God, Spacetime and the Mathematical Universe

Abstract

The Christian perspective on god is ‘He who has no beginning, He who always was, reigns and is eternal, being forever there’. A personalized god seems to be implied but actually the description may fit eternal forces as well, be they those of Buddhism or of the physics of Einstein. Even Max Tegmark’s mathematical universe can be considered covered. A de-personalised ‘religion’ of eternal forces raises specific question on human immortality, and the possibilities of carrying forward personality and consciousness. An eternal forces perspective might be similar to pantheism, and might pose the same problem of the ‘substrate’ being carried forward, but personality and consciousness not. However, it is doubtful whether a highly physicalist perspective on eternal forces captures the uniqueness of spirit. Is there a special role of spirit within the spacetime paradigm, within an eternal forces concept? Is it possible that death will release our spirit to roam the eternal spacetime structure? Will we be able to choose the ‘observer’ moments we want, so that we can choose the pleasant ones, rather than the terrible ones that will also be to hand? Will we be able to roam all observer moments, even whose we did not live before death? Is the difference between the eternal forces perspective, and the eternal roaming possibly allowed by it, and a classical concept of god and eternal life in the beyond, that in the latter case eternal life will be filled with pleasure only? But why should that be so, when we tend to think that eternal life with god is a continuation to some extent of life on earth? On earth pain and evil are definers of our lives. Why should god have made it different in the beyond?