GOD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY - THE PODCAST
JLM - Narrator (Jerry L. Martin) - voiced by Scott Langdon
Jerry - Jerry Martin - voiced by Scott Langdon
GOD - The Voice of God - voiced by Jerry L. Martin, who heard the voice
EPISODE FOURTEEN: Where I learn about the history of Humanity's relation to God
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JLM
"The external world and consciousness are one and the same thing," writes Erwin Schrodinger, the great twentieth-century physicist.
In "My View of the World," he sees the deep meaning of quantum mechanics expressed in the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta. This sounds important, I thought.
JERRY
Lord, I am reading Schrodinger...
GOD
No, that is not the way truth lies.
JERRY
But I felt you wanted me to read something scientific and—
GOD
You didn't pray for guidance about what to read.
JERRY
What do you want me to read, Lord? I get the sense that you want me to read something that cuts against scientific orthodoxy.
GOD
Yes.
JERRY
But what does that?
GOD
History of science. History of views that didn't work out.
JERRY
Like astrology?
GOD
Something like that.
JLM
Paul Feyerabend was a philosopher-scientist. On the cover of one of his books, where others list their degrees and honors, he gives his astrological chart. I had known and liked him. He had a remarkable appreciation for the unpredictable vitality of the life of the mind, and hence great respect for "views that didn't work out."
In his iconoclastic "Against Method," Feyerabend, a physicist himself, assembles a fascinating array of examples from the history of science to show that science does not depend of canons of rational method. Rather, the practice of science "can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists," he wrote. And "non-scientific cultures, procedures, and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so.”
Today, the standard view is that science and religion are opposites. But it was his theology that led Newton to regard space, "the sensorium of God," as absolute, and a different theology that led Leibniz to uphold relativity, two centuries before Einstein made a fateful decision to study physics rather than music.
JERRY
Lord, what does this reading have to do with my assignment?
GOD
The history of science is my story. The history of human efforts to understand the world is the history of Humanity's relation to me. I am the point of interaction between human beings and the world.
JERRY
What do you mean by point of interaction?
GOD
I am the medium through which human beings understand the world.
JERRY
Is mind the medium?
GOD
Yes.
JERRY
Are you saying that, in addition to the human mind and the natural world, there is divine mind somehow essential to the act of understanding?
JLM
The answer I received addresses one of the deep mysteries of philosophy. How is it that consciousness relates to or *intends* an object such as the Liberty Bell?
For example, what is it about a thought that makes it a thought about the Liberty Bell? The thought is *in your head* and the Liberty Bell is in Philadelphia. What connects them?
There his a parallel question about language. How is it that a particular word relates to or refers to a particular object? The word itself is an object, a vocalized sound or a mark on a page. What connects the word *bell* to the bell?
Sometimes it is said that one *points* to the other, but that is a figure of speech. As Ludwig Wittgenstein observes, the same question arises with pointing. When you stretch out your finger, why does it direct attention to an object across the room, rather than to itself?
GOD
Follow along, and open your mind. Mind is like a fluid in which human beings and the natural world exist. By participating in the fluid, minds can understand. Think of the problem of intentionality. How is reference possible? How can essences be grasped? How can objects be seen? There must be an interaction, and it is not only causal-physical. How could it be? Mind, understanding, is not just physical. It is a conscious, fluid medium.
JERRY
Is it somewhat physical?
GOD
Those categories are not helpful here, but it exerts a physical force, has physical consequences.
JLM
Later I learned that there are some interpretations of quantum mechanics that use a similar concept to explain how an electron in one part of the universe can be in perfect sync with an electron in another part of the universe without any physical interaction between them. I was not aware of that at the time, but I had just read about dark matter and dark energy, *dark* because they cannot be seen but only inferred from gravitational and other effects. The mass of these previously unsuspected components are now thought to far exceed the total visible mass in the universe.
GOD
Yes, you should look into those. Think of it--most of what is in the universe is unnoticed. It is inferred from gross phenomena, but it is inferred as force. Think of the human body. It is moved by the mind. How? Where is the mind? The mind is throughout the body. Its actions are registered, but it is not noticed. I am not noticed. But in fact I am seen everywhere, and I am in the innermost being of man and in the innermost being of matter. Do not have contempt for matter. It is not the inert stuff of certain old theories. It is vital and alive and a part of me. The interaction of mind and matter is part of me, and I am the vehicle through which it takes place.
JERRY
I have the feeling you want me to read and think less, and to listen more and just write down your story.
GOD
Don't stop thinking, but think in a different way. Don't work so hard to figure everything out, to make it rational, to make it fit your categories. Just listen and think through the implications of what I tell you.
JERRY
But some of what I learn from you comes from worrying over what you say.
GOD
Sometimes yes, but often no. Sometimes your questioning just gets in the way. The main point is to open your mind, to try to understand what I am saying on its own terms, and to see ways it might be true or understandable to you.
JLM
If something doesn't make sense to me, how am I supposed to *see ways* to make it understandable? Where is that vantage point to be found?
(The End)