Introduction


Despite my resolute sense of the sacred nature of earthly existence, religious belief has yet to strike me as a particularly appropriate form of response to the presence of the holy. Belief is to be distinguished from Faith, in that believing implies conceiving of the existence of spiritual beings without the perceptual experience to give such conceptions their content. Faith, in contrast, involves opening one’s innermost heart to the Wisdom of the divine and is the first step toward accessing supersensible experience.

Beliefs are empty wishes, which according to Rudolph Steiner, are “deeply bound up with personal egoism…rising out of the body like subjective smoke” (IMS, p. 233). I may believe a friend’s testimony concerning any number of worldly issues, but I cannot settle for a secondhand understanding of the true source of my deeply felt spiritual intuitions. I am forced, then, in this essay, to go beyond belief by way of Faith, that mode of loving perception whose content is Wisdom. In this way, I hope to contact the true source of my desire for the divine.

But leaving behind religious teachings and symbols entirely would be an arrogant mistake, stranding me in uncharted astral waters without any direction home. The human soul is a stormy sea between the lonely island I call “me” and the shores of a shared earthly destiny. Crossing these treacherous waters requires more than my ego can take. Psyche (my soul) is a spiritual being who cannot be an experience had by my ego, because my ego is always already adrift within Her, already swallowed whole. To calm the seas of my soul, I can only die willingly for Her in Faith that She redeems me. She is the Church, not of Rome, but of the earth entire. In Her, I find my destiny.

The maps toward Her hidden treasure have been written for us by countless spiritual seers, each urging us to brave the depths of Her psychic sea so that we may see with them what our earthly senses conceal. Her treasure is buddhi, the gift of intuitive knowing that bridges heaven and earth and turns death into eternal life.

The sacred scriptures pointing signs for us in the direction of the divine are many, but in this essay, I will discuss those mentioning three beings in particular: Krishna, Buddha, and Christ. In what follows, I will attempt, aided by Faith, Wisdom, and Love to know with these beings the purpose of their presence on earth, and to see with them how they are guiding the evolution of humanity toward a rebirth as the children of Gaia. 


Krishna

    The human, at present, is a being precariously caught between the ignorant instincts of its animal past and the angelic gnosis of its spiritual future. Said differently, the human is a heavenly being still in the process of becoming fully conscious of its mission on earth.

The human soul, wounded by the split of the ego from the unconscious, is torn between a desire to live and a fear of death. In such a wounded state, humanity has little choice but to make of life a war in defense from death. Out of this confusion (confusion, because war for life only assures that death prevails) grows the soul’s conscience, its sense of good and evil. These moral opposites arise because the ego knows of no other scheme with which to make sense of its precarious mortal existence.

Humanity’s inability to see the meaning of the playful war of these friendly enemies (good and evil, life and death, desire and fear) is responsible for shattering its collective Psyche into an untold number of ego identities, for whom collectivity has become unconscious. The current age of spiritual darkness due to egoic isolation is one of war for forgotten wisdom buried beneath the blood of ages, for as Krishna says, only he or she “who in all things is without affection though visited by this good or that evil and neither hates nor rejoices, [only] his [or her] intelligence sits firmly founded in wisdom,” (BG, 2:57).

Krishna is the being that helps open the human heart to the karma of the generations who have come before, in whose deaths the lives of the present steal their time. Krishna is consciousness of the past, and all its implications for humanity’s future path. In Krishna, one becomes conscious of the weight of the whole human mass, or what Teilhard de Chardin might call the “great Monad” (HM, p. 188). 

In the opening scenes of the Bhagavad-Gita, after being urged by his as yet unrecognized charioteer to ride forth into battle against his own family, the warrior Arjuna is caught in an epic struggle with the great moral forces in his soul. The war of Kurukshetra is set to begin, but Arjuna throws down his bow and arrow because he cannot bear the thought of slaying his own people, of embracing the cosmic significance and ultimate sacrifice of the task before him.

    Arjuna looks to his charioteer for help, saying:

It is poorness of spirit that has smitten away from me my true heroic nature, my whole consciousness is bewildered in its view of right and wrong. I ask thee which may be better [to fight, or not]—that tell me decisively. I take refuge as a disciple with thee; enlighten me, (BG, 2:7).

    His charioteer responds:

Finite bodies have an end, but that which possesses and uses the body, is infinite, illimitable, eternal, indestructible. Therefore fight, O Bharata. He who regards the soul as a slayer, and he who thinks it is slain, both of them fail to perceive the truth. It does not slay, nor is it slain, (BG, 2:18-19).

    In the chapters that follow, the charioteer eventually reveals himself to be Krishna, the Lord of all existences. He shares with Arjuna many lessons concerning the inevitability of action in the constantly flowing realm of Prakriti (Nature). Among these lessons are the yogas leading the divinely inspired worker to act without attachment to the fruits of his or her labor while knowing Purusha (Soul) through devotion to the supreme Brahman. Bhakti brings one closer to the divine essence within, the atman, which when identified with heals the egoic rift in Psyche by reminding us of our eternal origin and destiny. The necessity of uniting the three yogas of action, knowledge, and love is a message running throughout the Gita, but the most important impartation occurs in chapter 11.

    Arjuna, now free of self-pity and the delusion that his egoic indecision might forestall the inevitable cosmic unrolling of the Supreme Godhead’s secret labor on earth, asks Lord Krishna to reveal his divine form and body.

The Gita describes Krishna’s supreme form:

It is that of the infinite Godhead whose faces are everywhere…a world-wide divinity seeing with innumerable eyes, speaking from innumerable mouths, armed for battle with numberless divine uplifted weapons…the whole world multitudinously divided and yet unified is visible in the body of the God of Gods, (BG, 11:9-14).

    Arjuna struggles to see such a tremendous vision, which he says is “hard to discern because Thou art a luminous mass of energy on all sides of me, an encompassing blaze, a sun-bright fire-bright Immeasureable,” (p. 176).

    A warrior of another time, Teilhard de Chardin, seems to have encountered a similar many-eyed, many-mouthed divine being while embroiled in war against his own European family, calling it variously “an immense human Presence” (HM, p. 174), and “a Soul greater than my own” (HM, p. 175).  He echoes the difficulty expressed by Arjuna, saying that the “gift or faculty of perceiving, without actually seeing…is still comparatively rare,” (HM, p. 31). Krishna relates the same when he says, “What thou hast to see, this thy human eye cannot grasp; but there is a divine eye (an inmost seeing), and that eye I now give to thee,” (BG, 11:8). This eye belongs to the atman, whose spiritual sight sees beneath the surfaces that separate to the face shared by All.

