SIPBOK - Some Intelligent Potential Beyond Our Ken

I take the default position - there are no gods, there has never, in the whole of human history, been one shred of credible evidence for the existence of any. Some would describe the default position as meaning I'm to be described as an 'atheist', but the term is unnecessary. It's the people who contest the default position who need to be defined - as 'theists'.

I've long argued that there is only one meaning to life, one purpose. It's physical, it's organic, it's in our genes. We reproduce. Like every other organism which survives on this planet (or, presumably on any of the billions of planets in the cosmos), we survive by reproduction. Life begets life. The dodo, the dinosaurs, and the Neanderthals failed in that task and lost the game. We are still ahead of the odds ... for the time being.

There are reasons for our survival, reasons for our evolution. There is no purpose. We were not 'put' on the Earth so we could ultimately get a computer to conclude that the answer is '42' or to carry the Christian message to heathens.

We are, genetically, described as homo sapiens (wise man), the only surviving member of a broader homo genus - the others, and the Neanderthals are probably the most famous - died out. We survived because of our superior brains.

We emerged, about 200,000 years ago in Africa. We share a common ancestor with the Neanderthals (dating back around 700,000 years). We share approx. 99.5% of our DNA with the Neanderthals - only half a percent difference, but enough to ensure our survival and their extinction (they died out around 30,000 years ago).

We share 93% of our DNA with the rhesus monkey, over 98% with the chimpanzee - yes, we evolved from the same line as monkeys and the other apes. There was no 'purpose' to our evolution - it was chance.

A mutant strand of DNA here, a mutant strand there, just enough to give one organism an advantage over its brothers and sisters, and, with a bit of luck and a few hundred thousand years of reproduction, replication, further mutation, and an environment the new creature could exploit better than the older versions, and, hey presto, a new species emerges and goes from strength to strength. Until it meets a better competitor. For a few thousand years the Neanderthals were at the cutting edge of evolution.

We can currently describe ourselves as the most intelligent life forms on the planet - we are so advanced we have become the first life form capable of destroying the planet. That is worry enough, but there may be even more advanced life forms out there somewhere, and, should they arrive, it may well be the equivalent of Columbus discovering the Americas - disease, slavery, genocide, a few survivors kept on reservations or in zoos and circuses. We delude ourelves if we think we are 'the chosen'.

There's a reason for every organism's survival and continuing presence on the planet - a reason, not a purpose. There are reasons why so many species have died out; reasons not purposes - the dinosaurs didn't die out because they lacked faith or had failed to build temples or placate the gods.

We survived and evolved because we developed a brain - what other creature would invent golf or be prepared to watch daytime TV? There are reasons some people play golf ... pause to think ...., but no, I'm not even going to search for a reason why people would want to watch daytime TV; there's certainly no purpose.

We developed a brain, and a better one than the Neanderthals and other humanoid competitors who evolved along similar lines to our own. There is evidence that we do carry some Neanderthal DNA - I suspect it was more a product of rape than of romance. But the Neanderthals died out - they couldn't compete with us, and we probably helped a good few of them exit from life. Maybe we didn't invent warfare, but we've proved to be far better at it than any other species on the planet.

Writing 'Hamlet', painting the Sistine Chapel, sculpting David, taming fire and cooking food, or any of the wonders of philosophy, maths, or the physical or social sciences might mark us as civilised. There are reasons as well as reason behind our cultural, intellectual and artistic achievements. But no more purpose than a round of golf or watching 'Big Brother'.

The sharpened stick wasn't invented just so a bunch of hairy Jocks could take out the English cavalry at Bannockburn. The printing press wasn't invented with the ultimate purpose that it would produce cheap bibles for the masses - any more than it was invented so guys could buy cheap porn in the newsagents (not that I ever have, you understand, I'm just told it happens).

We weren't designed to discover DNA, or to hear the word of god, any more than we were designed to smoke and make vast profits for the tobacco industry. There are reasons, there's no absolute, ultimate purpose.

We evolved intelligence. Generation by generation we added to our knowledge, expanded our skills, gained a foothold in places as diverse as the deserts and Arctic tundra. We were and are adaptable. And we had language.

Language gave us the tool to analyse, to understand, to interpret, to record memories (eventually on paper, and disc, and film, but originally through conversation, poetry, and music). At night, we dreamed. We went into a fantastical world of altered consciousness. We learned to tell stories, to translate the fantasies of our dreams into fantasies of our worlds.

