Reply to comment

One of the ideas that we touched on briefly in the semester was the universe as information. I first encountered this idea in a novel by Philip K. Dick called VALIS where, interestingly enough, it is also used to suggest the existence of God as a purely transcendental being that in some sense is the universe. That is, God-is-the-Universe-is-Information. I think this is a fascinating way of introducing a god-being into a scientific worldview and fits very well with what we have discussed regarding emergence and the formation of the universe. If we find it important that CA (among other things) can work as turing machines, the idea that the entire universe is information being stored and processed can have some implications worth pondering.

For explaining consciousness, we understand that the universe-as-God is in some sense conscious, and that we as parts of it are reflections of that consciousness. Isn't it possible that some specific "Garden of Eden" pattern created the original consciousness which grew more complex but was able to reproduce itself in some form in all life? We are on some level just information, created from the long strings of information we call DNA; composed of electrons which (theoretically at least) will always move to the same next location leading to the possibility that our actions are entirely predetermined. VALIS also presents the idea that when the god-being was created, it had a twin which died not long after coming into existence. Dick uses this to explain our own strange behavior to some extent: "38. From loss and grief, the Mind has become deranged. Therefore we, as parts of the universe, the Brain, are partly deranged."

What does most of this have to do with emergence? NOTHING! But it's a cool way of thinking about the presence of God in an emergent universe and fits decently with the rest of that theory. Also, Philip K. Dick truly believed that in 1974 (maybe 72) he had an encounter with this purely transcendental God which communicated with him through a pink laser and told him about a potentially fatal birth defect in his son. Hooray tangents!