Category Archives: Science

In the Beginning, God . . . The Grand Mystery

14 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by in cosmic origins, Genesis, imagination, mystery, Science

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In the beginning, God . . .

 Scarce more profound a mystery be found. Aseity is how we discuss God’s self-sufficiency. To quote, Jesus the Christ, “I have life in myself as my father has life in Himself.” Although the Word of God only implies this attribute, aseity, to God here, the text invites us to conclude that God is indeed self-sufficient. We need not look for a reason or cause that somehow predates or precedes God. It touches our mind as a unfathomable truth that does allow us to fathom a bit of it. Applying the notion of time to God in this pre-history may be unfounded. Sequence may be merely a creaturely phenomenon that has no place for describing God’s divine pre-history existence.

We should not ask, “what was before God” because such a question already assumes that “time” is rightly applied to God prior to His creating. This is what boggled Richard Dawkins’ mind in his entirely insulting book, God is not Great. His claim was that we Christians only move the mystery back from the big bang to God but such a move, according to Dawkins, provides no more explanatory power than leaving the mystery at the big bang. I contend there are added benefits and explanation by supposing that God is and that the mystery resides with God rather than the big bang.

(1)  Locating the mystery of life with God and not the big bang provides a personal entity, God — rather than an impersonal force, the “bang,” — that is responsible for creating something entirely intelligently designed. This provides much explanatory power for why the universe should be here rather than not here. Only persons create organized and intelligently designed things. No sand castle has ever arisen apart from some child, a person, building it. No house erected from the arbitrary falling of logs in the woods; no a person comes and organizes it.

(2)  Dawkins is right that it moves the mystery to God but he is wrong that it does not provide us far greater resources in explaining the universe and purpose of life. A person such as God generating persons such as humans is a substantial foundation for purpose and meaning. If there is meaning that lasts beyond our life and the memories of descendants it will reside in the Mind of God, which would constitute our subjective meaning into the “objective annuls” of God’s mind, providing the complete basis for life not only to be meaningful in some daily yet ultimately waning sort of way, but then becoming actualized objective meaning.

(3)  Postulating a realm that God inhabited or simply was in pre-history breaks the need to explain (and ask) “what came before” — showing you are asking a question about creation rather than the Creator — by virtue of pointing out the fact that “cause and effect” implies sequence, but there is no reason to be compelled either from theological or scientific concerns to postulate that time and thus sequence existed prior to such a taxis and organization in the creation. Really, we have little idea what time is. Scripture states elsewhere and we live and move in God, and time might really be some realm or medium for humanity’s expression that is upheld by God although utterly different from Him. This is conjecture, but the point is that “time” is a humanly contrived idea that we use to describe our reality while also recognizing that “time” is really there even if in only abstract sort of way.

(4)  Given the law of entropy, there must be a generative force that is outside of or beyond the realm of nature or of the creation. Simply put, that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but yet energy exists, demands an “Energizer.” Postulating the natural world backward in infinite regression does nothing to solve this issue. In spiritual terms, there must be The Spirit for the life-energies of spirits to be.

(5)  God being Creator also provides us the resource of “intention” as a way to explain why the universe is and why it should have started at all. The big bang provides no such resource because forces do not “intend” anything. Rather than the universe’s existence being altogether arbitrary — as it would be if it were generated from an impersonal force — and just popping out of nothing, as though nothingness could produce something, a Personal Mind like God would simply intend to create, and such impulse to start something new is an experience each and every person has been involved with, analogously. Nothingness producing something is an experience no person ever has experienced in any real, relative, or analogous way.

Forces don’t have intention.

In the beginning God . . .  points to a fundamental relational reality you, me, everyone, will have with God. In every revealing there is a concealing. If God is such a Being that calls what is not into existence from resources of His own generation, then the Scriptural based claims of His infinite nature are not overblown (everlasting to everlasting). In an infinite series, there is always more ground to cover even if the ground upon which we currently stand is wondrous in its own right. Even here in Genesis 1:1, at the outset of all else God will say, this text maximizes attention on this single shining light, piercing through the veil of mystery which is the fact that God is. Period. God is.