    The intense human energy that is brought forth in war seems to have served as the provocation for the emergence of such a spiritual sight in both Arjuna and Teilhard. As Teilhard says, “The effect of the war was to break through the crust of the commonplace and conventional [so as to open a window] onto the hidden mechanisms and deep strata of what humanity is becoming,” (HM, p. 178). In this way, the confusion of good and evil are transcended through a vision of the future, as the full breadth of time and the path of world history are made present. Evil becomes, given such a view, the provocateur of further evolution—the light that violently wakes the Self (atman) from its slumber deep within the clouded human soul.

As Teilhard says, the outward chaos of the front lines, like a crashing wave, curls upon itself and develops within one: 

“…an underlying stream of clarity, energy, and freedom that is to be found hardly anywhere else in ordinary life—and the new form that the soul then takes on is that of the individual living the quasi-collective life of all men, fulfilling a function far higher than that of the individual, and becoming fully conscious of this new state,” (HM, p. 168).

    Krishna-consciousness calls upon one to go beyond the isolated egoic state and its culturally relative sense of good and evil by offering insight into the mission of humanity as a whole. Krishna is the first awakening of the human Self (atman) and its demand of personal sacrifice for love of All (Brahman). The ego must transform, like Arjuna and Teilhard, by remembering the momentum of karmic current carrying it out of the fragmentation of old, and seeing, with them, the future unification that redeems its present sacrifices. With the knowledge gained through such sight, one is called to fight not for hatred of one’s enemies or the spoils of war, but for love of an earthly destiny decreed by heaven.

    In the closing pages of the Gita, Krishna offers his final teaching to Arjuna, saying:

Devoting all thyself to Me, giving up in the conscious mind [ego] all actions into Me, resorting to Yoga of the will and intelligence be always one in heart and consciousness with Me, (BG, 18:57).

    To which Arjuna responds:

Destroyed is my delusion, I have regained memory through Thy grace, O Infallible One, I am firm, dispelled are my doubts. I will act according to Thy word, (BG, 18:73).

    “We are,” as Teilhard says, “the countless centers of one and the same sphere” (HM, p. 192) rushing toward an inevitable return to psychic and spiritual wholeness. Only by yolking individual knowledge, action, and love for the sake of collective human destiny can one participate in bringing to fruition the divine mission on earth.
 

Buddha

    Krishna grants the human being a glimpse of the glory of his or her dharma by reminding him or her of their terrifying karma and the sacrifices its purification requires. Fully acknowledging one’s dharmic duty involves purifying the soul of its desires and fears. The teachings of the Buddha provide an appropriate practice kindling in the soul the fires of such purification. 

    The Buddhist Pāramitās provide the ego with a vessel to carry it from the island of isolated suffering across turbulent seas to the shores of enlightened compassion. One such path toward moral perfection and wise understanding can be found in the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths.

    The first Truth concerns dukkha, or the fact that egoic life is suffering. Before Prince Gotama realized his inner Buddha-nature, his encounter with the three sorrows of age, sickness, and death nearly overwhelmed him. During the course of spiritual development, every individual is forced to confront these same sorrows in one way or another. Most initially ignore and repress them, turning their eyes elsewhere toward the many distractions afforded by countless bodily desires. But beneath the surface of such superficial pleasures, there begins to boil a sense of the emptiness of all egoic longings. The ego is possessed by a thirst that knows no satisfaction, and so eventually, dissatisfaction begins to overflow it, carrying the sorrows back into consciousness where they drown one in despair.

The Buddha invites one to sit with this psychic crisis rather than run, such that in its painful message is seen the source of the cure for all earthly sorrows. Recognizing that life lived egoically is a disease is the first step along the path toward calming the unsettled waters of the soul.

The second Noble Truth concerns samudaya, or the origin of suffering. Only once the impermanence of all manifest form is accepted and the sorrows of age, sickness, and death have been faced can the cause of such afflictions become apparent. It is craving for and attachment to the flux of phenomena that disquiets the soul and gives rise to its suffering. An ego still immersed in the uneven seas of desire is afflicted with a dis-ease occluding the clarity of its dharmic destination. Unless the ego-identified soul is cured of its suffering, one’s Buddha-nature remains but a seed awaiting the lush soil affording it an opportunity to grow. 

The third Noble Truth, nirodha, concerns the cure allowing for the cessation of suffering.  In this Truth is found the promise of the Buddhist path, that desire and its samsaric effects can be overcome and transformed into the bliss of nirvana. Nirvana is the extinction of desire through the realization of an emptiness (Suññatā) so luminously alluring that one cannot help but fill it with infinite compassion (Karuṇā). With this, the seed, or Tathāgatagarbha (GH, p. 105), of one’s inherent Buddha-nature absorbs the now purified water of the soul and begins to grow. 

The fourth Noble Truth concerns mārga, or the Eightfold Path.  It lays out a systematic way of engaging life as a spiritual practice in order to cultivate the seeds of wisdom (prajñā), morality (sīla), and concentration (samādhi) in oneself. Of course, an initial glimmer of insight was required before one could find the path at all. Without having the capacity to deeply recognize the inadequacy of egoic existence, one cannot even begin to take seriously the wisdom and moral precepts contained in the Eightfold Path.

As His Holiness the Dalai Lama says, in each person hides “the pure nature, the potential…to overcome imperfections and attain liberation,” (GH, p. 105). A natural awareness of the ever-present seed of wisdom within allows one to begin the process of cultivation. Once one has mastered right speech, action, and livelihood, he or she can begin to cultivate right effort, mindfulness, and concentration. With continued practice, the path culminates in a full flowering of the divine wisdom of buddhi, the intuitive intelligence lying dormant in the heart of each of us.

Buddhi opens in us a gateway between the heavenly realm of eternity and the earthly passage of time, giving us insight into the essence of our existence. The purpose of Mahayanist Buddhist practice, however, is not merely the attainment of Nirvana for oneself, but the transformation of one’s whole being into a bodhisattva of compassion. A bodhisattva is compelled to remain on the earthly plane to “suffer with” all sentient beings, sympathetically sharing with them through skillful means the path toward liberation.

