OUT-DATED SCIENTIFIC PERCEPTIONS of REALITY
Have old, 20th century scientific views of reality been fundamentally correct or in err? If in err, has the consequence inadvertently been to steer world societies into alienation, materialism, and violence? The role of the family considered, worldwide, primary and secondary schools are the incubator of social views for world youth. Scientific views regarded as sacrosanct, in the 20th century, no real change has been made to the materialistic perspective that has dominated school and university textbooks. If such textbooks – each in their own field and way – simply made mention of facts of the harmonious nature of science, over 12 years of education and through higher education, would that more foster a feeling of oneness and family worldwide enabling future generations to more pursue altruistic human goals and peace? Is there a greater and noble role for science: the saving of humanity from the ills of excessive individualism?
[I] and [II] show that science inadvertently teaches facts that are at odds with reality. Regarding views of perception [I] establishes that erroneous scientific vantage points are prolific and indicative of a systematic and fundamentally wrong perspective of reality. Therefore, group [II], which are widespread and erroneous outlooks applying to deeply engrained views of self, society, and life, are not incidental anomalies, but are more harmful instances of the effect of fallacious scientific views mitigating against the development of sensitivity to the gift of existence, human humility, and the sanctity of human life: there is hardly a society in the world where brother is not fighting against brother. In [I] are considered illusions as simple and fundamental as (i) up and down, (ii) time, (iii) color, (iv) size, (v) existence in three-dimensions, (vi) matter, and (vii) speed. Regarding life and the human being within are considered illusions of [II]: (viii) senses, (ix) sound, (x) smell, (xi) emotion, (xii) intelligence, (xiii) the eye, (xiv) freewill, (xv) man's non-spiritual nature, (xvi) man's greatness, (xvii) language, (xviii) the gulf between the animate and inanimate world, (xix) selfishness, (xx) human intellect, (xxi) individuality, (xxii) consciousness, (xxiii) Planck length, and (xxxiv) other illusions.
Space ships are shot "up" into space. But, are they, really? We call "up" anything above our head while standing. But, "up" 12 hours later is always "down" as the earth spins. The only theoretically true "up" would be a line running upwards from the south to the north pole. Everything else would be on the side. But, if the universe itself has no "up" then there is no such thing as an "up." No one has seen "beyond" our universe, so we don't know if anything is there or not. If there is something that contains our universe and it has discerned an "up" and "down" (like a true north) that would apply to our universe, then unless or until we know what that "up" is we have no way of determining where "up" is in our universe. The idea of "up" is a myth or illusion that is taught and believed. Though certainly a useful handle, it is technically not correct.
The year 2,000 will officially hit the earth 24 different times. Time is measured by 24 standard meridians every 150 east and west of 00 at Greenwich, England, in the centers of the zones: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). But, from a more natural point-of-view, • time is continuous and not found in manmade intervals: the pin-point of earth's surface which is the shortest distance between the earth and sun at any given second remains 12 o'clock noon and even one inch to the east or west of that point would properly not be 12 noon even though the whole time zone would be considered to be 12 noon. Time is properly never what is shown on any clock to be.
• We are born once but 24 times: If a person were born in any given hour in one place, the moment of her or his birth would actually be a different hour in each of the 24 time zones. A person born in Toronto at 12 PM and later visiting China, would, (more accurately) have to say that he or she was born at 12 AM for 12 PM Toronto time is 12 AM Chinese time. Birth certificates, then, accepted as legal proof of one's birth in every hospital, government institution, business organization, social convention, and court of law on earth, are technically not correct in any time zone other than that in which a person was or is born. The recording of birth time is undoubtedly useful, but is seriously flawed.
•Accepted as fact: Only earth has a 24 hour day and leap year every fourth. This time period occurs on no other planet. No other living thing on earth would consider human time important. The year 2,000 bug, due to computers with calendars and clocks not capable of date-keeping past the year 2,000 is only a human earthling's problem. Our calendar is based upon the birth of Christ: but he was not born on the 24th of December and some research shows his birth a year earlier than our calendars show. When we joyously celebrate the year 2,000, some would say that we will be one year late for the party. Still, we have choices. In Russia the Orthodox Church celebrates the turn of the year on what would be January 12th by a Western calendar, and the Chinese celebrate New Year after the third week of January. For anyone who likes to celebrate, they can party all around the world. If anyone dislikes festivities, they may want to spend New Year's eve 2,000 with an Indian tribe in the Amazon which does not live by calendars.
