Now we're talking about evolution. Not a great move, frankly, blog popularity-wise.

Yeah, writing about evolution in a blog is a great way to 1) attract trolls and 2) flamings and 3) fire- and brimstoning.

Because if you don't write exactly and precisely what everyone wants to read, then they'll come after you with frontal lobotomies and exorcisms and excommunications and really bad language. And they'll say you're stupid. All of them will say that.

Like, it's either TOTALLY RIGHT or it's TOTALLY WRONG.

There are no other options.

So just for fun, let's agree with the article we talked about last time from NewScientist magazine that evolution is in deep need of a fixin'. It has a problem. An issue. It needs to talk to someone about it.

The problem (spoiler alert!) is

Randomness.

Let's just also say that there's evidence for evolutionary change to be found. Lots. Tons.

But let's also say that the assumption that random mutation is 1) the only thing making it happen and is 2) truly random, is 3) just an assumption that we've made up all the way along the way.

It was not Darwin's assumption. He came up with Natural Selection, but not Random Mutation. They didn't have genes then (everybody wore khakis)(sorry, bad joke). Genes were later. Mutation was later. Randomness was later.

Random mutation and natural selection are the way that neo-Darwinian evolution is thought to have always worked. Genetic mutation is random. Natural selection is not.

And OH. BTW. Remember how the thinkers got rid of God (and free will) by using an infinite universe? Which turned out not to be true?

Randomness in Evolution is how the thinkers get rid of God all over again.

That is, if everything is random and nothing happens on purpose and evolution is not heading anywhere ever, especially not towards humans, then

Religion is just wrong to think that man is special. Because humankind, just like everything else, is just a big biological accident.

So. If Randomness is wrong (or mostly or partly or sometimes or frequently wrong), then humans may not be an accident and evolution was indeed heading somewhere and humans may be the where. Maybe. Along with free will. Maybe. And God might exist and might have structured the evolutionary imperatives as, well, imperatives.

You might go back and read the previous post again. So that you'll know where we're going.

Here's a hint: We now know that things other than genes are transmitted from parents to offspring...

That means that something other than random mutation and natural selection is going on.

That, frankly, is earth-shattering news.

Here's another bit: As well as being able to respond in specific ways to particular conditions, organisms seem to have evolved the ability to respond flexibly to whatever conditions they experience...

This allows systems such as the immune system, nervous system

and behavioural systems (through learning) to adjust to meet whatever environment the individual faces.

And finally: ... developmental bias directs evolution ...

So here's what it's saying.

It's saying that rather than, or maybe in addition to random mutation, organisms change deliberately and intentionally to things going on around them.

!!!!!!!

So evolutionary change is not always, and maybe never is or was random.

It may be sometimes, maybe most times, maybe all times intentional and organized. Specific. As though the organisms responded with deliberate intelligence to figure out what was going on and what they should do about it so that they don't die.

For the religious among the readers, let me tell what this is not. It is not intelligent design. It is not all-at-once miraculous creation. If there is anything intelligent design-y or miraculous-y about it, it is that organisms seem to have an innate, unexpected, surprising, and on the face of it miraculous ability to look around, see what's going on, and do something creative and amazing and generally entirely unexpected and unpredictable to fix it.

For the irreligious, areligious, atheist agnostic skeptical Newtonian readers out there, it is not random and it is not completely or maybe even mostly genetic. It is that via epigenetics, developmental bias, symbiotics, and/or spontaneous emergent self-organization, organisms seem to have an innate, unexpected, surprising, and on the face of it miraculous ability to look around, see what's going on, and do something creative and amazing and generally entirely unexpected and unpredictable to fix it.

It seems positively 1) neo-Larmarckian and 2) heretical.

Lamarck was the guy who suggested that organisms did this kind of thing.

All the trolls of his time made fun of him. Then he died. Not because of everybody making fun of him, but still, he's not around to get to say "I told you so." Bummer.

Because Lamarck is kinda back.

