Did consciousness emerge from the cosmos or visa-versa? Science: Human consciousness emerged from a cosmic big bang. Religion: The cosmos emerged from Divine consciousness How can we reconcile these complementary worldviews?

1. Where Did Consciousness
Come From?
Did Consciousness Emerge from
Cosmos or Visa-Versa?
Paul H. Carr
AF Research Laboratory Emeritus
www.MirrorOfNature.org
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2. Did Consciousness Emerge from Cosmos or Visa-Versa?
I. SCIENCE: Human Consciousness Emerged from the Cosmos
Cosmos emerged from a hot Big Bang 13.8 Billion years ago.
First Homo Sapiens in Africa, 200,000 years ago.
Searching for natural processes & laws that gave rise to psyche.
II. RELIGION: Cosmos Emerged From Divine Consciousness
“Word (Logos) was God,” John 1:1
“Spirit of God,” Gen 1:2
III. RECONCILIATION of SCIENCE & RELIGION:
-Biologos: Evolutionary creation.
-Emergence of homo sapiens’ sense of Divine beauty.
-Complementary beauty of science’s how & spirit’s why.
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3. “SCIENCE takes things apart and then puts them back
together to understand HOW.
RELIGION puts them back to together to understand
WHY.” (Alister McGrath)
EMERGENCE : Putting things back together.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
“More is Different” according Nobel-laureate
physicist Philip Anderson’s highly-cited article on
emergence (Science 1972). He emphasized the
limitations of reductionism and the existence of
hierarchical levels of science, each of which requires
its own fundamental principles for advancement.
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4. EXAMPLES OF EMERGENCE:
The microscopic interactions of carbon atoms,
within their environmental constraints, leads to
different macroscopic properties.
1. When the carbon atoms self-organize to form
a face-centered cubic microscopic structure, a
macroscopic diamond emerges.
2. When carbon atoms interact to form
microscopic hexagonal sheets, a soft graphite
lubricant emerges.
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5. Emergence of “Cool” Cosmos from “Hot”
13.8 Billion years ago.
Earth
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6. Paul Davies, winner of the 1995 Templeton Prize:
"I do not cling to the notion of God as a miracle-working
cosmic magician, who makes a big bang and
then intervenes as a cosmic repairman. A God who can
create a self-creating universe with laws (logos) is much
more majestic.
As an emergentist, I believe in a hierarchy of
principles, with the laws of physics at the bottom level
and emergent laws operating at higher levels. Thus, we
have laws of complexity, such as self-organizing
chemical cycles. There are Mendel's laws of genetics
when life appears. The high-level laws do not violate the
lower level laws, nor are they reducible to them. They
supervene on them."
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7. Carbon Dioxide, CO22
Prokaryote Cells Eukaryote Cells
Figure from “Cosmic Dawn” by Eric Chaisson
EMERGENCE OF LIFE ON EARTH
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8. 542 Myr Beginning of Multicellular Life.
“The Fossil Record of the Cambrian Explosion”
Keith Miller, PSCF, June 2014
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9. THREE STAGES OF LIFE’S EMERGENCE
From biological anthropologist Terrence Deacon ‘s(2011), Incomplete Nature: How
Mind Emerged from Matter.
1.THERMODYNAMICS, CHAOS: atoms and molecules of water, methane, ammonia,
carbon dioxide, etc. moving randomly from thermal fluctuations in a primordial soup.
2. MORPHODYNAMICS or FORM (morphology = structure). Self-organizing order for
free, and the absence of dynamical variety: amino acids and proteins. Stable
autocatalytic chemical processes in which the output feeds back into the input: self
reproducing molecules.
Example: Miller (1953) and Urey subjected a mixture of water, hydrogen, methane,
carbon dioxide, and ammonia that were present shortly after the earth was formed,
to an electrical spark, which simulated lightning. They observed amino acids, the
building blocks of life-forming proteins.
3. TELEODYNAMICS: (telos = purpose, goal) Self-replicating cells emerged under the
right conditions from amino acids and proteins.
The vital purpose (telos) of a cell is to eat and to avoid its absence (of being eaten).
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10. I
DEACON’S EMERGENT STAGE III:
TELEODYNAMICS & CONSCIOUSNESS
Incomplete Nature:
How Mind Emerged from Matter (2011)
Cells and brainless plants have sentience, response
to their environment, but not consciousness.
•“Consciousness is the final quasi-regular network-level
dynamic like melody played by a million-instrument
orchestra, this is the medium of mental information.”
(Consciousness Chapter).
• Deacon thereby formulates a naturalistic scientific
worldview: consciousness and psyche emerge from the
firing of our neurons but cannot be reduced to them.
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11. 11
Philosopher David Chalmers’ PANPSYCHISM
Director of the Center For Consciousness at Australian National U, &
Co-Director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York U
Thesis: MATERIALISM Everything is Matter (and Energy)
Antithesis: DUALISM: Matter and mind are separate (Descartes)
Synthesis: PANPSYCHISM: Everything has a degree of mind
or consciousness.
Our macro-consciousness emerges from the micro-consciousness
(or sentience) of neurons.
Conscious is holistic property of our brain. It is the eternal
pattern (personality) by which the neurons (parts) relate.
Consciousness emerges from this relationship.

