Being There

And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophesy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophesy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. Peter, Second Letter, First Chapter, Verses 19-21 (English Standard Version)

To save everyone…from having to trawl through two years of essays in lunacy, here once again are the basics, as best I can present them. If you have ever wanted to change the world for the better, this could well be your big break. Is there anyone who can pick up on this story, and give a report that manages to rise above all the dross and noise? Perhaps a comic rendition would work? Come on, surprise us. Prove that you get it.

The reality we inhabit is entirely configurable.

The evidence for this comes from the Gospel reports. For example, apparently in a very short space of time, water can be transformed into wine, articles of food can expand rapidly in quantity, trees can wither, water can be walked on, storms can be calmed, various ailments and afflictions can be healed, et cetera.

Assuming these things did actually happen, and could happen again, we can go on to reason the efficacy of such events.

One way of thinking about how such events might be possible, is to imagine that every instance of reality, every atom, every photon, every field, is in fact some value in a state machine – that the whole world (Universe) is being “simulated” inside a very large computer, and at the controls is the “great programmer in the sky” (God).

While this analogy is quite useful, the reality is more subtle.

In the Beginning, God.

In the beginning, there existed only the Mind of God. There was as yet no Universe, so the Mind of God was a mind without a body (and without gender).

We have been gradually led to an unquestioning belief that “mind” results entirely from the machinations of the material in our brains. Because of this, it now takes a certain capacity of mind to repress this belief, so as to venture back towards the idea of a mind that is quite distinct from the body within which it operates.

While it might be distinct from matter, we still cannot say what mind actually is, despite it being a phenomenon that most of us experience directly every day. However, if we hold the substance that is “mind” to be an absolute entity, we can go on to derive the entire material world from it.

Self simulating machines.

Each element of the material world, an “atom” of space-time for example, consists of a pair of very simple computers known as Turing machines, after the mathematician who first discovered them. One of these computers is hosting a simulation of the other computer, and that simulation consists entirely in software. The computer being simulated is however exactly the same as its host, and it in turn can, and does, host the ‘simulation’ of the first computer. In this way, each member of the pair holds the other in existence. It is as if they hold each other up by the other one’s bootstraps.

These machines are not made out of matter, but consist entirely of the non-existent abstraction we know as “number”. Each machine is nothing more than a string of binary digits, just like this one:

111001010001000001111101010001010000.

Because these machines have no material existence, they do not consume any power, nor are they subject to friction, nor do they generate any heat. They feed into each other indefinitely.
The programme that each string executes has several functions. Primarily, the programme simulates the partner machine. It then provides the parameters and interactions of the material phenomenon being presented, the “atom” of gravity for example. It then provides for the machines to be replicated – out of one pair of binary strings can emerge an exact replica pair of binary strings. Finally, it limits the number of reproductive iterations of these ‘materials’, so as to limit the ultimate size of the Universe.

The Big Bang.

To create the very first pair of these machines, the Mind of God merely needed access to something that represents “zero” (which is nothingness), and something that represents “unity” (which is himself). Armed with these two digits, he could invent, and hold in his mind, the strings of digits that together make up the first self-sustaining, self-replicating “atom” of the material world. That atom can then drift free of his mind, and start reproducing on its own. The subsequent exponential reproduction of these “atoms” of space, time, and matter from nothing but abstractions – numbers -produced the sudden population and inflation of the material Universe, a sea of protons.

Someone else is doing all the thinking.

The Mind of God has remained here within the world throughout the course of the Universe expanding out to become transparent, and of life emerging within it. The material world can proceed independently of God’s mind, merely following the base configuration (programme) that God initially gave it. However, God has reserved ultimate control over every instance of his creation and can modify it at will (as evidenced by the miracles).

It is tempting to think that our ideas have their source in our individual minds. This temptation has a label – pride. Our good ideas actually come from the Mind of God. In fact there has not been a good idea that was not God’s idea in the first place, and we do well to acknowledge the source of our good ideas - all wit, humour and intelligence comes from God. However, God cannot force our will, and from our ignorance of God emerges cowardice, stupidity and bad ideas.

Every moment in time is accounted.

The Mind of God is directing every event that transpires in the world. He places ideas in our heads, and our volition decides whether or not we act on those ideas. While there is a macroscopic (and none too subtle) drama being played out each day on the world stage, God’s control of the world extends to every instance of every person’s life, whether or not that person knows of or acknowledges God’s existence.

Prepare the way of the Lord.

Whenever we “make straight in the desert, a highway for our God”, we are not clearing a landing strip for Jesus and his spaceship – when we become men (and women), we put away such childish notions. What we are doing is preparing the world for the return of God himself, specifically the Spirit of God.

Sunday school eschatology is drawing to a close. Dead people’s bones are not going to emerge from beneath graves and be clothed again in flesh. The holy city is not going to float down to Earth from somewhere out past the Moon. Jesus is not going to swan in on a cloud. It just isn’t going to happen like that.

The reality of the end time is however astonishingly more beautiful than it is perhaps possible to imagine.

God is offering humanity a general amnesty. On the forthcoming judgement day, he is not going send some people to Heaven and others to Hell as he might once have threatened - for he wants everyone to return to him, because we are ALL the temples of his spirit. He is offering to wipe the slate clean, and it is the responsibility of those who already know God to extend this concept of forgiveness towards those who do not know of God.

Taking away the sins of the world.

It was God who configured the world so that it would contain death, pain, disease, and crying, as well as life, health and joy. We are therefore not responsible for our sin, because it was God who caused us to sin. This is how God takes upon himself the sin of the world. When the end comes, he will reconfigure the world into his eternal Kingdom. This will be quite something to behold. Considering the universal capacity of the material world for modification by God, we can expect some quite fantastic phenomena. For example, it is not unreasonable to think that all manner of undesirable configuration will come to an end, and their effects be reversed. And once we have all become healthy, we get to live forever.

Jesus is just alright with me.

By keeping Jesus somewhere else, out there in ‘Heaven’, where he cannot speak for himself, the Jesus cult, Christianity, has been able to manipulate Christ’s message so that authority and power over God’s people is retained by a select few.

It may seem fanciful to imagine that we might live forever, but that is exactly what Jesus understood and offered. He said that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have everlasting life. Because we have been so lacking in faith, we have simply assumed that death is certain, and have thus twisted Christ’s words into describing an everlasting life of an immortal soul that exists past the grave. However, Jesus quite clearly told us that God is the God of the living, and NOT the God of the dead.

Theodicy.

Many ask why God didn’t just configure the world from the outset to be without disease, pain and death.

God configured the world to appear as if it were an accident driven by Nature, so that we would endeavour to discover how nature works, so that we then might repair what we perceived to be her mistakes. There is a large community who is convinced that God does not exist, or does not have the powers I claim for him, specifically because they cannot accept that God might deliberately inflict disease, pain and suffering upon the world’s inhabitants. Yet their very disbelief has been a crucial factor in the development of our understanding. Human nature is such that if the world had appeared perfect, we would not have bothered to find out how it works, but would have merely accepted it as it was. Jesus illustrated this tendency in the parable of the servants and the talents. The servant who had been given just one talent buried it in the ground, so that when his master returned he could give the talent back unchanged. Yet God did not want us to remain cavemen – he wanted us to become modern man.

Energy.

Eternity is a VERY long time indeed, possibly as long as several million millennia, after which the sun will get too hot for comfort. After several million millennia, even the slowest achievers amongst us should have achieved all that we want to achieve, surely.

Wealth is ultimately driven by energy. The prosperity of an economy is proportional to the energy in the economy. Yet because we are trying to grab the most prosperity for each one of ourselves while we yet live, we have exploited the most easily obtained source of energy, the fossil fuels. Our consumption of these fuels is blanketing the planet with carbon and nitrogen oxides, and this looks likely to lead to the premature heating and runaway destruction of the planet. Concerned and well meaning groups are thus trying to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels. This effort has however engendered the impression that the future might have to be a bleak and frugal existence. Yet all the fossil fuel energy consumed by humans in the course of one year falls from the sun on the earth’s surface every few minutes.

If a concerted effort were made to harness the sun’s energy, the wealth of the economy would grow exponentially, fuelled by an energy source that has been hitting the planet for the last five million millennia anyway, and will continue to do so for another five million millennia. Heaven is a land overflowing with milk and honey. However, the only hope for us short circuiting our destruction of the planet is if we as individuals first secure our perpetual leases on life.

The Last Trumpet.

This is the crux of the matter – if you have the nouse to get this idea, you will be home, hosed, and well on your way to the eternal Kingdom – well done!

SOMEBODY MUST FIRST ANNOUNCE THE ARRIVAL OF THE KINGDOM.

