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Eternal Creator
or
endless cycles?
Post 13. February 01, 2018
Deism vs Atheism
Eternal Existence or Temporal Cycles?
Atheists & Humanists agree with Deists that most traditional religions, while useful for melding groups of unruly individuals into cohesive societies with standardized ethical systems, have gone astray from practical real-word truth in their search for idealistic other-worldly certainty. They observe that the social bonds of racial & religious tribalism also create rifts between tribes that are rife with strife. But more specifically, Atheists part ways with all forms of Theism on the touchy subject of supernatural deities that are imagined to rule the world, and whose existence must be taken on faith. While Neo-Deism has no use for a pantheon of cloud-dwelling Olympian deities or hordes of dirt-dwelling demons, it still has a role for a single ultimate principle of causation that created the universe, and governs its evolution. That abstract principle may or may not be personal, and may or may not be self-conscious; but it is essential to the existence & evolution of the natural world; hence must logically be a priori, in the sense of First Cause.
So, is the existence of the office-holder for that magisterial role to be accepted by faith in prophetic or priestly authorities, or is there a more rational reason for believing in a supreme being? Must the deity be simply defined into existence? Or can we all agree that if anything temporal exists, then something else must have existed a priori? Cosmologists have grappled with that logic, and have concluded that something must necessarily be "eternal"1. But that term has two definitions : a> temporal cycles with no beginning or end, or b> static existence without change. Clearly, the second definition cannot apply to the physical world as known by Science. So scientists have imagined a possible scenario that would allow space-time to exist before & after the only world we know. Unfortunately, their concept of an infinite regression of Multiverses is, like the notion of a transcendent deity, unprovable by ordinary scientific means, and must be taken on faith in speculative logic.
One line of logic says that if anything exists, something must have always existed. For physical scientists the essence of their studies is matter & energy. So it seemed obvious that the physical-phenomenal universe, as detected by our senses, is the best postulate for the always existing something. And yet, the most recent evidence of our technological senses tells us that space-time is a one-way trip, which began in the Big Bang, and will end in a Big Sigh in a few billion years. Consequently, something must have existed prior to that initial event, in order to light the fuse of the Bang. In that case, the a priori pre-thing must have somehow squeezed thru the Planck-scale bottleneck of the pre-space-time Singularity.
Yet there is no way that space-occupying matter could get through such an infinitesimal choke-point. So the thing-before-time could only have been either amorphous Energy (creative power), or shape-shifting Information. But energy requires time to do its job, which leaves only one candidate for the "thing" that slipped through from the time-before-time to our own local space-time : timeless laws of Mathematical Logic. If that conjuring trick seems logically possible, then we can imagine an infinite succession of prior universes, cycling from nothing to something and back. Hence voila! there's your answer to the question of ultimate origins.
Post 13 continued . . . click Next
1. Eternal Something :
See Post 11, and point to the “Eternal or Turtle” note in the margin.
Planck Scale :
Smallest unit of space-time. Smaller than you can imagine. Smaller than any sub-atomic particle, and briefer than one second of lightspeed.
Laws of Nature :
In practice, merely observed orderliness and predictability. In principle, any imposed limits, mandates, regulations, orders, ordinances, principles, authority, reasons, causes, etc. But established by whom?
Information :
noun of action : the power to – enform; organize; regulate; store knowlege; add structure; add meaning; impose limits; lay down the law .
The mechanism of consciousness :
Build a bunch of matter into a machine, and then a miracle happens! The machine unexpectedly comes to life and begins to say : “I think therefore I am”. But there was no life or mind in the parts. So the magic must be in the system as a whole.
NeoDeism is not a religion :
It’s merely my term to describe the current state of Deism in the 21st century. Three centuries of cultural evolution has resulted in a revival of a defunct philosophical adventure in a revolutionary era that upset millennia of religious and political traditions.
Originally, post-enlightenment Deism was essentially a continuation of the Proptestant Reformation of the Christian religion. As the Protestants rejected the authority of Rome for interpretation of scriptures, Deists went further to question the authority of scriptures arbitrarily canonized by human legislators. It retained the general concept of the Christian God, without all the man-made rules and regulations. In place of scriptural and clerical authority, it bowed only to the authority of “God-given” human reason to interpret the creation of God. That assumption of creation, versus unexplained existence, was its only divergence from the general worldview of secular Science.
So NeoDeism is a religious philosophy, an attitude toward religion that does not accept the authority of ancient myths and dogmans as applicable to our modern multicultural world. It rejects all special revelations to long-dead prophets to be taken on faith, without question or reasons. It does accept the general and self-correcting revelations of the scientific method for knowledge of how the world works. It also embraces the philosophical methods of rational inquiry into why the world works as it does. In place of occult & esoteric sources, it turns to the transparency & accessibility of modern science.
NeoDeism has no church, no members, no clergy. All it has is a novel concept of how religious beliefs should be obtained and validated. With that epistemological kernel, modern people are free to create their own religious practices to suit their local and cultural context. They may borrow good ideas from traditional religions, and they may invent new ones for a new age.
Deism is A-Theism :
Deism is essentially Atheism toward the anthro-morphic deities of most traditional religions. But it retains a general belief in a world creator of some kind. And the only laws of that First Cause are the laws of Nature. Any other rules & regulations of politics and religions are human constructs.
So the only absolute truths are those embodied in the physical world, as discovered by the empirical methods of science. If you break the laws of nature, you will be punished in this life by the inevitable effects of natural causes. For example, if you believe you can fly, the law of gravity will refute your faith. Unless, of course, you learn how to work within the natural system, by creating technology based on physical truths.
By contrast, the moral & ethical & practical restraints of human institutions are relative truths. They apply only to a particular context. For instance, if you believe that eating pork will contaminate your soul, your body/brain will act as-ff the pigmeat is poison, causing you to regurgitate. But if you are not a believer, the forbidden food will have no negative effect on you.
Religious authorities typically get around the relativity of of their rules – they relate only to believers – by asserting that the penalty for transgression will be deferred to the afterlife. In that case, their laws would be absolute, but applicable to a different place & time.
For Deists and Atheists there is no reason to accept the metaphorical myths of heaven & hell as anything more than harsh behavior modification techniques. So we need only be concerned with the consequences of moral choices in this life, in the physical world. If someone chooses to act unethically in their cultural context, then there are cultural tools for correcting their behavior in the here & now.
A promise of swift & sure punishment by the human justice system may not be as effective as the threat of eternal hell-fire for prevention of thought crimes. But ecclesiastical authorities had to resort to dungeons & gallows to avenge actual crimes. In practice, both God’s laws and Man’s regulations work only after the fact, not in premeditation.