And as this great day is based upon the birth of Christ, what hour was Jesus Christ born, anyway? Because that should be second 0. Will we measure Jesus' birth by GMT? But, what if he were born at 3 o'clock in the morning GMT. Then, would we call that 0 second: 0 minute: 0 hour: 0 year? Then, the day would begin at 3 AM (corrected to 12 AM). And, why a 24 hour day? Shouldn't our 24 hours have been expressed in units of a 48 hour day, or maybe 12 would be better? Or, maybe 10 hours, or 100 hours (24 minutes x 100)? But, is that right? Afterall, we like 10 because we have 10 toes: why not arbitrarily choose a base like 6.5 to express time from within? Living in an egalitarian world, shouldn't we be equal about everything? So, one year, worldwide time is measured by the birth of Christ; the next year, by the birth of Confuscious; the next year by the birth of Moses (when was he born, anyway?); and the next year by the birth of Mohammed? But, why only religious leaders? Why not political, or athletic, or something else? Would anyone too strongly object if we could say that time began with my birthday? You'd make me very happy if you'd say "Yes." If it's "Yes" then let's run out and reprint all the books in the world to reflect true time: time based on my birthday! What is a worldwide standard of the "right" time? Monday in one country can be Tuesday in another; morning one place, night elsewhere. And while we are approaching the year 2,000, the universe is approaching, some would say, 21 billion. Thus, if our time were to be based upon Truer time, i.e., the year, month, day, hour, and second of the universe' birth, then, it would not be the year 2,000. It will only be 2,000 on earth. It is will be 2,000 because our numbering system is based on the human's ten fingers. But, although everyone says as if it were gospel truth that the universe started at 10–43 seconds, 10–43 seconds in which year? Or which year give or take a few billion? Science demands precision so we need an exact time for time to begin. But, if time actually begins with God, and therefore before the universe was formed, then, we should mark time from the Birth of God. Some clever scientist will undoubtedly one day determine what True Time is: because God's Birth should mark the beginning of time. There will be other problems for will True Time be measured in a particular starting second? How will the difference in time before and after the big bang be accounted for? And, did God evolve in stages before the formation of the universe?: science must determine when we can properly say that God became God and time began. But, what, then, of time before that point? Science can know anything. One day we will surely know. The rock group, Chicago, once sang, "Does anybody know what time it is? Does anybody really care?" People may care, but nobody really knows what time it is.We see colors. But, do we really? Colors are only illusions as cones corresponding to the three primary colors of red, green, and blue mix light to create the infinite variations of colors we don't really see. Colors, in a sense, are just figments of our imagination regardless of how useful and practical the perception of color is. In fact, New York Medical School neuroscientist, Rodolfo Llinás says, "light is nothing but electromagnetic radiation. Colors don't exist outside our brains, nor does sound."
Being three times higher than the Statue of Liberty, we see forms as large as the Atlantis Space Shuttle and the infinitely larger starry universe at night. However, these images are focused on the tiny fovea which is somewhat like a mirror and as small as the "o" in the word "mirror." The fovea transmits these images to the optic nerve. It is only the brain which creates the illusion of large forms. What we in reality receive are images never larger than an "o" so small that if the brain did not enlarge it, the image would be too tiny to see such that we could never even distinguish the features of our parents. If we consider perceived size to be reality, then we delude ourselves for in reality, the fovea is even smaller than the "o" in the word "mirror." The fovea is only 4 millimeters in diameter. We only really see 4 millimeters of image: upside-down. Would anyone really want to view the world upside-down? In reality, that is the way that it enters our eye. Anyone who states that science seeks only truth must go to the optometrist and be fitted for glasses which make images upside-down and reduce them in size to 4 millimeters: such a person can live in truth. We live in a comfortable illusion of reality: size is not what it seems to be.
If there were a song bird suspended in the center of a sphere and surrounded by concentric spheres of seats (such that an audience of 10 thousand could all see), each would hear the identical song while due to depth perception and angle each would see a different view of the song bird. We stand in one point, see with two eyes (what if we had one in the front and one in the back?), hear with two ears, and both see and hear in three dimensions. With the rest of the animal kingdom, we are, thus, uni-point, binary beings, perceiving in three-dimensions: we are 1-2-3 beings. If there were no 1-2-3 beings, objects would necessarily be intermeshed, blurred, interpenetrated, and dimensionless (see example: interpenetration). Our earth may be the only place in this infinite universe where such distortion of reality exists as both sound and the transmission of images are omni-point, omin-directional and in every nanometer of space simultaneously. Complete, little sight and sound wave-packet packages (largely identical) would fill the universe like a Chinese apple full of seeds in every nanometer of space. It is true that the practical purpose is served to think only in terms of three-dimensions. However, in the abstract sense, one is not in possession of their wits if they believe that three-dimensional reality is actually true reality.
What is physical? What is matter? Our perception of matter is something solid and stationary through-and-through. The accepted thought since DeBroglie in 1915 won his Nobel Prize is that the fundamental form of matter is as a wave/particle where states regularly alternate. What of the particle dimension of the pair? If a proton were increased in size to the size of the moon, or sun, the solar system, galaxy, or the universe itself, or greater, we would find vast regions of empty space in our proton. The conclusion to draw is that while on our dimension it appears a particle of matter may be solid through-and-through, in the larger picture, a particle is only like a wad of loosely balled cheese-cloth full of empty space: or, more accurately, the particle dimension of the wave/particle is itself a wave. There is no such thing as the human perception of something solid through-and-through. There is no such thing as (that kind of) matter. There are only different densities of waves. Matter is but an illusion. A useful concept – but illusion.