If people, for example, started floating about in the air (or whatever it is God has in store for us), without any prior warning, there would be sheer pandemonium. All manner of claims would be made for the events. Dictators, for example, would claim the miracles as vindication of their despotism. The Pope would claim we should all become Catholics. You name it, and rest assured they would take ownership of it. People are like that, I know, I’m one myself.

The person announcing the arrival of the Kingdom isn’t particularly special, quite ordinary in fact. Merely someone with a basic understanding of science, religion and philosophy, a modicum of faith, a bit of love and a sprinkling of hope, who was able to put together the pieces of the puzzle without being overwhelmed by the powerful illusion of a random world that faces us each day. Behold I tell you a mystery, but one that isn’t mysterious anymore.

The person most qualified to describe the Kingdom was Jesus, and that he did for us. Apart from a few aberrations (Jesus never spoke of Lazarus and the Rich Man, someone added that later), we have in the words of Christ a full account of the Kingdom, and the quality of God’s mercy.

However, if we say “Precious Lord, take my hand” and the like, it is vitally important to understand, once and for all, that we are not calling to some long haired bloke with a beard from Nazareth, however lovely a bloke we might have imagined him to be – no, the person we are calling to is God. Not Jesus. God. The worship of Jesus comes under the banner of idolatry. Jesus was not God, he was God’s Christ. There is a big difference. God, or the spirit of God is one person. His servant, Jesus, is another person, albeit a person who was so filled with the Spirit of God that he presented for us a full likeness of God – but was not actually God.

If you want to enter the eternal kingdom, you must be born of the Spirit, as was Jesus, and the easiest way to do this is to imagine what the world would be like if you and everyone else were to start living forever. His yoke is easy, and his burden is light.

153

The cells in our bodies are a bit like us. Get to us when we’re young, and we can be become anyone. Once we have become, however, that’s what we will remain, for better or for worse. Stem cells are an ‘open book’ that can change to become any type of cell. Thanks to the research announced today, these cells no longer need to come from embryos - they can come from adult (skin) cells of the subject destined to use them.

“A Child’s View” which I posted yesterday, cites Stephen Wolfram and his work with simple computational systems. There was much excitement last month when his candidate 2 state, 3 colour Turing machine was proven to be Universal, making it the most simple such machine yet discovered since Marvin Minsky’s 7,4 machine in the early 1960s.

Yesterday’s post is for the most part self-explanatory, but its extreme brevity is deliberate. It attempts to provide a generic structure in which anyone and everyone can see themselves, a kind of homage and self-reference to the simplicity and universal functionality of the machines described within it. Stem cells are precisely such a machine, embryonic, universal, and generic.

The possibility that the E8 structure will be able to account for all the particles and forces of nature is another stunning development. But does it account for the person who decided to use this structure?

Christ instructed that unless we turn and become humble like children, we will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. To this end we should endeavour to make simple common sense out of the strange and complex notions that have emerged from science and religion.
Both disciplines appear to be striving towards grand conclusions. This programme within science has sought to reduce the material world down to increasingly simple components. The current fashion is to imagine that everything is made up out of “strings”. Religion may likewise profit from a programme that reduces the number of substances that are thought to comprise reality.
An ancient notion is that everything is an idea in the mind of God. Even from our limited experience of what it is to have a mind, we can readily see a problem with this notion. Each of us can only hold a few things in our mind at any one time. If we want to hold something new in our mind, we have to find ways to offload the stuff that is already in there. Despite how enormous God’s mind might be, there are a lot of pieces of string in the Universe that God would need to hold in existence by continually thinking about them. Even God would find this exhausting, not to mention boring, and would long to get on with the important and more interesting job of keeping the world in check.
We have memory cells, pens and paper, computers and so on, where we can store things away for later reference. When we imagine an object and then decide to make it, we can go to our storehouses and browse about for the materials we might need. However, when God first got the idea to create the Universe, there was no such resource to draw on, because He was yet to create it.
If you think about the person of God before His act of creation, it is fair to assume that He had a mind, but His mind must have been without a body, because He had not yet created the material out of which heads with grey beards and so forth are made. He would have been nothing except the substance of His mind. In having nothing to play with, however, He had a representation for the notion of “zero”, and by having His mind, He had a representation for the notion of “unity”.

Stephen Wolfram has long studied how complexity arises out of simple computational systems. In his ‘New Kind of Science’ programme he has put forth a challenge to find the simplest possible Universal Turing machine. A Turing machine is an imaginary device that manipulates symbols according to predefined rules, and a Universal Turing machine is a special type of Turing machine that can be programmed to simulate any other Turing machine, including itself. If the symbols available for manipulation are “0” and “1”, then simple Universal Turing machines can be completely defined through a “string” of binary digits.
God had access to the binary digits “0” and “1” before the creation of the Universe, because He could juggle in His mind the notions of “nothing” and “not-nothing”. One assumes He could hold in His mind, all at once, the string of digits that defines a simple Universal Turing machine. He would thus have at His disposal a machine which is completely abstract (made out of pure mathematics) and one that would not consume any energy or generate any heat – the physics emerges later. This first machine would be able to simulate another identical machine without any loss of computational power. In turn, this second machine would be able to simulate the original machine, and so on in perpetuity.
These two machines would then become a self-supporting complex that God would no longer need to think about. With a little more effort, God could slightly modify the code of these machines so that they not only prop each other up, but generate replicas and derivatives of themselves. Once this reproductive scheme is set in motion, there would be an almighty and exponential expansion of these machines out into nothingness, and God would very quickly build up His warehouse of material, stuff which He doesn’t have to think about, but within which He can parade His mind.
If He has indeed “thought up” these machines which comprise the material world that we all know and love, then presumably He is more than capable of changing the way He has programmed them. The unusual phenomena associated with Christ would have been merely a showcase of what is possible throughout a world that turns out not to be necessarily so.
None of us knows when God might choose to reconfigure His world, but in the mean time this notion explains something, and gives us something to think about. Man is so very clever, precisely because he has the mind of the person who created him. Human pride is merely the assumption so many of us make that our mind is ours alone. If it turns out that we are all the same person, just in different bodies, then what have we all been doing, treating each other as strangers?
Christ, who many believe did indeed have the mind of God, put it rather well when he said “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Sisters too.

A kaleidoscope of images from diverse arts, sciences and cultures swarms about and then coalesces to assemble into a composite image of the Earth from near space (as in the opening graphics of The Parkinson Show).
Narrator: A spate of recent publications has heralded the conclusion of our quest to understand the world and our place within it. Most have managed to bring very specialized research within the grasp of laymen. This has given a perspective in which the pieces of the puzzle can be seen all at once and without prejudice. What remains is to put them together.

The image of the Earth then retreats as the camera zooms out though all of space until it reaches the edge of the known Universe (as in Silleck’s Cosmic Voyage or Eames’ Powers of Ten). The camera (impossibly) has instantaneous vision of everything, however distant, and so as the outward zoom continues, we retreat outside of our known Universe. Continuing our retreat, we then see our Universe both known and unknown as a discrete entity. Next we see any other discrete conglomerations that may exist, until finally all existence retreats to a speck and fades to black.
Narrator: We first travel far outside our own Universe, indeed far outside the province of all existing Universes, to a place where there is no matter, no space and no time. Yet there is mind, indeed your mind having now taken this journey in your imagination. However, we cannot take our bodies with us to this place, so it is mind without a body.

A human body (like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man) is shown against the black background. The body dissolves away, starting from the extremities and moving in until just the head remains. The exterior parts of the head dissolve away, revealing just the brain, which then becomes enclosed in a vat of transparent liquid with rising bubbles. The brain is pierced all over with electrodes that are attached to coiled wires, and so on. Then the image of a ‘brain in a vat’ itself dissolves away, leaving behind just some of the bubbles, which rise to become a cartoon chain thought bubble above the place from where the vat has disappeared. (This last sequence is to emphasise that the brain is just as much a part of the mind’s embodiment as is the rest of the body).
Narrator: To approach the notion of mind without a body, sit still in a quiet place and close your eyes. Further sensory deprivation can be achieved in an isolation tank. Yet even with the immediate senses numbed, the conscious mind can continue to draw on memories of the world it has perceived in the past. With a bit of practise, it is possible to block these memories as well, so that your mind takes on a similar disposition to a mind without matter.

