Starships and Theodicy

For a million, no, tens of millions of parts and sequences, to go just right, is an achievement of human will, foresight, and… a massive evidentiary wallop against mysticism.

Many people seek evidence for God in deviations from the natural order, in miracles. And indeed, such supernatural intervention, should you run across it, would be powerful, maybe irrefutable evidence.

But I’ve got to say, I look for evidence for God in the total reliability of the natural order. Time keeps on ticking away, levers still pry rocks out of the ground, and this reliability is so sure (contra the advocates of quantum indeterminacy), that you can count on ten million events to go exactly as you plan.

Now, think about it, what could be a more fundamental need for children of God, than for the sun to rise each morning, for the heat to transfer from the pan into the egg, for the next minute to follow the previous, and for the gentle touch to a beloveds face to be carried out through atoms, nerves, neurons, and into their consciousness?

Only in such a world could persons INTEND for things to happen, only in such a world could persons CHOOSE good, by reflecting on experience and instruction, forecasting outcomes, and pushing/pulling against this trustworthy, tangible reality.

So, I look at the grey hairs on my face, at the wrinkling skin, the march of cause and effect aging me, and I see it in the same beautiful sequential cause and effect that allows human minds to put steel aluminum and glass on Mars, and allows any of us to love each other.

You can’t have it without the crashes caused by miscalculation, you can’t have it without pain from the heat transferring to your hand the same as the egg. You can’t have it without metal fatigue, broken gear teeth, fading batteries, communications interrupted by solar storms, you can’t have it without learning from falling, from failing, and from feeling.

So, today as I watched a man made object blow dust around the Martian surface, I became choked up, and tears obscured my vision. I saw God’s wisdom today, and his strength, to create and maintain such a veil of soul making.