FAQs About Reality: Chris Langan's Social Media Posts. Book One: Quora (excerpt)

Eighteen answers from Chris to questions regarding God. The book contains 240 answers to various questions regarding metaphysics, mathematics, science, reality in general, and many other topics.

FAQs About Reality: Chris Langan's Social Media Posts. Book One: Quora (paperback edition)

Publisher's Note

FAQs About Reality contains Chris Langan’s answers to questions posted on Quora during the years he was active, 2016-2019. Langan was banned from Quora for his conservative worldview and uncompromising debate style. Although Langan never broke Quora’s rules or violated its terms of service, he was summarily deplatformed without warning. All of his posts were deleted or orphaned. With the help of members of the Mega Foundation and CTMU Community, the majority of his work on Quora was preserved in this volume.

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G

GOD

Conformance to logic

85. God is who He says He is. He created the universe and us. What right do we have to expect Him to conform to our ideas of who He is or should be?

We may expect God to conform to our ideas of Who and What God should be precisely when they have achieved cognitive emergence in logical form, thus reversing the mapping by which God originally implanted them in the human mind. (Despite its concision and explicit invocation of logic, this answer is fully consistent with the New Testament and compatible scriptures.)

In other words, God does indeed tell us Who and What He is, and He does it with logic, which provides the only general means of verifying the message. This convergence of theological information and verification is no accident; unverifiable theological information is ultimately pointless, and God always has a point.

Obviously, any denial of what God tells us with logic is trivially false, and the deniers are illogical by definition. Such people and their opinions may be safely ignored for theological purposes.

May 9, 2017

Defining God

86. What is God according to Chris Langan? What does he think about the established religions such as Christianity or Islam?

God, best understood as Ultimate Reality, has (supertautological) structure which implies certain properties which are consistent with the definitions of God that occur in major world religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

Simultaneously modeling the main scriptural components of these religions in this structure makes them theologically and ontologically consistent.

Theological and ontological consistency is limited to just those religions which can be modeled in this way.

January 12, 2018

Endomorphic images

87. In the CTMU, human beings are seen as endomorphic images of the mind of God. Can this mapping be described? We are very constrained local entities, so how does it work?

In the CTMU, the global identity of reality is explicitly stratified, and distributed morphisms are utilized. So (1) one needs to be very clear on the level of identity to which any given statement or mathematical symbol refers, and (2) one needs to allow for the distributed nature of certain morphisms, where by distributed we mean that the morphism applies to each point in a topological point set.

Notice the implication: the use of distributed morphisms implies that each point of any topological space subject to distributed morphism has internal structure. In the CTMU, this internal structure is called syntax; hence, the points are called syntactic operators.

Some syntactic operators cannot support full isomorphism to the global identity; hence, they are subject to syntactic restriction, and isomorphism is limited to some proper part or aspect of global syntax. But the points in which the syntax of the global identity is fully imaged are not restricted in this way. It follows that their syntax is isomorphic to global syntax. (This does not imply isomorphism with respect to external state.)

And now for a bit of advice. Typically, questions like this come from people who have not bothered to read available material on the CTMU. They are looking for fast answers, they are often confused, and many of them dislike work so much that they don’t even review the answers I’ve already posted on Quora. Unfortunately, this gives others the opportunity to post false or misleading answers, and Quora is sometimes very lax in letting such people misinform its readers.

Readers are therefore cautioned against blindly accepting any answer for any CTMU question on its face unless it comes from me or someone else whose knowledge of the theory can be verified by checking it against the available material, especially if it emanates from someone who has been guilty of misinterpreting and/or badmouthing the CTMU in the past.

September 28, 2018

Logical theology

88. What is logical theology? How does it relate to Chris Langan and the CTMU?

Logical theology consists of the theological (God-related) implications of the CTMU, a metaphysical formulation of logic.

Others have used this term to describe strains of theology that conform to their ideas of logic. However, (1) “ideas of logic” often deviate from any well-defined logico-mathematical structure known to logicians and mathematicians; (2) it is hard to derive theological implications from standard logic; and (3) problems arise when trying to employ standard logic on the metaphysical level of discourse required by theology.

Properly applied to theology, the CTMU solves problems 1–3.

May 23, 2018

Omnipotence

89. Do you accept that any god could not be omnipotent due to the logical paradoxes this creates?

In order to infer divine non-omnipotence from, for example, the paradoxical assertion that an omnipotent God could create a rock too heavy for God to lift, one must be able to show that God Himself is not responsible for the operative constraints on His power, as these take precedence over God’s self-imposed “inability” to lift the rock.

