Roger Penrose, one of the most accomplished physicists of our century and his partner Stuart Hameroff are proving a theory of quantum consciousness. This is part of a growing field of quantum biology which is changing our understanding of how certain aspects of our known universe functions. In this post I am going to talk about how this discovery threatens the beliefs of everyone.
First, consciousness. We have gained a lot of knowledge on the brain in terms of mechanics but something that has always eluded scientists was how consciousness functions. How scientists discovered what parts of the brain did what was while doctors were doing surgery. A patient with their brain exposed would have certain parts of their brain stimulated with electricity and as expected their body would do certain things like raise their arm or in some cases the person would hear music etc.. The doctor would then ask a question like, “why did you do that?” and universally the patient would reply, “I didn’t do that, you did.” It didn’t matter where doctors did this in the brain, this would happen. This was perplexing because how could we possibly know after all the brain has no physical sensors to speak of.
The OR Theory asserts that consciousness is a quantum process and predictions are being proven and it is also being supported circumstantially by other advances in quantum biology, we now know the process of photosynthesis uses quantum coherence.
What can this challenge?
Untouchable Spirituality
Discovery is always the first step to interaction. The thought that spirituality could never be touched or accessed by humans via technology could be a thought of the past. What spiritualists held as a guarded elite experience could potentially be open to everyone.
“Impossible” Experiences
It is a common story that a loved one can know when another loved one either dies, lives, or is suffering. With classical science, this kind of experience would be impossible. Quantum Biology not only makes this plausible but makes all other non-local phenomenon of similar type also plausible such as remote viewing, and near death experiences. Caution: This theory doesn’t make these things real, just plausible. It also will not stop people from scamming you out of money using this new theory as a basis to their extra-sensory scams.
Classical Evolutionary Process
Quantum biology can fundamentally challenge the classical process of evolution that asserts that evolution occurred through “random” mutations. In Quantum biology, it is possible that no mutation was random and instead changes could of been executed purposefully and non-locally.
Artificial Intelligence
No matter how intelligent a system appears, without a quantum component it will not have awareness. This can alleviate some pressure on us as we build more sophisticated simulations of the human mind; we are not locking a consciousness in a box because consciousness is non-local.
Religion
Some might say that this actually helps religion and it might appear that way at first, but it really doesn’t. It creates as many issues for a religion’s spirituality concepts as the theory of evolution did for literal creation. While scientists will be forced to be faced with the reality that goes with quantum consciousness, the religious will have to face with a different sort of issue. Their “soul” is more sophisticated than simply another force locked in a biological box. Instead their “soul” is part of an ultimate dimension that is persistent.
Conclusion
There are many things that science is working on that could fundamentally change the human condition and this in my opinion could be one of the largest. This is the first scientific discovery that could dig into the issue of human existentialism in serious a way, so we should all definitely pay attention.
Elolight 