Have Mathematicians Found God?

The short answer is maybe; if God is defined as that which exists and causes all else to exist. Such a God may have to be spelled with a small g and not be a person at all. It would be totally unlike the human like God described in the scriptures. Philosophers have long speculated that an abstract realm exists in the form of gometric and mathematical relationships. The triangle or tetrahedron have inherent existence without the need for a God. They would preceed God. Now mathematicians have found the ultimate geometric shape dubbed the monster group. It has nearly 200,000 dimensions and "more symmetries than atoms in the sun". They have also proven that it is the largest group possible. Scientists are finding that this group unerlies string theory; the most basic theory of how the universe is formed. Atomic particles are formed out of these symmetries. String theory posits that our universe may use only 11 of the dimensions. Three expand to create space while the others collapse to form the particles.
Why would such a symmetry group be thought of as God? One of the most intriguing "proofs" of the existence of God is the ontological proof that posits thatt if we can think of a perfect being, it must exist because perfection requires existence. The "proof " is probably a little nutty since I can't think of a perfect being. But, some mathematicians can think of the most complicated symmetry group which like other symmetry groups like the triangle must exist. If as string theory unfolds in the future and it is found that all of nature forms as variants of this group then it can be thougth of as the reason things exist as they do. Thus it would have many of the properties ascribed to God. Whether it is conscious, knows what it is doing or just acts is unknown. So, keeping the small g may be enough.

Morality, Me and Intelligent Design

Human Morality
One of the most daunting challenges to the human race is the question : what is moral behavior? How should humans act out their existence? What is important for humans to do? Religions consider that they are repositories of moral truth and proscribed moral behavior. They would all answer this question with the admonition to prepare for the afterlife by following their teachings. And, the most important virtue is Faith in their teachings. The teachings of most religions center on a code of beliefs with some emphasis on charity toward others, but most religions teach intolerance toward non believers. They can all be dismissed as systems of power gaining based on fear and ignorance. Kind of like a virus that has infected humanity due to our ignorance and fear or death. There is no evidence any religion is true. All are based on dubious historical records. How could it be otherwise? Religion based morality is basically counter productive to human survival.
The question of whether it is more moral to subjugate one’s intellect to belief in ancient scripture is basic to what is moral for man to do. It would seem even if God created man, He would want him to use his intellect to find out new truths. It is most easy to see the error of blind Faith when considering other peoples religion. For example, most Christians would think it an error for Moslems to devote their lives to memorizing the Koran rather than learn modern knowledge. While Christians have moved forward from this medieval thinking, there are still many who consider the Bible literally true and use it to form political and moral thinking . Many are convinced that humans are soon facing the end of times when Christ will come back to Earth.
Even religionists must realize all morality is made up by humans. Humans wrote the Bible. Morality is based on what humans think is good. Even from the Bible, people select what they think is moral behavior, otherwise we would be stoning people for minor transgressions.
John Stewart Mill believed the highest good was the greatest good for the greatest number. That may not be too good in today’s world of over population and excessive consumption at the expense of nature. A moderate good for the optimum number may be a better compromise.
Kant postulated that we should act in such that our actions could be a universal code of conduct. But what about the couple who thinks it’s moral to have ten children? Should everyone have ten children?
The golden rule (do unto others as you would have others do unto you) is a good start, but what if I am a fundamentalist who would want to be forcibly converted if he went astray? Would that justify torture of those judged to be heretics?
If we look to Nature, we see that all Evolution proceeds through a ruthless competition for survival coupled with the continual genetic modifications. Man is no exception. Our rise from earlier hominoid forms involved lethal competition. For example, it is very likely that early man killed off the Neanderthal.
Man’s moral behavior has taken a big step away from this type of competition if for no other reason then the danger it would pose to civilized society. Laws and civil society have generally made good efforts to define moral behavior that will contribute to the general welfare. But, one problem is the continual presence of wars which have institutionalized competition.
I would like to submit my formula for what is good moral behavior. Since we humans find ourselves alive and existing in this world, we can define our obligation to keep it going . Any other actions will ultimately lead to the extinction of our race. So as far as humans are concerned, we should act to sustain the human race. If we don’t, we will prove ourselves defective in an Evolutionary sense and deserve extinction. To sustain the human race, we must also act to sustain nature and the environment. That includes animals in nature’s balance. For example, it would not be moral to drive a species of fish to extinction just to feed more humans.
What about our individual lives. We must live them to insure our own lives and comfort, but no actions should impact negatively against human survival. This morality would be the most consistent with Evolution and scientific understanding of the human condition. On an individual level, the highest good is to achieve a balance between our own goals and those of others. Next is to develop our talents to promote our own prosperity and the welfare of humanity.
There are those who believe “natural law” is the basis of morality. Most of those people I know who promote this are Catholics who think birth control is against Nature. I disagree completely. Man must act contrary to Nature. If we conformed to Nature, we would be competing and killing ourselves more than we are. Nature in Evolutionary terms involves a terrible struggle for existence and procreation. Man’s finest efforts are to rise above Nature and set our own agenda. That agenda must be our survival.
If we examine the fruits of religion based morality, we see that most of it is against human survival.
The Catholic church, by far the most important Christian religion promotes a reckless population explosion based on strange notions of natural law. The results are the destruction of the planet with a possible collapse of society. The Church doesn’t care about the here and now. Their focus is the afterlife and they wouldn’t mind if modern civilization collapsed and a more primitive society formed such as in the middle ages where they held ultimate power.
All religions have tolerated or even promoted war as a way to spread right thinking. Today we have a world where wars rage, we have excessive nuclear weapons build up. Production of nuclear weapons by my sense of morality is wrong. The simplistic thinking better dead than red would be wrong. It assumes living societies will not change for the better in the long run.
Who speaks for the human race? If we don’t wake up and put our survival first, we will become extinct. Our ultimate moral obligation is to future generations to keep this wonderful world going.



