CO
Copyright
MetaNexus Views
by
Kevin Sharpe
Graduate College, Union Institute and University, Cincinnati, USA;
Harris Manchester College, Oxford University, Oxford, UK;
Oxford Institute for Science and Spirit, Oxford, UK;
kevin.sharpe@tui.edu
www.ksharpe.com
ABSTRACT.
I seek a model for God, and how God can interact with events in the world, that involves downward action, Gods obvious involvement in our lives, and doesnt create an energy problem whereby God has to intervene in our universe. I find a suggestive answer in the idea of nonlocality.
KEYWORDS.
Downward action, energy, God-world relationship, holism,
information, mind, nonlocality,
CONTENTS.
The Universe
and Downward Action
Divine
Actions and Information
Preparation for a school biology class sent me to catch frogs to dissect, down
by the rifle range near the mouth of the
I learned something. Not only that swamps are messy and frogs elusive, and that I dont want to go into medicine because the insides of frogs are also messy, but that nature is made up of levels. A frog is the name we give to a whole organism. Inside that lies the level of its organs, its lungs and heart for instance. Inside that appears the level of its various tissues. Going deeper into any of these we reach the cells, and so on down through the levels.
Harold Schilling introduced me to the idea of levels, the
image of the universe as hierarchies of levels (Schilling
I want to develop this idea to understand how God acts in the universe.
Ask if the frog can influence its heart and lungs or the lungs can affect their tissues. In other words, turn the upward scheme around. Think whether higher levels can act downward on lower levels, whether a whole can influence its parts.
A colleague of mine faced the surgical removal of a cancerous tumor in his neck. Besides conventional medicine, he sought the help of an eastern healer who taught him how to use meditation to control the blood flow in the area of the tumor. My friend practiced and practiced until the technique became second nature to him. The surgeons didnt need any of the six pints of blood they had waiting to transfuse. Popular story abounds in downward explanations like this mind over matter.
Nobel Prize winner, neuroscientist Roger Sperry, develops an
image of the downward action from the mind to the body (Sperry
Mental events (thoughts, feelings, decisions) have to do with the Brain, Sperry says. They describe total states of the brain. But they arent events in a mind separate from the physical universe and that mysteriously interact with the physical brain, like a guardian angel. They refer to the physical Brain. I physically think I want a cup of tea and, in a downward way, this event in my Brain effects my brains neurons and hence my bodily actions. I walk to the kitchen and put the kettle on.
Take Sperrys Brain model and use it to think about the universe. We already assume that what happens in higher levels of the universe depends on what goes on in lower ones. What I read on my computer screen depends on whats going on in the wizardry of the electronic bits and pieces in its insides. Now, what about the reverse, an upper level influencing those below it? Could what I read on the screen influence the electronic hardware of my computer, or could what happens at higher levels of the universe influence our levels?
First, think of the Brain again; it forms a whole (the brain-as-a-whole) that exceeds everything in the brain. It is the total state of the brain. Then, by analogy, imagine the Universe, meaning the universe-as-a-whole, or the total state of the universe. The Universe, considered as an entity, forms a whole that exceeds everything in it.
When I think to write the cow jumped over the moon, a conscious process at the level of my Brain goes on. It causes the lower-level neurons in my brain to fire off frenetically with signals that go to my arms, hands, and fingers to type the words. The Brain acts on its parts in a downward way.
Take this as an analogy for the Universe with its series of levels, each of which has its specific entities and laws. It similarly interacts downward with each of its levels and parts. Imagine water flowing down through channels in a terraced garden. A single source at the top divides into several ducts and then divides and divides, passing through levels after levels of flowers, shrubs, and statues. So the Universes interactions start at the top and flow down through its levels.
Pukeiti, a well thought-out and maintained azalea and
rhododendron garden in the Pouakai mountain range
near my childhood home, provides me peace and inspiration. Shrubs stand over me
in glorious flower; others squat intricate and splendid. Paths to unknown dells
wind over trimmed grass. I carry the gardens overall feeling to my
appreciation of each plant. Its not the same tree as it would be growing on
the curbside of a
The Universe interacts in a similar downward way with its parts, and this helps build its wholeness. The wholeness and the downward action interrelate.
But can we be specific about how this might happen?
Its easy to say the world produces enough food for everyone to eat what they need. But its hard to break through the politics, beliefs, and self-interests to share it all around. Similarly, its easy to say the Universe acts downward, but its difficult to describe a credible means by which the Universe could act this way. We need to specify the wholeness and the means for downward action, and thus say what makes the Universe different from the universe. Wholeness needs meaning or else its just a pretty word maybe inspiring with no explanatory content.
The automatic transmission in my car is a complete mystery to me. It works, does a good job in fact. But I dont know how it works. Thank goodness someone does and I would take my car to my mechanic the moment the transmission had problems. It isnt just a pretty idea that works by magic. Similarly, someone needs to know how the Universe acts downward so we can ask them questions about it, so they can fix the idea if it has problems, and so they can at least say when the idea will work and when it wont.
