Programmed Reality

Introduction

Cosmological dualism is a long standing tension in the realm of philosophies and religions. Mankind has been inspired and marveled at the wonder and majesty of existent reality while at the same time being perplexed that, from a subjective human perspective, a lifetime of existence in this reality is frequently unpleasant and at times extremely so (much of human history attest to that estimation). The order and meticulousness of apparent existent reality for many tends to affirm an extraordinary consciousness as its ultimate source (arch materialist should first check in here before proceeding further). Yet the human mind has been unable to satisfactorily reconcile the grand artifact of apparent existent reality with the actual experience of it. Cosmological dualisms generally in some fashion seek to address, as explanation, this fundamental dichotomy of the pervasive human condition.

We will ponder here in a roundabout fashion the cosmological dualism of gnostic traditions – especially the Gnostic Christians of the first three centuries of the Common Era. Since the fourth century Gnosticism has been suppressed at any time it has attempted to surface. In contemporary times it again has garnered notice. More than a few have descried interesting convergences of current state of knowledge with the various ancient Gnostic precepts. In that light, let us proceed with our musings and meanderings.

National/Tribal Gods – Babylonian Marduk, Hebraic Yahweh

The German Assyriologist, Friedrich Delitzsch, caused a firestorm at the time when he revealed in a high profile lecture series began in January 1902, that the arch story elements of the Hebrew Bible had been discovered in archeological artifacts of civilizations that were yet more ancient and were not monotheistic. What were most controversial of all, as revealed in his lectures, were three Cuneiform tablets dating from time of King Hammurabi (1792 – 1750 BC). A form of the name "Yahweh", the Hebrew tetragrammaton, appears in one of the names on these tablets, indicating that this name was not a unique revelation to Moses at the latter time of the Exodus. (Joseph P. Farrell covers this in depth in his book, "Genes, Giants, Monsters and Men", where there is a section titled: Delitzsch's Dilemma: Babel und Bibel.)

Enuma Elish and the Lamentations Texts

The emerging kingdoms of the Babylonians and Assyrians were principal inheritors of remnant Akkad/Sumer civilization – the transition of cultural dominance occurring sometime around the progression of the historical sweep from the third millennium BC into the second millennium BC.

The Enuma Elish, also dated from Hammurabi's time, incorporates the pantheon of Annunaki gods of Sumer while imposing the Babylonian high god, Marduk, at the head of the pantheon as noted in this Wikipedia excerpt:

This epic is one of the most important sources for understanding the Babylonian worldview, centered on the supremacy of Marduk and the creation of humankind for the service of the gods. Its primary original purpose, however, is not an exposition of theology or theogony but the elevation of Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, above other Mesopotamian gods.

The Enuma Elish appears as antecedent material in a number of passages in the Hebrew Bible, and most especially The Book of Job, which draws on Enuma Elish and texts such as the Lament for Ur. Job is an attempt to philosophically understand or rationalize the devastation that had brought Akkad/Sumer to its demise (what happens to Job's family is paralleled in the Laments literature from that time period). The northern neighbor peoples, such as the early Babylonians, became the successors of what remained of the centuries long stream of Akkad/Sumer civilization.

Biblical scholar, Douglas Elwell, in his book, "Planet X: The Sign of the Son of Man", expounds on these earlier literary influences and where portions of them appear literally in many scriptural passages of the Hebrew Bible (with the Book of Job being the most pronounced). The arch theme of the Enuma Elish, Marduk battling the great dragon Tiamat, likewise is retained in the Hebrew writings – and even appears in the Christian New Testament writing, the Apocalypse of John.

The great biblical patriarch Abraham leaves the city of Ur, where his father Terah is a high priest – the reasons aren't precisely clear other than he is called out. The Book of Job, regarded as the oldest book of the Hebrew Bible, from our culture’s perspective looking back to this period in history, can be seen as essentially introspection into the twilight of Abraham's civilization – and is thus perhaps an indicator of circumstances that impelled Abraham and his considerable entourage to migrate out of Ur.

The Book of Job is akin to an Ecclesiastes manner of rumination (styled as a kind of play or opera) from this earlier patriarchal era where a once great stream of civilization fell into dissolution as resulting from devastating circumstances (refer to Elwell’s book for further speculation as to what that cause may have been – and Zechariah Sitchin’s writings have yet another perspective on a possible cause as well [i]).

