John Bannan

This does not directly answer the “why” question, but the fact that it doesn’t allows for this volume’s central point: the question itself is meaningless. Meaning is found in our dealings with the physical universe and takes the form of language. It is the use of language—grammar—which provides the philosophical standard for ruling a question meaningful or meaningless. Language cannot, then, be meaningful if extended beyond the physical universe: to God, for example, or even to the material world itself taken as a whole. Hence the “why” question is misconceived as is its demand for an answer. There is nothing to explain.

Damasio and LeDoux are neurobiologists, that is, brain scientists who work in the tradition begun by William James. I will introduce James from time to time for his historical importance and also because of the valuable schematization of the issues which his relatively uncomplicated view of the human organism allows. James considered what he was doing to be psychology, while Damasio and LeDoux regard themselves as biologists. James was also committed to understanding emotion strictly as a function of the nervous system. Brain science still does, though this focus is distressed by the need, faced by any theory of emotion, to deal with feeling. Feeling—or consciousness generally—is something that brain science is still struggling to accommodate.

In 2020, Swedish theoretical physicist, Dr. Johan Hansson published a physics proof that our universe is superdeterministic meaning a predetermined static block universe without cause and effect in physics. This physics proof that cause and effect in physics are not real provides a new avenue of insight useful in the philosophy of religion. For example, superdeterminism provides circumstantial scientific evidence of the existence of God and our own immortality in our static block universe. The implications of superdeterminism also include disproof of existentialism, nihilism. deism, pantheism, transphysical beings, pagan gods, and the Copenhagen and Many Worlds Interpretations of quantum mechanics. The philosophy of superdeterminism also conceives of the soul as an information packet appearing in spacetime rather than a transphysical being. However, the philosophy of superdeterminism also supports the truth of Christianity and the resurrection of the body and brain after death in special other universes we call Heaven and Hell. But, the philosophy of superdeterminism disproves other religions besides the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.