12. Artificial Consciousness & Revolutionizing Medical Device Design
A fascinating discussion about how artificial consciousness and revolutionary medical device
design are poised to transform healthcare. Our visionary speakers discussed in November 2014:
•Consciousness as a state of matter that can be described in terms of quantum mechanics and
information theory (materialist).
•Revolutionizing medical device design through advances in integrated circuits and micro-electromechanical
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systems
•Dr. Max Tegmark
MIT Professor of Physics
Author of “The Mathematical Universe,” Director of the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi)
•Dr. Charles Sodini
MIT LeBel Professor of Electrical Engineering
Co-founder of the Medical Electronic Device Realization Center
•Dr. Jonathan Rothberg
Chairman of 4Combinator
Inventor of high-speed DNA sequencing, founder Ion Torrent, RainDance, 454 Life Sciences,
ClariFi, CuraGen

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PLATONIC FORMS: IS CONSCOUSNESS MATHEMATICAL?
Mathematical Relationships are beautiful, harmonious, eternal
patters (forms) and independent of their representation (number
system) and material substrate.
1 + 2 = 3 (Arabic Number System)
I + II = III (Roman Number Systems)
1 + 3 = 4
I + III = IV
Consciousness is a
mathematical pattern:
MIT Prof. Max Tegmark:
TEDxCambridge 2014
https://www.youtube.com/

14. Can consciousness be described by mathematics?
MIT Prof. Max Tegmark: “Consciousness is currently not
understood through mathematics - nor by any other scientific
approach, for that matter. Whether it ever will be is a very
interesting question.
I co-organized a conference on the Physics of Information
recently where we invited the neuroscientists Giulio Tononi,
Christoph Koch and Larissa Albantakis to speak, and intriguingly,
they do think that the subjective feeling of the color red, the
feeling of love, etc., can be understood as complex mathematical
shapes related to information processing in the brain. I explore
this in chapter 11 of my book.
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We obviously don't yet know whether their ideas will
ultimately prove to be correct or not, but the fact that their
research is taken seriously in the neuroscience community means
that we can't be 100% sure that consciousness can't ultimately be
understood mathematically.”
Consciousness is a mathematical pattern: Max Tegmark at TEDxCambridge
2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzCvlFRISIM

15. Consciousness, argues neuroscientist/neurobiologist Damasio, is
linked to emotion, to our feelings for the images we perceive.
There are in fact several kinds of consciousness, he says:
the proto-self, which exists in the mind's constant monitoring of the
body's state, of which we are unaware;
a core consciousness that perceives the world 500 milliseconds after
the fact; and
the extended consciousness of memory, reason and language.
Different from wakefulness and attention, consciousness can exist
without language, reason or memory: for example, an amnesiac
has consciousness. But when core consciousness fails, all else fails
with it.
At the height of consciousness, above reason and creativity,
Damasio places conscience, a word that preceded consciousness by
many centuries.
In a book that cuts through the old nature vs. nurture argument as well as conventional
ideas of identity and possibly even of soul, it's clear, though he may not say so, that
Damasio is still on the side of the angels.
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Prof. Max Tegmark’s Consciousness Principles
The Ordering Below is Increasingly Human
•Memory & information storage
•Dynamics of information processing “Conscious is
what information processing feels like.” Max Tegmark.
•Individual identity as separate from the universe.
“I think therefore I am.” (Descartes)
•Integration and relation to others and our universe.
We are remembered by in the minds of others &
in the eternal mind of God. (Whitehead)

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PLATONIC FORMS: CONCSIOUSNESS CAN BE MATHEMATICAL
Mathematical Relationships are beautiful, harmonious, eternal
patters & forms (personality) and independent of their
representation (number system) and material representations.
1 + 2 = 3 (Arabic Number System)
I + II = III (Roman Number Systems)
1 + 3 = 4
I + III = IV
Consciousness is a
mathematical pattern:
MIT Prof. Max Tegmark:
TEDxCambridge 2014
https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=GzCvlFRISIM

