certainly cheap. Hearing people talk about their personal experiences and the way they think about them has been interesting and useful to me. The rest seems mostly about variations on theistic belief, and even "cosmic consciousness" looks like a new-age take on pantheism.

 

[godnotgod]

You have't provided one shred of evidence for the above, and you're conflating belief with reality, and the two are not synonymous concepts. There simply is no objectively-derived evidence for any kind of cosmic consciousness.

No one is making that claim. The experience is beyond the rational mind.

Fact: QM has now saying that there is no material reality; that the particles in the atom are due to quantum fluctuations.

Fact: If the world is not material, but appears to be so, then it is an illusion.

Fact: The mystics, particularly Buddhists, have said that 'form is emptiness; emptiness is form'

Fact: Consciousness is self-evident, whether you are a materialist or not.

None of what I've said can be proved via evidence. It is purely experiential, but it is not, as you have stated, belief. That is your view from the outside of the experience. However, the conclusions I've stated have been reached independently by mystics in different parts of the world and in different times throughout history. The knowledge is consistent and over 4000 years old.
That is why it can be called universal consciousness. In addition, non-locality of the brain has indeed been proven, the experiment repeated many times over, as discussed here:

 

[godnotgod]

Sorry, but facts are reality. If there are no facts, there logically there cannot be any reality. And I never stated that the scientific method was the only way to knowledge.

Facts are not reality. Knowing all about the piano does not yield the music. The music is not actualized until listened to.

Science gives us all the facts about the universe, but cannot tell us what the universe actually IS. To know that, it must be experienced directly.

Facts are only facts when expressed and tested. Reality does not require facts in order to be Reality. Facts are purely a human phenomena.

In your estimation, what other pathways to knowledge exist?