Look D, if all you want to say is that the universe is like a hologram in that information about the entire universe is present is in every event within the universe, fine. But I’d like you to agree with me that the universe is unlike a hologram in that we’re free. You can hardly deny this if you agree we're free.

I like the article on Bohm & Pribram. But they are only philosophizing/speculating on the results of experiments. And like I said, sure, there are aspects of these empirical data that are like a hologram. But the data are explained by different models. For example, instead of denying there is any real transfer of information or cause and effect relationship between two entangled particles at a distance and supposing that both particles are really “not separate at all” but constitute a single reality, it explains the empirical data just as well to suppose an omnipresent mind not dependent upon the speed of light is sustaining a cause and effect relationship. That at least has the advantage of maintaining the objective nature of created realities and the integrity of their freedom.

This is where the freedom of discrete entities to determine themselves and affect others helps define the objective integrity of those entities--their separateness or individuality. If the empirical data of experiments on quantum particles is interpreted to mean the particles aren’t “really” separate at all, if there really is no cause and effect relationship or transfer of information, then so is the freedom which individual particles display. That's what the hologram ends up getting you if pressed.

Did you see this in the article? “Indeed, even our most fundamental notions about reality become suspect, for in a holographic universe, as Pribram has pointed out, even random events would have to be seen as based on holographic principles and therefore determined.” (my bold)

At this point it’s philosophy/theology that has to guide us. The empirical data don’t actually entail the conclusion that the universe is a phantom or that objective reality is an illusion (as the author says). Posit an infallible mind that a) is ontologically independent of created realities, that b) is omnipresent, and that c) is the sustaining presence that actively upholds created realities in their otherness—and you just as well explain the empirical data without tending to monism and/or determinism.

It helps us avoid confusion about interrelatedness too. Through the article the author wants to say the universe of discrete objective entities is a “phantasm” or “illusion” because they are in fact a more fundamental reality unobservable by us. But they’re “not really separate at all.” But then he also wants to argue the “interconnectedness” of all things. But that doesn’t work. You only have real “interconnectedness” if you have real (objectively discrete) entities-in-relationship. Only if there is a “real separateness” on some objective level can you have “interconnections” at all. I posit this sort of “separateness” between created entities and created entities and God. I thought you did too.

This was evident in Bohm’s fish-tank analogy. It was a philosophically dissatisfying picture because in truth we knew there was only one fish. We only perceived two fish as discrete and separate because we had two separate cameras recording the same fish from two angles. But the perception of separateness was an illusion. There were not two. There is just one. "Two" is a term that applies to our perceptions, not to the object perceived.

If you think our perceptions of the discrete objects that make up the world of our experience are analogous to Bohm’s fish-tank analogy, then I can’t share your view. I can’t reduce the various diversities of the objects of my experience to being in truth a single reality. The empirical data doesn’t suggest we have to do that. What I can do is posit a single omnipresent, all-pervading, all-perceiving reality that is itself not the objects perceived but which accounts for the experimental results of quantum phenomena that suggest some such underlying, universal symmetry to the universe. I say ‘yes’ to such an all-encompassing reality (God). But I can't agree that created realities are then “phantasms” or “illusions of perception” just because they’re all-encompassed by God.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 1/24/2009 7:56:53 AM (GMT-6)

Tom: The empirical data don’t actually entail the conclusion that the universe is a phantom or that objective reality is an illusion (as the author says).

Jeff: It makes no sense, even, to call "objective reality" an illusion. It can be one or the other, but it can't be both. And if my interpretation of my subjective experience--that there is an objective reality--is wrong, then there is no such thing as "empirical data." And then, there is no Tom or D. There's just me and my illusion. At that point, I have no more reason to believe there's a God than that there's a D. God is not the author of confusion, much less contradictions.

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2009 8:40:58 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2009 8:31:09 AM (GMT-6)

Is Greg really going to say that we DON'T exist within the mind of the Creator?  That we somehow exist "outside" of God's mind, God who exists as the creative center of ALL THINGS? I'd love to see him do that.

Even weirder would be this.  God's Spirit IS God's self-knowledge (inseperable from the mind of Christ-the-Logos).  If the Spirit of Christ is the agency of creatio continua...then how is it again that all things DON'T exist within the mind of God?

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2009 8:42:48 AM (GMT-6)

But I'm feelin' where you are coming from.  Jesus DID have a fully human soul (along with a creaturely "organ of faith"/"eye of the soul" to apprehend God just like every other human) that was exercising creaturely self-determination in FREELY CHOOSING to die for sinners.  And Jesus' created HUMAN WILL always freely followed the ONE DIVINE WILL, through his synergy with the Uncreated Holy Spirit.

It's the only sufficient explanation for the "Not my will, but Your will be done."

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2009 11:27:48 AM (GMT-6)

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2009 11:39:22 AM (GMT-6)

Yea. I meant to say two wills.

Nesteruk on the Incarnation. Page 228. Light from the East.