It is seldom put in perspective that the strong and electromagnetic forces are simultaneously not matter and at the same time, the never-still blueprint for quarks, leptons, atoms, molecules, DNA, life, and the physical universe. Life and matter are, in their essence, immaterial – and therefore more like "thought" than matter.
Furthermore, we rarely account for the fact that the various resonance's – particles measured only by their vibratory states and for whom matter has never been detected – mediate elementary and subatomic particle interaction and are only energy. We have, then, a non-material phenomena, discovered by Enrico Fermi, which is the "boss" of the so-called "world-of-matter." But, is even matter considered properly?Whereas the common conception of matter is that of a solid material, atoms are largely space/wave entities, not permanently "solid" matter. If the entire human body were compressed to the density of the nucleus, it would comprise a volume smaller than a pinhead. This is because a nucleus is a thousand-million-millionth the volume of an atom and if all space were removed, that would be all that's left. In an atom blown up in size to St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome, the nucleus would have the size of a grain of salt. Atoms, then, are primarily space. In fact, as Steven Weinberg writes, "Neutrinos can travel for years through lead bricks without being scattered [i.e. without hitting and thereby deflected from a matter particle]."
Packed atoms form matter and that density gives the appearance of solidity. But on the lowest level, matter is not at all solid. James Needham calls: "The presence of matter merely a disturbance of the perfect state of the field ... a blemish." And Fritjof Capra, who researched high energy physics at the University of Paris, Stanford University, and Imperial College, London, and lectured at the University of California, Berkeley, describes the atomic nucleus as a "fiercely boiling nuclear drop." Nothing in either of these descriptions fits our concepts of "solid" matter.Regarding this point is the nonetheless widely accepted fact that while matter has fixed shape and occupies space, that doesn't hold true on the subatomic level where "shape" and the space it occupies is in a continual state of flux (click). Looking over a 1909 paper by Einstein, Louis de Broglie noted that particles exhibit the behaviours of waves such as interference, diffraction, and other properties that require a wavelength. His Nobel Prize was won for discerning the wave-particle where particles and waves intermittently behave as each other. As was elsewhere put, "energy is a dynamic pattern manifesting itself as a particle's mass." At its root, it is not the converse as energy historically preceded material.
In some corners, the "solid" view of matter is due to the "propeller-phenomena." If there were a propeller with just one pencil-thin blade that rotated several thousand times per second, it would look solid. Yet, 99% of the space it revolves in would always remain empty. This is what happens with electrons in the atomic shell. Einstein's laws of relativity apply to electrons and nucleons as they travel near the speed of light and maintain similar speeds within atoms thereby enabling atoms to appear as a "solid" sphere.
Then, the new string theories emerging in the mid-90's re-introduce matter as different vibrations of strings – or, in other words, completely immaterial. Thus, the "look" of matter is 99% illusion and 1% fact. With Her maternal instinct, Nature affectionately deludes humanity into believing that matter is the basis of existence. What we call matter is matter less than half the time. We may observe and summarize that:
• Resonance's are vibratory states, not material. The fundamentally empty universe maintains matter which is governed by a vibratory nature.
• At the big bang, and it remains historical fact, energy preceded matter
• Even in subatomic particles, energy travels near the speed of light
• Mass in only a momentary form of dense, relativistically moving energy
• Wherever energy goes, mass goes, mass is a disturbance of the field
• The nucleus and atomic shell have features of a fiercely boiling drop
• Mass is made of immaterial energy
Theoretically, there is no such a thing as a "solid" though perception tricks us into believing solidity exists. We might say that the belief in the solidity of matter is a myth at odds with reality – though the world we live in warrants belief in such a myth and the belief in the "permanancy" of matter is nevertheless a useful handle. And it is interesting that so-called "matter" is always interactive and motion and animal forms are but the organization of the different species of subatomic interaction and movement.
The perception we have of calmness and stillness when seeing lazy clouds in the sky is in contrast to our galaxy's rotational and linear speed. The flat Milky Way rotates like a frisby at 250 kilometers per second. It travels linearly some 18,000 km/sec while some of its sister galaxies linearly travel 61,000 kilometers per second. Earth is both fast and slow. Earth flies around the sun at 66,000 miles/hr.: 18.5 miles/sec. A thoughtful man may nod slowly but not as slowly as the earth. Earth's obliquity (it's 30 nod from 24.50 to 22.10) takes 41,000 years to complete. We may make a slow turn in a square dance in a circle but not as slow as the earth. It takes the earth 25, 920 years to complete one precessional cycle as the constellation makes a complete turn. And this later information on earth is set in stone (literally) in the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt at 4,500 AD and may have been knowledge existing as far back as 10,500 BC.3
While we hold ourselves still, even a recently dead person is busy as a beehive full of subatomic particles that if released from their orbits and freed would travel at speeds approaching 186,000 miles per second – nearly the speed of light. Lederman states that particles travel the 4 mile circumference of Fermilab's Tevatron Collider 50,000 times per second travelling one million miles in 5 seconds. Such a fact has led to the statement that electrons travel some 600 miles per second in their atomic orbits while nucleons 40,000 miles per second in the nucleus. We, on the otherhand, measure speed by the Condors, cheetahs, Mario Andrettis' and Jesse Owens' of the world. At the largest and smallest dimensions, speeds in Nature are over 40,000 miles per second: the linear speed of some galaxies and speed of nucleons in the atomic nucleus. Despite the usefulness of the perceptions, when using daily human reality as a universal standard for speed and stillness we fall to the trap of illusion, err, and put ourselves at odds with universal reality.