Here at this moment, the moment, the moment that precedes all other moments, the moment that pervades all other moments as the mother of them all, here we find Creator and Lord in the one word, Elohim. He is before all and as such is over all. To lord, or rule, we discover entails the impulse to share, to serve, and to fashion something that is an echo, a “re-presentation” of all that Elohim is. Creativity, generosity, and gratuity are unveiled in these first three words, “in the beginning.” There is a start, and the start begs us to ask why. This Being, this God, cannot be compelled to create, clearly is not creating out of need or acting out of deficiency. Indeed, that God simply was already puts all such notions He could be deficient into the grave.

You share that creativity friend, you exhibit profound imagination. God went beyond what was to produce what was not. Why do you imagine things beyond your experience? Why do we love mythologies, DC, Marvel, Warhammer 40k? How intense this creativity is among all humanity; we all love stories and stories are evidence of our great making property that God invested into us: transcendence.  Surely, it is an absolute marvel to be screamed from the hill tops that you are a subcreator, with capacities to transcend. We go beyond, we break limitations as we press ever more into the mystery of the infinite divine. When you use that imagination, you are a representation of this first moment that made all other moments possible: “in the beginning God . . .” Art, recreation, these are the resounding chorus of God’s first paint stroke on the canvas of creation. You are part of that painting, and you contribute to that painting. What will you fashion this day? Will we find in you the same type of creator from deep resources uses your authority to bring into being something new and wonderful out of sheer pleasure and as a generous expression of your spirit, of who you are?  Will the ethos of Elohim mark you? Will you be a Lord and Creator who fashions life-giving ideals, models, truths, endeavors, hopes, to bring these into being as a participant in creation’s melody?

Take captive this moment, as it carries in it the memory of that first moment, “in the beginning God. .  .” Imagine, express, create: discern what is generous, and be about that this day. Life in not about prolonging days but about finding this life-giving moment, rehearsing its wonder, and drinking deeply from the well of self-giving rather than feeding the devourer, selfishness.

Presence

In the grand theater of cosmic origins, contained in only 4 words, “In the beginning God . . .” we find what is first and therefore foremost in the taxonomy of meaning, namely, Presence. There are really only two alternatives in the grand narrative of the universe: either Presence is the most basic reality or emptiness. Presence, friends, is the locus of meaning. Without presence, meaning is naught. In other words, before you can have meaning in your life, say from your father or mother, they first must be present. Their presence is required for meaning. Similarly, we are faced with the void if the universe is some god-less array of foundationally empty beginnings — whatever that would look like, and it is not logical so don’t break your mind trying to comprehend it.

If this was the meaning in the beginning, whatever else we learn about the purpose of the cosmos from later verses in Genesis, then this is the meaning for you today. That God is there; that God is the Presence immutably available to you. Are you a father, a mother, a brother, or a sister, what about a dear friend, a close colleague, a guide to the young, a teacher of the curious? First among all things is to make yourself present, to be there, to demonstrate your presence even as we see God having done the same: In the beginning God. There He was.

Dr. Scalise

Transhumanism, Near Death Documented Consciousness, and the Afterlife (part 4)

09 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by in afterlife, apotheosis, Near Death Experiences/Consciousness, Science, Transhumanism

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The World Economic Forum Takes a Page From Empirical Data on Consciousness after Death to become Gods

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There is a plentitude of empirical, scientific, peer-reviewed data on Near Death Documented Consciousness. Although I opted for using “Near Death” rather than “After Death,” much of this data documents consciousness while someone is dead. For the sake of this discussion, we are uninterested in “experiences” that someone had while dead that cannot be empirically verified. What is scientific or empirical verification? That a person has knowledge of happenings, events, or conversations while her EEG read “dead” or while there is zero brain activity (= death) that they could not have had otherwise, and subsequent to her resuscitation, she reports it and someone, often more disinterested that not, verifies whether it is true or not. There are a host of after death or near-death experiences that people have, a firsthand account of what he saw while dead. They are of no empirical or scientific value because there is no way to falsify a firsthand account that is locked away inside someone’s mind or perceptions. Even Scripture states that every word should be validated by “two or three witnesses” and thus we should leave those out of conversation here. There is a myriad of peer reviewed, empirically verifiable data on Near or After Death Consciousness, from “during death consciousness” to documented “out of body knowledge” to “the non-locality and immateriality” of the quantum or molecular universe. At the end of the article, I have put up a few links to show this empirical data’s existence if someone wants to begin exploring it. Let’s not lose sight, however, of the point of this article; it is not about whether you think the data for after death consciousness is compelling or not but about how the World Economic Forum’s ideology builds on the notion of after death consciousness.

