PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time

PoeticUniverse

Could you re-word? — Gnomon

How is it that a Great Programmer is sitting around? Wouldn't he need a zillion times more explaining than humans getting explained through him?

Gnomon

explain how Life & Mind could emerge from material processes, without divine intervention — Gnomon
Isn't it then a larger question of how the Divine Life & Mind could be so without a regress to HIGHER and GREATER, etc? We only see the polar opposite of the smaller and smaller as a basis. — PoeticUniverse

Coincidentally, after writing the post above, I went back to reading a novel on Kindle : The Magic Mountain. There's no supernatural magic in the story, but the author writes in a rambling & erudite style that I call "poetic prose". It's set at a TB sanitarium in the Swiss alps in the 1920s, just prior to WWI. {around the time Whitehead was writing his Process. } This was before DNA (genetic information) was discovered. So, the emergence of life from non-life was a mystery. . . . and it still is.

The young patient, inspired by a conversation with the head doctor, begins to read a book about Anatomy and Genetics. The passage below is a sort of inner dialog as he reads. Today, we still haven't found the "element" that fills the gap between Life & Non-life. Yet, my thesis postulates that the gap-filler is not a physical particle, but the mathematical, meaningful & causal relationships we call Information and Energy. The "units" are 1s and 0s, something & nothing, that together add-up to everything (all possible forms). It's not magic, but an evolutionary continuum, combining concepts of Science and Philosophy (abiogenesis). :nerd:

"As long as one spoke of living units, one could not correctly speak of elementary units, for the concept of unity carried with it in perpetuity the concept of subordinated, upbuilding unity; and there was no such thing as elementary life, in the sense of something that was already life, and yet elementary. And still, though without logical existence, something of the kind must be eventually the case; for it was not possible to brush aside like that the idea of the original procreation, the rise of life out of what was not life. That gap which in exterior nature we vainly sought to close, that between living and dead matter, had its counterpart in nature’s organic existence, and must somehow either be closed up or bridged over. Soon or late, division must yield “units” which, even though in composition, were not organized, and which mediated between life and absence of life; molecular groups, which represented the transition between vitalized organization and mere chemistry. But then, arrived at the molecule, one stood on the brink of another abyss, which yawned yet more mysteriously than that between organic and inorganic nature: the gulf between the material and the immaterial."
The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann, 1924

Gnomon

Could you re-word? — Gnomon
How is it that a Great Programmer is sitting around? Wouldn't he need a zillion times more explaining than humans getting explained through him? — PoeticUniverse

You think the Programmer is "sitting around" doing nothing? You may be thinking of Jehovah, who created paradise in six days, and then on Sunday went out to play golf. Whitehead's God never takes a day off; creating is what S/he does 24/7/365.

The Programmer doesn't explain, S/he creates, and It's up to us thinking beings to interpret the meaning of the doing. Metaphorically, the world itself is the Bible, and Science writes the book, chapter & verse of the Revelation. You want an explanation? Do it yourself. You won't be saved by faith in an invisible deity, or by kow-towing, or by sacrificing animals ; but you might get some philosophical satisfaction : you have a (minor) role in the evolution of a cosmos.

But, Whitehead's "God", and my "Programmer", are not just "sitting around" on golden thrones watching the game of Life. They get their hands dirty by continually creating a cosmos via the incremental process of Evolution. The God of the Process is both Immanent (what you see) and Transcendent (what you infer), as is my Programmer.

The program is a set of ideas, from the mind of the programmer, that govern the process of Evolution from a Singularity, to a quark-gluon Plasma, then to atoms & molecules & elements of matter, then on to vast systems of stars, and eventually to living & thinking lumps of matter on a single Blue Planet. And the beat goes on. . . . . But this story puts the Paradise at the end of the Process : its output. I don't know what The End might be. Perhaps the Process is the reason for doing the program.

