Fortunately I was brought up in a home where religion was not foisted upon me. That’s great. I regard teaching religion to children as child abuse.
As a teenager I went through a questioning/spiritual phase where I started to investigate various religions. I was very interested in mysticism and looked for it in Christianity with mystics like St John of the Cross, in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufiism and Native American practices. They fascinated me. I had no belief in any god as such but saw spirituality as a force that worked through all of nature.
In later teens I started getting into the Beats and Zen and went along to a Buddhist temple for some meditation.
I became disenchanted. My observations of history and the present led me to conclude that all organised religion was little more than a power structure and vehicle of the state. I despised all its incarnations, saw no evidence for any god and could easily divorce all notions of spirituality from religion. The two were distinct. One good the other horrendous.
One only has to look at the division, hatred, violence and terror created in the name of religion. One only has to look at the hypocrisy and way religion is used to justify all manner of excesses and nastiness to see how awful it is. Religion = cruelty and control. Spirituality = harmony and oneness.
For me spirituality resided in nature and I was completely content being an atheist. I saw no role for any god.
As a scientist I was happy to explain the whole universe in terms of observable phenomena.
There were numerous things that intrigued me. Coincidences occurred. Like with evolution being simultaneously ‘discovered’ in different parts of the world. Like numerous coincidences that sprung up with friends reading the same book, turning up or telephoning etc. I was particularly intrigued by experiments that indicated that photons behaved differently when being observed.
These things could not be easily explained but I put it down to coincidence.
I do like to keep up with science and have been intrigued by quantum physics. Observations such as electron being in two places at the same time fascinate me.
I was very interested in the ideas coming out of latest scientific theories. As a Sci-fi writer I find them extremely energising.
One of the papers I read was concerned with consciousness (one of my pet interests). Is consciousness a product of our brains? How do flies and organisms with little or no brains exhibit consciousness? Many religions have regarded rocks, trees and planets as possessing consciousness. That seemed a little absurd. A branch of Buddhism regarded the brain as a sense organ that ‘sees’ thoughts not the seat of consciousness but an observer of it.
That intrigues me.
This paper proposed that consciousness was inherent in our universe. It was either created with it or was responsible for its creation. Not a god but an inherent force that operated through all matter and was not restricted to living things.
Maybe.
Here’s what Copilot came up with:
| Argument | Core Claim | Why It Supports a Conscious Universe |
|---|---|---|
| Mind–Body Problem | Consciousness can’t be reduced to matter | Consciousness must be fundamental |
| Teleological Cosmopsychism | Universe shows goal‑directed behavior | Suggests mind-like structure |
| Anthropic Argument | Universe fine‑tuned for consciousness | Consciousness may be built-in |
| Consciousness Field Theory | Consciousness precedes matter | Universe is fundamentally conscious |
| Galileo’s Error | Science excluded consciousness | Reintegrating it may require cosmic consciousness |
| Emergence Argument | Consciousness arises from universe | Universe must contain proto-consciousness |
