Scientists' theories thrown into confusion

Particles of the Standard Model of particle physics (Image: Daniel Dominguez/CERN)

 Here's how the Associated Press described some breaking scientific news today:

The grand explanation physicists use to describe how the universe works may have some major new flaws to patch after a fundamental particle was found to have more mass than scientists thought.

“It’s not just something is wrong,” said Dave Toback, a particle physicist at Texas A&M University and a spokesperson for the U.S. government’s Fermi National Accelerator Lab, which conducted the experiments. If replicated by other labs, “it literally means something fundamental in our understanding of nature is wrong.”

That fragility of science's understanding of the "really beautiful and weird” components and forces of what exists and how these unite to sustain our life was stressed in a BBC article on the same news arising from the publication of a research paper published in the journal Science:

Dr Mitesh Patel of Imperial College, who works at the  Large Hadron Collider, believes that if the Fermilab result is confirmed, it could be the first of many new results that could herald the biggest shift in our understanding of the Universe since Einstein's theories of relativity more than a hundred years ago.

"The hope is that these cracks will turn into chasms and eventually we will see some spectacular signature that not only confirms that the Standard Model has broken down as a description of nature, but also give us a new direction to help us understand what we are seeing and what the new physics theory looks like.

"If this holds, there have to be new particles and new forces to explain how to make these data consistent".

The BBC report continues:

All eyes are now on the Large Hadron Collider which is due to restart its experiments after a three-year upgrade. The hope is that these will provide the results which will lay the foundations for a new more complete theory of physics.

"Most scientists will be a little bit cautious," says Dr Patel.

"We've been here before and been disappointed, but we are all secretly hoping that this is really it, and that in our lifetime we might see the kind of transformation that we have read about in history books." 

The AP provides insight into the shock waves sent through all those digging into the mysteries of quantum mechanics:

The result is so extraordinary it must be confirmed by another experiment, scientists say. If confirmed, it would present one of the biggest problems yet with scientists’ detailed rulebook for the cosmos, called the Standard Model. [Go to this site for an interesting read]

Duke University physicist Ashutosh V. Kotwal, the project leader for analysis, said it’s like discovering there’s a hidden room in your house.

Scientists speculated that there may be an undiscovered particle that is interacting with the W boson that could explain the difference. Maybe dark matter, another poorly understood component of the universe, could be playing a role. Or maybe there’s just new physics involved that they just don’t understand at the moment, researchers said.

 The finding is important because of its potential effect on the Standard Model of physics.

“Nature has facts,” Duke’s Kotwal said. “The model is the way we understand those facts.”

Scientists have long known the Standard Model isn’t perfect. It doesn’t explain dark matter or gravity well. If scientists have to go in and tinker with it to explain these findings they have to make sure it doesn’t throw out of whack mathematical equations that now explain and predict other particles and forces well, researchers said.

It is a recurring problem with the model. A year ago a different team found another problem with the Standard Model and how muons react.

“Quantum mechanics is really beautiful and weird,” Toback said. “Anyone who has not been deeply troubled by quantum mechanics has not understood it.”

I like that thought - that the design of the universe, whether on the scale of innumerable galaxies or on the scale of subatomic particles - is "beautiful" and awe-inspiring ("troubling"?). It gives science as a whole a fresh purpose, that of serving humanity by revealing the wonder of what has been provided for us out of love.

💢 See also Machine finds tantalising hints of new physics 

                    New force of nature

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Hero Mom saves daughter from sex-change pressure

Determined mother exposes fallacy of transgender rules      Photo by Albert Rafael

Theresa's daughter went through a time of wretchedness believing that the answer to her anxiety over the changes occuring in her body at puberty was to become a boy. Theresa stood her ground as the daughter's school followed the "affirm, affirm, affirm" path. By changing school and losing access to social media, Theresa's daughter has regained her balance and is happy she can flourish as a teenage girl.

Whereas the "experts'" response to the daughter's declaration was to affirm every thought the daughter had, Theresa wanted to tread carefully and, particularly, protect all options for her daughter's future. Theresa and her husband were not against transgenderism but they knew their child, who had delighted in all things feminine but also had a history of  anxiety and depression. They wanted the school to continue to treat their daughter as a girl and to support her as she went through a period of counselling to identify exactly why she felt distressed at that time.

Accounts of clashes between protective parents and schools that have succumbed to transgender orthodoxy are very informative about the character of our society, where the right of parents to have the governing responsibility for care of children is clearly downgraded by those whose goal is to redefine the family and to assert that the rights of adults must take precedence, no matter the harm inflicted on the vulnerable.

To scrutinise the rescue of Theresa's daughter is definitely instructive:

Despite their daughter’s protests, Theresa and her husband decided it would be best that she be identified as a girl and by her real name when she returned to school in mid-January. They assumed their local suburban school district about 30 miles west of Milwaukee would support their rights as parents to make this delicate medical decision for their daughter.

They were wrong.

Leaders of her daughter’s middle school told Theresa that while they couldn’t change her daughter’s name and gender in official records, they would refer to her as a boy and by her new chosen name, Leo, if that’s what her daughter wanted. “We’re an advocate for the child and not the parent,” they told her, Theresa recalled. To Theresa, the school-district leaders were usurping her and her husband’s rights as parents. 

Theresa and her husband have sued the school district, as other challenges to school policies that shut parents out from decisions regarding kids’ gender identification at school occur in California, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia. Cases are that schools violated their constitutional rights as parents.