Evidence would be good.

Here's some, from www.evolutionnews.org :

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was an early evolutionist who proposed that life forms could acquire information from their environment and pass it on in their genes. He was dismissed, when not ridiculed, by Darwinists for many decades (though not, as it happens, by Darwin). But the basic thrust of his idea has recently resurfaced in epigenetics.

Epigenetics is the study of the systems and processes by which

Turns out, he wasn't completely wrong at all.

genes' expression can be altered, not randomly as in Darwinism, but by specific, predictable, repeatable, and researchable events -- and then inherited in the altered state.

Here's another: Science Magazine called Michael Skinner "the epigenetics heretic" for maintaining that chemicals can cause changes in gene expression in mice that persist across generations. Notice who ... had the biggest knee-jerk reaction of all:

Michael Skinner is gleefully listing the disciplines that he's ruffled with his contention that, without altering the sequence of DNA, certain chemicals can cause harmful health effects that pass down generations. Toxicologists are so outraged that they have tried to block his funding, he says. Geneticists resist having their decades-old understanding of inheritance overturned. Then there are the evolutionary biologists, who have "the biggest knee-jerk reaction of all."

Skepticism is to be expected, Skinner acknowledges: "This is probably going to be the biggest paradigm shift in science in recent history," he declares. (Emphasis added.)

And that's just epigenetics. Wait till we get to Complexity Theory.

And finally, from MIT. MIT. The real MIT. The IT that's in M. 

The effects of an animal’s environment during adolescence can be passed down to future offspring, according to two new studies. If applicable to humans, the research, done on rodents, suggests that the impact of both childhood education and early abuse could span generations. The findings provide support for a 200-year-old theory of evolution that has been largely dismissed: Lamarckian evolution, which states that acquired characteristics can be passed on to offspring.

If you're religious, you need to keep reading. If you're not, you need to keep reading.

Something Else Going On.

Having now pissed off all the religious people and all the Harley guys (and the latter is probably safer, since they'll just beat me to death with the Harley tool of choice, whereas the religious folk tend to have all sorts of interesting solutions to the problem of what they might define as heresy.) and probably the atheists and agnostics, too (do they have a plan for dealing with, um, what we might call anti-heresy? a-heresy? a-heretics?) ...

Anyway. Let's piss off the scientists.

Some of them, anyway. The old school traditionalists.

Here we go.

Several blogs ago (you should go look - it's the Free Will - Get Over It. Or not. blog), there were some articles.

The first one said that free will, just like everything else, has to have evolutionary origins and therefore is just a genetic byproduct, just the DNA that each one of us inherited from all of our ancestors. Everything biological is a product of evolution, and that's true for the brain, and that's where free will would be, and so all of our decisions are predetermined by our genetics, and so we don't have free will.

And there were all these experiments that seem to say that we don't have free will.

Until in the second article, there was an even better experiment using an MRI that actually observed free will apparently happening in the brain.

And then, of course, in the final article, there is the reality that we'll never really understand the brain, anyway. So we're never really going to know whether or not we have free will based on any kind of scientific evidence.

I read something else about that the other day - someone said that if the brain were simple enough for us to understand it, we'd be too simple to understand it.

Zing.

Let's assume for a minute that the absolutely positively latest and best experiment, the one that says we have free will based on the MRI evidence, let's assume that one is correct.

Let's assume that we have free will.

Standard Darwinian evolutionary theory says we can't have free will. Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory says we can't have free will.

But, today at least, we do.

Hmmm. That is a conundrum.

So either evolutionary theory the way that we understand it is generally wrong, or specifically wrong.

Let's assume that it's generally right, but specifically wrong. Like, in this case.

So what does that mean?

Well. Regular old evolutionary theory says that random mutation provides a gene by complete accident that happens at a certain moment in time and space to provide for better survivability, and that gene is then selected for, and so it goes.

What if there's something else going on?

You should keep reading now even if you're upset.