In other words, if God has tied His own hands by establishing prior constraints or commitments that prevent Him from lifting a given rock (or doing anything else), then the real measure of His power is the establishment of these prior constraints, and the real measure of His will is His own refusal to break them.

Human examples are easy to find. E.g., it would be misleading and ridiculous to accuse a smoker who successfully forbids himself to smoke one more cigarette of “lacking willpower”. In fact, willpower is exactly what such a person demonstrates.

As long as God Himself is responsible for any limitations on His own power, including even the structure of logic, this remains entirely consistent with divine omnipotence.

August 15, 2018

Proving God’s existence

90. Why is the physical world the best proof of God?

If you’re talking about the physical world alone, it is not the “best proof” of the existence of God. The reason is very simple but often overlooked: proof is a two-way street with a sender on one end and receivers on the other, and many receivers are defective. In particular, those who disbelieve in God typically attribute the physical world to a cosmogonic form of “randomness” (with respect to origination) and cite “logic” as their pretext for rejecting any claim to the contrary. They can receive no information through this blockage.

The physical world is indeed the (partial) basis of proof, but must be combined with logic and mathematics to constitute a proof that defeats the fake, hand-waving sort of “logic” brought to bear against it by atheists and materialists.

[date unknown]

91. Can Christopher Langan’s Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) prove God’s existence by logic?

The answer is yes, and it is completely unequivocal. This is obviously not the forum in which to argue about it, as out of the 10 answers which have thus far been posted, at least 8 are saying no for entirely the wrong reasons.

If you want a meaningful debate about this, my advice would be to find a widely recognized authority on the subject and get him to express an opinion on the matter under his real name in the full light of day, with his reputation on the line just as mine is. That way, he or she has something to lose as well as something to gain, and I have something to gain as well as something to lose (that’s how fair debates are conducted).

Examples: Richie Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, or someone else of that ilk. (Your problem, of course, will be that these people have been ducking me for years, and don’t want me to publicly mop the floor with them. Which I can certainly do.)

May 7, 2017

92. How does Christopher Langan’s Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) prove the existence of a god?

The CTMU proves the existence of God by (1) explicating the deep structure of reality, and (2) showing that this structure possesses attributes conventionally ascribed to God.

No qualified and well-reputed physicist, philosopher, mathematician, linguist, theologian, or other professional has ever demonstrated that the CTMU contains a single error, or that it is not what I’ve just said it is, or that it fails to do what I’ve just said it does. In all likelihood, at least part of the reason for this is that no qualified, well-reputed professional academic in any relevant field is intellectually capable of doing so and making it stick, at least under his or her real name in the full light of day.

After nearly 30 years since the first papers were published on this subject, sincere and well-motivated readers may consider the CTMU and its implications to be written in stone. Further clarifications will be forthcoming.

(Papers on the CTMU have, by the way, been published in peer-reviewed journals. It is hard to say why any CTMU critic would deny this. But two fairly obvious reasons are that the critic recognizes only a select subset of journals in specific fields – in a word, “academic snobbery” – or that the critic is simply trying to conceal his or her inability to understand the content, in which case he or she should not be making negative comments about it on social media sites.)

May 11, 2017

93. Would an atheist believe in God if he/she found proofs beyond a doubt of God’s existence?

No, and the reason is very clear: disbelief is a cognitive filter. In order to recognize a proof of the existence of God, one’s mind must be open to the possibility, and true atheists have closed their minds to any such intellectual content. Thus, they cannot “find” (or recognize) such a proof in the first place.

I have thirty years of relatively high-profile experience with this. The minds of most atheists are cognitive wind-up toys which absolutely cannot be swayed by any theory, model, or form of reasoning which even smells like it might confute their (anti)theological preconceptions. Wind them up by mentioning the possible existence of God, and their minds instantly spiral into an infinite loop.

The underlying conceptual mechanics are also very clear. Real atheists (as opposed to so-called “agnostic atheists” or agnostics with mere atheistic leanings) implicitly or explicitly subscribe to “metaphysical naturalism”, a self-reinforcing (and therefore academically dominant) worldview which oxymoronically excludes the metaphysical from its arbitrary physicalistic conception of reality and thus precludes any meaningful (metaphysical) definition of God. Obviously, the existence of X cannot be proven to anyone who refuses to let X be properly defined.