This is the situation:

To progressive trans advocates, not immediately affirming a child’s new gender identity is a form of abuse. Earlier this year, teachers in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, were instructed by “diversity” staffers from a local college to hide their students’ changing gender identities from their parents on the grounds that “parents are not entitled to know,” and that it is “knowledge that must be earned”, according to leaked training documents.

This month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is slated to hear arguments in a case regarding a Madison Metropolitan School District policy, adopted in 2018, that commits to affirming “each student’s self-designated gender identity” and prohibits staff from letting parents know that their child is using a new name and pronouns at school. To prevent the parents from finding out, staff are instructed to use “the student’s affirmed name and pronouns in the school setting, and their legal name and pronouns with family”, according to the policy.

 Back to the circumstances to Theresa's daughter:

Anxiety and depression had been an issue throughout her daughter’s childhood, and that got worse during the Covid-19 lockdowns when she was isolated at home, stuck in her mind, and with access to too much social media.

“She struggles with self-worth, and feeling like she’s pretty enough, is she thin enough,” Theresa said. “She has struggled with that for some time.”

On the first occasion that her daughter had opened up about wanting to be a boy Theresa had responded with the message that: 

“I think we need to work on you starting to like who you are instead of constantly focusing on changing yourself into something you’re not.”

She continued to press for that basic step when her daughter entered a mental health facility for a few days. She asked the girl's counsellor whether he had looked into whether the eruption of depression and anxiety might explain why she was trying to “create a brand new person”.

“And he was kind of like, essentially, ‘No.’ But he was like, ‘If you don’t do what your daughter wants, if she decides to hurt or kill herself, that’s really going to fall on you guys, because you’re not respecting your child’s choices.’”

Theresa said her husband was willing to call his daughter whatever she wanted if that meant keeping her alive. Theresa put her foot down. Her daughter is a girl, “and until somebody is going to take some time to find out what the hell is going on in her mind, it’s going to stay that way,” she said. “I’m not going to appease her for short-term gain when I feel like there are long-term problems that need to be worked out.”

At home, she said, her daughter was continuing with outpatient virtual therapy and growing angrier. Some nights her daughter just vented, said she was a boy, and called Theresa a “transphobe”. But Theresa said she refused to negotiate.

“I told her, ‘I’m not telling you that you can’t be transgender. I’m not telling you that you can’t be a boy. I’m telling you that you can’t change your name and your gender right now,’” she said.  “You have a lot of underlying issues that need to be addressed before you make the decision that you were born in the wrong body. I understand that all these people around you are appeasing you and giving you want you want, and I’m not doing that, and that makes you angry. But I am your best friend. I am looking out for your best interest.”

Her daughter just seemed to grow angrier.

Therapists were telling the girl that her mother was her biggest opponent to any sex change. Theresa states:

“I was going to be the biggest problem in her life because I do not accept her for who she is now, nor will I ever,” she said. “They discussed her getting on medication to transition to a man because it’s easier when you’re younger. Her anger was fueled by the therapy I was paying for.” 

Theresa took her daughter out of the school that would not comply with her wishes for her daughter. It cited an executive order on transgender issues from President Biden. This was in January 2021. At that time her daughter now identified as a lesbian. Also:

Theresa didn’t send her daughter back to her therapist after her month of outpatient care ended. She took away her daughter’s access to social media. And after a couple of weeks, she said, her daughter’s demeanor began to revert back to where it was before.

 Time is a great healer!

One day, Theresa said, she came home and found her daughter in the kitchen talking with her dad. “She was like, ‘You know, Mom, I’m really sorry. Affirmative care really messed me up. They really made me hate you and Grandma. I know that you love me, and you just want what’s best for me,’” Theresa said. “She’s just a completely different kid.”

Theresa said her daughter now sees a therapist they vetted well. They work well together, and her daughter is doing better. The family bought a new home in another school district, and her daughter is going to school there. She said her daughter no longer identifies as a lesbian or a boy, though she would be free to do so in her new school.

 What a great mom! She went the full forty yards. For the sake of her daughter she studied peer-reviewed research on gender dysphoria and treatment, which made her concerned about the affirmation approach. She would not let the self-identified experts and officials push her from the track she knew was best for her daughter. She knew that it was going to be her and her husband who would have to pick up the pieces if transgender orthdoxy were to be inflicted on their daughter.

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Male+female parenting is best

Artificial families are not optimal for children

A single man wanted a baby of his own, so he hired a surrogate to deliver the child. But what will he say when his son declares he wants a mother of his own?

Society is beginning to suffer in fundamental ways from this kind of self-indulgence, and especially from the form manifested in the civilisation-destroying triumph of gender ideology.

One way that society is being affected detrimentally by the explosion in our midst of "gay rights" and by the tragedy of same-sex marriage, is in the loss of the rich insight from time immemorial that a child needs parents who are male and female. Conversely, each child is in the best environment when they are raised by their own biological mother and father.

A thorough reading of the academic literature makes it plain that parents of each sex have distinctive attributes and combined, they complement each other. That said, it goes without saying that the devoted single mothers and fathers bringing up children deserve only praise from society.

However, the University of Texas Child and Family Research Center can stress in its document "Five things you should know about the importance of fathers", that children suffer through the absence of a committed male father:  

Involved fatherhood is linked to better outcomes on nearly every measure of child wellbeing, from cognitive development and educational achievement to self-esteem and pro-social behavior. Children who grow up with involved fathers are:

39% more likely to earn mostly A’s in school,

45% less likely to repeat a grade,

60% less likely to be suspended or expelled from school,

twice as likely to go to college and find stable employment after high school,

75% less likely to have a teen birth, and

80% less likely to spend time in jail.

