God knows

1.
Imagine that one afternoon you’re watching a film (and you watch a lot of them, don’t you?).
Now this is a new film, fresh off the presses, but suddenly it hits you that you know exactly
where this story’s going. I’m not talking about a random hunch or an educated guess about
what could be coming next knowing Hollywood’s penchant for remakes, sequels, prequels or
just repackaging the same tired plots. No, you know. You can visualize, scene by scene – exactly
what’s going to appear on the screen, before it appears. And you know how it’s going to end.
Perplexing.
Later on, early that evening, you sit down to watch a basketball game (disclosure: although you
have better and more important things to do, you waste countless hours watching hoops) and
almost immediately you realize that you know what the players are going to do before they do
it, and exactly how (how well, badly or indifferently) it will turn out. We’re talking here about
complete, certain foreknowledge of every make, every miss, every lead change, foul call and
season-ending injury. And you already know the final score.
Feeling mystified and increasingly edgy, you begin to cast about for alternatives. After half a
round of a boxing match, the opening credits of a soap opera, and a few seconds of a TV game
show, you put everything on pause, and scratch your immense and spectacular head.
Zooming forward a bit: an evening on Broadway and one in the West End, an abbreviated
afternoon of bird watching, and back home. Outside your door, you briefly consider resorting to
something far outside your normal range of activities. You turn back towards the street and
focus, first, on an adult male walking by you and then a young female child screaming at what
appear to be her extremely unfortunate parents. Actually, they don’t just appear to be her
parents – they clearly are her parents and clearly are extremely unfortunate. Piteously so. Just
as clearly as it is that the male pedestrian is on his way towards nearby bar, where he will drink
himself into a stupor, argue with a friend about the utter futility of watching soccer matches,
and stumble back outside, cursing, to be (mercifully, in your judgment) flattened by a garbage
truck.
Ok, that’s it, you’ve had it. As in enough. You’ve got the picture. For whatever reason, it’s all
just one surpriseless and therefore in a sense lifeless puppet show after another, with your
mind wandering and your head beginning to throb, as soon as the act begins.
How long would you persist in these pastimes? Not long, I think. I mean, if you had any sense at
all – if you were even moderately intelligent and imaginative – I think you’d start looking
around pretty damn quick other ways to occupy Your time.
2.
It is at this point, by the way, that you realize that you are God. That You are God,
And pretty soon – because You are at least moderately intelligent – You figure out that there
aren’t any better ways to occupy Your time. There isn’t anything better to do.
Now it gets better (but for You, actually, worse): You realize that, as God, You not only know the
outcome of every event, occurrence or phenomenon You turn You gaze to, but – like some
silent, unseen Producer/Writer/Director – You can make up – and here You realize that You
already are in fact making up – the action, dialogue and flashbacks of the countless
‘performances’, ‘matches’, ‘events’, or in any case phenomena, and in another sense always
‘stories that You watch, even as they unfold before You. By virtue of Your thoughts alone. And
that You possess, and are in fact exercising, full control over all the various beings – be they cast
members, players, contestants, combatants, stags, stag beetles or staghorn ferns in every
occurrence you tune into. We are talking here about complete determination of what and how
every person and every thing does. Of their eventual failure or success, survival or demise, and
post-demise destiny. You are, You realize: All Powerful. And yet, simultaneously, and
paradoxically, somewhat deflated. And indisputably bored.
And so – having Time (spiraling stretches of endless, empty Time) on Your hands (Your itchy,
sweaty, trembling hands) – You reflect further, and (because You are at least moderately
imaginative) decide that, in order to spice things up – to reintroduce the element of suspense
and rekindle Your flagging interest – You will suspend Your omnipotence. And that’s what You
do. You pack it up in a box (labelled ‘OMNIPOTENCE’), imagine a storehouse (which instantly
materializes), and store it away in a small, empty) cupboard (also imagined and conveniently
materialized), labelled ‘DIVINE PROPERTY DEPOSITORY’.
You pop outside to sneak a peek at Your New World. To give it a spin – so to speak. You are
flabbergasted to see that everything has come to a complete stop. Obviously (obvious, at least,
now that You stop to consider it) with no Guiding Force – no Divine Will to determine its stops
and starts, ebbs and flows, turns and returns – nothing can and nothing will ever appear, move,
change, disappear or reappear. Clearly, the World will need a kickstart, or reboot, in the form of
some guiding principle, albeit one inscrutable to potential outside observers. So You look
around Your (newly imagined, i.e. fashioned) office, and Your all-seeing eye is caught by a sign
on a cabinet door reading ‘RANDOM CHANCE DEPOSITORY’). You extract a canister (labelled
‘RANDOM CHANCE’) and shake out a portion of the contents, which fall like beige snow, or
grated Parmesan cheese, covering All The World.
Once again, things begin to move, shake, change, grow, fade, decay, fall apart, break, die and
regenerate, or not, just like before. But to Your divine dismay, You are still fully aware of how
every minimal detail of each process will go. There may be no more rhyme or reason to any of it
(at least none of Your reasons or Your rhymes), but neither is there any doubt, suspense or
surprise (except, of course, for the irksome fact that there are still no surprises*).
* And this did come as a surprise. Which is in itself surprising, given that You’re supposed to be
Omniscient and therefore, presumably, unsurpriseable. You should not only see, but also foresee
Everything – including the fact that this was, at best, a half-baked idea. As they say, live and learn.

