IXa
Why a Universe?
Why Anything?

We have already compared God's need for mankind to man's need for meaningful relationships with chipmunks. The point of doing so was not to discredit the idea that a Creator exists. (And don't you PETA folks get testy— no offense to chipmunks was intended either.) The chipmunk argument was intended to discredit the simpleminded reasons for creation offered by many religions.

As noted in previous pages: God did not create man— at least not the component of man which survives the body's demise— the soul of classical religion, the beon of our theory. The interesting question is—

Why did God, the pair of beons we've named Geon, engineer the mechanisms which invite us to consciousness? Why did They invent the human brain-body system and a planet which supports its survival and propagation? Why did They create the universe which supports our planet and perhaps others?

It seems unlikely that only one planet in the entire universe is suitable for beon-connected life forms. All our answers to the “why” question must apply to a universe teeming with extraordinary forms of beon-supportive life, on myriad planets more bizarre than anything concocted by human imagination.

Motivations

The more intelligent a person is, the more we expect rational motivations for his behavior. Experience also affects motivation; older and wiser people are somewhat less likely to operate according to their immediate self-interest than young people. We naturally expect that people with wisdom, experience, and intelligence will have good reasons for their actions.

Given that the Creators of the universe are far more intelligent than humans and a few ticks older than the universe, we may expect Them to have reasons— not simply good reasons, but excellent and highly logical reasons for creating the universe and bringing beons like ourselves to consciousness.

Human motivations are often a product of genetic and societal programming, but this cannot apply to God. Deriving consciousness free of either body or brain, each component of Geon came into being as a new, unprogrammed mind. They had none of the physiological or sociological support systems which are essential to the development of human consciousness— no body, no brain, no civilization, no tribe, no teachers, no parents, no language, and a start-up IQ one micro-tick above zero.

The proto-universe which gave birth to its own creator did not have the structure and organization we associate with the word, “universe.” Whatever structures existed were only transient energy aggregations randomly formed by the action of beons.

Each entity comprising Geon was born into a universe with a temperature identical to his initial IQ, nearly Absolute Zero. Lacking food, shelter, comfort or warmth, they survived without fur coats or feathers. Neither came programmed with emotions, the forces behind most human motivation. Geon derived consciousness free of any desire to get a roll in the hay, protect a family, demonstrate tribal loyalty, or serve a nation. We therefore assume that their motivations were rational, objective, and emotion-free.

Later, we will propose three interconnected motivation theories. Believe none of them, for they are not religious truths. Sci-fi novelists will do better. Before long, some self-styled prophet will steal a science fiction plot and con gullible people once again into believing that her goofy story is a profound truth revealed by God Himself.

When that happens, it is time to haul out a bazooka, grenade launcher, pistol, potato gun or slingshot and terminate the prophets, gurus, or whatever these most reprehensible of liars name themselves. A human being who claims to represent God is a liar of the most despicable sort.

The only liar worse than he, or she, who claims to be an emissary of God is the liar who claims to be a God. Close seconds— anyone who packages a set of beliefs which he then declares were given to mankind (through him, of course) by God.

Treat all stories about the Creator's motivations as fantasies. If you wish to adopt one for your emotional comfort, we advise choosing the most logically plausible. Make up your own mind about what that entails, remaining always open to a better tale.

Here we introduce a few creation tales. A story-telling style of explanation will best express these speculative ideas. To keep the language simple we shall tell the stories as if they are true, trusting that you know better.

Creation Theory #1

Upon acquiring consciousness, Geon discerned other beons who were not conscious. Seeking to share their new discovery, Geon sought to induce consciousness in them. This required a bit of input and some attention to feedback similar to that which a human mother gives her own offspring. Beons benefiting from this level of attention developed self-awareness much faster than Geon had originally done.

Bringing an unknown entity to consciousness may appear to be about as clever as fondling a blob of pulsating, glowing jelly oozing from a crashed flying saucer while ominous music plays in the background. But keep in mind that we are not considering the motivations of a 14 billion-year old all-knowing Creator, but rather those of an entity-pair newly conscious and childlike, naturally anxious to experiment and communicate.

Imagine two children who knew nothing except their recent mutual discoveries of self. Two parentless children, alone— not alone in a house, or alone in a forest— not even alone in a universe, but alone in a vast empty space of cold, diffuse energy and unconscious lumps of aeon. Who at such a primitive stage of development would not seek whatever companionship might be available?