Well. Here's part of an article from NewScientist for you to read and consider:

In recent years, our understanding of biology has taken huge strides. Advances in genetics, epigenetics and developmental biology challenge us to think anew about the relationship between genes, organisms and the environment, with implications for the origins of diversity and the direction and speed of evolution.

In particular, new findings undermine the idea, encapsulated by the
“selfish gene” metaphor, that genes are in the driving seat. Instead, they suggest that organisms play active, constructive roles in their own development and that of their descendants, so that they impose direction on evolution.

Some biologists are trying to shoehorn the new knowledge into

traditional evolutionary thinking. Others, myself included, believe a more radical approach may be required. We don’t deny the roles of genetic inheritance and natural selection, but think we should look at evolution in a markedly different way. 

It is time for the theory of evolution to evolve.

We now know that things other than genes are transmitted from parents to offspring...

These and many other findings suggest that the current focus on genetic mutations only captures part of the story of adaptive evolution – the slowly changing part. The broader view shows there are other ways to generate heritable variety.

And that’s not all. We now also know that a given set of genes has the potential to produce a variety of phenotypes, depending on the environment in which the organism develops.

This ability, called developmental plasticity, used to be dismissed as

“noise” or mere “fine-tuning”, but recent research suggests it may play a far more active role in the evolutionary process. As well as being able to respond in specific ways to particular conditions, organisms seem to have evolved the ability to respond flexibly to whatever conditions they experience...

This allows systems such as the immune system, nervous system and behavioural systems (through learning) to adjust to meet whatever environment the individual faces.

Perhaps, rather than merely setting limits on what forms are available for selection, developmental bias directs evolution by generating the tramlines along which the engine of selection can proceed.

The article goes on. You can read it here - https://www.facebook.com/www.lifeuniverseverything.org/posts/10154012596767428

or if you have a subscription, at NewScientist.com.

So. Here's what we're suggesting.

Free will is not a product of random mutation and natural selection.

It's a product of directed evolution.

Now that is really gonna make absolutely everybody upset.

You need to remember, though, that if there is no free will, then you can't be upset at me because my DNA made me do it.

And if there is free will, then you can't be upset at me because, heck, there is free will.

Trapped like rats. Don't you hate that?

Living within the Clumps

Life is clumpy.

Get over it.

Not helpful.

Really. I mean, how are we supposed to live with unpredictability?

Well. Pretty much the way you've been living so far.

This shouldn't be a big surprise to you. That life is unpredictable, I mean.

Because, you know. Look around. See?

We really really want life to be predictable, so we say things like when a door closes a window opens and there's a reason for everything, but in fact,

that's just not true.

Here's what is true.

First. When a door closes, you can't go that way anymore.

So you've got to find another way.

Chances are good you'll find one. There are lots of options. Sometimes you need to be creative and work hard and be patient. It would have been good for you to get ready for a clump of bad things to come along, so, you know, having some extra money in the bank is a fine idea. For example.

If you know that bad clumps are always out there lurking, then heck. Get ready for them.

And everything doesn't happen for a reason, but lots and lots of things that happen come with a life lesson wrapped up inside, something to learn, something to remember for next time.

Like, wear a seatbelt. Flush twice. All smells are particulate. OK, that last one is not useful to remember at all. It's just disgusting.

However. There are some things that happen that are so terrible, horrific, and monstrous, that not only did they not happen for a reason, but they didn't happen so as to provide you with a neat little lesson to learn from.

They happened because the quality of bad things is clumpy, too. Many bad things are just kinda bad, maybe most bad things. But some are much, much worse. Some are beyond imagining. Some are the stuff of nightmares that are not supposed to transition into daytime and reality. But they do.

Some you just have to survive as best you can. And maybe find people who have already survived as best they could. And then maybe become one of those people, so that you can be one of them when it happens to someone else.

Could be that there is a reason, after all.

We are supposed to help each other. And sometimes it helps to have been there for people who are now there.