We made up explanations of our world - why the seasons changed, where the sun went at night, what happened after we died. The stories became more and more sophisticated - fairy tales gave way to drama, drama to religion and philosophy, religion and philosophy to science. The stories seemed reasonable, they seemed to have reason.

We became certain of our importance as a species - we domesticated animals, we tamed the wild. Surely we were the chosen. It's quite logical to see our ancestors believing that we had a purpose, that there was a meaning to life.

We are probably the only creatures aware of our mortality. We see death. We know what it means. We try to avoid it, usually, but we know it comes to us all. We're desperate to believe that there will be some life after death - that we'll go to a better place, that we'll come back again, that this life isn't the only one we'll know.

Claim there's a god, claim you have heard his word, that you have power to negotiate something better in an afterlife, and you have access to power over your community ... and probably access to a lot of its younger females. There are good reasons for creating religions and for convincing others that you are the one who understands its mysteries. Don't like young females? Several religions seem to make do with choir boys instead.

There are reasons, too, for inventing a purpose to life - it gives people hope while it gives the priest power. The shaman, wizard, priest claims to understand the ultimate purpose, so can control people by declaring that they are working for or against god's purpose. The priest has the power to reward or punish.

So, let me continue this old story inventing and story telling tradition. Let me tell you a story. Let me create a new, maybe not religion, but a new 'purpose'.

Suppose I speculate for a few minutes about the possibility of some purpose behind all this - an intelligence beyond our comprehension which was ultimately responsible for the emergence of time, dimensions, matter, and the logic (the mathematics and scientific dynamic) of the cosmos. Suppose I introduce you to SIPBOK, Some Intelligent Potential Beyond Our Ken.

SIPBOK has spoken to me and I know SIPBOK to be true. These are the instructions I have received from SIPBOK.

If we are to know SIPBOK, if we are to fully understand SIPBOK and SIPBOK's 'purpose', we can only do so through science, through discovering the laws of science and slowly comprehending their astonishing beauty. That way we discover SIPBOK's nature and 'purpose'.

We have long heard the myths of the various gods and their creation of the Earth and space and life. Let me tell you that it was, in fact, SIPBOK who triggered the emergence of the cosmos - SIPBOK was the intelligent design behind it all, SIPBOK provided the palette of colours and the canvass on which the action would be painted.

SIPBOK did not have any specific purpose for the Earth or any particular relationship with future human beings. In the beginning the Earth was not yet a speck of dust in the cosmos. The genus Homo would not emerge for billions of years after the beginning. SIPBOK did not know that the genus would evolve on this Earth.

SIPBOK had no purpose in triggering the beginning of time and space and matter. SIPBOK gave creation a direction, not a purpose (not even a reason) - creation, after all, would be a very imprecise tool for such a power if it's object (purpose) was the hope that the genus Homo would eventually evolve, somewhere, and then be left to its own devices in the off chance its heirs might, one day, discover SIPBOK and understand its purpose in being created.

To SIPBOK, were SIPBOK conscious, humans would appear no more special than bacteria, or amoebas, or fish - our evolution is simply a product of the Earth's evolutionary processes. We mustn't assume that SIPBOK had a 'purpose', and that that purpose was to produce humans.

If SIPBOK was prepared to wait that long for humans to emerge (and to emerge and survive by ridiculously slim chance), who's to say that SIPBOK's real 'purpose' isn't to bring about the arrival of the superior species which will evolve from humans ... that there is nothing special or 'chosen' about us, we're simply a stepping stone on the way to SIPBOK's true love.

Even if we were a by-product of SIPBOK's 'intelligent design', and an unforeseen one at that, we have no right to claim any special relationship with SIPBOK or to insist that we are the expression of SIPBOK's purpose - suppose we're simply the bait, suppose there's another species out there, SIPBOK's 'children', who trawl the universe in search of sustenance and who will eventually descend upon us to harvest the rare genes on which they thrive?

In fact, SIPBOK was not the prime mover. SIPBOK was merely a spark, the trigger for the Beginning, not a conscious, all-knowing super being. SIPBOK existed only for a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a microsecond. SIPBOK was a brief moment, before time, before dimensions, before space and matter, before life. SIPBOK no longer is. SIPBOK was an event, not a material reality. We are the legacy of SIPBOK, not SIPBOK's heirs.