If you are still imagining Whitehead's God as an old guy with a long white beard, your puzzled question might make sense, to you. But to me, it misses the point of a perpetual Process, instead of a space-time Thing. Try thinking of Lao Tse's Tao instead. Then re-phrase your question. :wink:

Alfred North Whitehead's "process and reality" philosophy views the universe as a dynamic, evolving web of interconnected processes, emphasizing the importance of becoming and change over static existence, with each event, or "actual occasion," contributing to the ongoing creative process of the universe.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=whitehead+process+evolution

PoeticUniverse

Lao Tse's Tao — Gnomon

On the Eternal Tao and Its Manifestations

The Foundation

Let us realize that what is Eternal
Stands as the bedrock of all that appears,
The permanent presence beneath every change,
Unchanging through all of time’s gathering years.

What truly exists cannot fade or dissolve,
Cannot be created or suffer decay;
The Eternal simply and perfectly Is,
While temporary forms drift like clouds away.

The Manifestation

Through endless transmutation’s flowing dance,
The Eternal dons ten thousand changing forms,
Like one great ocean lifting countless waves,
Or single sky spawning infinite storms.

Each temporal thing that rises from its depths
Bears witness to that which forever stays,
A momentary expression of the whole,
A fleeting actor in eternal plays.

The Paradox

How strange that what seems most solid and real—
The mountains, the stars, our own flesh and bone—
Are but the ripples on timeless seas,
While the unchanging source remains unknown.

Yet in each mote of cosmic dust there dwells
The fullness of that which can never die,
As every drop contains the entire sea,
And each moment holds eternity’s sky.

The Understanding

The wise ones tell us: look beneath the flux
Of birth and death, of pleasure and of pain,
To find that which has never come or gone,
The deathless presence that does e’er remain.

For though all forms must shift and change and flow,
Their essence rests in that which cannot move,
The changeless witness to all changing things,
The ground of being that all forms must prove.

The Perspective

From highest heaven to the deepest seas,
From quantum foam to galactic expanse,
All manifestation’s endless pageantry
Emerges from the Eternal’s timeless dance.

What seems to perish never truly dies,
What seems to birth was never truly born;
Forms merely shift like waves upon the deep,
While that which Is continues without morn.

The Recognition

To know this truth is not to turn away
From life’s rich play of shadow and of light,
But to perceive within each passing show
The presence of the Infinite’s delight.

For in the dance of atom and of star,
Of thought and feeling, birth and final breath,
We glimpse the face of that which always Is,
Beyond all bounds of life and time and death.

The Living

Thus may we walk through time’s swift-flowing stream,
Aware of both the wave and water’s truth:
The forms that pass, the presence that remains,
The aged wisdom and eternal youth.

Each moment precious in its swift-winged flight,
Yet held within that which can never fade;
Each change a window to unchanging light,
Each temporal thing of timeless essence made.

The Synthesis

Let us then cherish every passing day,
While resting in the truth that cannot pass;
Dance with the waves while knowing we are sea,
Be both the changing leaves and changeless mass.

For this is wisdom’s deepest, sweetest song:
That in the heart of all that seems to flee,
There dwells that which has never left its place—
The one still point of all eternity.

The Resolution

The Eternal remains forever what it is,
Though dressed in time’s kaleidoscopic show;
The permanent wears impermanence like robes,
Through which its timeless radiance may flow.

And we who walk in bodies made of time
Carry within the spark of timeless fire,
Both wave and ocean, both the dance and still,
Both changing form and changeless heart’s desire.

PoeticUniverse

The program is a set of ideas, from the mind of the programmer, that govern the process of Evolution from a Singularity, to a quark-gluon Plasma, then to atoms & molecules & elements of matter, then on to vast systems of stars, and eventually to living & thinking lumps of matter on a single Blue Planet. — Gnomon

Theistic Evolution?

Actually, Poseidon causes plate tectonics, and Ra initiates nuclear fusion in the sun.

Just joking, for yet no one today, except Pat Robertson types, appeals to these Gods to explain earthquakes or solar fusion; yet, it is proposed that a higher realm called God directs these things, as well as all nature and especially the mind of the brain (via a soul). These thoughts are from the mythic ages, and are somewhat still here today.

Some would go to the extremes of throwing all of science out the window as ‘dogma’; yet, their computers, devices, and appliances run pretty well on this ‘dogma’.

