God and chance

“God does not play dice”
— Albert Einstein

Einstein was wrong. God does play dice. What Einstein was referring to was his own rejection of a chaotic universe. Instead, I believe that God invented the game, but that He indeed does allow a certain amount of random chance within the constructs of the game He’s created.

Some argue that even God does not know the outcome of these ontological dice He rolls, until they settle. Such is a proposed solution for the problem of Free Will. Succinctly, how can people have freedom of choice within a deterministic creation?

The notion of predestination is impossible to avoid, as it relates to nearly everything in life. For instance, survivor’s guilt — that pang of disbelief in surviving a traumatic experience and being left to ponder why comrades weren’t spared.

Or another is country of origin. How is it that I find myself born to the greatest country of the world, into the One True Religion of the world, during the greatest moment in history? All three of those criterion constitute a very narrow window of opportunity for birth. What were my chances? Let’s take a look:

World population (on April 1, 2000) = 6 billion ¹General population data taken from the U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. Population (on April 1, 2000) = 281,421,906 ²ibid
Percentage of Protestant Christian Americans (2001) = 36.6% ³Religious population data taken from Adherents.com and About.com, Religious Affiliation
========
1.7 people in 100 are born just like I am.

Those are fairly narrow odds. This leads me to conclude one of two things:

Postulate 1) My birth was preordained by the Architect of my faith.

In other words, these odds are slim enough to believe that an act of God intervened on my place in history.

Postulate 2) The criteria of my birth do not hold the significance that I believed.

In other words, what I believed separated me from all the other poor saps on the planet may not be all that. My Muslim counterpart in some (more than likely) un-democratic society in an Arab country (more than likely) wants nothing to do with Western democracy. He wants extremist governance like I want my decadent freedoms.

He also does not believe himself to be damned to an eternal pit of hell. He believes at least as strongly as I that his way is the true Way. In fact, he believes it so much that he and his fellow believers are willing to destroy themselves for their belief. Liars don’t die for their causes. Lunatics might, but who can judge lunacy?

And finally, as far as eras go, he and I both share this same time: now. My present is blessed with the modern conveniences that my American republic government affords me. His is presently cursed with war and turmoil, not necessarily borne out of his own religious background, but possibly from imperializing countries like my own.

So what are the odds? Which way of life is better? Is there actually a cultural superiority to one government, one religion over the other? Did God play dice with us like lab rats in an infinitely complex experiment? Or is all that complexity a finely tuned machine, with an immaculately ordered outcome, wherein one side truly is privileged?

What are the odds?

Footnotes

• 1
  General population data taken from the U.S. Census Bureau
• 2
  ibid
• 3
  Religious population data taken from Adherents.com and About.com, Religious Affiliation