A Bayesian Evaluation of Higher-Order Existence: From Personal God to Non-Material Consciousness

This paper aims to comparatively evaluate several hypotheses concerning a metaphysical target that I call “higher-order existence,” using a Bayesian framework constrained by evidence from cosmology, consciousness studies, and cultural psychology. Concretely, I define the following five hypotheses as a finite discrete hypothesis space: H1: Personal God (a personal, purposive divine being) H2: Impersonal First Cause (a non-personal, ground-of-being–type First Cause) H3: Non-material Consciousness (non-material consciousness, including field-like and individual aspects) H4: Emergentist Naturalism (consciousness as a strongly emergent, yet fully physical, phenomenon) H5: Self-organizing Naturalism (radically self-organizing naturalism without any higher-order principle) As empirical constraints, I select nine representative pieces of evidence E1–E9, including: the Big Bang and a finite past, the apparent fine-tuning of physical constants, the hard problem of consciousness, near-death experiences (NDEs), and the cross-cultural ubiquity of religious experiences and beliefs about the afterlife. ※This paper was co-authored with multiple large language models (Grok 4, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Gemini 1.5 Pro, etc.). All numerical calculations, sensitivity analyses, and Python pseudocode were generated and verified with AI assistance. The human author is fully responsible for the final content, interpretation, and submission.