Community is the thing. Coming together. Sharing lives and pains and joys and struggles and clumps.

Oh. And sometimes bad things happen because you did something stupid.

Let's not rule that out.

Because that's when everything does happen for a reason, and the reason is, you were an idiot.

Now. If God exists (always an option), then how does he fit into all of this?

Well. His main job is not to keep you safe from bad things. If it is, then he's doing a really crappy job of it.

And we're going to assume that God never does a crappy job on anything.

His main job is not to provide you with object lessons to learn from. With an exception for the stupid things you do. Those, you're supposed to learn from, whether God exists or not. Here's the lesson: That thing you just did? That's what idiots do. Don't be an idiot.

See how easy it is?

Now, as far as all the other bad things, especially the really bad things that happen, that's an interesting question.

Clearly if God exists, he could stop bad things from happening.

And clearly, he doesn't always do that. He might do it sometimes, but, well, you never really know. 'Cause they didn't happen.

So why doesn't he just stop all the bad things and keep only the good things?

Huh. Good question.

Let's give it a shot.

First. If there were no bad things, then we would never have any reason to look to God for help. Or to each other, for that matter.

We might even just start to think about only ourselves all the time, and never about anybody else.

Eventually, that would cause bad things. Maybe it does already. I'm gonna bet on that one.

Second. if there were no bad things, then there would be different levels of good things. And we'd start to rank them so that some of them would start to seem bad to us, and then we'd complain about it.

So even if there were no bad things, we'd come up with some. Maybe we already do that. I'm gonna bet on that one, too.

Third. There are only good and bad things if there is some sort of God around to call them good and bad. Even Richard Dawkins says that. "No design, no purpose, no good and no evil, nothing but pointless indifference."

That's a universe without God.

So even if we're not totally crazy about all the bad things,

they are only bad if God exists.

So you just have to live with that. And you kinda have to live with whatever he calls good and/or bad. You don't get to get to define good and bad for yourself.

Because often something that is good for you, is bad for someone else. One of you is being a jerk.

And we can't really let nations or cultures define what is good and bad, because they are full of people, and people are often not the best judges of that.

Because, well, the Holocaust. For example. There might be others. Ha. Not funny.

Fourth. If there were no bad things, then we'd never do anything at all.

Because some of the bad things are like, um, being hungry. Thirsty. Tired. Dirty. Naked. Walking instead of driving. Or floating. Or flying. Being sick. Or lonely. Or bored.

All of those needs give us something to do. For ourselves. For each other. If we had no needs, we wouldn't do anything. We wouldn't need to. And we wouldn't need each other. Or God.

And we wouldn't have dark chocolate. Or ice cream. Cookies. Hamburgers. Pizza. Fondue. Ceviche. Curry. Sushi. Burritos.

Or cars or movies or jeans or books or bikes or skiis or games or TV or music or scuba diving or dancing or theater or pyramids or great walls or tall buildings or short buildings or buildings or

anything. At all. Like friends. Lovers. Children.

Bottom line. Life is clumpy. So we need each other. And we need God.

Get over it.

Life is Chaotic. Then you die.

And when we say Chaotic, we don't mean messy (though life is certainly sometimes messy) but unpredictable. That's what Chaos Theory is all about. Unpredictability.

Life is unpredictable. And then, yes, well, it just so happens that at the end, dying cease to be an option and becomes an imperative.

That might be the only predictable thing about life, in fact. Taxes too, I suppose. Unless you're able to figure out how to not pay them. As some have been known to do.

But just because life's unpredictable doesn't mean it's random.

Nor does it mean that there is no meaning or purpose to existence.

Or that there is no good or evil.

Richard Dawkins and his buds have mistaken unpredictability for randomness.

So the way that life works lies somewhere between randomness and predictability.

So when we say things like God has a wonderful plan for your life or when a door closes a window opens or everything happens for a reason or ask questions like why do bad things happen to good people or most importantly why do bad things happen to ME?, 

we are acting like life is predictable. That there's a reason for everything.