Notably, the WEF’s interest is in disembodied digitized consciousness, and we experience the WEF’s interest through cultural influence campaigns the likes of the Amazon series, “Upload.” Although it is usually psychologists, psychiatrists, and spiritual-vocation persons, that express and incite interest in near and after death consciousness, we have a new massively powerful group entering this conversation: the global elite, the WEF, who we might just call “dehumanizing digital futurists.” They shockingly bridge the gap between atheist and new religion; one of their chief spokespersons, Yuval Harari, arguing that this is one of the new 21st century religions. The shear fact that these digital futurists have found a potential way (if they can actualize it) to propose a new atheistic religion is no small feat. Who would have thought that computer programmers would form a main vector in advancing knowledge on near/after death consciousness or disembodied consciousness? Big issues that are caused to be readdress because of this new intellectual movement include “what is death,” “what does it mean to be human,” “what is the nature of information,” “what is the body as it relates to being human,” “is there a spirit in each person,” “would you want to exist in a disembodied space,” “what about the knowledge of what is lost if/when you become digitized,” “is what is gained better than all that is lost in becoming a disembodied consciousness.”

An oddity is the makeup of the WEF: that it sits on the cutting edge of technology and science. Historically, science is viewed as at odds with religion, theism, or any non-naturalistic or non-materialistic views of the world. Said differently, science as an ideology (sometimes called scientism) and worldview is usually metaphysical naturalism or philosophical materialism. The exact definitions of all these are unimportant here; the point is that ‘humans’ from a mainstream scientific view is either viewed as nothing but its physical materiality (the body, brain, finger, toes, etc.) or all that humanity is derives itself from strictly natural processes — hence Darwinism, evolution, adaptation, etc. The WEF is, based on their dismissal of any God-ward worldview, presumably naturalists of one type or another, yet they bring in traditional concepts from religion like “intelligent design,” “disembodied consciousness,” “eternal life,” and “gods.” There is certainly an apotheosis in their worldview, which is traditionally put in the category of mythology, religion, or paganism, yet here we are. Should we call this WEF worldview apotheotic naturalism? What the WEF is trying to do here — in creating a new worldview and issuing a call for eugenicide on biological humanity — must be recognized as ambitious in the extreme. Perhaps it is delusions of grandeur, perhaps it is reckless, or perhaps there is something more sinister at play.

The proposition that human consciousness could be digitized so that the “mind” goes on while the “brain” dies would call for a redefining of both “life” and “death.” Similarly, if this could be done, the debate about dualism, about whether the mind is different from the brain, might finally be settled. Much research and debate has gone into precisely what the brain is: at least one version of this takes the brain as a receptor and sender of human consciousness. Could human consciousness be facilitated without the brain as the WEF proposes? Would we still call it human consciousness if so or would it be synthetic post human consciousness? When I first thought about these things it sounded much like science fiction, yet Elon Musk’s neural-link and Syncron’s computer-controlling human body parts makes this futurist “fiction” look much closer on the horizon. Do not hear me wrong: I am only preliminarily reflecting on this new technology and the WEF’s post-human proposals, but I find it discomforting, immoral, and just a bad idea all around. Next time, I will get into the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics (entropy) as to why the WEF’s vision of digital apotheosis is so misguided.