Illusion of sound: George von Békésy wrote: "At some sound frequencies the vibrations of the ear drum are as small as one billionth of a centimeter – about one tenth the diameter of the hydrogen atom!"1 With such infinitesimal minuteness, it is only due to vibrations sent by the ear drum and ossicular chain to the cochlea which effects amplification in vibration that we hear what we don't.
We don't really 'smell' things: we smell vibration. Lewis Thomas, former Dean of Yale Medical School and award winning writer, stated: "The special vibration of atoms or groups of atoms within molecules of odorants, or the vibratory song of the entire molecule, have been made the basis for several theories, with postulated 'osmic frequencies' as the source of odor." 2 In this view, 'solid' matter has nothing to do with smell. The molecule of odorant, itself vibratory, remains at the olfactory receptacle while its vibration reverberates in relay through the nervous system to be interpreted as scent. The brain could as easily have made fragrant scents 'smell' putrid. Any particular class of scents were 'subjectively' determined by Nature. Scent is not a natural given. It is an optional perception designed by Nature and we would not seem to 'smell' as such, as to interpret vibration.
Have we adequately considered what the source of emotion and feeling are when we state that social or biological reasons cause them: Abuse breeds aggression and danger has historically bred fear. If John is happy and the next moment each atom in John is separated and each put in a little box, where is his happiness? "Only the whole living system makes happiness," you say? Then, let us restore John to his former state and he will have the same happiness. Where is his happiness? In his brain? Where does it start and stop? Where is happiness (all emotions and feelings) if not somehow having at least a base in the quarks, leptons, and forces that make atoms: or in the electromagnetic force that made atomic particles in early clashes between matter and forces in the universe of the big bang?
And to exist during the big bang, must they have not existed before the big bang? No? Then, when did they come into existence and how? And, if not in matter, where does happiness exist: for if it does not exist in matter, it must exist somewhere and certainly it must exist in elementary form in matter. No? We unconsciously portray aliens as possessing of emotion: where would these have arisen and why are they portrayed as human-like? Why would we assume they would be?
If we use another angle of approach: if we have the range of emotions, must they not exist in some base code in genes? No? If not in genes, where? And what form do they exist in in genes? If feeling and emotion are coded in genes (see "amygdala" discussions in Goleman book mentioned below) where is feeling and emotion when a gene is but 80%, 40%, or 20% formed? While we speak of emotion and feeling, it would appear that the nature of emotion and feeling is far from being resolved and what we consider them to be is but a shadow of what they actually are.
"There is no organ in evolution as complex as the eye and Darwin is right in stating so," says conventional wisdom. This may be true, but it misses an important point. To be sure, the eye is an engineering miracle as 10 trillion particles of light enter the pupil each second and as the eye has 30, 000 million retinene molecules as primary receptors for visual data forming information in the form of electrical signals which among other things sift out and send on colors to the optic nerve where in the brain's primary visual cortex the rainbow of color is registered. Already "Been there. Done that," Nature could say. Arnold Somerfield, Heisenberg's mentor and an accomplished pianist, observed that:
Hydrogen atoms, which emit over one hundred different frequencies, must be more complex than grand pianos, which emit only eighty-eight different frequencies.
Related to color, and more to the point, when electrons in their ground state are bombarded with photons (i.e. quanta of energy), they make a quantum jump and leap to an outer shell. When they return to their ground state, they emit energy equal to the absorbed quanta. These emitted energy packets (photons) constitute light which dispersed through a prism form the spectrum of one hundred or so colored lines. Sight is a blessing and it is true that the organ of the eye does much more in the way of organizing quanta to form visual information than simple electrons. Yet, in principle, the eye acts like nothing more than a sophisticated electron and technically is similar to the behavior of electrons (with electron shells functioning as rods) since their moment of creation in the big bang 20 billion years ago. The biological accomplishment is an illusion of grandeur from one perspective.
Freewill does not give us the freedom to levitate at will or fly to the sun this instant. In real time, we are not free to build dams like beavers, tunnel like ants or worms, jump up mountains like goats, or make webs like spiders. We are restricted by the laws of nature as to what we are "free" to do. Man is the only animal with freewill. That is the consensus – but is it true? Bird's aren't freer? Or, like the other animals, are we free to choose how we fulfil our specie's basic needs, self-improve, and abide by optimum social norms.† Those who willingly or unwillingly deviate from the optimum (e.g. physical or mental sickness, old-age, and crime are unwilling deviations) usually experience physical and/or mental discomfort "equal" to the degree of the deviation. † Which also address how we fulfil basic needs: and crime for instance – at least against ones immediate family and friends and sometimes the immediate extension of ones social group – is not usually an acceptable means to fulfil them.Such discomfort is mild when infractions are mild. Yet, when willing or unwilling (e.g. aging) infractions deviate far from the optimum of social or natural law (holding that "optimum" is found in the combination of peak health and happiness of an adult of about 25), violators of social norms usually variously experience social ostracism (even boring and very ugly people are ostracized as they deviate from the norm – though unwillingly), imprisonment, or death. Those naturally ageing or who otherwise contract disease or incur physical accident nonetheless violate (though unwillingly) optimum health norms and may sicken and surely eventually die.