That somebody is in charge and making all the decisions and pulling all the strings and making everything happen according to some grand plan.

God. Or if you don't like God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain or Fate or Destiny or Karma or Aliens or the Buddha or the Military-Industrial Complex or the Illuminati.

We're gonna go with God. Short, sweet, simple.

Now the Richard Dawkinses of the world don't wanna go with God or anything resembling God, so they swing all the way to the other end of the bell curve to randomness.

Frankly, that just shows a lack of imagination.

Let's just use some. Imagination, I mean.

So. Let's just say that life will have good things and bad things in it. Also lots of things that are neither good nor bad but are just ... things.

Now. Everybody is going to get some good things and some bad things.

That seems fair.

So when something bad happens to us, here's what we say - why me?

Yeah, we never say that when good things happen.

We kinda assume that good things are normal and bad things are not normal.

For those who believe in God, sometimes we think that God's main job is to protect us from bad things and make sure we only get good things.

That's just silly.

For those who don't believe in God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain or Fate or Destiny or Karma or Aliens or the Buddha or the Military-Industrial Complex or the Illuminati, bad things are just baaaad things dammit, and good things are great, unless you are Richard Dawkins pretending for a brief moment that there are no bad or good things, there are just things, in which case, a bad thing is just a thing.

Yeah, he never does that. If he ever did, he'd stop saying that religion was bad. For example. He's a total hypocrite. Sorry, Dicky. And he never ever ever ever says that a bad thing that happens to him is not a bad thing it's just a thing. Never ever ever. Nobody does, not even Dr. Dicky Dawkins.

So really, life is going to have good things and bad things in it.

Now. Here's a math question for you. Or two. Several.

Are the good and bad things going to be equally divided in your life? Just exactly the same number of good things as bad things?

And are they going to be equally divided between humans? That is, will every human get exactly the same number of good and bad things as every other human?

And will the good things and bad things happen at regular intervals so that we will know they are coming and 1) bake a cake (in case it's a good thing or 2) run and hide (in case, well, you know)?

And since Death is like the ultimate Bad Thing, is everybody going to die at the same age?

Whether you believe in God or not, the answer to all those questions is the same:

No. That's ridiculous.

So here's what that means. It means that you will have an unequal number of good and bad things happen to you in your life.

Some of you will get way more good things, and others will get way more bad things. Some won't suffer much. Others will suffer a crapload.

Sometimes in life you'll get a crapload of bad things all at once, and then there might be a loooong pause where nothing bad really happens. Sometimes a ton of good stuff will happen all at once.

And since we're all going to die at different times in different ways, some of us will die before we are born, some when we are born, some when we are babies or toddlers or pre-schoolers or schoolers or teenagers or collegians or young adults or middle adults or old adults, and some will die quickly and painlessly and others will not be that lucky.

And some things will happen for a reason, and others will not.

And sometimes doors just close and windows don't open. Sometimes they'll both open.

It's not random. It's unpredictable.

Your life is not paint-by-numbers. It's not fill-in-the-blank. It's not a crossword puzzle.

It's a blank canvas with dangers and joys lurking in the paint, the brush, in your fingers and brain, in the fabric of time and space and in the interactions that are your emerging life.

And every interaction is the artist of your life.

So here's what Chaos tells us - life is clumpy. Life comes in clumps. Clumps of good things. Clumps of bad things. 

And when you get a clump of bad things that happen to you, you wonder, why do bad things happen to good people, but of course, what you really mean is, why do bad things happen to ME?! ALL THE DAMN TIME!?!?

And the answer is (envelope, please), why not?

Bad things happen to everyone eventually. Sometimes terrible things.

But not equally. Some people have lots of terrible things happen to them. 

And others ... don't.

Because the universe is clumpy.

In scientific terms, the universe started out not clumpy at all, and then got clumpier as time went on. So after 13.8 billion years, there's a crapload of clumpiness out there.