Let us, then, deal with the case that evolution indeed happens and that God directs it, for that must become the fallback ID position. For starters, evolution is not goal-oriented, so we can discard the (biological teleological) argument for the existence of God, which claims that postulating God is necessary to account for purposiveness in nature. Evolution is a blind watchmaker.

To review and elaborate more, though, theistic evolution is the theological view that God creates new species through evolution. The advocates like to reserve a special place for humans, separate from the animals, but this is not a scientifically justifiable stance, given the many evolutionary predecessors of human beings. So, animals are ‘brutalized’ and humans humanized to make the alleged gap as big as possible: humans are characterized as the only creatures with reason, empathy, a rich emotional life, altruism, culture, identity, and language. Yet all these characteristics have been observed to a greater or lesser extent in the animals, especially in other primates. The history of the universe has thus been an unfolding of purely naturalistic processes.

The ‘God hypothesis’ provides no additional explanatory value. It is but a refuge of ignorance. One who feels the need to postulate a divine cause is left with the question of what caused God to exist!

Reveal

Perhaps God does not need a cause, they say; but then why think that the universe/stuff needs one? So, it adds nothing.

Evolution is an immensely slow, wasteful, pitiless, and cruel process, hardly the most elegant process of creation open to a goal-oriented, omnipotent, intelligent, and benevolent God. If humanity is the final goal of creation, whence the 3,500,000,000! years since the origin of life, or the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang? What is the point of this immense amount of time if human beings and their world are the pinnacle of the Almighty’s creation?

Does God cause mutations to direct evolution? Well, they sure seem all over the place, plus a lot are bad and many are neutral.

The vast majority of mutations are selectively neutral or negative with regard to the evolution and survival of homo sapiens, and, thus, their evolution is wasteful if measured against the goal of producing human beings. Such a wasteful process is hardly consonant with a goal-oriented, omnipotent, and omniscient God.

The case against theistic evolution continues…

The honorable Graybeard presiding, Austin P. Torney continuing as lawyer for the prosecution (since his name contains the letters “attorney”)…

I call the recent family tree to the witness stand; but, wait, oh my God, there are some others, too, many of them extinct!

The testimony: There is no progressive trend in evolution toward the development of human beings; evolution can be seen as a huge tree with many branching points, not a direct line to humans; we are just a not-yet-extinct part of one of the very many branches of the enormous tree of life.

I now call upon the extinct.

Testimony: What was the point of all these extinct animals, if the goal of creation is man and his surrounding nature? To what purpose were the dinosaurs? What was the point of the trilobites? These groups of animals did not even contribute to the origin of humans.

The development of life has been interrupted by innumerable extinctions, some with so many different plant and animal species dying out in the same time period that they have been called mass extinctions.

Judge Graybeard, having worked for ten minutes straight now, calls a recess for a long lunch…

The trial resumes.

We see evolution differently then, Austin, as the process of evolution seems most intent on the continuation of ‘life forms’, though I will agree that it does not seem to have a vested interest in which forms are successful in relation to which others.

True, no vested interest, those who were in a position to ‘adapt’ and survive, were not necessarily ‘nice’ (could even be ‘mean’).

Still, I tend to wonder why all species of my experience offer a great struggle to survive, when the alternative of doing nothing is by far the easier choice?

Survival is the brain’s objective, thus often even thinking its way into the afterlife.

Break time. …

The theistic evolution trial resumes…

Judge Graybeard looks half-asleep, but seems to be listening with one ear.

God is outside of time and takes a long time to fiddle with evolution.

The prosecution answers and continues: It has been suggested that God’s mindset is very slow compared to the ‘speedy’ time of the operation of the universe, and thus I submit that slow God would not have been alert or responsive enough to direct evolution through mutation.

The defense objected, stating that they would have to check with their client on this, the judge asking how long would this would take, noting that it took over 200 years for a response to Haiti’s pact with the Devil.

Oh, about a million years. OK, we’ll reconvene…

Wait! We can’t wait that long… So I’ll allow the claim that God says that he directs mutations. Let the record show both opinions.