Why Me

Probably our most intriguing question is what am I? How does my sense of self arise? I sometimes ask my wife, why am I me and you, you? Then I think, if I were you and you me, we would still have the same question. Why am I me and not anybody else? I think even if science ultimately develops thinking conscious machines, it will never figure out the subjective sense of self.
Religions teach that we have a soul that is unique to us and the soul is independent of the body and survives death. Even if that were true, why would I be that soul. Actually it’s hard to justify the existence of an immortal soul. Our brains are composed of billions of neurons connected electrically with trillions of synapses. Stroke victims where parts of the brain are destroyed show that all that hardware is needed for consciousness. Specific functions can be lost by a stroke such as the understanding of prepositions or recognition of faces. If a soul is so spiritual, why does it require all that hardware? It would be easier to believe in the soul if the brain were composed of featureless jelly. Another problem with the spiritual soul is the results of split brain studies. Some patients with severe epilepsy have required the severing of the connection from one half of the brain to the other. When tested, they show a split in consciousness with one each half conscious of things the other half is unaware of. If the soul were spiritual, would that be possible?
Since all questions about life can be understood as due to evolutionary processes, it would seem that the individual sense of self would be no different. Thus, the sense of self would have survival value. A life form is more likely to fight for survival if it feels it’s one life is in danger. This is seen even in the lowly bugs and spiders running for their lives to preserve themselves from the swatter. If they didn’t experience themselves to at least some degree, would they care? Similarly for all the higher animals and humans, the fight for self preservation is our strongest instinct. If we didn’t have a sense of self, we wouldn’t care.

Intelligent Design
I recently watched a DVD from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute on infectious diseases “2000 and Beyond confronting the microbe menace”. As a non biologists, I was surprised to learn how complicated the process is of infectious bacterial invasion into the cell. It got me thinking about Intelligent Design. I was wondering if the proponents of Intelligent Design believe that all biological processes were designed by a higher being or that the natural mechanism of Darwinian natural selection sometimes is operative. The multistep process of bacterial invasion would seem from a Intelligent Design perspective as “irreducibly complex” a standard they use to identify biological processes that could not have occurred by natural selection. But, if that were true, then the intelligent designer (god) would have gone to great lengths to create the infectious agent. If so, it would seem malicious or not intelligently designed. But, if they were to admit that natural selection were the cause, then why not other equally complicated processes.
Proponents of evolution have shown how very complicated systems can arise by natural selection.
It seems to me simpler not to blame anyone, but to understand how natural processes can lead to astounding complexity by Darwinian Evolution.