For a moment You’re puzzled. You double check the canister’s label. Sure enough it’s pure,
undiluted Random Chance – ‘double strength’, no less, guaranteed to repel and extinguish the
first signs of deterministic contagion.
You smack Yourself on the forehead and shout out loud, convulsing the heavens: “Imbecile! Pea
brain!*
“Yes. Odd that it shouldn’t have occurred to Us”, You answer, and then, reassuringly: “But then
again, there’s never really been any reason to consider the issue”.
But now that there is, it’s immediately, or at least pretty quickly, clear to You that what appears
‘random’ (since it’s not based on any known, or knowable, principles, and is therefore
unpredictable to finite, mortal minds) – e.g. raindrop trajectory and splash distributions, or the
sudden shifts in female moods – appears so only because the underlying pattern of causes and
effects is inaccessible. To them, but not to You. You exist outside the realm of temporal, and
therefore causal, considerations – outside the Grip of Time – and You see very process
backwards and forwards all at once: in mortal terms, from beginning to conclusion,
simultaneously.
“Leaving things up to chance”, You continue – not without irony, not without regret, and not
without a smidgen of bitterness – “is exactly the same thing as leaving them up to Me!”
“Hmm. Yesss. And therefore true randomness – perversely, and paradoxically – appears to be
beyond Our supposedly infinite powers!”

*You’ve (obviously) never had anyone to converse with – to bounce Your ideas off of and have any meaningful
feedback from – and so You’ve developed the habit of talking, and then responding, to Yourself as though You were
(at least) two distinct separate individuals. You sometimes take turns playing Good God, Bad God.

3.
Which gives You something new to stew and chew on for a while – like years, or maybe a
nanosecond, which for You are indistinguishable. Anyway, finally (or immediately, but in any
case, after a double espresso and a cold bath, which always seems to boost your
concentration), something occurs to You.
“Aha!”, You exclaim to Yourself, and chuckle as You remember (or maybe foresee) a Shel
Silverstein cartoon that was or will be drawn in the 1950’s:
You recall a closet where, behind some brooms, a broken photocopier and an old bone (the
jawbone of an ass, actually) You once tossed Samson’s way (that is, somewhere no one could
ever just wind up by accident – which is to say by chance, so maybe let’s just say by mistake)
there’s a painting that you really like (which we would find troubling if we stopped to think
about it): Saturn Devouring his Son: A Study in Damnation (by Goya, in a fit of madness, in the
early 1800s).