So you see, reasoning with true atheists on this matter is simply not in the cards. The only “atheist” who could possibly be convinced of the existence of God is one who unwittingly falls somewhere short of true atheism.

July 19, 2017

94. Is God really there? How can you prove it?

Proof is a logical operation. It follows that there is just one way to prove the existence of God: using logic. Unfortunately, the things with which standard logic ordinarily deals do not include God, Who resists being captured by it (because, in effect, God is by definition the One Who spans all that exists and thus does all the “capturing”). Therefore, logic must be adapted to the task in question, and reformulated on the metaphysical level of discourse. Proving the existence of God thus requires a system called the CTMU, which incorporates the required metaphysical formulation of logic.

[date unknown]

95. How does CTMU prove that God exists?

The CTMU proves that God exists by providing a valid framework for the overall structure of reality, and showing that this structure exhibits properties traditionally attributed to God.

Note: I see that someone is requesting a definition of God. In the CTMU, God is defined as Ultimate Reality, with a recursive base consisting of perceptual reality (the physical world) plus its regularities (patterns). “Ultimate” means, roughly, “idempotent with respect to containment and explanation”. This has been the CTMU definition of God for decades.

(Those with questions about the theory might try reading up a little, especially if you’re capable of handling appreciable abstraction – abstraction is the name of the game when it comes to metaphysical reasoning.

It may be hard to believe, but some people really can’t handle much of it at all. This evidently includes many people who use Quora, even some who claim to respect “science”.)

July 11, 2018

96. Is it possible to use science to prove or disprove the existence of God?

There are two kinds of science: mathematical and empirical.

The only statements that can be proven in the empirical sciences are (1) observation statements about things that can be directly observed with replication; and (2) statements that can be logically deduced from replicable observation statements.

Where God is defined as omnipresent, He cannot be directly observed in His entirety; and because nothing that is not omnipresent qualifies as God, God’s existence cannot be empirically verified using limited powers of observation. Because our powers of observation are limited not only by the cosmic horizon, but by the limits of quantum measurement expressed in terms of Heisenberg uncertainty, God’s presence goes beyond our observational limitations on the macroscopic and microscopic scales; His extent exceeds our ability to perceive it. Due to Hume’s Problem of Induction, which is related to the horizon and uncertainty problems, His existence cannot be logically deduced from limited observation statements alone.

This rules out the empirical sciences, leaving only the mathematical sciences to consider. But here we arrive at another set of problems, including the form of dualism whereby statements deduced from mathematical axioms cannot be globally attributed to any incompletely observable external universe to which those axioms might hypothetically apply. Again, the problem of induction rears its head; that the axioms of a theoretical language are found to apply in any given region of its universe does not mean that they necessarily apply everywhere.

It turns out that what is actually required is a higher-level proof system capable of generically relating theories, their universes, and their model-theoretic relationships, and thus of uniting the mathematical and empirical sciences. Called a “metaformal system”, it has a unique structure that was explicated decades ago as the CTMU, short for Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe.

In other words, this is a well-solved problem, and has been for quite some time. If one likes, one can simply forget about the dozens of conjectural answers to this question and concentrate on this one alone. On the other hand, anyone who is unable to understand what I’ve just written, or doesn’t like the conclusions to which my answer leads – e.g., “God exists” – is free to keep on groping.

May 3, 2018

97. Is Chris Langan’s CTMU the first intellectual production to incontrovertibly prove God’s existence? Didn’t any earlier philosophers (e.g. Kant, Hegel) make cogent cases before him?

While many well-known philosophers have attempted, over the centuries, to “make cogent cases” for the existence of God, they all lacked a coherent and comprehensive metaphysical framework in which to do so.

As the CTMU is inarguably the required metaphysical framework, it alone can support the rehabilitation or restructuring of their arguments and carry the issue to its proper conclusion.

June 13, 2018

98. How can I explain the CTMU, the proof of God and the afterlife with metaphysical logic, to an atheist?

Science and human experience depend on the intelligibility of what science studies, and what people experience. This means that the integrity of science depends on an explanation for the intelligibility of physical reality.

The CTMU is a high-level formulation of logic designed to provide such an explanation. It answers questions like the following: What is it that makes reality identifiable? What features does reality possess that make science and human experience possible – what forms do they assume in the overall structure of the cosmos? How do these features manifest on all scales?