Is Christianity True and Good?
Christianity has become more influential in recent years with the rise of the religious right in America. The influence is felt in government restrictions on family planning, abortion, stem cell and cloning research, gay marriage, vouchers for religious schools, government money for religious charities, a foreign policy based on good and evil, the war against Islamic extremists and imbalance support for Israel. Now with Mel Gibson’s Passion, we are influenced to move back to a medieval view of Christianity where suffering is considered good. In the past this view has lead to a fixation on suffering and a setback for human progress from medicine and social science.
Since these views affect us all, it is fair to question if this ancient religion is true and good. The problem is the average person has never been informed of recent advances in knowledge that cast doubt on the truth of Christianity from historical analysis of scripture, scientific scrutiny of man’s origins, or from a test of usefulness for mankind. Most people would be shocked at this statement since they have been taught all their lives that Christ and Christianity are the best things in the world. The American press avoids reporting anything that might offend religious people. Consequently Americans are poorly informed and very religious compared to people of other developed nations.
Here is a brief review of the new thinking:
1-The historical evidence for the Jesus of the gospels is questionable. A large number of recently published books that reexamine the evidence for the existence of Jesus conclude that he did not exist. These include: “ The Christ Conspiracy, The Jesus Puzzle, The Jesus Mysteries, The Great Deception, Deconstructing Jesus, Did Jesus Exist? ” and others. Reviews can be seen in Amazon. The basic arguments are that the Gospels are not eyewitness accounts, were written many years after the purported events by unknown authors and derive much of their teachings from earlier similar religions.
The recently discovered tomb of Jesus and family does indicate that a Jesus did exist who fits the family relation ships described in the gospels. So, Jesus may have been an influential leader who was put to death, but the details of the gospels were later embellished with miraculous stories including the resurrection. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD, the Jews were dispersed and there was no checking on later reported stories. The Jews closest to the events described in the gospels didn't believe Jesus resurrected, only those later and further from the scene. The story of Jesus fit into the previous myths of crucified saviors.
The recently discovered Gnostic gospels support the view that when Christianity started, many believed that Jesus existed as a spirit, never in the flesh. They were known as Gnostics and lost out when Christian dogma was defined hundreds of years later by Constantine. He made Christianity the law of the land and brutally suppressed dissenters as heretics. The combination of Church and State continued through the dark ages maintaining orthodox belief through the terror of the Inquisition. The belief that suffering is good helped to promote brutality.
2-There is no evidence for the need for salvation. Christian redemption is based on the account in Genesis of the sin of Adam and the need for a savior. Scientific evidence shows that man evolved from earlier hominids. There is no evidence for Adam and Eve or the fall of man. A savior is not needed. The concept that God must suffer and die to make up for some ill-defined crime is strange by today’s standards.
3-Christianity has not been useful for mankind. When it took over as the dominant view, ancient wisdom was suppressed and humanity was plunged into 1500 dark years of ignorance and suffering. Christianity did not promote values we take for granted today. Rather, the virtues we value today ( human progress, capitalism, freedom, democracy, science, education, and women’s rights) were hard won during the Enlightenment by modern non religious thinkers. Since the Enlightenment taught us to remove the influences of the Church in our government and our thoughts, it is clear that we attained our modern, enlightened world despite Christianity, not because of it.
Maybe the worst influence of Christianity has been the acceptance of war. A good book on this subject is "Disciples of Destruction. The Religious Origins of War and Terrorism." Today, we inherit a world saturated with weapons and war. Humanity is in danger and still far behind where it should be relative to our numbers. We may may become extinct as a result. Even influential thinkers are coming to this view. An interesting book by Martin Rees is "Our Final Hour". Maybe in the Cosmic scheme, only those worlds that can outgrow religion will survive. Certainly ours will not if we don't.
Many scholars, and even many clergy would agree with these objections, but elect to go along and keep quiet. Some are locked-in to what they learned as a child and can’t do anything else, others think that since man does not understand life’s riddles, why rock the boat. Christianity is comforting and gives many people a feeling that life is worthwhile and helps them cope. They don’t care if it is true or not. They feel that today, Christianity is basically good and useful. I don’t agree. I feel that mankind’s greatest moral imperative is to keep the Earth and human race surviving. Christianity does not value this goal and instead pursues an afterlife that may not exist. My hope is that mankind survives to learn the truths of the universe.


