A Trilogy of Universes: Part Three

There is a trilogy of possible universes we inhabit – Supernatural, Natural and Simulated. There are also several universal beliefs that nearly all humans, all cultures, over all of history share. Belief in these universals usually extends to the present day. Can the later assist in determining which of the three possible universes we might live in, is the one we do live in?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Reincarnation

Lastly, another near universal concept is reincarnation. Some people believe they have led previous lives. Some cultures suggest you can be reincarnated as another life form. Nearly everyone has experienced a sensation of Déjà vu. 

*Natural Universe: You cannot have a memory of a previous life or lives since neither your father’s sperm and your mother’s egg could contain a genetic memory of your previous life or lives, so at conception, your conception, you could not have been blessed with any genetic inheritance of a memory of another you that lived once upon a time (in a galaxy far, far away). For a similar reason, you could not be the reincarnation of a previous life form. There is only one ‘you’ and that ‘you’ did not originate from any other life forms apart from your biological parents. As for Déjà vu, that would have to be coincidence. A natural universe rules out any versions of reincarnation.  No points awarded in this case.

*Simulated Universe: If your name is Joe Blow, and you’re just software, then there’s a command within that software that you come to that says something like “end subroutine program Joe Blow” – Joe Blow kicks the bucket. But, then there’s another command which says “start subroutine program Joe Blow reincarnate” – Joe Blow gets reassembled into another simulated identity. Easy! One full point has to be awarded here for the logical possibility that the Supreme Programmer or Supreme Player likes to subject their simulated characters to perform as various identities, sort of like father, like son, or like human, like cockroach.

*Supernatural Universe: Some religions do suggest that upon attaining the state of death, some part of what was you, becomes a you again, but in another body, which may or may not be of the same species as the one you just died as. If, presumably, this transition from life to death to life (not afterlife) is guided or determined by supernatural deities, then I guess such a belief is rational, since a supernatural deity can transcend the Natural Universe or the natural order of things. And, who’s to say whether a transition from life to afterlife is more logical than a transition from life to another life. One point if you please!

Shape-Shifters

Like ghosts, shape-shifters and shape-shifting, of certain deities, humans and creatures, and a belief in same, is a universal shared by all cultures throughout recorded history, albeit less so in modern times than ancient times.

*Natural Universe: While shape-shifting isn’t unknown in the natural world, it’s a slow process – a seed can’t transform into a plant; a tadpole into a frog, in seconds, and in the natural world it’s a one-way street. The shape-shifters throughout human history cannot be natural since transitions tend to be rapid and reversible. However, they just might be extraterrestrial since we have no idea what might be biologically possible on other worlds. Still, without proof of aliens and that alien ability, terrestrial (natural) shape-shifters have to be given the thumbs down, but, given the (unlikely) possibility, ½ point.

*Simulated Universe: We’ve all seen shape-shifting undertaken by characters in the movies or in TV episodes. It can be made to look pretty convincing, in fact, given the state of the CGI art; it can be made to look absolutely convincing. If a computer programmer wants their creation(s) to shape-shift, so be it. One full point for the possibility has to be the order of the day.

*Supernatural Universe: Well, in mythology, various deities, such as Zeus, shape-shift to their heart’s (and private parts) content. God and/or Jesus may not have shape-shifted within Biblical texts, but they probably could have had they wanted to. That’s just one of those superpowers deities have. Again, one point is awarded based on the relevant literature.

Hybrid Creatures

While now relegated to our past societies and cultures, hybrid creatures, either animal-animal (like the dragon or griffin) or animal-human composites (like the centaur or Minotaur), were in ancient times held universal, and in fact based on prehistoric carvings, extend way back before recorded history. Even on tiny, isolated, remote Easter Island you get images depicting hybrid creatures, in this case birdmen predominate.  

