Alone In The Machine

A First Cause

'Give us one free miracle and we'll explain the rest'.

-Terrence Mckenna

I was watching a documentary about how the earth was made. They were going through all the steps, the formation of the earth from smaller bodies of particles of dust thrown out from a sun exploding, forming a new sun, those smaller bundles of matter forming planets, planets colliding and diminishing in number, sucking each other up and eventually settling into the order of our solar system. The cooling of the earth, bacteria, the cell, DNA, plants terraforming the planet releasing oxygen as a waste product making the air breathable for animals.

"It is as though the earth were designed for us" the voice over said and immediately i thought it was more correct to say we were designed for it.

None of these possibilities rule out the idea of a designer or 'informer'. I think its more a viewpoint or a way of looking at things. The world can look made for us and we can also look made for the world. Even if it were just an adaptation to existing circumstances, that does not explain why those circumstances came into existence in the first place. Rather than viewing ourselves or any thing as a tiny solitary adaptation, a phenomenon distinct and exploiting the environment, you can instead trace the origins of anything in existence to causes prior to it, so as to explain a toothbrush or yourself you have to trace back the entire history of humanity and explain the existence of matter, go into planetary and star formation, trace it back and back through endless cycles of forms emerging, flowing and changing.

It is related to the stars, and the time before stars, and the time before time. Even something as small or insignificant as a toothbrush. Explain the designer, how the designer came about, the origin of the matter that makes up its existence. The evolution of life, the emergence of humanity, technological advances, and finally there it is. It has been waiting to exist for billions of years, it has existed as possibility and one day emerges. Everything can be seen as related, and if you trace back the existence of anything distinctions begin to lose meaning because its all one movement branching out and hiding itself in different forms. Here its a toothbrush, before its a sun, and before that, and so on, later it will be something else.

Distinctions rise up from an underlying unity. They rise up and they fall, and they rise up again. What causes these fluctuations of the physical universe can be traced back only so far until it becomes baffling, and ultimately, incomprehensible.

When religious people get to this point they tend to formulate the idea of a God. When physicists get to this point they tend to talk about fields, a time before time and space, things immaterial or indistinct, or mathematical laws. In both approaches the retrogression of events drips back and gets to a point where things become more obscure or immaterial, and in explaining the known universe everything there is seems to have emerged from a nothing, an ideal realm of organizing forces, mathematical laws. Something coming out of nothing-that nothing cannot really be nothing for every-thing subsequently emerged from it. It seems one can call it mathematical laws, immaterial fields, Plato's realm of ideal forms, or spirit, and ultimately we are describing the same event. One can call it the laws of physics, the big bang, or God, and in each case we have merely created a label that indicates the limits of our knowledge.

It must have been information, some organizing force in-forming itself into matter, some immaterial cause of causes from which all events flowed from. If you attribute it to mathematical laws and equations you can ask what wrote the equations or why it should be that particular equation. If you attribute it to God or a designer, then you can ask what designed the designer.

The question of a first cause is baffling and we never know if we have found it. When we think we have found it more questions are raised and we begin to question what caused that, on and on in an infinite retrogression until we finally give up and say, it just happens to be the way it is. Will we always keep pushing the boundaries of the known? Will there always be the known and the unknown? Science is still looking and doesn't think it has found it. Religion has given up and called it God. Some people have given up and called it God, others mathematical laws, but i wonder in either case if it really explains anything. We either give it a name or a number thinking we have understood it, but existence still remains mysterious.

I suppose the scientists have actually tried to understand the world and how the cosmos came about, they haven't just thrown out a hypothesis and clung to it regardless of the evidence-which seems to be the approach of faith. What we call science grew out of natural philosophy, which tried to understand nature and the environment. In that way it would try to understand the creation or the mind of God from the ground up, or they would find nature and explain it, and then ultimately have to say, 'it just happens to be that way'. With evolution God was no longer necessary as a working hypothesis, but now we as humans are stepping into the role of creator it has once again become a useful metaphor or working hypothesis. There are computer metaphors, code, the idea of a programmer, and now DNA is being described as a digital code. These are all useful metaphors to play around with.

Maybe science will stop probing and give up the mystery someday too. Everyone likes to believe they have an answer. I think its an endless question and it will go back as far as the universe expands outwards, then we'll ask what the universe is expanding into and where it came from and it will become completely incomprehensible and awe inspiring. It will quieten our minds for a moment and we'll feel that true sense of mystery and awe. We'll be silent and slacked jawed, experiencing from reality itself those sensations that have previously belonged to religion.

Its mysterious and the more you probe the more mysterious it becomes. Separation breaks down, unity enters. Everything starts to look like nothing, but nothing contains the seeds of everything. All distinctions seem to melt into each other. To explain one thing, you have to explain everything. Trying to explain everything, it becomes one. Poles are separate, but joined. Contradiction or paradox seems to be built into it and there are multiple truths or realities. Different perspectives or points of observations, where it is true on one level, and not on another. Being both true and not true. What is the opposite of everything? Nothing. What is the opposite of nothing? Everything. What is the opposite of every-nothing? Here it breaks down and you see it was a relationship, and that there are no words or opposites for things that aren't related, because words are representations of objects, and all objects in existence are related.

Words and objects are related just as matter and information are related. Energy would be the carrier of information. Matter would be a condensed cooled form of energy. Both matter and energy would contain information. What that information is and how it in-forms it all is a mystery, but they are all expressions of it, and each other. Just like in the body there's no organ in charge and it all works toward the same purpose, changing and growing, conscious and unconscious. The universe starts to look like a giant organism. We don't understand how our bodies do it and we don't understand how the universe is doing it, but its all here doing itself regardless, and all things in existence are it.