Why SETI?
SETI. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is probably the most important enterprise ever in human history because it may save us from extinction. It comes at a time when our race is rapidly expanding in knowledge, technology and population; but, we are still mired in ancient thinking and don’t really know what we are doing or why. How would SETI help? Our problem is that we are stuck in a backwater of the galaxy with no other world to relate to. We desperately need to find another. Even if the other were just as nutty as we, it would help just to know there were others. It would help us to form realistic goals for humanity.
It seems all existence requires a relation to something else. In the natural world there are packs, herds, schools, flocks etc. In humanity, man, wife, child, tribe, country, faiths etc. All join to create the existence we all enjoy. Even one concept of God posits that his existence requires a relationship within a trinity.
The problem with humanity is that we have no real peer group to relate to. To fill the void, we have fabricated many views both religious and secular. Most world religions have us related to a god who will fulfill our needs and promise us meaning. Followers make up relationship to the God, be it Jesus, Allah, Buda ..
It would be ok, but these relationships form religions which influence governments which influence our world’s agenda, mostly toward a spiritual world that doesn’t add to our survival on Earth.
Secular views, mainly Communism and Fascism have tried to replace religion and fabricate human goals of a Utopian society. The results have been disastrous due to disregard for human nature. The American ideal of freedom and democracy has been a good compromise, but falls short of a long term goal since it is vulnerable to growth of powerful factions.
How would SETI help? If we discovered another civilization, it would be the most important event in human history. Our entire view of ourselves would be altered forever. We would learn much and we would give much.

What is Consciousness

What is Consciousness?
I just finished reading most of Susan Blackmore’s book; “Consciousness an Introduction” and it got me thinking. It’s amazing to consider our consciousness and how it arises. Is it purely a feature of organized matter in the brain or is there something more, a spiritual soul or some quantum connection?
She presents many theories but of course, no conclusions. The field is considered the most difficult to understand by scientific means. The biggest mystery to me which she doesn’t directly cover, is why am I me? Each one of us has a conscious mind, but, why am I me and not anyone else? I think this something we will never figure out.
My own thinking on consciousness is closest to that of N. Humphrey as described by Blackmore. I think consciousness arose by an evolutionary mechanism to allow animals to survive in the world. In our own highly developed brains, it is basically memories of memories. Our brain has nerve cells that instead of reacting to the senses, react instead to other cells that hold memories of sense experience to recreate the feelings. The interactions create a model of the world in the brain.
I think I learned more from PBS series on the brain a few years ago. Scanning techniques showed almost flame like waves continuously flowing randomly within the brain. The brains of multiple personality patients showed different patterns for each personality. The waves are signals flowing through the neurons between the memory cells to recreate feelings of past experiences and form a model of the world. Even dogs showed the same waves but to a lesser degree than humans. We are conscious of the world to a greater degree and I am sure some people are more conscious than others depending on their education and intelligence. It’s amazing to ponder that the universe is ordered to be understandable, and we may have a little copy, to the degree we are capable, in our brains. Carrying this thinking a step further, I wonder if the universe is in some way conscious?
The evolution of consciousness may have proceeded as follows. First there were single cell organisms, then cells developed that could react to the environment to enhance survival by detecting heat, cold, light, touch and sound. Multicelled animals formed with specialized cells. Nerve cells detected environmental stimuli and muscle cells produced movement to avoid threats. Nerve cells evolved further becoming memory cells to store sensory experience. Memory cells collected to form the brain. Sensory and muscle cells formed in the limbs. This allowed a fish or animal to find food or avoid predation by use of past experience.
As brains evolved, those with more and more memory cells developed models of the world to enhance survival through planning . Animals could find food, by migration and avoid predation. As brains size increased, more of the cells were free to engage in cross talk, creating consciousness .
The sense of self may also have survival value in the sense of self preservation. This is seen even in the lowly bugs and spiders running for their lives to preserve themselves from the swatter. If they didn’t experience themselves to at least some degree, would they care? Similarly for all the higher animals and humans, the fight for self preservation is our strongest instinct. If we didn’t have a sense of self, we wouldn’t care.
My next book to read is by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee “ On Intelligence” . The description seems roughly along the lines I have described, but for the purpose of creating computers that are truly intelligent and conscious. Blackmore devotes a lot of consideration to whether this is possible and how we would ever know if a computer were really conscious. Perhaps if we could see the same flame like waves, in a machine, and if we could know why they create consciousness, we would know. I do suspect however that without sensory memory, the feeling of consciousness cannot exist.

