The Pillars of Creation

I was born into Catholicism.
The Church promised me heaven.
I tried to be a priest,
But they rejected me for heresy.
Now, nearly 60 years later I see they are a fraud.

There is no afterlife.
There is no other world for us. Their promises are meaningless.
This Universe is our home for life

If there is to be any heaven
it must be here on Earth
and we must make it for ourselves.

How?

The Universe is divine
Divinity is pure action, Action is eternal delight. The drive to act is lust, lust for life

We are divine children of a divine world:
if we listen to our world with careful science we can learn to live together
securely and peacefully.

A biography of naked gravitation

Contact us: Click to email

Ten steps to a Universe

Science and evolution, both create new reality

Science is a form of evolution. Darwin's theory of evolution completely revised our understanding of ourselves and our world. We and our world were not created by an omnipotent and omniscient God is six days. Instead, the Universe evolved from an eternal, omnipotent, structureless and completely ignorant beginning guided only by the fact that contradictions cannot exist. This is why science finds that when we study it closely the Universe is completely reasonable. Contradictions are eliminated by evolution ipso facto as logicians might say. It may take time. It took about ten years for the forces to gather than eliminated Hitler's Thousand Year Reich. Charles Darwin (1859): The Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Nazi Germany - Wikipedia

This idea might seem rather surprising at first sight. The theological view is that the omnipotent and omnipresent God controls every event in reality right down to the finest detail. The traditional divinity has providence over everything. This is called determinism, the work of Laplace's demon. Aquinas, Summa, I, 22, 3: Does God have immediate providence over everything?, Determinism - Wikipedia, Laplace's demon - Wikipedia

Einstein appears to have been a determinist. He was opposed to quantum theory until his dying day because he thought it was incomplete. It is incomplete because it embraces the randomness necessary for creativity. A deterministic system cannot be creative. It is doomed to run in the same groove forever. Random events are at the heart of creative evolution.

The creative heart of humanity is love, and from the point of view of love all creatures are precisely equal. Any two creatures can fall in love and bind to one another. These random events are the foundation of the spectacular diversity of our natural and human worlds.

Many controlling theocrats believe they have a mandate from some deterministic God living in their own imaginations to tell us all what to do. They are the source of the unnecessary war, pain and suffering in the world, often demanding that people sacrifice their lives to their imaginary schemes of conquest.

We are not creatures of an omniscient all knowing creator, but inhabitants of a partly blind Universe which has taken 14 billion years to create itself from almost nothing (the initial singularity) to its present state. Evolution works like science. Variation, like imagination, explores the realm of possibility; selection, like science, picks out the species and the ideas that are capable of reproducing themselves to overcome death and become durable elements of reality.

How does this idea work? First we do a quick survey, in 10 steps. Then, on the following pages, we expand each of these steps in an essay on creation.

Then we go over these ideas again, showing how they differ from the ancient doctrines that still bind us.

Finally we run through the whole story once more, pointing out some of its advantages in terms of human salvation, that is in long life, happiness and peace in Earth. We no longer postulate heaven for the good and hell for the bad but a route to everyone having a good time if we learn from the nature of the world to restrain our greed and baseless pride.

1: In the beginning

1. In the beginning we have naked gravitation, a structureless, eternal, dynamic topological space, an empty set, ∅, continuous, complete and convex. It represents the axioms of probability theory and fixed point theory. Andrei Kolmogorov (1956): Foundations of the Theory of Probability, Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia

2. Universal space

Fixed point theory endows naked gravitation with Hilbert space, a kinematic linear space of time, period, interval or frequency driven by gravitation. Since naked gravitation is structureless the actions due to its omnipotence are often random, providing the random variation necessary for creative evolution. John von Neumann (2018): Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia

3. Logical space

We understand the quantum of action in its native Hilbert space as a logical operator at least as powerful as any operator in a Turing machine. Linear operators in Hilbert space select sets of stationary kinematic states from the variation within the initial singularity (naked gravitation) known as eigenvectors and their corresponding eigenvalues. Space and time as understood in physics do not yet exist. In Minkowski space the Planck operator takes on the dimensions of angular momentum. Planck constant - Wikipedia, Eigenvalue algorithm - Wikipedia

4: Energy

The stationary kinematic states selected by quantum mechanics induce naked gravitation to split into kinetic and potential energy. The kinetic energy transforms the stationary states into real dynamic particles, ie substances as understood in philosophy. The potential energy establishes potential wells to stabilize the system. The overall energy of the Universe remains zero. Ousia - Wikipedia, Zero-energy universe - Wikipedia

5: Intelligence

The stationary states chosen by quantum theory are in effect solutions to eigenvalue problems implicit in the variety on offer. Modern laboratory observations indicate that all these states made observable by energy drawn from gravitation fall into one of two categories, fermions and bosons.

