Dear Mr. Stenger,
Coffee thoughts!
I have read up to Chapter Two of your book advocating atheism, which I purchased yesterday. Very interesting so far, but I thought I would pass on a few thoughts before I forget them. You may then begin to understand my take on our human dilemma regarding the concept of God or gods.
I am a writer of fiction with little faith in either God or Science the way they are conceived by the majority. So far your writing does nothing to dispel this pessimism so I am struggling, but will finish your book.
We all wrestle with our understandings about the 'real' world. I have found the history of physics, Penrose and Hofstadter particularly helpful, but they are by no means the end of a personal journey of discovery.
I visited Weimar and Buchenwald a few weeks back and had an iPad app call the ghost hunter by someone called Perkins or something. In any event, while my wife and I were in the woods in the ruins of the old bombed out factory we silenced ourselves because of a shadowy figure kicking around in the rubble. We walked by the site of the stranger some hundred yards away (fearful) and kept our silence. My wife saw a hut recently built and decided to explore. My Ghost app, once activated, produces words. I turned it on, but said nothing and my wife said nothing. The app produced one word 'bees' and refused for a long while to produce more. I understand German and at that point approached a sign on the hut, which described it in German as a bee keepers hut.
I occurred to me at the time that the universe and the app was truly playing with my mind. I still have no rational explanation for the sequence of events which I scarcely would Catherine as coincidence. That would be an insult to reason!
The man in the woods turned out to be wearing the uniform of a German soldier exactly as it would have been in 1945, or thereabouts. The message was almost Ghost like, but certainly a sequence of events with meaning!
The world is truly strange, and I for one can't make up my mind what to think about what is real or unreal.
I do know a vantage point that might be helpful to your explorations,
I play the card game spider solitaire (a great deal) and realise that the two deck game is somewhat analogous to our existence and the existence of God. As you know, to win at solitaire you must get all the sequence of cards right. If by your efforts, the sequences can not be made you lose.
Breaking the game down, you have an initial dealing of cards and secondary rounds that you play when you feel the time is right. You move the cards to get the sequences correct and you only try to play the rounds when you are totally stuck.
To me, the universe is somewhat like the game. There is the set of physical cards cast for you to play with and you have rounds that you can sequence or you can try to pick an opportune time to cast them. The whole game is reversible step by step of play except for its initial structure.
The game, the way it is structured, is vastly different with each beginning. You face off against a 'random' initial distribution of cards and you have to follow the rules if you must win. Many players give up and lose. Many don't think the game is winnable. Having faith and continuing the game is like having faith in God only you see God as not only something that creates the cards, but starts the game off, and in play suggests from your small successes that the game is winnable if you continue on in your Bayesian faith, which some can also override whenever they wish.
The Bayesian truths of Science are no more real than God or you as an decision maker. All forms have dubious validity over the longer term. Science by its nature unearths truths that are later discovered to be misunderstandings. Similarly, our understanding of God and of the forces for good is not written in stone. We understand that our own integrity fades with age, so even we are not realities.
Time being reversible makes our world real again and allows God to back step to re sequence events into a game that is winnable for Him and for Us.
You will also see that God can be thought of as playing the same game as you, but on an extraordinarily massive scale. Ultimately, in each round of development of solar systems what matters are the material evolutionary sequences and the initial distribution of materials. We are seeing that for more and more solar systems the sequences are hospitable to life and possibly even life forms that can parallel humanity.
Thinking of the universe as a game played by God, Science and humanity is a stretch, I know, but what we conceptually have is a world that potentially can be reworked and sequences back stepped. The problem with science is that it has no potential for back stepping and winning the game when sequences can't be fulfilled. In that sense, Science is severely limited as a tool of mankind or any intelligent creature. Science the way you think of it seems to miss Hofstadter's point that we are indeed strange loops configured in ways that allow for reversing and repairing bad or evil sequences that don't reconcile with God's winning the ultimate games.
The idea of God's existence allows players of the game of life to continue to play at life and in many cases achieve a brilliant sequence ... They win! The idea that there is no power that can't reverse the second law of thermodynamics seems ridiculous to me. Even if all logic says no, my attitude can still be to cast another round of cards, do back steps, and re sequence my plays to get a good sequence. This is what faith in God is all about. It's about playing the game of life with and not against an entity that is also playing the same game against what has originally been dealt, but God as a player has a greater range of potential moves including that of back stepping or restarting the game.
It is no accident that God and good are phonetically and historically similar. This is simply because a successful sequence of cards is good and because we see God in such a sequence.
Life is about materialising the sequence of matter in such a way that, at the end, one whether God or mankind or a lesser being can say that the sequence is good and success has been achieved. That's all the game of life asks: learn what matters, understand the rules, play the game the best that you can, get the sequences right and you win! Having God as a companion helps in your need to continue to the finishing line because ultimately nothing remains real unless time is reversible and God = good is at play!
Sincerely your turn,
Arthur Lake