Buddha’s mission is to provide the human being with a method for realizing the wisdom and compassion of its inherent Tathāgatagarbha. Without a way of cultivating this seed within, one remains stranded on an island of ego lost amidst the sea of saṃsāra. Buddhist practice offers a light in the darkness, a means of contacting the buddhi hidden in the depths of our soul and making conscious its task of transfiguring the world.


Christ

     While it has also been said of Buddha that he “walks on the water” (EPO, p. 90), Christ heralds the very Spirit of the water itself. Rudolf Steiner has said, “Buddha’s life ends with the transfiguration, whereas the most significant part of Jesus’ life begins after the Transfiguration,” (CMF, p. 97). By this, Steiner means that Christ not only became one with the light of the world (as Buddha did after his parinirvana), Christ is the being who radiates this light into the world of flesh and blood, into the very heart of the cosmos itself.
   
    Just before his death, the historical Buddha, according to the Dalai Lama, “stated that the body of a fully enlightened being…is…impermanent and subject to [transience, impermanence, and non-endurance]” (GH, p. 120), just like every other phenomenal form. According to Steiner, Buddha’s transfiguration merged him with the “all-pervading blissful life of the spirit” (CMF, p. 97), thereby demonstrating humanity’s origin in the divine Word (Logos).

    In contrast, as is written in the Gospel according to John, in Christ, “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (1:14). In this way, the spiritual essence of the cosmos incarnated on earth, suffered crucifixion, and was resurrected. As a Sun being, Christ expresses the hidden meaning of light and warmth, radiating wisdom and love upon all humanity. Christ’s transfiguration makes transparent, according to Jean Gebser, “the genuine irruption of the other side into this side, the presence of the beyond in the here and now, of death in life, of the transcendent in the immanent, of the divine in the human” (EPO, p. 529).

    While Buddha provides the method that purifies the soul, returning Psyche to a virgin state free of the conflicting desires and fears of a merely earthly existence, only Christ can provide the spiritual power that births in us the divine Wisdom capable of loving the world entire.

As is spoken by Christ to His Father:

…the glory which You gave Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as We are One: I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have Loved them, as You have Loved Me (John 17:22-23).

    The Love made possible by Christ’s incarnation on earth is what unifies not only the entire human race, but the cosmos itself into a single Body whose life is eternal. This, the Body of Christ, is the true Church open to anyone with the Faith to heal the separation from the spiritual realm caused by original sin. This sin was the knowledge of good and evil that turned the soul into a battleground and made death its principle enemy. As is written by Paul in Corinthians 15:22, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

    Faith was distinguished from belief at the outset of this essay in order to make it clear that the wishful desiring of the latter only clouds our ability to listen for divine inspiration. Although it is written, “…blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29), we may read the use of the term “believed” in this context as more akin to the openheartedness of Faith than the egoic desire for wish fulfillment. But the open ears afforded by Faith are not enough to fully and intuitively participate in the meaning of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

As Steiner has said,

Faith allows a person to participate unconsciously in the Mystery of Golgotha, [but] initiation leads to a fully conscious connection with the power that streams invisibly from events depicted in the New Testament (CMF, p. 100).


    In other words, while Faith brings us to the water, it cannot make us drink of its immortalizing Wisdom. However, the Resurrection of Christ is significant precisely because it transforms what had been revealed only to a few in secret into an event upon the world stage of history. What had been a mythological image becomes, after Christ, an actual event (CMF, p. 98). Given Faith, though one may currently lack the spiritual sight to consciously commune with the Wisdom of Christ, realization is nonetheless assured and made inevitable by the deed that was done on the Cross for all humanity.

   
    But as was made clear at the outset, I cannot settle for the hearsay of stories, but must myself die and rise by the Love of Christ. I must know, with Paul, “that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more,” (Romans 6:9), and “that our old man [was] crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed” (Romans 6:6). With this, the Christ in me becomes alive unto God, I am reborn, and my Psyche remembers her true name: Sophia, Bride of God.

    My soul is but a reflection of Sophia, the divine Wisdom who’s Love was so great it overflowed the Pleroma and created the world. As Eve, She tempted me when I was Adam with the serpent’s secret fruit. I ate and gained knowledge that this world was not my origin and that death must not be my destiny. Christ was Her rescue mission, the Savior sent to Redeem Her creation from the sin of separation from God. Christ is “the Light of the world” (John 9:5) who shines upon the shattered mirror of many souls making each One with Him in Love.
   

Conclusion

Only when I begin to open my heart in Faith can I hear the whispers of spiritual beings softly singing me the Song of the Spheres. Faith brings me—through Krishna, Buddha, and Christ—to Wisdom, the source of the Light of the world.

With Krishna, I come to know and love my karma, to act without personal attachment to the fruits of my labor. For the labor of life on earth concerns a destiny shared by all, a mission mandated by the insatiable ramification of the human race and the closed shape of its planet’s surface. Our dharma is to unite as a single Omega, a Cosmic Person.

I come to know, with Buddha, the skills required to pacify my soul, to cure it of its sickness. So long as the ego remains unconscious of its shadow and Psyche forgets her name, my soul cannot express its one true desire: to love all beings that suffer in the world of earthly turning. Buddha provides the soil out of which the seed of compassion and Wisdom may grow.

In Christ, I come to know that His was also my ego’s crucifixion, the death of all my sin. Christ comes to replace the external Law of old by awakening the Word of God within my heart, “for the Law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). His resurrection redeems the creation of the cosmos and opens the gates of heaven to all who dwell on earth, because as Teilhard says, “Heaven cannot dispense with Earth” (HM, p. 203).


Works Cited
ISM - Bamford, Christopher, ed. Isis Mary Sophia: Her Mission and Ours. Steiner Books, 2003.
BG - Bhagavad gita and its message with text, translation and Sri Aurobindo's commentary. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Light Publications, 1995.
HM - Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de. The Heart of Matter. New York: Harvest Books, 2002.
EPO - Gebser, Jean. Ever-present origin. Athens, Ohio: Ohio UP, 1986.
GH - His Holiness The Dalai Lama. The Good Heart A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus. Minneapolis: Wisdom Publications, 1998.
CMF - Rudolf, Steiner,. Christianity as mystical fact. Hudson, N.Y: Anthroposophic P, 1997.

This is a video I posted that sparked a whole series of responses (from YouTube users Renshank and LordImmolation that you can follow if you go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv0so8rbwPA

I post it so you can better follow this textual exchange I had with another user, sdaciuk, about Dennett and Dawkins, as well as the nature of science and the place of human beings in the universe. It eventually became a discussion about panexperientialism, as well... enjoy!


