Thanks Skado. There are longer, more detailed explanations about this hypothesis but, truthfully those videos and the biological and astro-physical info they contain are just a little beyond my intellectual capacity so far.

@Seminarian
Mine too.

It's true many religionists are trying to evolve their religion in order to survive. It's unknown at this point if they will be successful. It's obvious though that anything that fails to evolve will ultimately die. That has to include atheism as well. Right?

@Seminarian

How can a non belief evolve? How can critical thinking evolve?

Are you suggesting that atheism adopts theism to 'evolve'?

@Ellatynemouth Critical thinking has definitely evolved. The most popular model for how it continues to evolve is with the integration of artificial intelligence. How can a non-belief evolve? I don't know.

How do we know it's ultimately unprovable? If a hypothesis isn't already disproven how can it be considered an invalid hypothesis? Black holes are not yet proven. As far as I know they are still considered a valid hypothesis.

@Seminarian In order for a hypothesis to be falsifiable you have to describe some means by which you could disprove it (and therefore, by implication, potentially fail to disprove it, producing a higher probability that it is true). If a hypothesis is non-falsifiable that is just a statement of its present status. It doesn't mean that in theory someone might not find a way to falsify it later. But until and unless they do, it doesn't qualify as "scientific".

However ... some hypotheticals ARE inherently non-falsifiable. The most consequential one being the standard-issue supernatural god. Supernatural = above or outside of nature, and therefore inherently once you start asserting or claiming things about something that's allegedly supernatural, you are either making that up or you have information that comes from the natural world and the hypothesized god is no longer supernatural. Supernatural is just a special pleading mechanism to try to exempt something from having to be substantiated.

"Radial energy" has all the hallmarks of such a beast -- it is in contrast to "tangential energy" which he defines as energy that CAN be measured by science -- therefore the opposite of that is "spiritual" or "supernatural" and we're back to the realm of speculative imagination again.

@mordant What if he had used the term dark matter or dark energy instead of radial energy? Is theoretical astro-physics science? According to Meta-Physical (New thought) Christianity Divine Love is merely the energy that pulls and holds molecules together to make larger things. Some type of energy does that. I'm being taught that nothing is supernatural, everything is natural, although some things are as yet understood. God is an aggregation of all natural law and the Christ Spirit is Universal Human Consciousness. If the Christ Spirit (Universal Consciousness) doesn't exist in nature, humans are surely creating it artificially now.

@Seminarian What if he had used "dark energy" instead? Well I suppose he would be pulling the usual gambit of trying to identify some hypothetical speculative unknown with something we have a label for but not a lot of understanding of as yet.

If New Thought renames molecular forces "Divine Love" in an attempt to legitimize particular theological ideas then I'm not too impressed with it.

On the other hand if you're being taught that nothing is supernatural then at least they've caught on to the uselessness and irrationality of the concept of "the supernatural" so I give them props for that.

My personal take on "universal consciousness" and similar concepts is that it is a garden-variety category error, or more specifically a composition error. It does not follow from the fact that the universe contains conscious beings, that the universe itself is conscious or (in a causal reversal) that a conscious universe is the cause or source of individual consciousness.

All available evidence currently points to consciousness being an emergent property of biochemical activity in a physical brain, and each instance of consciousness being dependent on that particular organization of matter and energy. Very interesting work is being done on the hard problem of consciousness, and I believe it likely that we are on the cusp of cracking that problem and that we will in the foreseeable future have self-aware general purpose AIs as a result. See for example The Book of Why by Judea Pearl.

@mordant I haven't been able to find out for sure but, I believe the Teilliard died (1940s) before the term Dark Energy was coined. You are correct though that New Thought Theology does use spiritual or religious terms in place of secular scientific terms. We believe spiritual terminology is more powerful due to the emotions they provoke. Emotions provide fuel for most of our actions. I greatly appreciate the info on the consciousness studies. I will check out the book. Thank you.