Disclosure: Following post modified from comment posted at Richard Dawkins web site.
I'll say that the idea of a "God" as a creative force that might be sentient but not cognizant of its work is not one I wince from. I could accept an absent minded God:
' a Giant in another dimension sneezed and 10 centimeters from his nose was born our Universe'
: does that make our Universe a theist one? If we are to accept the plausibility of multiverse theories over those of the theists that postulate a controlling conscious God for our Universe, we have to accept the possibility of what these theories predict. If Universes are born and die in an infinite foaming of space not unlike the Planck scale undulations we know occur in our space time, then it is possible that there was a "God", in this thought experiment it was completely oblivious of its creation just as we are oblivious of the riot of particle creation we engender as we wave our hands in the wind and give birth to a billion trillion virtual undulations in space time.
Is this absent minded type of God possible?? yes, but extremely unlikely. If universes can be born in the random "nothing" of space, which is far more numerous in expanses away from any sentient beings (like ourselves) then near them, then it is more likely that(away) is where most of them will spontaneously be born. In no way aided by an absent minded and oblivious "God". In fact it seems in the limit as the number of created universes in the multiverse goes to infinity, the probability of an absent minded sentient creating any single universe goes down to zero.
Though I have none of the skill to explore rigorously the veracity of what is conjectured above, it seems intuitively that the probability of a God ..even an absent minded creator one, approaches zero if the infinite multiverse concept is correct. Given the fact of no evidence at all to support the cognizant and watching theist God the only other alternative, there is something delightfully ironic about that to me. ;)
To understand why this is so read about the idea of limit, a concept created by mathematicians for use in Calculus and the study of variations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_(mathematics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_of_a_function
I'll say that the idea of a "God" as a creative force that might be sentient but not cognizant of its work is not one I wince from. I could accept an absent minded God:
' a Giant in another dimension sneezed and 10 centimeters from his nose was born our Universe'
: does that make our Universe a theist one? If we are to accept the plausibility of multiverse theories over those of the theists that postulate a controlling conscious God for our Universe, we have to accept the possibility of what these theories predict. If Universes are born and die in an infinite foaming of space not unlike the Planck scale undulations we know occur in our space time, then it is possible that there was a "God", in this thought experiment it was completely oblivious of its creation just as we are oblivious of the riot of particle creation we engender as we wave our hands in the wind and give birth to a billion trillion virtual undulations in space time.
Is this absent minded type of God possible?? yes, but extremely unlikely. If universes can be born in the random "nothing" of space, which is far more numerous in expanses away from any sentient beings (like ourselves) then near them, then it is more likely that(away) is where most of them will spontaneously be born. In no way aided by an absent minded and oblivious "God". In fact it seems in the limit as the number of created universes in the multiverse goes to infinity, the probability of an absent minded sentient creating any single universe goes down to zero.
Though I have none of the skill to explore rigorously the veracity of what is conjectured above, it seems intuitively that the probability of a God ..even an absent minded creator one, approaches zero if the infinite multiverse concept is correct. Given the fact of no evidence at all to support the cognizant and watching theist God the only other alternative, there is something delightfully ironic about that to me. ;)
To understand why this is so read about the idea of limit, a concept created by mathematicians for use in Calculus and the study of variations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_(mathematics)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limit_of_a_function
Comments
Best wishes
Steave Markson
if God is the first "cause," then all "effects" must be present in the first cause.
'cognizant persons' are an effect in the universe and therefore present in the first cause.
the above is pure philosophy or metaphysics, but it is also affirmed scientifically
human beings (who are cognizant and personal) are the effect of a billion year evolution that never once strayed from the direction towards higher consciousness
on any planet where circumstances are right, the universe will evolve towards higher conscious and more materially complex beings, and if given enough time will eventually give rise to cognizant persons
thus it stands to reason that the 'quality of cognizant persons' lies dormant in the very stuff of the universe, only waiting for evolution to release it.
"Did you know that I, exist before the earth?" - Damien Marley
As a gifted sentient mammal, we'd be giving ourselves and a potential a disservice not to recognize that the recognition that we are alive with free will could be considered a form or expression of God. consciousness and light itself could be "the first cause" the P.O.V. of a photon is eternal and timeless--if you could travel the at speed C you would exist outside of space/time where presumably the universe's beginning and end are the the same thing. thus we create/experience the space/time fabric by observing it. after all, what is more verifiable than your sentience, consciousness, and will power? it's more reliable than science, which is a limited but helpful tool for measuring some of the patterns and relationships that exist in this "big picture" reality. science can't explain what it's like to FEEL emotion and experience living (though it can map it and predict it).
It's been called qualia, and I believe it's shared on different scales in the "experience" of the amoeba, bacteria, dogs, or brain cells, as they respirate, feed, and reproduce all on different scales (oh how the universe loves to reproduce, on all levels, from cell division, to the birth of stars, planets, and galaxies, from mental emotions, to corporate franchises, to symbols, to ideas, to songs, to enzymes to DNA itself) They all persist or repeat (in a fractal-like nature) because they are all in harmony and interdependent. the constant process of creation, destruction, on/off, the inner (consciousness) / outer (the "material" universe, the external world, "the other") are interdependent. even fundamental particles must be conscious on some level. as you've hinted at, maybe our universe expanding into "nothingness" exists as a "virtual particle" in another universe where they're working on their own hadron collider. you could end up there sometime, but you'd have to start considering reincarnation, which begins to seem plausible. you're falling into one or expanding out through one right now and you change your view in some limited ways by choosing where to "zoom into" or "zoom out to". Do you care to be a cat, or an insect, a virus, an idea, a sun or a galaxy? You've been them all at one point or another. And it's all one point :) there's no point until you give it significance or meaning.
it's been said life's timeline is a branching fractal of possibilities. Consider consciousness or spirit to be a point in space, infinitesimally small or infinitely large. Maybe our moment by moment experience is like a singularity moving through a fractal pattern of information (interference patterns) of relative relationships. the why and the how is more important than the what and the who in this case. it seems we ARE the light waves and electric signals that we experience. we bridge the two worlds. emotions and raw experience embedded into our memory and in our brain stores holographically (and higher dimensionally). within our bodies occurring alongside outside stimili, the physical, emotional, and and memetic world which defines us as much as our bodies do. now the phrase "we are the observer AND the observed" has even deeper meaning.