After blowing off the dust, and admiring it briefly (or for eons), You remove the painting from
its hook, revealing another cabinet with the sign plaque “Free Will Depository”. You pry the
door open and from the cobwebs pull out and open a moldy cardboard box. In faded blue
letters across the top You can barely make out: ‘Free Will’. It is filled with tiny gold and rose
colored beads, or granules, and a card, also now badly faded, that reads “Happy Birthday, Dad,
love, Pandora”.
“You know … this might actually do the trick”, You say.
“Well, before getting Our hopes up let’s test it out”, You respond.
“Well, let’s do it quickly and quietly, before they get suspicious. If they knew what this shit was,
and what it was for, they’d never forgive Us for roping them into a game they can’t possibly
win.”
After a bit more discussion, and several discarded suggestions, You dial Your awareness to the
mid-twentieth century, and shoot a fine spray of the tiny beads over Eugène Ionesco, Orson
Welles and a group of actors (among whom Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright). Just for good
measure, You skip ahead from there to Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals and dump some over
the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. You rub Your hands as You begin
viewing the two spectacles – simultaneously … while chewing gum.
“Fuck Me!” You scream at Yourself within seconds. “I still know exactly what all these assholes
are going to do! And then You look up and snarl, as though to an imbecilic Twin Brother:
“Seriously? Why the hell couldn’t You see this coming?”
“Me? Why didn’t You see it, genius? Oh, man. I don’t believe this shit. Anyone can see that
Irving’s gonna hit the game winner ___ seconds before the buzzer.”
“And what’s with the Rhinoceros? I mean, what’s the point in a theater of the absurd … if it’s
predictable? This is just pathetic!
You realize that Free Will isn’t going to do the trick either. Free Will, like Randomness, can be imposed
by You, but just as what actually happens will never be random to You (You possess too much
Information), no one, even one endowed with Free Will, will ever be free of You (same problem: You
know too much – and will always see behind the curtain, and into the whirring mechanisms or firing of
neurons and synapses that generate our choices).

Even with You off their backs, those unsung heroes, distressed damsels, serviceable villains and suffering
servants, the point guards, middle linebackers, middleweights, sea slugs, woodpeckers and greater and
lesser apes may be:
 - on their own now, making their own choices and standing or falling by virtue of their own skill or
clumsiness, intelligence or stupidity, strength or weaknesses … or (in the alternative but
apparently mutually indistinguishable version),
- being blown here, there and everywhere by the winds, waves or dollops of good or shitty luck,
entropy and the uncertainty principle), or
- enmeshed in an inextricable combination or mixture of the two.

But the problem remains:

However wonderfully, horribly, logically or senselessly they behave – their behaviors are still
foreseen and foreknown, still predictable. Mechanistically determined, subordinate to random
chance/entropy or endowed with free will, Your players are still as boring as tax accountants.
Irritating even. So much so that, in Your frustration, You (Bad God) catch Yourself occasionally
and inexplicably harassing and punishing them. Making some of their lives, some of the time,
really fucking miserable*.
Until You (Good God, that is – because You are at least somewhat reasonable) realize that this
makes no sense. That it was You who set, unset and reset things in the first (and subsequent)
place(s). They’re just playing along. They can’t help the fact the You can’t help seeing the bloody
script. Even after having set fire to it. Even when there’s not supposed to be one.

* As though if You pushed them hard enough and far enough they might finally fucking up and do
something surprising. But that sea sluggish imbecile Job cured You of any such foolish thoughts.

4.
And now You’re in an even shittier mood. It seems that You’ve painted yourself into (or
dreamed Yourself up in, or maybe have simply always been in) a corner, and are staring into a
permanent state of checkmate, deadlock, impasse, when suddenly, from somewhere – God
only knows where, or maybe You don’t, but I certainly don’t, but anyway from somewhere –
back in the dusty broom closet of Your Mind, an exit strategy takes shape and announces or
reveals itself:
“It’s because We’re fucking omniscient, You twerp!”
“Say what? And who do think you’re calling a twerp, You jackass?”
“…”
“…”
“Aaahh … it’s the omniscience! Because We – as a system – represent an infinite, or at least
unlimited, amount of information integration. That’s what you’re saying!” That’s the fucking
problem!
Yes, You’re going to have to sacrifice Your omniscience, too – dear to as it is You. The only way
any fox hunt, bingo game or holocaust is ever going to be of any interest whatsoever is to
render ALL OF IT unforeseeable, and incomprehensible. And that’s what You do.
You pack up Your Omniscience now as well, reluctantly and with an infinite sigh of resignation,
set it up on the shelf next to the Omnipotence.
Having wound all the pieces up, so to speak, You let go of them, one last time, but this time You
wipe the slate clean. Leaving Yourself (or maybe yourself?) without a clue as to what will
happen.
You begin to watch, wondering (and making side bets on how things will turn out with a devil
you create spontaneously – i.e. without really thinking it through – for this very purpose). For
the first time, You find Yourself truly giving a shit about how things are going to develop, what
any of Your subjects (who, You remember suddenly, are not strictly speaking Your subjects
anymore – although in a certain existential sense they are now more subjective, that is less
objective, than they’ve ever been) are going to do. And, obviously, what the consequences will
be.