The thought bubble expands out beyond the field of view, and circular spots of pure white appear against the black background. The white spots expand and contract at different rates, appear and then disappear, at times slewing into each other to resemble the symbols of yin and yang, until the screen becomes evenly divided between black and white. Small ‘1’ characters coloured black begin to fill in the white areas as if being typed in rapid succession, while identical sized ‘0’ characters coloured white begin to fill the black spaces in the same way. The black and white spots then morph to a cycling full colour exploration into many layers of a Mandelbrot set, which fills out the field of view. Euler’s identity (e to the power of pi times iota, plus one, equals zero, invariably voted the most beautiful of all formulae, and featuring a prominent ‘0’ and ‘1’) emerges in white from the centre of the screen and zooms into prominence.
Narrator: What can mind think about if it does not have a world, or any memory of a world? If it is possible for it to conceive of something - anything - then it has access to an opposite to nothing, and it can represent a binary. It will then be able to conceive of number, which opens up the world of mathematics, and mind has a bright future ahead of it.

The screen fades to black. Various objects of classic design (such as Arne Jacobsen ‘AJ’ Cutlery, 1958, the E-Type Jaguar, 1961, Hepburn and Givenchy in Charade, 1963 etc.) appear for a moment and then fade, followed by the next classic design object. One of the first objects to be displayed is then shown once again to correspond with the text from the narration which reads ‘thought about’. Then a sequence is shown of a potter’s hands at the wheel, forming clay into a vessel. The screen again fades to black.
Narrator: Often the first creative step is to imagine some sort of potential reality. However, the thing being imagined has an existence only when mind is thinking about it. When the mind wanders off elsewhere, the thing once imagined no longer exists until the next time it is thought about. In the material world, we can relieve the mind from having to continually keep things in its imagination, simply by turning those things into objective realities. We take a lump of clay, and fashion it into the object we have in mind. Then we no longer need to describe it to our duly astonished neighbours, for it has taken on an independent existence. Our mind without matter, however, has no such luxury.

A modern laptop computer with a high definition screen is shown resting on an expanse of lawn beneath an apple tree. As the camera approaches the screen, a green apple falls just clear of the laptop, and rolls off to one side. Once the laptop screen has come to fill the shot, it shows that it is running a modern operating system (for example, Vista or Ubuntu). The operating system (OS) desktop is displayed and no other applications. A virtual machine (VM) application (for example Virtual PC or VMWare Workstation) then launches, preset to occupy approximately 70% of the screen after initialization. On starting, the virtual machine clearly displays the Power-On Self-Test (POST) sequence which is characteristic of a real computer. It then proceeds to load the same operating system as the host. This OS in turn is set to automatically open to a desktop after loading (no logon required), and then launch yet another imbedded VM which is again preset to occupy about 70% of the screen, and then begin its POST sequence.
Narrator: To understand how mind goes about producing an objective world in which it can live, we need to look at developments in that paragon of technological progress, the computer. When the concept of the computer was first presented, it was recognised that a general purpose computer would in principle be able to replicate the operation of any specific computer, including itself. These virtual computers have now become an everyday reality. A computer is comprised of a physical machine, the hardware, and the programmes which are enacted by that machine, the software. Software is ultimately just an abstract sequence of binary digits, and when computer hardware is itself enacted purely through software, it too becomes a mere abstraction.

This iterative sequence repeats continuously, but the laptop itself (and the parkland) fades, leaving just the laptop screen, without any frame. Within this frame, the entire image is continually zooming in, so that at most only three levels of host and hosted ‘machines’ are shown at any one time. This single central screen then separates into two smaller but otherwise identical screens shown side by side, with each screen continuing to repeat the zooming iteration of the virtual machine ‘frames’. These two new screens have each emerged, the first from one frame of the original screen, the second from the next frame of the original screen. They enlarge to eclipse the original screen, which disappears behind them. Two fluid and broad stemmed arrows are drawn, each emerging from behind each of the screens, and moving out and across to, and then pointing into the front of the other screen. These two screens then fade out, and are replaced by an image that fades in, with the same relative size, of M.C. Escher’s woodcut ‘Drawing Hands’ (which shows a piece of paper from which have emerged two hands, each drawing the other one into apparent reality).
Narrator: Because it is merely a logical construction, software on its own is not subject to friction and heat, and so one virtual machine is quite capable of hosting another identical virtual machine, which can then in turn host the original virtual machine. Together they prop the other one up, holding each other in existence.

The ‘drawing hands’ begin to rotate in the direction their fingers are pointing, and they morph into two pieces of string, which are seen to be strings of binary digits (the actual digits used are a typical definition for a minimal Universal Turing Machine, each about 20 digits long). Each piece of string follows the other, with a small gap between them, as they move, wave-like, in an inverting figure of eight (Mobius) path. Lines of binary digits then intermittently break out of the gaps between this pair, leaving the original pair intact, but separating completely to become a new pair. These new cycling pairs in turn also reproduce. The reproduction proliferates, and the screen fills with ‘particles’ (string pairs) made of ‘0’s and ‘1’s. This community then shrinks to a speck, and this speck becomes the starting point for a rapid animation of a biological colony growing to fill a bounded circle of nutrient. This circle then also shrinks to a speck, and this speck becomes the starting point for a familiar, rapid animation of the inflationary birth of the Universe.
Narrator: Of course, complex computers are not at the basis of physical reality, just very simple programmes which are present as one dimensional strings of binary digits. These strings can not only be coded to support the existence of each other, but also to reproduce themselves, building material from an infinite resource of abstract numbers. So when mind first thinks up these machines and sets them in motion, there is an almighty bang, when nothingness becomes suddenly populated with protons.

The Universe fades, and is replaced by a large tangled ball of vibrating binary digits that shrinks down to become a solid grey sphere. The sphere is labelled with a ‘plus’ symbol, and represents a proton, as the presentation now reverts to a model that is more familiar to a general audience. In keeping with this model, the proton is being orbited by a much smaller electron, taking a stereotypical hypotrochoidal trajectory (like a ‘spirograph’ pattern). The atom is shown proceeding slowly across the screen through emptiness. The path of the atom stops suddenly near the centre of the screen, and remains motionless. At the same instant that the atom stops, the electron disappears. A photon of light, shown as a ‘burst’ of alternating electric and magnetic fields, each pushing the other along, emerges from the space in between the proton and the place where the electron once was. The photon proceeds away into emptiness. The electron then reappears in an orbit which is now closer to the proton, and at that same instant, the atom recommences its original trajectory. Other hydrogen atoms begin to traverse the image from different directions and at different speeds, each emitting photons in random directions by the same sequence of events. In every case, the atoms stop whenever they eject a photon, and then resume their trajectories at their original pace. In every case, the speed of the ejected photons is always the same (and shown to be the same on screen), despite what may have been the propagation speed of the emitting atom.
Narrator: The physical Universe exudes phenomena which make sense. Whenever we measure the speed of light, it is always the same, because every source of light stops moving during the instant when the light departs from it.

The sun is shown with gravity ‘particles’ (gravitons, the postulated mediators of the gravitational force) departing from it in all directions and out into space. The particles have small arrows coming out from them and pointing in the direction of their movement. The camera zooms up to an area of about 10 degrees of arc near the surface of the sun. From there, the camera zooms into and then fixes upon and follows the path of a selected group of particles coming from this region. As their journey proceeds, the density of this stream of particles gradually decreases, according to an inverse square. However, the lengths of the arrows remain the same. The camera zooms out, and the stream of particles is shown travelling through a sparse ‘sea’ of background gravity particles (which have come from other objects in other parts of the Universe). The particles which were neighbours to this stream when they left the sun are not shown, for clarity. The background particles are shown with arrows pointing in random directions. The stream then approaches another star. This star is also shown emitting gravity particles as was the sun, decreasing in density with distance from the star, according to an inverse square. The path of the particle stream which is being followed intersects with the particles from the star being encountered, and the two predominant directions for gravity at this location are shown against the faint background ‘sea’ of omni-directional particles. The camera zooms out to display the entire galaxy, and it too is shown emitting gravity particles in every direction out into space, but in a pattern and intensity commensurate with the shape and density of the galaxy. The camera again zooms out to a view from outside the Universe.
Narrator: The Universe is held together by gravity. This force of attraction travels in straight lines from one mass to another. However, the attraction is not exchanged instantaneously, because gravity travels at a finite speed, the speed of light. Thus the gravitational influence of one moving mass on another moving mass is in continual flux, for their relative positions will have changed by the time their gravitational influences reach to the places where the other once was. Taken together, these complex and dynamic interactions resemble curvature, and there is a mathematical instrument which elegantly describes them as space-time. However, this phenomenon of gravity should not be confused with space and time, which are fundamental dimensions of reality. The Universe is bound by gravity, and so it has a finite volume. However, there is no limit to the extent of the space beyond the Universe, because there is nothing there to be measured.

