IX
Why a Universe?
Why Anything?

This page is under development. Please forgive errors and incompletions.

Motivations determine actions. In a cause-effect universe, this boils down to simple forces— like cue sticks striking billiard balls. The complexification of the universe does not change cause-effect relationships— it only makes the important ones more difficult to discern .

We've 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.

To summarize 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, beon Himself, engineer the mechanisms which invite us to consciousness? Why did He and his supporters invent the human brain-body system and a planet which supports its survival and propagation? Why did He 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 Creator of the universe is far more intelligent than humans and a few ticks older than the universe, we may expect Him 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, God came into being as a new, unprogrammed mind. He 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 a few ticks above zero.

The universe which gave birth to its own creator did not have the structure and organization we've learned to associate with the word, “universe.” Whatever forms existed were only transient energy aggregations randomly formed by the action of beons. Whatever consciousness existed was less than that of a newborn baby. Primitive forms, but enough to get the job done. We are proposing God was born into a universe with a temperature nearly identical to His IQ, nearly Absolute Zero. Yet he survived w/o a fur coat or feathers. He did not require food, shelter, comfort or warmth. He did not come programmed with emotions, the force behind most human motivation. God derived consciousness free of any desire to protect a family, demonstrate tribal loyalty, or serve a nation. We therefore assume that God's motivations were objective.

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, but remain 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 without equivocation, as if they are true, trusting that you know better.

Creation Theory #1

Upon acquiring consciousness, God looked around and saw other beons like Himself who were not conscious. Seeking to share His new discovery, He 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 God had 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 Creator, but those of an entity newly conscious and childlike, anxious to experiment and communicate.

Remember too that although we use the singular word for God, we are likely referring to at least three beons who developed consciousness in concert and may be acting together with common purpose.

Imagine three children who know nothing except their recent mutual discoveries of self. Three 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, unformed 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 did not personally do all the engineering involved in this project. The natural tendency of beon is to think and innovate, and with plenty of conscious beons needing something to keep them occupied, universe-construction was a worthy project.

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 simple formula: One life, one judgement, followed by an eternity of joy or pain. Having neither pews nor 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 over management decisions. Lucifer's challenge involved all those factors and more, as we will explain later or leave as an exercise for the student. This 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

That about sums up the simple creation story. So far, the main improvement we've appended to cathological explanations for God's motivation is the elimination of blame. While the notion that God created the human soul has enormous appeal for those who run their lives by emotion, it never made logical sense. What sense is there in the belief that an entity with infinite intelligence craves the company of beings with almost none?

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 know better touted the idea that biological life and the evolutionary process might be unique to planet earth, until the Speculative Science TV channels explained that there was more money to be made guessing about life on distant planets.

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