This post will delve into substantial research on the subject of female-male parenting, but, first, interesting findings:

Dads [...] seem to offer a unique touch, with at least one study suggesting that fathers are better than mothers at teaching children how to swim because they are less overprotective and more likely to let their children venture into the deep end or swim facing away from them.

Broadly, the research suggests that boys lean on their fathers more than anyone else as they develop social skills. And one large study of nearly 9,000 adults confirmed that a father’s death affects sons more strongly than daughters, leading to the same sort of health problems seen after an ugly divorce.

Most studies suggest that, until children hit puberty, the father effect is roughly equal for boys and girls. Both boys and girls who are fortunate enough to have dads in their lives excel and, in some cases, outperform their peers. But when hormones kick in, studies demonstrate that dads suddenly become the arbiters of their children’s sexual behavior too. This is most acutely felt by teenage daughters, who take fewer sexual risks if they have strong relationships with their dads.

Although DelPriore examined several outside factors, one of the most salient links between a woman and her sexual decision-making was how close she felt to her father [as a man]. 

Promundo, a global group promoting sexual equality, provides these research results:

Over the last four decades, efforts by researchers and practitioners have contributed to increase the body of evidence that improved the conceptualization and understanding of the myriad ways fathers can positively impact the health and wellbeing of children. Though most of the research is from the Global North, it has become clear that fathers can and do distinctly contribute to foundational components for children’s growth and development including nutrition and safety, early learning and responsive care (WHO, 2018).[My emphasis]

Fathers’ positive engagement in their children’s upbringing has been linked to children’s improved physical and mental health, better cognitive development and educational achievement, improved peer relations and capacity for empathy, fewer behavioral problems (in boys) and psychological problems (in girls), higher self-esteem and life satisfaction, lower rates of depression, fear and selfdoubt into adulthood, lower rates of criminality and substance abuse, and more openness to critically examining traditional gendered roles (Levtov et al., 2015). 

The distinctiveness of how each sex relates to their children is clear from a 2019 paper from UC Berkeley. The author states:

I provide evidence on the role of parent gender. Fathers are more likely than mothers to enter their child into competition, and this difference is sizeable enough to make fathers choose more competition for girls than mothers do for boys. The difference in mothers’ and fathers’ choices is not explained by a difference in their beliefs about children’s preferences. Rather, it appears that parents’ choices are partly determined by the competitiveness preferences of parents themselves, with fathers being more willing than mothers to compete (51 percent versus 32 percent). 

Another instance of sex coming to the fore naturally in dealing with children is this:

Also, lesbian biological mothers typically assumed greater caregiving responsibility than their partners, reflecting inequities among heterosexual couples. 

The traditional family has survived for good reason. Schumm reports on research findings:

Relationship instability appears to be higher among gay and lesbian parent couples and may be a key mediating factor influencing outcomes for children.

Western society has let itself down by not defending more vigorously the foundations of what makes for a healthy existence, especially for the most vulnerable. The tide-change in mentality toward aggressive individualism fostered the narcissistic sexual revolution, no-fault divorce, and now the massive family-redefinition machine.  

Psychiatrist and distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association Scott Haltzman observes:

Parenting styles correlate to biological differences between men and women. Women, compared to men, have higher levels of oxytocin—the hormone responsible for emotional bonding—and oxytocin receptors. Oxytocin serves to calm anxiety, reduce motor activity, and foster an increase in touch. In contrast, testosterone—present in men at levels tenfold higher than women—is correlated to an increase in motor activity in infant boys and may be responsible for higher levels of physical activities in men compared to women.

Rob Palkovitz, professor of human development and family studies at the University of Delaware writes,

As far as biological sex goes, men tend to be firmer and more nondirective than women as parents, while women tend to be more responsive, structured, and regimented than men. Fathers are more demanding of children in regard to problem solving than mothers and make more action-related demands for accomplishment of tasks. Fathers tend to be more unconventional in their toy and object use than mothers and use objects to engage in physical contact with children to a greater degree than mothers. Fathers also destabilize children during play through the use of teasing to a greater extent than mothers.

Rutgers University sociologist David Popenoe, notes that fathers “emphasize play more than caretaking and their play is more likely to involve a rough-and-tumble approach”. 

Further:

Fathers emphasize more competition, risk-taking, and independence while mothers stress more self-paced play, that is, mothers tend to encourage more play that is at their child’s level. For example, fathers are more likely to encourage their kids to go hiking with them and take a more challenging trail. Fathers are more likely to engage in wrestling and grappling with their kids and also to play sports that are more physically demanding. By promoting and encouraging diverse activities, fathers and mothers build their children up in distinct ways.

The 2010 research conclusions from Biblarz and Stacey that there was no difference in outcomes for children raised by male-female and those by same-sex couples have been well and truly debunked with the preponderance of research in the past 10 years producing evidence that children need male-female parents to be equipped to thrive. 

Children's rights are a much neglected area. It shouldn't be that way, but thanks to the successful push for legislation introduced on behalf of adults' "rights", society is going to have to learn from its suffering as children grow up in less than optimal environments and wreak havoc through mental illness, drug consumption and anti-social behaviour. Reality will win out.

So let's get back to reality, away from the woke-imposed anti-scientism that flows through the study of history, through sociology, and into a debilitating form of family life. 

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Divorce is a tragedy for kids

— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) April 1, 2022

Trading God for Goop: The pitfalls

Elise Loehen and Gwyneth Paltrow Source

Those who put aside religion often trade God for Goop. The evidence makes clear that both the wellness environment, as with the mindfulness industry - see here - takes a person away from a proven religious tradition and sends them along a path bedevilled by many dangers with regards physical and psychic health.

