The Ontology of the Omniverse

I had lunch a while back with a Christian guy, who insisted there is an “abstract” realm, God, etc. He had a convoluted “proof” of God’s existence (and the existence of this whole Abstract Realm) based on … the existence of language and information. He basically argued that there are certain problems that cannot be solved without assuming his ontology: the fact that there is life in the natural world … means that there is information … means that there is “language”…. implying that there is more than just natural-world causality… implying that there are these other realms and ontological breakdowns. In other words, if you have “meaning” you have to have some intelligent being that imparts the meaning; and language has meaning, by definition, right? And there is a “language” to life itself, right? Right? So… the natural world has “meaning” and “thus” there must have been a God who “authored” this meaning or language.

Hey, the universe sings to me, man, so it must be alive–singers are alive, aren’t they? And here we see the perils of overuse of metaphors and non-rigorous reasoning combined with wishful thinking and creative imagination (see Appendix: On the dangers of metaphors in scientific discourse to my post Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation MetaphorsRead more: Objectivist Law Prof Mossoff on Copyright; or, the Misuse of Labor, Value, and Creation Metaphors).

Anyway, I tried to clarify his picture of reality, to pin him down, to get him to see how ridiculous this is. He refused to include “God” as part of “the universe” even though it’s “all that exists,” so I had to create new terms. I made this drawing of “The Ontology of the Omniverse,” and provided him with a description, an edited version of which is below. He tentatively agreed with my description, but didn’t seem interested in discussing it further.

My view (psychologizing a bit here) is that if you diagram out the religious/supernatural view of the world, (a) you see how silly it seems–like the universe a fantasy author invents as background for his novel; and (b) the theist recoils from it because it takes the mystery out of things: nothing is really supernatural, it’s just that the domain of the natural is bigger than is normally admitted; and God is not special, he’s just one powerful player in this big scheme. I am not sure why people are drawn to such a mysterious view of the world; maybe they think there’s a role or “place” for them in it. Anyway, here’s my summary of the world-view of my Christian friend, as illustrated by the chart:

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Dear __: I sketched out my understanding of your view of things. We have the “Universe” or Natural Realm, but there are other things outside this. So, since you have no word for “all that exists,” and refuse to grant the word “universe” for this purpose, I use “Omniverse” to describe “all that exists” (a bit reminiscent of Marvel Comics’ idea of the “multiverse“). Inside the Omniverse there is the Natural Realm (Universe), God, and some spirit or “Abstract Realm” (as you call it). God “permeates” all of the Omniverse and controls it, and He Himself has three persons or aspects: Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

The Natural Realm contains the natural world we know, governed by causality (Natural Universe type causality, mostly, although it can somehow interact with the Abstract Realm and with God). It contains the planet Earth, and about 6 billion human bodies. As C.S. Lewis said, “You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.” So there are a bunch of “human beings”–their Souls are in the Abstract Realm, and the ones that still have bodies have bodies in the Natural Realm (on Earth).

The Abstract Realm has its own causal laws, which we know nothing about, but it has to have some, because God controls them and beings in that realm are not omnipotent; yet the humans in that realm have some causal influence over what happens in the Natural Realm too. So the Abstract Realm contains one human soul or spirit or “mind,” for each human body in the Natural Realm (though if we create a clone of a human, here on Earth, maybe it would be a mere-body with no corresponding Soul), and there is some functional connection between each such Soul and “its” body.

Presumably the Abstract Realm contains the souls for now-dead human bodies, say, 4 billion or so of those [note: this was my estimate; looks like it may be closer to 100 billion humans have lived and died]. Some of these are presumably in Heaven, a sub-realm of the Abstract Realm (“Heaven” means the Souls have a connection to God or in his presence; others are in “Hell”–away from God’s presence).

The Abstract Realm may also contain other beings, such as Angels and Demons, some of which can somehow interfere causally with the universe (in particular, Earth)—which is one reason there has to be causality in the Abstract Realm (indeed, an overarching Omniversal causality, to enable the Abstract and Natural Realms to interact), because otherwise a single Demon could just destroy or conquer all of the Natural Realm (Universe); but they don’t, so obviously there are limits on their powers—i.e., some causal rules.

We may refer to the Abstract Realm (plus God) as “supernatural,” because they are “outside” the Natural Realm, but from the point of view of the Omniverse, there are some laws that obviously apply throughout, which may be called omni-natural laws.

Being a fan of imaginative fantasy and science fiction, I can conceive of such an ontology, and even find it interesting … and if there were evidence for it, I suppose one would have to accept it. But as far as I could tell your theory is that there are certain problems that cannot be solved without assuming such an ontology: the fact that there is life in the natural world … means that there is information … means that there is “language”…. implying that there is more than just natural-world causality… implying that there are these other realms and ontological breakdowns. I don’t see how this is implied by the purported problem, or how it solves this problem, or that there is any evidence or indeed reason to believe in the existence of anything other than the Natural Universe itself–i.e., the Natural Universe is the Omniverse. But maybe we can chat on this next time we get together.