This introspection is a kind of foreshadowing of the traumatic self-doubt the Hebrews underwent over a millennium later when carried off into Babylonian captivity. Job’s wife and Job’s friends ponder if somehow there was some discord with the deity as resulting from human weakness (indeed, they assume that must be the case); those in Babylonian captivity could only imagine that their national god, Yahweh, had abandoned them due to displeasure. In the case of Job, his misfortunes are portrayed as stemming from an inscrutable deity that evidently simply couldn’t resist being goaded into an interesting wager. The loss of life and human suffering are simply Man’s due lot in life in respect to the sovereignty of the deity. In such tales, if the principal great patriarch comes out okay (as Job does) then that constitutes a righteous conclusion of the matter. The great take away is to never question the ways of the deity but unflinchingly accept them.

The Attempted Editorializing Into Monotheistic Cosmogony

As the Hebrew Bible began to be written down at a much later time frame, drawing upon these earlier sources stemming from polytheistic civilizations, the Hebrew authors – as a net effect – editorialized a monotheistic filtering. As an example, when textual material that is paralleled from the Enuma Elish appears, proper names of deities were transliterated to depersonalized wording while the proper name Yahweh is superimposed. The Babylonians, in contrast, incorporated the earlier Akkad/Sumer source material, yet retained the pre-existing pantheon – only asserting their national god, Marduk, as preeminent.

The Hebrews imposed Yahweh as the supreme deity while mostly (but not absolutely) suppressing the earlier polytheism of their inspirational source material:

Deuteronomy 10:17 For Yahweh your God is the God of Elohim, and the Lord of lords, the great God, the mighty and the terrible, who regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward;

Here in Psalm 82 we see a highest echelon god speaking to an assembly of colleagues – urging them to govern with justice – for just as do mortal Mankind, they too will eventually die:

Psalm 82
1: God standeth in the assembly of Elohim, he judgeth among the Elohim.
2: How long will ye judge unrighteously, and accept the person of the wicked? Selah.
3: Judge for the needy and fatherless: do justice to the humble and the poor.
4: Rescue the poor and needy, deliver them out of the hand of the wicked.
5: They know not, neither do they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are moved.
6: I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High;
7: But ye shall die like Adam, and fall like one of the princes.
8: Arise, O Elohim, judge the earth; for thou shalt inherit all the nations.

For further exploration of Yahweh and Elohim as appearing in the text of Genesis, I also recommend my 2010 article:

Heiser vs. Sitchin

The Theistic Concept of the Gnostic Demiurge

In the early formative Christian era, Gnostic Christians rejected the deity Yahweh of the Hebrew biblical scriptures inferring that Yahweh, as described, was incongruent to the Heavenly Father revealed in the ministry and teachings of Yeshua.

The concept of the Demiurge is an arch defining tenet of many Gnostic traditions – even Jewish Gnostics that were not adherents of Christianity. In the introduction section of their book The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition, authors Marvin Meyer and Willis Barnstone say this on Gnostic cosmological dualism:

"They [Gnostics] concluded that a distinction, often a dualistic distinction, must be made between the transcendent, spiritual deity, who is surrounded by aeons and is all wisdom and light, and the creator of the world, who is at best incompetent and at worst malevolent. Yet through everything, they maintained, a spark of transcendent knowledge, wisdom, and light persists within people who are in the know. The transcendent deity is the source of that enlightened life and light."

(The Gnostics' cosmological dualism, inherent in the concept of the Demiurge, is typically expounded upon in theological terms. My writing in Heiser vs. Sitchin, as well as that of others, takes a concretized literalist perspective of what [or who] the Demiurge is. A circumstantial case is made that Yahweh is a high overlord of the Annunaki of Sumerian fame. Identifying exactly who the Annunaki are remains an open ended investigation. There are, of course, various hypotheses.)

Meyer and Barnstone list five distinguishing traits of gnostic religions. Third on this list is cosmological dualism as an explanation of a transcendent divine spirit vis a vis the evident fact of the estrangement of the world as it is experienced from a human perspective.

Meyer and Barnstone go on to point out that even among the non gnostic Christians there was a tension over this matter. The influential Marcion of Sinope advocated a theological dualism:

"Marcion preached that the good and loving god, revealed in Christ, must be distinguished from the just and righteous god of the Jewish people."

"Marcion wrote a book, a rather simple-minded piece called the Antitheses, with quotations from Jewish and Christian texts that seemed to Marcion to show the striking contrasts between the Jewish god and the Christian god."

Eventually Marcion too was denounced as heretical as the congealing orthodoxy of Christianity at the time decided to opt for continuity of the salvation story in respect to the history of Judaism. None-the-less, Marcion evidences the point that the Gnostic Christians were not unique in advocating theological "Demiurge" dualism.

