@K9Kohle789 Ummm....do bees and ants communicate with each other telepathically, you mean? Or something like that?
I don't know; I doubt it, but who knows? Instincts can mysterious.
As far as we're concerned, I'm thinking of 'energy' common to all matter which with increasing complexity becomes more and more self-aware. That may suggest a 'collective consciousness' of some kind, at least at it's most evolved level. It doesn't seem the scientists themselves have much more than a vague notion what that really means... but if there IS any validity to it, that may be the source of man's conception of 'god,' and the wellspring from which religion itself originated.
Sorry, I appreciate your respect for T.S. Eliot and the book you're reading, but do YOU think past and present (and future) exist simultaneously? I can't see it.
I CAN see that time is a kind of illusion. Organisms--and inanimate objects for that matter-come into being, have a life cycle, and die. It's a chemical process governed by physical laws.
TIME only exists in our minds relative to our OWN life cycle and OTHER life cycles. I personally do NOT think any of it is pre-determined.
Moreover, the idea some 'god,' even supposing one DID exist, knows the future is ludicrous, and apparently comes from the "paradox" between "free will" and the supposed fact 'god' knows EVERYTHING, including the future, making it a fait accompli. But since the 'future' hasn't happened yet, there is nothing yet to know! -.[qz.com]

@K9Kohle789 Only if the future were known could it be "pre-determined."
Leaving aside the parallel universe for a moment and focusing on this one, take a decision you are considering but haven't I made yet. You could choose from a number of different options, each of which will set in motion different chains of events, some very similar, some widely divergent. Or, you could decide to do nothing, which in itself is a decision with it's own results.
No matter what you do or don't do, however, the hours will tick away and today will pass and tomorrow will arrive.
If you've done nothing, things in that regard will have remained unchanged, but other chains of events you've previously set in motion will continue to unfold based on the interaction of millions, billions, even countless trillions of random events based on decisions other people have made in the same way as you, totally outside of your control.
If you've decided on a course of action and begin executing it, likewise an equal number of random events will interact with your actions at THAT juncture, and the result will be different, in some ways readily apparent, but in other ways unseen and unknown.
In other words, no matter what you do or don't do, the result will be random, to a large degree. So much of the result depends on events of which you'll never be aware. The people affected will never know where and how these unseen forces originated. So much of what you do cannot be "pre-determined," in other words, but are the result of countless random events outside of your control.
Not even 'god' would know!
Think where you are today compared to what you had planned a few years ago, say Do two outcomes resemble each other in any way? I'll guess not! Out lives more closely resemble ping-pong balls in a lottery hopper, than a carefully-orchestrated 'plan!' This is the reason.

If you define 'god' as consciousness, it exists. If everything has consciousness, from the very tiniest particle, to you (very big IFs), everything is 'god.'
So, the line of thought goes, the people who created these religions (and god) were really trying to describe, explain, and understand consciousness, their own and everyone elses'.
That they projected THEIR and everybody else's consciousness into a separate "entity" or "entities" may have been simply a result of their inferior understanding of the nature of the physical universe and what are it's constituent parts.
As our understanding of it--and consciousness--increases, it stands to reason, the closer we get to understanding "reality" itself.

@Omnedon This whole discussion proves my point. When we define anything as "god" we are simply forming a human conception. No gods exist except in human minds that wish to believe that the concept means anything at all.

@Omnedon All hail the Mighty and most Magnificent Spud Murphy, aka the Potato, btw, I'm a 'spud' loving person, fried, steamed, mashed, etc, just love and enjoy eating them.

@Storm1752 Consciousness is the emergent property of evolutionary intelligence.

@Now that you have said that, please elucidate. Please clarify and provide the intellectual or evidence basis for such a statement,.

@wordywalt The increase of intelligence in any species is linked to evolutionary development, is it not? Consciousness is relative to an organism's degree of intelligence, hence self awareness.

@Atheist3 You still have not defined what you mean by consciousness or evolutionary intelligence. I still do not know what you are real;ly saying.

