We see a natural world filled with random events. It seems nothing but arbitrary most of the time. The ancient idea of a deity who inflicts punishment for human transgressions has been usurped by a headless, accidental god of chance. And we perceive this randomness as a fundamental aspect of creation. A principle, we call it. From it stems entropy, and the science of chaos. We perceive that this scientific god of hit and miss can be as cruel in its indifference as could the old God in His anger and His chastisement. Despite our science, despite our new understanding of things, our fear does not abate. It simply lurches away from the religious condemnation feared by our ancestors toward the unmeaning feared by our philosophers.
Most of us think death is inevitable. But we don’t necessarily believe life is. The materialists tell us that life arose in an accident. And many believe life may not exist anywhere else in the universe. And so, we obsess over the existence of extraterrestrial life, setting up vast arrays of radio telescopes, sending out probes with messages almost pleading for something to find us and rescue us from our oh so accidental and existential loneliness as we drift on an outer arm of a galaxy ordained as ordinary by the tyrannical laws of probability. Behind this obsession to discover that we are not alone is the idea that life is accidental. And if life is accidental, it is not inevitable. Only death is.
And so, death is worshipped as more powerful than life itself. We who are so inclined have faith in death’s certainty, yet not in life’s inexorability. This grim but unspoken worldview relegates us to a despair so great, that many rush back into the chastising arms of a contemnor God who may try us and, finding us wanting, toss us into a lake of fire. For those with faith in Last Judgment, even a certain life of pain and punishment is preferable to no life at all once the body dies. In fixing our eyes upon the cruel and absurd unmeaning of a death ruled by the laws of randomness and probability, or upon an afterlife of absolute paradise or justified punishment, we miss a third alternative.
What if we created the odds? What if we created the laws of probability through which the countless combinations of dark energy gave rise to universes in which matter and galaxies could coalesce? And in which a planet was just the right distance from a medium-sized, main sequence star to allow the conditions necessary for carbon-based life? What if we created the random and the probable? And what if we created the demiurge of infinite chastisement and endless embrace? Is it just possible that we project our own sense of anger and self-condemnation, our own feelings and of unworthiness and sin, upon a God?
The idea that randomness and probability eventually gave rise to life, which became conscious, which projected a God onto the unconscious processes of the universe, is accepted by many. According to this assumption, the laws of probability eventually configured to yield consciousness, forging humanity from the chaos, who in turn projected their own guilt and need for punishment upon a creator God. According to this hypothesis, God is essentially a mental projection.
The other idea, that we were created by a First Cause, is more ancient. It, too, is an idea believed by many. It holds that conscious energy – a conscious, creative force – preceded the creation of the universe and iss responsible for its inception.
The two hypotheses—God and mindlessness— are forever at odds: the intention of a conscious creator in which mental processes create the physical reality of time, matter, space and energy versus the mindlessness of a chaotic yet mathematically-patterned creator which yields the identical physical reality.
The materialists assume that the creator God is a mental projection. The spiritually inclined assume that a God created the uncountable combinations which gave rise to consciousness. Seldom is it considered that randomness and the laws of probability are also projections of a human mind, not because of the randomness inherent in the brain itself, but because randomness is a psychological projection of that mind. Something within that mind believes in the probable and the improbable, believes that we humans and all of creation are subject to the mindless, random and probabilistic forces which that mind perceives as inherent in an indifferent universe. In other words, randomness and probability can be projected by the mind just as the existence and qualities of a creator God can be projected. Why should God be explained by the projective tendencies of the mind, while randomness and probability should be excepted from these same projective tendencies? It is inconsistent to assume that only one set of qualities – that of the deity – can be the subject of a psychological projection. There is no rational explanation for why randomness and probability should be considered to be preexistent qualities inherent in an external, objectively-experienced, physical world while a Creator should be excluded from this description.
If the argument is that randomness and probability are observed ‘out there’ while God is not, it could be argued that the universe also contains evidence of a personified God in the external environment. Intelligent design recognizes this. What we are then left with is the conclusion that mind, or consciousness, is an inherent quality of the universe, and that the cosmos exhibits psychological as well as physical traits. One of these psychological characteristics is the tendency for the mind to project outward what is first experienced – and then denied – as inward state. This third alternative harmonizes the Platonic and materialist worldviews.
Without coming to a conclusion as to whether consciousness created the material world or not, this third way simply regards both scientific and religious cosmogonies as essentially psychological. It may be that psychological, or theological, forces created the human mind. It may be that completely random, material processes created the mind. The third way takes no position on what ultimately created reality. It may be that conscious and unconscious processes co-arose and co-created the mind we call human. Indeed, based upon the endless and seemingly irreconcilable war waged through the weapons of hypothesis and premise, theorem and theory between these two camps, it is likely that probability and consciousness pre-existed the world and, co-occurring and co-arising, gave birth together to the material universe. Yet the third way is simply an attempt at reconciliation and at harmony. As an assumption, it offers no proofs. It may, however, provide a way to move forward.
© 2023 by Michael C. Just