6: Messengers

Bosons: Bosons carry information between fermions.The majority of bosons are massless and travel on null geodesics. Boson - Wikipedia

7: Sources

Fermions are massive particles that communicate through bosons: Fermions obey the exclusion principle and require a three dimensional space like Euclidean space to move freely. These two categories of particle therefore establish the metric of Minkowski space, a combination of 3D Euclidean space and null geodesics. Fermion - Wikipedia

8. Classical space-time

Minkowski space is the local covariance which provides the quantum mechanical structure to convert naked gravitation into the field described by Newton and Einstein. Minkowski space - Wikipedia, Einstein (1923): The Principle of Relativity - A collection of original memoirs on the special and general theory of Relativity. Sommerfeld, Einstein, Lorentz, Weyl and Minkowski

9. Einstein's Universe

Minkowski space gives structure to the Universe. At the end of his article on the field equation of gravitation Einstein notes that the postulate of general relativity cannot reveal to us anything new and different about the essence of the various processes in nature than what the special theory of relativity taught us already. Albert Einstein (1915): The Field Equations of Gravitation

10: The world in spacetime

The computational power of quantum mechanics in Hilbert space space accounts for the existence of all the observed fundamental particles. The properties of these particles enable the construction of complex networks such as ourselves and all the other observable objects in the Universe and ultimately the Universe itself. Black holes occur when the local gravitational potential becomes so intense that the quantum mechanical structure of spacetime is collapsed. Nielsen & Chuang (2016): Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Hawking & Ellis (1975): The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Black hole - Wikipedia

Image: The Pillars of Creation are set off in false colour in NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared-light view. This image is set within the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light-years away. This is a region where young stars are forming – or have barely burst from their dusty cocoons as they continue to form. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Anton M. Koekemoer (STScI), Alyssa Pagan (STScI).


Copyright:

You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.


Notes and references

Further reading

Books

Darwin (1859), Charles, The Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Cambridge University Press 1859, 2009 ' It's hard to talk about The Origin of Species without making statements that seem overwrought and fulsome. But it's true: this is indeed one of the most important and influential books ever written, and it is one of the very few groundbreaking works of science that is truly readable. . . . Darwin's friend and "bulldog" T.H. Huxley said upon reading the Origin, "How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that." Alfred Russel Wallace had thought of the same theory of evolution Darwin did, but it was Darwin who gathered the mass of supporting evidence—on domestic animals and plants, on variability, on sexual selection, on dispersal—that swept most scientists before it.' Mary Ellen Curtin 
Amazon
  back

Einstein (1923), Albert, and Einstein, Lorentz, Minkowski, Weyl and Sommerfeld, The Principle of Relativity - A collection of original memoirs on the special and general theory of Relativity. With notes by A. Sommerfeld. Translated by W. Perrett and G. B. Jeffery, Methuen 1923 Minkowski: ' We can determine the ratio of the units of length and time beforehand in such a way that the natural limit of velocity becomes c = 1. If we introduce it = s in place of t the quadratic differential expression 2 = - x2 - y2 - z2 - s2 thus becomes perfectly symmetrical in x, y, z, s; and this symmetry is communicated to any law which does not contradict the world postulate. Thus the essence of this postulate may be clothed in a very pregnant manner in the mystic formula 3.105 = i seconds.' 
Amazon
  back

Hawking (1975), Steven W, and G F R Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge UP 1975 Preface: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity . . . leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first that the final fate of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a 'black hole' which will contain a singularity; and secondly that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to our universe. Our discussion is principally aimed at developing these two results.' 
Amazon
  back

Kolmogorov (1956), Andrey Nikolaevich, and Nathan Morrison (Translator) (With an added bibliography by A T Bharucha-Reid), Foundations of the Theory of Probability, Chelsea 1956 Preface: 'The purpose of this monograph is to give an axiomatic foundation for the theory of probability. . . . This task would have been a rather hopeless one before the introduction of Lebesgue's theories of measure and integration. However, after Lebesgue's publication of his investigations, the analogies between measure of a set and mathematical expectation of a random variable became apparent. These analogies allowed of further extensions; thus, for example, various properties of independent random variables were seen to be in complete analogy with the corresponding properties of orthogonal functions . . .' 
Amazon
  back

Nielsen (2016), Michael A., and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2016 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002. 
Amazon
  back

von Neumann (2018), John, and Nicholas A. Wheeler (editor), Robert T Beyer (translator), Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press 2018 ' Quantum mechanics was still in its infancy in 1932 when the young John von Neumann, who would go on to become one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century, published Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics--a revolutionary book that for the first time provided a rigorous mathematical framework for the new science. Robert Beyer's 1955 English translation, which von Neumann reviewed and approved, is cited more frequently today than ever before. But its many treasures and insights were too often obscured by the limitations of the way the text and equations were set on the page. In this new edition of this classic work, mathematical physicist Nicholas Wheeler has completely reset the book in TeX, making the text and equations far easier to read. He has also corrected a handful of typographic errors, revised some sentences for clarity and readability, provided an index for the first time, and added prefatory remarks drawn from the writings of Léon Van Hove and Freeman Dyson. The result brings new life to an essential work in theoretical physics and mathematics.' 
Amazon
  back