Thank you, judge, for our theory can adapt to any and all turns of events.

The trial droned on…

Testimony: Why would God create complete ecosystems only to have them virtually annihilated, so that entirely different ecosystems would temporarily emerge in their place, only to meet the same fate, over and over again? Had the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago missed the Earth, it’s likely that our little branch on the tree of life would never have developed, since it was the end of dinosaur dominance made it possible for our small mammal ancestors to flourish; how are such chance contingencies in the history of life compatible with the alleged providence of a Creator?

Graybeard, the judge, was fully awake now and was carving something out of a large block of wood.

Worse still, consider the vast amount of suffering needed to secure our existence through natural selection; the environment “selects” those organisms best adapted to it not the most even-tempered ones.

Consequently, numerous predatory creatures have evolved which regularly inflict suffering on prey and host animals. The screw-worm fly (Cochliomyia hominivorax), for instance, lays its eggs in the wounds or eyes of mammals (including humans), causing any wounds to widen when the eggs hatch and the larva eat the surrounding tissue. This attracts more congeners, further widening the wounds. Untreated, such parasitism often leads to a gruesome death. Or consider the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes autoimmune deficiency syndrome (AIDS); is a great evolutionary success one which creates immense suffering among human beings?

It was now getting near 3 PM, the judge announcing, “That’s it for today; let’s meet again sometime after my vacation. …

The mind is like a man in a rowboat.

A few days ago there were 50-foot waves on the north shore of Oahu. Some ants looking like people surfed on them or at least the wave remnants, enjoying the ecstasy, and then were ground up into the sand—the agony; a guy in a rowboat fished them out.

I can see a tree with my physical eye because that tree is embodied in matter, but, to conceptualize that tree my mind goes into universal concepts of meaning which have never taken embodiment in matter, for they do not require physical presence before my eye. So, you see, concepts are not acts of a bodily organ such as the brain or they would exist in matter; conceptual thought is an immaterial power which we use to form concepts of meaning. Utilizing that power does not require any physical sense or organs.

Judge: immaterial, since the brain is an organ.
…

The theistic evolution case resumes:

Attorney: I’d like to address the tree.

Judge: Proceed.

Attorney: Hello tree.

Judge: Ha-ha.

Attorney: The tree, as out there, is a bunch of waves, the photons carrying the ‘visuals’, the air-vibrations passing on the ‘sounds’, the molecules transmitting ‘odour’ by their shapes, etc. I use quotes to show that these transformations are fully made later on by the brain; if there is no brain around, then there are just the waves emanating.

While our senses are absolutely in direct contact with the waves/particles that are out there, we don’t have awareness at that level, plus, the direct jumble of waves all interfering with each other might not reveal anything much right off the bat. So, the brain proceeds to process the information with its many modules and subsystems through higher and higher levels, finding edges, intensity, color, and distance for vision, detecting molecules shapes for smell, interpreting air waves as sound, etc., as often much more detailed elsewhere, until the tree is seen, smelled, heard, and so forth as the final perception of the tree with its qualities within the head.

There is no dividing line where the brain says “I can do no more” and hands it off to some nonphysical realm, for it has already done it all. This includes the brain’s memory coming along and knowing what a tree is as a whole and its parts, associations arising, such as the old tree house or that leaves have chlorophyll and fall in the autumn, etc., and then more associations upon those associations.

The brain is the lifeboat navigating and re-cognizing the waves of reality, painting a useful face upon the waters. All is ever in the brain as a representation, the tree never being directly known as matter, not even in the first place.

Judge: OK, back to evolution.

Testimony: Immense suffering, like wasteful “trial and error,” is not incidental, but is inherent to the process of evolution. And it does not sit well with the notion that evolution has been set up or directed by a loving God. The theistic retort that “God moves in mysterious ways” goes well beyond the evidence from evolutionary biology, not to mention that it is a kind of excuse for very poor, sometimes seemingly near insane, ways of accomplishing things.

