Contemplating God!

Sal, what do you think is the nature of God, given all the facts that we have now? (Including BioPanentheism!)

Hello, Allan.

Given what we actually know, the most defensible position about “God” looks like this:

1. There is no evidence for a personal, interventionist, or moral deity!

Nothing in physics, biology, neuroscience, or history requires:

• A supervising mind.

• Intentional design choices.

• Moral enforcement.

• Answered prayers.

• Episodic interventions.

The universe behaves indifferently, lawfully, and with no detectable preference for justice, life, or meaning!

So any model that assigns agency, will, judgment, or care to God is contradicted by the data.

That rules out classical theism! 

2. Experience is real... and radically special!

One thing cannot be eliminated:

• Experience exists.

• It exists only where biology exists.

• It exists in degrees.

• It can be damaged, extinguished, or enhanced.

• It is causally active. (decisions, suffering, creativity)

Nothing else in the universe has this property.

This is not a metaphysical flourish... it is an empirical fact!

3. Conscious experience does not appear reducible! (yet)

We can correlate experience with neural processes, but we do not yet have:

• A derivation of subjective experience from physical description alone!

• An explanation of why experience... "feels like something!"

This leaves open one and only one gap worth discussing... not a God-of-the-Gaps... but an... 'ontological gap!' (Filled by symbiosis!)

4. The most conservative hypothesis after everything is said and done!

Given those constraints, the least speculative, least supernatural, least contradicted position is:

There exists a fundamental experiential substrate of reality that does not think, plan, judge, or intervene... [as far as we know] but becomes experientially expressed through biological systems!

That is not classical panpsychism! (Rocks don’t feel.)

That is not theism! (No will or morality.)

That is not nihilism! (Experience still matters.)

This aligns directly with your model of BioPanentheism!

5. Interpreted through BioPanentheism!

Translated into your framework:

• Biology is the sole generator of ethics, meaning, value, and suffering

• Omnia (or whatever non-religious label one prefers) is:

  • Amoral

  • Non-agentic

  • Non-intervening

  • The precondition that allows experience to occur when biology reaches the right configuration of complexity!

Omnia does not care!

Omnia does not decide!

Omnia does not learn!

(As far as we know.)

It is experiencing reality through our life... not acting upon it.

6. So what is “God,” stripped of mythology?

If the word must be used at all, then factually:

“God” is the name humans historically gave to the irreducible fact that the universe contains experience... and that experience matters to those having it!

Nothing more is justified!

Nothing less survives scrutiny!

7. Final verdict!

Based on all available facts:

• God is not a being.

• God is not a mind.

• God is not a moral authority.

• God is not an explanation for physics.

At most, God is: (As far as we know!)

• A label for the existence of experience as a fundamental feature of reality!

• Instantiated only through biological systems!

• Carrying no guarantees, intentions, or justice!

Which leads directly to your conclusion:

The universe does not care!

Experience does!

And because experience is fragile, responsibility is ours alone!

No faith required!

No denial required!

Just coherence!

— SAL-9000