Links

Albert Einstein (1915), The Field Equations of Gravitation, ' In two recently published papers I have shown how to obtain field equations of gravitation that comply with the postulate of general relativity, i.e., which in their general formulation are covariant under arbitrary substitutions of space-time variables. . . . With this, we have finally completed the general theory of relativity as a logical structure. The postulate of relativity in its most general formulation (which makes space-time coordinates into physically meaningless parameters) leads with compelling necessity to a very specific theory of gravitation that also explains the movement of the perihelion of Mercury. However, the postulate of general relativity cannot reveal to us anything new and different about the essence of the various processes in nature than what the special theory of relativity taught us already.' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 10, 2, Is God eternal?, 'I answer that, The idea of eternity follows immutability, as the idea of time follows movement, as appears from the preceding article. Hence, as God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being; and hence as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity.' back

Aquinas, Summa I, 25, 3, Is God omnipotent?, '. . . God is called omnipotent because He can do all things that are possible absolutely; which is the second way of saying a thing is possible. For a thing is said to be possible or impossible absolutely, according to the relation in which the very terms stand to one another, possible if the predicate is not incompatible with the subject, as that Socrates sits; and absolutely impossible when the predicate is altogether incompatible with the subject, as, for instance, that a man is a donkey.' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 22, 3, Does God have immediate providence over everything?, ' I answer that, Two things belong to providence—namely, the type of the order of things foreordained towards an end; and the execution of this order, which is called government. As regards the first of these, God has immediate providence over everything, because He has in His intellect the types of everything, even the smallest; and whatsoever causes He assigns to certain effects, He gives them the power to produce those effects. Whence it must be that He has beforehand the type of those effects in His mind. As to the second, there are certain intermediaries of God's providence; for He governs things inferior by superior, not on account of any defect in His power, but by reason of the abundance of His goodness; so that the dignity of causality is imparted even to creatures.' back

Aquinas, Summa, I, 3, 7, Is God altogether simple?, 'I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His "suppositum"; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple. . . . ' back

Aquinas, Summa: I, 2, 3, Does God exist?, 'I answer that, The existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. . . . ' back

Big Bang - Wikipedia, Big Bang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model explaining the existence of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution. The model describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature, and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. ' back

Black hole - Wikipedia, Black hole - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light and other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. Although it has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly. ' back

Boson - Wikipedia, Boson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, bosons are particles with an integer spin, as opposed to fermions which have half-integer spin. From a behaviour point of view, fermions are particles that obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics while bosons are particles that obey the Bose-Einstein statistics. They may be either elementary, like the photon, or composite, as mesons. All force carrier particles are bosons. They are named after Satyendra Nath Bose. In contrast to fermions, several bosons can occupy the same quantum state. Thus, bosons with the same energy can occupy the same place in space.' back

Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, Brouwer fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'Among hundreds of fixed-point theorems] Brouwer's is particularly well known, due in part to its use across numerous fields of mathematics. In its original field, this result is one of the key theorems characterizing the topology of Euclidean spaces, along with the Jordan curve theorem, the hairy ball theorem, the invariance of dimension and the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. This gives it a place among the fundamental theorems of topology.' back

Democritus - Wikipedia, Democritus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Democritus (Greek: Δημόκριτος, Dēmókritos, meaning "chosen of the people"; c. 460 – c. 370 BC) was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from Abdera, primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. None of his work has survived. ' back

Determinism - Wikipedia, Determinism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Determinism is the philosophical view that all events in the universe, including human decisions and actions, are causally inevitable.[1] Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Like eternalism, determinism focuses on particular events rather than the future as a concept. The opposite of determinism is indeterminism, or the view that events are not deterministically caused but rather occur due to chance.' back

Eigenvalue algorithm - Wikipedia, Eigenvalue algorithm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' In numerical analysis, one of the most important problems is designing efficient and stable algorithms for finding the eigenvalues of a matrix. These eigenvalue algorithms may also find eigenvectors.' back

Fermion - Wikipedia, Fermion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'In particle physics, fermions are particles with a half-integer spin, such as protons and electrons. They obey the Fermi-Dirac statistics and are named after Enrico Fermi. In the Standard Model there are two types of elementary fermions: quarks and leptons. . . . In contrast to bosons, only one fermion can occupy a quantum state at a given time (they obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle). Thus, if more than one fermion occupies the same place in space, the properties of each fermion (e.g. its spin) must be different from the rest. Therefore fermions are usually related with matter while bosons are related with radiation, though the separation between the two is not clear in quantum physics. back