The nonoccurrence of irresolvable paradox in physical reality is a scientific fact. No scientist has ever managed to observe an irresolvable paradox; somehow, reality maintains its consistency under all circumstances. When a scientist sees what looks like an inconsistency in the structure of reality, the usual paradox-avoidance strategy is simply to make the paradox vanish by adjusting an existing theory, or finding a new one. But why should this work?

The undeniable fact is that science has no answers for questions like these, and mainstream philosophy has been of no help. Science lacks any cognitive framework in which the actual relationship between theory and content, knowledge and reality, epistemology and ontology, can be expressed, and its standard methodology does not permit this deficiency to be meaningfully addressed. In order to remedy this situation, it must be shown how and why reality is able to maintain its self-consistency and ontological integrity. This is what the CTMU does, and more.

I’ve scanned some of the answers below. Most are full of ignorance and derision, contain almost zero information on the CTMU, and are profoundly misleading. Readers are hereby advised to be on guard against the efforts of Quora’s ever-expanding troll population to mislead the unwary about a theory that its members, for all intents and purposes, are intellectually incapable of understanding. That a few of these people seem to know a smattering of scientific and/or philosophical terminology is beside the point, as they evidently have no idea how to properly apply it.

[The other parts of this question, which is actually several questions in one, are addressed in other answers I’ve posted on this site. A bit less misinformation out of you trolls, please.]

July 21, 2018

99. Can the CTMU prove God with roughly 80 symbols?

Of course, and easily. However, the definitions of those symbols might exceed that number, and even the term “symbol” might not be defined in quite the usual way.

August 21, 2018

Self-configuration

100. What created God according to Chris Langan?

God is eternal. He exists without respect to any external clock; clocks exist within God, not outside of him (basically, that’s why time is relative in General Relativity; this relates to something called “background freedom”, specifically from any external standard or metric). On His most general level of Being, God simply exists. All change in or evolution of the structure of God, known in the CTMU as “Self-configuration” (often through secondary telors), is strictly internal to God Himself.

February 28, 2018

Self-integrity

101. Does Rabbi Harold Kushner correctly imply that God cannot violate physics because God invented physics, and God does not destroy his creations usually?

Yes, given a sufficiently broad definition of “physics” which recognizes its necessary embedment in metaphysics. (With this qualification, the Rabbi is not the only one to have acknowledged such an implication.)

On the global level of nomological invariance, God does not break His own laws, for this would be to paradoxically violate His own will. The law that reality does not contain irresolvable paradoxes is certainly inviolable, as any violation would render reality self-inconsistent and therefore unintelligible, when in fact, we know reality to be intelligible by our very ability to identify it through direct observation with mutual perceptual corroboration.

The problem is to determine the exact form of the invariants that God, defined as the Ultimate Reality, must preserve for the sake of His own Self-integrity. It is important to note that these are not necessarily “laws of physics” as physics is ordinarily understood.

Fortunately, there is a metaphysical theory which permits such determinations, namely, the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU).

[Note: The original form of this question was “Does (—) correctly imply that God cannot violate physics because God invented physics?” As for the part which has been added to the original question, I do not necessarily agree that God “usually does not destroy His creations”. He destroys them, with nonviolation of high-level Self-consistency, precisely when they persistently fail to serve His purposes, with the understanding that on the level of metaphysical invariance, His purposes are always served.]

October 21, 2017

Ultimate Reality

102. Is God ultimate reality?

Yes, beyond any shadow of doubt.

This answer can be logically justified with complete certainty in a unique “metamodel” of reality called the CTMU. It can be gainsaid by no other belief system (including Zen and other forms of Buddhism), as the CTMU is a reflexive model-theoretic extension of logic in which every intelligible belief system is by definition embedded, and which is as inviolable as predicate and propositional logic themselves. (Note that śūnyatā, whether regarded as an ontological feature of reality, a meditation state, or a phenomenological analysis of experience, has conceptual structure and is therefore subject to the demands of logic.)

In short, just as there can be no escape from ultimate reality, there can be no escape from God. Make peace with Him, or pay the price: dissolution and reabsorption, not necessarily without a very great deal of pain and regret in the “dissolution” phase (as deserved).

Good luck on the road to enlightenment regarding the true nature of being.

February 13, 2018

Worshipping God

103. How can it be wrong to worship God in other forms?

Not to worship God in totality is in effect to deny some aspects of God, which amounts to denying God, period.

October 31, 2017