GOD'S PLAN
Okay, so now that I have your attention, let me begin by saying that I don't really believe that God has a plan. What I do believe is that God has a process. Is there difference? I think so.
To me, a plan is designed to get you to a predefined end result. In the sense that I mean it, a process is a progression of events over a period of time. Those events may or may not yield the same result every time. A recipe is a plan. Cooking is a process.
So what is God's process? Well, I think there are at least two distinguishing features. The first is chaos. The central point of chaos theory is that in a dynamic system, which is just about everything, tiny variations in initial conditions can lead over time to major differences in the end results.
Whoever set the universe in motion was not all that worried about predictability. Change is inherent in the nature of things.
The other distinguishing feature of God’s process is self-organization, which is structure that appears without any outside intervention. Snowflakes and people are self-organizing forms. In self-organizing systems, the sum is often greater than the parts, a concept referred to as an emergent property. Put all the pieces of a car together and you get a machine that can do what the pieces can't.
Something that both chaos and self-organizing systems have in common is that they will eventually settle into a routine. This is called an attractor, which is where systems want to be, all things being equal. But thanks to chaos, things may or may not be quite the same equal again.
For me, chaos means that our choices make a difference, that free will is an important part of the process. Chaos theory tells us that everything matters, that the tiniest changes can lead to hugely different results. Anyone who has tried to cook knows the truth of this.
The fact that things are self-organizing tells me that the universe is a system pretty much left to its own devices. There may indeed be some sort of divine principle overseeing the fall of every sparrow, but there doesn't have to be in order for the whole thing to work.
Like quantum physics, much of this is beyond the layman's ability to understand and that certainly includes me. So experts would very likely deem my thoughts to be a gross oversimplification of a very complex subject. Still, my gut tells me that chaos theory and self-organizing systems are the two most important things you probably don’t know much about. I'll let you be the judge of that.
October 24, 2009
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