The Cathars of 11^th through 13^th century in the Languedoc region of France likewise held the Old Testament god, Yahweh, to be the Demiurge:

“Before the persecutions started, Cathars seem to have regarded the Roman Church much the same as everything else in this material world. But increasingly evidence seemed to confirm that the Roman Church was actively allied to the wrong God. In the first place the Roman Catholics venerated the Old Testament. But the God of the Old Testament was not the Good God that Cathars recognized.”

Coming down to more recent times, the above mentioned Friedrich Delitzsch, as cited by Joseph Farrell’s book, also took umbrage with the deity portrayed in the Hebrew Bible:

“In the early 1920s, Delitzsch published the two-part The Great Deception, which was a critical treatise on the book of Psalms, prophets of the Old Testament, the invasion of Canaan, etc. Delitzsch also stridently questioned the historical accuracy of the Hebrew Bible and placed great emphasis on its numerous examples of immorality”

In the 2012 book, Yahweh, the Two-Faced God: Theology, Terrorism, and Topology (Apocalypse Theater) [ii], Joseph Farrell and coauthor Scott deHart bring the long line of Yahwist critique up to the very present time. Here are excerpts from the book’s preface:

This book is the product of our many discussions and conversations over the twenty years of our friendship. In it, we have tried to summarize our own observations about the religions of Yahwism and the types of behavior engineering that they foster.
…
By "Yahwism" we mean simply to connote those monotheisms that have as their basis some version, be it Jewish, Christian, or Islamic, of the Old Testament character of Yahweh. This is a key point, for it is the character of Yahweh itself that is our focus here, and the social effect of that character on creating "regions" of light and darkness, of "revelation" and "idolatry", of "believer" and "infidel" or "skeptic".
…
And this brings us to what, in our conversations, we have called the "Apocalypse Theater," by which we mean to imply that many of these memes and "macro-scenario-creating activities" are to some extent deliberately contrived experiments in social engineering: the deliberate creation of certain types of expectations of "fulfillments", which can then be manipulated.

So is the 21^st century Demiurge our ancient Gnostic fathers’ Demiurge? Perhaps not in detail yet perhaps so in essential consequence.

[i] Downfall of Akkad/Sumer: The account in Genesis of Abraham’s visit by Yahweh and the subsequent destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah would tend to reinforce Zacheriah Sitchin’s explanation for the demise of this southern Mesopotamian civilization. This region suffered an unfortunate side effect of the devastation of the Sinai area. Also in Genesis, Abraham's journey to the land of Canaan could be viewed as a harbinger of an agenda that is not taken up again to completion (by the Yahweh Moses encountered at the burning bush) until a few centuries later. Abraham’s descendants ultimately go into the land of Canaan, being lead by Joshua; one outcome is a near extermination of remnant Nephilim. Such extermination continues even down to the time of King David, around the beginning of the 1^st millennium BC. Goliath was slain by David in the field of battle and then Goliath’s brothers are late slain in the town of Gath where they resided.

[ii] Farrell, Joseph P.; deHart, Scott D. (2012-01-05). Yahweh The Two-Faced God: Theology, Terrorism, and Topology (Apocalypse Theater) (Kindle Locations 2-3). Periprometheus Press. Kindle Edition.

Cat's foot iron claw

Neuro-surgeons scream for more

At paranoia's poison door.

Twenty first century schizoid man.

Blood rack barbed wire

Politicians' funeral pyre

Innocents raped with napalm fire

Twenty first century schizoid man.

Death seed blind man's greed

Poets' starving children bleed

Nothing he's got he really needs

Twenty first century schizoid man.

King Crimson - 21St Century Schizoid Man lyrics

© Universal Music Publishing Group

Epistemology

According to the Wiki (aka the Encyclopedia Galatica), epistemology is a branch of philosophy that concerns itself with the nature of knowledge and how humanity comes by it. You’ll wade through a lot of isms that are variants of approaches to knowledge acquisition, but the big daddy that has fueled the technology of the industrial revolution up to the present has been the scientific method.

Scientific Method

The scientific method fundamentally posits a rational objective reality to exist. In other words, it is predicated on certain assumptions – to most folks they seem to have been pretty good ones. Mankind, after being in virtually a technological static mode for thousands of years, where humans, animals, and natural forces of nature such as wind and running water have provided the source of energetic force for anything requiring labor, in just a few centuries the scientific method overturned that status quo, literally propelling our species into the outer space beyond our planetary sphere. For most people that speaks volumes to the success of this particular approach to knowledge acquirement. We believe ourselves to be much better off than the state of humanity that prevailed, say, during the Middle Ages before the scientific method and its technological offspring of the industrial revolution become dominant.