First message from sdaciuk:

Honestly, its very hard to listen to these videos again. Ill give it a few minutes and let you do the rest, because honestly, your droning nonsense is terrible.

I fail to see how you come to any of your conclusions except by misinterpretation. For example: Dawkins. Dawkins does indeed boil down everything to genes. That those genes contain information, absolutely. His position is that those genes need to be good valuable replicators. What he has NEVER done is say that everything else is negligible. Indeed, those outside factors you mention are WHY genes matter as selfish information containing replicators. Become familiar with the term phenotype, I can assure you that Dawkins is and uses it often. Your claim that evolutionary biologists often disagree with Dawkins is rather bizarre since you dont seem to know what Dawkins view is. In fact it seem to be the opposite situation where the public does not understand evolution and posts ridiculous videos on youtube about it.

Dawkins and his readers are of course aware that there is more complicated things going on with traits and genes (again PHENOTYPE). The point of Dawkins view is that genes ultimately give us our possible abilities, drives, instincts and so on. Our capacity for communication, our capacity for intelligence is wrapped up in genes and DNA. By improving those things genes become better survivors (dependant upon situation of course). Ive never ever heard him say that DNA is independent of the organism. To argue against DNA as being self-replicating is moronic at best. Its a pointless statement since everyone knows that DNA alone is not self-replicating, that it occurs in certain conditions within the creature. What is being referred to is the entire process of reproduction including stages of reproduction, gestation, birth, and development. I should hope that would have been obvious. Did you read the whole book or just a page?

Dennett: He does not deny that you feel, he is absolutely not a dualist. Software is stored on hardware in an absolute material sense. This is NOT dualism. Dennetts position is entirely biological. In fact he is often criticized in an opposite fashion to your equally wrong points. Usually people claim he doesnt even believe in consciousness, only in biological machines. He does attribute much to unconscious processes, which you may be alluding to in a bit of your video. Seriously, Dennett is so against Descartes dualism he has spent the last 20 years trying to destroy anything remotely close to it. Dennett does not try to say that consciousness doesnt matter in evolution, but that it is a part of it. But he doesnt think it is a special magical thing that is unknowable.

What I truly find striking is that you critique the perspectives you think Dennett and Dawkins hold, but they dont hold them. Your statements about what you think are actually very close to what Dawkins and Dennett argue FOR. I honestly dont know how you got so mixed up.

The main thing I can see that Dennett, Dawkins and myself would laugh at you for is your position on atoms having feelings or having consciousness, that is most definitely from the shrooms.

I urge you to watch some of Dennetts videos on consciousness, they are absolutely excellent. I think you need to take a second read of the selfish gene as well. Somehow youve come to disagree with people you mostly agree with.


My response:

Thanks for the message. I have read Dawkins' Selfish Gene and several of Dennett's books (including Darwin's Dangerous Idea). I tend to prefer the paradigm offered by other biologists like Lynn Margulis, Francisco Varela, Richard Lewontin, and Stuart Kauffman. Dawkins is easy to caricature and I may have done so in my video, which is what has flustered you so. While I realize he obviously realizes all the other factors involved in getting the DNA to do its work, I think he over-emphasizes the selfish replicator idea to such an extent that it gives people a distorted idea of evolution, that it is all about random mutation of genes and selection by a pregiven environment. I think Developmental Systems Theory is shedding light on how important embryogenesis and environmental conditions are, so much light that the selfish gene theory no longer seems to have put the emphasis in the right place. Self-organization is the basic principle of life, in my opinion, not gene replication. The "gene," as I said in my video, is an abstract, artificial shorthand that doesn't exist in the complex physical reality of the genome. Of course much of what an organism does is wrapped up in its genome, but I think Dawkins' tends to lean too far toward genetic determinism. The environment and self-organizing tendencies of life play just as large a role in phenotype and behavior. Dawkins repeatedly uses the metaphor that genes are a program for making an organism, and then says that it is not a metaphor. Not only is it a metaphor, it is a poor metaphor, because as you admitted, the genes can't do a thing without the autopoiesis of the cell as a whole.

As for Dennett's view of consciousness, I know he was a student of Gilbert Ryle and prides himself on being anti-Cartesian. But nonetheless, I think he avoids dualism only nominally, while implicitly he is still employing the same basic principle that Descartes did separating mind from body when he separates information from its medium, or software from hardware. I absolutely love Dennett, however (can't say the same for Dawkins) and have written numerous papers making heavy use of his ideas about consciousness. I don't think consciousness is magical or unknowable, either. But I don't think it can be known reductively or empirically. I think phenomenology must be employed if we hope to understand consciousness on its own terms. This doesn't mean I am a substance dualist, but I think it is obvious that there is a hard problem of consciousness that requires fundamentally rethinking our approach to understanding the way the brain and consciousness are not ontologically separate. The are obviously distinct, but the challenge is to discover how this distinction is possible without substantial separation. Varela began a research program called neurophenomenology before he died that I think is very promising in terms of shedding light on this issue.

Yes, I am used to being laughed at for my panexperientialism, but I think it will prove to be the only solution to the mind/body problem once reductive materialism is no longer in vogue.

I've watched pretty much all Dennett's lectures on YouTube, unless there are new ones I haven't found yet.

I'd recommend a book to you, if you are at all interested in the perspectives I've offered: "Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind" by Evan Thompson.

-Matt


Second response from sdaciuk:

I've been debating with myself for an hour as to whether or not to respond. I wrote out a full page response before feeling that I was wasting my time and probably your own. I will instead respond shortly:

Thank you for admitting to misrepresenting Dawkins. I still think you are and will do so in the future as well, but I appreciate that you acknowledge the unfair treatment of his position.

I still don't think you understand Dawkins position for what it is. I suppose he can come across as narrowing it down to the gene alone, but he means that in context of the phenotype (his extended phenotype) and everything int he environment. I've never gotten the impression that you have from his work and I think you should recognize how much you are agreeing with him when you don't focus on the metaphor but what he is actually meaning.

The hard problem of consciousness is getting people to forget that they ever heard about a hard problem of consciousness. In its current form as "the hard problem" it is begging the question. What could anyone ever come up with to satisfy those terms? In your case it requires magic atoms. For other it requires matter that is unknown in the universe thus far. For some others they simply "know" that biology isn't the answer. The hard problem requires redefinition to something that makes sense, in its current form it is meaningless speculation for believers who crave mystery. What special answer would truly satisfy you as to why we have phenomenological experience? I was satisfied far before I even heard of the problem by the simple statement that it seems better than not having it at all. Or, if not better, than at least stable enough for reproduction to continue.

