The Origin of My Framework of Reality

Copyright© 2007 K Harris

Humanity truly began when one of our primate ancestors first started searching for answers to the fundamental questions of its origin, purpose and destiny to quell the uncertainty that troubled its life. Over the course of our time on this planet, humans have developed a number of compelling answers that some of us have found satisfying. But many of us are not content with the currently available answers and thus we continue to search.

To this point our search has produced a number of noteworthy frameworks including: native spiritualism, Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism), Judaism, Jainism, Pythagoreanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Newtonian mechanics, Cartesianism, Kantianism, evolution, the Bahá'í Faith, relativity, quantum mechanics, existentialism, the Standard Model, postmodernism and possibly String Theory (the jury is still out on that one).

These frameworks represent significant spiritual, philosophical and scientific advances in our understanding of Reality, but they each have limits. The newer frameworks are constrained by the artificial boundaries that separate our current disciplines of science, philosophy and spirituality. The older frameworks are limited because they emerged before the discovery of particular contemporary ideas that aid in the rational understanding of the nature of Reality. These ideas include: self-similarity, emergence, non-Aristotelian logic and pre-causal dynamics among others.

Over the last 20+ years I have developed a new framework that uses these concepts to free us from the constraints of ideas such as: the Law of the Excluded Middle (i.e., statements must be either true or false), the paradox of the origin of causality (i.e., how can causality be caused?) and the impenetrability of the Transcendent Foundation (i.e., the ultimate source of all things must be beyond our comprehension), that limit the older frameworks.

Freed of these constraints, my new framework integrates the knowledge accrued by its predecessors into a configuration that spans their individual boundaries and rationally answers of our most fundamental questions. These questions include:

1. “Why is there something instead of nothing?”
2. Is there a God?
3. Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?
4. Do we have free will?
5. What is our incentive to be moral?
6. What is our purpose?
7. Is there life after death?

The framework underlying my unambiguous answers to these questions emerged from combining four essentially rational ideas: quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, the anthropic principle and the law of parsimony (i.e., Occam's razor). In order to answer these philosophical and spiritual questions, I had to extend some of these ideas beyond the empirical domain.

I have spent years vetting my framework against the writings of the ancient and modern scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and mystics that form the basis of our entire world view. Rather than focusing on their obvious contradictions, I chose to look at the subtle points of convergence at the cores of these various works. As a result, I discovered a common thread connecting our diverse sources of wisdom that is consistent with my framework.

This new framework is not based on incomprehensible concepts, supernatural beings, mystical realms or strange energies that science has yet to discover, though it provides a rationale for many of these interpretations. The essence of my framework is that certain things that exist can be distinguished, certain distinguishable things can be qualified, certain qualifiable things can be quantified, certain quantifiable things can be measured, certain measurable things can change, certain changeable things are alive and certain living things can think. If you do not regard these insights as revolutionary or controversial then my basic framework will not overly stretch your credulity.

The question facing you is this: Do you believe there are rational answers to the questions of our origin, purpose and ultimate destiny that are consistent with science, philosophy and spirituality? If you suspect (or hope) that there are, then you owe it to yourself to come back from time to time to see how it rolls out.