In summary, we might say that the WEF wants to forge a world with consciousness apart from the human body. The empirical data from the field of after death documented consciousness provides the WEF with a scientific data set that shows that the proposition, “Consciousness without the body is possible,” is true. The WEF seems to be trying to make a counter argument to the spiritual and religious people, who have for millennia claimed that humanity survives the death of their body. The WEF might say, as Harari has intimated on more than one occasion, it is not some metaphysical spirit or soul that continues on, but it is consciousness as an electrical and data-bit set. In this way, it might be possible for the WEF to advance a narrative of their new digital religion while staying true to metaphysical naturalism, staying true to a universe that does not involve God or gods, well, at least no gods other than themselves.

https://digital.library.unt.edu/explore/collections/JNDS/browse/?q=consciousness&t=metadata&sort=

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1505485/m1/5/?q=after%20death

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799125/m1/3/?q=after%20death

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc461716/?q=consciousness

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1727986/?q=consciousness

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799308/?q=empirical

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799442/?q=empirical

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc461717/?q=empirical

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc461722/?q=empirical

https://iands.org/research/publications/journal-of-near-death-studies.html

The scientific argument against Abortion in light of specific Roe v. Wade language

04 Saturday Jun 2022

Posted by in Abortion, Science

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There were two major criteria or legal arguments that crafted the major contours of the Roe v. Wade ruling: (1) the woman’s right to privacy, and (2) the criteria of viability, which, roughly put, is the baby’s ability to survive outside of the womb on his/her own. This piece is designed to be largely scientifically heuristic, letting the science point us where to go; however, in conclusion, I will discuss the role of the sacred or sanctity as it relates to human life and as it bears on the topic of abortion.

  • The right to privacy for a woman who willingly involves herself in sex and carries in her body the cells of another, thus not properly private to her, is uncompelling based on the scientific nature of pregnancy — emphasis on the word “willingly” above so that we exclude from this present discussion rape, incest, and otherwise unwilling, compelled pregnancy. A woman’s body is privately hers and hers alone prior to involving herself in the communal act of sex. Sex, with exceptions like artificial insemination, is definitionally a public affair in the sense that it is always communal involving at least two. Most important in the following days after sex (and conception) is the scientific fact that the man’s seed, his body not the woman’s body, is compositionally entailed in the new conceived life. Therefore, any concealment by the woman from the man about the conception is to withhold vital — literally a living part of the man’s body — information about the man’s body. The man has a right to his body although the woman has privileged epistemic access because she carries that new life in herself. Ergo, in this specific instance, a woman’s right to privacy violates the man’s right to his body, literally the seed that has now become a new conceived human life. We could go further here and note the fact that in many ways the woman’s body treats this new conceived life as a foreign agent. The right to privacy is (in consensual sex) disbanded by the woman’s involvement in sex and conception; she has willingly given up that privacy for the sake of sex and sharing herself with this man. An argument could be made that there is a couple’s right to privacy over the new conceived life; this would require remarkably mature couples that are simply not a de facto possibility in society at large. Notice here we do not have to make the argument about “when the conception becomes human.” We just use the scientific data that the conception is the man’s body too. This is scientifically demonstrable and dispels the half truth that the conception is the woman’s body; it is, but it is also the man’s body. If we wanted to, we could build on this with arguments about how the woman’s body treats the conception as an autonomous entity, but this is beyond the scope here.
  • The criteria of viability functions on the notion of when a baby can survive outside the womb on its own. This criterion is potently ambiguous, and I shall argue we should toss it because of this. The first set of business though is to demonstrate the ambiguity. What does “survive outside the womb mean?” Does this entail the usage of cutting-edge medical technology or is it only common medical technology? Is it the medical technology capacities of the 1980s or of the 2020s? Could someone argue that “survive outside the woman’s body” entails the ability for the baby to feed him/herself? In other words, could a ‘bad actor-lawyer’ argue that “survive” fundamentally means the full spectrum of activities to maintain human living? The 1973 court case, after all, specified viable to mean “capable of prolonged life outside the mother’s womb.” From what I can gather, the intent was to put the life of the woman ahead of the life of the fetus. Echoing back to point (1) above, it likewise put the life of the woman ahead of the life of the man and the fetus. Why should the woman get to decide unilaterally that the man’s body (his seed, now inherently part of the fetus) should die? Who decides what “prolonged life” means? One-year olds certainly cannot prolong their life outside of the womb for long without having virtually everything done for them all the time.  What is the takeaway of this series of questions? Precisely that (a) the ambiguity in the phraseology itself is disastrous for clear meaning and (b) that the vicissitudes involved in changing medical technology from the passage of time, geographic location, and even supply line matters, makes the ‘criterion of viability,’ frankly unviable. The scientifically simple way to determine viability would be at conception. The union of the egg and the seed, the known multiplication of cells and growth, the man’s body and the woman’s body generating someone new, all these are scientifically known at conception. Who determines why viability is conception? Call it nature if you like, maybe science if you want; if you are religiously minded, call it God. The point is that this fundamental union called conception is codified in the fabric of nature in the process of procreation.

