Since losing my faith in my inherited religion, I’ve thought a lot about the seeming-paradox of my existence.

How did I come to exist? How did the world come to exist? What caused the big bang? In part 1, I tried to explain how I believe my sentience is the product of connections in my nervous system. In this post, I’d like to discuss my beliefs regarding how the universe we live in exists at all.

For many, God is the ultimate explanation for everything— A being outside of time that is perfectly benevolent, all-powerful, and all-knowing. He created the world, the universe, and everything…. There you go… Problem solved… Makes complete sense… 

Certainly such a powerful being could do such a thing… He’s by many people’s beliefs and definitions “omnipotent”… But it doesn’t actually give us a lot of explanatory power. It doesn’t tell us why God exists.

My old religion has tried to explain this by suggesting that God was not always God, but that He learned to become God and be perfect over time. They have also taught that mankind are God’s literal spirit children, gods in embryo, and can become like Him over time, that that is the way it has always been and that is the way it will always be for all eternity; God’s begetting gods; worlds without end… 

While such a belief certainly tickles the human ego, it also suffers from a similar problem to having a single god. How did this infinite cycle start? “Well, that’s the thing about infinity, it doesn’t have a start. That’s simply the way that things have always been. Our feeble human minds simply cannot comprehend infinity. We’ll have to wait until God opens our minds to explain it to us…” Such are the types of things people would tell me. So often I would be told, “My human mind cannot comprehend it”.

Although, I think the real reason I couldn’t comprehend it is because infinite recursion is a type of circular reasoning and I logically could not progress that train of thought. Just like the other scenario, it leaves us with no explanatory power to say why the gods or anything exist at all.

So why does anything exist? If something exists, did something have to cause it to exist? And then did something have to cause whatever caused it to exist, to exist?

If everything needs a cause to exist, then nothing could exist without creating a paradox of infinite recursion. Some things, however, do exist, therefore, the only logical conclusion is that not everything needs a cause to exist and there is at least one uncaused cause. If something that exists was never caused to exist, it exists outside of time and is eternal.

Well great! Can’t God be this eternal, uncaused cause?

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Sure.

This is actually the way I now think about God. I have disregarded all of my prior conceptions about God and now think of him/her/it to simply be everything that exists without cause or that is eternal.

So what would that make God? What exists outside of time and needs no cause?

…

π

…

prime numbers, 

Pascal’s triangle, 

e, 

golden ratio, 

fibonacci numbers 

etc.

“Did you really just give me a bunch of math terms and say that’s God?”

Yeah. Yeah, I did. Mathematical ratios, patterns, and relationships exist without cause. While humans put names to these relationships, no one invented them. We discovered them. These relationships exist unconnected to time, whether any sentient being is aware of them or not. Connections in numbers, geometry, and logic are self-evident and eternal, and the number of these connections are infinite.

While it might sound strange, it is currently my sincere belief that these eternal, self evident connections are the building blocks of reality. Given that, you could say I believe in a form of mathematicism.

Okay…. So let’s suppose for a moment that mathematical connections are the only things that exist without cause. How then could we get space, time, matter, and energy out of connections in numbers, geometry, and logic?

I’m glad you asked!

So last year, I came across this introduction to the Wolfram Physics Project. When I read it, I felt like a light was turning on in my head. I felt awe, ASMR, and enlightened. I think part of that was just because of the excitement and confidence portrayed by the paper’s author/s, but it also helped fill an important missing piece to my theory of existence.

Stephen Wolfram and his team have come up with a fundamental theory of physics that can be modelled using graph automata. I’ve tried several times, but I can’t hope to summarize this very well in layman’s terms. You’re better-off reading the actual article. If nothing else, the section titled “How it Works” tries to explain the base concept in a simple way.

What’s important is that they found a way to account for space, time, mass, energy, gravity, relativity, and quantum mechanics in a unifying theory that can be represented in a very simple and very abstract way. The point that the building blocks are “abstract” is important, because connections in mathematics and geometry are abstract. They are both, abstract connections between abstract objects.

