Chaos Theory

Sometimes you get an idea so profoundly profound that you find yourself profoundly confused. I had just such an idea over the weekend when blogger was down and the computers were down and I couldn't bring myself to face its implications. So, here, in a nutshell is the idea: What if, instead of a Grand Unifying Theory of Everything - a simple law that explained how everything in the universe behaved - there was only chaos. What if, in essence, the Universe was Chaos?

This might seem to fly in the face of both science and theology at once. What do you mean the universe is chaos? What do you mean there's no GUT out there for us to discover that will explain the universe and how everything works? What do you mean there is no grand plan and nothing is controlled? Surely God created the Universe and he set it in motion using laws that we will eventually discover and then we will be able to conquer the universe. Right?

And that was the crux of this thought. What if God created the universe and set it in motion using what we call chaos? What if the key to understanding everything was the notion that we could never understand anything? Like I said, profoundly profound.

So, a little background using laymen's terms. Chaos Theory, in essence, says that we can never predict anything. It showed that for any steady state experiment there will always be some sort of unpredictability based on the notion that we can never precisely measure anything to get an accurate base for our starting point. It was discovered by a meteorologist who was doing weather predicting experiments. He entered in the numbers and got a week's worth of forecasts. Then, on accident, he reentered the numbers using three decimal places instead of six, and discovered that the results changed dramatically. He did some calculations and realized that the difference between three decimal places and six, in terms of weather phenomena, was the approximate equivalent of the beating of a butterfly's wings. This theory has come to be known as The Butterfly Effect and gives the example that whether a butterfly beats its wings up or down at a particular moment can mean the difference between a hurricane in Puerto Rico or a bright sunny day. Further, the difference doesn't stop with the butterfly's wings, because the way the air flows over the wings also can effect the final outcome. In other words, every single minute thing effects every single other minute thing. The entire universe then becomes one giant ball of chaos.

There is also a key component of this principle for quantum mechanics called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or the HUP for short. The HUP states that for objects in motion we can never precisely know where they are located and how fast they are moving. The closer we get to knowing one of the two figures, the more fuzzy the other one becomes. And there is never 100% accuracy no matter how hard you try. In otherwords, you will never be 100% certain that a particle is anywhere in particular. There will always be a 99% chance that a particle is somewhere its not supposed to be, even potentially on the other side of the universe. This leads to all sorts of really weird science - in that particles can be seen to pass through solid objects or have been shown in experiments to arrive at places before they were sent.

Most physicists believe that there is some sort of simple mathematical equation that explains it all. And that if we can figure out this GUT it will show us the way to explaining why chaos theory is and why the HUP isn't so unpredictable at all. In short, science believes that the understanding of everything in the universe in terms of physical interactions is just one equation away.

But, of course, in the meantime, science continues to discover weirder and weirder things that the mathematics and science seem to suggest as being possible - like String Theory (The idea that the entire universe is actually composed of strings so tiny that they could never be seen and that these strings vibrate in certain ways and that's what causes the universe to do what it does - very simplified explanation). So, we've got chaos theory that tells us the universe is unpredictable, the HUP that tells us we will never be able to pinpoint and particles, string theory that suggests we'll never be able to see the things that actually run the universe, and the GUT that says there is a simple answer to all of the above and then some.

I don't know about you but the GUT sounds to me suspiciously like faith wrapped in science's clothing. There is an answer to all of this chaos. We just have yet to discover it. There is a truth that is beyond all of our understanding. We just have yet to discover it. There is a God beyond all of our understanding. We just have yet to discover Him.

And so, back to the thought - the profoundly profound. If we follow that the Grand Unified Theory of everything is pretty much the same, truthwise, as the theory of the Grand Original Design, then it can be inferred that humans could discover the secret behind God's design - that humans could figure out how to be God. But looking at the objective facts - everytime we get close to thinking we've got it solved, we peel back the layers of science and discover yet another layer beneath - perhaps science is pointing to something that faith points to all the time. Perhaps science, by way of failure, has proven the existence of God.

And so what if our universe runs on Chaos Theory? What if the grand design is simply that there is no grand design? That the universe is as deep as it is wide? That it is, in essence, infinite in every single aspect and therefore unknowable? Into this chaos, God creates order. Into this chaos, He injects human beings and creatures that strive to make sense of the chaos around them - only to discover that there is no way to ever achieve that. If science was to prove tomorrow that there is no such thing as a GUT, that there is no ultimate goal to physics, that there is no way we will ever know how the Universe works, entirely, would we not start asking different questions? Would we not change our question from how to why?

Science and Religion are two sides of the same coin. We are all striving for answers. What if the answer is the same in both cases?