Plasma Cosmology as the fourth form of matter (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, July 04, 2019, 10:29 (1947 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Energy and matter are always equivalent in that they are both the same thing, but as the author notes in the opening paragraph, plasma is not matter as we usually think of it. It is the purest form of energy we can see as a gaseous state of pure charged ions. I've always thought of God as pure energy, but I don't know if He is in this gaseous form. One would think He is in a more organized form. But His form must remain as an unknown.

dhw: I have always been bewildered by the idea that your God can have any organized form. I don’t understand how an organized form can be eternal, unchanged and present throughout an ever changing material universe. If you think he might be in a form even more organized than material gases, then clearly you think material gases can be conscious. In that case, it is just as logical to suppose that billions of individual blobs of consciousness combined to form billions of different facets of the universe and life as to believe that all the blobs had always been part of a single consciousness, but one day it decided to split itself up into the different facets while still remaining itself.

DAVID: My position is always the same. I believe in panentheism in which the universe exists in God's consciousness and He is within and without the universe. Your imagination has, as usual, run away with itself. Plasma is a very specialized form and differs from other material gasses as the article makes quite clear. Perhaps you did not understand the points in the article.

dhw: My comment has nothing to do with the article, other than to point out that plasma is a material gas. It was your comment that I did not understand. If you think your God might possibly exist in a gaseous form, but you think it is more likely that his form is “more organized”, then clearly you think he has an organized form! So perhaps now you will comment on the implications I have extrapolated.

DAVID: You have introduced an extrapolation that individual 'blobs' of gas might be conscious, without recognizing that the article makes it clear that plasma is a single very specialized form of matter which is totally different than all other gasses. It plays very specific roles in the universe. What form God has must include the recognition He has consciousness. That implies God has some degree of organization in His form. Theologians think it is simple.

If you think that your conscious God may be in the form of a gas (you wrote “I don’t know if He is in this gaseous form”) then clearly you think gas can be conscious! Yes, it would be a very special gas. And yes, of course God (if he exists) must be conscious. But if gas can be conscious, then why must it be one single consciousness? And why shouldn’t other gases also be conscious? And why shouldn’t other forms of matter also be conscious? And why shouldn’t different forms of consciousness combine to form all the different facets of the universe and life? I am, as you will gather, pursuing a panpsychist view of the universe – not through belief, but as an alternative to your view that plasma might possibly be one great big mind.