In the view of empty space, a small spherical object is shown moving across the screen. An imaginary graduated measuring tape is superimposed on the object’s path, showing the distance travelled by the object relative to its last observed position. The scale on the tape changes randomly from graduations of just one ‘unit of length’ to ten, a hundred, a thousand ‘units of length’ and various scales in between. Finally, the object is again shown inflating out to fill space. The object that was moving through nothingness was in fact the nascent Universe.
Narrator: If you have an object moving in nothingness, it is meaningless to ask how fast it is moving, because there is nothing against which to measure its speed. Light has a native speed relative to its source, but there is no speed limit in nothingness. Indeed, when the Universe was first invented, it burst out into nothingness considerably faster than light, and so the light which was released has remained within it.

We zoom in to a view of the Earth from near space, and we are shown an evolutionary sequence taking in the last five thousand million years. The exposition, which expands to fill the screen, gains speed exponentially as it passes through the emergence of life, mass extinction, the emergence of man, and the 20th century.
Narrator: From the simple distinction between nothing and something, mind has thought up a vast material world in which to dwell, the sheer wonder of which is obvious to everyone. Having begun as an entity which knows everything, but was without form, mind has distributed itself throughout all sentient life, and between us, we have approached knowledge of everything. From the meekest to the mightiest, we all share the same mind.

An outline map of Europe and the UK without political boundaries is shown obliquely from space, and people are shown walking about on the surface. The size of the people is such that perhaps ten people would fill the area of France. The chains of a cartoon chain thought bubble rise and fall from each of the people to join a single large thought bubble, which is shown above all of them in the space above the earth. One of the people in the UK grows in size and eclipses the other figures on the island. This figure changes from a generic to a specific appearance, and is shown to be Newton. The same thing happens over the continent, centred on Germany, and the emergent figure is shown to be Leibnitz. Only two chains of cartoon chain thought bubbles are now shown, one between Newton and the single large thought bubble, and the other between Leibnitz and the thought bubble. The symbols which make up the Fundamental theorem of calculus fill out the thought bubble. The symbols are then shown simultaneously moving down through the chains and into the heads of Leibniz and Newton. The same symbols are then shown emerging simultaneously from the mouths of Newton and Leibnitz within speech balloons, each directed towards the other.
Narrator: Mind has directed the enlightenment of humanity by selectively imparting knowledge and insight amongst all of its incarnations. Anyone with a mind knows what mind is like, and how personal it is. What makes our mind seem so personal is the free will we exercise over and above our mind’s direction. Our mind cannot force, it can only suggest, and it is our will that decides how we then act on its suggestions. It is however very common for individuals to believe that what comes into their heads is from themselves, rather than a source beyond themselves.

The Earth is shown increasing in temperature, changing from blue and green to red and orange and finally becoming engulfed in flames. A fire fighter is shown floating in space with the stream of water from the fire hose trained on the planet.
Narrator: We have come to a fork in the road. We can if we like choose to maintain our conflict with Nature, and melt down the planet. A millennium, one thousand years, is a long time, but at the rate we’re going, it could all be over in a lot less time than that. If we chose instead to manage the planet intelligently, we could live here in theory for another several million millennia. To encourage us to take the long road, mind is offering us an incentive to sue for peace.

The camera zooms in towards the Earth, finally reaching the laptop, shown as it was earlier beneath an apple tree. We pass through the screen of the laptop, and enter into a simulated world (like Job entering into virtual reality in The Lawnmower Man). This virtual world is clearly identifiable as a simulation, and looks similar to ‘Second Life’. The visual definition (clarity, sharpness) of this virtual world gradually increases to a degree where it cannot be distinguished from the real world. A naked man and woman are shown side by side, changing through time lapse from the age of about thirty forward into old age and near death, similar to the sequence with Connery and Rampling in the last scene of Zardoz. As they reach near to death, the sequence reverses in direction and the transformation of the couple proceeds backwards through their adulthood to childhood and infancy, whereupon the sequence changes direction, and again proceeds forward. After several cycles, the sequence pauses at about age thirty, and the couple changes from a lifelike appearance, into a stylized and idealized outline like the illustration of the couple engraved on the plaque attached to the Voyager spacecraft.
Narrator: In thinking up the Universe, mind has in effect programmed the Universe. The Universe behaves the way it does not because it has to behave that way, but because that is the way it was programmed to behave. Included within that programming is hidden code, which when the time comes, is set to change the overall behaviour of the Universe.

Narrator: Quite anything is possible, but the key incentive on offer is a reconfiguration, leading to the indefinite extension of everyone’s lease on life. These modifications to the programme can be made in an instant. Once the changes have been made, we can then all think about living happily ever after, and begin to develop our one hundred, one thousand, and one million year plans. After the first million years, we should then have a clearer picture about what we want to do for the remaining several thousand million years.

Narrator: In the world as we know it, an individual’s material wealth is bound by the limits imposed on their lifespan. When those limits are lifted, the limits to the material wealth of the individual are also lifted. The only gain worth seeking will be spiritual.

The rotating Earth, still enflamed and reddened, is shown slowing to a halt from the opposing force of the fire fighter’s hose. It then begins to rotate backwards, and to regain its blue and green tinge.
Narrator: In progressing to this point, we have come to understand the practices which are sustainable, and those which are not. In the process of restoring the Earth to a pristine condition, we will be returning to the past, a place from which we will then proceed in a new and sustainable direction. In this sense, the mistakes which have led to the present will be seen as events from the future affecting the past.

The camera shows the Clock of the Long Now (foundation) running at high speed. Then a combination of Google Earth and Sketchup routines runs through a sequence of reality modelling. It is the real world that is being modelled rather than some imaginary world in Second Life.
Narrator: The first step in tidying up our home will be to catalogue the world, and from there to model the world. The first catalogue would be a census of all those people who are interested in staying on. By sequencing each individual’s genetic code, we can then construct a precise family tree, so that each one of us can trace at will our exact blood relationship to each and everyone else. We then need to create a three dimensional virtual model of the planet, showing the natural and built environment down to the last integral component, such as a brick in a building, or a tree in a forest. Finally, we catalogue every discrete object of worth contained within that environment.

Narrator: We first hand over title of the entire system to the mind who first thought it up. Each individual incarnation of that mind’s will is then given a shareholding in the system. Each human is given one human class share, no more, no less. The other primates are each given a single shareholding of their particular calibre, and so on down through all fauna and flora. The system exists to produce the goods, and deliver the services, that are required by the shareholders in their pursuit of spiritual wealth. It is the shareholders themselves who in turn produce those goods and deliver those services. Any pursuit is valid if it is eternally sustainable, and does not come at the expense of any other shareholder. Lamb remains on the menu so long as sheep can graze happily, and neither they nor their colleagues ever know what is about to hit them.

The planet is shown exploding as if it has been destroyed by Vogons to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

I’m hoping someone might be able to help me out with a bit of a conundrum. You probably already know about all this stuff, so it would be interesting to know if there is something that you already know, but perhaps don’t know that you know it.
The basic idea behind Idealism is that the ideas are what count, rather than those who may have been responsible for promulgating them. A user of Wikipedia soon realises that whatever subject they thought they were an expert in, plenty of people have a lot more expertise. I was pleased to say that much American philosophy has been transmitted through mere novels and essays. Australians ‘punch above their weight’ in philosophy, and it would be un-Australian to go beyond that which is necessary to get the job done, so I will try and restrict myself to a pamphlet, with ‘an informed self-confidence that is sensitive to circumstances, sensitive to history, and not too prone to doubt’.
Idealism should be simple enough for a child to grasp. It should not be some esoteric curiosity for pursuit by academics. Instead, it should be an integral part of everybody’s daily life. If it takes hold, it should spread like bushfire.

Are you a computer?

A computer is a machine that reads a string of symbols that have been arranged in a structured way, interprets the operations encoded in that structure, and then writes out some other string of symbols whose structure is generated by those operations.
So what I thought I’d do is take a string of symbolic structures (some recent philosophical presentations), process (some of) the meaning contained within them, and write out another set of structured symbols.