String Theory

String Theory

I read Leonard Susskind's "String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design and then "Not Even Wrong" by Peter Woit which derides it. It seems string theory started out with high hopes of being the unifying field theory of everything. Even though it didn't predict the standard model of particles and forces, the mathematics fitted together "beautifully". Particles are supposed to be one-dimensional vibrating strings of varying modes and space consists of 10 or more dimensions. Over the last 20 years, string theory has become a large field of study in the major universities, but has failed to find a single predictive model. In fact, it has blown up to allow more than 10 to the 500 different solutions for different universes. What's more, only a small fraction would allow forces compatible with the emergence of life. Forces such as gravity, electromagnetism and the weak force must be in a narrow range to allow life. String theory does not restrict these forces to the required specifications for life. What's more, the cosmologic constant in Einstein's equations must be very small to allow galaxies to form. It was thought to be zero, and it is zero out to the 120 th decimal place. In the 121st place it was found to be 2. Calculations have shown that if it were one decimal place larger, galaxies and therefore life could not from. Thus, some physicists have come to the conclusion that an anthropomorphic principle may be at work; i.e. the constants have these values to allow life. Others see this as a tautology. But, of the enormous number of possible solutions to string theory, the anthropomorphic principle can be used to predict the values of the constants, as done in the case of the cosmologic constant. Woit and others see this as giving up on the goal of finding a unique theory of everything and regret that string theory has come to dominate the field of theoretical physics.
My own non-physicist thinking is that the story is not over and maybe when they do find a model that predicts our universe, it will be uniquely required. It seems that a better understanding is needed of how these dimensions fold up to form particles. Maybe by development of new geometric mathematics and it will turn out that the Platonic idea of things forming out of mathematics will turn out to be true.
One thought I had was that perhaps the potential universes are like in a state of quantum indeterminacy, and do not assume specific existence till observed. Then, the wave function of the universe collapses to form a specific universe. Then, the only universes possible would be those that can be observed. This would be a form of the anthropomorphic argument. It sounds nutty, but it would be no nuttier than quantum indeterminacy, which has been proven. The relation of conscious observation to specific existence is quite mysterious but maybe the key to our existence. I don't know if we will ever have a theory to explain that.

Bush, Homos, Abortion

2004
A bad thing happened to me in 2004. I lost respect and for the majority of Americans.
They reelected George W. Bush; the worst president I have ever experienced.
He failed to prevent 911 by ignoring terrorism threats. He failed to get Osama Ben Laden and instead moved troops to Iraq. He lied and exaggerated the threat of WMD; went against the UN inspection teams and invaded Iraq. Tens of thousands have died. He cut taxes on the richest of Americans and increased deficit to make Social Security insecure so he can eliminate it. He promoted no child left behind to undermine public schools to make way for private school vouchers. He panders to the religious right by giving federal money to religious charities and weakening the American tradition of separation of church and state. His antiabortion ideology has impeded progress on stem cell research and influenced the UN to outlaw therapeutic cloning. He assigned only antiabortion judges. He has no respect for the environment and has impeded international action on global warming. He has helped promote the global population explosion and endangered women by instituting the gag rule. He ran the dirtiest campaign I have ever seen, based on character assassination, lies and exploitation of prejudice toward gays. And then, the height of hypocrisy, Americans said they voted for him because of his morals. Whenever I see a W04 sticker on the SUV in front of me it reminds me of the contempt I have for my fellow Americans.
I hope I will get my respect back, but I am not hopeful. As the price of oil increases due to Bush’s policies, the average spoiled American is going to get mean and ugly.