Good luck with your atoms,
-Stuart


My second response:

I think Chalmers formulated the hard problem for a very simple reason: if biological organization and evolution are entirely mechanical in nature, there is no reason for consciousness to ever have evolved and no role for it to play. So all a reductionist can say about it is that it is an epiphenomenal fluke. This doesn't satisfy me. When I hear a materialist say that interiority all the sudden appeared because of some special sort of material organization, I think "magic." Panexperientialism is an attempt to avoid such a magical leap from vacuous matter to conscious experience by explaining evolution as an increase in the experiential capacity of biological systems due to an increase in physiological complexity. It is quite reasonable if we are only able to free ourselves from a Newtonian metaphysical outlook.


Third response from sdaciuk:

Ah.

I wrote way too much again, and so, must trim it down to be reasonable.

Anyone who makes the conjecture that evolution needs a reason to occur is a quack. There is never a reason for something to evolve, why should there be? Consciousness doesn't need any more of a reason to evolve than a talon or long neck. It occurs because of mutation, natural selection, and all the other things that happen. Sometimes a little luck in the unpredictability of events (a lightning bolt, a fire, or a free meal) can make all the difference. To infer reason is to make a critical mistake in understanding evolution.

Allow a metaphor to deal with another of your points: If I wanted to go to the circus with my father, but the circus which was advertised goes bankrupt before coming to town, and my father explains this to me, does my dissatisfaction with the answer change the nature of existence? Mere dissatisfaction with existence and evidence does not infer some other answer like: "the circus will come later" or "consciousness must be still out there somewhere".

Panexperientialism is an attempt at begging the question. Without evidence it is not a theory nor of any use. You and I have the same access to atoms. I fail to see them as experiencing, yet you do (I presume). Whether they are or are not experiencing still tells us nothing in the long run. We still use a brain and it's structures to have consciousness, it is consciousness. Correlative evidence (lobotomy, lesions, head injuries, diseases, etc) all point to the structures as important, i believe you do not disagree with this. Why then does experience need to occur at the atomic level and then again at the structural level? It seems like a good time to use Ockham's razor.

One minute you put down matter as vacuous and unable to form consciousness by evolution, the next it has additional fundamental properties that make it far more magical than the materialist perspective. Perhaps I am misreading you.

"Panexperientialism is an attempt to avoid such a magical leap from vacuous matter to conscious experience by explaining evolution as an increase in the experiential capacity of biological systems due to an increase in physiological complexity." This does not sound like panexperientialism without adding in that matter has its own experiences regardless of structure. Whatever the hell that means. So maybe I am misunderstanding you.

-Stuart


My third response:

"Anyone who makes the conjecture that evolution needs a reason to occur is a quack."

Or a philosopher...

We cannot avoid doing metaphysics when we begin to investigate the biological world, because our understanding of life must include our own ability to know it. We are creatures trying to know the essence of our own existence.

I think you'd agree that there is a reason to do science, despite the fact that the beings doing it are biological organisms.

One of my basic metaphysical assumptions is that the mind that attempts to know the world and the world itself are not ontologically distinct. If you are an avowed anti-Cartesian, I assume you'd agree.

It follows that nature cannot be understood as a mere playing out of mechanistic parts driven by blind forces. If we do understand nature this way, as pure objective extension with only accidental motion, then either we have re-adopted Cartesian dualism, or we have concluded that human consciousness (and therefore all its ideals, including scientific knowledge) is a complete illusion.

Rather than separate rational knowing consciousness from nature, I'd rather see it as an extremely developed mode of experience and feeling that is present to some degree in all forms of matter (which even at the atomic and sub-atomic level, is highly complex and self-organizing).

If you think consciousness doesn't need any more reason than a long talon or a neck to evolve, then I don't think you've grasped the significance of consciousness. What we call 'consciousness' is really a rather well developed mode of experience that has only come very late in the trajectory of evolution, but its essential property is interiority. The question is why body parts like necks and talons should be capable of awareness of any kind at all if, mechanically speaking, they could perform their functions just as well without it. What is the survival value of a property (interiority) that adds nothing to the way forces are exchanged within a deterministic machine?

"Panexperientialism is an attempt at begging the question. Without evidence it is not a theory nor of any use."

Panexperientialism is not a scientific theory, but a metaphysical presupposition. Scientific theories about specific facts provide us with knowledge only within a metaphysical system of general reasons. Causality itself is a sort of "reason." If we haven't established metaphysically how causality works, we cannot do science (and as Hume brilliantly showed, based on empirical observation alone, there is no evidence for efficient causality).

It is my sense that, given the complete collapse of Newtonian cosmology over the course of the past century, reductionistic materialism no longer seems to be an especially elucidating metaphysical explanation for contemporary scientific findings (like that the entire universe is more of a process of becoming, a series of irreversible transformations, than a machine obeying fixed laws).

The experience occurring at the atomic level is intensified as atoms coalesce into more complex forms of organization over time. There are multiple levels of structural emergence nested in the brain's physiology (atoms, molecules, cells, etc.). Each increase in organized complexity produces an intensification in the experience associated with the body in question.


Fourth response from sdaciuk:

Or a philosopher
-One with a desperate need for more than evidence suggests.

We are creatures trying to know the essence of our own existence
-An essence? Im not sure which definition of the word youd like best. I assume you mean true substance. Again we get back to satisfaction, what satisfies some will not satisfy others on this matter. Again I am satisfied with evolution not requiring reason, but that it developed something capable of seeking reasons. That does not mean reasons exist in every place we look.

One of my basic metaphysical assumptions is that the mind that attempts to know the world and the world itself are not ontologically distinct. If you are an avowed anti-Cartesian, I assume you'd agree.
-Agreed, so long as mind means only the brain and no magic particles, no dualism, nothing beyond the simple interactions of specialized bits of brain doing brainy activities.

It follows that nature cannot be understood as a mere playing out of mechanistic parts driven by blind forces.
-Why? And which blind forces? I dont think evolution is a force at all in any way if that is what you meant. Id be ashamed to hear it described as a force. Although making up forces seems popular right now.