The other aspect that is important is that automata such as these have been shown to be able to generate complexity as well as both randomness and symmetry by repeatedly applying a simple rule. That might be hard to follow, so as an example, consider Conway’s game of life. This is a type of cellular automata of which graph automata is a generalization of. I used to play the computer game/simulation when I was a kid as did many of my siblings.

In the game of life, there is a two-dimensional grid of squares. Each square (cell) is either alive or dead. Every frame, a rule is applied where if a cell has at least 2 but no more than 3 neighboring cells that are alive, it stays alive, otherwise it dies, and if a cell is dead and it has three alive neighbors, it becomes alive.

With such simple rules, a lot of complexity can be created. Objects/configurations can move, generate new objects/configurations, etc. Gemini is an example of a self-replicating object in life.

Graph automata work in a similar way, creating, removing, and changing connections as some sort of rule is repeatedly applied to a graph of abstract edges and nodes.

Stephen Wolfram believes that there is one such rule that perfectly describes our universe. The search for which rule is a primary goal of the project.

Whether or not this theory is correct, it demonstrates the potential for the complexity of our universe derived from simple, primitive, patterns.

As for which pattern exists? Well, not all will perfectly describe our universe, but all possible patterns exist, outside of time, even if no one is aware of them, meaning they are all part of the mind of God.

What’s more difficult to explain is how these connections can provide substance to our reality. How does something go from being an abstract connection between abstract objects to being fundamental particles, forces, and laws? I imagine the answer is similar to how connections through chemical and electric signals in a person’s nervous system can provide substance to perception, memory, and intelligence.

My answer, if you want to call putting a name to something an answer, is Deific Arcana.

In part 1, I described how I believed in 3 different levels of reality. I believe in individuals’ subjective reality, I believe in our shared objective reality, and finally, I believe in an eternal reality. 

The eternal, is what I’ve been describing as God, or the mind of God. It is everything that exists without cause. This is the most fundamental reality and you could say it’s the only thing that really exists, everything else is simply an “illusion” created by a subset of possible connections.

Objective reality, while it may appear to be an “illusion” to one living outside of time, actually seems quite real and fundamental to us who are living inside of it. Objective reality is how I would describe our physical universe. It consists of matter, energy, space, and time. There may be an infinite multiverse of possible objective realities, but for the most part, only this one is relevant to us.

If it’s still hard to comprehend the transformation from something that exists only symbolically to becoming real and tangible, consider what it would be like to live in a video game. Different objects like monsters, houses, etc. have no form or matter in objective reality— All they are are different patterns stored as electrical charges in a computer. At one level, all game entities could be considered an “illusion”. However, if your mind were placed in that virtual world, and you could interact with those objects, and they could affect your perceptions, experiences, and subjective reality, they might as well be real. They would be real to you, and I believe reality is relative.

Which brings me to the third type of reality, subjective reality. While I can only really know for myself, I assume that every person, and potentially every animal has some sort of experience. While at one level, we may all be biological machines that work because of electrical signals caused by chemicals in our nervous system, I take it we all have our own subjective experiences that to us, are the most real thing there is, even if physically, it’s all an illusion.

So back to our universe. If things that are eternal have always existed, and our universe is the expansion of a specific pattern that happens to exist, then how does time in our universe work? Don’t scientists think the big bang happened 13.8 billion years ago? Did something cause “time” to start then?

Another concept that helps to explain this is eternalism. Eternalism is the belief that all moments in time are equally real. They all exist— past, present, and future. We simply experience time along the progression of entropy.

In Stephen Wolfram’s theory of physics, time is a quantum phenomenon, where the most basic time step is the application of the automata’s rule or the next step in the pattern.

This is actually helpful in explaining how time could have a beginning. When time is thought of as a dimension that is infinite forward and backward, it is difficult to describe how something could start to exist. However, if time is simply the progression of states in a pattern, then it’s fairly easy to see how the beginning of the pattern could realize the beginning of time. The time we live in now, is simply the part of the pattern that we exist in and always will exist in.

