towards a non-materialist science of origins, and of cosmically-relevant transcendentals (meaning, purpose, moral responsibility, free will, creativity...)
(As presented in Genesis, which relates as well to the issue of moral responsibility for the creator : The scenario outlined in Genesis both creates the need for - and presents - a theodicy).
See below the intial part of a paper mentioning ours: "Guendelman & Rabinowitz, Linde, and Vilenkin independently claimed that topological defects expand exponentially if the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field η is of the order of the Planck mass"
Physicists seek the deepest level of cause & effect. When seeing a phenomenon, identifying a pattern in nature, the underlying mechanism is sought, and then the mechanism underlying that. What led me to become a physicist was a search for Truth in this respect - what's 'behind' what we see. But the same yearning led me to seek the deepest aspects of the religion in which I grew up, and then to study all religions.
My study of scientific cosmology led me to the privelege of arriving with a colleague at a proposal for a (topological) mechanism allowing the initial possibly-ephemeral state of the universe's existence to (utilize quantum properties to 'tunnel through' in order to) achieve a long-term-viable state.
[Scientific Cosmology & creating a universe in the lab: See below the intial part of a paper mentioning ours: "Guendelman & Rabinowitz, Linde, and Vilenkin independently claimed that topological defects expand exponentially if the vacuum expectation value of the Higgs field η is of the order of the Planck mass".]My studies of religion led me to various understandings, but based on intensive early exposure I am culturally conditioned towards the Jewish Bible, and thus a major theme of the book utilizes the creation story in Genesis as its muse in exploring ideas.
In ancient times, several types of interaction at the deepest level underlying events were proposed: determinism, randomness, a cyclic pattern of cosmic history, Fate, karma, magic, and the actions of the gods. What is usually of most interest in all this is to explore the role of humanity - and any other thinking & aware beings - in the cosmos (from this point I'll speak of 'humanity' but will generally impicitly include others).
My interests led me to a phd in theoretical physics, researching general relativity & cosmology, and then to presenting these ideas to others. My feeling was that physics represents the deepest level of understanding of physical nature, and any conflicts with religion needed to be resolved to the satisfaction of scientific arbiters. I began to write articles on the subject, and lectured widely, but found that basically only religious people understood my ideas, cared about the problem, and enfranchised my attemted 'resolutions'. In the scientific community there was very little interest, but I accepted this as natural.
Until......
In self-exploration, I find that my deepest conviction - as expressed in the Decartesian notion of the significance of the thought "I exist", or going one step beyond it - is that consious awareness is the most fundamental. (I would add the words "aspect of reality", but then I would need to define reality, and would discover after some thought that I don't really need to put that phrase in that sentence, and it is preferable to leave it out.) And later introspection led me to understand that the most significant aspect of all that is really "true free will".
In addition, I found that what I most deeply believed to exist is "moral responsibility", and for me this is the next step of the Descartesian realization.
I know of course that there is good reason for a mechanistic process of evolution to produce beings which act altruistically, and for them to evolve - and teach - the notion of moral responsibility. Also, that conscious beings may be protected from insanity by imagining themselves to be in control of their actions. However I also know that physics eschews "awareness", and there is no way that conscious awareness can evolve within the confines of natural law, and no reason for it to be present in a big bang. Given however that the most fundamental truth is that I am aware, then it became clear to me that physics and cosmology do not encompass the most fundamental truth. And so I ceased to be impressed by the alleged hierachy of physics as being above (or 'underneath') all else, and therefore ceased to accept the scientific denial of 'true moral responsibility'.
Eventually I also came to realize that philosophy derides the "true free will" which underlies the full notion of moral responsibility, and this led me to attempts to 'resolve' the conflict, trying to force my beliefs about moral responsibility somehow into the framework of science. Of course the fact I feel that I am "free" is no proof that it is so, but if I DO believe that moral responsibility is "True", then to me that means that I do indeed posses a true free will.
However, I found that the scientific community was simply uninterested in what I felt to be the most fundamental aspects of my own 'reality', and even negated their existence, even though these ideas were not in any way counter to science.
Unexpectedly for me, I eventually found myself 'switching allegiances', disregarding as irrelevant the scientific objections to my deeply-held beliefs.
That is, physics' denial of awareness as being fundamental - and even of existing - instead of making me lose belief in free will, rather removed physics from my pantheon's role of 'arbiter of the validity of ideas', and so the denials of the viability of a true free will lost their force.
However to understand what I mean by all this, you may have to read the book.
Let me explain a bit.
Just as a story or poem often conveys a deep message better than does a tome, the themes of the creation & Eden accounts are for me the simplest presentation of what I believe is unique to humans in this respect.
