Since Henry Bemis brought up the Block Universe interpretation of GR, with its attendant illusion of free will, I thought I’d mention the other side, the Many Worlds interpretation of QM. Sean Carroll explains in https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iXRLDatmbgA

I kind of like the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, which has conscious observation collapsing the wave function. If anything can do that, then everything is conscious. So, pantheism.

In Many Worlds, the world today is the result of infinite branching. The probably of life is very small, but we are here because of incredible luck. But then the fact that it doesn’t fall off the rails doesn’t support that. It seems that anything can’t happen.

Maybe all of the many worlds form one block. There’s still the luck thing. Yeah, but God. Or something else. Consciousness traveling backward in time. Good futures pull on us and bad futures repell us by way of information flow. Your higher self doesn’t cooperate when you’re trying to do something stupid, unless you’re way out of tune so it’s much easier to do the stupid thing. So Mormons know of that hack, but think it only works for them. No, it’s just nature.

We can’t travel backwards in time, but maybe our thoughts can. Then our future selves are sending us messages. Feelings are the language of the message. You can’t leave notes like Bill and Ted. It’s not the Holy Ghost, it’s time travel.

Astral physics are guardian angels giving us occasional glimpses into our future, who can see the future where we cannot.

Physicists have been able to determine time travel is possible into the future, just not the past. They haven't figured out how, only that it's possible.

I saw my great grandmother appear to me when I was a girl of around ten. I didn't know it was her at the time. She was in pioneer dress with her hair the way she wore it in life. I didn't see a picture of her before I was in my 30's. That's when I made the connection that it was she who I saw as a child.

Why did she come to me in (her) future? She passed away around 1951. I saw her in 1969. She was born in 1864. Her husband, my great grandpa, was the Civil War soldier she married who was the love of her life. He was the one I placed a tombstone on his grave two summers ago. He'd been without one for 127 years. Maybe she came to me as a child to let me know she was thinking of me all those years ago, and then I got to pay it forward by honoring hers and his memory.

:)

I suspect that we are our ancestors. One time I was looking at a photo of two of my kids, while not quite in my normal mind, and saw my great grandmothers’ faces superimposed on theirs. Not that I recognized them, but I felt that’s who they were.

We feel the presence of the past and the presence of the future in different ways. Humans are different from animals in the way they remember the past. When a calf is born, for example, it instinctively knows what to do. It will be up and walking in two hours. Grazing in 2 or 3 months. Nobody teaches it which plants to eat and not eat. It just knows.

So does it work like that with us, carrying our life experiences through the incarnations? What we learned before is just there, and it comes through. That’s why families have their ways. Human connection to the past is much more removed from immediate consciousness, perhaps so that we would evolve civilization. You don’t see any animals creating the future. That’s our thing. And somehow the concept of God ties into that.

The future works on probabilities in superposition. Intuition can guide you to the best future. Religious structures help with that. You need it the most at the same time of your life you don’t have the time to figure it out yourself. I hate to admit it, but Mormonism was good for me once. But that ship has sailed.

All of this depends on extra dimensions of time. One dimensional time rules it out. So the fact that these things are part of nature implies that there are at least two dimensions of time. Those are being explored in the frontiers of Physics. As with all things, I think the knowledge will come when it’s needed. Given the pace of discovery these days, I’d expect it sooner rather than later.

It's fine to post these type of subjects here on rfm, however, if you really want a better discussion where there are 'claimed' psychics, mediums, remote viewers, etc. etc., I would post on reddit ----- various paranormal areas. The discussion would probably take a much different tone and you would probably get a lot more input from non skeptics.

You have hinted at reincarnation, past lives, psychic/intuition, why we incarnate, God, religion, dimensions, etc. etc.

I have discussed some 'cool stuff' on these sites and have learned a great deal from others there.

The discussions take a significantly different tone, skeptics and non skeptics.

Because hypnogogia/hypnopompia are even better than magic.

My first concept of guardian angels was manifest at age 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxRAMq5-l08

That is beautieful.

Because magic is the explanation for everything

Life is magical. The predominant secular clergy saying it isn’t is hardly intellectualy honest.

The universe is a steam locomotive. This is true because babyloncansuckit can hear the WOO WOO!

"Many worlds" is an hypothesis. Not a theory.
Same with "block universe."

The simple fact is there is a lot we don't know. Hypotheses are proposed as explanations for some of those things, but they aren't valid until/if verified by evidence. Which means we don't know. We might know someday. We might not.

