After writing that last post, I realized that, in some sense, I have again been banished to the back of the classroom. In this instance, the classroom is anywhere scientific or philosophical discussion are happening (most often, Facebook, Twitter, etc at the current moment, because of the pandemic) and the “teacher” is any one of the many materialists and/or atheists out there defending their church of materialism. And make no mistake – it is a religion of its own, its dogma every bit as demanding and strenuous as the most severe Christian one of ages past, and its priests, prophets and missionaries willing to give their all to defend their sacred scriptures that state science is god now, none shall question this god’s pronouncement, and anyone who believes in the “old God” or any kind of spirituality or mysticism is a heretic, not worthy of listening to, and shall be immediately banished into the hell or purgatory of irrelevance or humiliation.

Now some people might think this sounds way too harsh, and would strongly deny this is the case. But as someone who has made the mistake (one I will continue to make though – hehe!) of even suggesting something other than a purely material explanation for some kind of phenomenon, I can tell you that the punishment is severe; the banishment real; and the lack of openness to new ideas complete. In fact, I think the Inquisitors of old would be jealous of the religious edifice the materialists have put in place, because it has taken such a complete hold over all things, especially in this technological age, and they don’t even have to physically torture or kill people anymore to get them to renounce their mystical heresy! No, that’s because atheism is probably the most “in” it’s ever been. In the circles of science, the “cool kids” don’t believe in god, or anything non-material. Only losers think that science and materialism can’t explain everything. And just because they can’t now doesn’t give anyone any kind of reason to propose other solutions: the churches verdicts are FINAL.

That being said, I have spent many, many hours of my life reading and learning about quantum physics, consciousness, the origin of life and intelligence, DNA – you know, light subjects like that lol. And all those scientists or scientifically-minded people who like to espouse their beliefs that there is no God, that it’s silly or even ignorant to believe in one, and tend to patronize or talk down to people who do believe in one – when asked “what or who created the big bang?” or “how do you explain the counter-intuitive behavior of particles at the quantum level?” or other hard to answer questions, they tend to fall back on the ‘many worlds’ hypothesis, which states that for every single interaction in the world, in the universe, an entirely new universe splits off for each different choice or option that could be made.

So if you are out car shopping, and can’t decide on what car to buy, there is a universe that splits off where you bought a Kia, one that splits off where you bought a Ford, one that splits off where you bought a Dodge, ad infinitum. And this process happens every millisecond, of every day, for every single person on earth (all 7+ billion of them) – all of this so they, the high priests of materialism, can avoid a possible conclusion that the observer effect can suggest: that it is consciousness that is primary, and that matter is a resultant property of it – not the other way around. To some, this suggests that there is something more than material reality, some underlying force or Source of consciousness, and that Source is something some ancients called God, others called Brahman, still others called The Great Spirit, etc.

It is the old dualism vs materialism debate, and the materialists claim victory and think that dualists  are silly, ignorant, or just haven’t learned enough to know the “truth.” But to this, I like to ask whatever happened to Occam’s Razor – the postulate that states for a number of different hypotheses provided to explain an observed behavior, the simplest one, with the least assumptions necessary is the most likely correct one? Is it really easier to believe that there are an infinite number of universes for every single possible outcome for any interaction? Or is it simpler to believe that there is some higher power or creative intelligence, some force that we do not completely understand that underlies or guides and shapes our reality? I like the old analogy of a tornado rolling through a junkyard and after passing, a perfect 747 jet is sitting there, ready to fly into the air. That is rather the explanation that we are required to believe to avoid believing in God. Oh, but of course there are an infinite number of universes in which that tornado went through that junkyard, and we just HAPPEN to live in the one where it created the jumbo jet. Ok.

What do we observe in our world? Do complex structures like airplanes, skyscrapers, particle colliders just arise out of random interactions? Do I believe that if we threw a bunch of steel and other materials down, in a billion years they would? No, I don’t, and that’s not what I observe. Complex systems in this world have creators, and as someone who creates them for a living, I have a special appreciation for them. Do I develop an entirely new application every time any user takes any action, and continue doing that indefinitely? There are plenty of users who wish I would, for sure! Lol. And I know the analogy is very loose – I can hear in my head some intellectual person who is much smarter than I formulating a blistering response to that drivel haha. But the fact is, even science doesn’t believe this. e.g. the concept of entropy, which states that the degree of disorder or randomness in a system tends to increase – not decrease.

But I decided long ago to stop arguing with the members of the Church of Materialism. It takes too much energy, and it’s not important to me to convince them what is real and what is not. In fact, I can’t even claim to know that completely myself. But I do believe that materialist science does not have all the answers. And because we all exist in our own consciousness, which to date, still evades materialist description, it may never have them. I believe, as did the mystics through all the ages – and, much to the churches consternation, even many of the greatest scientific minds of all time – that there is something “more.” And it is the search to better understand what that “more” is, to get a clearer glimpse of it, that guides my life now, just as it did then. They can still try banish me to the back of the classroom, but they don’t realize – I dropped out of their school a long time ago, quit their church, and am loving my life of heresy!