Looking into 2024, here's my last Life-Stance views in one page about Reality, Life, and History

MY LIFE-STANCE in one page --JANUARY 2024

1 REALITY—is MEANINGFUL--the Cosmos, Life, Natural Laws, Moral Truths, Math, Reason, Scientific Method, Technology, Creativity...

All humans have worth within themselves!

And to a lesser degree, other primates and sentient animals, worth in themselves...

I suppose one could say that plants, bugs, rocks, asteroids, planets, solar systems, quasars, Black Holes, gravity, relativity, etc. have worth in themselves, but since none of those are conscious, aware, rational, etc., it’s probably a category error to make such a huge judgment about inert things or unconscious processes.

Despite the ruthless, impersonal nature of Deep Time evolutionary change over at least the last 3.7 billions years of survival of the fittest, and the luckiest...

And the large number of human thinkers who advocate atheism, naturalism, materialism, anti-realism, and others who claim revealed religions, ideologies of extreme left and extreme right...

Those are false, bind alleys into nihilism, denying all human worth, purpose, meaning, morality, reason, math etc.

2 Instead, Like many brilliant famous scientists have emphasized (including Albert Einstein), Ultimate/Essential/Transcendent Nature of Reality is unknown to all finite, limited humans-FAR beyond anything we are capable of thinking or concluding.

Who knows if there are advanced species in the Cosmos like the science writer Carl Sagan speculated?

HOWEVER, many brilliant thinkers have SPECULATED on possible answers, one of the most recent being that the nature of REALITY is PROCESS, Not substance, Not Irrational, Not Chance...

And that seeking the ultimate doesn’t come by reductionism down to only tiny particles like theoretical physicist and atheist Brian Greene states (in The Elegant Universe) and others such as Sean M. Carroll.

Other theoretical physicists think we need to focus upwards to the possible Multi-Verse for finding ultimate significance.
Different views come from other famous cosmologists such as Paul Davies, George F. R. Ellis, the South African theoretical physicist “who is considered the world leader in relativity and cosmology. He co-wrote the book, The Large Scale of Space-Time with Stephen Hawking.”
https://royalsociety.org/people/george-ellis-11396/....

3. When all has been said and done in my 77-years-of-life, I realize now that Family, Friends, etc. don’t care as much as we old guys would like.

BUT, I do know that Life isn’t about me.

Heck, over a million Americans AS IMPORTANT AS ME died in the COVID pandemic in only a couple of years. Does anyone in particular care?

NO!

Many current American leaders even deny social distancing, masking, and the vaccinations’ worth and claim, instead, that COVID was all a “Democratic scam” and the completely false huge lies about alleged massive fraud in the 2020 election (of which there is not even a single shred of evidence. Even some Republican leaders such as those in Georgia emphasize there is no basis for the false claims)!

--

I’m just one of billions of humans inhabiting this tiny planet in a minor solar system on the edge of a galaxy among billions of galaxies...

And, I know for a fact, though I can’t imagine it, that my brief important time is almost up. Like my beloved dad 10 years ago, I will in the not to distant future, breathe my last.

And 2 undertakers will arrive like orderlies, will wrap my corpse in a winding sheet, bag my body onto a rolling cart, and haul it out.

BUT I AM THANKFUL FOR ALL THE WONDERFUL TIMES I’VE EXPERIENCED, THE OTHER HUMANS I’VE CARED FOR, AND THE AMAZING FACTS I’VE LEARNED IN MY LONG LIFE.

HOPEFULLY, the TRUE GOD WILL REMEMBER ME, and some humans I’ve known will think of me once and a while as they continue to live on into Reality’s FUTURE.


Dan Wilcox, the aged stroked mutant;-)

12/27/23

LIGHT-centered VIEW of REALITY

1. TRANSCENDENT—the GOOD, TRUE, JUST, CARING is the ULTIMATE CONCERN.

2. EVIDENCE based in the scientific method and facts about the cosmos is the authority.

3. DEEP TIME-SPACE is the true story/narrative.

4. MORAL REALISM is the true way of action.

5. LIVING for the ‘oughts’-- the good, true, just, caring--for the future for all humans, other conscious species, and all of nature is the purpose.