At least as far back as Plato, and more recently Descartes and Berkeley, people have attempted to do away with the external world. Most people can imagine, or at least think they can imagine, that at any moment they could feel a whirring sensation, wake-up, and discover that they are in fact just a brain in a vat which was being fed sensory data, and that it was all just a dream.
There are several problems with this particular way of formulating an illusory external world. One problem which is common to many of these Matrix-like schemes is that they do not get us any closer to finding out what is actually at the core of reality, the thing-in-itself, the noumenon or the ‘ding an sich’ as Kant put it. Another problem with brains in vats is the modern presupposition, as espoused by Australian materialists, that the only thing we need in order to have a mind, is that particular part of our embodiment we call a brain. It also shows up that very common faux pas, the assumption that we must first have a brain in order to have a mind.
The popularity of worlds which are simulated by computers has given prominence to another formulation – the idea that we are already ‘within’ such a simulation as we speak. In this scenario, quantum indeterminacy is seen as circumstantial evidence of this possibility, with Plank time corresponding to the ticking clock of the computer doing the simulating. The problem still lies in finding a way to get outside the simulation, so we can see who is actually running the show.
The more general problem is that while it is easy to talk about these things in theory, you eventually have to ‘bump into the world’. You look around you, see how smooth the world looks, and contemplate how vast such a ‘simulation’ would have to be. The mind more ‘boggles’ than it whirrs, and even the true believers are tempted to slump back down and return to the safe, comfortable and thoroughly accessible world of fair dinkum solid matter.
It is in such times of resignation that you need to ask again how many grains of sand it takes to make a heap. There was a time when Carl Sagan started writing out a googolplex in long hand as he rolled out a roll of toilet paper, only to comment that even if he turned the entire known Universe into 1-ply sheet, he would run out of space for noughts long before completing the task. Since then we have thought the good old ’plex to be a mere trifle compared to Skewes’ number, but now we have to contend with Graham’s number. You have to first learn a special notation before you can even understand how this number is constructed. The point in all this is that despite how huge Graham’s number might be, it is no closer to infinity than lonesome number one. So it is with the Universe itself.
When Alan Turing first conjured up these ‘computing’ gadgets that now actually exist, he recognised that a particular construction, which he called ‘the universal machine’, could simulate any other specific machine, including ‘the universal machine’ itself. The simulated machine would consist entirely of a sequence of symbols on the tape of the machine doing the simulating. Computers which simulate themselves are now not only a reality, they are big business - VMware is being touted as the ‘next’ Google. The only difference is that instead of symbols on a tape, these ‘virtual machines’ (as they are called) consist entirely of binary digits.
It seems unlikely that our Universe would be hosted on a machine that is assembled around von Neumann architecture (as are modern electronic computers, and even Apple Macs), or even for that matter around Turing architecture. However, an infinite tape running through a reader/writer/eraser ‘state machine’ (a Turing Machine) is a useful metaphor for what follows.
When computers are nested within each other recursively like Russian dolls, conventional wisdom says that the simulated entity will always be smaller than the host, and then that it will be either slower, or less complex, or less complete than the host.
The assumption here is that these systems are subject to the laws of nature. However, if you are in the business of simulating the world, the laws of nature are a mere contingency of the simulation. The laws of thermodynamics, for example, which slow computers down and generate a lot of heat, are far from being necessary to any simulated world. Instead, they are merely coded, designed into the simulation, an arbitrary setting of the dials.

Now this is where the good Bishop Berkeley would start getting carried away with Australian anti-materialism, were he to be still here with us….and probably carried away by men in white suits, rather than by his sophistry.
A simulated computer, despite being hosted on some sort of real physical machine, is nevertheless itself comprised entirely of symbols, typically numbers coded in binary digits. Symbols, such as numbers, are of course mere abstractions. They have no physical existence as such. Instead, they are just representative tokens.
So then, what say we get one string of numbers, representing a computing machine, to simulate another computing machine, and then get that second computing machine, (which is itself another string of numbers), to take over the task of simulating the first machine?
One way to picture this notion, is to add another reader/writer/eraser complex adjacent to the first one, and then have each of them work away at simulating each other. The problem with this is that the tape of the entire universe, if it were simulated in this way, might have to make its entire way back and forth through the logic units over each interval of what we perceived as time.
I am open to any ideas here, but what say we get one very small string of numbers to simulate themselves, and in the process bring into existence the simulation of what appears to be an ‘atom’. If you know something about atomic theory, recall that the entities which theorists refer to as quarks are always paired, and an isolated quark will dissolve away if it loses its partner. So imagine that behind this perception of reality, the ‘up’ quark is in fact simulating its partner the ‘down’ quark which in turn is simulating its partner the ‘up’ quark and so on. The same would hold for ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ quarks, and ‘strange’ and ‘charmed’ quarks.
If all goes well, that first such ‘atom’ should have some degree of autonomy, that is to say, it does not need to be “thought about” so as to be kept in existence, any more than John von Neumann needed to think about the operation of one of his machines once he had designed and constructed it – after that, it simply went about computing. Like one of Eric Drexler’s imaginary assemblers or what he called “engines of creation”, that first self supporting atomic ‘machine’ could just possibly be made to reproduce another one of itself, and so on, multiplying in number very rapidly in a sort of “big bang”, with no one in the least ‘bit’ concerned about where all these fresh numbers have come from, because these numbers are free – they don’t have any material existence in themselves, they merely act to simulate a world that only ‘seems’ to have a material existence.
Is it any wonder that Ernst Mach suggested we shouldn’t believe in actual atoms – and if they are purely numerical, is it at all surprising that their behaviour is indeed described, by mathematics?
Incidentally, there are a lot of people who believe through faith that atoms actually do exist beneath their ‘instrumentation’. They have a mythology which tells a slightly different version of the self-creation story:
“In the beginning, quantum fluctuations in the space-time continuum produced ever so slightly more matter than antimatter. After massive annihilation between the two, all that remained was that small surfeit of matter over antimatter, and that surfeit is the preponderance of matter which we observe today”.

What do we call the person who first thought of self-simulating that first self-replicating ‘atom’ machine, that ‘von Neumann’ genius of Genesis? In a homage to ‘The Thunderbirds’, rather than using the name “Brains”, I’ll call that person “Ideas”.
So then, Ideas is all that exists, and Ideas and Mind is one and the same person. Some of Ideas’ ideas are the square root of minus one, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, the number whose logarithm to its own base equals itself, and even other fundamental elements of mathematics, such as that brain teaser for BBC presenters that encapsulates the properties of right angle triangles.
Ideas is bored with the merely theoretical, and longs to be embodied. So ideas creates the first self supporting atom, and that atom creates the next atom, and so on, and before long there is an entire Universe that eventually has transparent places in it where Ideas can really get serious about embodiment.
Ideas evolves into ever more ‘intelligent’ levels of embodiment, even to you and me. Keeping an open Eye for an ‘I’, the only thing that differentiates one embodiment of Ideas from any other embodiment of Ideas, is the form of the embodiment, its experience, and the ‘will’ that quite obviously belongs to each one of those embodiments (including most higher animals). When Ideas chose to became embodied, the freedom of the embodiment was essential.
So then, here’s the conundrum. If all our minds are in fact just one mind, and that is Ideas’ Mind, then how does any one of us embodiments escape from the persistent, imposing, and some would argue quite desirable belief, that there exist just as many separate minds as the number of embodiments of mind? Quiz any person in the street, and they will probably declare quite confidently that their mind is their own, and theirs alone. Truly!

The Bard suggested that the world is a stage on which we are merely players. What I have attempted to do here is reflect back some of the fundamental topics which are being addressed in this day and age, in the anticipation that you get a suspicion that we are all being had, in a sense, “up a gum tree”.
As events happen in your life, you assume that you are responding in an entirely voluntary way to external stimuli. However, what if you have been merely a pawn in this process, all the time thinking yourself to be free, when in fact you (and of course all those with whom you interact) have been pushed about by someone else as their instruments?
This very ancient idea is a bit hard to swallow when it is presented as a hierarchy, with ‘higher’ beings pulling the strings, and even higher beings pulling their strings, and so forth. However, it is much more attractive, and as it turns out, liberating, to imagine that there has been just one person playing the game all along. As St. Paul put it, “then we shall see face to face”. This may have been his way of describing the “final encounter” between any two or more different embodiments of the one mind.
Imagine that you are Ideas, and in the beginning you have all of mathematics at your disposal with which to design the material world in which you will eventually have your dwelling place. Because the design is entirely contingent (you are not constrained by any necessities other than mathematics), why on Earth would you deliberately introduce entropy into the design? Why would you deliberately impose mortality on yourself? Why would you make so many ‘mistakes’ in what you have designed?
Firstly, the cycle of birth and rebirth allows the various embodiments we witness today to have evolved in ways that even Ideas could not have predicted. Unpredictability makes the system interesting, and an interesting system holds meaning. Secondly, by making the world seem as if it is necessarily the way that it is, faith is engendered in the prediction of the behaviour of its systems. Because the systems appear prone to breakage, we are encouraged to find out how they work, and find out how we can fix them. In that process we should eventually arrive at a time when we have discovered both who we are, and where we have come from.
So just like in Aristophanes’ tale, Ideas is a mind that has been split amongst all living experiential nodes, and that mind is rejoined whenever any two nodes again become of like mind.

