h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There seems to be some confusion about what is meant when we use the term *god*.

Some here treat the term with the contempt it deserves , if it is used to refer to some biblical YHWH character (or equivalent), whilst others have some other concept of a higher life form (?) which has no means or desire to interact with us directly, but might have *some* indirect affect on us.

Perhaps we need some form of agreement on the terms being used.

We don't know the limits of DNA to store information.

In one programmable gate array experiment researchers produced a logic circuit that correctly compared two inputs to produce an output using less gates than would be required using simple logic circuit designs (IIRC about ten times less). Furthermore they found that even when reduced to the minimum number of gates to work properly that only around 2/3 of the gates actually did anything, but removing one of the non-functioning gates rendered the system inactive. (I can't remember the reference, only the outline of the results, but it gets a mention in The Science of Discworld )

DNA could similarly be an extremely complex way of storing information, above and beyond our current understanding of its function.

*still here, just reading and pondering*

Heay, I know the logic gate example (Also from Science of Discworld ).

But once you start talking about 'conciousness' you're talking really big numbers here. And most of DNA is used simply with the replication instructions and other very basic information. When you compress information, you reduce the 'data' size by encoding some of the complexity into the compression algorithm, in a way that (hopefully) saves net space. With DNA the compression algorithm and the data are in the same space, severely reducing the amount of information you can store. Sooner or later you can only gain improvement by confounding one peice of information with another (so for exmaple eye colour is fixed with hair colour). While this does go on in DNA to some extent it can't be too pervasive without stopping the orgnaism from being able to evolve.

Once you get to civilisation-level 'conciousness' the sheer volume of information in all personal thoughts in interactions exceeds anything DNA could manage.

In terms of storage efficiency, our brains (as cousins of neural nets) are already close up on DNA. Besides, I believe 'collective conciousness' should also include extelligence, which can't be encoded in DNA.

'c' comes the closest. I view this discussion as one about feelings, emotions and faith, not science and 'facts'. I'm sure others have different perspectives!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

"The problem is not too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of the soul."

Can anyone remember who said this? I've forgotten.

I was thinking along the lines that most of the elements embedded in the "collective unconcious" would be derived from what we are anyway (e.g. the structure of our collective concious and subconcious might in some small way depend on our hair colour, without us having to know what it is - they do say blondes have more fun, maybe there is a reason why).

What would be required might be another algorithm or interpreter that can decode the DNA strand to form the framework on which the "concious" hangs. Speciation would not occur in humans since we are all one species (and increasingly likely to remain so), but the consequence would be that there appears to be a racial memory.

The instruction set need not be large, and might rely in part on the the environment to provide some interpretation of the instructions for the concious mind.

(Does any of that make sense?)

Robert Musil

"We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little intellect in matters of the soul."

for the quote

If we do have some racial memory stored inside us, then we run into difficulties with this racial memory being confounded with more mundane characteristics. I think that if the linking is widespread enough to be able to hold racial memory then it would leave us without enough leeway to adapt sensibly in either racial memory or physicality.

There's already considerable confounding going on with just our physical characteristics. Evolution would surely lead to the amount of confounding being an 'optimum' balance of economy and adaptability.

Food for thought?

I have a friend who believe that introns (*apparently* unused sections of 'junk' in our DNA) *could* form an aerial for transferring information between humans. This, combined with Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance, could give rise to something akin to the collective unconscious....

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Agreed. But there could still be room for a basic personality type to be defined on the basis of certain physical parameters.

So how much of our DNA is made up of apparent *junk*?

I'm no expert, but I think the answer to your question is 'most of it'.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Hence why the Y chromosone is so much smaller than the X. Both sexes carry the X chromosone, but males only carry the Y. When all the DNA is shared out, the X chromosones are swapped, but the Y cromosone has nothing to swap with (most of the info contained in the Y cromosone is present elsewhere) so gets shorter. Eventually humans will nolonger possess a Y chromosone and will have to survive on other ways of DNA change in order to reproduce (some skinless moles use a method of DNA change that has nothing to do with Y and X chromosones).

PC: <'c' comes the closest. I view this discussion as one about feelings, emotions and faith, not science and 'facts'. I'm sure others have different perspectives!>

I agree... I just thought you were the one to bring in 'theories', 'evidence' and 'facts'... or at least responded to arguments in that field.

Ok, Ben. I've just come back from the Jung primer, so I'm ready to take this conversation to the next step.

You've identified that god should be something greater than human. But the thing you've identified, the collective unconscious, can never be greater than human. It is a sub-component of a human mind. Certainly the sum of conscious, personal unconscious, and collective unconscious are greater than the collective unconscious alone, isn't it? And the human would be the sum of its parts plus the mind. So your god is less than your mind, and your mind is less than you are. And by your definition, anything that is less than you cannot be god.

If the collective unconscious does exist, and it does evolve as humans evolve, it can never evolve into something greater than human. It exists only in the human mind, and it depends on human evolution to drive its own evolution. It evolves only *after* humans evolve, so it can never evolve into something greater than man.

And this is all without exploring the basic fallacy in Jung's work. He developed the concept of the collective unconscious as a way to explain the similarities in mythology between many different cultures. He decided that the myths were based on "archetypes," which were stored in the collective unconscious. But which is more likely... that we all tap into this common and universal pool of knowledge, or that we humans are the basis for our own mythological archetypes, and the experiences of various cultures when forming civilizations shared a lot of common elements? We are, after all, all the same species.

P-c: Feel free to address any of the above. And now that I believe I've re-fired the enthusiasm for this particular topic, this isthe basic question I've been wanting to explore with people who express beliefs such as yours and Ben's... and I never seem to get an answer when I pose it.

1) If the universe is something we can call "god," then why call it "god," when we've already got a word that describes it, without the mythological connotations: universe. How is the word "universe" unsuitable?

Others as they occur to me through the conversation.

Are we considering mitochondrial DNA here?

Everyone knows junk DNA is just the comments in the code. Put there by the Raelians...

OK, I'll try your question. I think we've already said that God is an emergent quality of the universe, not the universe itself. I suspect that God couldn't exist without the universe, and maybe the opposite is true too; I'm not sure.

To me, 'universe' *doesn't* have the mythological connotations. That may actually *be* the reason why we need a seperate term for God. God is alive, is the life of the universe. In contrast, I think the universe (considered independently of God, although that is a nonsense ) is not alive, of itself, although it contains life.

There's much to interest me here, but I have things to do. I'll be back, as the Big Austrian says.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

It's a commonplace of philosophy that ethical statements cannot be reduced without remainder to nonethical statements. Is the same thing true of religious statements? Can anyone give an example to show that it is?

And if it is true, is there any way that those of us who just don't "get it" could be persuaded that something extra is being said?

Noggin