An Exploration of Religion and the Meaning of Life!

Dear Friends:

The title of this blog is also the title of one of my books (available on the left side) and since this is a holiday Monday (as if that made any difference to a retiree) I am going to delve into a subject that I have been wrestling with for about a half a century now!

Please bear with me because the article is very long and complicated..... plus it might disturb some people who suffer from any severe religious diseases. (Take your pick, there's enough of them to go around kids!)

I should also remind you of the masthead on this Bolg: Allan's Perspective is NOT recommended for the politically correct, or the overly religious.

Basically what I have been wrestling with is the nature of God.... and how we fit into everything... since in spite of what people like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens say.... this Universe is not just a random collection of stuff that is entirely here by chance! (This is the only thing I can claim to "believe-in" with 100% certainty!)

Indeed the very nature of God is inexorably linked to Consciousness since I can't see how one could exist without the other! (Remember the adage: "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody sees it...... did it make a noise?" OR: "If a bear shits in the woods.... does it still stink?")

ANYWAY!

Since the search for God seems to point to point to a connection with consciousness perhaps we had better start with an examination of just what consciousness is!

Without mind, there might as well be nothing. Colin McGinn at the University of Miami, believes that no matter how much scientists study the brain, the mind is fundamentally incapable of comprehending itself. “We’re rather like Neanderthals trying to understand astronomy or Shakespeare,” McGinn said. Human brains suffer from a “cognitive gap” in understanding their own consciousness.”

“Is it possible that consciousness may exist by itself, even in the absence of matter, just like gravitational waves, excitations of space, may exist in the absence of protons and electrons?” asks Andrei Linde, Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University. “Will it not turn out, with the further development of science, that the study of the universe and the study of consciousness will be inseparably linked, and that ultimate progress in the one will be impossible without progress in the other?”

Recently, Princeton physicist Edward Witten, who has been compared to Isaac Newton and Einstein, addressed the problem of human consciousness. Witten is largely responsible for the popularity of string theory over the past several decades. String theory holds that all of nature’s forces stem from infinitesimal particles wriggling in a hyperspace consisting of many extra dimensions.

Witten is pessimistic about our ability to comprehend the origins of human consciousness: “I think consciousness will remain a mystery. Yes, that’s what I tend to believe. I tend to think that the workings of the conscious brain will be elucidated to a large extent. Biologists and perhaps physicists will understand much better how the brain works.

But why something that we call consciousness goes with those workings, I think that will remain mysterious. I have a much easier time imagining how we understand the Big Bang than I have imagining how we can understand consciousness.”

“The universe and the observer exist as a pair. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of the universe that ignores consciousness,” says Linde. This the great question –perhaps the central unsolved mystery of the 21st Century. Linde is one of the world’s leading proponents of the inflationary universe theory. The paragraph below from Linde’s essay Universe, Life, Consciousness brilliantly examines this great question.

According to standard materialistic doctrine, consciousness, like space-time before the invention of general relativity, plays a secondary, subservient role, being considered just a function of matter and a tool for the description of the truly existing material world.

But let us remember that our knowledge of the world begins not with matter but with perceptions.

I know for sure that my pain exists, my “green” exists, and my “sweet” exists. I do not need any proof of their existence, because these events are a part of me; everything else is a theory.

O.K. So much for the "theory"  of consciousness...... now let's take a look at a hypothesis I have come up with that might tie it in with the concept of God! 

For this we need to go to another adage that I have put on the masthead of my blog: "CONSCIOUSNESS IS THE PHYSICAL EXPRESSION OF GOD WITHIN US!"

This leaves us with the problem of how we are connected to God, Mother Nature, Cosmic Consciousness or whatever you wish to call it.

A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in "microtubules" inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose. 

They suggest that EEG rhythms (brain waves) derive from deep level microtubule vibrations.

The theory, called "orchestrated objective reduction" ('Orch OR'), was first put forward in the mid-1990s by eminent mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, FRS, Mathematical Institute and Wadham College, University of Oxford, and prominent anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, MD, Anesthesiology, Psychology and Center for Consciousness Studies, The University of Arizona, Tucson.

They suggested that quantum vibrational computations in microtubules were "orchestrated" ("Orch") by synaptic inputs and memory stored in microtubules, and terminated by Penrose "objective reduction" ('OR'), hence "Orch OR." Microtubules are major components of the cell structural skeleton.

Orch OR was harshly criticized from its inception, as the brain was considered too "warm, wet, and noisy" for seemingly delicate quantum processes..

However, evidence has now shown warm quantum coherence in plant photosynthesis, bird brain navigation, our sense of smell, and brain microtubules. The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair's theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations. In addition, work from the laboratory of Roderick G. Eckenhoff, MD, at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that anesthesia, which selectively erases consciousness while sparing non-conscious brain activities, acts via microtubules in brain neurons.

"The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?" ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review.

"This opens a potential Pandora's Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, 'proto-conscious' quantum structure of reality."

After 20 years of skeptical criticism, "the evidence now clearly supports Orch OR," continue Hameroff and Penrose. "Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or "qubits," as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998 -- of these, six are confirmed and none refuted."

An important new facet of the theory is introduced. Microtubule quantum vibrations (e.g. in megahertz) appear to interfere and produce much slower EEG "beat frequencies."

Despite a century of clinical use, the underlying origins of EEG rhythms have remained a mystery. Clinical trials of brief brain stimulation aimed at microtubule resonances with megahertz mechanical vibrations using transcranial ultrasound have shown reported improvements in mood, and may prove useful against Alzheimer's disease and brain injury in the future.

Lead author Stuart Hameroff concludes, "Orch OR is the most rigorous, comprehensive and successfully-tested theory of consciousness ever put forth. From a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions."

The review is accompanied by eight commentaries from outside authorities, including an Australian group of Orch OR arch-skeptics. To all, Hameroff and Penrose respond robustly.

Penrose, Hameroff and Bandyopadhyay will explore their theories during a session on "Microtubules and the Big Consciousness Debate" at the Brainstorm Sessions, a public three-day event at the Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, January 16-18, 2014. They will engage skeptics in a debate on the nature of consciousness, and Bandyopadhyay and his team will couple microtubule vibrations from active neurons to play Indian musical instruments.

"Consciousness depends on harmonic vibrations of microtubules inside neurons."

And there ya have it folks, on a lazy Monday afternoon your long suffering author has just solved the "meaning of life" for you.

(As a follow up to this post I was sitting out on the back patio this evening and The Mrs. Herself and I were discussing this article and what it all means. I explained that we..... and all living things have a spark of God or Mother Nature within us. We, with a human brain, behave like humans...... dogs, with a dog brain....... behave like dogs, and fish, with a fishy brain...... behave like fish!)

Simple eh?

The way I see it anyway!