Langan developed his own 'theory of the relationship between mind and reality'(Cognitive-Theoret
Quotes: You can't describe the universe completely with any accuracy unless you're willing to admit that it's both physical and mental in Nature.'
'You can prove the existence of God, the Soul and an afterlife using mathematics'.
'I believe in Evolution, but i believe as well in the allegorical truth of creation theory. In other words i believe that evolution including the principle of natural selection, is one of the tools used by God to create mankind.
'Mankind is then a participant in the creation of the universe itself, so that we have a closed loop. I believe that there is a level on which science and religious metaphor are mutually compatible.'
What is CTMU?
Introduction to the CTMU
Why God exists? Take time to read
© 1998 by Christopher Michael Langan
The real universe has always been theoretically treated as an object, and specifically as the composite type of object known as a set. But an object or set exists in space and time, and reality does not. Because the real universe by definition contains all that is real, there is no "external reality" (or space, or time) in which it can exist or have been "created". We can talk about lesser regions of the real universe in such a light, but not about the real universe as a whole. Nor, for identical reasons, can we think of the universe as the sum of its parts, for these parts exist solely within a spacetime manifold identified with the whole and cannot explain the manifold itself. This rules out pluralistic explanations of reality, forcing us to seek an explanation at once monic (because nonpluralistic) and holistic (because the basic conditions for existence are embodied in the manifold, which equals the whole). Obviously, the first step towards such an explanation is to bring monism and holism into coincidence.
When theorizing about an all-inclusive reality, the first and most important principle is containment, which simply tells us what we should and should not be considering. Containment principles, already well known in cosmology, generally take the form of tautologies; e.g., "The physical universe contains all and only that which is physical." The predicate "physical", like all predicates, here corresponds to a structured set, "the physical universe" (because the universe has structure and contains objects, it is a structured set). But this usage of tautology is somewhat loose, for it technically amounts to a predicate-logical equivalent of propositional tautology called autology, meaning self-description.
In the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe or CTMU, the set of all sets, and the real universe to which it corresponds, take the name (SCSPL) of the required extension of set theory. SCSPL, which stands for Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language, is just a totally intrinsic, i.e. completely self-contained, language that is comprehensively and coherently (self-distributively) self-descriptive, and can thus be model-theoretically identified as its own universe or referent domain. Theory and object go by the same name because unlike conventional ZF or NBG set theory, SCSPL hologically infuses sets and their elements with the distributed (syntactic, metalogical) component of the theoretical framework containing and governing them, namely SCSPL syntax itself, replacing ordinary set-theoretic objects with SCSPL syntactic operators.
The CTMU is so-named because the SCSPL universe, like the set of all sets, distributively embodies the logical syntax of its own descriptive mathematical language.
What does this say about God? First, if God is real, then God inheres in the comprehensive reality syntax, and this syntax inheres in matter. Ergo, God inheres in matter, and indeed in its spacetime substrate as defined on material and supramaterial levels. This amounts to pantheism, the thesis that God is omnipresent with respect to the material universe. Now, if the universe were pluralistic or reducible to its parts, this would make God, Who coincides with the universe itself, a pluralistic entity with no internal cohesion. But because the mutual syntactic consistency of parts is enforced by a unitary holistic manifold with logical ascendancy over the parts themselves - because the universe is a dual-aspected monic entity consisting of essentially homogeneous, self-consistent infocognition - God retains monotheistic unity despite being distributed over reality at large. Thus, we have a new kind of theology that might be called monopantheism, or even more descriptively, holopantheism. Second, God is indeed real, for a coherent entity identified with a self-perceptual universe is self-perceptual in nature, and this endows it with various levels of self-awareness and sentience, or constructive, creative intelligence. Indeed, without a guiding Entity whose Self-awareness equates to the coherence of self-perceptual spacetime, a self-perceptual universe could not coherently self-configure. Holopantheism is the logical, metatheological umbrella beneath which the great religions of mankind are unknowingly situated.
Why, if there exists a spiritual metalanguage in which to establish the brotherhood of man through the unity of sentience, are men perpetually at each others' throats? Unfortunately, most human brains, which comprise a particular highly-evolved subset of the set of all reality-subsystems, do not fire in strict S-isomorphism much above the object level. Where we define one aspect of "intelligence" as the amount of global structure functionally represented by a given sÎS, brains of low intelligence are generally out of accord with the global syntax D(S). This limits their capacity to form true representations of S (global reality) by syntactic autology [d(S) Éd d(S)] and make rational ethical calculations. In this sense, the vast majority of men are not well-enough equipped, conceptually speaking, to form perfectly rational worldviews and societies; they are deficient in education and intellect, albeit remediably so in most cases. This is why force has ruled in the world of man…why might has always made right, despite its marked tendency to violate the optimization of global utility derived by summing over the sentient agents of S with respect to space and time.
Now, in the course of employing deadly force to rule their fellows, the very worst element of humanity – the butchers, the violators, i.e. those of whom some modern leaders and politicians are merely slightly-chastened copies – began to consider ways of maintaining power. They lit on religion, an authoritarian priesthood of which can be used to set the minds and actions of a populace for or against any given aspect of the political status quo. Others, jealous of the power thereby consolidated, began to use religion to gather their own "sheep", promising special entitlements to those who would join them…mutually conflicting promises now setting the promisees at each other’s throats.
But although religion has often been employed for evil by cynics appreciative of its power, several things bear notice. (1) The abuse of religion, and the God concept, has always been driven by human politics, and no one is justified in blaming the God concept, whether or not they hold it to be real, for the abuses committed by evil men in its name. Abusus non tollit usum. (2) A religion must provide at least emotional utility for its believers, and any religion that stands the test of time has obviously been doing so. (3) A credible religion must contain elements of truth and undecidability, but no elements that are verifiably false (for that could be used to overthrow the religion and its sponsors). So by design, religious beliefs generally cannot be refuted by rational or empirical means.
Does the reverse apply? Can a denial of God be refuted by rational or empirical means? The short answer is yes; the refutation follows the reasoning outlined above. That is, the above reasoning constitutes not just a logical framework for reality theory, but the outline of a logical proof of God's existence and the basis of a "logical theology". While the framework serves other useful purposes as well, e.g. the analysis of mind and consciousness, we'll save those for another time.
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