Sperrys model says that the whole (the Brain) acts on its
parts (the neurons, for instance), but it doesnt say how this happens, a
serious flaw according to the psychologist Aviel
Goodman (Goodman
An important theory comes from
We may ask how Peacockes God works downward. What means does Peacockes God use to interact with the Universe and the Universe with its parts?
The information approach suggests that God can communicate with the Universe and it with us by encouraging thoughts and feelings in our minds. Thus, a message may flash into a persons consciousness to act suddenly and so avoid a danger. Or it might dawn on us that certain events in history have profound significance and provide meaning to existence. God uses information to influence events by communicating something to the Universe, which passes the message on to its parts like a repeater station. Information seeps from beyond the Universe down to it and then to its various levels. Information forms the pivot for Peacockes image of the God-universe relationship; it creates his bridge between the levels.
How does the information proposal fare? One challenge especially needs addressing.
The conservation law of physics that says the energy in a closed system stays the same over time. This poses a problem for divine action because, for something to happen in a system (such as you or me) requires the expenditure of energy and this has to come from somewhere. If the only thing to change in a closed system is from the action from God, where does the energy come from to create the change? The interventionist approach says, no problem, God breaks into the regular order of nature and we should expect energy to be created in a closed system from Gods action. I reject the interventionist approach. I therefore need find out how God can interact in a way that doesnt create an energy problem for closed systems.
Water flowing down through a terraced garden is absorbed by the soil and plants, so that less reaches the bottom than left the top. It uses up water. Information isnt like water; its transfer doesnt use up energy, at least Polkinghorne thinks this way. He and Peacocke think they solve the problem of divine action and energy.
The passing of information from the words printed on the page to your eyes requires the same energy as the passing of no information from the page to the eyes of a blind person. Light moves between the page and the eyes the same in both cases. No more energy is required when information is read off the page than when its not.
If God were to send information to a lower level say to the Universe, the join in the chain of communication that Peacocke focuses on when he considers the energy problem this requires no extra energy. The energy problem appears solved, Polkinghorne thinks.
I used to have a fax machine on my regular telephone line and it was supposed to switch between the fax and phone modes automatically. Because this switch frequently didnt work, I invested in a separate phone line and number for the fax machine. Not everyone knows about the change, so I sometimes pick up my phone to hear the screeching of a fax machine struggling to get through to mine. It tries in vain; without the machine, I cant receive, store, process, understand, let alone act on the printed information in the incoming noise.
Peacockes information transfer model assumes the Universe has the means to receive, store, process, understand, and act on the data coming from God. But does the Universe have these abilities?
What if you tried to communicate with me by fax and I didnt have a phone line? You couldnt even get your machine to start to send it because you wouldnt have a number to dial. Similarly, God must transmit the information in a medium and in a mode that the Universe can pick up. In fact, it would have to be done in a physical medium for the Universe to receive, store, and so on, and not in some non-material medium outside the Universe.
Information transfer may not need energy, but it does need
other things. If God sends messages in a physical medium so the Universe can
pick them up, this requires energy. Polkinghorne and Peacocke havent escaped
the energy problem (though a footnote by Peacocke does start to recognize a
problem with this explanation; Peacocke
Information flow between God and the Universe requires energy from somewhere other than the universe. Peacocke may wish to overlook this, but it throws his scheme into doubt. He bases his system of spiritual ideas on a troublesome notion that conflicts with science. It depends on an unhealthy dualism whereby God exists outside the Universe.
Not all downward models of God interacting in individual events work. It is as though the information model creates a sealed room and asks you or me to walk into it. We cant. The Universe is, energy-wise, sealed like the room. No divinity from beyond the Universe can enter it to interact with it or anything in it without raising an energy problem.
A way out is to assume that you and I have ethereal bodies and that we can walk through walls and override physics. I dont go in for sleights of hand to solve intellectual problems; I would rather try to work them out from within my secular and scientific experience. Peacocke would probably agree.
I want to work within the sealed room of the Universe and understand God and Gods interactions with it in terms of the Universe.
Since the Brain image has no concrete content, that of the Universe cant borrow from it on this score. Similar with the idea of information. We need to look elsewhere.
While I like the transmission of my car, what I dislike most
about it are the heater controls.
Nonlocality says that simultaneous events separated in space
can correlate with each other at the very smallest quantum level, though no
known connection exists between them to cause this to happen. Neither pulls the
others string or sends it a fax. In theory, nonlocality happens everywhere, to
events at opposite sides of the universe as well as to those in neighboring
back yards. Their history doesnt matter and, though it only affects
quantum-level properties, it occurs at any scale from the quantum to the
galactic. Experiments have confirmed its existence as predicted in theory:
change the spin of a particle and observe what happens to a sibling particle:
it alters its spin at exactly the same time (Sharpe
Nonlocality perks the imagination: how can we explain it? What causes the correlations? The mathematics of the physics just says they occur without explaining why, without giving any underlying reason.