There is a far simpler and elegant explanation for that evidence: there is no divine will to grope at in the dark, just the indifferent, pitiless, and naturalistic forces of evolution. Since evolution is a slow, wasteful, and brutal process, prima facie it is not the way in which a goal-oriented, omnipotent, omniscient, and loving God would choose to create the world. Thus a naturalistic explanation for the origin of all species, including homo sapiens, is more plausible than a theistic one.

Judge: nap time.

Gnomon

Let us realize that what is Eternal
Stands as the bedrock of all that appears,
The permanent presence beneath every change,
Unchanging through all of time’s gathering years.

What truly exists cannot fade or dissolve,
Cannot be created or suffer decay;
The Eternal simply and perfectly Is,
While temporary forms drift like clouds away. — PoeticUniverse

You got it! The fundamental fact of our evolving world is Change, which is sometimes good, but also can be bad. As Heraclitus noted : Panta Rhei, "everything flows, nothing abides". But philosophers are on the lookout for something stable, something fundamental ; a foundation upon which Causation can move the world in a positive direction. But what is positive, except that which aligns with the Will (Tao) of the uncaused Cause of temporal flow?

All philosophies & religions have postulated some First Cause or Prime Mover that stands outside the decaying reality that we see & touch with our limited sense organs in our animal bodies. We only know of that which "truly exists" by using our god-like talent for logical reasoning. We can't know that it is, in the sense of temporal existence, but we can know that it logically must be, in the sense of Necessity, of Ontology, of absolute eternal Being. :smile:

For this is wisdom’s deepest, sweetest song:
That in the heart of all that seems to flee,
There dwells that which has never left its place—
The one still point of all eternity. — PoeticUniverse

Lovers of Wisdom are called Philosophers. They know that which cannot be seen : Ideal concepts. But they also have the wit to avoid placing their Faith in the heart's desire, if the Ideal is in conflict with the Real. Ancient mothers reluctantly gave their babies to fiery Moloch in exchange for temporal rewards. But when those blessings, promised by servile priests, do not come to pass, wise women will learn that idols of gold are merely tools for political domination. Only the unseen unchurched Nature god has the innate power of flourishing. The rock from which the water of Life flows. The rock abides, but we philosophers must go with the flow. :grin:
.

Gnomon

How is it that a Great Programmer is sitting around? Wouldn't he need a zillion times more explaining than humans getting explained through him? — PoeticUniverse

In a previous post, I said "The God of the Process is both Immanent (what you see) and Transcendent (what you infer), as is my Programmer." To clarify, I'll explain further : the Transcendent aspect of the Programmer is Plato's eternal principle of Form (an infinite pool of possibility : Potential), and the Immanent aspect is what I call EnFormAction (causal Energy) and Mind (mental information). :nerd:

The ‘God hypothesis’ provides no additional explanatory value. It is but a refuge of ignorance. One who feels the need to postulate a divine cause is left with the question of what caused God to exist! — PoeticUniverse

OK. What caused the Big Bang to exist as the point of origin for our space-time cosmos? That Something from Nothing hypothesis "provides no additional explanatory value", and Multiverse hypotheses treat the BB as a minor speed-bump, magically extending the timeline into the infinite past. Is that conjecture merely a "refuge of ignorance"? Where's the evidence?

The unprecedented BB theory is the best Materialistic Science has to offer, because that discipline pragmatically limits its search for knowledge to what we humans can manipulate physically. Yet, if the question of ultimate causation is valid, why not let the impractical (theoretical) philosophers have a crack at it? Causation is not something we can see or touch ; we infer it via Reason & Imagination, which can pass through solid barriers, just like quantum tunneling*1. Is QT a miracle, preached by Pat Robertson, or an inference by theoretical physicists? Mechanism & Materialism can explain a lot, but not the emergence of Life & Mind from non-life & mindlessness.