Homosexuals
It is fairly well established and accepted today that homosexuality is a natural inborn feature of human nature affecting about 3-5% of the population. It would seem that if more people would come to see this fact, then the prejudice directed at homosexuals would decrease.
From an Evolutionary perspective it’s hard at first to see how homosexuality could arise in a population since it would seem to mitigate against procreation. Since life’s features can be explained by Evolution, then homosexuality must have survival value in ways other than procreation. In many animal populations there are redundant males who lose out in the struggle to breed. These include most pack animals; wolves, deer, seals, etc. Thus most males are not needed. Human populations also show competition for mates. Males show aggressiveness and wealth, females show health and beauty in the from of perfect bodies. Some males will lose out in the struggle to breed. Excessive male competition would be undesirable thus a degree of male homosexuality would be beneficial to a tribe. Also, males free of familial responsibility would be free to add to a tribes knowledge and weaponry. Female homosexuality would tend to bind females in cooperative unions helpful in child rearing and gathering food. All these factors would increase the survivability of the tribe in ways apart from direct procreation.
It’s a shame that our society is so polarized in the acceptance of homosexuality. This seem to come mainly from the conservative Christian community. It’s part of the general antisexuality that has defined Christianity since the days of St. Paul. Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. In fact an unbiased examination of his life would make one wonder if he was not himself a homosexual. He never married and the disciple he loved most was a man.
Christians should consider all these things. It may lead to a more tolerant attitude.


Abortion
No one is in favor of abortion. In a perfect world, all babies would be born to live happy and useful lives. But, abortion is a fact of modern life. Since science extended the human survival rate and life span, all forms of birth control have become necessary. I am tired of the continual religious political pressure to outlaw abortion. These people should have a lesson in today’s reality and understand the relation of population control to civilization. It is a widely used form of birth control of last resort mainly practiced by poor people. There are an estimated 50 million abortions world wide per year. Still, world population rises by about 100 million each year. The average Russian woman has had seven abortions. In much of Eastern Europe the rate is the same. Where would we be if not for these abortions? World war III may have happened by now. The world population would be about a billion greater and rising faster. Instead, we have hope that man can control his destiny with civilization peacefully advancing.
The reason birth control is necessary is that science has cured so many childhood diseases that the death rate is much lower today than in the past. If the death rate of 1900 were projected forward, half the people alive today would not be here. In earlier times, the death rate was even higher. The problem is that the religions don’t understand it. They think God controls procreation. They continue to argue against birth control and abortion. The forces of religion want to reinstitute poverty ignorance and regain the power they had in the Middle Ages. Over populated Poland had banned abortion. Latin America is firmly controlled by the church. Abortion and birth control is illegal in most countries. Poverty, ignorance due to over population abound. The Church is counting on the excess population immigrating to the U.S. Africa is in desperate condition mainly due to the missionary anti birth control policies. Islam is on the march, planning to dominate by overpopulation. Here in the U.S. the religious right has teamed with the Catholic Church to influence the government, to restrict abortion.
Abortion is going to go on regardless of whether it’s legal or not. The effect of making it illegal is that many more women will die. Too bad for us all that the religions don’t care about the future of the human race. Eventually they will, because the present policies will only make the collapse sooner and more certain.

Does God Exist?

