I found God

For real this time guys...

I found God.






I'll allow time for any necessary double-takes....










Well, my friends, it's pretty involved, but here is how I came to this realization....

Now I am a materialist. This means I hold the stance that there is only "one" substance: material. The idea of the immaterial like spirits and souls is doubted heavily, and the notion is held that if such things do exist, they must be made of some kind of material... since we would be able to observe them. To sum it up: everything in the universe is made out of matter/energy (material) to the best of our knowledge, and any other substance that exists should be observable/testable and therefore also material.

I am also a determinist (who take quantum effects into account, so I dubbed myself a "Quanto-determinist" [This idea has some really cool consequences that I will share in another entry]). This means I entertain the idea that every event must have had a cause and if it is uncaused it is purely random. Of course the idea of an event includes our own decisions. Knowing your past (this includes your past from one second ago) is what purely dictates your actions, it is then implied that your actions (and anything else's actions) are predictable by observing the state of things from some previous point in time.

FORMULATION
If E(x,y) is some event where x is its place in the order and y is the number of the event in the causal "web".
E(1,1)+E(1,2)+...+E(1,n)=E(2,1)+E(2,2)+...+E(2,m)
n and m aren't necessarily equal.

This of course throws freewill out the fucking window. Even if you take quantum probability into account. Because events are either causally determined or uncaused random events. So your thoughts are either completely determined, completely random or have components of both. Either way, you have no uncausable control; no real freewill. It is an illusion generated by your lack of knowledge of the future. [Real knowledge of the future could be paradoxial in some cases...but that's neither here nor there.]

"So what does this have to do with god, Chax?"

Good question, me.

Well I have always supposed that if there is god it is probably synonymous with the idea of "the universe", basically the idea of pantheism. I still hold this stance.

Now if you think about the mind or brain from a materialistic and deterministic standpoint (or really any standpoint, if you don't want to think too much about it), your brain formed out of millions of years of evolution (even more immediately, from your mother's and father's food in a matter of 9 months (and over the course of your life)).

Now your brain, somehow, out of all these electro-chemical signals and brain-cell configurations generates "I AM"; what makes you you; your self. Through these causal chains the universe has arranged your configuration and has generated your conciousness and self-awareness. This means the UNIVERSE has generated self awareness...YOU.

You are the universe looking back on itself.





So since you are part of the universe and you are self-aware, the universe is self-aware.

We are the gods we've been looking for all this time.



...but we hardly deserve the title, unfortunately. So my initial claim was merely a ruse.
With no actual freewill, subject to the whims of causality and randomness, we are just a result of happenstance. [eh... redundancy]
We are not in charge of the universe's will, but it is safe to say we are, in a way, it's consciousness(es).


Peace,
-Chax