God and Immortality
Most of the world’s religions have some concept of gods or
a God, with some notable exceptions such as Buddhism.
Theologians claim to have discerned the essential
attributes of a monotheistic God, such as omniscience
(perfect foreknowledge), omnipotence (unlimited power),
omnipresence (present everywhere), omnibenevolence
(perfect goodness), and a necessary and eternal existence.
Information philosophy offers a simple test of the "revealed
truth" of these attributes, specifically the visions by inspired
thinkers that have no empirical evidence. Although these
visions are in the realm of "pure ideas," we can say that if every
world religion agreed completely on the attributes of God, it
would increase their believability. As it is, the comparative
study of religions with the incredible diversity of their claims,
renders the idea of God as implausible as Santa Claus.
At the present time, arguments like these will carry little
weight with the believers in a religion, most of whom have
little exchange of knowledge with those of other faiths. This
can be expected to change with the reach of the Internet via
smartphones to most of the world’s population by 2020.
In theism, God is the creator and sustainer of the
universe. In deism, God is the creator, but not the sustainer
of the universe, which is now assumed to be running itself
following deterministic laws of motion. Open theism denies
that God’s foreknowledge has already determined the future.
Monotheism is the belief in the existence of one God or in
the oneness of God. In pantheism, God is the universe itself.
Polytheists hold that there are many gods. For atheists, no
gods exist.
God is sometimes conceived as an immaterial being
(without a body), which information philosophy accepts,
since God is quintessentially an idea, pure information. Some
religions think an avatar of God has come to earth in the
past. Some religions see God as a personal being, answering
human supplications and prayers. A God intervening in
human affairs is thought to be the source of all moral norms.
Logical "proofs" of God’s existence are based on various of
these assumed attributes.
Now that information philosophy and physics has
identified the essential attributes and properties of the cosmic
creation process, the problem for theologians is to reconcile
their views of their gods with these discoveries.
Modern cosmology confirms that the universe came into
existence at a definite time in the past, some 13.8 billion years
ago. Although this does not need the Creator some religions
want, it does confirm a creation process. Information
philosophy attributes this to a
cosmic creation process.
Because this process continues today (indeed human beings
are co-creators of the world), deists are wrong about a creative
act at the beginning followed by a mechanical clockwork
universe tending to itself ever since.
Classical mechanics and even quantum mechanics can not capture
the time dependence of a creative process, that following the laws of physics something important
may be created from nothing of importance, that something of value may
appear where there was nothing of value before.
The laws of physics are said to be
indifferent to human affairs. It is the case
that if everything is
reduced to matter in motion
Theodicy (The Problem of Evil)
The problem of evil is only a problem for monotheists who
see God as omnipotent. "If God is Good, He is not God. If
God is God, He is not Good." (from J.B., a play by Archibald
MacLeish). The information philosophy solution to the
problem is a dualist world with both entropic destruction
and ergodic creation. If ergodic information is an objective
good, then entropic destruction of information is "the devil
incarnate," as Norbert Wiener put it.
Omniscience and Omnipotence Contradictory?
The idea of God as an omniscient and omnipotent being
has an internal logical contradiction that is rarely discussed
by the theologians. If such a being had perfect knowledge of
the future, like Laplace’s demon, who knows the positions,
velocities, and forces for all the particles, such a God would be
perfectly impotent, because the future is already determined.
Because if God had the power to change even one thing about
the future, his presumed perfect knowledge would have been
imperfect. Omniscience entails impotence. Omnipotence
some ignorance. Prayer is useless.
The discovery by Albert Einstein of ontological chance
poses an even greater threat to the omniscience of God and
the idea of foreknowledge. The inventors of probability always
regarded chance as atheistic. The use of statistics was simply
to make estimates of outcomes of many independent events
when detailed knowledge of those events was not possible
because of human ignorance. Ontological chance means that
even God cannot know some things.
For example, in quantum physics, if knowledge exists of
which slot a particle will go through in a two-slit experiment,
the outcome of the experiment will be different. The
characteristic interference caused by the wave function
passing through both slits disappears.
The Ergod
There is absolutely nothing supernatural about the cosmic
creation process, but it is the source of support for human life.
Many theologically-minded thinkers have long assumed that
life and mind were given to humanity by a divine providence.
The main product of the cosmic creation process is all the
negative entropy in the universe. While thermodynamics
calls it "negative," information philosophy sees it as the
ultimate positive and deserving of a better name. So we call
it the Ergo, which etymologically suggests a fundamental kind
of energy ("erg" zero), e.g., the "Gibbs free energy," G0, that is
available to do work because it has low entropy.
We co-opted the technical term "ergodic" from statistical
mechanics as a replacement for anti-entropic, and because it
contained "ergod.
An anthropomorphization (or theomorphization) of the
process that creates all the energy with low entropy that we call
Ergo has a number of beneficial consequences. Most all human
cultures look for the source of their existence in something
"higher" than their mundane existence. This intuition of a
cosmic force, a providence that deserves reverence, is validated
in part by the discovery of what we can provocatively call
"Ergod," as the ultimate source of life.
Such an Ergod has the power to resist the terrible and
universal Second Law of Thermodynamics, which commands
the increase of chaos and entropy (disorder). The great
mathematician and inventor of Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener,
saw Entropy as the Devil incarnate, a most apt theological
metaphor.
Without violating that inviolable Second Law overall, the
Ergod reduces the entropy locally, creating pockets of cosmos
and negative entropy (order and information-rich structures).
All human life, and any possible extraterrestrial life, lives in
one of these pockets.
Note that the opposition of Ergod and Entropy, of Ergodic
processes and Entropic processes, coincides with the ancient
Zarathustrian image of a battle between the forces of light
(Ahura Mazda) and darkness (Angra Manyu), of good and
evil, of heaven and hell. Many religions have variations on this
dualist theme, and the three major Western religions all share
the same Biblical source, probably incorporated into Judaism
during the Babylonian exile.
The Ergod is "present" and we can say enthusiastically is "in
us." The Ergod’s work is to create new information, so when we
create and share information we are doing the Ergod’s work.
The Problem of Immortality
The two basic kinds of immortality available today may not
satisfy those looking for an "afterlife," but they are both very
real and important, and there is a medical technology solution
visible on the horizon that should satisfy many persons.
The first is least satisfying - partial immortality of your genes
through children. This is of no significance to the childless.
The second is the ancient notion of fame or kleos (κλέος)
among the Greeks. When Homer sang of Achilles and
Odysseus, it was to give them undying fame, which they have
today among many literate persons.
A third kind of immortality will result from a solution to
the problem of aging, almost certainly from stem cell research,
which should allow vital organ replacement, and from a cure
for runaway cancer cells, a devastating entropic force.
This should satisfy even Woody Allen, who famously said,
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work.
I want to achieve it through not dying.
The second kind we call "information immortality." It is
more realizable than ever with the development of world-wide
literacy through print and now through the world-wide web,
which makes the Information Philosopher available anywhere.
In five years time, a majority of the world’s population will be
carrying a smartphone and thus able to read this work.
The great online Wikipedia will be capable of having
something about everyone who has made a contribution to
human knowledge.
If we don’t remember the past, we don’t deserve to be
remembered by the future.
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