This post is a response to a question posed in its full format as follows: “Atheists, do you ever wonder where consciousness originated from? Do you sit back and think ‘maybe science doesn’t have the answer to everything?’”
Based on the fleeting interest in the topic demonstrated by the wording in this question, I have wondered that likely more than most. I’m obsessive that way. It’s a curse I must have been born with because I remember thoughts as a toddler that may not have been quite as sophisticated as now but definitely within the ballpark.
20–20 hindsight leads me to believe my life would have been far easier if I had realized I could create a vocation and a “normal life” around the formal pursuit of knowledge in that realm. I had to get this far on my own before I could think about options I didn’t realize could have been available to me then.
Even as a kid, I valued my mind more than my body, and I found myself attracted to any reading material, fact or fiction, that expanded my views on the mental realm. This led me to explore myths at an early enough age to understand how religion is also just mythology, except that people believe it’s more than that.
I should have been more focused on exploring the sciences, but I was more interested in exploring self-knowledge, which led me straight to the arts. Economically, it was the worst decision I could have made. Insofar as personal development is concerned and surviving the nightmares I’ve endured, it has been my only means of making it this far.
By the time I went to art school, I had already consumed many subjects from various realms. I have enjoyed material from scientific objectivity and metaphysical subjectivity. The arts have enabled me to process abstractions such that when Carlos Castaneda, Jane Roberts, or Edgar Cayce wowed me, I never interpreted their material from a literalist perspective. I still love and am affected by the imagery they evoked within me. People like Joseph Campbell were an incredible inspiration to me from the standpoint of cognitive discipline and the “hard sciences modality of thought,” but discovering Douglas Hofstadter’s “Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid” was like being hit with a hammer to crack open a hard shell surrounding my awareness of consciousness.
I highly recommend “The Mind’s I” as an “easier-to-consume” piece of his writing.
At any rate, my pitiful comprehension of the sciences allowed me to understand, on at least a basic level, that science itself isn’t an answer to anything. Unlike religion, however, “science doesn’t lie” about being an answer to everything.
Science itself isn’t even a source of knowledge — people are.
Science is just a process of determining facts, leading some incredible minds to discover amazing facts about our universe.
One recent proposition arrived at through the scientific discipline of inquiry is that we may be on the verge of identifying a connection to or a source of consciousness within the quantum realm. That’s exciting news to me.
Not too long ago, I chanced upon this image:
This set my imagination on fire as an analogy for 3-dimensional existence created by consciousness itself. I had already been aware of issues like the “Thermostat Problem,” “Integrated Information Theory,” memory structures stored in 11-dimensional space, and microtubules in our brains that directly interact with quantum space. This image was like another crack in a shell obscuring my view of consciousness.
The analogy I draw from this image is that “consciousness shines through” our physicality to take shape in a three-dimensional structure we understand as reality. The shadow in this image represents physical reality, while our biology shapes the nature of consciousness within the context of a three-dimensional space.
Recently, much more intelligent people with dedicated minds have been exploring realms outside my comprehension in ways that filter down to hope within me that we will eventually solve the mystery of consciousness — even though it still feels far too distant to believe we’ll manage to create artificial facsimiles of actual consciousness. We can’t map quantum space, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s possible or how we could do that.
How the hell do we establish a coordinate system for virtual particles? At this point, all I can think of is that we can’t and likely never will; if we can, it won’t be in any near future.
At any rate, anyone with any basic understanding of science knows science is not a magical source of all knowledge like religion pretends to. It’s at least testable and verifiable knowledge rather than the ludicrous fictions concocted by religious nonsense that leave reality far behind in its rearview mirror as it gallops into fantasyland.
Here’s some additional reading on the subject of consciousness by people far more advanced in their explorations than I am.
Quantum mechanics and the puzzle of human consciousness
https://alleninstitute.org/news/quantum-mechanics-and-the-puzzle-of-human-consciousness/
Study Shows Consciousness May Be Product of Quantum Effect
https://www.gaia.com/article/study-shows-consciousness-may-be-product-of-quantum-effect?gad_source=1
Quantum Physics Could Finally Explain Consciousness, Scientists Say
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a40898392/quantum-physics-consciousness/?gad_source=1
Oh… let’s not forget a valuable source of primers on almost every subject imaginable — good ol’ Wikipedia — please donate if you can to this marvellous resource that thumbs its nose at the parasitism of capitalism and generates knowledge for its true value to humanity.
Quantum Mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind
Temet Nosce
thotbag 