Yet as we’ve entered the 21^st century, mankind – around the globe – has found itself to be in a bit of a funk; perhaps even disillusionment would not be too strong an expression.

The scientific method keeps cranking out further advancement and refinement of knowledge over the mastery of nature, yet there are certain detectable cracks in its mighty edifice that have begun to appear to the observant.

A Hairline Fracture

To begin with, there are findings in science itself that have brought into question the matter of if our shared reality space is indeed truly objective. This is a rather big deal because from the outset it has been one of the fundamental pillars of the scientific method to assume that reality is objective. Yet in the field of quantum physics there has been a peculiar finding.

Again, referencing the Wiki, this statement here from the Wiki's description of Wheeler's Delayed choice experiment crystallizes the essence of the mystery that goes on in such experiments:

According to the results of the double slit experiment, if experimenters do something to learn which slit the photon goes through, they change the outcome of the experiment and the behavior of the photon. If the experimenters know which slit it goes through, the photon will behave as a particle. If they do not know which slit it goes through, the photon will behave as if it were a wave when it is given an opportunity to interfere with itself.

Some state of knowledge of the experiment underway, held in the mind of the experimenter, has bearing on the outcome of the experiment. Juxtaposed against the core assumption of an objective reality, this is just extraordinary – and perhaps even unsettling to anyone that gives it a moment of serious contemplation. Further, it is the act of measurement (observation) that collapses the so-called quantum wave function of matter/energy. The universe is seemingly a probability field that is in a continuous mode of manifestation upon being observed – by conscious observers. In respect, at least, to the various double slit experiments, that consciousness is pinpointed to that of the human scientist conducting the experiment and making the observations of the experiment’s outcomes.

In everyday life deterministic laws of nature, such as Newton’s still quite handy formulations, work very well and consistently. If we step in front of an on-coming bus we’ll get pulverized – quantum physics might describe this as a high probability outcome of the collapse of the wave function of the system under observation.

Yet at the very finest scale of the fabric of reality that is probed scientifically – sub atomic particles and even larger orders such as clumps of atoms and molecules – reality does not behave in that straight forward deterministic manner. A tiny hairline fracture appears in that most comfortable model of the so-called objective reality assumption.

The Heresy

In my posting, Consciousness And Quantum Physics - And Where That Leads, I discussed three of the interpretations in view of this finding.

Certainly one possibility that remains on the table is that consciousness may actually be more primary than the matter/energy detectable phenomena by which we’ve been accustomed to reckoning about reality. Instead of the universe innately existing and then human consciousness being a mere byproduct, a kind of reverse scenario may be the actual order of things. Information processing due to elemental, pervasive consciousness may undergird all aspects of perceived experience. What we distinguish as reality may be a kind of virtual reality (the term virtual here denoting not having innate existence in and of itself), and instead of behaving simply as good clockwork should, it might at times exhibit phenomena that seems a bit strange because it ebbs from the deeper meta reality of all that is going on.

Today this point of view (the universe as a kind of virtual reality manifested via consciousness) is the provenance of the side-lined and marginalized pop culture (our favorite thought provoking movies) and counter culture (our various flavors of gurus and mystics). These are the fringes that exist in our society where an imposed rigidity of thinking can be most resisted (or simply ignored).

All we see & seem is but a dream within a dream

The fracture that is coming about in human understanding of so-called reality has been building in cadence for some time. Even as science has emerged triumphal and seemingly swept away superstition, mysticism, or anything else that might be dubbed as so-called paranormal, there has continued to be an undercurrent of contrarian agitation in the panoply of reported human experience, stubbornly refusing to be completely banished to non existence or unreserved irrelevance.

Outliers

The term outlier is used in statistical mathematics to denote a data point that is numerically outside the range or grouping of most normal data points. Statistically speaking normal tends to define the effect that is most prevalently observed/experienced. Hence outlier here is a good basis for metaphoric language that denotes phenomena that surfaces in the annals of human experiences and yet does not reside in the observations/experiences designated as normal.

What consideration is consigned to a reported outlier?