The hypothesis, that all thought stems from a common source, implies that there could be an element of truth in all thought. All religions, atheism included, could each be a piece of the one big puzzle. At this point I have a vision of rabid materialists letting out a kind of Munchian scream! It is simpler to imagine that there is just one person, Ideas, who has many different personas, just as we, who are Ideas’ embodiments, also have many different personas.
The piece of the puzzle with which the west is most familiar has a standard doctrine. Man was created immortal by God, but rebelled against God, and thus became mortal. God then became Man in the person of Christ, and paid the price for His creation’s rebellion with His own life, after which Man regained his immortality, and without the payment of any additional price.
Like the Ptolemaic system of the movement of heavenly bodies, this notion persisted more or less satisfactorily for a thousand years or more. However, with the coming of the enlightenment, cracks began to appear in the standard doctrine. It became increasingly clear that Man had not been created in any special sense, but had instead evolved from the Apes, and that he had in fact always been mortal. Furthermore, it continues to be quite self-evident, that no one has ever become immortal. This fundamental inconsistency has spurned the introduction of all sorts of complications to the system throughout the ages. Reality becomes composed of spirit, souls, bodies, minds, with each different aspect coming and going as required, upstairs, downstairs, and anywhere in between.
Coming as did the Copernican revolution, there is a much simpler model (with or without an introduction by an Osiander!)
God, as pure Mind, thinks a Universe up out of nothing, into which He then becomes incarnate (embodied). He imbues his incarnation (Himself) with mortality, and makes the world look like an accident, so that He will endeavour to discover where He has come from. When He does at last find himself, now embodied, He will imbue His incarnation with immortality.
According to an ancient tale, there was just one instance of incarnation that took upon himself the entire responsibility for Man’s mortality. In the reality, by comparison, just one Mind, having existed through all incarnation past and present, will have collectively paid the price, by enduring the trauma (but also the ecstasy), of humanity’s childhood and later adolescence.
At the end of time, Mind will set its incarnation free. It is important to emphasise the distinction between Ideas and Man. Man in not himself Ideas, but merely the incarnation of Ideas’ Mind. Pride takes over when any incarnation assumes that their capabilities stem from themselves.
We will never know if this jolly old hypothesis is merely wishful thinking or actually substantial, unless we first conduct some sort of open dialogue about it. I have reasoned why the world has been like it is, and why it might become something else. This is Rationalism. At the same time, I have given a running commentary on just one facet of the great play itself, as it has been unfolding in its small corner of the stage. This is Empiricism.
All the events in the world we perceive could be entirely coincidental – as most people assume – or they could just as easily be entirely contrived.
Just recently, the moon turned to blood. Edmund, in King Lear, would contend that there is nothing but rocks up there, and up to a point, he would be right.
A lunar eclipse occurs in the space of about two hours, and involves various movements in the heavens. There is the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. Then there is the rotation of the Earth about its own axis. Finally there is the orbit of the Moon around the Earth.
Now think about a lunar eclipse for a moment, and decide which of those movements just described is predominant.
If you thought the Earth’s orbit around the Sun was predominant, that is what most people first think - for the Moon appears to be fixed in the sky, while something else moves across it. In fact it is the Earth’s shadow which is effectively fixed, and the predominant movement is of the Moon through that shadow as it orbits the Earth.

So there it is. The worst possible hypothesis in the world, for philosophers at least, would be the one which suggests that all philosophy has been discovered, and all that now remains is for technicians to arrange it all in the right order.

The Greek term ‘apocalypse’ is often equated in popular culture with the calamitous events portrayed in the last book of the Bible. Yet the actual meaning of the word is to ‘uncover’ or ‘reveal’ (that which is hidden), a somewhat ironic title for one of the most mysterious and cryptic texts ever written. Yet some of the most simple of ideas remain hidden, until it is time for them to be spoken. Jesus was reported to have paraphrased the prophets: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world”1 and “then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.”2

Abraham started a monotheistic tradition that prophesied its culmination in the ministry of a man directly chosen by God, His ‘Christ’ or anointed. By fulfilling the predictions of the prophets who came before him, either deliberately or unwittingly, Jesus effortlessly demonstrated his commission.

The descendants of Abraham had evolved a complex set of rules for living a life that they believed was pleasing to God. Jesus came along and swept all those rules aside, replacing them with just two very simple rules. One, that we love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and two, that we love our neighbours as we love ourselves. Speaking on God’s behalf, he extended God’s love beyond Israel to encompass all people and all nations.

The incumbent Hebrew authorities perceived blasphemy in Christ’s teaching and a consequent threat to their own salvation, and so they successfully agitated for his execution. They preached the fear of God, climaxing in their fear of His Christ, who instead preached the love of God.

Jesus declared God’s ministry to be complete shortly before he died on the cross at Calvary. Several days later he was brought back to life, having been dead for less time than Lazarus had been several weeks earlier, and emerged from his opened tomb. After various encounters with some of his relatives and disciples, he departed from them. Because he could no longer be called upon to clarify his words, his parting message was that God would send the Comforter (the Holy Spirit) to guide them instead. He was able to confer this expectation because from the time of his baptism, Jesus and the Holy Spirit affirmed the intimacy of their relationship.

The Church is born.

Fifty days after Jesus had been brought back to life, over a hundred assembled members of the Church suddenly entered into the same relationship with the Holy Spirit that Jesus had entered into at his baptism. The result of receiving knowledge of God, as had Christ through the Holy Spirit, was the rapid expansion of the Church into the society surrounding it.

In its infancy, the Church assembled under Peter as a loose collective. Everyone placed all that they owned at the apostle’s feet, and everything was shared in common and according to need. Peter demonstrated that the Holy Spirit would not tolerate deception. A husband dropped dead suddenly, and soon after his wife the same, after each had independently presumed they could hide the truth of their innermost thoughts from God.3

Saul the Pharisee was initially oblivious to this spiritual foundation of the Church. He saw it as merely another political uprising, and was actively suppressing it by arresting and jailing its members. All this changed when, on a journey to Damascus in search of more Christians to persecute, he himself quite suddenly entered into a relationship with the Holy Spirit, as had Jesus, and later his disciples, at Pentecost.

Such a dramatic and sudden change of heart became the motif of Paul’s subsequent ministry. Gradual reform is the usual course of change in this world, yet Paul was to declare that everyone throughout the world “will be changed in an instant, in the ‘blink of an eye’, when the last trumpet sounds.”4

Christ had declared that the good news of the Kingdom of God must be proclaimed to all nations before the end can come.5 After all, it is only fair that all humanity is presented with the facts, so that each and every person can then make an informed decision on their future. Thus to hasten the end, Paul embarked on a mission to proclaim the Gospel throughout what was thought, at the time, to be the four corners of the earth. Paul’s mission ended with his execution in Rome under Nero.

The apostle John died of old age in Ephesus, the only apostle who would die of natural causes. While exiled on Patmos, he had received the definitive account of the conclusion to history, which he wrote down in the Apocalypse.

The common thread to all these characters, Jesus, Paul, John, is that they each had some sort of mystical encounter (presumably with the Holy Spirit) which fundamentally changed their perspective, and each felt compelled to relate their vision to others in their own particular style. Jesus spoke in parables (and also occasioned miracles), Paul spoke of things which are hard to understand and mysterious, and John drew upon ancient biblical imagery.

Getting to know Paul

The challenge before the rationalist is to try and understand what was going on in the minds of these men to then lead them to their proclamations. None of them seems to have arrived at their positions through blind faith – quite to the contrary, they conduct themselves as if they have somehow obtained certain knowledge. What sure beliefs could have engendered their behaviour? In asking this, it does not matter if those beliefs had any basis in fact. For example, a belief in a world which is flat and has four corners, with other worlds above it and below it, would now be considered mistaken, but at the time, it was more than just ‘reasonable’, it was self-evident truth.

The clue to how they were thinking comes from Paul. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”6 Jesus also drew on the imagery of the ‘child’, instructing his disciples to address God as ‘our father’. How then, can ‘children of God’ put childish ways behind them, and move on to become ‘adults’ of God? As Paul goes on to state it “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”7 Had Paul already glimpsed the complete story when he made this declaration?

Children are not equipped emotionally to properly understand for example, sexuality, and so as parents we shroud the details from them with euphemism. Did Paul perceive that humanity was likewise not yet prepared for the full truth about God? If we are human, then we have all set out to deceive at one time or another, most commonly when we were children. When that deceit is challenged, we try to bluff our way through it. Some members of the church at Corinth were having trouble swallowing Paul’s story of the risen Christ, and his claim that Isaiah’s prophesy had come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”8 Paul declares “If only in this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.”9 His declaration is ambiguous, for he is careful not to clarify the ‘other’ life he hopes for – he merely provides instead a poor reflection in a mirror.