The evidence for the big bang is such that it’s essentially universally accepted. Some theists like to claim that God caused the big bang.

If we’re considering God as the uncaused cause, then sure. I can get on board with that. However, if we’re talking about Yahweh, the god of the bible, there’s a lot of issues to work out.

Yahweh is described in the scriptures as being personal, emotional, and sentimental. It’s not that there couldn’t be powerful beings in the universe that possess these traits, but for an entity to have such a unique personality and yet exist without cause is not self-evident.

I’ve started to call the reason for existence “God”, but what I really mean when I talk about God is Nature. You could say that I believe in the god of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. 

Spinoza was considered to be an atheist because he used the word “God” (Deus) to signify a concept that was different from that of traditional Judeo–Christian monotheism. “Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God; he has neither intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act according to purpose, but everything follows necessarily from his nature, according to law….”

Wikipedia

Albert Einstein was another that viewed God in this way. He often described himself as believing in the god of Spinoza, using the term more synonymously with Nature and rejecting the notion of a personal god that interferes with our day-to-day life. Einstein once wrote to a colleague,

The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. …. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions.

How often have I been in churches where people claimed that God helped them with this or that issue, no matter how small or insignificant it may have seemed. “I know God loves me because he helped me find my keys”, etc. And then there are those who pray for relief from great sickness, abuse, or for their most basic needs and never seem to be the recipient of divine intervention. It seems more likely to me that we’re all a bit self-absorbed, thinking, even if not consciously, that we’re more special than others instead of simply being more fortunate at times.

Did you know that 99% of the billions of species that have existed on earth are now extinct? If life is a product of intelligent design, that’s a curious artifact. Why do so many branches of evolution seem to take off only to end?

Evolution as a concept is far more than just a simple theory. Trial, error, random adaptation, and survival of the fittest is a natural system (A.k.a an eternal relationship) that is proven to be effective at general optimization. As an eternal pattern, it always existed. It was never invented, only discovered.

I had an interesting conversation with a family member a few years ago. They were telling me about a system that used a monte carlo algorithm for optimizing the design of some sort of vehicle. I don’t remember the details, but the system would run different simulations with procedurally generated vehicles that had different shapes, sizes etc, randomly adding or removing parts of the chassis, trying to optimize the strength and speed of the vehicle while minimizing weight and material cost.

I was told that when they tried running this algorithm starting with only the bare minimum connections, the optimal result the system returned was something resembling a bit of a ribcage. I remember pointing out to my relative that that seemed to demonstrate the effectiveness of evolution.

“Or… that God knows what He’s doing”, they suggested.

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I still believed in my old religion at that point, but for some reason, that comment still fazed me. How did that follow? If this is simply an optimal result that can be generated through a natural process, why would a conscientious design by God be needed? I didn’t think my comment would be that controversial. Even the church school I had just graduated from was teaching evolution at that point, even if they also taught that Adam was the first “man” on earth.

When I think about God, I think about automation. Evolution is a process that can develop without intervention. The planets revolve around the sun without intervention. The seasons change without intervention. Plants and animals grow automatically without intervention. And the more we’ve studied and learned about these things, the more we’ve learned they all seem to be enabled by the natural expansion of simple, consistent, rules.

I used to think that the earth was upheld by God’s omnipotent hand, but does it take conscious effort for gravity to remain a law? Does it take conscious effort for the strong and weak nuclear forces to remain? If God is sentient, then what exactly does He do besides help seemingly random people at seemingly random times achieve a seemingly random subset of their desires?

There are certain instances where viewing God as an impersonal force is far more justifiable than viewing Him as a selective architect that works in “mysterious ways”.

I don’t pretend to fully understand everything there is to know about life, the universe, and everything. Deific Arcana is simply my attempt to explain what many have claimed is unexplainable. It gives me an answer I can comprehend regarding how and what I am and the nature of my existence. I’m sure that not every conclusion I’ve made is correct, and I expect to learn more and adapt my beliefs as science progresses. So far though, this is the best explanation I have for my subjective experiences.