This does not mean there is not an anti-SIPBOK, a contrary force trying to stop us understanding the emergence of the cosmos and our role on this planet. SIPBOK was the creation. Might the anti-SIPBOK be entropy, the tendency for all things to decay and end?

If there is a contrary 'purpose' to SIPBOK, it seems to be embedded in the very design itself - evolution is a process so fraught with difficulties as to make the emergence of any species utterly unpredictable.

We don't need to conceive of a 'devil', just of equal and opposite forces, of evolution based on struggle, conflict, and the unpredictable. SIPBOK's intelligent design is one which incorporates conflict and uncertainty - matter and space are violently hammered out on an anvil of time. The intelligent feature of the design is the fact that there is no design, just an interplay of physical and mathematical laws which randomly but logically produce time and space, light and life.

If we wish to know SIPBOK, to understand this design of physical and mathematical laws, we need to explore our world, our galaxy, our cosmos - we need to understand how the science and maths work, how our planet emerged, how evolution resulted in our being here, now.

Can we go beyond that? What of those people who might claim they know SIPBOK's purpose - and who go so far as to claim to know that SIPBOK has a male gender and is to be called 'god'? Is this not clear evidence that they have actually failed to understand SIPBOK? Is this not the equivalent of graven images? Anyone who claims to have heard and understood the word of some mythical god is, in fact, putting a brake on the true discovery of SIPBOK ... they are, in fact, agents of the anti-SIPBOK, agents of entropy.

The world's religions thus amount to devil worship - they promote ignorance, they seek to deny SIPBOK's lack of purpose and power, they claim for themselves some corrupt, special relationship which is actually a special relationship with those forces which will deny us knowledge. Religions invite us to 'believe', understanding SIPBOK is about acquiring 'knowledge'.

Religion actually stands in the way of knowledge - its servants are in the service of ignorance. We can understand how and why religions emerged in evolutionary and historical terms - we can understand their continued existence in historical, sociological, psychological, and political terms. But we have no reason to assume they have any metaphysical or supernatural significance. The supernatural is, in fact, an illusion, the metaphysical merely evidence of human states of altered consciousness They are simply an explainable error, a functioning lie - darkness in the face of light.

SIPBOK does not require worship. SIPBOK requires understanding. SIPBOK requires doubt, wonder, research, challenge of the known, pursuit of the unknown. SIPBOK may only eventually be known and understood by our systematic acquisition of a knowledge of science and maths. SIPBOK will only ever be found through scepticism and enquiry, not through faith.

The so-called sacred texts, the visions, the prophets, etc., all can be explained in simple historical, sociological and psychological terms. They have no role in enabling us to understand SIPBOK - in fact, they frustrate our potential ability to know SIPBOK. All religion is a diversion - their claims to speak to or for gods are effectively the creation of their own devils and they are colluding in the promotion of satanic ignorance.

We have a choice. We can choose the light, or we can be infected by ignorance. If understanding SIPBOK is our goal - discovery, uncovering the laws of science, etc. - then worship of gods is a corruption, distorting and abusing our intellects.

Some :          SIPBOK is not a god. SIPBOK has no gender or number. SIPBOK
                           could be a singular force or many, may simply be an event,
                           not an entity.

Intelligent :   a logic, not necessarily super-intelligent or capable of intelligent
                            behaviour, consciousness, or communication, merely a simple,
                            trigger mechanism, intelligent in the sense that a computer 
                            chip is 'intelligent'.

Potential :   there is no universal blueprint - there is only a trigger, the 
                           blacksmith's scientific and mathematical tools which will forge
                           laws, dimensions, matter, and time chaotically (but not 
                           randomly). No plan or destiny, simply possibilities.

Beyond :     SIPBOK is beyond time and space, dimensions and life, beyond 
                           even death, having never lived, having only ephemerally 
                           existed, or happened.

Our :             we cannot delude ourselves that we are the only species which
                          fails to know SIPBOK, we are not the chosen, there may 
                          be billions of other intelligences out there, seeking after truth
                          or trapped in ignorance.

Ken :           can we ever know SIPBOK? Even if we create a mathematical 
                        model for creation, can our minds ever cope with the imagining of
                        it ... or might it only be comprehended by some future super-
                        intelligent machine?  Could the answer yet be 42?