Epilogue
So. For those of you wondering why God allows babies to be born deaf, blind and limbless,
allows meteors to destroy defenseless dinosaurs, allows acid rain, category 5 hurricanes and
train wrecks, why He ALLOWS THE WICKED TO PROSPER: now you know.
that the very concept of randomness is without meaning for a Being who knows All and sees All
(having been its Author).

BACK TO THE BIG BANG

… and then remember that in order to push RESET and get things started again from scratch,
You still need it. Then You return to the Big Bang and …
This, by the way, being the moment of Your birth, is a rather moving moment for You, and You
stifle a sniffle and dry a half-formed tear as You watch your fellow newborns – the first
neutrons, protons, electrons, anti-electrons, photons and neutrinos – fly out from the nest,
filling the baby universe. Though this is not Your first return visitation, You never tire of this
spectacle, and You tarry a few minutes to witness again that first dawn – the emergence of
Light.
A deep breath and then it’s back to business. You press START and then fast forward.

So here we have it, You think: the entire world, wound up like clockwork under a set of
deterministic principles and mechanisms (of Your choosing, and therefore perfect). With the
exception of a few naked apes You’ve endowed (in varying measures) with blessing/curse of
self-consciousness and its evil twin, Free Will – just to see (for Your own insatiable curiosity and
prurient entertainment) what they’ll choose to do.
And having set everything up, You let go of the reins and settle back to enjoy the show. But no
sooner has the show started You realize that it can’t go on. Unlike the lux You once so cleverly
fiated – it’s somehow still no good.

Which, You realize, will entail:

a) endowing the entire cast with varying degrees* of Free Will/Consciousness, a batch of which
you’ll have to whip up and pour or sprinkle over them, before they have a chance to consider
and then probably reject it, or …
b) submitting them to the forces of a system of random chance that You could, alternatively,
fabricate and impose.
*You imagine a scale from 0 to 10, with, let’s say, rocks and tax accountants at 0.0000000000001 and the average
human at 4.326.

You fall into a state of inert and seemingly endless indecision over the question of which
solution would be preferable, before finally realizing that the two are in fact mutually
indistinguishable. And so You set the wheels in motion once again.
And of course, given who You are, You’re not just watching all this stuff a single episode at a time –
You’ve got it all going on simultaneously, and Your blessing – and of course, curse – is that you can’t turn
any of it off, even for a few seconds. There’s no down time, no respite. Talk about sensory overload –
You will never get a fucking break.

And so You come to realize that Free Will’s not going to do the trick either. Like Randomness,
Free Will can be imposed by You – but just as what eventually happens will never be random to
You, no one, even one endowed with Free Will, will ever be free of You, for the same reason:
You know too much. You’re privy to too much information, including the choice tidbit that as
soon as you give them free will they may stop believing in and worshiping You – and maybe
start making up stories about You

Idea that omniscience is almost indistinguishable

from omnipotence?

You stand back to observe Your latest handiwork, already imagining (You can’t help gloating
slightly) the rave reviews: “And He saw that it was good”. You tune in to Your first non-
predestinated basketball game – it’s the New York Knicks vs the Phoenix Suns and You don’t
really give a shit about it, but still, You’re curious to see if it can hold Your interest now that
You’re powerless to influence the outcome. But lo and behold, Lord Smarty Pants, no sooner
has the tipoff been controlled by the Suns center than the penny drops. You realize that nothing
has changed. State-of-the-art random programming notwithstanding, You know, as always,
what’s in store – the Knicks lose. Again.
You had thought that the randomness treatment would do the trick. That things would have
been, by definition, unpredictable.

d
Newton did what he could to do away with
the notion of randomness. He gave us the
means to see into the Almighty Clockwork,
AKA the Mind of God. With all the laws
spelled out and there on your desk for ready
reference, all you’d have to do would be to
follow all the relevant information on any
uncertain outcome back through time to the
Big Bang: “The facts, Ma’am, just the facts”.
And, bang, everything would be completely
predictable. Flip of a coin. Roll of the dice.
Time, cause and weather forecast for your
death … you name it. With all the info at
your disposal, you could, in theory, predict
everything.
But as some cynical (realistic) person once
said: “In practice, whenever anyone says ‘in
theory’, it means: ‘not really’”. In this world,
we’ll always be missing a piece or two of the
puzzle. So Randomness is just a lame excuse
–it’s those missing pieces that account for
our inability to understand, much less make
predictions.