So just about the only other predictable thing about the universe is that it will be unpredictably clumpy.

Live accordingly.

OK, that is not helpful advice.

Why bad things happen to good people, or Chaos Theory Explained

Here are some things folks worry about.

Like, why bad things happen to good people.

And, why good things happen to bad people.

Also, does everything really happen for a reason?

Plus, if a door closes, does a window open?

And most importantly, why do bad things happen to ME? Or in your case, YOU?

Now the reasons that we wonder about these things are curious.

It's because there's a certain ... tension ... in our thinking.

Science tells us that there's no reason or purpose for anything.

Not for the universe. Not for the earth. Not for humans.

Not for you. Not for me.

Everything is meaningless. That's what they tell us.

What? You don't believe me?

Well. Since science is all about evidence, here's some. Evidence, I mean.

Richard Dawkins, Oxford zoologist …
…the universe "has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pointless indifference"…human beings are "machines for propagating DNA”.

Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize winner, physiology/medicine
"The ancient covenant is in pieces. Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance."

Carl Sagan – Pale Blue Dot

You are there. Along with all the rest of us.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves."

Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize winner, physics

"Though aware that there is nothing in the universe that suggests any purpose for humanity, one way that we can find a purpose is to study the universe by the methods of science, without consoling ourselves with fairy tales about its future, or about our own."

Bertrand Russell
"That man is the product of causes …;
that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental (collections) of atoms;
that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave;

that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system,
and that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins;
all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."

Stanley Kubrick: "The very meaninglessness of life forces man to create his own meaning."

Joseph Conrad: Life is "that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose."

Jean Paul Sartre: "It is meaningless that we are born. It is meaningless that we die." 

Sartre: "Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance."

Sartre: "Everything has been figured out, except how to live."

Clarence Darrow: Life is a ship that is "tossed by every wave and by every wind; a ship heading to no port and no harbor with no rudder, no compass, no pilot, simply floating for a time, then lost in the waves."

The catch, of course, is that nobody lives like that.

We, and by "we" I mean "everybody", live like there's a reason for us to be here.

And thus, there's a reason why things happen. Bad things. Good things.

And there's supposed to be some sort of ... balance to the universe. 

Justice.

Like, if you are bad, then bad things are what you get.

And if you are good, then you get good things.

The universe is supposed to be sort of like Santa Claus. There's a list. All of our names are on it. And good and bad things get divided up perfectly and justly and fairly between good and bad people.

Now, if there's no meaning to the universe, all of that is just

ridiculous. Things just happen randomly without meaning or purpose, so when a bad or a good thing happens to you or me, well, tough luck or wasn't that nice?

So bad things will happen to good people and good things will happen to bad people randomly and without rhyme or reason, and good things will happen to good people and bad things will happen to bad people randomly and without rhyme or reason.

And sometimes more good things will happen to bad people and sometimes more bad things will happen to good people, because it's all random.

Nothing happens for a reason. Things just happen to people because things just happen and people are always getting in the way.

When a door closes, a door closes. Windows opening are entirely

unrelated and random. Sometimes windows don't open when doors close.

In fact, if we really paid attention to Richard Dawkins up there, there are no good things or bad things, because there is no good or bad. There are just things.

"Good" and "bad" are just levels of comfort and inconvenience that

we make up out of nothing. Because we persist in thinking that we matter. That we are here for a reason. That there is meaning and purpose to our lives.

Silly us.

Perhaps, though, we might be wrong. In part, at least.

That would be ... intriguing.

God Does Not Have a Wonderful Plan for Your Life. Sorry.

A lot of well-meaning but sadly confused religious folk have been walking around thinking this:

God has a wonderful plan for your life.

And our cartoonist from the last blog post has been suckered in by this, as follows:

Our lives are predetermined, so it's not our fault if we do crappy things to each other, and so hell isn't really fair.