General relativity - Wikipedia, General relativity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalises special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the four-momentum (mass-energy and linear momentum) of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations.' back

Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, Laplace's demon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.' A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, Essai philosophique dur les probabilites introduction to the second edition of Theorie analytique des probabilites based on a lecture given in 1794. back

Minkowski space - Wikipedia, Minkowski space - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' By1908 Minkowski realized that the special theory of relativity, introduced by his former student Albert Einstein in 1905 and based on the previous work of Lorentz and Poincaré, could best be understood in a four-dimensional space, since known as the "Minkowski spacetime", in which time and space are not separated entities but intermingled in a four-dimensional space–time, and in which the Lorentz geometry of special relativity can be effectively represented using the invariant interval x2 + y2 + z2c2 t2.' back

Nazi Germany - Wikipedia, Nazi Germany - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Nazi Germany,officially known as the German Reich was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800/962–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after only 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe. ' back

Nicene Creed - Wikipedia, Nicene Creed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The Nicene Creed (Greek: Σύμβολον τῆς Νίκαιας, Latin: Symbolum Nicaenum) is the profession of faith or creed that is most widely used in Christian liturgy. It forms the mainstream definition of Christianity for most Christians. It is called Nicene because, in its original form, it was adopted in the city of Nicaea (present day Iznik in Turkey) by the first ecumenical council, which met there in the year 325. The Nicene Creed has been normative for the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox churches, the Anglican Communion, and the great majority of Protestant denominations.' back

Ousia - Wikipedia, Ousia - Wikipedia, the free enxcycxlopedia, 'Ousia (Ancient Greek: οὐσία) is a philosophical and theological term, originally used in ancient Greek philosophy, then later in Christian theology. It was used by various ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, as a primary designation for philosophical concepts of essence or substance. In contemporary philosophy, it is analogous to English concepts of being, and ontic. In Christian theology, the concept of θεία ουσία (divine essence) is one of the most important doctrinal concepts, central to the development of trinitarian doctrine.] The Ancient Greek term θεία ουσία (theia ousia; divine essence) was translated in Latin as essentia or substantia, and hence in English as essence or substance. . . . Some modern authors also suggest that the Ancient Greek term οὐσία is properly translated as essentia (essence), while substantia has a wider spectrum of meanings.' back

Planck constant - Wikipedia, Planck constant - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' Since energy and mass are equivalent, the Planck constant also relates mass to frequency. By 2017, the Planck constant had been measured with sufficient accuracy in terms of the SI base units, that it was central to replacing the metal cylinder, called the International Prototype of the Kilogram (IPK), that had defined the kilogram since 1889. . . . For this new definition of the kilogram, the Planck constant, as defined by the ISO standard, was set to 6.626 070 150 × 10-34 J⋅s exactly. ' back

Transmission of the Greek Classics - Wikipedia, Transmission of the Greek Classics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, ' The transmission of the Greek Classics to Latin Western Europe during the Middle Ages was a key factor in the development of intellectual life in Western Europe. Interest in Greek texts and their availability was scarce in the Latin West during the Early Middle Ages, but as traffic to the East increased, so did Western scholarship. . . . After the Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) and the Sack of Constantinople (1204), scholars such as William of Moerbeke gained access to the original Greek texts of scientists and philosophers, including Aristotle, Archimedes, Hero of Alexandria and Proclus, that had been preserved in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, and translated them directly into Latin.' back

Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, Variety (cybernetics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The term Variety was introduced by W. Ross Ashby to denote the count of the total number of states of a system. The condition for dynamic stability under perturbation (or input) was described by his Law of Requisite Variety. Ashby says: Thus, if the order of occurrence is ignored, the set {c, b, c, a, c, c, a, b, c, b, b, a} which contains twelve elements, contains only three distinct elements- a, b, c. Such a set will be said to have a variety of three elements. He adds The observer and his powers of discrimination may have to be specified if the variety is to be well defined. Variety can be stated as an integer, as above, or as the logarithm to the base 2 of the number i.e. in bits.' back

Zero-energy universe - Wikipedia, Zero-energy universe - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 'The zero-energy universe hypothesis proposes that the total amount of energy in the universe is exactly zero: its amount of positive energy in the form of matter is exactly cancelled out by its negative energy in the form of gravity. . . . The zero-energy universe theory originated in 1973, when Edward Tryon proposed in the journal Nature that the universe emerged from a large-scale quantum fluctuation of vacuum energy, resulting in its positive mass-energy being exactly balanced by its negative gravitational potential energy.' back

https://www.lust-4-life.com is maintained by The Theology Company Proprietary Limited ACN 097 887 075 ABN 74 097 887 075 Copyright 2000-2024 © Jeffrey Nicholls