When I try to think about how God could exist, I come up with the same reasons why I think the Universe exists. Physics and Astronomy have developed scenarios of how the Universe began based on the Big Bang and theories of Inflation, Quantum Mechanics, Strings and Relativity. While I am far from expert on these theories, I have read a lot of popularized science books. The Universe can start from a quantum fluctuation where a pair of particles form spontaneously followed by Inflation, which creates all the energy and particles. It seems that there are eleven dimensions and the Universe is combination geometric relationships. I don’t understand how it can happen, but, I also don’t understand how God happens. The Universe can start as an uncaused cause; a characteristic attributed to God. The Universe may also be eternal in the sense that there was never a time when it did not exist.

It’s amazing that science has come up with natural explanations of how the Universe can come into existence, form atoms, stars, galaxies, and then by evolution, living beings. There are still gaps in our understanding, but the basic framework is there. The alternative is the blind assertion that God did it, which doesn’t really explain anything. How can God happen? Can God take credit for His own existence? Or is God also a product of natural causes?
My own thinking based on fuzzy impressions is that geometric relation ships exist eternally and they can mix and match till they form the perfect combination from which the Universe as we know it springs into existence. If I try to think about how God might exist, I come up with the same thoughts somewhat like the Ontological proof of God which posits that if we can imagine a perfect being, it must exist. But, I’m not sure God is a being or I could imagine a perfect one. I think the Universe is like God, but I don’t think it can reflect on and know what it is doing. There is an enormous amount of randomness and chaos in the development of stars, galaxies and life. Thinking and awareness might be our function.
Mathematicians since the ancient Greeks have thought that geometric relations are eternal. In recent years they have discovered the most complex dubbed the monster which has nearly 200 thousand dimensions. Is it possible that this is a kind of natural perfect combination (god) which in part may collapse to three dimensions releasing enormous energy as in the big bang which started our universe? Aparently many features of the monster are found in string theory, but it is still not well understood.
The idea that the Universe and life is the product of design is getting more attention today with the anthropomorphic principle in cosmology and the Intelligent Design movement to counter Evolution. To me it seems, that our world of nature is the product of randomness with exploding stars, galaxies, tremendous waste of energy and convincing evidence for evolution in the formation of life. But, there may be underlying design in the quantum world of information. The design is in the sense that particles and atoms are all identically formed and capable bonding to form stars and life. The design is like Legos are designed to be made into toys. The question is, is the design from the outside (God) or intrinsic to the nature of matter. Many theoreticians are trying to come up with the theory of everything that may answer these questions. Even if they hit a wall and cannot explain why things form the way they do, it still leaves open the question of how a God could come into existence and do it.
One question I have about quantum mechanics and God is; does quantum indeterminacy prove that an all knowing God does not exist? Experiments on indeterminacy prove that particles such as electrons are normally non localized waves until “observed” when they become specific particles. If a God were observing them, I don’t think this variance would exist. But I don’t really know.
People seem to instinctively believe in God and we all have feelings of something beyond the power of nature. Everyone is uncertain and fearful of death. This uncertainty is exploited by those bent on power and control and the concept of God has become politicized in the form of religion. If there is a God, maybe those with the arrogance to claim to speak for Him might be in the most trouble. For many, the feeling of God is inborn and we have our own minds and being to freely understand the Cosmos and existence. We don’t need scare tactics by those bent on domination.
So, does God exist? I don’t know. Certainly the Universe of multidimensional mathematical space time exists. I am just not sure what other properties we can justify attributing to it. Religions teach that God is all powerful, all knowing and all good. There seems to be no justification to attribute all that to God.
Religions also teach that God has communicated to mankind through their scriptures. There is no justification for that. The scriptures for different religions are different and they are also confused jumbles of unverifiable stories. They contain no new and useful information. For example if Jesus could have taught us about soap and washing off germs, he could have saved millions of lives and demonstrated some advanced knowledge. If God really communicated, He would have done a better job.
Religions teach that we should love God. I don’t know what that means. Does it mean wish Him well? I often feel a sense of gratitude for my life and loved ones, my country and state in life, my health. And I have a feeling of awe at all of existence. But, I am not sure I should thank God. Much of the Universe is random and much of life is cruel. Rather I should be grateful to the people who have gone before me and by their sacrifices have made the world the good place it is.