The latest such person to sound the alarm is no less than Goop's former chief content officer, Elise Loehen, who made multiple appearances on the Netflix series The Goop Lab and co-hosted the Goop podcast with company founder Gwyneth Paltrow. Loehen has earned Paltrow's praise for helping transform what started in 2008 as a newsletter into a prominent lifestyle brand.  

The Independent reports:  

Although it’s been almost two year since her departure, Loehen recently opened up how working at Goop impacted her mindset in a video posted to Instagram, in which she said that there was a time where she wanted to “foreswear cleansing” after leaving the company. According to Loehen, when she left Goop, she was in a place where she felt like she had to “punish” her body through “cleansing,” and noted that she felt the wellness method had become synonymous with “dieting” and “restriction”.

Loehen also raises the matter of how the "wellness culture can be toxic", given the emphasis on body weight, or in eating only those foods someone has declared "correct". She said on Instagram:

I needed to break a tendency to be critical and punishing. To chastise myself. All of it. I stopped weighing myself completely. [...] I’m just trying to get to a place where I can again be in conversation with my body, as those conversations had become distorted.

I've come to realise I really like my body and am grateful it is mine. 

It's great that Loehen has broken free from the harmful mentality of Goop's consumer-oriented business which vigorously uses Paltrow's celebrity status to promote the latest food fads and its ever-expanding list of "must-have" products.

In addition, a harmful mentality is seen on Goop's corporate front. The Independent states:

Over the last few years, Goop has been called out for creating a poor work environment. According to employee reviews posted on Glassdoor, and reported by the DailyMail, the wellness company has been described as a “toxic” workplace, with “fear-based management” and a “mean girl vibe”.

According to Insider, more than 140 employees had been laid off or resigned from the company from 2019 to September 2021. Some of them spoke to the publication and cited low pay, burnout, and difficult leadership as the reasons why they left Goop.

 To investigate the wellness space more generally, we get this kind of picture:

There is a type of “all-natural” Instagram influencer who, at first glance, appears to be all about living her best, healthy life. She is an avid proponent of meditation, clean eating, yoga, and a vague form of Asian spirituality. Her approach to life — and health — is “holistic.” And her social media feeds are a whiplash of content, ranging from the benefits of gua sha and ayurvedic diets to her skepticism about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines.

Over the past year of the pandemic, the wellness space [...] has grown rife with politically motivated misinformation on QAnon, Covid-19, the prevalence of child trafficking, and election integrity.

Media coverage has largely centered on these New Age-type influencers as peddlers of a libertarian, anti-science ideology that refuses masks, social distancing, and vaccines. “California’s yoga, wellness and spirituality community has a QAnon problem,” read a recent Los Angeles Times headline. “Wellness influencers are spreading QAnon conspiracies about the coronavirus,” declared Mother Jones. In March, the Washington Post wrote about “QAnon’s unexpected roots in New Age spirituality”.

The conclusion is this:

These articles explore a concerning facet of American life, a phenomenon researchers call conspirituality, or how conspiracy theories have found a home in spiritual circles that are skeptical of Western medicine and established institutions. The observations stop short of implying that certain practices, like yoga, are a direct pathway to radicalization. Blame is generally assigned to the wellness communities where these fringe, anti-science ideas comfortably fester. Still, while most coverage identifies the prevalence of these dangerous, unfounded beliefs accurately, there is often little context on the wellness space’s relationship with Orientalism (or the West’s tendency to romanticize, stereotype, and flatten Asian cultures) and libertarian individualism.

For decades, many health and medicinal practices have been exported from Asia to the West, including yoga, ayurveda, reiki, and aspects of traditional Chinese medicine such as cupping, gua sha, and acupuncture. Such traditions are often categorized under the “alternative medicine” or “New Age” umbrella — vague terms that conflate different philosophical and medical systems into a uniquely Western mishmash of ideas. 

This "mishmash of ideas", regularly the next port of call for those who abandon traditional institutions, includes alternative medicine. One observer of that domain last year found that:

[T]he gurus of “alternative health” are having a good pandemic, informational chaos and legitimacy crises bolstering their positions. YouTube brims with them: thin, tanned, toothy juicers who mix boring, sensible advice like “get enough sleep”, with sexily counterintuitive emerging wisdom like “fat doesn’t make you fat”, then each throw in their own twist: normally something involving curcumin, infra-red light, and the healing power of beef tallow.

That observer wondered why wellness gurus become Covid dissidents; and found that: The world of alternative health was already primed to question the medical establishment.

Other elements of the rebellion against traditional institutions are that:

... "the so-called pandemic has been little more than a casus belli for a broader system of global control that aims to create a common international identification system, to puppet ordinary folk towards the vague ends of Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates and various other plutocrats. A theory often known as The Great Reset." 

The difficulty in this particular domain is that dissidents can fly free, dismissing moral/ethical boundaries that society expects of its leaders. Therefore:

There are a range of questions that medicine, with its careful studies, cannot yet answer. Outsiders, in informal structures, can make the links quicker, and offer rules of thumb without worrying about clear cause and effect. 

All of these conditions are part of the world that greedily absorbs many institutional dissidents, especially those who have rejected their religious heritage for freedom, as they think, to do and be what they want, even if it impacts negatively on the common good through a breakdown of their own well-being.

In this light, the pervading individualistic character of Western society that gives rise to the dissident "wellness" and "Alt-whatever" environment, is clearly having a serious effect on the well-being of young people. To take one statistic, that relating to the number of people reporting a sexual/gender identity at odds with the norm, we find a match between that number and the gradual-then-swift rejection of traditional spiritual institutions and the morality they teach. 