Calling consciousness as I see it an illusion is no insult to me, I prefer to think of it in perspective: its better than it could have been. At least from my tainted personal perspective it seems better than not having it or having a more limited form. Obviously this is a silly statement entirely as anyone can poke holes in it. However, it doesnt feel bad to think this way, it doesnt make me value my consciousness any less. I am still me despite the illusion (if you want to call it that). Frankly I dont consider it an illusion, it seems to me that when you start thinking about it as mere biological processes scattered round the brain with no special-ness that it stops being an illusion.

If we do understand nature this way, as pure objective extension with only accidental motion, then either we have re-adopted Cartesian dualism, or we have concluded that human consciousness (and therefore all its ideals, including scientific knowledge) is a complete illusion.
-uh huh. Ok. Weve got being objective turning into dualism for some reason, there is accidental motion instead of just regular motion (accidents must be caused accidentally by intentional movers yes?) Right, and I already agree with the end bit, except that science still makes sense since the things weve done with the scientific method seem valuable to me whether I am an illusion or not.

Rather than separate rational knowing consciousness from nature, I'd rather see it as an extremely developed mode of experience and feeling that is present to some degree in all forms of matter (which even at the atomic and sub-atomic level, is highly complex and self-organizing).
-Im with ya until you hit the bit about atoms having experience and feelings. But I suppose you know that. My point is that what youd rather doesnt really matter, what matters is what matter actually does. In your case, matter made your thinking matter think that matter has experience, I get that, but you have in no case made it clear as to WHY this should be the case.

If you think consciousness doesn't need any more reason than a long talon or a neck to evolve, then I don't think you've grasped the significance of consciousness.
-Again, there is no evidence for a reason in evolution. It happens because of the process of replication, genetic drift, phenotype/extended phenotype effects and all that environmental stuff with a big dash of natural selection. There is no more reason for consciousness than a long neck, a talon or a hairy chest. If the adaptation/mutation works than it goes on. Why add to that something which we have no evidence for? If consciousness aided in survival, communication, planning, understanding etc than it works. If it is a by-product of the better brain we have, why does it need more reason than that? If you cant think of one reason why consciousness is better than no consciousness than perhaps it is you that does not see the significance of consciousness. I would say that down to many life forms (Im thinking mammals, reptiles, fish and the like) that they all have consciousness at different levels of some yet-to-be-determined scale. Its going to be vastly inferior in computational power, I think that is obvious, but I see no reason to extend that bar down to things that lack a nervous system and brains. Unless those things have non-biological equivalents, such as a self-aware and much more advanced computer than todays technology. As for your final statement about the deterministic machine: The consciousness is a part of the deterministic machine why would it be anything else? Does that alone not increase the survival value? I dont want to discount other things like feelings and emotions, those are fun too. In fact I would suggest that they too add survival value and the subjective experience that consciousness offers gives us an interesting motivation for life that also boosts survival. But its not all pluses, certainly we can think of negatives too.

Causality itself is a sort of "reason." If we haven't established metaphysically how causality works, we cannot do science (and as Hume brilliantly showed, based on empirical observation alone, there is no evidence for efficient causality).
-In theory I agree with you, in practice I do not. Hume is absolutely brilliant, and you are absolutely correct in citing him for this occasion. But sometimes I will take correlative evidence when it seems useful enough, and while it is not proof positive, it is directional and persuasive. I will take it from your use of a computer that you believe in the benefits of technology and scientific exploration whether cause and effect is proven. So good point and I agree with you, but what of it? Using that as a reason to accept the invention of extra-atomic properties is rather weak. While cause and effect at least has correlative evidence there is really nothing to support atomic-level experience.

So long as we are invoking Hume let me pose this to you: Without cause and effect the effect of your magic experiencing particles would be irrelevant as their cause and effect relationship would be null and their properties irrelevant.

The experience occurring at the atomic level is intensified as atoms coalesce into more complex forms of organization over time. There are multiple levels of structural emergence nested in the brain's physiology (atoms, molecules, cells, etc.). Each increase in organized complexity produces an intensification in the experience associated with the body in question.
-again this just simply doesnt seem to be the case. The difference between these ideas and the model proposed by Dennett is that his model relies on scientific observations in various fields to back him up. His model is predictive, verifiable, and without extra magical explanations.


My fourth response:

I'll try to be more clear...

If the conscious human being (with all its purposeful cultural activities, like scientific knowledge-creation) is part of nature, nature can no longer be understood as Descartes did, as mere extension devoid of interiority and meaning. Either we are dualists and see consciousness and its scientific abilities as existing in another realm apart from the purposeless, mechanical nature which it comes to know objectively, or we see interiority as a fundamental property of nature itself that arises in varying intensities depending upon complexity of material embodiment. What motivates my philosophical approach is a desire to understand the universe as one within which the complexity of human consciousness is something that can be reasonably accounted for. A materialist cosmology does not allow for this, but makes of the human being an aberration and a improbable accident. Philosophically speaking, if your metaphysics does not account for the existence of the human being (or even organic life, for that matter, which materialism also can only say is a fluke accident in a predominantly dead and inert physical universe), then it has failed to meet the true potential of human reason.

Maybe you don't think we need a better explanation for how human consciousness or life came to be other than "it happened." I fortunately or unfortunately have an intense desire to answer such questions in a more reasonable way, and so I am lead to adopt a general metaphysical outlook that is entirely in line with all contemporary scientific findings. Materialism is itself a metaphysical perspective that is meant to interpret scientific facts. You can't prove materialism or panexperientialism with scientific experiment, you can only interpret the findings of experiments (facts) within the general context of a metaphysical system (reasons). Of course, specific facts derived from ongoing scientific experimentation can lead us to change our metaphysical generalities, so observation and speculation continually inform one another. I've adopted panexperientialism because I feel the facts discovered by physics in the past century no longer can be explained by a materialist metaphysics.

When it comes to consciousness and evolution, I think you are missing the point I am trying to make. You are suggesting that our consciousness (or experience/interiority) emerged suddenly due to some sort of mutation in our genes leading to a change in phenotype. Do you not see the miracle required here? You're suggesting that an entirely material system suddenly produces a completely new ontological domain (not just a new trait!). A new trait, like a talon or a longer neck, is entirely unlike a change brought about by the emergence of experience (and I'd include emotion and feeling as facets of experience) where before there had been only vacuous matter. You're saying that pure extension can suddenly produce interiority. That is magic.

It should go without saying that various sorts of experience (like emotion and feeling in lower animals, and reason in higher animals) aided life during the course of evolution. I hypothetically ask why such interiority should ever have evolved only because biological organization, at least in your (or Dawkin's) view, could have gotten along just fine without it (because all that matters is how the genes program the organism to behave)! If our metaphysics understands matter as essentially mechanical and lacking self-enjoyment, then we have left our own conscious experience entirely unaccounted for.