While we may be free to choose when we shall go to bed (though children as a rule don't), when we will rise (those employed usually have no choice), what we shall wear or eat (we must eat), who we shall marry (some marriages are arranged or pregnancy before marriage sometimes forces it), or who we shall not, there are things we are free to do only at the cost of our happiness, sanity, and life. At a risk: we are free to swim with sharks, run with wolves, or crawl with army ants; we are free to live without eating, breathing, or sleeping; we are free to violate gravity and leap from the Empire State Building; we are free to live without friendship, love, or kindness.
Yet, in choosing to do these we choose either death or a life not worth living as nature allows us stepping outside our nature only at a cost and finally with the ultimate cost – loss of precious things and death. Of freedoms, we are not free to live without going to the bathroom, sweating, ageing, or death. We are not free to live without ever angering or manifesting each second only happiness. We are free, but it would seem that from the total set of choices available in nature we are only free to choose from within the infinitesimally small set of choices applicable to the human species. Nature is not impartial but has Her own ideals. Regarding what kind of people we "chose" to be, Nature, as a rule, "spanks" us when we "deviate" from the "ideal" and rewards us with happiness when we are "good." Races and nations are variously "spanked" or "rewarded" over generations or centuries, it seems. The belief in the unlimited freewill of the human being sounds nice. But, it's only an illusion.
To read, click here.
"Man and nature have no spiritual foundation," says one view. How true is such an assumption? If we state that intuition and the formation of visual images are of spiritual nature, then the supposition that man and Nature have no spiritual nature would not seem to be true.
Observe yourself. Go over past experiences and check with others of theirs, and the conclusion will be that we communicate subliminally in ways that can be recorded if not measured. For instance, there have been times in your life when feeling someone was looking at you, you picked your head up from reading to turn sharply to the left, right, or behind and saw someone looking at you. Or, more subtle, as you did the above and momentarily caught the person's gaze you noted by the final movement of their head and eyes that they suddenly looked towards you meaning that the moment both of you felt the other, both were immersed in some other thought and with synchrony began at the same moment to look towards the other.
The cause preceded the movement to look. No physical factor prompted this. As it is two people anticipating the other unconsciously with their eyes drawn "magnetically together" as it were, perhaps this phenomena could be called the tango as each dancing partner moves as one in anticipation of the other's moves. Such behavior speaks to a spiritual or subliminal connection between people acting almost like a common nervous system co-ordinating behavior in people somehow related to each other. The tango meaning we are subconsciously "entangled." Secondly, we have visual images of things during our waking hours, at times in our life visual images in dreams, and lower animals are born with images of their environment such that when fish, insects, reptiles, and amphibians emerge from their eggs, they recognize and appropriately respond to all physical and behavioral aspects of their environment. They foreknow, have some picture of their environment.
These two phenomena, intuition and visual image, both indicate a fact never considered in our discussions of matter. Firstly, all living things are made of inanimate matter: air, water, nutrients of the earth, and energy from the sun. These inanimate forms of matter are, at their root, quarks, leptons, and forces. Quarks, leptons, and forces are at their roots energy. Energy is at its root the so-called super force or super string from which matter, space, time, life, and the universe emerged. The point to be made is that one unconsidered aspect of inanimate matter (i.e. quarks, leptons, and their forces) is an innate nature to form images and function based upon intuition. These things must be an aspect of quarks, leptons, and forces. Yet, they remain unmentioned, unregarded, unnoticed, unnamed, undetected. We undervalue and underestimate the spiritual nature of physical matter. Richard Feynman wrote:
There are phenomena ... such as extra sensory perception, which cannot be explained by physics. However, that phenomena has not been well established, and we cannot guarantee that it is there. If it could be demonstrated, of course, that would prove that physics is incomplete, and therefore it is extremely interesting to physicists whether it is right or wrong. 4
Perhaps there are several experiments which can test extra sensory perception related to the occurrence of the tango. In either of two settings – a small garden or library – a group of people large enough for a valid conclusions to be drawn from a study, could be selected. They would be asked simply to remain seated around tables there for two hours or so reading books or writing letters to people they haven't had a chance to write to for a while. They would be given no clue as to the purpose of the experiment. These test groups would be observed to see how many times they tangoed. Those that tangoed would be asked the obvious questions: "Were you aware ..." such and such. The study should reveal whether people are subconsciously "entangled" or not: whether we, at basic, are spiritual in nature.