In the context of a scientific experiment, where some outlier measurement is contrary to expectations, it would typically be relegated to such causes as: 

1. Low contrasting signal to noise ratio of system being measured
2. Procedural error in taking a measurement
3. Faulty calibration or operation of measuring equipment
4. Bias of the human experimenter clouding the technique or method of taking the measurement
5. Fraudulent intent of the human experimenter
6. Mental instability of the human experimenter

In a recent highly publicized scientific experiment, regarding a possible finding of neutrinos traveling faster than light, the head of the group that came forth with that finding, Prof Antonio Ereditato, has now resigned:

Neutrino 'faster than light' scientist resigns

An attempt by a second group to make the same measurements came up with results that found neutrinos to be traveling at the expected speed of light. Back in February there was intimation that measurement equipment might have been at fault:

Faster-than-light neutrinos could be down to bad wiring

The two problems the team has identified would have opposing effects on the apparent speed.

On the one hand, the team said there is a problem in the "oscillator" that provides a ticking clock to the experiment in the intervals between the synchronizations of GPS equipment.

This is used to provide start and stop times for the measurement as well as precise distance information.

That problem would increase the measured time of the neutrinos' flight, in turn reducing the surprising faster-than-light effect.

But the team also said they found a problem in the optical fiber connection between the GPS signal and the experiment's main clock - quite simply, a cable not quite fully plugged in.

In contrast, the team said that effect would increase the neutrinos' apparent speed.

The indication here is that the unusual finding may have been due to the third bullet item, yet the recent resignation of the team’s director implies a reaction from the scientific peer community that is behaving as though it were bullet item 4 or 5.

Climate of Intimidation

Ponder here the upshot that is involved. A team following scientific protocol in good faith perhaps has a mistaken result, yet because the outlier finding challenged a fundamental pillar of contemporary science, an individual most responsible for that team is allowed scant mercy.

The incident then ends up being a reflection of the collective mind set of the scientific community: we have our hallowed precepts – do not come anywhere near to treading upon them in the science you conduct.

If the body of the scientific community reacts toward its peers in this manner in this situation, consider the disdain it would have for ordinary folk reporting categorically bizarre outlier phenomena.

Perhaps there are readers that see this in the same vein as the scientific community – if you dare to bring forth a finding that is contrary to an established pillar, you’d very well better have your ducks in a row as the body of science is hard won knowledge and is not to be dallied with lightly whatsoever. The attitude here is that this body of knowledge should be accorded due respect. Being duly respectful sounds like a reasonable and even virtuous demeanor.

Personally I’m not sure I see how an atmosphere of civility and a wee bit of forbearance for making mistakes can be thrown out the window, though, and there still exist an environment for scientist (and other researchers) to be able to go forth and probe the edges.

There is so much that hints that there is yet much to learn – and that even our hallowed pillars may one day be overturned. For indeed, what can we say about scientific theories couched in continuous maths and yet experimentally we keep verifying that the true nature of the fabric of reality is that it is discreet? Continuity doesn’t ultimately map fully onto a medium that is innately discreet – it may simply appear as good approximation for perhaps a wide range of operational regimes; quoting from the Wiki again, this time regarding Plancks’s Constant:

This inherent granularity is counterintuitive in the everyday world, where it is possible to "make things a little bit hotter" or "move things a little bit faster". This is because the quanta of action are very, very small in comparison to everyday human experience. Thus, on the macro scale quantum mechanics and classical physics converge. Nevertheless, it is impossible, as Planck found out, to explain some phenomena without accepting that action is quantized. In many cases, such as for monochromatic light or for atoms, the quantum of action also implies that only certain energy levels are allowed, and values in between are forbidden.

The formulas of classical physics are continuous maths and by that manner of categorization, Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is still a kind of classical physics – thus at odds for reconciliation with the fundamentally discreet nature of quantum physics. With an eventual deeper understanding, something is going to give way here and end up being lumped into the same space as Newton’s Laws – that which serves as good approximation for some regimes of consideration and purposes, but not a true depiction of deeper underlying reality. One could say that the laws of classical physics are emergent.

By the way, that which is inherently discreet is of the realm of information processing. Physics is in transit to giving sway to the science of information processing as the ultimate discipline. Indeed, all fields of science these days are in route to being subsumed in some fashion under the umbrella of information processing.

Gentle reader, you may view the prior paragraph as a bit of fanciful assertion, but go undertake an investigation. First ask the question of whether all scientific inquiry is edging toward the auspices of information processing. Consider these books as a jumping off points:

Decoding Reality: the universe as quantum information

Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics 

Then ask the question: Is the ultimate agency for the information processing that sustains our apparent observable reality an innately existing universe, or is it something still deeper?

To be continued…

In the next installment we will delve into more outlier phenomena while looking at another pathway to knowledge. We will posit that it is a necessity to break out of the confines of the epistemological box that our civilization (indeed our species) is currently trapped in.

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