The health care organization, HealthPartners, gives these statistics for LGBTQ mental health:

People in the LGBTQ community experience mental health issues at higher rates. A recent study found 61% have depression, 45% have PTSD and 36% have an anxiety disorder.

Additionally, 40 percent of transgender individuals have attempted suicide in their lifetime. This is nearly 9 times the overall rate in the United States.

Stigma certainly contributes to those disturbing statistics, but they show that the culturally promoted gay lifestyle, and more worryingly, the notion pushed even at elementary school level that trans is normal, is already having an impact on the overall well-being of society.

Without the traditional religious institutions to be our ship over troubled waters, we end up with the wellness space turning toxic, with anti-science proclamations harassing the health field, and with a fraudulent "conspirituality" that bedevils the world of mindfulness and the like. 

The solution: Stay on board, and do your exploring where history has shown that your adventure will be rewarded with unimaginable treasure, and with a relationship that endures for eternity.   

💢 Also, read carefully the information on how society permits the grooming of kids 

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Spiritual dimension of all things gets fresh attention

Photo by Frank Cone Source

A reading of the world around us and of the internal domain that gives rise to our capabilities relating to our experience will fail if it sources everything solely in the material. Rather, the evidence compels an understanding of the world as having a dimension that we might term spiritual.

This is highlighted in the work of Iain McGilchrist whose two-volume book on epistemology and metaphysics was published last year as The Matter With Things.

From Wikipedia, a quick account of McGilchrist's status in the world of literature and neuroscience:

Iain McGilchrist (born 1953) is a psychiatrist, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar. McGilchrist came to prominence after the publication of his book The Master and His Emissary, subtitled "The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World".

McGilchrist read English at New College, Oxford, but having published Against Criticism in 1982, he later retrained in medicine and has been a neuroimaging researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a Consultant Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital in south London. McGilchrist is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and has three times been elected a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford.

He  lives on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of Scotland and continues to write, and deliver many lectures and interviews.

In this post I draw on the study of McGilchrist's The Matter with Things conducted by American author Rod Dreher, who is delving into the work as preparation for a book he is writing on what we miss in our experience of life because of the filters that our learned ways of thinking, and especially our culture, impose on us.  Dreher has created excerpts from the text (possibly behind a paywall) which I will use to further my exploration in this blog on the subject of how many scientists today go with the mentality of the age and close their minds to all the possibilities that make up reality.  

To start, there is a growing awareness that the laws of physics and those observed in human psychology come together in a way that demands we open our minds to new ways of  perceiving the whole of existence.

To quote McGilchrist (per Dreher):

Legendary astrophysicist Fred Hoyle famously remarked: ‘A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature’. Astrophysicist Paul Davies’s view similarly is that ‘there is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe … the impression of design is overwhelming’. And for Einstein, the cosmos showed evidence of ‘an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection’.

We will see how this is true by quoting McGilchrist in his assessment of recent discoveries in neuroscience: 

Neuroscientists VS Ramachandran and Colin Blakemore conclude that ‘consciousness, like gravity, mass, and charge, may be one of the irreducible properties of the universe for which no further account is possible.’ Physicists agree. According to Heisenberg, ‘if we go beyond biology and include psychology in the discussion, then there can scarcely be any doubt but that the concepts of physics, chemistry, and evolution together will not be sufficient to describe the facts.’ This is very similar to Bohr’s insight that ‘consciousness must be part of nature, or, more generally, of reality, which means that, quite apart from the laws of physics and chemistry, as laid down in quantum theory, we must also consider laws of quite a different kind.’ The great mathematician and physicist von Neumann confirmed that ‘it is inherently entirely correct that the measurement or the related process of the subjective perception is a new entity relative to the physical environment and is not reducible to the latter. Indeed, subjective perception leads us into the intellectual inner life of the individual, which is extraobservational by its very nature.’ And in similar vein, Adam Frank, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Rochester, New York, writes that we must entertain the ‘radical possibility that some rudimentary form of consciousness must be added to the list of things, such as mass or electric charge, that the world is built of.’

There is, to put it conservatively, a good chance they are right. It may be irritating to some to face the fact that after several thousand years of ratiocination and experimentation we are arriving at truths that were anciently known to philosophers and sages, East and West, though it is exciting and perhaps reassuring to have them confirmed by elaborate experimentation.

McGilchrist continues:

If asked my view, I would say that matter appears to be an element within consciousness that provides the necessary resistance for creation; and with that, inevitably, for individuality to arise. All individual beings, including ourselves, bring forms into being and cause them to persist: each of us is not, ultimately, any one conformation in matter, but, Ship of Theseus-like, the conformation itself, the morphogenetic field, which requires matter in order to be brought into being, but, once existent, persists while matter comes and goes within it. Could matter be a ‘phase’ of consciousness?

He offers this observation:

Mass and energy are interconvertible: the brain is a manifestation as mass, the mind a manifestation as energy. 

An important question:

How on earth might consciousness – immaterial and lacking extension in space as it is – emerge from matter, which is very clearly both material and extended in space? Since, as Colin McGinn reflects, this ‘looks more like magic than a predictable unfolding of natural law’, he suggests ‘the following heady speculation: that the origin of consciousness somehow draws upon those properties of the universe that antedate and explain the occurrence of the big bang … If so, consciousness turns out to be older than matter in space, at least as to its raw materials.’ That would be one very important difference. 

'Everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both physical and nonphysical – that is, capable of combining into mental wholes.’

Max Planck, who died in 1947, was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him a Nobel Prize: 

A long roll call of the most distinguished physicists would support the view that the originary ‘stuff’ of the universe is consciousness. Thus Max Planck was famously asked whether he thought consciousness could be explained in terms of matter and its laws. ‘No’, he replied. ‘I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.’ It is worth noting that the interviewer prefaces his piece with the remark: ‘In my interview with him Professor Planck replied to all my questions with a quite remarkable lack of hesitation. It would seem that his ideas on these subjects are now definitely formed, or else that he thinks with remarkable rapidity – probably both suppositions are true.’

Thirteen years later, and three years before he died, Planck went further:

As a physicist, and therefore as a man who has spent his whole life in the service of the most down-to-earth science, namely the exploration of matter, no one is going to take me for a starry-eyed dreamer. After all my exploration of the atom, then, let me tell you this: there is no matter as such. All matter arises and exists only by virtue of a force which sets the atomic particles oscillating, and holds them together in that tiniest of solar systems, the atom … we must suppose, behind this force, a conscious, intelligent spirit. This spirit is the ultimate origin of matter. 

 Further on this topic:

Astronomical physicist Richard Conn Henry writing in Nature avers that ‘the Universe is entirely mental … and we must learn to perceive it as such’. Elsewhere he expands on this theme, and goes further:

Non-local causality is a concept that had never played any role in physics, other than in rejection (‘action-at-a-distance’), until Aspect showed in 1981 that the alternative would be the abandonment of the cherished belief in mind-independent reality; suddenly, spooky-action-at-a-distance became the lesser of two evils, in the minds of the materialists.

Why do people cling with such ferocity to belief in a mind-independent reality? It is surely because if there is no such reality, then ultimately (as far as we can know) mind alone exists. And if mind is not a product of real matter, but rather is the creator of the illusion of material reality (which has, in fact, despite the materialists, been known to be the case, since the discovery of quantum mechanics in 1925), then a theistic view of our existence becomes the only rational alternative to solipsism.

So we read that "a theistic view of our existence" is more credible than solipsism, the egocentric "doctrine that, in principle, 'existence' means for me my existence and that of my mental states" (Source).  

McGilchrist continues to mount his argument that science is finding that there is more to reality than meets the eye:

The eminent evolutionary biologist Sir Julian Huxley wrote that:

the relation between mind and matter is so close that mind or something of the nature as mind must exist throughout the entire universe. This is, I believe, the truth. We may never be able to prove it, but it is the most economical hypothesis: it fits the facts much more simply … than one-sided idealism or one-sided materialism.

McGilchrist provides a summary of what the science means:

In sum, it seems that (1) mind and matter have a close relationship; that (2) we cannot logically dismiss the existence of consciousness; and (3) ought to be unwilling to dismiss the existence of matter; that (4) they are not so distinct that they cannot interact; that (5) neither are they identical; and yet (6) may be aspects of one and the same reality. Nonetheless (7) they are not equal, in that there is reason to believe that consciousness is prior ontologically to matter.

The filters of past scientific assumptions need to be eradicated:

The re-admission of the observer’s consciousness into the description of the cosmos is a change of unequalled significance in the history of science since its banishment in the seventeenth century. In a theme that should be familiar to my readers, that exile enabled us to become hugely, indisputably, powerful; but at the price of a lack of understanding of what it is we had power over. 

Assumptions made in the past have been found to be eccentric and illogical:

Before we conclude that it is absurd to suppose that other organisms, perhaps far removed from us in terms of evolutionary history, have awareness, let us remember that the detached post-Enlightenment view of life as mechanical, and of consciousness as something we must not make the mistake of attributing to any creature other than ourselves, on the basis that to do so is to make assumptions we cannot validate, is both historically anomalous and illogical. Historically anomalous, because such a view would never have been accepted by Greek or Roman, Chinese or Indian philosophers, or our own, until Descartes. Illogical, because to assume that they do not have awareness is also an assumption we cannot validate, but which, unlike its alternative, does violence to every other human faculty.

Another key point:

That consciousness interacts with matter, an insuperable problem in the seventeenth century, is no longer insuperable, since matter is already intrinsically a field that interacts with a field of consciousness.

'What has always made science possible is [...] our imagination, not our avoidance of it.'

Imagination is likewise crucial:

In the words of Lakoff and Johnson,

as embodied, imaginative creatures, we never were separated or divorced from reality in the first place. What has always made science possible is our embodiment, not our transcendence of it, and our imagination, not our avoidance of it.

According to geneticist Ho, there is

no mismatch between knowledge and our experience of reality. For reality is not a flat impenetrable surface of common-sensible literalness. It has breadths and depths beyond our wildest imagination. The quality of our vision depends entirely on the extent our consciousness permeates and resonates within her magical realm. In this respect, there is complete symmetry between science and art. Both are creative acts of the most intimate communion with reality.

McGilchrist raises the stakes with this declaration:

In this light, the question ‘what is consciousness for?’ appears to be based on a false premise. Consciousness is nothing to our purpose; we are to the purpose of consciousness.

 He develops this theme of  a clash of world views:

‘Physicalism’, writes Whitehead scholar Matt Segall, referring to what I call scientific materialism,

is the idea that the universe is fundamentally composed of entirely blind, deaf, dumb – DEAD – particles in purposeless motion through empty space. For some reason, these dumb particles follow the orders of a system of eternal mathematical laws that, for some reason, the human mind, itself made of nothing more than dumb particles, is capable of comprehending. On this definition of physicalism, ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’ are just words we have for epiphenomenal illusions with no causal influence on what happens. ‘Life’ is a genetic algorithm and ‘consciousness’ is a meme machine, in Dawkins’ and Dennett’s terms. We are undead zombies, not living persons, on this reading of physicalism.