Christianity rearticulated the biblical idea of the fullness of humanity by referring it to Christ, the incarnate Logos of God. Ireneaus of Lyons, in developing the idea that it is in the incarnation that the fullness of humanity was recapitulated by Christ, writes that "in times past it was said that man was made in the image of God, but not shown, because the Word, in whole image man was made, was still invisible." In the incarnation of flesh, "God recapitulated in Himself that ancient handiwork or His which is man," and "He recapitulated in Himself the long history of mankind." Irenaeus asserts that by taking human flesh, make of the substance of this world, and uniting it to the Divine in Christ, God confirmed that substance, which God used initially to create human beings, is linked to God's first place to save humanity, and that the incarnation fulfills this plan. This means that the substance of the world has a fundamental importance for the fulfillment of God's plan. It implies that for the Incarnation and recapitulation of all human nature in Christ to take place, the substance of the world was chosen by God in his plan of creation of the world and salvation of humanity, thus making this particular substance to be closely linked to the Divine hypostatically (relationally), that is, existing not as it is in itself but only in the hypostasis of God, who created it. This was demonstrated by the incarnation of the Logos of God with a new force.

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2009 12:51:42 PM (GMT-6)

Make sense?

Post Edited (One Love) : 1/24/2009 1:20:19 PM (GMT-6)

D: Hypostatic activity cannot be separated from "thoughts one is having." The Incarnate Word (God's Incarnation) is ONLY BY "thoughts that God is having."

T: Well of course God doesn’t incarnate (or do anything) apart from thinking about it (as far as we can tell). I didn’t say hypostatic activity can be separated from thoughts one is having. I said hypostatic activity isn’t LIMITED TO one’s having thoughts. Our own experience forces upon us the distinction between merely thinking and acting upon those thoughts with our bodies.

D: So what does that say about the MATERIAL that is confirmed in the Incarnation, the FLESH and BLOOD of Christ?

T: Well, it certainly doesn’t tell us that the incarnation is JUST a “thought God has.”

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T: If not, then show me what about holograms you think is analogous to the freedom we admit is definitive of creation.

D: The freedom of self-transcendence-in-relatedness by each being in all and all being in each. Any aspect of the hologram is not "locked" into it's particularity (eachness) even though it is particular...because universality (allness) indwells within every particular. In like manner, with God indwelling every human heart as Spiritus Creator, we can CHOOSE TO ACKNOWELEDGE the freedom for self-transcendence-in-relatedness that the Spirit's "objective presence" has for us...or we don't.

T: Dude, the analogy isn’t there. A hologram “self-transcending-in-relatedness” by choosing (or anything analogous to this)? That doesn’t happen in holograms. There’s nothing about the hologram that is analogous to free self-determination. Sure, you have wholes in parts and parts in wholes with a hologram. Fine. I get that. But I don’t see what it is about the hologram that is analogous to creaturely, free self-determination. Where’s a hologram do anything analogous to that?

This is getting WAY out of hand as it moves away from the issue at hand (idealism or not?) and over to Christology. Again, it’s just about the philosophical feasibility of believing that we as created entities are BOTH freely self-determining AND nothing more than thoughts God is having.

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D: The Creator is immaterial and utterly transcendent...therefore the Creator's MIND operates in that context. If ANYTHING is created...AND if everything that is created can be said to be a continuously created and sustained product of the Creator's FREE CHOICE (which involves intellect!)...then how can hypostatic agencies within Creation NOT be a product of the Creator's "thought" of Creation?

T: Two things:

1) On your view creation is as immaterial as God. You’re an idealist. All created realities are immaterial thoughts God is having. So there IS NO material/immaterial distinction for you.

2) Nobody’s saying creation isn’t a product of God’s thought. “Let there be…and there was” and so forth. Creation isn’t a mindless act of God. The question is, Is the product nothing MORE than God’s thought? Can God (who abides in an immaterial—viz., spiritual—mode of being) create (by thinking and speaking so, of course) into existence entities whose mode of existing includes “materiality,” that is, a NEW mode of existing? I don’t see why not. And I see some problems created if we say no NEW (material) mode of existing comes into being with creation, but instead all continues to be essentially the same mode (immaterial mind/thought).

D: Is Greg really going to say that we DON'T exist within the mind of the Creator? That we somehow exist "outside" of God's mind, God who exists as the creative center of ALL THINGS?

T: Nobody wants to say we exist “outside” of God’s mind in the sense that God fails to perceive/know (think about) all that he created. We have Paul in Acts after all, like Corey said: “In God we live and move and having our being.” But Paul didn’t elaborate philosophically upon it. Our loss. But what we’d like to say is that the perceived ("thought about one") in the case of creation is not JUST itself another "thought" of God.

Admitting a real distinction between material and immaterial doesn’t amount to a two-story cosmology either. Divine immanence disallows that much of a break. But reducing creation to being “thoughts God is having” dissolves the material/immaterial distinction altogether. The material world ends up being just something the immaterial is thinking. I don’t know that that’s enough to sustain what we know to be the case about the material world.

I need to see some relevance for knowing the truth about this to keep going. If I'm not an idealist, what problems do I have to live with?

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 1/24/2009 5:37:49 PM (GMT-6)