The thing is, "we don't know" doesn't mean "magic." Or psychics, or guardian angels, or reincarnation, or god, or any of the thousands of other things humans make up to replace "we don't know" simply because they don't like "we don't know."

I personally don't understand why making stuff up is more "comforting" than simply accepting "we don't know." The former (making stuff up) is a dead-end. It shuts off the search for actual answers, and it induces people who believe made-up stuff to do really silly things. The latter leads to questioning, testing, verifying, and fact-finding. I'll take the latter, and continue to pooh-pooh making stuff up.

Perhaps because "making stuff up" is much more lucrative than "I don't know?"

Isn't pretending just Mother Nature's natural anti-anxiety pill?

"Many worlds" is an hypothesis. Not a theory.

COMMENT: The "many worlds' interpretation of QM has been specifically and mathematically articulated in physics beginning with Hugh Everett III, and continuing with many variations thereafter. Your suggestion that it is not a "theory" is nothing more than leaning on semantics in an attempt to undermine its wide popularity in the physics community. It is indeed called a "theory" by most authors who address this subject. You are the only person I know of that has denied it "theory" status simply in order to summarily dismiss it.
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"Same with "block universe."

COMMENT: The idea of a "block universe" is not a theory per se, but rather the implications of special and general relativity as applied to the universe as a whole. To avoid this implication you have to change Einstein's view of time; and therefore of spacetime. I explained this to you in specific detail in a prior post, with citations, but apparently without effect. You remind me of many exMormons who manage to shed Mormonism, while retaining their redirected dogmatism.
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"The simple fact is there is a lot we don't know. Hypotheses are proposed as explanations for some of those things, but they aren't valid until/if verified by evidence. Which means we don't know. We might know someday. We might not."

COMMENT: It is, of course, a trivial fact that there is a lot we don't know. It is also a trivial fact that hypotheses and scientific theories are proposed as explanations for what we don't know; including explanations about both empirical facts about the world, and their relationship to scientific laws.
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The thing is, "we don't know" doesn't mean "magic." Or psychics, or guardian angels, or reincarnation, or god, or any of the thousands of other things humans make up to replace "we don't know" simply because they don't like "we don't know."

COMMENT: Can we add to your list speculative scientific theories, like the many worlds interpretation of QM? I invite you, and everyone else here, to view just the first 2 and a half minutes of the OP linked talk by Sean Carroll, where he embraces the "absurdity" of the many-worlds view, and then tells us that he is about to explain how it is a rational view accepted by many physicists. If the many-worlds scientific view is intuitively "absurd" (which it is) why is its status in science higher, and more worthy of respect, than the postulation of a God? Is it only because scientists are making the claim, and not theologians?
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I personally don't understand why making stuff up is more "comforting" than simply accepting "we don't know."

COMMENT: You are naïve to think that theologians (or scientists) just "make stuff up" for their own comfort, without acknowledging what they "don't know." In both cases, there are reasons that are offered to support the views proposed, however speculative or personal they might be; or even absurd. These reasons may not meet yours or my evidentiary standard, but they are reasons nonetheless. In short, what *might* be true given what we *do* know, or what *might* be true given what we *have* experienced, has value in assessing what "we don't know" and how we might move forward either in science or in our personal lives. A worldview that prohibits one from engaging in such speculations, and even adopting tentative commitments based upon such speculations, is stifling at best, and narrow-minded at worst.

I like you, Henry, but sometimes you're so full of crap...:)

Ditto!

Many years ago, I was told by one of my teachers that as applied to ideas there are two kinds of "crap." On the one hand, there are ideas that are well-informed, clearly articulated, and logically formulated, but just wrong. On the other hand, there are ideas that are just pulled out of one's ass to support entrenched ideological commitments. The former type are difficult to refute, and often generate lively debate. The latter type are easily refuted, but often generate either silence or perhaps a passing rhetorical insult.

Once you get to the point where you are rating the size, texture, and aroma of crap, one might consider that the need to "win" has trampled on listening to what someone is really saying.

Just really tired of the convoluted technicalities that do not reflect their target.

Until we actually establish that there are many worlds, that we can communicate with them, and may even travel to them; I'm going to have to be satisfied with the one world I know of.

There are indeed many worlds. Higher life forms existing on them is highly doubtful.
I can't even find higher life forms on THIS world.