What is the probability that consciousness survives death? Let's be pessimistic and say 1%. Now what do we know? We know our lifetime aligns with the now, which is a requirement if consciousness dies with the body. What are the odds of this? If we posit time began with the universe and will end again when it is say 100 billion years old in a big crunch, the now is equally likely to be at any point and the probability of it aligning with a lifetime of 100 years is one in a billion. This dwarfs our 1% guess, turning the odds overwhelmingly in favor of immortality. Now reasonably the universe came from somewhere and something will come after it, put succinctly: the odds of a lifetime aligning with the now over an infinite timeline is 0. Inverting this, the probability that consciousness survives death is 100%. This proof has been verified by a PhD in mathematics.
For reasons that will become clear I restate this proof as an axiom:
Axiom 1: Consciousness is immortal.
The research by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose suggests that consciousness is related to quantum collapses, essentially consciousness is fundamental rather than emergent, trivially there is some relation since superpositions collapse when they are observed. Consciousness in humen (saving 1 letter) their theory propose originates in microtubules, cellular skeletons that appear in pyramidal neurons, not in a skeletal role. As evidence for this they show that the length of superpositions held by the building blocks of microtubules is enhanced by psychedelics, which are associated with states of increased consciousness, and decreased by sedatives, which cause unconsciousness in sufficient dosage. From this they derive that carrots can have some primary form of consciousness, maybe even matter itself, which would align with many mystical traditions stating we are in the mind of God.
Many modern scientists are atheist (or rather agnostic as few would claim they know God doesn't exist) even though a large part of the giants on whose shoulders they stand were very involved in divine philosophy. Looking up quotes can be enlightening and I have gathered some in the religion page.
I propose the following definition: God is the unity of all consciousness that does actual good. This has the advantage of everyone agreeing God exists, unless you want to claim no goodness exists what so ever, and the question is shifted to how powerful God is.
Posit two isolated networks of consciousness, one completely good and the other containing corruption and greed. It is self evident that societies evolve faster the less corruption they have, let's make a conservative estimate that the good consciousness doubles in power every 1000 years compared to the evil one. After 1 million years it will be 2^1000 times more powerful. To illustrate just how much more powerful this is, it is like the evil network is a single atom whereas the good is the entire observable universe except every atom is also a universe and every atom in all those universes is also a universe. A small evolutionary edge results in total dominance due to exponential growth. This leads to:
Axiom 2: Goodness is overwhelmingly powerful.
Updated on 2024-12-22.