"So long as we are invoking Hume let me pose this to you: Without cause and effect the effect of your magic experiencing particles would be irrelevant as their cause and effect relationship would be null and their properties irrelevant."

Actually, I don't agree with Hume b/c I disagree with his reduction of experience to empiricism (ie, to the outward facing senses which perceive only bare universals). I think we can have direct experience of causality, but only via a non-sensory perception of our own body. This comes out of the work of A.N. Whitehead and was his attempt to show (contrary to Hume and Kant) how cause and effect can be conceived as features of reality itself, but only if we attribute experience to all material bodies. Cause and effect, for Whitehead, becomes more like cause and affect. Causality becomes a genuine feature of reality not just because our technologies work, but because the whole of nature literally feels the influences of causation.


Fifth response from sdaciuk:

It is rather bizarre that we can agree upon so much and yet come to vastly different conclusions.


or we see interiority as a fundamental property of nature itself that arises in varying intensities depending upon complexity of material embodiment.
-Of course I agree. Except about atoms.

A materialist cosmology does not allow for this, but makes of the human being an aberration and a improbable accident.
-This must be wrong since an accident can only be committed by intention gone wrong. For example, I am an accident because my parents forgot to use a condom and did not intend to get my mother pregnant. Being an accident in either the regard of evolution (which is more like a process that has no intention, perhaps akin to bureaucracy I joke) or the regard of my example is no shame and not something to reject if it is true. Nor is it something to be avoided at all costs by making up effects that we have no evidence to suggest.

Philosophically speaking, if your metaphysics does not account for the existence of the human being (or even organic life, for that matter, which materialism also can only say is a fluke accident in a predominantly dead and inert physical universe), then it has failed to meet the true potential of human reason.
-This, although eloquent, means nothing. Whether we use your magic atoms or my regular atoms, which happen to be the same atoms, we are still alive having a nonsense discussion that was never intended to be, rather, it evolved without reason since we both know that an internet battle changes no minds. But neither was it accident, it just sort of keeps on keeping on. Anyway, the metaphysics either of us choose to support does not have to account for human life, only that our versions do not negate human life. Neither of our versions are relevant in this context. However, I have a real pet peeve for spurious roots and unfounded claims about particles, as youve noticed. And again, that word accident should only be applied to intentional acts, not unintentional ones.

I fortunately or unfortunately have an intense desire to answer such questions in a more reasonable way, and so I am lead to adopt a general metaphysical outlook that is entirely in line with all contemporary scientific findings.
-Fine, until you assume particles as experiencing.

You can't prove materialism or panexperientialism with scientific experiment, you can only interpret the findings of experiments (facts) within the general context of a metaphysical system (reasons). Of course, specific facts derived from ongoing scientific experimentation can lead us to change our metaphysical generalities, so observation and speculation continually inform one another. I've adopted panexperientialism because I feel the facts discovered by physics in the past century no longer can be explained by a materialist metaphysics.
-Right, thats great, but where are the facts that even hint that particles are experiencing? Its fine to guess and its an interesting thought experiment, but without any evidence or predictive theory what is gained by the position? It does not add any more knowledge than me suggesting the moon has a core made of jelly, except that someone might find out I lied. Like I said before, you are no closer to atoms than I, but you claim special knowledge at this level. I know of no claim in physics that states a property of atoms is experience.

You are suggesting that our consciousness (or experience/interiority) emerged suddenly due to some sort of mutation in our genes leading to a change in phenotype. Do you not see the miracle required here? You're suggesting that an entirely material system suddenly produces a completely new ontological domain (not just a new trait!). A new trait, like a talon or a longer neck, is entirely unlike a change brought about by the emergence of experience (and I'd include emotion and feeling as facets of experience) where before there had been only vacuous matter. You're saying that pure extension can suddenly produce interiority. That is magic.
-Did it suddenly get Christian in here? This is the drivel that starts a creationism argument. A talon and a neck evolution can do, but consciousness! No way, its too complicated! Look weve already agreed that consciousness appears to come in levels of some kind, increasing in complexity up through the animal kingdom to us. I think were around the top out here on our rock, that sounds like a safe bet. However, is that increase magic or a result of more complexity, computing power, specialized cells and so on? I presume we both agree on the latter, even though you called it magic in your argument, I presume you did that for effect. Now why do your particles need to be special and mine do not? However unlikely it is to take the long long road from early life with basic sensory cells and a couple neurons up to the big bundle of neurons we have, why do your particles need to be more special to jump the gap?

It seems like youre saying that if someone (more likely a team) worked tirelessly to make a robot, one that thinks and feels and is self-aware and conscious and all the other descriptors we could use that you would not attribute the robots consciousness to the work of the team but to the property of consciousness in its atoms. Including the atoms in its foot. Perhaps that is a question for your metaphysics: what has more experience my foot or my passport? What about my foot and a cabbage? Does size matter?

I hypothetically ask why such interiority should ever have evolved only because biological organization, at least in your (or Dawkin's) view, could have gotten along just fine without it.
-I think youre smart enough to know why this is a poor question. But Ill do my best anyway. Lots of things could fit into the fine without it category, why limit it to consciousness? Why develop lungs? Why develop teeth? Hair? Eyes? A frontal lobe? A penis without a bone? Why didnt everything just stay as a single cell and forget about all this nonsense?

Again we go back to mutation and adaptation and natural selection, and then you say thats not good enough. So Ill pick up there: the organism doesnt choose the next evolutionary step, there is no guidance, it just tries to get along with what its got from its parents (provided its got the desire or programming to move it along). With this in mind why does it need a purpose? Fine with it, fine without it, so long as it works. If it happened as a by-product of getting smarter, more perceptive, more adapted to communities and socialization than why does it need more explanation? If you dont need cause and effect you certainly dont need more of an explanation than a by-product. But thats just one possibility. Regardless, the mutations which facilitate more consciousness must occur if consciousness increases. Likely that breeding encouraged consciousness in someway: perhaps there is a social link there both deep in the past and still current today. I believe that you agree with this, though I could be wrong, otherwise Im not sure what your stance is on evolution. Anyway, being fine without it, is not a criticism for something that does not decide anything at all. You are only in the position to hypothetically suggest being fine without it because it happened to work out. Basically that is true regardless of your special particles. I really dont understand at what point these things become necessary.

