"God doesn't play dice"

Albert Einstein once said that "God doesn't play dice". An interesting comment from a man who didn't believe in God anyway, but as far as Einstein was concerned, what he was saying was that there are a certain set of universal rules in place throughout the cosmos that are fixed. The universe, according to Einstein, isn't chaotic at all, but a well ordered system, governed by immutable laws.

Personally, I don't agree with Einstein. Not that I'm any kind of physicist, of course, and I don't believe in any kind of sentient, conscious god, but if there were a god I say that god would be chance itself.

All that what we see around us is a product of chance. What we are ourselves - human beings - are a product of chance. I can see no other way. I can't possibly accept any kind of traditional "creationist" nonsense any more than I could accept Santa Claus: the universe is fifteen billion years old, our planet is four and a half billion years old, and that's an awful, awful long time for chance to play its game - and considering it has a universe so vast we can barely grasp the numbers of stars, solar systems and galaxies within it, I'd say that the outer reaches of chance is perhaps what life is all about.

To me, DNA is an inevitable product of randomness. It's most likely rare in the universe, yes - baring in mind that any matter at all is rare in the universe, let alone organic matter - but it exists because the universe has been around so long, the chances of matter eventually arranging itself into DNA is only a matter of time. An awful long time, yes. But a finite time.

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It's strange the fascination so many people have for gambling It's a fascination that's been around so long. People have gambled with cards, dice, the flip of a coin, on horse races, cock fighting, which boxer, wrestler, or gladiator will win the fight. People have gambled on the outcome of events and many have invested everything they've held dear to them in the pursuit of more, or of something they want. And what progress would there have ever been throughout history without The Risky Endeavour? And it's been when those endeavours have had the odds stacked most against them that some people have made the greatest achievements in life.

Cities like Las Vegas have thrived on chance: certainly on the common man's ignorance of probability, anyway. Economies have grown and fallen as a result of it. Wars have been won and lost because of it. The gamble Eisenhower made on the morning of June 6th 1944 could have lost the allied the war had the weather not decided to change in their favour that day. Would we be living under Nazi rule today had a few millibars moved on the barometer that morning, or a few neurons fired a little differently in his brain that morning? Who knows? Did something or someone make him feel confident enough that morning to make that decision? Was a nice, relaxing cup of early morning tea responsible for the halting of the nazi war machine?

I'm a huge fan of The Butterfly Effect, as you might see...

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One thing that strikes me odd about us humans, though, is we crave uncertainty. We might think we want it, but certainty is, to many people, a kind of death. It's almost non-life. After all, we all know what boredom is. Isn't it just a type of certainty? People will live lives of apparent luxury, and yet be bored to death.

I can't help thinking that's odd.