Orthodox Belief

The standard model of Christian theology is well established, and is centred on John’s analysis that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”10 The model begins with God creating man. Man rebels against God, chooses to go his own way, and thereby becomes mortal. God becomes man in Christ, and in an act of pure love, God dies on the cross in place of us. He takes over responsibility for all our waywardness, and thus overcomes mortality for anyone who chooses to accept the redemption on offer. Finally, at the end of time, God will return to judge both the living and the dead. Those who accepted the offer of salvation when it was still available will go on to live in eternal joy. Those who missed their chance, and rejected the offer, will go on to live in eternal damnation.

There are several problems and inconsistencies with this creed, which have been raised since the earliest life of the church.

A clear example of contradiction is John’s claim that Christ is God’s one and only son, when Christ himself (admittedly according to Matthew) addresses God not just as ‘his’ father, but rather as ‘our’ father, implying that we are all His sons and daughters.

Next, if God is all powerful, all knowing, and can do anything, then He would seem to be a contemptuous, even monstrous God, because He would have created man knowing that the design was predestined to go astray. To enter back into His world after the fact, and die for our sins, looks like He is merely fixing up His own faux pas rather than any mistake we might have made. Only a cynical God would deliberately create an imperfect world that becomes in effect a factory for producing souls, and then put in place a quality assurance department which tests each soul’s capacity for accepting or rejecting His offer of salvation.

The more serious problem with this creed is that it claims Christ has already won the victory over death. While Jesus and Lazarus may have been brought back to life, a child, in all its innocence, would look at this world we inhabit, and protest that Christ has (quite obviously and literally, in truth) not yet finished the job, and is yet to win the victory over death. In this world we inhabit, someone somewhere dies every second of every day. This perishable body of ours has not been clothed with the imperishable – everyone grows old. This mortal body of ours has not been clothed with immortality – everyone dies.11 Even though I might believe in Jesus, and in every word he spoke, I nevertheless appear in fact to be falling apart. I do not seem to be destined for eternal life - rather I seem destined for the grave.

The child who states the obvious, who declares that the “emperor has no clothes”, is duly corrected under the standard model. The standard model claims that it is of course not the body that has eternal life, but rather an abstract entity called the ‘soul’. Yet Jesus himself declared, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”12 Job declared that “although worms destroy this body, I will see God in my flesh.”13 Jesus was making the observation that Abraham, Isaac, and Moses were all living people when they professed God was their God. Yet belief in a ‘soul’ that persists beyond the grave, leads to Christ’s words being taken to mean that the Patriarchs are now ‘alive’, even though their bodies have long since decayed. In this day and age, holding on to a belief that we persist beyond the grave, through the imaginary vehicle of the soul, is not unlike holding on to the belief that the Earth is at the centre of the Universe in the age of Copernicus. Each time an anomaly appears in the geocentric model, another epicycle is incorporated to account for the anomaly and further complicate the system. Likewise, as evidence of the Earth’s true history has unfolded, so have thousands of millions of words been written to complicate and explain away a salvation which is, in fact, pure and simple, able to be understood by a child.

The Rapture

When as children we find out the truth, the revelation itself can be occasioned with shock, horror and anger, but it is often soon followed with acceptance and joy, like jumping into the ocean for a swim. Paul spoke to the Corinthian Christians of Faith, Hope and Love.14

The sort of faith he imagined was the ability to move mountains.15 If God has sent a powerful delusion, a suggestion Paul makes to the Church at Thessalonica16, then it has been the doctrine, indeed the illusion, of materialism. The nature of the material world is generally so unflinching and consistent, that it is tempting to believe the world can only be as it appears. The belief in the certainty of death, and thus its elevation to an axiom, had engendered the invention of the ‘immortal soul’ long before Christ’s, or even the Patriarchs’, teachings on mortality.

Paul has heard the evidence of Christ’s miracles, and extrapolated by faith that every ‘atom’ of God’s creation is instantaneously and absolutely ‘configurable’ by God. He has overcome, in his mind, the grand illusion of a solid, ‘material’ world. In Paul’s understanding, it has become a small step to proceed from transforming water into wine, onto the moving of entire mountains, and ultimately, as he claims, living indefinitely.

We have already a glimpse of how a fully contingent world operates, in the ‘virtual’ worlds of the Internet. The detail of how the actual world we now inhabit operates, draws on fundamental results in computing science, and is the subject of another essay. Basically though, a ‘computer’ is fundamentally a physical machine which manipulates symbols according to pre-defined rules. A ‘universal’ computer can be ‘programmed’ to simulate another computer. The computer which is being replicated can be identical to the ‘real’ computer, except it has no material existence – it is ‘virtual’, comprised entirely of bits and bytes, of numbers, of mathematics.

In conventional thinking, it is always assumed that the simulated computer cannot be as powerful as the host computer, because that would contravene the laws of thermodynamics. However, those laws could themselves be a contingency, rather than a necessity, of the world which is being simulated. We could thus allow the replica computer (which is just a string of numbers) to ‘host’ the original computer, and then do away altogether with the computer which was originally proposed to be made of ‘matter’. The result is a Universal computing machine (and of course an entire Universe) which has pulled itself up by its own bootstraps, and is made entirely of ‘nothing’ but numbers. This perpetual motion machine is only possible because there is no actual material, but merely numbers, and therefore no actual friction in its operation. The Ghost in this machine, the ‘software’ as it were, is Mind.

In this model then, all that exists is Mind and Mathematics, and what appears to be the material, is merely number (an abstraction), so that the only actual reality, is Mind. The mathematics keeps itself supported in the course of daily life without necessary input from Mind. While Mind is eternal, in the physical creation (a string of numbers), Mind firstly evolves life, and then having evolved an opposed thumb, Mind further manipulates the world to His liking through Man. No one knows what Mind is, except that the Mind of God is just as capable as the Mind of Man. He has Man’s intelligence, wit, and humour. Man could have no closer, more personal relationship with God. When Christ said “what you do to the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me”17 he equated himself with God, and he equated all of us with Him. Our ‘original’ sin resides in the ‘firmware’ of our bodies. Our will drives our desire, from birth, for our personal ‘experiential node’ of the Mind of God to have greater access to good than any other ‘experiential node’.

The idea that the observed world is not material and ‘real’, but in fact merely spirit and ‘virtual’, was held by the Gnostics, and recast often by much later philosophers. In the case of the Gnostics, the notion led to some dubious moral conclusions and practices, for it suggested that if the world does not really exist, then neither does pain or suffering ‘really’ exist. Yet the raison d’être for God creating the world we observe, is precisely so that Mind can experience it, and ultimately reach emancipation. This dualism is stated throughout philosophy and religion. For Descartes, the Mind is separate from, but has its dwelling place in, the body. For the Christian, the Holy Spirit is separate from the body, its temple, but there within that temple the Holy Spirit has its dwelling place. For the Buddhist, the soul moves from one body to another.

However, because each individual is so obviously physically separate to any other, and also knows themselves to have a mind, a very strong illusion proceeds that we each have a separate mind, (and a separate soul) that is quite distinct (and separable) from any other individual’s mind and soul. Did Paul conclude that in fact there is only one Mind, and that what makes our mind seem unique, is merely our ‘experiential node’, our body? If so, then the only thing which makes us individuals is the sum of our experience, and the ability of our will to either follow or reject the guidance of our Mind. If there is only one Mind, and that Mind dwells within each of us, then it would make sense that at the end of time, we will each see any other as literally the same person as ourselves, “face to face” as Paul describes it, albeit just in a different body.

Love

To understand love, however, we have to consider these revelations which were given to Paul, but from Christ’s perspective. Imagine a world which is completely contingent (not necessarily as it may seem), and one in which, as John puts it, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away”.18 Basically, imagine a world in which God provides not just the occasional miracle we hear of in the Gospels, but Universal healing and the abolition of degenerative processes. Then imagine you are Christ, a normal sort of bloke, a simple chippie from Nazareth, a place from which no one of any great importance has ever come before. Having received a calling, you go about your ministry, and because you have a direct ‘hyperlink’ to the Mind of God, when you are told that Lazarus is dead, your Mind tells you he is only sleeping, and you merely declare that fact. When you are told there is no more wine at the wedding, your Mind (God’s Mind) tells you the vessels should be filled with water, and you merely deliver the instruction.
All this magic is going along just fine until your final entrance into Jerusalem, when the words of Isaiah gradually start coming back to haunt you. You realise the deal. God is going to let everyone live forever in love peace and happiness just like they did in the beginning, but there is just one condition. You, Christ, are going to have to be the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. By your death, everyone else will live. Everyone else will be going to the eternal world except you!