By contrast, according to Thomas Nagel, ‘the inescapable fact that has to be accommodated in any complete conception of the universe’,

is that the appearance of living organisms has eventually given rise to consciousness, perception, desire, action, and the formation of both beliefs and intentions on the basis of reasons. If all this has a natural explanation, the possibilities were inherent in the universe long before there was life, and inherent in early life long before the appearance of animals. A satisfying explanation would show that the realisation of these possibilities was not vanishingly improbable but a significant likelihood given the laws of nature and the composition of the universe. It would reveal mind and reason as basic aspects of a nonmaterialistic natural order.

If one is certain that consciousness emerged from matter, then this is indeed a conundrum, and I agree with Nagel’s conclusions. But to me even for the possibilities of consciousness, and all the rest, to be inherent, the actualities must have been present, otherwise we are back to what one might call the Midshipman Easy problem. Nagel points up the trap for reductionism, since, if consciousness exists (and it does) and it cannot emerge (and it cannot), this implies that consciousness was there all along. So he continues: ‘since conscious organisms are not composed of a special kind of stuff, but can be constructed, apparently, from any of the matter in the universe, suitably arranged, it follows that this monism will be universal. Everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both physical and nonphysical – that is, capable of combining into mental wholes.’

Later:

The grounding consciousness is not deterministic. It has none of the characteristics of an omnipotent and omniscient engineering God constructing and winding up a mechanism. It is in the process of discovering itself through its creative potential (one thing we all know directly from our own experience is that consciousness is endlessly creative). …

More:

Nobel Prize-winning physiologist George Wald thought that ‘the stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is Mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life, and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create … In them the universe begins to know itself.’

This is entirely in keeping with the model I am recommending for consideration. But, echoing Yukawa’s words, Wald reflected: ‘Let me say that it is not only easier to say these things to physicists than to my fellow biologists, but easier to say them in India than in the West’. He continues: ‘Mind is not only not locatable, it has no location. It is not a thing in space and time, not measurable; hence – as I said at the beginning of this paper – not assimilable as science.’

McGilchrist continues quoting from Wald:

He put forward the hypothesis that Mind,

rather than being a very late development in the evolution of living things, restricted to organisms with the most complex nervous systems – all of which I had believed to be true – that Mind instead has been there always, and that this universe is life-breeding because the pervasive presence of Mind had guided it to be so. That thought, though elating as a game is elating, so offended my scientific possibilities as to embarrass me. It took only a few weeks, however, for me to realize that I was in excellent company. That kind of thought is not only deeply embedded in millennia-old Eastern philosophies, but it has been expressed plainly by a number of great and very recent physicists.

The recourse to a multiverse to avoid acknowledging even the possibility of God as principal agent in bringing all that we know into existence is raised in McGilchrist's exhaustive study of the various realms that comprise reality:

The multiverse hypothesis suggests that the explanation for the unimaginably intricate interrelationship of highly precise factors necessary to permit the evolution of life in the cosmos just happening to be present together and to the right extent is that, as long as you keep multiplying universes indefinitely, eventually you are bound to end up with one like this. It is worth setting the probability in context, because it shows that the number of such universes would have to be effectively infinite. Here is astrophysicist Lee Smolin: 

 

That there is strong evidence to argue that consciousness is "woven into the fabric of reality" is a key takeaway for Dreher whose forthcoming book dwells of acknowledging the role of "enchantment" as a stepping stone in our journey in awakening to all that God is, how God is ever present to us in our world, if only we would open our hearts and minds.

Though McGilchrist does not believe in God, he comes right up to the point of belief with his statement that "that this universe is life-breeding because the pervasive presence of Mind had guided it to be so".

A second fundamental point he makes is that it is we in the West who are primitive creatures with regard knowing what is real, allowing bland materialism to capture our spirit, and subdue us in the exercise of our human capabilities.

💢See also Where science has lost its way in service

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Prayer for Russia, Ukraine and world peace

Mary, the Mother of God. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Tallin, Estonia. Credit: A. Davey

To understand what occurred with Pope Francis's consecration of Russia to Mary last Friday, some scene-setting is in order as the spiritual meshes with human affairs here and now. First, why Mary?

"They have no wine," Mary says to her son Jesus while they were at the wedding feast at Cana. Jesus was caught by surprise, but Mary's concern for the young couple was enough to move her son, the Messiah, and all powerful God,  into action. "Do whatever he tells you," Mary told the servants, and they fetched jars of water, which Jesus turned into wine, rescuing the hosts from grim embarrassment.

Second, we have to appreciate that the early Church, speaking of the dead as well as the living, saw the community of believers as a mystical body, a concept Paul was inspired to unfold. Every part of the body is part of a unified whole, and we are to pray for each other. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) states the teaching this way:

"When the Lord comes in glory, and all his angels with him, death will be no more and all things will be subject to him. But at the present time some of his disciples are pilgrims on earth. Others have died and are being purified [in Purgatory], while others are in glory, contemplating 'in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is'." [para 954]

And:

"So it is that the union of the wayfarers with the brethren who sleep in the peace of Christ is in no way interrupted, but on the contray, according to the constant faith of the Church, this union is reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods." [955]

Thirdly, from the earliest times Christians have understood John the Apostle's depiction of Jesus on the cross saying to his mother and to John: "Woman, here is your son," and to John, "Here is your mother," has significance beyond John, given the use of "Woman", which harks back to Genesis where the term is used of Eve as the mother of all (Genesis 3:20). This view of Mary's wider role in the work of bringing all to Christ is already part of the Church's tradition in 160, in Justin Martyr's writings.

