Negative Geez by CH3SH1R3 M4TT	Last Updated: 04 July, 2010
Modern Philosophy

God: Software Engineer 04/19/10 Some people think that science is an affront to god. They would have you believe that god, being the supreme being that he is, has taken time and care to prepare this universe for us and that to attempt to categorize and codify the wishes and will of god is the highest insult and no less than blasphemy. I always like to think of it this way: if god does exist, and he really did create all this for us, then he has done such a superb and spectacular job of programming our universe. I literally mean like a computer program. Right from the smallest physically indivisible scales of time and distance right on up through to the immeasurable expanses of the entirety of the universe itself, this universe works like the most flawless computer program of all time. And when you really do try to look to the far extremes of what we can explain about our physical existence, we really can't explain why the program has these mysterious limits. Limits like the age of the universe and what it means to exist before the universe began, the Planck length and time, the smallest indivisible measures of time and distance so small it's pointless comparing them to anything we can conceive of. Limits like the speed of light, which we are told by Einstein will appear to you to be moving the same speed no matter how fast you go, no matter what. Limits like the fact that when you go as fast as light itself time itself stops. Period, that's just a fact. And even limits like black holes and uncertainty. These are all concepts we are wrestling to define even in an age when we fully believe them to govern every aspect of everyday life. Concepts which when thought about, cause us to feel very insignificant and perhaps even frightened about our existence. This is where god comes in, if we just say god sets the rules and the limits we can just write these properties of the program off as gods will. As comforting as it is to think like that I am perhaps literally cursed with a deeper curiosity than that. I have to think that if we can work out the how and why of the properties within the limits, surely we can determine the properties of the limits themselves. There doesn't need to be a god to explain the unexplainable, 100 years ago radiation and dinosaurs weren't readily explainable to the public. We will figure it out. Sometimes I think its fun to think about what aspects of science any hypothetical god might be more angered about us delving into. Space exploration comes to mind, subatomic physics, maybe, genetics? I think subatomic particle collisions would probably get his attention. If he did write the program for the universe, what would you assume he would be more angry about? His beloved creatures, finding themselves placed here on lovely mother earth, oasis in the desert of the cosmos (supposedly) decide to ride some firecrackers to the next nearest rock in search of something to do to try and outdo one another? Or attempting to smash the tiniest things we can control into one another, at the most incredibly fast speeds at which we can possibly get them to travel and watching what kind of even more minute parts fly out of the ensuing aftermath in an attempt to codify and perhaps manipulate the way our very reality is sewn together and displayed for us? If god's a code-monkey, seems it might be quite the eff you to try and crack the source code for his operating system. Even worse, what about when we try to hack his favourite desktop application: life? Breeding, eugenics, genetics etcetera. We're further along with our attempts on those fronts, after all life is just a pet project, the real pride of creation, the true masterpiece is our universe itself. -CH3SH1R3 M4TT Share

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