We will also prove (or disprove) the point, when (if) some clever person takes advantage of infrared photography and sensitizes it enough to detect spiritual beings (those who lived once and died). As it is, infrared photography reveals our electromagnetic aura as a shimmering rainbow of color changing with our emotion, thought, feeling, and mood. A spiritual audio-visual TV would enable us to see and talk to the spiritual world. Or, it may be proved such does not exist. There is probably someone, somewhere, working on such technology and we may hear of its results in our lifetime. It will establish if the spiritual world exists or not. But, tangoing does: a dimension (the most important?) of our communication is spiritually based – and MAY include aspects falling under the nebulous terms called "intuition," or "sixth-sense."
The conventional thought is that the animate world is superior to the inanimate: but we should investigate whether the assumption is true or in error. The suggestion is that there is an insurmountable gap between biological life and the inanimate world. In fact, the gap is measured in mere milliseconds and opportunity. Opportunity, for given the chance, any inanimate molecule of air, water, or mineral can become alive. Virtually the whole physical earth (inert elements and certain others notwithstanding) can, has been (in the last 3 billion years many of today's inanimate molecules were probably before in some animate form), and is waiting its chance to be biologically alive. The earth is a ball of clay, a ball of proto-life (explained below). "What" is alive is the result only of chance in the sense that these molecules rather than those were in the right place at the right time. The hamburger a waitress chanced to give you at lunch is presently reading this selection.
Deprive the brain of inanimate air for several minutes and we immediately loose consciousness and die. Air is intimately connected to physical processes designed for it to such an extent that if those processes did they not exist in a given organism, such an organism would be called a plant rather than an animal, or not considered to belong to even the botanical world. Air is a part of, gives definition to, and is characterized by breath, thought, laughter, voice, consciousness, life. Life is what life is because of the definition processing air has created in living organisms.
Deprive the body of inanimate food and weight loss immediately sets in. Our body mass is simply changed dirt: i.e. dirt to which, via photosynthesis is added water, air and sunlight to make vegetation. Inanimate "dirt" instantaneously converts into animate substances including energy. Deprive the body of inanimate water and dehydration immediately sets in and death can follow. Too much "changed dirt" and people begin complaining about being overweight and the onset of a cycle of dieting sets in. The only difference between the living biological features of the animate and the inanimate are biological transformers (i.e. biological mechanisms transforming the inanimate to animate) found in biological systems themselves made of the inanimate.
Life is a gift of the inanimate to the animate. Life is the living inanimate. Life is not above the inanimate but an organization of the so-called inanimate. And calling it inanimate reflects poor definition as subatomic particles are in continual movement. As mentioned elsewhere, in The First Three Seconds, the suggestion is that proto-life (i.e. micro facsimilies of macro forms and behaviors) is found in particles and if it is proved they have proto-life, they are animate in the sense of having features which are "ancestral" precursors to those found in life. If someone claims that the animate is above the inanimate, they can prove it by holding their breath for 10 minutes. The inanimate is the "high octane gas tank" of life that keeps the car running. In the form of yin and yang, the inanimate (yin) would seem to be a fully equal partner in (yang) Life: latent-life fully capable of assuming all the duties and joys of Life. Life would seem to be the evolutionarily new born sister to proto-life.
And we do not always remember that those aspects of ourselves we call "us" or "me" – the thing which insulted we kill defending – finds its way daily into the bathroom in a form (proud though we are) we turn our noses up due to its putrid smell. The inanimate goes full circle: "Remember, oh man, that dust thou art and into dust shalt though return." Manure makes good fertilizer. Its elements put flesh on and make life.
It seems that many have come to take in stride the assumption that we are made selfish by genes as Richard Dawkins popular book, The Selfish Gene, would seem to state. Peter Medawar on the cover writes: "The world of the selfish gene is one of savage competition, ruthless competition, and deceit." Dawkins writes of a machievellian gene: "The gene reaches out through the individual body and manipulates objects in the outside world."5 However, there is another view. First of all, every historically 'first' gene is formed by molecules and because of metabolism and death, the molecules which first populate a gene are all soon gone. There is hardly any selfishness in that act as the molecules that create genes create them for other molecules that will soon replace them, and elsewhere our view was stated that particles, energy itself, has proto-life. May life exist for proto-life?
Does proto-life exist, in fact? Looking at the existence of virtual metabolism, atomic "genetic-like" inheritance from super force or string, error correction mechanisms and some 80 other biological-like features found in particles, The First Three Seconds makes the claim that proto-life has existed in the physical world since the big bang. The prospect of Nature recycling its smallest living proto-life forms into biological life may be an egalitarian move on Her part. Then, there is the prospect that no scientific experiment will ever prove: "Biological life exists in service to proto-life rather than the converse: or there is mutual benefit for life and proto-life."
