Proposal for an IRAS yoking project:Spirituality is About God

Stan KleinIRAS 2005

The Sweetness of God

Why: Politics. To ensure a lush, high tech, cool Earth for our grandchildren

What: Get the secular world to understand (embrace?) progressive Abrahamic theism.

When: Next 10 years

How: Top-down – Emergence. Star 2006-2007 Bottom-up -- quantum mechanics

WHY?

Does anyone have suggestions on how to develop commitments to altruism, love,

caring for others and Nature. And which organizations can do the "legwork".

Jared Diamond's "Collapse"

Politics and Money: Problems with minimally controlled consumerism/capitalism

Who is at fault?

It’s the fundamentalists

It’s the Republicans

It’s the media

It’s the selfish voters

It’s the thoughtless consumers

WHAT?

Yoking* three horsesThree progressive groups need to be yoked.

Secularism – All events are based on the laws of Science

Progressive Theism - God is central for understanding role in universe. Progressive means bible stories are metaphoric.

Holistic Spirituality – Similar to preceding but dislike God language, especially Abrahamic religions (Buddhism is fine).

What needs to be changed?Scientists need to understand Metaphors, Symbols, Myths

and the red flag nature of certainty.Religious/spiritual folks need to understand science, and

the red flag nature of paranormal.

*yoking is Zygon in Greek.

10% 10% 10% 50% 20% USA population 20% 35% 20% 20% 5% This conference

Physical world is basis for everything?

Is God language repulsive?

Do you take bible stories literally?Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Secularism Holistic Progressive Traditional Fundamentalist Spirituality Theism Theism Theism

yes maybe maybe ??? no Quantum compatible?

May

be

Classifying Religious beliefs

Physical world is basis for everything?

Is God language repulsive?

Do you take bible stories literally?Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Secularism Holistic Progressive Traditional Fundamentalist Spirituality Theism Theism Theism

yes maybe maybe no Quantum compatible?

10% 10% 10% 20% USA population 20% 35% 20% 5% This conference

May

be

???

50%20%

Intelligent design (Humility)Anti Gay MarriageParental consent for abortion"Under God" in Pledge

Unhealthy Religious beliefs

Physical world is basis for everything?

Is God language repulsive?

Do you take bible stories literally?Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Secularism Holistic Progressive Traditional Fundamentalist Spirituality Theism Theism Theism

yes maybe maybe no Quantum compatible?

10% 10% 10% 20% USA population 20% 35% 20% 5% This conference

May

be

???

50%20%

Classifying Religious beliefs

Physical world is basis for everything?

Is God language repulsive?

Do you take bible stories literally?Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Secularism Holistic Progressive Traditional Fundamentalist Spirituality Theism Theism Theism

yes maybe maybe no Quantum compatible?

10% 10% 10% 20% USA population 20% 35% 20% 5% This conference

May

be

???

50%20%

Classifying Religious beliefs

Physical world is basis for everything?

Is God language repulsive?

Do you take bible stories literally?Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Secularism Holistic Progressive Traditional Fundamentalist Spirituality Theism Theism Theism

yes maybe maybe no Quantum compatible?

10% 10% 10% 20% USA population 20% 35% 20% 5% This conference

May

be

???

50%20%

Eco-sustainability Justice Health Equality Peace Science Education

Healthy Religious beliefs

Physical world is basis for everything?

Is God language repulsive?

Do you take bible stories literally?Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Secularism Holistic Progressive Traditional Fundamentalist Spirituality Theism Theism Theism

yes yes yes no Quantum compatible?

10% 10% 10% 20% USA population 20% 35% 20% 5% This conference

May

be

???

50%20%

Eco-sustainability Justice Health Equality Peace Science Education

Healthy Religious beliefs

Einstein's famous symbiosis"Science without religion is lame,

Religion without science is blind"

Sciences (includes social sciences and technology) can see future problems and make proposals for handling them.

But in USA it takes religion to give the legs and values (cooperation/love thy neighbor) to generate the passion and deep love to nurture and protect the Earth's eco-web.

Unfortunately, both scientists and fundamentalists know they are right and typically have a severe HDD affliction not shared by progressive theists. Cures for HDD will be discussed.

HOW?

Einstein on Nature and Religious feeling

We are like a little child entering a huge library. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.

What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien is a dead person.

Descartes (Snell’s) Law: A simple example of purpose

Mechanistic: The photon’s electric field causes electrons in the water to oscillate, emitting more photons, bending the light.

Purposive: The photon chooses the path to get to its destination in the least amount of time.

Why does light bend when entering water?

How did Feynman find purpose?

