An ideal ultimate truth? (Origins)

by dhw, Friday, May 07, 2010, 21:35 (5312 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Our brain creates consciousness, a thinking intellect not directly from brain matter but from energy within brain matter. Why does this sound strange to us: We cannot appreciate energy when we observe matter. This computer desk is wood, but filled with energy I cannot appreciate. It is just wood, but it isn't. This is why quantum theory is so counter-intuitive, and we can only see the surface of the 'wall of uncertainty'. If we could get to the other side we wouldn't be so confused. Try using this concept as you think about God.-Perhaps we can leave God out of it just for the moment and concentrate instead on humans as a kind of stepping stone to God. Just as the universe may have started from a singular event, so do we, and the question for me is which comes first ... matter or intelligence? BBella's suggestion and your confirmation that all matter is energy appears to dissolve frontiers between the physical and the spiritual, but I don't see how we can do without this distinction. When the physical sperm fertilizes the physical egg, a new physical being comes into existence. Clearly, if you and BBella are right, a new "spiritual" being comes into existence at the same time, and to understand this, I need something a little more precise than "energy within brain matter". Do you think the brain matter PRODUCES the energy, or is it a CONDUIT for the energy? If it's the former, our consciousness is entirely our own, right from the beginning, and it will die with the brain; if it's the latter, does the brain tune into some external consciousness from the moment of birth? And if it's merely a conduit, how do we get our individual identity, since our consciousness is so integral to who we are?