Secondly, when a stronger more intelligent creature consumes a smaller and less intelligent creature the 'lesser' creature's 'self' is completely transformed, raised, or elevated, as it were, as it becomes part of the creature that consumed it. Such would hold for plants that in this manner 'become' animals and field mice that take to the skies and become part of the hawks that devoured them. Life in Nature can in this sense be exciting. It would seem that 'selfishness' is not an appropriate title for what Nature has engineered in the gene. Nature raises the lower up as even happened when life itself was created. Finally, however, each cell and creature dies returning its molecular modules back to a lesser state while their offspring carry on life. From the more basic, more ancient aspect of existence (i.e. the proto-life molecular) Nature is both self-sacrificial and egalitarian and it would seem that these are the lessons Nature would teach us through the phenomena of genes rather than a proposed selfish nature reflected in one interpretation of genes that may or may not be correct.
Human intellect appears superior for man establishes the comparisons and selects visible, easy targets while generally ignoring more elusive comparisons that are easy to push aside and generate no protest when they are. We compare ourselves to lower animals. Yet, there is something to be said of the easy operation of a machine as such requires a great and silent intelligence behind it to make it so. Even a single-celled creature would require more 'intelligence to make than humankind collectively possesses.
"What then of the creation of life?" is the question of following inquiry. If organs are towns, veins are streets, and an organ's functions a roster of town-events, then the zygote is a total blueprint of the total human being – the one celled mono-zoan produces 1014 copies of itself in the form of a mature metazoan such as ourselves. From the observation of the human genome we should be able to read, therefore:
all anatomical structures and functional behaviors. We should be able to predict the exact way a person will look and a close approximation of how they will act (when a genetic as opposed to social variable). Sight, and its organ, touch, and its organ, smell, taste, and hearing are all genetic programs. We should be able to understand how they operate and are formed from the observation of the cell.
In one serving of sperm, a man has billions of cells, or enough to people China and every country on the face of the earth. One cell generates the human being and in one man's lifetime, countless trillions of sperm are created. Thus, one truly equals infinite. And, from a study of the one, we should be able to "see," to understand the infinite in each of its smallest parts. What worlds would exist if a different set of people were born than were? In any case, from the observation of any given human genome, we should, therefore, be able to find out all about every:
potential for legal system, government, philosophy, social organization, personality, ambition, profession, hobby, and human endeavor.
We see in the human being the genetic ability to string random sounds together in the form of words and string words into ideas related together by a syntax to make spoken language – and Nature has made thousands of such human languages. It is child's play for Her. The same, and even more remarkable thing is done with random symbols strung together to represent sounds (letters/symbols) and those letters/symbols grouped together to form alphabets that can be ordered to represent a particular cultures sounds (grunts, clicks, dental, guttural, aspirated, labial, nasal sounds) put to words, and words strung together with syntax to make written ideas.
This duality of language, spoken and written, is accomplished some say by random forces working in evolution to form this genetic behavior and the combined intelligence of the cleverest consortium of computer programmers in the world have not the slightest idea of how they could make such a similar program: in a nearly invisible cell no less. Note too, that any animal language utilizes this same duality of skills as both audio and visual behaviors have parts strung together to make wholes and wholes in different arrangements represent different intentions and behaviors. My, how wonderful randomness is. Does the idea of mindless random force designing language in nearly invisible cells of genotype make sense? How, please?
In any case, though we learn the language we are born into, that it is a general ability such that any language we are born into becomes our native language. Every baby associates sounds and symbols which are initially to them like Martian: i.e. completely meaningless and random. Yet, from this "at-root" meaninglessness, they come to associate words, ideas, symbols, and written and verbal accounts of their society's culture, values, and history. Quite ingenious, those unformed minds – carrying out instructions coded in a single cell of genotype which itself on the subatomic level is pure energy formed from inanimate substances in the form of soil changed into food. The genetic-driven intellectual ability to assign a sound identity (and language) is quite domineering. We need only think of all the completely new computer and Internet-related equipment and accessories developed in the last ten years to note that they number in the thousands, but never does the time emerge when an object exists without a name: and names are nothing more than sounds that are at their root totally random and meaningless. Therefore:
We should be able to understand how language is formed by looking at the human genome.
Respectfully speaking – for we all stand to gain as a result of the research – the point should still be made that hundreds of the most brilliant brains cannot easily understand one nearly invisible dot made by the billions in Nature every millisecond of the day. The Human Genome Project, working with hundreds of scientists on three continents is not really capable of mastering the knowledge contained in the genome. Yet, every living organism embodies this knowledge as when even mushrooms produce millions of genome-filled spore with regularity. However, neither mushrooms nor the majority of human beings know how they create and we don't even know the moment of conception when a woman becomes pregnant.
Nature uses a different form of communication and knowledge and human knowledge and intelligence is but a small subset of Nature's knowledge and intelligence. Einstein put it nicely: "[Natural Law] reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." That Nature uses a different form of communication and infinitely superior to human language is clear in the sense that She created the whole universe and even the human brain without uttering a single word of human language and without reading a single technical manual written in English, British, or Chinese to do so. Though it is unnecessary to have fear, most humans fear the unknown and rather than countenance the fact that there may be a greater intelligence than the human, man has claimed himself the Lord of Knowledge.