That is, God has this wonderful plan, but we, um, aren't interested since sex, drugs and rock&roll are so much more fun (or partying or getting drunk or being a hedgefund manager or a dictator or a serial killer or a rapist or a drug dealer or just your garden variety very nice kind to others giving and generous atheist), so we miss the plan and go to hell. Dang. Doesn't seem right. The last one, I mean.

But our religious folk are confused.

God does not have a wonderful plan for your life.

Your life is not predetermined by God.

Nobody's is.

You get to make decisions. And the decisions add up to being the life you create.

You can make God-ish decisions. Feed the hungry. Care for the homeless. Fight injustice and oppression. Don't be a jerk.

Or you can make not-God-ish decisions. Pretty much the opposite of all of those. Basically, be a jerk.

Religious folks somehow got the idea somewhere along the way that God had everyone's life entirely planned out, start to finish, and you just had to figure out what his plan for you was, and then all would be peachy.

Only he doesn't tell you what the plan is.

Which is kinda nasty.

So you have to guess a lot and hope for the best. And pray. There's lots of praying.

So, the assumption goes, every minute is planned out. And you have to guess right. And he's not telling.

That's not the way it works. Nothing is predetermined. Nothing is planned out. Things might go well. They might go really really badly.

But. Regardless of what choices you make in your life, you're supposed to do the same thing all along the way.

Don't be a jerk. Love God. Love your neighbor. Be nice.

Now. Since God is God (if he exists) and can do anything he wants, he surely might have a plan for someone every now and then. There are examples.

But for most of us, and when I say most, I mean statistically pretty close to all of us, there's one plan.

Live your life. Make good choices. Do the right thing. Don't be a jerk.

That's free will. Take whatever job you want. Marry whomever you want. Live wherever you want. Do whatever you want to do. Live your life. Make good choices. Do the right thing. Don't be a jerk.

Here's what I'm telling you. God doesn't have a job, a spouse, a house, or anything else planned out for you. I'm not saying he doesn't care, but it's not planned and waiting for you.

You get to choose. It's a free will thing.

If you assume that God has planned it all out, and all you have to do is figure it out via prayer and fasting, then there would be, it seems to me, only two types of decisions.

Perfect ones.

Crappy ones.

That's it.

But life doesn't work that way.

Because there are no perfect choices.

Jobs - every job is going to be crappy at some point or another.

Spouses - every spouse is imperfect, and that includes both sides of the spouse coin.

Living here, living there - there are no perfect places to live, and I'm a good source, because I've lived in Zurich, Geneva, Pebble Beach, Monterey, and Colorado, which are pretty danged spectacular places to live.

But not perfect. Spectacularly not perfect, in fact.

Maybe you think God wants you to go to Africa or the inner city or China.

It would surely be fine for you to go there and do whatever it is you think that you are supposed to do.

No offense.

But there stands an excellent chance that it will surely not be perfect when you get there.

You'll be lonely. Bored. Lusty. Frustrated. Scared. You'll hate the locals and the local culture at some point, maybe at all points.

And if you think that you might not have done better to have stayed where you were, well, you easily might have.

Going, staying. Either is fine. Either is a good decision. Both come with good, bad and ugly parts.

It may be that the only real free will decision you get to make is kind of Hamlet-y. To be a jerk or not to be a jerk. Wherever you are and whatever you do.

That's worth thinking about.

BTW, I think it's useful to make the more challenging choice sometimes. Pain and suffering are good for you. Up to a point.

Now It Gets Confusing

So. Here's what we are saying.

In a universe with a starting point where things are not always predetermined (because of quantum uncertainty) or predictable (because of Chaos Theory and the Butterfly Effect), then it is possible that both God and Free Will exist.

That's because thinking types back in the 18th Century said that if the universe is predetermined by the laws of physics and totally predictable and infinitely old, then 

1) you don't need God to do anything and 

2) you can't have free will. 

The laws of physics make everything happen, they've always been there, nobody made them, nobody made anything, and they make you do everything you do.