Therefore, Pope Francis in Rome, in union with the Church around the world, last Friday stood on the firm foundation of Christian practice to ask Mary to intercede with her Son, that He might undo the devastating effects of the disobedience continuing into our present time that was brought into the world by our first parents.

Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Mumbai, India, reads the consecration prayer. Source: YouTube

The prayer used around the world is this:

O Mary, Mother of God and our mother, in this time of trial we turn to you. As our mother, you love us and know us: No concern of our hearts is hidden from you. Mother of mercy, how often we have experienced your watchful care and your peaceful presence! You never cease to guide us to Jesus, the Prince of Peace.

Yet we have strayed from that path of peace. We have forgotten the lesson learned from the tragedies of the last century, the sacrifice of the millions who fell in two world wars. We have disregarded the commitments we made as a community of nations. We have betrayed peoples' dreams of peace and the hopes of the young. We grew sick with greed, we thought only of our own nations and their interests, we grew indifferent and caught up in our selfish needs and concerns.

We chose to ignore God, to be satisfied with our illusions, to grow arrogant and aggressive, to suppress innocent lives and to stockpile weapons. We stopped being our neighbor's keepers and stewards of our common home. We have ravaged the garden of the earth with war, and by our sins we have broken the heart of our heavenly Father, who desires us to be brothers and sisters. We grew indifferent to everyone and everything except ourselves. Now with shame we cry out: Forgive us, Lord!

Holy Mother, amid the misery of our sinfulness, amid our struggles and weaknesses, amid the mystery of iniquity that is evil and war, you remind us that God never abandons us, but continues to look upon us with love, ever ready to forgive us and raise us up to new life. He has given you to us and made your Immaculate Heart a refuge for the church and for all humanity. By God's gracious will, you are ever with us; even in the most troubled moments of our history, you are there to guide us with tender love.

We now turn to you and knock at the door of your heart. We are your beloved children. In every age you make yourself known to us, calling us to conversion. At this dark hour, help us and grant us your comfort. Say to us once more: "Am I not here, I who am your Mother?" You are able to untie the knots of our hearts and of our times. In you we place our trust. We are confident that, especially in moments of trial, you will not be deaf to our supplication and will come to our aid.

That is what you did at Cana in Galilee, when you interceded with Jesus and he worked the first of his signs. To preserve the joy of the wedding feast, you said to him: "They have no wine" (John 2:3). Now, O Mother, repeat those words and that prayer, for in our own day we have run out of the wine of hope, joy has fled, fraternity has faded. We have forgotten our humanity and squandered the gift of peace. We opened our hearts to violence and destructiveness. How greatly we need your maternal help!

Therefore, O Mother, hear our prayer.

Star of the Sea, do not let us be shipwrecked in the tempest of war.

Ark of the New Covenant, inspire projects and paths of reconciliation.

Queen of Heaven, restore God's peace to the world.

Eliminate hatred and the thirst for revenge, and teach us forgiveness.

Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons.

Queen of the Rosary, make us realize our need to pray and to love.

Queen of the Human Family, show people the path of fraternity.

Queen of Peace, obtain peace for our world.

O Mother, may your sorrowful plea stir our hardened hearts. May the tears you shed for us make this valley parched by our hatred blossom anew. Amid the thunder of weapons, may your prayer turn our thoughts to peace. May your maternal touch soothe those who suffer and flee from the rain of bombs. May your motherly embrace comfort those forced to leave their homes and their native land. May your sorrowful heart move us to compassion and inspire us to open our doors and to care for our brothers and sisters who are injured and cast aside.

Holy Mother of God, as you stood beneath the cross, Jesus, seeing the disciple at your side, said: "Behold your son" (John 19:26). In this way, he entrusted each of us to you. To the disciple, and to each of us, he said: "Behold, your Mother" (John 19:27). Mother Mary, we now desire to welcome you into our lives and our history.

At this hour, a weary and distraught humanity stands with you beneath the cross, needing to entrust itself to you and, through you, to consecrate itself to Christ. The people of Ukraine and Russia, who venerate you with great love, now turn to you, even as your heart beats with compassion for them and for all those peoples decimated by war, hunger, injustice and poverty.

Therefore, Mother of God and our mother, to your Immaculate Heart we solemnly entrust and consecrate ourselves, the Church and all humanity, especially Russia and Ukraine. Accept this act that we carry out with confidence and love. Grant that war may end and peace spread throughout the world. The "fiat" that arose from your heart opened the doors of history to the Prince of Peace. We trust that, through your heart, peace will dawn once more. To you we consecrate the future of the whole human family, the needs and expectations of every people, the anxieties and hopes of the world.

Through your intercession, may God's mercy be poured out on the earth and the gentle rhythm of peace return to mark our days. Our Lady of the "fiat", on whom the Holy Spirit descended, restore among us the harmony that comes from God. May you, our "living fountain of hope", water the dryness of our hearts. In your womb Jesus took flesh; help us to foster the growth of communion. You once trod the streets of our world; lead us now on the paths of peace. Amen.

💢 Watch the Consecration Ceremony at St Peter's Basilica in full here 

💢 Please note that the use of statues or pictorial mosaics in Catholics' devotion to - not worship of - Mary is to help us remember that she is a human who has struggled through many difficulties but remained steadfast through her trust in God's love. 

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