Thanks for your response. I am researching for a Ph.D. It would take a thesis to answer the valuable counter-points you raised.
Good luck with the thesis! What is your major? Sounds like Philosophy, but could be Cosmology or something else. I studied more than my share of Philosophy in college and accidentally got the degree by taking every course in the department as electives
I've thrown out what I said as a survey to collect various (subjective) responses.
Not the poll in this thread, I hope! I deliberately did not answer it as, despite appearances, I don't think the answer is as black and white as the options imply.
I will get back when I have a coherent (and short summary) of my research/survey.
No hurry, we are all busy folks.
For now, however, regarding the concept of Zero and Infinity; they originated in Indian Hinduism
(although they have come into the West through Arabic mathematicians) and are experienced realities in a meditative state.
I learned meditation while studying martial arts, and did not find the states I experienced to be either completely empty, or completely infinite. My awareness was rather heightened but I drew different conclusions as to what that state of mind represented (despite being told what it was supposed to mean by others). Same experience, different interpretation.
It is interesting to note that in computers alpha is referred to transparency or an empty space channel and likewise much scientific experiments have demonstrated elevated alpha waves in the brain during meditative states i.e. empty.
I know of many such experiments and still maintain that what they are calling empty I call relaxed. Alpha waves are associated with sleep, which has been demonstrated to be far from emptyness, even while not dreaming.
The universe is one organism : the micro an macro cannot be cut off. For example one's kidneys on their own
cannot work without the synchronic functions of other organs to keep one alive. Likewise the earth cannot be alive without
the sun and the solar system which are only functioning in the macrocosm of the galaxy and that in turn function in an important
relationship to other galaxies ad infinitum. The legacy of Cartesian Dualism has done too much damage already - in the sense
that it removes interconnections; mind and body; man and nature; and so on. We have recently all seen the 'butterfly effect' in the
extreme weather originating in the Philippines effecting freezing North America and finally hitting our UK isles with.
Again, I think our beliefs are not so disparate as all that. Of course everything is connected. If everything sprang from some sort of "singularity" as modern science asserts, then of course it is all connected.
But I believe to extrapolate from that the notion that the entire universe is alive is unfounded. That would be like saying there is nothing inanimate or un-alive in the universe.
I prefer to draw a distinction between life and death - alive and not. If it's all one, then there is no room for that distinction and the result would be philosophically unacceptable and lead to unresolvable ethical problems ("But Officer - I didn't kill him! There is no such thing as death!").
It would, to me, be like saying there can't be any distinctions drawn between any two things - red may as well be blue since they are both manifestations of the same thing; electromagnetic radiation.
Cartesian Dualism has it's purpose. It aids us in distinguishing between different aspects of otherwise connected things (like red and blue - both are EM Radiation, and share many qualities, but they are distinctly different aspects of the phenomenon).
So I maintain that all things can be connected, but all things can not be one.
Further on my 'wild' assertions later.
I look forward to it. You raise some interesting points