We humans observe this natural occurring phenomenon called conception, letting that determine viability. This is resoundingly more scientific than letting court room debate, and a very small group of people determine when human life begins by arbitrarily defining “viable.”

Lastly, and in close, the sanctity of human life is something part and parcel to every citizen of the United States that loves the Declaration of Independence. It proposes that humans’ dignity is endowed by a human’s shear existing, coming from the Creator. This is what makes them unalienable.  The benefit this constitutional link to the Creator provides is incalculable, laying an unassailable connection between creature and Creator that no government can get in the middle of — so long as the people hold fast to that constitutional truth.  The Declaration of Independence also claims that “all men are created equal,” which is repeating and upholding that Scriptural claim that God’s Spirit knits people together in the womb, and man and woman are participants of that creational process. Scripture further notes that God knew people before one of their days were. In short, the foundational document, the Declaration of Independence, maximizes the sanctity of human life; the arbitrarily, court-roomed defined “viable” marginalizes the importance of human life by making it determined by a kind of lawyer elitist debate. I don’t know about you, but I have very little interest in letting elites of any type determine things for me. I prefer the scientific, natural moment of conception to define viable, and with that position, move in the same direction as the Declaration of Independence in maximizing the sanctity of human life.

Prime Theologian

Against All Odds

My Daughter Lydia, God, and Abortion: Theologically interpreting my wife’s pregnancy, part III

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Abortion, Expecting Parents, Pregnancy and Theology, Science

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I consider myself a father now although my daughter is still in my wife’s womb. There is good “scientific” reasons for this, like the size, shape, human features, muscular control of my daughter’s body by her mind (kicks, movement), but all this is so cold. The whole tendency to only scientifically look at things is so narrow a window. What about relationship, the wonder of new life, and communion in heart and soul in the father and the mother towards our daughter, and towards one another around this new life. Are these to be disdainfully dismissed because “science” is somehow the supreme way of viewing things even though what makes us feel most alive as humans is often not understanding things in a scientific analysis. Sliding down a waterpark ride is thrilling and makes me feel alive; doing the math to calculate what scientifically is happening when I slide down is a distant shadow of the experience. Love between two people is earth shaking; scientifically looking at love between two people as natural selection, reproduction, and the continuation of the species is not.

Lydia is a person with her own identity beyond either my wife or me. This is not manifest until Lydia is born, but what is readily needed for a person to be a person is being created there even if not separate from my wife’s body yet. Said differently, Lydia is distinct from my wife right now although not separate (like the Trinity, I’d remind you). God is knitting Lydia together in my wife’s womb; truly a marvel this is! Lydia will have both my features and Gloria’s, physically as well as character-wise.

Aside from the typical arguments against abortion made in public political discourse, I want to make a plea. Please consider people as persons, not as scientific objects. Please don’t confuse a baby-in-the-womb with a woman’s body; this baby is distinct even if not yet separate. Please embrace your own humanity, for heaven’s sake, enjoying all it is to be human by experiencing people as people, babies-in-the-womb as marvelous others, and not as “scientific masses of molecules, electricity, and energy.” Do you not know that you depersonalize yourself when you depersonalize others, whether adults or babies-in-the-womb?

I am a father, and if you’re an expecting man or woman, you are a mother or a father too. I am a man, you are a woman, and we are dignified in each act of “life-giving” we do, whether in terms of family, supporting others, or building them up. Life-elimination is poison to our own souls.

Dr. Scalise