# The multiverse and an atheistic ontology

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-multiverse-and-an-atheistic-ontology/227306>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 3, 2004, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-multiverse-and-an-atheistic-ontology/227306 "2004-02-03T10:55:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![opacis\_magi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/f6c823/32.png) [@opacis\_magi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/opacis_magi)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-multiverse-and-an-atheistic-ontology/227306/21 "2004-02-05T14:04:56Z")

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Difficult thread this…  
Morality, our consciousness and all of this which is not physical but merely ideas or common knowledge is hard to put into any kind of category I think.  
All of these things exist on some level, outside of the person, because many people see them the same way, and it kind of lingers in the air.

Even if they were just a sum of physical parts in the brain, then that brain has another level somewhere, where it experiences something.  
I notice you haven’t brought the human mind much into this, but I think it is very metaphysical, and also very important to this discussion.  
If the metaphysical is purely a common accepted idea that many people hold in their heads, then it’s only the materialistic parts making a cognitive decision that something exists, but it doesn’t exist outside of these brains.

It’s purely a side effect of cognitive beings(run by physical parts).  
If on the other hand, there is some sort of morality particle, or any other particle that is not physical, then there might be some sort of metaphysical side to the universe which is not explored yet.

If we bring it further and say that the Supreme Being is /everything/, then this is just a classification from us, since I believe everything in the universe whether it be metaphysical or physical, has zero value, it’s just a complex pattern of one dimensional pieces.

Either way, I’m stuck with the notion that I have no clue, which is true, i have too little information on both quantum mechanics and the metaphysical to make a judgement like this.

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**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2004, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-multiverse-and-an-atheistic-ontology/227306/22 "2004-02-05T14:40:39Z")

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**opacis** , don’t worry, you’re on the right lines.

> [@](#):
>
> Morality, our consciousness and all of this which is not physical but merely ideas or common knowledge is hard to put into any kind of category I think.

Not really. It is either physical or metaphysical.

One _can_ say that thoughts, goodness, mathematics, logic, and a perfect being are themselves essentially **physical** in nature since they are derived from the physical (_ie._ the neurological). That such cannot yet be falsifiably demonstrated is irrelevant; it is merely _not logically inconsistent_ to define _everything_ as physical, whether or not you can “have a bucket of it”. Of course, if the metaphysical simply does not exist, we cannot very well have a chat about ontology, since the entire subject is predicated on the existence of the metaphysical.

(Similarly, one can also _deny the physical_ and claim that _eg._ atoms are not “real”; that the entire universe is solely metaphysical in nature. What, then, would be the point of discussing cosmology, Darwinism or any other subject dealing solely with the _physical_?)

So, for the purposes of this thread, let us say that both the physical and the the metaphysical exists. I offer that, if so, then _both_ are part of the universe: the Combined Whole of both physical and metaphysical.

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