Über-Consciousnessism

So I've been bouncing around and between religious ideas and spiritual theories lately. I've taken a drawn-out, complicated journey in my lifetime from Catholic, to non-denominational Christian, to Wiccan, to Pagan, with a vast array of eclectic details fading in and out as I went, like monolatrism (which eventually changed to henotheism), polytheism (which eventually bred theistic indifference), pantheism, and I can see myself reaching ever closer toward atheism, although I'm not quite there yet.

Most everyone has heard the phrase, "In the beginning, man created God," a popular satirical twist on the even better known biblical phrase, "In the beginning, God created man." I don't believe I'd be far off in assuming that the majority interpret the former to mean that God is just make-believe, and exists only insomuch as Micky Mouse exists, or Captain Ahab. Recently I've been flirting with the idea that every god ever known to His/Her/Its followers (or naysayers) truly does exist, but only as a concept (like the square root of -1) which people use to further their own agendas (love/hate, acceptance/intolerance, peace/war, etc.) - goodness knows that all works very well. MOST recently however, I've been flirting with an alternative interpretation of "In the beginning, man created God."

But before I try explaining that:
I've determined for myself that the consciousness we experience is simply a result of an ongoing system of evolution, due to the (popularly believed to be) unmatched brain advancement of our mammalian species, as it is easily observed that we are not the only beings to experience consciousness, but may very well be the only species that gives a shit. I spoke of this at greater length in my "Eternal Souls" entry, suggesting that they (eternal souls) may not exist, due to our consciousness likely being exclusively due to evolutionary development and NOTHING of the metaphysical. But what if our brains having advanced so far as to develop consciousness and abstract thought, that our consciousness has advanced so far as to develop a pure-energy echo of ourselves that continues to exist after our material bodies die and decay: souls (perhaps not eternal, but souls nonetheless). After all, we still are light years away from unlocking all the secrets of our highly developed brains - many people are witness to some pretty unbelievable mind-over-matter achievements. If our incredible minds are able to overcome and overpower those same basic physical boundaries from whence they evolved in the first place, who's to say they couldn't continue to somehow exist above and beyond their material prisms.

Now, what if these immaterial echos of conscious life are contributing to the gradual, collective formation of a universally present Über-Consciousness, or "god" (as with several different religious views, god is seen as a collective consciousness, with which people are rejoined after death). Buddhist reincarnation teaches that there is no one constant "self" - that personalities (or spirits?) are ever-changing, and this process continues after death. Resonating with this idea, perhaps rebirth (within the cycle of reincarnation) is a process in which a small part of this Über-Consciousness breaks away to inhabit the physical body of a conscious being (perhaps human, perhaps not), the specific piece of which has never been formed precisely that way ever before; like putting drops of water together in a bucket, and then using an eyedropper to separate a drop from the rest - it was not one of the original drops that entered the bucket, but rather a collection of water molecules from many of the drops within the bucket. ~~For my Pagan friends reading this, perhaps that would explain why so many people claim to have been Cleopatra in a past life ;)~~

I'm rather attracted to this line of thinking because it brings me at better peace with my remaining attachment to a belief in ghosts and other such paranormal phenomena. Which of course my atheist friends reading this will roll their eyes with the confidence that that's why any of these crazy "religion" ideas ever came up in the first place: people trying to explain the things they don't understand in a way that makes them comfortable rather than just following the facts. Yeah I get it, but gimme a break. However, as soon as I start recruiting for Über-Consciousnessism (via threat of either conversion or death, or passing out pamphlets on street corners, or pushing for it to be taught in science classes, etc.), then I openly invite (and encourage) you to give me a nice, hard Slap of Reality.

Ooh - freaky afterthought: immaterial consciousness = higher life form? Is our species evolving into Earth's next dominant species while we blissfully live our lives completely unaware of our own impending apocalyptic takeover? OMG - I could totally start my own religion and brainwash all my followers into giving me 10% of their income... You know, I think I truly understand Christian authorities in an entirely new way now.

UPDATE: (25 June, 2009 at 10:56)
Hold on, caught myself: what if the Über-Consciousness, rather than being a result of brain development, is an omnipresent energy ever since the Big Bang, much like the constant (and apparently increasing) expansion of the universe. This energy, which manifests itself as consciousness when applied to our brains, is only able to effect us physically because of how far our brains have evolved. This energy (Über-Consciousness) has the potential to effect all matter in different ways (certain rifts or fluxuations may result in what some people perceive as ghosts or paranormal activity), and the effect it has on grey-matter is consciousness, the intensity of which is direclty related to how far the particular brain it's effecting has evolved (hence why other species experience consciousness, but not perceivably to the extent that we experience it).

