GOD DOES (DOES NOT) PLAY DICE

Establishment of the laws of motion from the time of Newton led to the acceptance of scientific determinism, which is to say that the paths and motions of celestial bodies are predictable if one knows the speed and position at any given time. Celestial mechanics are behind NASA’s ability to predict that a spacecraft will orbit at a chosen altitude a moon that circles Jupiter some years after it has been launched from Earth. From a practical standpoint scientific determinism serves us well.

But in 1926 German Physicist Heisenberg changed everything with the observation that you cannot measure both the speed and position of a particle accurately. That would carry heavy implications for understanding how the universe works, and had practical import in material behavior as humans learned to make and apply micro and nano-scale electronics. For many years now quantum mechanics has supplanted and sometimes shoved aside determinism.

Appearance of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in 1926 was disturbing to Einstein, who found it hard to accept. That was when he issued his famous statement: “God does not play dice.” He believed that there may exist a hidden variable that would settle everything.

Stephen Hawking discusses determinism and uncertainty at length in one of his famous lectures

(www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/lectures/64), leading to his conclusion that indeed “God does play dice.”

You have to wonder: Why one position to the exclusion of the other? If God behaves like people (all concepts of God seem to indicate this) then maybe God gambles just some of the time.

This leads to a thought train that stems from recent assertions by astronomers that Earth-like planets across the Universe number in hundreds of millions. Here’s where one would think Einstein was right. God would not gamble, placing all his bets on a single blue ball inhabited by us humans. Things could go wrong, and more than once they did go wrong, coming close to wiping out all life forms. Is God a gambler, hedging his bets, or an astute planner, wise to the vagaries, shape and accommodating features of the universe?

Accordingly, in infinite wisdom, to avoid influence and cross-contamination, life sustaining planets were placed at distances from each other that would make it difficult, if not impossible to travel from one to another. So distant in fact, that even transmission of information is impractical (No one is likely to wait a hundred years to receive the next letter).

In this context, whether or not humans survive on Earth is inconsequential for a God who only gambles sometimes. It means we are on our own. If we don’t shape up as a species, shed our prejudicial, predatory, greedy ways for the common good, we’re screwed.