Specifically, the notion of moral responsibility is from my point of view best expressed in the context presented in Genesis - given my somewhat extensive but nevertheless very limited knowledge, I personally know of no physics text or ancient religious document or modern philosophical treatise which presents in such beautiful poetic manner the central concepts required for an understanding of this profound notion.
(Whether there are such, or whether the notions presented in Genesitheos were at the time revolutionary ideas about the role of humanity is a determination in the purview of other fields of expertise).Included in this category of central concepts are both the idea of human moral responsibility and the moral responsibility of any entity deciding to create thinking & aware beings, and indeed any entity capable of feeling pain.
Central to the ideas as I understand it is the concept of an "outsider perspective" such as is provided by the concept of the creator in Genesis who is 'outside' the physical universe, who designed and created the laws of nature & causality, space & time, and is the source of our consious awareness. Not that I expect to convince the reader - or myself - that there is indeed such a creator, but rather the notion of this type of creator is the best mechanism to explain what is meant by the type of 'moral responsibility' and 'free will' which is so meaningful to me, and which I believe has potentially important implications for cosmology - specifically for the question of how something (our universe) emerge from nothing, which as I mentioned was also the subject of the cosmology research (and subsequent paper) I was closely involved in.
These ideas may be present in other ancient cultures in other ways - for example in religions of the ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks etc, Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism - or perhaps they are contrary to those understandings (Again this is a question for experts in other areas, ). As a modern example, Kushner's book presents a deity insufficiently omnipotent to require a theodicy, and perhaps to hold created beings morally responsible. The notion of karma can imply that there is only cause-effect and wise methods to avoid bad effects, but not necessarily 'moral responsibility'. So not all cosmogenies qualify as a platfrom for developing the notion of full moral resposibility. In any case, whtether there are sre such or not, I use the ideas in Genesis because they suit my purpose best, without necessarily implying theological or historical claims. And whether or not the notions presented in Genesis are correct, and whether or not there really is a true free will and moral repsonsibility, one part of this book simply presents the ideas within the conceptual-context provided by Genesis, and then proposes that the key conception is valid irrespective of whether or not the scaffolding upon which it was erected is itself true .
Why keep the conception even without the scaffolding which midwifed it?* Because my deep feeling is that the notion of 'free will' is a key to comprehending not only our role in the cosmos, but to understanding the underlying causal structure of the cosmos itself, including its physical origin - but going beyond that too, which is why this book about free will is titled "MetaCosmology".
One project is the book/video "Einstein's Blunder & the God who plays dice".
Note: I had intially written a book for a religious audience, which approaches these ideas from the opposite direction, meant to show why even Bible believers could enfranchise scientific origin theory, ie the combination of big bang theory & evolutionary theory, but it too was really a book about free will.
As part of that process, I published an article about free will in 1987, in a journal dedicated to religion & science, and wrote several other articles for that journal, mini-articles like this, and various others).
If the present work were meant in the religious context, ie if it was a book about Genesis, it could be titled "The Quantum Kabbalistic MetaCosmology of Good & Evil".
I have found over decades of speaking to people that Very few - including intelligent people - understand:
1. why 'true free will' is impossible logically and according to science, and therefore do not understand what the whole hulabaloo is about. Of the few who do understand, many therefore have concluded that true free will cannot and so does not exist.
2. the Descartesian duality, ie why conscious awareness is 'other' than all else in the material universe. And why someone possessing it and knowing that they do, can say that (by definition) they know they posses it, not just that they 'believe they posses it'. This type of statement ('I know that I am aware', 'I intuit directly that awarness is qualitatively other than the material unierse dealt with by science') simply leads materialists to declare that these people are deluded and fools. (And that leads me to the belief that the materialists are simply lacking conscious awareness).
So the dilemma is: Only highly intelligent people will want to read this book, however many of them are materialists and would think the book's subject matter is idiotic, and many of those who are not necessarily materialists are atheists or others who have no cultural interest in the Biblical stories. Many of those who are not materialists or atheists are religious readers who may be offended if the Bible is not treated in a fundamentalist manner. And so there is left only a very small potential audience for this subject.
And a related dilemma is that the few people who would truly be able to appreciate the book probably know much of its philosophical scientific and biblical contents already, and so perhaps a brief article directed at them specifically is preferable to a book.
Although there are many other consciously aware people who potentially could benefit from the book, in my experience it is virtually impossible to explain to the basic ideas to them - though Nagel seems to have achieved some success at this among philosophers.
Some cosmology references:
A J Ayer quotes Bennett