Everybody follow that?

What about love?

I heard something frightening today while watching an hour-long television special I StumbledUpon online called “Evolution: What about God?” Most of the video referenced a particular Christian college – they explored some of the students there, a little of the history, and on-campus controversy, among other things. In 1961 something happened that brought about likely the most controversial change to Wheaton College. A product of “secular” schooling until attending Wheaton (but still a Christian), in talking about Christianity and human origins, Walter Hearn announced that the same chemical processes that bring each of us into existence today could have produced Adam and Eve. Wheaton – while maintaining the status of a Christian college – now teaches evolution, but at the time it stirred up quite the political and religious controversy. The mother of one of the students at that time wrote one of hundreds of protest letters to the college (and this is what I find so frightening):

“Twice I have heard that the college is growing liberal; that they teach evolution at Wheaton. What grieves me most is that our daughter may lose her faith at Wheaton. Is this possible? If her faith should be shattered or even shaken, I’d rather see her dead.”

The rest of the show had a great many more examples of “conservative Christians” and their outright fear of anything that threatens their comfort bubble. One student of Wheaton that they focused on, Nathan, talked about his struggling transition from creationism to evolution while keeping his faith, and showed him debating/conversing with his dad about it, his dad being the unyielding defense of a 6-day, young earth, biblical creation. What stood out to me was Nathan’s testament to growing up as a Christian, where evolution wasn’t even talked about – it was evil, it was wrong, it was the work of the devil, and that’s all anybody ever needed to know about – and his seemingly exhausting attempt at explaining to his dad that people ordinarily fight against evolution without ever actually understanding what it is. All his dad had to defend himself with was something to the effect of, “so basically evolution says that one slimy thing created Adam, and another slimy thing created Eve.” Then when Nathan tries to defend that that’s a “GROSS simplification,” his dad retorted that it’s all that’s important about it, completely proving Nathan’s point.

The reason why these things frighten me so much is that there are people living in this world with such self-destructive fear. They are taught to avoid at all costs anything that threatens their faith, which promotes unequivocal misunderstanding under the guise that they can have a perfectly accurate opinion about it without knowing anything more about it than “it’s evil” or whatever else other “properly” prejudiced sources tell them about it. Nathan’s father even says during their discussion, “No matter how much science discovers, God tells us – and I believe it – that man’s wisdom is foolishness.” And as the concerned mother of the Wheaton student clearly shows, goodness forbid anyone’s faith be tested, because they’d be better off dead. That these people raise children is the most frightening of all.

Let me make this clear: creationism is not the problem here; faith is not the problem here; Christianity is not the problem here; pride, self-confidence and/or conservatism may not even really be the problem here. Extremism, xenophobia, ignorance, and the downright FUCKED UP idea that somehow fear has any place within a system of love (God is love; love thy neighbor; love thy enemy; etc.), THOSE are the problems here.

If you are/not this, you’ll suffer for all eternity.
If you don’t/do this, you’ll suffer for all eternity.
If you don’t/believe this, you’ll suffer for all eternity.

No matter how you slice it, how you read it, how you interpret it, or what context you put it in, there is NO love in any of those statements. Lots of fear – no love.

Now, if even just to make myself feel better, this sounds more like love to me (quotes from some of the Wheaton students they interviewed):

“I want to be educated, I want to be intelligent, I want to have answers that someone could say, ‘I can respect that.” And also to be able to argue some answers without God. I mean, that sounds almost sacrilegious but I want to be able to reason some things, without necessarily having to bring God into the picture, and I want my life and the way that I live it to reflect God.”

“When I hear a God-fearing man say, ‘I hold to the evolutionary theory,’ that worked wonders for me. It gave me a little bit of a freedom to say, ‘Wow. God is bigger than the box that I put him in.'”

Love is immeasurable, limitless, and unconditional.

I’d like to leave you with this closing quote from one of the professors at Wheaton:
“Are we placing students’ faith at risk by examining these hard questions? Absolutely. But I would add, additionally, that there is no such thing as a safe place from which to hide from these issues. If we engage in the most rigid biblical literalism, the fact that our students live in a real world indicates that their faith is always at risk. Christians believe that our faith is rooted in real happenings in a real world, and so to try and structure a place, or a way of conceptualizing our faith that insulates us and isolates us from risk, is to rob Christianity of its very essence.”