These qualities spoken of several paragraphs above concerning the modularity of matter, uniformity of natural law, its interchangability, endless creativity, and infinite ability to form intelligent constructs quite much resemble omniscience, omnipotency, omnibeneficience, and omniscience: qualities we attribute to God the Creator and have in some form or other been with us since at least the time of ancient Greece and Egypt before it. However, there is not a single new force or law to add to the body of science that exists to understand Nature more deeply. We need only observe more openly.
One final issue of the illusion of intelligence is the following. This whole century intelligence was measured by IQ tests but they have shown to be only predictive of academic intelligence and success in a career as a college or university professor. The farther one goes from academia, the less useful IQ tests have shown to be. Work such as that pioneered by Daniel Goleman, show that the complementary, and often more important form of intelligence is Emotional Intelligence as possession of it results in satisfaction with self, happiness, and success in all manner of social relationships. Studies show most people consider those intelligent who understand and get along successfully with others. Recent research has also shown emotional intelligence to be a measure of professional success and indicates poorly rounded people with IQ's of 160 may work for otherwise successful people with IQ's of 100. As people in the 20th century were largely judged by their IQ many have suffered under false illusions of even what it meant to be a whole and valuable person.6
While certainly individuality exists, it is in teaching it has such narrow boundaries that sages have poorly served us. Almost to a person we feel more like tiny isolated islands of individuals, families, religions, and races set apart from the vast mainland of humanity and the universe than the converse. But, just how individualistic is Nature? For one thing, on the particle, atomic, and molecular level, i.e. the foundation of the macro-world, all identities are reversible: there is virtually no "unchanging" entity as such.
If we imagine the system of a geyser, for descriptive purposes, let's say it is fed by an ocean at its mouth. An underground channel travels to its fountain. And, of course, at the fountain is the sprouting geyser itself. We might say that the "unchanging" part of the geyser is its channel, its "individuality." Its hot contents are continually recycled from the ocean through the channel, into the air where it falls upon the earth to evaporate into clouds of precipitation which fall back into the ocean and into the channel again in an endless cycle.
In this same manner, if anything, you and I are like the channel of the geyser where wind (air), fire (sunlight), water, earth (nutrients) pass continually through us. And, spiritually and mentally, our eyes are camera lenses, our brain film, our memory playback where all we see and hear in our environment becomes, comprises, makes us. We are children of Nature passing continually through us and we give all elements back to Nature to be used by others. We all continually breathe air recycled through billions of beings through billions of years. Nature passes through us like water through a faucet. Our forms are like whirlpools i.e. temporary holding patterns of flesh and blood until we return to dust.
In a sense, Matter and Energy (ME) is "me": i.e. you and I. We might also say Universal Substance (we're playing now with another term for matter and energy) is "US" being "us": again, you and I. Then, ME is me and US is us and us is ME and me is US (etc.). It would appear to be just a word game but it is, in fact, a truth of Nature. Being individualistic as history has taught us to be is violent, actually, and very much at odds with Nature's nature of self sacrifice and egalitarianism where the whole is enriched and evolves upwards (entropy notwithstanding).
Definitions of hot and cold are understandably "real" but not really hot or cold. The universe was really hot at the big bang when temperatures were 1035 Kelvin, and really cold at 00 Kelvin. Earthly hurricanes can be strong, but earth would be a dust-particle in a sun-storm. A weak person laying supine may feel the pull of gravity and not be able to raise themselves. However, the force of gravity would flatten our earth to the size of a basketball if it were on the surface of a neutron star. The following point is small, but the distinction never made: the heart is portrayed as the source of feelings from the Cupid to books on psychology. The heart has little if anything to do with feelings though the imagery appeals to all of us.
This essay has stated that scientific views on fundamental aspects of reality, particularly where they concern images of the self, society, and life, have been in err. Science even forces erroneous views on students with punishment as the weapon for failing to adhere to a certain view: punishment in the form of bad grades preventing students from passing, graduating, getting into good schools, having good jobs or lives. It has in this way stifled and often killed spiritual creativity. Furthermore, a materialistic view has been perpetrated throughout this century and this has singularly been responsible for the dominance of alienation, materialism, and violence. It may be added that Hollywood is held responsible for promoting such views, but it is not often remembered that Hollywood is guided by people who grew up in schools promoting a materialistic view of the individual and society. It is primarily the failing of science in general and no individual in particular.
It is here proposed that the alternative views presented above are representative of a genre of logically sound beliefs that speak to the harmony of Nature with the individual as an intrinsic part of Nature and not a dominant particularly important player. It speaks to a humbler role of the human and the familyhood of the human being – if given a chance to see that Nature has actually made it so. Every child in the world must sit in a classroom for at least 12 years and hundreds of millions continue onwards. If science textbooks, each in their own way, spoke to the harmony of nature, it is here believed that the extremes of individualism which take on tones of the social illnesses riddling the world, can subside. They can subside if we begin at century's end to teach a more enlightened view of self, society, and life, a generation from now, the world may find itself on the upward incline of peace and world family.
This is a role particularly fitted to science. There may not be another group of individuals who can do more to save the moral and spiritual fibre of this world as church and State have so often failed to live up to their calling.
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