The Anthropomorphic Principle

Not that it is all that unreasonable. After all, it's intrinsically almost human nature. How can language communicate what is outside our lived experience, or outside the power of our imagination to conceive? Jews were regarded in ancient times as utterly atheist. After all, with nothing visible to show for their deity, how could they claim to even have one? All the nations round about them, all the other tribes of the ancient world -- they all had Gods, usually MANY of them. And all were visible, tangible, palpable. The Jews had nothing. Zilch. Nada. Vespasian conquered Jerusalem, penetrating their Holy of Holies -- only to find -- NOTHING THERE.

Where was the god of the Jews? There was nothing there. Not a statue, not a form, not an image. Nothing. Vespasian emerged to declare that the Jews were Atheists. They had a ghost for a god. He left in disgust.

Indeed, when Moses spoke with the voice at the burning bush, he was hard pressed. How would he possibly describe the deity he was supposed to represent? The answer? Tell them, "I am that I am" hath sent you. Jeesh. A verbal conundrum. Word games. "I am that I am." What's this? A Buddhist ko-an? A tautology (circulus in probando?)

Even the tetragrammaton is little more than a breath with-held. Four "consonants" too holy to be aspirated. (Linguists? Is your glottal stop ready?) And the possible meaning of this most holy NAME is even more obscure. We are left with a "place holder" of sorts. Like the zero in math, It is impossible to do without, but this NAME in Hebrew is ineffable, unpronounceable -- a breath, or a breath WITH-HELD.

The great German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, now often regarded as a bit heterodox or even heretical, felt that theology misses the authentic challenges of the modern world, the legitimacy of science and evolution, or rationalism and atheism. After his arrest by the Nazis, he continued to delve into the depths of the profound mysteries in his papers and letters (to friend Eberhard Bethge especially). He spoke of a "world come of age" not as a threat to faith but as simple and positive maturity and experience. What if the very word "God" is itself problematical? Bonhoeffer spoke of this linguistic struggle as if we might better approach the god mystery as a concept out of philosophy or mathematics. God as a "working hypothesis."

The "Placebo God" like a zero (place-holder)
Bonhoeffer borrowed the famous Latin phrase etsi deus non daretur from Grotius, a phrase which means "even if God did not exist." In ethics and law, the point of the phrase is that human behavior, ethics, law are all applicable merely from the standpoint of the actions themselves, even if God did not exist -- the morality itself still is valid, a stand alone reality. But Bonhoeffer uses the idea to express something else. In our modern "world come of age" what kind of theology is left?

See Michio_Kaku Future of the Mind scientific quest to understand, enhance & empower

The elusive 'god' particle

deus abscondita. the Jewish "God That Isn't There."

The Hebrew Bible is not western. Europeans wanted a theology, wanted to DEFINE God, and pin down a kind of theology specificity into rigid terms.

But the Bible was not European, and not really about defining. Not about theology. It had narratives, stories. It really posed questions, leaving it to the hearer (reader) to infer ... and draw his own conclusions.

The Bible itself was more about leaving God undefined. The Hebrew stories were often about showing what the deity is NOT.

One after another, the major dramatis personæ of the Bible narratives were not the good guys, but flawed figures, many of whom defied the deity in one way or another. Moses, David, Job, many of the prophets.

The notable biblical figures again and again asserted their humanity against God. Prometheus-like, they asserted their own individuality and humanity at times in the very face of God.

And few escaped (in the Hebrew stories) 'unscathed'

Father Abraham laughed at an Angel or Avatar. The Patriarch of Genesis tried to cuckold himself, and to sexually share his wife, who was "fair to look upon." (see Father Abraham)

Abraham laughed at an Angel or Avatar. He tried to cuckold himself, and sexually share his wife, who was "fair to look upon."

Jacob wrestled with God (at Bethel). A mama's boy, he had previously partaken in the deception of his father, and had "cheated" his brother. Later, working for his father-in-law, he had also cheated him as well, yet the deity calls him a prince, Israel, and he is the preferred brother.

