This page will REPEAT much of the previous page, so as to reinforce the the sense of magic
My first hint that reality was MAGICAL was that something actually existed — ME
NOTHING existing would make much more sense — in fact, that would make PERFECT sense
Think about it….
That ANYTHING/SOMETHING exists doesn’t seem to make ANY sense!
Think HARDER about THAT ONE…
Superficially, once something EXISTS, something must have ALWAYS existed — how could something be caused by nothing?
But according to modern science, time ITSELF began about 14 billion years ago — with the BIG BANG…
Does THAT make any sense?
I must be missing something
According to cause and effect, something must have existed BEFORE the big bang
Something must have CAUSED the big bang
Something STARTED time — but to start ANYTHING would seem to require the CURRENT existence of time — causes occur BEFORE their effects
But Stephen Hawking said that the big bang was started by an INITIAL SINGULARITY — which itself, did not include any time, or cause and effect
Whooo!
Hawking didn’t suggest that the initial singularity was”GOD” — but maybe he should have….
If someone is reading this, YOU KNOW that something DOES exist — YOU exist
And THAT, more than anything else, is why you should believe in magic
Do you realize how unlikely your existence would EVER be if you can exist for only one finite time at most?
Do you realize how unlikely your CURRENT existence is, if you can exist for only one finite time at most?!
Where did you (or, I) come from?
How is it that we came to exist?
Were we NOTHING before we were suddenly aware?
Did we always (in some way) exist?
This is one of those things that we just take for granted but shouldn’t — we should be AMAZED by our own existence
See what I mean?
And, once SOMETHING exists, reality includes a serious conundrum – according to the law of cause and effect, once there is something, there could never have been NOTHING — if at one time there had been nothing, SOMETHING would have come from NOTHING!
But then, how could there have ALWAYS been something, either — what did THAT, ETERNAL something come from
We must be missing something…
And then, there’s the problem of GOD!
God seems to be especially unlikely
It’s difficult enough to believe in “magic” in general, but to believe in something like AN ORIGINAL BEING WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING ELSE is almost impossible to believe (if you’ve been well-educated in the U.S. or Europe)
By the second grade, I was already worried that God was just another Santa Clause…
In trying to fully understand REALITY, we humans are probably like THIRD GRADERS trying to understand Calculus (or maybe, like preschoolers or even chickens)
But now there’s quantum mechanics, and the likelihood of something called “universal consciousness” and that consciousness naturally CARES (Look up “quantum theory of the soul”
There would surely seem to be something MAGICAL, SPIRITUAL AND RELIGIOUS about our own existences…
And, GOD is beginning to make sense
And, now’s our chance to begin rightfully appreciating the existence of our own personal consciousness, our own awareness, our own self, our own SOUL
WHERE (IN THE HELL) DID WE COME FROM???
We must each be a BASIC PART OF REALITY — a “small” piece of an infinitely divisible SOUL!
Supposedly, homo sapiens have existed for 200,000 years and produced about 100,000,000,000 (ONE-HUNDRED BILLION) SELVES
Is there a limit to the number of potential human selves (souls)?
Probably not…
Do other animals have selves, souls?
Do plants?
Do rocks?
So, here are my SUSPICIONS so far
What scientists call “Universal Consciousness” is the essence of God!
We conscious beings are just PARTS of an infinitely divisible Universal Consciousness
More than one of us today was Napoleon back in 1800 — each of us must physically exist many finite times at least
Consciousness naturally CARES FOR OTHERS (note all those videos of different animal species caring for each other — the videos can’t all be AI)
This is where “ULTIMATE MEANING” comes from — our behavior is ethically good or bad, or somewhere in between, based upon the fact that consciousness naturally cares for other consciousnesses…
We are all ONE
We all take our SELVES for granted – but our SELVES are the very last things that we should
So, where do our SELVES come from, anyway?
As far as I can tell, science does not try to explain how that happens – how our particular selves actually come to exist…
Science does tell us that our awareness emanates from some sort of electrical activity in the brain – but that electricity brings with it something different and extra special: a BEING, a SELF, a SOUL
Cloning (using the same DNA to reproduce animal bodies) apparently does not reproduce selves (accepting that lower animals have selves, and that 2 bodies sharing the same self would hinder if not prevent survival)
Consequently, it would appear that the particular SELF is NOT determined by DNA…
So, what is the PHYSICAL explanation for DIFFERENT selves?
What is the physical explanation for YOU?
Whatever — the consensus secular hypothesis about the mortality of our selves is that each of us can exist for only one finite time — at most
What science does say is that consciousness is the “emergent property” of a large neuronal network… yeah
And then — consciousness naturally involves a self
And, if a self can have only one finite lifetime (at most), the probability of you ever existing must be virtually zero – and, the probability of you existing right now must be even smaller (I was tempted to say “much” smaller)
Another way of describing this probability (according to Stephen Hawking) is that before time there was an “initial singularity” of infinite, but timeless mass that somehow led to the Big Bang — which happened to possess all the physical properties that would ultimately lead to you and me, right now…
That must be a LOT of specific properties!
How likely was that — that the Big Bang was exactly what was needed in order to eventually produce YOU (and me), RIGHT NOW?
If cause and effect is to rule, the number of specific Big Bang characteristics needed to produce you (and me) right now may not be infinite, but neither are they countable
And, what if time is infinite, and we each can occur for only one finite time — at most?
However a particular self comes about, the probability that it would exist for only one finite time, right now, must be less than one over a googolplex
And, if you actually exist right now, you should expect that modern science is missing a dimension (or, something) or more
In other words, the consensus “secular” hypotheses of human mortality right now – AND the rule of cause and effect — ARE VERY LIKELY WRONG