*Natural Universe: There’s no biology, no natural selection, no operations of normal evolutionary genetics that can account for the dragon, the griffin, the sphinx, Pegasus, the Minotaur, the centaur, and literally thousands more hybrid creatures that are found and described in ancient literature, depicted in ancient art, manufactured as ancient statues – what tends to be termed today mythologies from around the world. However, composite creatures produced or manufactured via artificial selection is a different hybrid horse of mixed colours. Since such artificial selection techniques, advanced genetic engineering, was beyond the abilities of the ancients, the only explanation, assuming hybrids in our natural universe, has to be technologically advanced aliens. So, ½ point here too.

*Simulated Universe: If software can simulate a human; if software can simulate a lion; then software can simulate a sphinx! As in the case of shape-shifting, well, one can simulate a hybrid creature via sophisticated computer generated software. So, if you believe there was, once upon a time, a sphinx, then one point awarded for your belief, since that belief can be vindicated via a Simulated Universe.

*Supernatural Universe: If mythology is just somebody else’s supernatural religion, then the supernatural is chock-a-block saturated with hybrid creatures. The issue of ‘why’ the need for such entities isn’t at issue here; they just are. Since mythologies record their existence, who am I to doubt this universal facet that humans, at least once upon a time, found credible? - One point.

Universal Flood

*Natural Universe: All ancient societies, for obvious reasons, settled first near water, usually rivers. Rivers flood, even if the source of the floodwaters was way upstream and not local rain. So, it’s not surprising that there would be embellished tales of catastrophic floods, all the better when told down through the generations with a morality twist. So, local floods can get thumbs up, but one big global deluge is not possible by any sort of geography known to mankind, so that gets thumbs down. All up, ½ point for an each way bet.

*Simulated Universe: A 100% global flood is certainly possible to simulate. One could probably design a video game called ‘Noah and the Ark’ or equivalent from some other culture. If you accept a deluge that was worldwide, then a simulation of same has got to be under consideration. One point has to be awarded for the logic.

*Supernatural Universe: Well, there are no shortages of massive flood events that were triggered by the wrath of the gods, and not just the one related in the Book of Genesis. Science can not account for forty days and nights of rain (and variations on that theme), but in the La-La-Land of supernatural occurrences, well, the Heavens knows, anything goes. One point if you accept the realm of the miraculous.

To be continued….

Six Impossible Metaphysical Things

The paranormal incorporates a whole potful of concepts, some which maybe plausible, some rather implausible, and some that are IMHO impossible. Here I detail what I think are six impossible metaphysical or paranormal concepts, and why. But for true believers I give an escape clause toward the end.

We all like lists: The ten best this, the top dozen that; the five worst ranking next thing. In “Alice through the Looking Glass”, the White Queen believed in six impossible things before breakfast. Exactly what those impossible things were is not stated or listed – so here are mine that reside in the land of the metaphysical or paranormal.

1) You’re alive and you have one or more out-of-the-body experiences. The immediate problem here is how can your body physically split into two separate living entities? You (and your body) can’t. Further, your out-of-the-body self has obvious functioning sensory apparatus, since your out-of-the-body self can recall what it sees and hears, and therefore it must be physical in order for light, sound, etc. to register. If your out-of-the-body self is physical, it must have mass and since you’re in Earth’s gravitational field, weight. Since your out-of-the-body self doesn’t have wings, it can’t float or fly around, so gravity should do its grabbing thing and bring your out-of-the-body body crashing back down to earth.

Conclusion: your out-of-the-body experience was actually self-contained within your own mind. It was all a mental hallucination or an illusion. An independent observer would have noticed nothing out of the ordinary, and certainly will not have witnessed two of you, one on the slab and one floating around. Now you may say your significant out-of-the-body other is invisible. But that doesn’t wash since then it couldn’t see. That’s a prime flaw in all ‘invisible man’ tales from H.G. Wells on down. If it couldn’t see it couldn’t ‘report’ back to you what it saw! 

2) You’re dying and you have a near death experience. The exact same problems arise as with out-of-the-body experiences. It’s all in the mind, just like a dream is internal to the mind. An independent observer can’t witness what you’re dreaming and they can’t observe you split in two, even if you are dying.