But since the universe is not infinitely old and the laws have not always been there because they came into existence with Big Bang, and quantum uncertainty is the Way Things Work, then 

1) you might need God to make everything happen and 

2) you might have free will.

Nice. God and Free Will got thrown out together, so they get to come back together. Sweet.

However. There are some skeptical types who say things like this:

If God already knows everything that's going to happen, then you can't have free will, since he already knows what you are going to do.

That is...

if God exists, then free will can't.

Or, if God exists, then HE predetermines everything, not the laws of physics.

Hm. That is a problem.

Because now we're in a place where free will only exists if God exists, but if God exists, then free will can't.

That cartoon right there says it just like some folks want it to be said.

So what you gotta do is look at assumptions and conclusions and see if they are good physics. Since if God exists, he made physics that way that it is.

Here we go.

"If God knows the future"

OK, that works. If God exists, he made space and time (which bounced into existence with Big Bang, so that's good physics). If he made space and time, then wherever or whenever he exists, it's not in space and time. He's outside of space and time. 

(Make sure you get this part. God doesn't exist in a where or a when. He does not occupy a point in space and/or time.

(That's the way we [who exist in points in space and time until we don't exist anymore] understand existence.

(So if someone asks the question, does God exist?, the answer is, what do you mean by existence?

(If he exists, he does not exist in the same way that we do. He created the way that we exist.)

Anyway.

Since he's God (if he exists), then, well, he's God, and he can see all of space and time together. Now since to a photon traveling at the speed of light, all of space and time are one point, then clearly God is at least as cool as a photon, so since he can see all of space and time, then he knows the past, the present and the future all at once. He sees it all. But not like a movie that he has already watched. Everything is a point to God, so he sees it all at once.

That's just physics.

"The future must already be determined, and if the future is already determined, we have no control over our future actions."

You wanna take a shot at this one? Go ahead. I'll wait.

(clock ticking. background humming. toe tapping. very large claw tapping.)

Time's up. Let's see how you did.

Problem the first: our cartoonist, and all the thinkers and philosophers who derived their thinking and philosophy from this cartoon (or maybe vice versa), is/are fooled by time. S/he isn't thinking about God outside of time, but God inside of time, as though the place God hangs out is just like the time and place we hang out, and, well,

it isn't.

We don't know what it is, but it's not time and space the way that we experience it.

So trying to catch God in a space-time trap isn't gonna work.

Problem the second: our cartoonist et al is blissfully unaware that this universe, the universe that if God exists and created it, is quantum. And it's chaotic.

And thus, nothing is predetermined. None of our lives, our decisions, our actions, anything we do is predetermined by anything except maybe behavioral conditioning, and we don't know where that starts and stops.

And that's the way God made it, because 1) if he exists 2) he made it and 3) intended for us to find it 4) the way that it is.

Now you might say, as my atheist friend Trevor once said, well, just because we can't know all of the forces that cause things to happen chaotically, doesn't mean that they can't be known by someone (in a God-like sort of way). And thus, things are predictable.

To which I responded, those forces might be capable of being known, but they get smaller and smaller until they become quantum, and then

they cannot be known anymore, because at the quantum level, nothing is predetermined. Ultimately, everything is quantum, and nothing is predetermined.

So here's the answer. God knows what you are going to do. No, that's not right. God knows what you did, what all of us did, because he sees all of time at once. But what you are going to do is not predetermined and is up to you. He sees the beginning and the middle and end game all at once. But you get to ride the ride and make the decisions yourself.

If you like, it's a quantum thing. He both knows and does not know, depending upon how he is looking. It's all in the observation. And you, as the observer yourself, have a choice to do, or not to do.

Time is not seen by God as a movie. It is a photo. Even though you, and I, and everybody else lives it as a movie.

At least, that's what the physics of the universe tells us.

Problem the third: S/he (the cartoonist) has been fooled by an unfortunate misunderstanding of God's interaction with humans, created by well-meaning but sadly confused religious folk.

We'll talk about that next.