Feynman’s little book “QED” presents the way that quantum mechanics puts ‘purpose’ into the world. Before an observation is made or an event occurs the world explores all paths. The end result is a path that achieves the purpose of minimizing a global principle like the time it takes to get from here to there.

Three placements of the observed/observer split

Introduction to the quantum duality

Between you andexperiment

Between me And you

Between my consciousnesscircuitry and me

Quantum mechanics has two rules depending on presence of an observer.

Rule 1. When no observation is made the world evolves according to Feynman rules that resemble a deterministic wave-like equation.

Rule 2. When an observation is made the wave collapses to the real world. The probability of the outcome is proportional to the square of the wave height.

The split is movable

Relevance of QM to Religion1) QM is the first self-consistent dualism ever developed. The dream of Plato,

Descartes, Kant & theologians may have been found. The old dualities were plagued by inconsistencies and implausibilities.

2) QM gets subjectivity into science: The observer is central.Anti-Copernican. We are special.

3) QM has a non-reductionist as well as a reductionist aspect.This differs from classical mechanics that is fully reductionist.

4) QM provides an ontological status for free will. Important for theology, ethics and jurisprudence.

5) QM clarifies the constraints on God's powers Post-holocaust theology. Remote vs. local prayer, tsunamis, bleeps and miracles.

6) QM directly connects with religion (Process, Bleep) but beware of dangers.

7) QM is mysterious. Mystery of koantum mechanics is good for humility. The quantum weirdness makes Abrahamic God look like an amateur.

8) QM has uncertainty. Also good for humility.

9) QM has five conflicting interpretations (myths). Just like religion.

10) QM has nonlocality. We are connected to each other and nature.

11) QM has bound states. We’re tightly bound together.

12) QM explores all possibilities. 13) QM is metaphoric. The particles of Feynman and waves of Schrodinger are

metaphors. This makes metaphor more acceptable.

QM has multiple deep mythsBohr/Copenhagen. It’s all epistemology with no deep ontology.

Unasked questions have no reality. Complimentarity.

VonNeumann/collapse. Wave-like rules before observation, then a collapse give classical-like rules after observation.

Splitting universe. Every observation splits universe into all possible options. “I” am following one of those universes.

Bohm. Particle-like “observer” is added to wave-like reality. Deterministic.

Transactional. Future observer propagates back to meet with past state to determine outcome.

Bridge items:All the above interpretations give identical predictions for occurrence of events in our universe. These predictions have been incredibly accurate. The multiple conflicting world views are like the conficting religions and the conflicts between science & religion.

The above ontologies and the ontologies of QED are much more peculiar than the simple God metaphors.

How does the world work?

Emergence ecology, cooperativity,complexity

Laughlin’s “A different universe”Star 2006-2007.

Quantum Mechanics unity in duality, simplicity

Feynman’s QED

How does the world work?

Quantum Mechanics

unity in duality, simplicity Feynman’s QED, Stapp

Emergence ecology, cooperativity,complexity

Laughlin’s “A different universe”Religion

and

Spirituality

The three dominant religions of the West

Abrahamic theism (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)

Consumerism/Capitalism (non-theistic)

Environmentalism/Communityism

(non-theistic)

Liberal theism

Bush a

nd

Fundamen

talis

m

Education

(Bellah)

So, what should IRAS do?

"Science without religion is lame,

Religion without science is blind"

Teach myths & symbols to Jeff Dahms and Stan Klein and other secularists so that they become comfortable with and embrace theists and alien abductees and holistic.

Develop a dictionary of translations like to facilitate the dialog.

Inform clergy & public about threats to Nature and sacred ways to love Nature. Beyond IRAS: Hold dialogs in Israel/Mideast and India/Pakistan about what Islam can teach us about how to contain consumerist mentality.

For further information, go to the

Science and Spirit Work Group Website

http://cornea.berkeley.edu/duality

Proposal for an IRAS project:

The Religious Transformation of Jeff Dahms

Why, When and How

The religious wars in our society are affecting science education and science funding. IRAS can influence the dialog between the world of science and the world of religion. For this dialog to succeed very difficult transformations will be needed, both among scientists and theologians. The cute title of this session represents one approach to this very challenging topic.

Education vs. Religion as solutions

Problems with education:

It's been "the solution" since the Enlightenment, 300 years ago.Education in USA shows regress as much as progress.The gated community problem.What about Germany of the first half of 20th century.

Problems with religion: The old pagan religions had greater respect for nature. History isn't promising for rapidly adaptive religious liturgyIt's difficult to bring harmony to a world with conflicting religions. New Judeo-Christian approaches exist but their influence is small.