You are a passionate and eloquent debater. We have much in common on this topic. To narrow it down I see us only really conflicting in a few areas and even in some of those conflicted areas we have something in common. Neither of us wants to see evolution as an accident and we both believe that consciousness is a result of matter, an interaction of various bits of matter. I wont be able to concede that atoms have experience without any sort of proof, please provide any evidence of this or at the very least a decent metaphor to enlighten me. Without this I will probably drop the conversation, as I believe we are nearing a point where weve said enough. If you do provide something to back up the claim that atoms have some kind of experience I would be very excited to continue. I have appreciated, through my frustration, your contribution to my understanding of your position.

After watching your video on The Enjoyment of Matter I can see that it is a waste of time to speak with you further on anything without proof of these claims. Your presentation of evolution is not even remotely different from magic. And I wasted a few more minutes on your video God is Risen. Your statement that Atheism is a belief is rather ignorant of the plan ordinary fact that atheism means not theistic, and is defined today as not believing in a religion. Good luck with your silly videos, I think Im done. If I had spent anytime watching your other videos I dont think I would have bothered with this discussion. Originally I only intended to correct your presentation of Dawkins and Dennetts work which was woefully misrepresented.

Good night.


My fifth response:

You keep coming back to 'proof' that particles experience, so I'll just go into why this is totally beside the point.

I cannot even prove to you that I am not a zombie lacking all conscious experience and interiority (I assume you have not read Chalmers). I may just be a physical body with all its working parts that just so happen to lack the quality of conscious awareness or feeling. There is no empirical proof of experience of any sort, whether we are talking about atoms or about human beings. If you want to 'know' something is conscious, you can do so only via the causal efficacy of non-sensory perception, which I talked a little bit about at the end of my last message. We cannot see that other people (or animals, etc.) have internal experiential processes, but we can intuitively feel it through our interactions and meaningful communications with them. But if all you want to go on is empirical proof, you obviously will never be able to SEE or measure conscious experience by looking at the surfaces of a body. Experience is interior (not spatially, but qualitatively) to bodily surfaces.

This is why experience/interiority cannot be compared to lung, teeth, hair, eyes, etc., as just another evolutionarily acquired trait. But I think we actually agree on this, because we both recognize the gradual increase in experiential intensity as we move from single cells to animals with nervous systems (a cell's 'brain' is its selectively permeable membrane). The real issue then is the gap between non-life and life: how does experience emerge with cells if the molecules which compose it are entirely empty of experience?

The reason panexperientialism is gaining mainstream attention in the journals these days is because philosophers are recognizing that there really isn't any other way to solve the mind/body problem.

About atheism... there is no empirical proof for or against the existence of God, so whether you are atheist or theist, you are such based on belief.


Sixth response from sdaciuk:

You keep coming back to 'proof' that particles experience, so I'll just go into why this is totally beside the point."
-So this is besides the point; when someone suggests a fundamentally different property to the entire universe, something never recorded with no observable effects (you have not pointed to such) and it is "besides the point". Nonsense.

At this point you are telling me that your version of events does not require any evidence precisely because you cannot provide any. While at the same time you suggest that the massive amount of evidence building up an materialistic, non-magic particle view is not good enough. Rubbish. Your version requires no evidence, but other versions require some amazing piece of supernatural evidence to satisfy your desire to be more than you are.

Oh yes, the hard problem, which is again only hard if you want it to be. Otherwise it's just millions and millions of years and evolutionary steps later... which you agree on, sort of, just with magic properties of atoms instead of normal atoms. Seriously, Ockham's razor. If it's structure that improves consciousness why add magic atoms?

Your reason for avoiding that burden of proof is not acceptable. I didn't ask you to prove I was conscious, or you, or anyone else. I don't care about philosophical zombies, that is not a problem in my view of consciousness: they are the exactly same as regular people, they are people, whatever.

I agree that we can intuitively feel that people have consciousness, that this is shown in their actions. But it's guesswork, and that's acceptable to some degree. So long as we frame it right, such that we know that we don't know for sure, but that we're going with feeling. Besides that feeling we have correlative evidence like various brain scans, effects of brain damage, drug effects, lesions, lobotomies and so on. All of these can alter the processes of the brain, the behaviours of the person, and the reflective sense of consciousness they report. That's good enough for me to move on and not worry about zombies, except the kinds that eat brains. It's not a perfect argument, I agree,
but it didn't require any special magic to get there.

"how does experience emerge with cells if the molecules which compose it are entirely empty of experience?"
-How do colours appear from things which are all colourless? How does sound exist from things which never make any sound? It's all interpretation. The brain generates thoughts, attention moves around, chemical receptors go off increasing activity somewhere to feel something more intensely, what more does an explanation need than an exhaustive account of this activity if you agree that structure is key to consciousness?

As for atheism, wrong again. If a person has never been informed of anything to believe in, they are an atheist by birth. All babies are atheists by my count, not by belief but because they have never been informed of any magical beings or superstitions to believe in. Just to be very clear: you are not an atheist because you believe there is no god, you are an atheist because you do not have a belief in any god. You do not thus own a negative belief in your head, though people talk this way sometimes, what you have is an absence of a positive. There is quite an important distinction.


My final response:

Wouldn't the absence of a positive belief in God, if it is not a positive disbelief, be agnosticism rather than atheism?

I would like to know more about the massive amounts of evidence in support of materialistic metaphysics... because to my knowledge of contemporary scientific facts, you're making a massive overstatement. Just as an example, I beg of you, in light of quantum mechanics, to explain to me what matter even is. It certainly isn't a substance, as Newton supposed. I prefer to understand it by way of a process metaphysics (which is closely tied, if not wedded, to panexperientialism). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy

To my mind, there are plenty of observable effects that suggest that interiority and experience is fundamental to nature, first and foremost being the large scale evolution of the universe. To the best of our cosmological knowledge, the universe has been rushing toward greater complexity for its entire 14 billion year history. Despite the 2nd law of thermodynamics, some other principle must be at work thrusting this organizational momentum forward. I suggest it is the desire matter has to intensify experience via complexification. What is your explanation for the trend toward complexity evident in the transformations from light, to atoms, to stars, to galaxies, to solar systems, to cellular, animal, and intelligent life?

You can say that given enough time, anything is possible, but cosmologists estimate that it would require 100 times the life of our universe for a single amino acid to have formed by way of pure mechanical chance (ie, w/o some ingrained cosmic desire to self-organize).