A common explanation says that all things connect with each
other at a basic level, like the heater controls connect somewhere inside the
mechanism. These interconnections show up in certain circumstances, such as
when the nonlocality of quantum physics appears. Menas Kafatos and Robert
Nadeau follow this interpretation in their book The Conscious Universe (Kafatos and
Nadeau
Each part of the universe connects with every other part. We cant separate off any part of it and say it is completely independent of everything else. This means the universe is indivisible. Its wholeness is at root this interrelatedness of all its parts; its indivisibility. The capital-U Universe is the small-u universe thought of as interrelated through nonlocality. The Universe is a gigantic heater control where everything has a button that, when pushed, instantly alters the setting of every other one.
I want to understand how God might act in the universe. The biggest step I take toward this is to claim that God forms the highest level of the universe; God is the Universe with a capital U. Just as the Universe is a whole that interacts downward on the parts of the universe, so, we can say, does God.
To rewrite Kafatos and Nadeaus theory in theological language, we might say that God can interrelate or interact downward with every part of the universe through nonlocality. In particular, God can (nonlocally) interact with specific events. However, nonlocality is only one way to look at the wholeness, the special attribute of God, that exceeds what the parts of the universe have as a collection. God transcends the universe.
The engineers who designed the heater control in my car hopefully only intended it to control the heat, cold, and air flow in my car. But, because one button pops out when I push another, it infuriates a customer and takes on another life. The mechanism becomes more than just a heating control.
The Universe is the whole that is all the parts of the universe interrelated nonlocally. Like the heater, it brings to its parts something they wouldnt otherwise have. The Universe (God) takes on a separate life that to some extent directs the parts.
I propose that God is the Universe because I think this idea can tell us how God might interact with specific events in the universe. The idea of the Universe God also satisfies the conservation law of physics that says the energy in a closed system stays the same over time. God can interact in a way that doesnt create an energy problem for closed systems. No energy flows with nonlocal correlations. Any box drawn in space and time around any object will, energy-wise, ignore nonlocal correlations with objects not in it.
Many young adults graduate from college or university with a liberal arts degree and no idea of what vocation to plunge into. Society believes it has prepared them for life and provided them with the ability to adapt to a variety of paths. What they choose is yet to come.
What Ive developed above is a means (via nonlocality) by which God can interact with individual events, but I have yet to discuss what God would do. What do the nonlocal connections of the Universe (and God) lead to in human experience? To make the question more specific, because were interested in ourselves I should ask: What individual events in our lives happen as a result of divine action? What are specific nonlocal interactions that the Universe God plays a part in?
Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff
(Penrose
Nonlocality automatically means, however, correlations with the Universe, with God; nonlocality is one way the Universe Divine works. So, strange though it may seem, thought and God interact; thinking is an example of an individual interaction between God and the universe.
You may feel short changed. You may be looking for miracles, something new and unexpected that God could do. You want a finger from the sky, for instance a lightning bolt that eradicates crime forever. Then youll feel satisfied; then youll believe. Thinking as God at work isnt enough, you may think.
Another matter. We dont expect God to mess with the universe in a magical or capricious way. God wouldnt add energy at some places and not at others. A rescue here, a healing there; a miracle for me, a miracle for you; but no help for a baby run over by a crazy driver. This we cant understand. We expect God to interact consistently with the universe and to respect its integrity. It all has to make sense, somehow.
Does the nonlocality explanation of what God could do make sense of divine actions? To answer this, we have to know what we want to make sense of. Miracles havent been my object. We dont experience the end of crime, no matter how much welfare the state pays out, how many police it deploys, how many prisons it builds, or how often lightning strikes. Nor do we expect it to disappear suddenly. Ive been trying to unravel something about what is God and what are some of the interactions God thus pictured has with the universe and its parts. I want to understand what does happen, not to fantasize. Thus we should forget about miracles in the orthodox sense; theyre outside the regular western belief system (though we might understand, using the nonlocality explanation, why they happen for those who believe in them). Forget about value judgments too. Im not asking why God doesnt stop crime when many suffer under it, because the system of understanding Im developing doesnt yet accept that God is interested in preventing suffering.
I want to make sense of the real events of our experience not explicable. Thought is an example, and I have shown how this is God at work in a noncapricious and nonmagical way.
I have equated God and the Universe and used nonlocality to say how God can interact individually with the parts of the universe so not to raise an energy problem. Other means may supplement or do a better job than nonlocality, but this suggests one way in which to understand the interaction. I also provided thinking as an example of what God might do in these individual interactions.
I now need to develop further this image of God, showing
more of what the modern western belief system says about its divinity (see
Sharpe
Goodman, Aviel.
Kafatos, Menas
and Robert Nadeau.
Peacocke, Arthur R.
Penrose, Roger.
Polkinghorne, John C.
Schilling, Harold K.
Sharpe, Kevin.
_________.
Sperry, Roger W.