When aeon-space collided with energy it formed lumps (beons) of different sizes. The largest beons were the first to develop consciousness because of their greater power and extent. As consciousness cascaded down to smaller beons, it eventually reached those too small and weak to acquire consciousness directly— beons like us.

Consider how long it takes a human to develop consciousness. Each of us is bombarded with visual, auditory, and tactile information for several years before the first glimmering of consciousness appears. Imagine attempting to induce consciousness in a beon by personally supplying it with every bit of the equivalent data. The project would prove as daunting as boring.

Consider further the process of providing information to an entity which has no built-in information processing mechanisms— no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, or skin— an entity which has the potential to think but happens to lack a brain.

Human beings have learned that the way to handle repetitive and tedious jobs is to automate them. We build factories to manufacture automobiles, and factories to make every nut, bolt, and wire that goes into those automobiles. Our factories are equipped with a variety of tools, from simple screwdrivers to complex computer-controlled robots— and we have factories to make those as well.

The universe is an enormous machine engineered to induce consciousness in beons like ourselves which would otherwise never make it. Its galaxies provide the superstructures which support power plants like our sun. Many of these stars provide energy to nearby factories like our planet. Each such planet is equipped with a biological infrastructure engineered to work within the available environment to support versatile life forms capable of supporting a beon-brain interface.

And no, the simple, fundamental life forms did not appear spontaneously within any kind of primordial ooze. Their molecules were arranged into working, self-replicating structures by the direct action of beon. The process is no different than that by which we transform lifeless matter into machines, except that the shaping is done telekinetically.

God— Geon— did not personally do all the engineering involved in this project. The natural tendency of beon is to think and innovate. How better to keep lots of newly conscious beons occupied than by setting them to work constructing a universe?

In the consciousness induction factory we call planet earth, a beon is assigned to each body during fetal development as soon as the tuner section of a newly growing human brain becomes functional. If the body survives and the brain works, beon is guided into consciousness through the body's sensory input fed to beon by the brain.

This process is not intended to be passive. Although low-level beons spend life by going along for the ride, the option to choose always exists.

Beon-level choices determine the quality of consciousness we develop. When the brain stops functioning, beon is released to do what it will— or what it can, according to its level of development. Ideally, beon will sustain whatever level of consciousness it acquired during its sojourn within the body, and will continue to develop in whatever environment it finds. But the ideal is not easily realized.

There is a state which we will call the independent consciousness threshold, or ICT. A beon reaching this state can maintain long-term consciousness without the assistance of a body. Beons falling short of the ICT will eventually lapse into unconsciousness.

Although a common component of Eastern belief systems, reincarnation is not a popular concept in cultures dominated by Christianity, where churches keep their pews and coffers full with a simpler formula: One life and one judgment, followed by an eternity of joy or pain— a fundamentally digital, black and white solution. Lacking pews and coffers, we can afford the concept of reincarnation: another lifetime in a different body for beons not reaching the threshold of independent consciousness.

Our version of reincarnation differs from Eastern religious concepts in several major respects. One is that beons are not granted an infinite cycle of returns to another body. We may resurrect the subject later.

Angels

From here we can parallel religious lore. Some angels got the notion that they were more powerful and intelligent than those who first derived consciousness, like pubescent children who suddenly know more than their parents.

One of these, the legendary Lucifer, challenged God's ascendency. Humans commonly challenge one another over territory and the right to control the behavior of others. They also challenge management decisions. Lucifer's complaints involved all those factors and more, as we will either explain later or leave as an exercise for the student. His challenge must not be compared to emotion-ridden human squabbles, because while beons at that level may have different projections of uncertain outcomes, they do not have emotions.

Summary

God must no longer be blamed for the creation of man. The worst that beon theory accuses God of doing is forcing us to consciousness.

Human beings have a built-in ego which leads us to imagine that we are in some way special. Theories of creation reflect this egocentric attitude. Evolutionists who should have known better once touted the idea that biological life and the evolutionary process might be unique to planet earth, until the marketing people from speculative science TV channels took them aside and explained that there was more money to be made inventing life on distant planets— something which old-fashioned science fiction writers figured out long ago.

Humans actually are special, but only in the special needs sense— the beons incorporated into human bodies are those who cannot possibly attain consciousness without bodies, those for whom a thousand lifetimes might produce the first glimmer of intelligence.

Now and then bits of truth sneak into holy writ and remain despite the best efforts of religionists to transmogrify their meaning. “Many are called, few are chosen,” comes to mind.

Fri 10/10/08 00:05
Mon 12/21/09 18:40 Ver.2