i had finished reading something and i went up to my window that night. it wasnt raining but apparently it was somewhere far out; there was a lot of lightning. and i thought:
when lightning strikes it can take on any unique shape, a shape being drawn by the hand of probability. it can fern out at any point in its travel time, producing a different pattern for every bolt. while seemingly random, one day, man might devise a formula to predict the exact structure of a lightning strike from the very moment a spark crowns from the lining of a cumulonimbus. a far future i surmise--no doubt, but does the fact that a random route can be predicted imply that it is after all not random, ie. the outcome was predetermined from the start?
there is only one thing that i, in my lacking knowledge know that is predetermined: the flash that speeds towards the ground always ends up on the ground, regardless of its route. that doesnt make me sound like much of a fortune teller, yet if i claimed i knew in my mind the exact shape of the next lightning strike yet to come down from the heavens, people would actually take notice. therein lies the mystery of mystery itself--we as a curious species strive to know everything, and that which we do not know, we ascribe high desirability factor to, as do we give great honor to those few who know what is not widely known.
suppose a physicist appears from the future and tells us that he invented a machine which could observe you flipping a coin and from the moment the coin leaves your hand, is able to perfectly compute the fate of that flipped coin--heads or tails. the entire concept of probability would be rendered moot. if i flip a coin a hundred times in an experiment of probability, and each time a physicist is able to calculate its outcome using a formula from the distant future using the variables of the coin's metal composition, atmospheric humidity, down to the skeletal structure of my thumb, then by deduction, i have not performed a set of probabilistic maneuvers. while it appeared to me that i played a hundred games of chance, to a really smart person i was merely placing a coin on its head or on its tail a hundred times in succession.
do i believe that God made the coin land in such and such a way? if i were an ancient egyptian, i would say that horus made the coin land in such and such a way after the coin had left my hand. if i were an all-knowing scientist, i would make a more convincing statement. yet i am neither an ancient egyptian nor an all-knowing scientist. what i do know, as i realise now writing this: the limit of each man's influence on any earthly object's ends at the moment he stops exerting his influence. the moment the coin leaves my hand, i lose my power over it, and its story though started by me, can not and does not end solely by me. there are a myriad variables that continue to exert their influence on the flying coin, and these factors are observable by an all-knowing figure, like the physicist from the future.
this hypothetical physicist does not exist yet. he or she might eventually. is this person God? i would not agree, for it is not sufficient to be all-knowing; this person must also be all-powerful. for the intents and purposes of this writing, any of the aforementioned observable variable that can be observed by an omniscient figure is also a manipulable variable by an omnipotent figure. it seems that by our earthly criteria of what makes God God, my conclusion can only go so far as to say that God can indeed make any coin land in any such way, but as to the questions of whether he does, or would: these are the questions regarding fate.
a man can live his life believing that God is the artist that painted every single unique lightning bolt that comes from the sky, the sculptor that formed every single unique snowflake that ever floated down, the chemist that pieced together by hand every atom and molecule in your bones, the physical source of the wind that drove our ships and the ocean tides that kept our earth warm, the nuclear physicist who regulated the fusion in our sun which makes life possible, the biologist who personally engineered us humans from the primate families millenia ago. a man can believe that fire was given to man from mount olympus, abode of the greek gods.
or he can believe that God is the mastermind who only created the rules of the universe, and within his self-sustaining universe, art, sculpture, chemistry, meteorology, physics, biology and even fire created themselves. he can call the rules of the universe Nature, where anything that creates itself is natural, even mutations, disasters, catastrophes, war, bloodshed, death, floods, fires and earthquakes. i am this man.
i believe in the Nature that God created. i know that nature is real. i believe in the reality of heaven and hell, but not as much as i believe in the reality of dying if i stepped off the parapet of a skyscraper. that is the extent of my incomplete wisdom, insofar as my inability to believe in God as much as i believe in the Nature that he created--the Nature which is so much closer to me than is God himself. i believe that out of the billions who claim to believe in God like i do, only a handful believe in God more than they do Nature, which God created. and somehow i feel that he only created Nature so that man might just at minimum choose to acknowledge his existence.
God is like the hand that flips the coin; each one of us are like coins that are flipped. except that we can choose how we land. he knows how we are going to land from the way we spin in the air, he knows your future, but that in no way determines it: he can describe your future for he is omniscient, or he can prescribe it, for he is omnipotent, but there would be no reason from him to prescribe your outcome--each one of us were given the chance to choose for a reason.
it just so happened that Nature is so good and so believable, that we single-track minded creatures with our imperfect eyes, noses, ears, tongues and skin, trust and rely on it so much and become blind and distrusting to things we cannot see, smell, hear, taste or feel with our hands.
to these unsensable things, we as simple, curious creatures, attribute eerie mystery to. we create fantastic words like probability, fate, and destiny because even when we know we cannot control everything, we have a human need to label the uncontrollable and therefore try to control it. these words are fantastic delusions because out there...there is a perfect physicist from the future, one that not only knows all but can do all. i call this scientist God. to him, there is no probability because everything is predictable to him. there is no fate or destiny for these only obey God's will. but then there is causality. causality obeys the will of God, man and flea.
why would God allow us to determine our own outcomes? because we would be no better than a stone on the hill that wastes away at the mercy of rain and wind otherwise. i seriously doubt that. i am definitely more important than a stone on the hill, because the stone wasnt given the power to deny its Creator.
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