@wordywalt I think therefore I am. This sense of 'I am' is what is called self-awareness, the cerebral ability to contemplate ones existence, to be conscious of ones place in time & to extrapolate one's future. If this is not the result of evolution, then how be it?

@Atheist3 Biological evolution, including the evolution of intelligence as a evolutionary advantage, is a fact. I see no reason for applying the concept to the universe.

Of course not. They may have just taken what they percieved with their five senses and made sense of it the only way they knew how: through their own very limited understanding...that's why it ended up turning into the convoluted mess we call religion!
Maybe.

As I said, 'god' is a word with too much baggage to be useful, except to describe what reality is NOT.

@Storm1752
I understand the feeling.

I'm going by the articles I read.[mindmatters.ai]

Until it's no longer a mystery... The only reason I would like to live forever is to be able to see the discoveries we will make in the millennia to come.

@HumanistA Ha! Living forever is like always getting the same pussy. Boring!

Here's the article:[mindmatters.ai]

I totally agree and that's my point exactly.

The article from which I extropolated my admittedly [mindmatters.ai] idea:

I was just saying maybe HUMANS called it 'god,' and built religions around it make it comprehensible. But 'it' was simply consciousness itself.
By giving 'it' human characteristics, then, they only obscured it's true nature.
The article: [mindmatters.ai]

@Storm1752 Just to be clear, are you saying the application of the concept of "god" was purposely put on the concept of panpsychism, or universal consciousness? I would say no. They applied it to much simpler concepts like the lightning that started the fire that destroyed their crops one season. I'm hard pressed to believe that they were staring at their navels and came up with the philosophical concept of universal consciousness that included rocks and trees. The article itself discusses it as a new phenomenon and not generally accepted and makes no historic claims that it affected any culture or philosophical thought in the past.

The article:[mindmatters.ai]

@Storm1752 LOTTA wooo.... and quantifiers in every single sentence! Not exactly definitive science.......

Mind Mattets Podcasts are produced by a marketing organization known as Morris Creative Services, which is a subsidiary of a larger marketing organization known as, the Quad Organization.

The Mind Matters Podcast features discussions with leaders in the fields of psychology, education, and beyond, with an emphasis on gifted/talented and 2e (twice-exceptional) children and adults. Mind Matters explores parenting, counseling techniques, and best practices for enriching the lives of high-ability people.

I could not find any info on what their criteria for acceptance of research material. Their podcasts are well linked and associated with many well known and established sites.

@Storm1752

The scientists and periodicals in which they published are pretty obscure. They represent an incredibly small contingent of researchers in their fields. Doesn't mean they are wrong, but they are not a convincing set of credentials. I followed several links in several of the associated articles, was not impressed.

Yeah, I see it.
I think of myself as inhabiting a body, but it could just as easily be some other body and it'd still be me.
Or would it?
If I was different in looks, physiology, and circumstances, would I be the same person?
Is there something uniquely ME about me, or am I interchangeable with everyone else?
Are we ALL interchangeable, or is there something uniquely YOU about you?
Btw, I can't speak for "many scientists," but I'm not sure they "believe" consciousness is universal, just that it MIGHT be.

@Storm1752
Still have to use the word believe, a true scientist wouldn't use the word believe. They would say "it isn't proven to be possible and untill it does it can be discarded...

@Storm1752 My friend, the body any of us inhabits is the one made by the union of 1 single sperm cell and 1 single ovum that is ALL there is to it.
The fertilized ovum develops into an embryo, then into a foetus and finally into a human baby, what becomes of that tiny baby is a matter of what it eats, learns and does as it grows, that is the only and major choice we have in life, we cannot inhabit any other body EXCEPT the one we are born as.

@Triphid Agreed halfway... maybe we will be able to inhabit another body some time in the future. It might be a scientific possibility that we haven't discovered. Maybe there will be a great scientist someday who will be able to transfer human conciousness to a computer. Maybe another great scientist will be able to create a body that can effectively host that conciousness. Who knows just yet?

