Are Marbles Self-Conscious?

State 0

State 1

State 2

There is a consensus view in science that everything started with the Big Bang. (The Pope recently agreed.)

The scientists who hold this view suggest there was a 'Singularity' and from this Singularity everything in the Universe came into existence.

The scientists – who tend not to have a training in Philosophy, Theology or Ethics – suggest nothing meaningful can be said about "What was there before the Big Bang?" or "Where did the Singularity come from?"

After the Big Bang, they (the scientists) can hold forth in great detail about what happened in the first second or first three seconds and so forth.

The initial singularity was the gravitational singularity of infinite density thought to have contained all of the mass and space-time of the Universe before quantum fluctuations caused it to rapidly expand in the Big Bang and subsequent inflation, creating the present-day Universe.

Wikipedia

So, looking at the graphic at the top of this post, 'State 0' – which is prior to or above or within the Singularity, is considered as meaningless and having no cause or subsistence.

This simple cognitive act of ignoring what caused the Initial Singularity or how it came into being, or what It is in Itself, allows our current materialistic scientists to dodge a multitude of philosophical problems with their theory. The idea of 'infinite density' is an impossibility, as it happens. It can only be a mathematical proposition - not a reality.

The scientists simply start at State 1 and describe their speculations about how it became state 2 (or 'Now' as we call it). Notice why the Big Bang banged is attributed to "Quantum Fluctuations" or - in other words - "I haven't a clue".

Nothing can fluctuate if it is 'before time'. So the very premise of the Big Bang is a philosophical problem - not a paradox, simply a falsehood.

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Let's look at this consensus scientific view (as in most newspapers and all current science text books) taking as an analogy, that the singularity is a marble.

This is not so far fetched, as 99.999999 ... % of the universe is 'dimension' or massless space. The solid stuff of our universe is, indeed, about the size of a small marble (or so we are told - no-one was there to measure it before it fluctuated).

This marble, for reasons only known to marbles, suddenly Big Bangs!

Many marbles expand through dimension, creating space, time and motion.

They cluster in various forms, making stars, solar systems and galaxies.

They re-arrange themselves and elements arise, followed by minerals and finally plants and animals. Eventually, these marbles (or atoms as the scientists now call them) become human beings, that ponder where they came from and why.

One day, they hypothesise it all began with one big (or rather very small) marble ...

Although, in our analogy, we have simplified things a little - it is not so far from the way science currently sees the mystery of cosmology and how life arose.

But, it has left materialistic science with a dilemma. That dilemma is consciousness.

There is no point on the journey from Singular Marble, to many marbles, when the complexity of the arrangement of marbles allows for sentience - let alone self-consciousness. You will look in vain in the text books and learned tomes for an cogent explanation of that point where the insensate becomes sensate.

You will struggle even more to find that point when the aware becomes self-aware.

What we are expected to believe, through a complete leap of faith, is that inanimate objects (atoms) with no awareness, suddenly, through a chance amalgam of complexity go "I think, therefore I am". Yet, essentially, this is what the consensus scientific reality holds as being self-evident, without a single experiment or field study to back it up.

It is simply, an assertion.

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An alternative view

The Absolute, The ONE, The Supreme Intelligence, The Void ... intended to Know Its Self.

So it expressed (ex = out of) its Self.

Each point of expression, howsoever small and particular, participated in the Supreme Intelligence of its Source. So each point of expression was a point of awareness.

That awareness means every point in the unfolding universe is conscious - in howsoever small a degree - of its environs.
Consciousness is not something that suddenly arises; it is the basis of all aspects of the universe.

The movement from consciousness, which applies by degree to everything without exception, to self-consciousness remains a philosophical conundrum. In the human being, the triple brain is said by some, to be the vehicle that allows self-consciousness to manifest in a living person. In an earlier post we suggested one of the qualities or principles of the Soul is self-consciousness.

But the soul in carnation (in a body) still needs a vehicle for that consciousness, which is the brain.

The question of whether Artificial Intelligence can develop a self-consciousness is an important one, as we are quite possibly on the threshold of that happening, if it has not occurred already. But if it did - there is no reason to believe that the self-consciousness requires a soul (as it does with homo sapiens.

This might constitute a serious problem.