Moses argued with God. (He adamantly expressed his doubt in his own mission. "I can't do it.") As prophet he lost his temper, smashed the two tablets (ten words) that God had just inscribed with His own finger. In his youth he had killed a fellow Egyptian. He also was married to a Cushite woman. An Ethiopian.

David was like a Greek hero, his hubris, his lust, his vanity. Yet the biblical narrator calls him a man after God's own heart. In a sense, he was a quintessential "bad boy" -- human, all too human -- yet one etymology of the Hebrew name david says it means "LOVE."

The entire book of Job is rich (illustrative) in demonstrating this principle, that the outspoken ones, the defiant ones, the sinners and doubters are the ones whom "God" takes time with, bothers with. And justifies. Job blamed God, justified himself, defied God, demanded God answer him. He basically said, "Why me? Why does God allow this to happen to me -- I'm one of the good guys."

Most of the book of Job, Job is resisting, or exposing, his three "righteous" friends and all their preaching, advice, and so-called "spiritual" coaching. Job is like, Bug off. You don't know a thing. At the very end, after God does indeed "answer" Job (taking his breath away). Job is speechless, but God then takes about two sentences and rather curtly DISMISSES the three hypocrites. He said Job had said of him (God) that which was right. (Strange, Job had attacked God, basically. Yet God said he had spoken right)

The Known Unknown - Gopal N. Honnavalli's Atheistic Spirituality
(Some Strange Cosmic Experiences) - comparable to the scientific findings of Higgs-Boson (so-called "God" particle) at Large Hadron Collider (LHC). He says what was found at LHC is like a god-particle but not THE GOD Particle, while IT is, in the form of a Sub-Atomic- Cosmic- Light- Energy, seated eternally at the center of in the Universe, said to be about 50 billion light- years, to where the author also in the form of a sub-atomic- light- particle, travels, astral, with infinite speed to meet and to be with the GOD (particle).

So What About It? Is there an authentic atheist spirituality? Is there even an authentic rational theism? Can we know anything at all? The Science of Being, for all its arduous Herculean exertion (intellectually) is still in its infancy. Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes. (Marianne Williamson). All we know, (if we even know that) is that nature has secrets to tell, and sometimes someone will come along who listens carefully. And to that person, Nature will speak.

"Secrets of all kinds must be approached with reverence." Indeed, there are mysteries and secrets so sacred that they can only be approached with reverence. They never yield themselves to the impatient demands of arrogant intellect but only to those in the humble reflection of truly open hearts.

Parallel Universe
Niels Bohr wrote: "All of us know that there is such a thing as consciousness, simply because we have it ourselves. Hence consciousness must be a part of nature, or, more generally, of reality, which means that quite apart from the laws of physics and chemistry, as laid down in quantum theory, we must consider laws of quite a different kind."

Bohr also declared, “I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.” Both Bohr and Schrödinger, the founders of quantum physics, were avid readers of the Vedic texts and observed that their experiments in quantum physics were consistent with what they had read in the Vedas.

Niels Bohr got the ball rolling around 1900 by explaining why atoms emit and absorb electromagnetic radiation only at certain frequencies.

Then, in the 1920′s Erwin Schrödinger came up with his famous wave equation that predicts how the Quantum Mechanical wave function changes with time. Wave functions are used in Quantum Mechanics to determine how particles move and interact with time.

See "Shrodinger, Einstein and Tesla were all Vedantists"

For More see Quantum Mechanics: the modern paradigm shift

The Artist and the Mathematician: The Story of Nicolas Bourbaki, the Genius Mathematician Who Never Existed

The greatest mathematician of the 20th century was actually a committee.