3) You’re now dead and so part of you turns into a ghost. Alas, only part of you performs this magical transformational split since while others may see your ‘living’ ghost, they can also witness at the same time your very dead and decaying (or decayed) body. Something is screwy somewhere. Now the physical you seemingly kicks the bucket – you die. However, some part of that ‘you’ doesn’t kick the bucket, but instead retains animation. So, like Schrodinger’s Cat, you are both ‘alive’ and dead at the same time. Talk about a split personality!

Now presumably, at the time of death, you lose weight, that weight transferred into the newly animated part of you – your ghost. Your ghost must have weight since it is something physical, and being physical, is subject to the laws, principles and relationships of physics. Why is your ghost physical?  It’s physical since if you can see it, if you can hear it, if it interacts with its (haunted house) environment, it must have substance. You can’t see or hear or interact with a nothing! A nothing of no material substance cannot interact with a material something, like matter and energy. Only matter and energy can interact with matter and energy.

Okay, so you are dead and your ghost is alive, or at least is associated with animation. How can this be logically explained? Does every part of your deceased body contribute to your ‘I am alive’ ghost, or only bits and pieces? Does your ghostly self have a ghostly stomach and lungs? Logic demands that since your ghost is physical, it needs to ward off the second law of thermodynamics – entropy – in order to retain its ghostliness. Your ghost gives off energy. That needs to be replenished. Translated, your ghost needs to eat, drink, breath, sleep, etc. otherwise your ghost will also kick the bucket since neither you, when you were fully alive as one unity, or you, as that dead/alive split personality, can give off energy endlessly without replacing it. 

All up, the transition from a 100% alive you to an X% dead you coupled with a Y% alive or animated you (i.e. – your ghost) cannot be explained by any concept of physics, chemistry or biology that is currently on the books. The logical conclusion is that when you are dead, you’re dead: full stop. Ghosts are just one of those six impossible things some people believe in before breakfast. However, I do provide an escape clause – see below. 

Discussion 1 – 3: Now if out-of-the-body experiences, near death experiences and ghosts are credible and real, then each and every one of us is carrying along a duplicate you. You are your own clone! Are you aware of another or second you within you that presumably will get the flu when you do and have all the same personality characteristics and virtues and flaws and physical defects? I’m not, but that’s just me (or all two of me). There’s one difference between the two of you – one of you will die, but the other, well as the song goes “I believe that the heart does go on” and on and on and on. 

4) You recall your previous lives. No doubt in you previous lives you were someone important and not one of the great unwashed, despite there being vastly more great unwashed that VIPs. But great unwashed or VIP, it’s total nonsense. You are the product of the union between a single egg cell and a single sperm cell. Your father’s sperm cell couldn’t have a ‘memory’ of your past lives. Your mother’s egg cell couldn’t have a ‘memory’ of your previous existences. Therefore your single cell that is you at the moment of conception could not have any knowledge of your previous lives. So, where did this recollection of previous lives come from? How about it came from within your own mind and your previous lives have no reality outside of that mental realm.

5) Extra-dimensional; trans-dimensional; ultra-dimensional; higher planes of existence; spiritual planes of existence; astral planes; other levels of reality, etc. are all very warm and fuzzy New Age buzz phrases that mean absolutely nothing. You won’t find these sorts of phrases, like “another physical plane” adequately defined (and certainly not in physical science texts), or if defined, then defined in equally mystifying hocus-pocus terms. I gather these New Age authors just assume you intuitively are supposed to know what they are on about. They all allude to physical places where you might be mentally more spiritual, or moral, or more knowledgeable, or an all-round better person. Maybe it’s a place where you are cool, calm and collected with no stress; where you have perfect skin, a strong and steady pulse and heightened senses. But you would be hard pressed to say the physical geography of your new realm was anything but 3-D and where time flows from past to future.

Any mental or physiological state, altered or otherwise from the norm, has to be housed in a volume (3-D) – like a body – where cause and effect and rates of change operate (i.e. – time flows). In other words, these realms are exactly the same as the Universe you currently squat in. So these ‘other realms’ aren’t really alternative universes, rather it’s you that has altered within this Universe. It’s the same old Universe; different versions of you. 