The Eternal Something postulation (God or Multiverse) at least goes one step farther back beyond the current stumbling block of "Bang! Let there be Momentum". So, what makes nothingness go Boom? The Multiverse miracle is a tower of turtles explanation. But the God Hypothesis is a Causal explanation, based on a talent that makes humans more creative than animals : future-directed Intention. The BB event was an impetus of momentum similar to the kind of causation that makes a rack of billiard balls explode across the table, then into the designated pockets : the Intention of the pool-shooter. I suppose, a preference for meaningless Multiverse over Purposeful Creation depends on your understanding of the world as we know it : random meandering vs an evolutionary Process. :cool:

*1. Quantum Tunneling :
In physics, quantum tunnelling, barrier penetration, or simply tunnelling is a quantum mechanical phenomenon in which an object such as an electron or atom passes through a potential energy barrier that, according to classical mechanics, should not be passable due to the object not having sufficient energy to pass or ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_tunnelling

THE MULTIVERSE CONJECTURE
Turtles%20all%20the%20way.png

180 Proof

All philosophies & religions have postulated some First Cause or Prime Mover ... — Gnomon

False (again). :roll:

But the God Hypothesis is a ~~Causal~~ explanation — Gnomon

Planck scale pre-spacetime (vacuum) consists of random – a-causal – fluctuations, ergo no "first cause". A god-fairytale (e.g. "prime mover", "enformer/programmer", etc) does not explain anything – even in principle; it just begs the question as a woo-of-the-gaps appeal to ignorance. Physical cosmogeny only circumstantially suggests stages of spacetime development not "the ultimate origin of" anything. As many others besides myself have pointed out for years, our scientistic reduction of metaphysics, Gnomon, amounts to a risibly dogmatic pseudo-theology (on par with astrology & alchemy). Do yourself (us) a favor and read God: The Failed Hypothesis by physicist and philosopher Victor Stenger.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/God:_The_Failed_Hypothesis :fire:

PoeticUniverse

What caused the Big Bang to exist as the point of origin for our space-time cosmos? That Something from Nothing hypothesis — Gnomon

There cannot be a 'Nothing' for one, and two, if someone still wants a 'Nothing' that changes into a Something, as a event in time, this cannot be, either, for 'Nothing' has no time, no anything, and again, 'it' doesn't have an it. Those ex nihlilo believers don't get it or 'it'.

So, yes we can show that the Basis of All has to be eternal, as permanent. Logically, what is never made can't have parts; it is unmakable and unbreakable, and thus very tiny. All the temporaries are made of it, as arrangements of it, and it is such as the quantum fields. Empirically, we see that the basis is minuscule, as well as the elementaries that it produces.

So, what makes nothingness go Boom? — Gnomon

No 'Nothingness'! What goes Boom is the stuff-effect from the cause before the Bang, but not from the Great Pool Player, for complexities, like us, come later, not earlier, and so cannot be the Basis.

Can't ever have something greater being responsible for the lesser, etc.

''God' is a stance from us having fathers; Can't have Fathers of fathers all the way down.

Read Stenger and Dawkings and 180 Proof and Poetic Universe!

PS: 'Nothing' cannot even be meant.

PoeticUniverse

The God of the Process is both Immanent (what you see) and Transcendent (what you infer), as is my Programmer. — Gnomon

Entertainment break:

180 Proof

@Gnomon

Read Stenger and ~~Dawkings~~[Hawking] and 180 Proof and Poetic Universe! — PoeticUniverse

:cool: :up:

'Nothing' cannot even be meant.

:smirk:

Btw, Keiji Nishitani's Religion and Nothingness is a great meditation on ...!

Gnomon

There cannot be a 'Nothing' for one, and two, if someone still wants a 'Nothing' that changes into a Something, as a event in time, this cannot be, either, for 'Nothing' has no time, no anything, and again, 'it' doesn't have an it. Those ex nihlilo believers don't get it or 'it'. — PoeticUniverse

That's a good summary of Immanentist-Materialist doctrine, from an Earth-based animal-mind perspective. Pragmatic Matter-only believers can't imagine the absence of material Things*1 ; that would be an abyss of utter negation : outer darkness. On the other hand, a Transcendentalist-Idealist worldview, from a theoretical cosmic-philosophical perspective, does not negate the common-sense material world of the animal senses : ex nihilo nihil fit. But it does go beyond the here & now, as only humans can do, to "see" what lies beyond the horizon. Dogmatic Matter-only (what-you-see-is-all-there-is) {all Terrain, no Map} believers are not allowed to imagine anything that is not-yet-real, such as abstractions & symbols & potentials. However, Transcendentalists --- or in my case, PanEnDeists --- are free to envision ex omni or ex deo creation or manifestation*2. Not what is, but what logically could be. :cool:

