Elegant Order Implies Elegant Architecture

Is Our Universe/Cosmos Architected?

I studied many philosophies of religion, cosmological mythology in many cultures, read lots of things about mysticism, even read the Book of Mormon, tomes like the Tao of Physics, learned about shamanism, and tried my hand at Wicca/Paganism. Had some psychedelic experiences. Learned tarot. Did yoga and meditated. Devoured anything metaphysical. Spouted koans. I felt like I could feel truth, but not always see it. Nothing really gave me the insight I really wanted (what does it all mean?!), but I was still intrigued. I was on the path, whether I knew it or not.

I went through almost this exact sequence, and so did a number of people I know. I think there’s an argument to be made that this almost describes the “traditional path” for westerners “waking up” in the late 20th Century.

I needed to find some meaning. Every day I was waking up and my first thought was ‘what the hell is this all about?!’

Again, me too. It’s a longstanding “joke” at family reunions that I spent my high school years obsessing over God instead of sex, like a “normal teenager.” It’s true, though. When one’s first thought every morning is “What the hell is this all about? dating is just boring by comparison. Even after I declared myself an atheist, all I thought about, and talked about was God, religion, spirituality.

I realized that our history is much more complex than most of us know.

I know you’re referring to deep history here, and you’re right. But even on the “shallow history” level, the lack of knowledge in our time is stunning. Evidence of human civilization goes back as far as 80,000 years, yet my own kids weren’t competently taught even the 240 years of US history in public school. I read somewhere that children in China are expected to be fluent in 5,000 years of Chinese history by the time they graduate high school. And people wonder why America is in decline…

I wanted spirituality to be proven by scientific means and I wanted science to consider the possibility that we can’t fully observe or measure some phenomena.

I wrote a thing recently delving into the whole right brain/left brain concept, and I think there is a real parallel here. Maybe spirituality and science represent the left brain/right brain split in humanity as a whole (the “oversoul” or whatever). In which case bringing the two into balance and union would represent ultimate species mental health. We need something along the lines of a global corpus collosum to help them communicate. Maybe the Internet is serving that function?

it makes sense to me that our universe was architected. I don’t believe that elegant order emerges spontaneously.

For all the reasons you name, I think this is one place where scientific atheists routinely violate their own precious “Occam’s razor.” The simplest answer that accounts for all the evidence of elegant order in the universe is, as you say, architecture. When atheists twist logic into strange pretzels to deny that elegant order is itself evidence of anything but chance, they are clearly (clear to everyone but them) defending their preconceived belief that God does not exist. Any evidence that suggests architecture/creation they simply reject as evidence.

It made me sad to think that the Universe is a big robot programmed to kill and that I exist only to propagate DNA.

For readers who want to label this point a straw man argument, I say they need to go read Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. Your statement here is an accurate one-line summary of Dawkins’ theory of evolution.

We can’t prove that God exists, because God is a not a phenomenon that can be observed, repeated, predicted, and measured. Which is what the scientific method requires.

Which also means science can never prove God does not exist. The common atheist assumption that unless God can be proved scientifically to exist it is safe to assume God does not exist is a “leap of faith.” Their faith is in their unproven belief that science can explain everything. That’s pretty arrogant, when you think about it.

I feel like I understand some hints of universal truth, but feel like it’s still too big for me to fully grasp with puny 3D/4D consciousness.

I think there is great freedom in embracing this truth. If our goal is to understand universal truth as we are, with our puny 3D/4D consciousness, we will always be frustrated because we’re just not equipped to accomplish that. So instead, it makes sense to a) assume no matter what we think we know, it’s not the whole enchilada, and b) make our goal evolving to 5D consciousness and beyond.

Space is not the final frontier, consciousness is.

I think it behooves us to purse both frontiers simultaneously and aggressively. With population growing as natural resources dwindle, the only solution that is joyous rather than tragic is space colonization, I think. If we could do both at once — a race of Buddhas colonizing the Milky Way, wow, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Thanks for this insight into your path, Lisa!