@HumanistA Yes BUT that is still a long way down the track, atm and as it stands, like it or not, the body we get is the body we are stuck with until we kick the bucket.

Not talking about 'god' as a 'thing' or 'entity,' but as consciousness. Or are you yourself a figment of your own imagination?
Do I exist, or are you just making me up?

@Storm1752 Sir, Cut me and I bleed, kill me and I die, no figments can ever bleed or die and that is a fact.
As the Latin saying goes, " Cogit ergo sum, " I think therefore I am."

Here I am, I really exist, yes, I have eaten a taco. What more evidence do you need of my existence?

I have only my own experience as a living, breathing, conscious person. Do I exist? Do you? Does the chair you're sitting in?

@Storm1752 I created Taco God, any person that has eaten a taco is a God by way of eating a taco. Have you eaten a taco? If so, did the taco exist, did you really exist when eating a taco and do you exist after eating the taco becoming a taco God?

@Word But you're not god! Unless your delusional. And I'm just going by your medical records. lol

@Atheist3 eating a taco is not delusional. Trying to be your god would be delusional.

@Word And you would luv every minute of it! Send me yer $.

@Word God! Is that you?

@Storm1752 Sure! But that.doesn't mean that your subjective experience exists in the naturalist world.

I'm saying that's what men do when they create religions. Maybe the 'god' I think may exist is the impersonal consciousness all matter down to every single atom has.
I don't KNOW exactly what I'm saying. I'm not trying to start a religion here![mindmatters.ai]

@Storm1752 Basic consciousness is awareness of one's surroundings or environment. All life has a certain level of consciousness. Even AI senses and monitors its environment and to that extent possesses some consciousness. It is simply silicon-based intelligence rather than carbon-based intelligence. Self-consciousness may be nothing more than (neural) feedback loops that allow one to be conscious of one's consciousness. In that case, a certain level of intelligence will automatically and naturally lead to self-consciousness, even potentially and eventually in AI. I don't really think of consciousness as being anything special or mysterious but inherent to life. Now, I suppose you could speak of a collective consciousness of the Universe but it does not necessarily follow that it is centralized into a Supreme Intelligence. In fact, I see no evidence of that, just human projection of human consciousness onto nature. Nevertheless, it does seem that there may be some guiding principles to the formation of the universe and the life within it that we usually refer to as the laws of physics or the laws of nature. This would, it seems, include the characteristic of consciousness endemic to life.

It's not that I'M calling it 'god.' It's that some other people interested in understanding "reality" do, indirectly, by imagining consciousness is centered in a hierarchy, going from the least to the most organized, which must have an apex, a crown.
This is patterned on man-made social structures, right? But it could be an anarchy instead, or a democracy. Or something else. Or nothing.
Maybe we just ARE.
And to suggest we and/or our self-realization are to be "worshipped" is ridiculous, and may betray a misunderstanding of who and what we are, which is everything, so to speak.
Should "everything" be worshipped? Of course not.

Tell that to those people who corrupted the word to the point it's no longer useful as a convenient shorthand for consciousness. When one hears or reads it they automatically think of an "entity" much like a person, except with superhuman powers without limit. This is stupid and ridiculous by today's standards. Yet some people still believe it.
They'd be much better off, of course, building their beliefs systems on the much firmer foundation of observable fact. You and I know this.
But even scientists have to then take the latest factual building blocks and deduce from that new hypotheses on which to base future research. This is how knowledge accumulates.
So what are pure fictional speculations today are tomorrow's facts

Why go all the way to 'universal' consciousness, then? Why not just your OWN consciousness, as a human your self-awareness?
I'm not saying it's 'god,' merely what men CALL it. By doing so they obscure it's true nature by then giving it emotions and feelings, when it's really an impersonal 'energy' which flows through EVERYTHING.
That's the thought, anyway. [mindmatters.ai]