If you knew that in death, you were going to meet the Father in Paradise, you might as well just hurry up the process and get on back home. But when instead you know that God is the God of the living and not of the dead, you will be taking every last encounter with friends and loved ones very seriously. It is only in this context that anyone can, if they try, begin to imagine Christ’s passion. His selfless love for others reached its climax when, knowing his and their lives were about to end, completely, he yet found the courage to comfort those who were crucified next to him with a vain hope, assuring them that “today, he would see them in paradise”.

We do not know with any certainty what happened to Christ after his resurrection. In an entirely contingent world (which is akin to a ‘virtual’ world), it is quite possible that he ‘moved through walls’ and ‘walked on water’. After that interlude, it is most likely that he left the scene of his passion, to quietly live out his days. It is highly unlikely that he ascended in a literal sense, because as you rise up, the air becomes rarefied, you lose the ability to breathe, and you eventually die.

However, the hope given to us by Paul, in very carefully constructed words, of eternal life, has been a powerful palliative. A person in this world who goes to the grave in all faith, does not just believe they are going to Eternity, rather, they know it as a certain fact. They depart with a peace that is not afforded to someone without faith. Their approach to the end is in stark contrast to those who know for a fact that they are going nowhere, or worse still, those who know for a fact that they are going to eternal damnation.

It is only natural to assume that eternal bliss, if it were ever possible, would come at a price. In one sense it has indeed come at a price, that of Christ successfully proceeding to the Cross, instead of walking away from it (which he could easily have done). Thanks to Jesus, the price has been paid, and does not need to be paid again.

However, at the end of time, it will be the Creator of the entire system, who will himself absolve anyone and everyone from any sin, whatever that sin may have been. For it was not something that we did wrong that lead to our mortality, as was originally assumed. Rather, we now know that both Man and all the species that preceded us have in fact never been immortal. Mortality has been, throughout evolution, the Creator’s most efficient way of accelerating our development into an enlightened being, one who is no longer a child, but an adult mindful of the needs of others. It is God, rather than His Christ, who takes on the sin of the world. He owns up to the fact that the way we are, is exactly as He always intended us to be. And as the embodiment of God’s Mind, it has been all of our late ancestors who have collectively paid the price for us who are alive, their children.

This then is how Paul knew that the change would happen in an instant. Once a child realises that it had been told an interim truth, and is now being presented with the final truth, it very quickly adapts to the new paradigm. Who still wants to terminate their embodiment, and leave a perfected world behind for some future generation, that which is destined to inherit the Earth, and live on into eternity?

Was Paul dreaming? Was it all in his imagination? We will only know if we first go. If the flood of the miraculous were to commence, we must first have clear knowledge of the rules of engagement as we proceed out of the land of the shadow of death, and into life. That knowledge is precisely what Paul conferred to us through his Words.

1. Ps. 78:2, Mt. 13:35
2. Is. 40:5
3. Ac. 5:1
4. 1 Co. 15:52
5. Mt. 24:14
6. 1 Co. 13:11
7. 1 Co. 13:12
8. 1 Co. 15:54
9. 1 Co. 15:19
10. Jn 3:16
11. 1 Co. 15:54
12. Mk. 12:27
13. Job 19:26
13. 1 Co. 15:54
14. 1 Co. 13:13
15. 1 Co. 13:2
16. 2 Th. 2:11
17. Mt. 25:40
18. Rev. 21:4

11/7 Forces storm the Red Mosque in Islamabad.

It is of course in God’s plan for all Mohammedans to return to him. However, they must first recognise that redemption is offered by God free of charge – the price has already been paid by Christ. The offer is made to everyone, but it is up to each individual to choose freely if they want to accept the offer. If you impose your will on another human being, if you force someone to believe, then whatever it is you are peddling, it does not come from God. If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.

11/7 Solomon Islands appoint a man facing serious criminal charges as the country’s Attorney-General.

This action does not demonstrate the Wisdom of Solomon. Mr. Moti must be presumed innocent, but he must also face his accusers. In an earthly court of law, he could defend the charges against him, and be found innocent, possibly while still being guilty. He could even be found guilty, while still being innocent.

However, there is coming a time when we will all be answerable before God, and as I have alluded to elsewhere, God knows every secret that lies within our hearts. Before God, Mr. Moti will again be given the opportunity to plead innocence or guilt. If he pleads truthfully, and he is innocent, that will be the end of the matter. If he pleads truthfully, and he is guilty, then like the woman who was caught in adultery and brought before Christ, neither will God condemn him, as long as he repents and does not transgress God’s law again, which is to love your neighbour as yourself. Christ interceeds on behalf of us all before God. (The sexual pursuit of those who are too young to comprehend the beauty of sexuality, innocent children, is a violation of God’s commandment to love your neighbour as yourself.)

However, if he pleads innocence, while God knows of his guilt, he will be beyond redemption. What is required is quite simply the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert, an information superhighway for our God.”

The Lord is of course the Lord of Hosts, God, the Big Guy up on High, the Fat Controller, and preparing the way for His return have been all of us, His servants. For 24 hours as the world spins on its axis, this Saturday morning, the clock will strike

07:07:07 07/07/07

(and for one of those rare moments, it will not matter how other cultures may have got the numbers all arse about). What with Sam possibly returning from Mars the next day in “Life on Mars” and Robin having the final showdown with the Sherriff on the same day in “Robin Hood”, I wonder if His Nibs upstairs (He is actually here within us) has got a special surprise planned for us. The date looks a bit like the countdown to a VERY BIG bomb going off!

Of course days can come and go. Next year, we will have the “8”s all lining up for the Chinese and their hosting of the Olympics. I am still a young man, and will just keep commenting on the events of the last times, as long as I live. However, “7″ has traditionally been the most important number for God, and do we really want to wait yet another year, or another minute for that matter, if God has indicated He is ready?

I am not a gambling man, because fate picking one person out of six thousand million puts paid to chance completely. However, consider this:

Rowan is darting about with a box of matches like a boy scout around the bonfire, trying to set it alight. Like the parable of the sower of seed in the fields, some of the flames from the matches are igniting paper, some are lighting the set kindling, and others are getting snuffed out completely. The ones that are snuffed out are the people who visit this site and think it is nonsense, and never come back. The rest are those with varying degrees of cognisance. What we need is a good dousing with petrol (or gasoline as some know it).

Imagine that what I have been telling everyone about God and His Kingdom is true (btw, it is…). That He is indeed ready and waiting for the moment to wipe away all our tears, heal all our wounds, and live with us all happily ever after. He is merely waiting until everyone knows what the rules are.

Can you imagine the kudos that would come to the person who puts some petrol on the fire? That person will go down forever in history. If there is anyone out there who can somehow accelerate references to these pages, I promise you now, your reward will be great in Heaven.

In his Apocalypse, John gave stern warnings to anyone not to add or take away from what had already been written. And yet about six centuries later, despite all the warnings, Mohammed decided to ignore them anyway, and add his own thoughts and extensions to what had already been completed by Christ.

There are only two rules. The first is to love God with all your heart, and mind and soul. The second is like the first, it is to love your neighbour as yourself.

In the Age of Grace, evil is allowed because the perpetrators do not know that their actions are wrong. However, as we approach the Day of Judgement, I again warn these people that everyone can come to the Lord, and all can be forgiven, but if after the Day of Judgement they continue to disobey God’s law, there will no longer be any possibility for forgiveness.

I really cannot put it any more bluntly.

So imagine, for example, that you are a suicide bomber. Ask yourself these questions.

After I have detonated the bomb, am I going to Heaven?

No, you are going to be blown apart. Heaven is not a different place, it is a different time, and that time is nearly upon us.

Will my death, and my murdering the innocent, demonstrate my love of God?

No, it will demonstrate your contempt for God, and your name will be remembered for Eternity in the minds of those who had their loved ones taken away from them because of your contempt.

Will my death show my love for my neighbour as myself?

No, it will show your hatred of yourself, and your hatred of your neighbour. You are not doing anything for God; you are doing what you do entirely for yourself.

In this Age of Grace, whenever you have detonated yourselves, unimaginable pain and horror has ensued. However, after the Age of Grace, if you go to detonate a bomb attached to yourself, you will be switched off instantly. Pure and simple. There will no longer be any room for mercy. You will drop dead. Indeed, anyone will fall to the ground, and be carried away for burial, if they so much as even think of harming any one of God’s children, who are all the people of the world.

However, there are over two thousand million believers ready and waiting to show you the love of God, should you choose to accept His salvation. We really do want you all to come to Him, whatever you may have been through.

4/7 45 year old Scotsman Alan Johnston released after four months captivity which he likens to “being buried alive”. Presumably he was once buried alive to then make the comparison. Perhaps he means that his experience was like what he imagines that both he, and we, think it would it would be like to be buried alive. Seriously though, this is a powerful symbol of the more general jail break alluded to yesterday, possibly breaking out on 777. We are all prisoners here you know…