6) Do you claim to have remote viewing or extrasensory perception (ESP) and/or the related concept of telepathy? Again, that is a belief internal to you – your personal mental delusion. There are but four physical forces that act upon you or can influence you. There’s gravity. There’s the strong nuclear force that holds the atomic nucleus together. There’s the weak nuclear force which lets atoms split apart – radioactivity. Then there’s the electromagnetic (EM) force. Only the latter could explain ESP/telepathy since it is the EM force that transmits information from A to B at the speed of light via photons – visible light photons, gamma-ray photons, radio wave photons, microwave photons, X-ray photons, infrared photons, ultraviolet photons, etc. To receive information directly into your brain, bypassing your normal five sensory channels and organs (sight, sound, taste, smell and touch) restricts immediately what part of the EM spectrum could be at work.

It can’t be visible light since the thickness of your skull blocks that out – your brain resides in eternal darkness. If it were infrared or ultraviolet your brain would heat up and fry or get sunburn. If it were microwaves, you’d experience an everlasting ‘hiss’ in your brain due to the cosmic microwave background radiation – a leftover from the Big Bang. It’s not radio waves since you aren’t bombarded with 24/7/52 information from radio stations around you – not to mention all that radio noise given off by interstellar hydrogen and other elements and compounds that are in interstellar space. In fact, each and every part of the EM spectrum can be rejected for these sorts of reasons.

That’s quite apart from the fact that if you were telepathic, how could your sanity cope with the picking up of the thoughts 24/7/52 of all those odd-bods and sods around you?

If remote viewing were even possible, why are there spy-in-the-sky satellites; the U-2; eves-dropping bugs planted; industrial espionage is rampant; computer hacking (cyber-spying) ditto; intelligence agents like the fictional but all too real 007 and agencies like the NSA or CIA, and all manner of other espionage apparatus part and parcel of our modern society? Remote viewing, etc. would be the great equalizer. It would result in a level playing field among all nations and nationalities. There could be no secrets in any medium, from paper to grey matter that’s safe. That’s not the way the world works, so ESP and telepathy, etc. is just so much BS. On a more personal level, you could ‘see’ winning scratch-it lottery tickets without scratching, and select accordingly. Students would all get 100% on their exams.

Besides, if ESP/telepathy/remote viewing were really possible, given all the scientific put-up-or-shut-up experiments that have been conducted, why isn’t this standard information in all the relevant textbooks? The global implications of such abilities, over the course of human events, would not have produced the sort of history we know today, since from Day One, human society would have been an Orwellian society because Big Brother would have been watching you! In fact everyone would be ‘watching’ everybody else. Again that not the way of the world, so of course it’s no surprise that these ESP and related experiments have all resulted without resolution in favour of the claimants.

Escape Clause: Apart from special effects on make-believe TV and in the movies, and works of literary fiction where all things are possible, there is another realm where anything goes – virtual reality; video games; simulations of all kinds. It’s in fact a simulated Universe that resides in the guise of computer software. Software can be programmed to give rise to images or experiences of out-of-the-body happenings; near death experiences; ghosts; past lives; astral planes; and ESP. You could have existence in other dimensional realms like the famous 2-D “Flatland”.

So, it’s a trade-off. If you accept these six impossible things before breakfast (and lunch and dinner too), then you need to believe the seventh – you don’t exist as flesh-and-blood; your ‘reality’, including say telepathy, resides in a computer. Who programmed the simulated Universe is another question.

That escape clause aside, if after multi-decades of inquiries and research into the plausibility of these six topics, there’s nothing, no hard evidence to convince scholars, academics and sceptics of their bona-fides, then I think it’s safe to conclude that if it ain’t happened by now, it’s not going to. These really are six impossible things. It’s not rocket science after all to come to once-and-for-all conclusions about these issues in the affirmative if they were in fact issues that had any possibility of an affirmative resolution.