Image: Hiker enjoying the night sky at Craters of the Moon. The Monument was designated as an International Dark Sky Park in 2017. NPS/Jacob Frank
In the Light,

Dan Wilcox

Review of the Philosophy Book, War of the Worldviews by the Phyisicist Leonard Mlodinow and Spirituality leader Deepak Chopra

War of the Worldviews: Where Science and Spirituality Meet--and Do Not

This book shows great potential. Consider the depth of the worldview questions that Chopra and Mlodinow answer based upon their counter views of Reality!

How Did the Universe Emerge?

Is the Universe Conscious?

Is the Universe Evolving?

What is the Nature of Time?

Is the Universe Alive?

What Is Life?

Is there Design in the Universe?

What Makes us Human?

How Do Genes Work?

Did Darwin Go Wrong?

What Is the Connection Between Mind and Brain?

Does the Brain Dictate Behavior?

Is the Brain Like a Computer?

Is the Universe Thinking Through Us?

Is God an illusion?

What Is the Future of Belief?

Is There a Fundamental Reality?

And Mlodinow’s explanations are lucid, detailed, and measured. Chopra less so, though he makes a few good points that show the weaknesses of Mlodinow’s worldview, Naturalism.

The huge problem elephant in the room is Chopra’s ‘Spirituality” an Asian religious philosophical worldview, basically a non-organized Hinduism shorn of ritual and mythology based mostly in the Upanishads. He not so subtly fails to explain the central essence of his beliefs-- that all is God.

Though he hints at it by quoting the famous statement in the Upanishads that Reality is ‘THAT’; we humans are THAT! A famous rock group in the late 1960’s wrote a New Age song with that key line as its chorus.

In shocking contrast, Mlodinow’s “Reductionist” view diminishes the human species to only physical particles, though he tries to avoid the nihilism of many modern hard atheist/materialists by being civil in his responses and trying to present a humanistic view of the human species.

But he never explains how IF mind only comes from the brain, and the brain from mindless and meaningless evolution, and at the microlevel reality is deterministic, how in the cosmos can humans have any significance, how can “wonder” and “caring,” exist except as illusions, etc. How can humans have any worth, be more than particles moving about?

At the same time I was listening to the Audible version of this book, I read an intriguing review of British philosopher Christian List’s book, Why Free Will Is Real, and also listened to a deep interview with him by Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine.

Though, at times List is also unclear how one can avoid the opposite abysses of Scylla versus Charybdis—all is aware Mind versus all is meaningless atoms-- at least he does explain a middle way.

Like the famous astrophysicist George Ellis, and other non-reductionists, List explains the key is to realize higher-level activities in reality can’t be reduced to only microlevel atoms (like materialists and other reductionists attempt to do).

For instance, it’s the case of comparing physics at the microphysical level where only atoms are moving about with in contrast, the physicist at the conscious aware level wo is taking a break and deciding whether or not to have tea or coffee:-).

Or think how different only atoms physically determined reality is from at a far more complex different level, a psychologist helps an emotionally disturbed human to choose to change his destructive habits.

Or how different only atoms in a materialistic reality is from at the more complex level where an architect plans whether or not to use steel and glass on the front side of a new office building.

Obviously, the latter 2 examples of humans making choices can’t be reduced to only the movement of deterministic atoms from the Big Bang.

List’s view of reality is very different from both the “Conscious Mind of the Universe” of Chopra and the hard materialism of Mlovodov.

While Mldodov presents his case more moderately than such as Sam Harris with his podcast “Tumors All the Way Down,” the claims seem to be essentially the same-- only atoms are real, not human value and worth, and alternative and creative choices.

Those are illusions. And Jerry Coyne who claims that a human who “chooses” to murder or rape couldn’t have done otherwise since all atoms at the physical level of Reality determines everything.

Overall, though War of Worldview is worth the read, I was dissatisfied with both worldviews, would choose neither.

Evaluation: C+

Dan Wilcox