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News Briefs 12-11-2010

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.”

Many thanks to Kat!

Quote of the Day:

“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress. ”


Niels Bohr

  1. collapsing biocentric observer
    All this stuff about the observer creating the observed is circular reasoning.

    The observer in this universe is also part of the observed – as I keep telling you folks every time I post something : we are the cat.

    And there goes your special status, Dr. Schrödinger.

  2. Biocentrism: new name, old concepts
    I’m not sure how long the term Biocentrism has been around but it seems to me that the ideas Dr. Lanza is describing have been with us for a very long time. Essentially, he appears to be adding the fine tuning argument to philosophical idealism which goes back to Plato and beyond. I see nothing wrong with that: I have put forward similar arguments both here on TDG and on my own website.

    I’m sure many will agree that what he describes is the only credible alternative to both the theological God of the Gaps argument from religion and the Big Fluke argument from the materialists/atheists.

    As for the observer and the observed, I think that if you start from universal consciousness (consciousness is all that is), then truly the observer and the observed are the same.

    By the way, there are lots of other “lucky coincidences” to add to his list, such as the good fortune that we have the right ratio of land to water to produce the weather systems to water our flora which sustains our fauna. If Daydreamer is still around, I’m sure he will correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe I’m right in saying that there is another finely tuned balance here on earth involving the rock cycle (volcanic activity, tectonics, etc.) and the water cycle (or hydrologic cycle: sea levels, evaporation, precipitation, rivers, run-off, etc.). Add to that balance the effect of the moon which is just the right size and distance from us to influence our seasons – especially due to the stabilizing effect on the Earth’s axial tilt which ensures we don’t swing wildly between extremes of temperatures which would prevent the development of life as we know it.

    So there are three ways you could look at these facts. One would have an omnipotent and designer staring from scratch and knowing in advance all the right formulas to produce exactly the right conditions in at least one small corner of his vast universe. Another would be to take the opposite stance and cite a fortunate series of accidents since the Big Bang which led to our seemingly privileged status here on earth. But before I posit a third option, I’ll comment on what I feel is wrong with these first two theories.

    The creationist idea of God the Designer doesn’t work for me because it is dualistic. God is separate from His creation. He sits outside and looks on. Thus, God stuff is removed and apart from material stuff. And the material stuff is just as inert as the materialist universe in the second option. In other words, there is no room for evolution – everything is designed from outside. The created plays no part in the creation.

    The advocates of the accidental are under no illusions as to how unlikely our being here actually is. This being so, they play statistical games in order to hang on to the materialist dogma and exclude the creator option (hiss, hiss). If enough universes – perhaps infinite universes – have burst into being from nothingness, then there is a statistical probability that at least one of them would have produced our universe, complete with all the fine tuning. Nicely wrapped up and impossible to dispute. But that doesn’t mean it had to have happened that way. There is no proof of gazillions of parallel universes – it is just a statistical conjecture. The main reason for its support is because it excludes consciousness because, in their world view, consciousness is nothing more than a curious epiphenomenon arising out of the fluke happen-stance of carbon based life forms.

    So to the other option: the possibility that consciousness creates for itself and of itself. That matter is a manifestation of conscious energy and its form is directed by the consciousness that brings it into being. In order to know itself, consciousness creates. Those creations are conscious because they are made of conscious stuff. There is no separation between creator and created. The whole process is self learning. It is evolution.

    Hmm, I got a bit carried away there again. However, after taking the time to type it, I don’t want to junk it so I’ll post it anyway.

    1. kamarling wrote:
      As for the

      [quote=kamarling] As for the observer and the observed, I think that if you start from universal consciousness (consciousness is all that is), then truly the observer and the observed are the same.[/quote]

      Agreed, and the process of getting lost in recognizing self in the
      observed would seem to be the thing here. Something seems to come in between, and understanding and dissolving it feels like a worthwhile goal.

      Kabbalah, I Ching and numerous other traditions seem to give intuitive glimpses of connectedness, or at least associations between phenomena earlier seen as separate. These systems use hierarchies as a vehicle for understanding, and then one can only wonder which model or hierarchy is the real one…. The True One. Heheh.

      Has the total consciousness created a gazillion thin stacks of
      differently coloured foils only to look back at its radiant self? Or in other words, has the total consciousness created a set of hierarchical layers of attitude, of different views back to its complete self, each observer standing behind a more or less unique combination of these layers? End result being identity, viewing certain other combinations as threats or unworthy.

      Evolution, but for what?

  3. Galatic centre….
    so “What we see are two gamma-ray-emitting bubbles that extend 25,000 light-years north and south of the galactic center. We don’t fully understand their nature or origin.”

    I don’t fully understand how he came to the conclusion of north and south….is he using earth poles as a reference? and if so then it is somewhat remarkable that these bubbles happen to be 90 degrees to earth. Earth is not 90 dergrees to the galactic centre in referrence to the plane of the spirals.

    1. arbitrary
      I think by galactic north and south they just mean perpendicular to the plane of the galaxy. Since this phenomenon seems to be symmetric, it doesn’t make any difference which is north and which is south.

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