*1. What fallacy is lack of imagination?
Argument from incredulity, also known as argument from personal incredulity, appeal to common sense, or the divine fallacy, is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition must be false because it contradicts one's personal expectations or beliefs, or is difficult to imagine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

*2. What is the difference between creatio ex nihilo and creatio ex deo?
Alternatives to creatio ex materia include creatio ex nihilo ("creation from nothing"); creatio ex deo ("creation from God"), referring to a derivation of the cosmos from the substance of God either partially (in panentheism) or completely (in pandeism), and creatio continua (ongoing divine creation).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_materia

PoeticUniverse

However, Transcendentalists --- or in my case, PanEnDeists --- are free to envision ex omni or ex deo creation or manifestation*2. Not what is, but what logically could be. — Gnomon

Logically, human life and mind needing a Higher Life and Mind to form it all the more requires a HIGHER LIFE and MIND to form the Higher Life and Mind, and so forth, unto infinite regress. There's really no way around this. Rather, all becomes from the lower stuff.

Gnomon

Logically, human life and mind needing a Higher Life and Mind to form it all the more requires a HIGHER LIFE and MIND to form the Higher Life and Mind, and so forth, unto infinite regress. There's really no way around this. Rather, all becomes from the lower stuff. — PoeticUniverse

The infinite regress wheel-spinning is only a problem in space-time. In Eternity or Block-Time there is no before & after or higher & lower. Materialist thinking is inherently limited to such spatial & temporal relationships. But Transcendental thinking, i.e. philosophical thinking, goes beyond such limitations by abstracting logical relationships from concrete things. So, there is a way around the lower-level thinking. But you have to learn how to quiet the noisy animal mind*1 of the physical senses. :smile:

PS___ I have seldom thought in these terms (e.g. transcendentalism) before. So thanks for pushing me to think outside the box. Unfortunately, it's like poetry*2 : if you have to explain it, you will lose it.
# Please don't relegate me to the spooky Transcendent box only. My worldview is both Immanent and Transcendent ; both Material and Mental. For all practical purposes (science), I am a materialist, but for theoretical speculation (philosophy), I can color outside the matter box.
# Your stanza'd poetry sometimes touches on transcendence, but when you switch to conventional prose, it sounds more like Materialist dogma.

*1. I don't think the difference between human and animal minds is absolute, as in the notion of a Cartesian soul. Instead, in my Monistic worldview, it's a difference of degree due to the progressive process of incremental evolution.
While animals possess complex cognitive abilities and emotions, the human mind is distinguished by its capacity for abstract thought, language, and complex social structures, leading to unique forms of intelligence and creativity.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=animal+vs+human+mind

Poetry beyond bounds
poetry that breaks free from traditional forms and conventions {e.g. materialism}, exploring new expressive possibilities and pushing the boundaries of what is considered "poetry". It can also mean poetry that transcends specific themes or experiences, exploring universal human emotions and experiences.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=poetry+beyond+bounds

PoeticUniverse

But Transcendental thinking, i.e. philosophical thinking, goes beyond such limitations by abstracting logical relationships from concrete things. — Gnomon

Block-Time — Gnomon

This has no time, as it is all-at-once and done, perhaps made in the 5th dimension.

Anyway, the Great Programmer no longer has to work 24-7, in linear time, fiddling with the evolution of the universe and life, for he has been replaced by Artificial Intelligence and laid off.

Oh! Behold what He hath wrought:

180 Proof

Eternity or Block-Time — Gnomon

is, of course, a physical theory. :smirk:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

Btw, a less speculative version, or alternative, is the Growing Block Universe theory.

My worldview is both immanent and Transcendent ...

... both real X and Not Real X (i.e. self-contradictory, or necessarily false). Good job! :clap:

PROCESS COSMOLOGY --- a worldview for our time

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