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“Perverse panentheism” is a term seemingly derived by me (I found no instances on the Internet) to describe a variant of panentheism where divinity is not the creative force but rather an evolutionary consequence of multiversal evolution.  “Simple Panentheism”, a term I’ve devised to differentiate it from Perverse Panentheism, is the classical belief, perhaps originally posited by Heraclitus and evolved in Neoplatonism from which it spread amidst numerous spiritual-religious concepts, that the divine is comprised of everything that is as its physical manifestation but supplemented by a universal soul, such divinity being the primogenitor of all.  Over the millennia, panentheism has branched many times but two fundamental trunks might be the anthropomorphic “god” based form common to currently perceived traditional religions, and a non- anthropomorphic variant more associated with a generic form of spirituality.

The concept in physics of Boltzmann-brains, in a sense, the probability of non-corporeal awareness coupled ironically with Richard Dawkins-derived memeplex hypotheses (memetics), seem to provide a fascinating, perhaps lightly explored bridge between mysticism and cosmology.  Indeed, among the travelers along such bridge one might find a stream of incorporeal intelligences ranging from few to approximations of infinity which some among us might consider gods.  The possibility of such connections would seem to increase exponentially as modern physics veers more and more towards multiversal probabilities such as those expounded by such acknowledged luminaries as Stephen Hawking, James Hartle and Thomas Hertog in their model of the early universe: the No Boundary Proposal, although they are certainly not adherents to the hypothesis posited in this article, at least not to my knowledge, though they might find them of at least passing interest.

In a sense, these musings are the antithesis of the concept posited by adherents of intelligent design and might instead be described as “accidental divinity”.  But certainly not an infallible divinity, or an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipresent or omnipotent divinity, just a run-of-the-mill evolutionary probability, a synthesis of quantum and general relativity theories, perhaps as confused and fallible as are we.

Wouldn’t that beat all?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2017; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia although he has primarily lived in the United States of America (of which he is a citizen).  Until recently he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  He can be contacted at wacalvo3@autonoma.edu.co or guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at http://www.guillermocalvo.com.