18. Consciousness Beyond Life:
The Science of the Near-Death Experience (2011)
By Cardiologist Pim van Lommel, MD
Cardiologist Pim van Lommel, MD for decades studied
near death experiences in 100s of patients, which he
published in the refereed medical journal Lancet.
He concludes that the current views on the
relationship between the brain and consciousness held
by most physicians, philosophers, and psychologists are
too narrow for a proper understanding of the
phenomenon.
He shows that our consciousness does not always
coincide with brain functions and that consciousness can
even be experienced separate from the body.
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19. I.SCIENCE: Human Consciousness Emerged from the Cosmic Big
Bang, 13.8 B years ago.
- How mind emerged from the matter,
-Research on a naturalist worldview of human consciousness &
psyche is continuing.
II. RELIGION: Cosmos Emerged From Divine Consciousness.
Word (Logos) of God, John 1:1
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that
bringeth good tidings. Isaiah 52:7
Jesus brought us this good news. “The world was made by
him”(John 1: 10) because he was with the creating “Spirit of God”
in the beginning (Gen 1:2).
I n Hinduism, consciousness has its independent existence in the
Divine Brahmin. Human consciousness is a small fragment of the
Divine Consciousness. (Christian Trinitarian “Spirit of God” within.)
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20. Consciousness Explained Better:
Towards an Integral
Understanding of the
Multifaceted Nature of
Consciousness (2009)
By neuralpsychologist Allan Combs,
President of the Society for
Consciousness Studies
• Consciousness is not relativistic and culturally defined. There are
universal states and streams in the evolution of consciousness.
• Consciousness is not merely viewed as epiphenomena, emerging
from the material stuff of brains. Rather it is an integral part of
cosmos itself.
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21. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
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We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

22. Donald P. Merrifield, S. J., (1928 – 2010)
Former President, Loyola Marymount Univ.
•The mind-body problem is philosophic and
ontological not scientific. There is a spiritual
dimension beyond the physical. If matter were
an abstraction removed from its holistic
spiritual ground and only governed by natural
laws, then we humans would be nothing but
biological machines.
• There is spiritual core totally at home and incarnate in
the brain though not emerging from its structure but
from its being. If this is an attempt to resurrect the old
Thomastic soul, the form of the body, so be it.
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23. III. RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE & RELIGION
• Scientific conscious is a holistic property of our body. It is the
eternal pattern (personality) by which the neurons (parts) relate.
Consciousness emerges from this non-reducible relationship.
• Divine consciousness is a holistic property of the universe
by which its parts relate through God’s eternal logos. God’s
eternal being is these patterns of the universe. (Pantheism)
God creates & sustains these relationships & emergent
creatures, but transcends them. (Panentheism).
•The EMERGENCE of homo sapiens with a sense of beauty
(harmonious relationships) pointing to the Divine.
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24. Dr. Francis Collins, founder BioLogos.
“I find those rare dramatic moments of scientific
discovery in my own experience to be moments of
worship also, where a revelation about some intricacy
of God’s creation is appreciated for the first time.”
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25. "BioLogos" is a new term for theistic evolution.
http://biologos.org/
• Bios is the Greek word for "life".
•Logos is Greek for "word," with a broader meaning in
Philosophy and Stoicism—namely the rational principle
ordering the universe.
• In Christian theology, "word" includes the Hebrew idea of
a creative agent for all that exists, in addition to being an
ordering principle.
•"BioLogos" expresses the belief that God is the source of
all life and that life expresses the will of God.
•BioLogos represents the view that evolutionary science
and religious faith co-exist in harmony. 24

26. Complementary Beauty of Science & Spirit
• The emergent evolutionary process
produced homo sapiens, who see
beauty (harmonious relationships) in
the world.
• “If nature were not
beautiful, it would not
be worth knowing.”
Henri Poincare
• I experience beauty
in both science and
religion.
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27. “This is salvation
When we marvel
At the beauty
Of created things
And praise
The beautiful providence
Of their Creator.”
- Meister Eckart ( 1260 – 1327),
“The thirst for beauty that permeates our lives is
an opening for transcendence…” Theologian Philip Hefner.
Foreword, Beauty in Science and Spirit.”
“Beauty’s self and beauty’s giver…” Gerald Manley Hopkins
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28. "Here is beauty
– whatever those who have never looked at butterfly may say-
Beauty that rejoices and humbles,…
beauty remote from all that is meant by words like random or
purposeless, utilitarian or materialistic,
beauty in its impact is akin to the authentic encounter with God.“
Naturalist priest Charles Raven
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29. BEAUTY OF THE UNIVERSE
From cooler temperatures 0.3 M yrs after the “Beginning,”
to Galaxies, 2 B years later.
Image of the universe 0.3 Million
years after “the beginning.” This
image of temperature fluctuations
was measured by the Wilkinson
Microwave Anisotropy Probe. The
cooler regions “seeded” the stars
and the galaxies. 28
Hubble Optical Deep Field Image
of Galaxies 12 Billion Light
Years away, about 2
Billion years after “the
beginning.” (1996)

30. From Cosmos to Psyche
John Wheeler’s Participatory Universe
Human consciousness & eyes have emerged from the
beginning of the Universe (U) to look back 13.8 B years & ask,
“How did we get here and why?” 29

31. III. RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE & RELIGION
• Scientific conscious is a holistic property of our brains & bodies. It
is the eternal pattern (personality) by which the neurons (parts)
relate. Consciousness emerges from this non-reducible relationship.
•Divine consciousness is a holistic property of the universe
by which its parts relate through God’s eternal logos. God’s
eternal being is these patterns of the universe. (Pantheism)
God creates & sustains these relationships & emergent
creatures, but transcends them. (Panentheism).
•The EMERGENCE of homo sapiens with a sense of beauty
(harmonious relationships) pointing to the Divine.
•
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