Metareligion – Christopher Michael Langan

CONCLUSION

Despite the fact that an elementary formulation of the CTMU (Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe) has elicited relatively little academic interest after nearly three decades since its introduction, it is natural to ask how it is likely to impact the intellectual environment. Perhaps the most profound change in our worldview will come from learning that living, breathing human beings are essential and logically necessary ingredients of reality, not just “emergent phenomena” which “supervene” on brute physical processes. In the CTMU, human beings comprise a class of entities with a very specific mathematical formulation and an essential role in the structure and dynamics of reality. Once this role is properly understood, the spiritual and scientific realms fall back together of their own gravity.

In academia – which suffers from closure and a preference for intellectual orthodoxy over profound conceptual innovation – this realization will be characteristically retarded. For mathematics and the hard sciences, it will probably be mostly business as usual, especially at first; this is because in their current forms, both already have places in the CTMU. That is, pure mathematics inhabits SCSPL syntax, while science inhabits the

linear-ectomorphic semimodel of the CTMU as a physical limit (ignoring for now the relationship between the syntax and the limit). For “softer” and more amorphous sciences which do not enjoy rigorous mathematical theories that compensate for their lack of solid conceptual foundations, the benefits may be more readily felt, at least among those who have not been locked into academic naturalism. Philosophy and theology have the greatest potential to undergo more immediate change; at any rate, it will no longer be possible to rationally dismiss the metaphysical aspect of reality or its implications, or to concoct ad hoc rationalizations based on relativism and existential ambiguity. Meanwhile, the emergence of a common foundational language for all of these disciplines will probably be only gradually realized.

As for religion, believers of which often languish under the crushing weight of orthodoxy and peer pressure, a whole new level of courage and open-mindedness will be required. But fortunately, perhaps as an unintended consequence of the steady erosion of religious dogma, many minds have already opened enough to accommodate a greatly enriched understanding of spirituality. Let us hope that there are enough of them to help us attain the Human Singularity, and redeem mankind from its otherwise gloomy and potentially catastrophic future.