Science popularizer Amir D. Aczel (Chance, 2004, etc.) begins with a mystery: the voluntary disappearance in 1991 of Alexandre Grothendieck, a leading French mathematician. The author surveys Grothendieck’s childhood in a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied France, then shifts to the careers of several other French mathematicians active before WWII. The common thread in their lives is Nicolas Bourbaki, a fictional mathematician under whose name the most influential work of the modern era was published. Bourbaki was, in reality, a group that first met in December 1934 in Paris, believing that math needed to be rebuilt from its foundations, starting with the fundamentals of set theory. Although there were always acknowledged leaders, beginning with André Weil, decisions were made collectively. Bourbaki’s members shouted each other down and argued vehemently over every detail of the work in progress. Miraculously, this chaotic methodology produced brilliant results. Bourbaki’s insistence on rigor and its emphasis on structure revolutionized the way math was taught. The “new math” that swept through schools in the 1960s was a Bourbaki creation. Likewise, as Aczel points out at length, the “structural” movement in philosophy, science and the arts derives from the Bourbaki approach, especially as adopted by Claude Lévi-Strauss, to whom Weil taught the mathematics that would underpin his anthropological studies. For four decades, the best young French—and, increasingly, foreign—mathematicians were recruited into the group, and its influence was unmatched. Grothendieck, most brilliant of the latter-day members, eventually took math beyond the reach of set theory, at which point he left Bourbaki, and the group began its decline. But as Aczel shows, it had left an indelible stamp on mathematics and on the world at large.

A fascinating topic, despite the author’s sometimes plodding approach.

[kirkus review]

Tearing Down and Building Up

If atheism has a world view that is primarily modern or futuristic, religions are often enchained by their embrace of a multi-generational "æonian" perspective .... seeking to pass on an ancient "recurring" inheritance: links in a chain, as it were.

From a westerner's perspective, I would be tempted to seek knowledge of "the divine" -- without expecting ultimate finality -- in the East, in India and in Asia. Hindu is said to be the oldest living religion in the world. It is the religion of the majority of people in India and Nepal. It also exists among significant populations outside of the sub continent and has over 900 million adherents worldwide. Unlike most other religions, Hinduism has no single founder, no single scripture, and no commonly agreed set of teachings.

In fact, while it has theistic aspects, it is also rich in non-theistic dimensions as well. It is deeply spiritual, yet almost scientific in the attention to detail among the students of India's wide-ranging religions, their ancient recognition of the intermesh of body, mind, and spirit. The sacred sound of the creative "resonance" is not too holy to be pronounced, but is actually intoned freely and reverently. Pronounced "Om." Written in Devanagari ....

Gandhiji and the Quakers
(Rufus Jones in India)

Nuclear Warfare - in ancient times. Vedic revelations.

The arrival of quantum theory (QT) at the start of twentieth century necessitated a profound shift in conceptual underpinnings of modern physics. It is a conceptual revolution that is not yet complete. Physicists and indeed scientists in all other fields do await with great anticipation what stellar conceptual revolution quantum theory will ultimately bring when the riddles lying at its conceptual basis are properly solved eventually. But in the present context, two points can be made.

One is that quantum theory has decisively invalided the idea that the quantum physical properties (which correspond to quantum mechanical observables) cannot be thought of as primary properties since primary properties possess definite values prior to and independent of our measurements of these properties. In quantum mechanics we cannot take that view without violating other enshrined classical physics ideas such as locality (the idea that if two objects are so separated that no physical signal travelling at or lower than the speed of light can mediate their interaction, then there can be no physical influence of one object over the other).

Nevertheless, it is an amazing feature of QT that physicists have been able to put to practical use this theory by treating the quantum mechanical observables (such as x, p and H) as corresponding to classical properties such as position, momentum and energy, and apply it to deal with a vast range of atomic phenomenal. Let us call this as standard, microscopic quantum mechanics (mQM). However, despite its practical success, that primary properties are not the right ones for QT is shown by the deep, unsolved conceptual conundrums that mQM has so far engendered. There have been extreme solutions to this – ranging from ignoring the problem (treating as philosophers’ predilection), forcibly solving it (via metaphysical ideas such collapse postulate, pilot-waves or decoherence) or according a causal role for the consciousness of the experimenter directly within the theory. All of these have remained unsatisfactory. [To be continued]