Prologue 5: God’s Will

God wants you to appreciate the life that you have and the universe you live in. That’s why She has willed this metanovel into existence.

To understand this metanovel you need to understand evolution and the scientific method. That’s why She has willed this prologue into existence, and willed that it contain this explanation.

Every universe depends on evolution. You may believe that the universe came into existence 14.75 billion years ago and arrived at its present state because of evolution. You may also believe that God created the universe a few thousand years ago and evolution is a recent phenomenon. God doesn’t care what you believe as long as what you believe isn’t stupid. Believing stupid things pisses Her off. You can avoid most stupid beliefs if you understand the scientific method, which is the reason that God invented it, and has willed that this prologue explain it.

God believes people waste valuable time arguing about stupid things, like when the universe was created and whether She exists. The scientific method cannot shed light on either issue. The key element of the scientific is experimentation. No experiment can falsify or support a hypothesis about the date of the universe’s creation. No experiment can support or falsify the hypothesis of God’s existence. Since the scientific method can’t be used, God says it doesn’t matter what you believe. God knows the truth. You don’t. And you can’t. And God says you’re going to have to live with that.

God wants you to understand that if you believe that science has proved anything, you don’t understand the scientific method. Proof is for mathematicians and whiskey distillers, not scientists. Scientists may provide evidence that can support a hypothesis, or that can falsify one, but science never proves things. It never has, and it never will.

Some of the world’s stupidest beliefs are held by people who call themselves scientists. They’re scientists in name only, and they piss God off. Others of the world’s stupidest beliefs are held by people who call themselves Christians. They’re Christians in name only, and they piss God off, too. Saying you’re a scientist or a Christian doesn’t make you one. You’re not one unless you act like one.

God doesn’t care if you believe that the universe is only a few thousand years old. That’s all right with Her as long as you acknowledge that someone antiqued the universe so that it would appears as though it evolved in about 14.75 billion years, and you acknowledge that whoever did the antiquing either was God or had God’s permission. You can believe that the universe is antiqued so that people can see that God’s design is consistent and timeless and elegant and beautiful, or that it’s antiqued to trick you. God gave you free will, so you can believe what you want, but God wants you to know Her opinion: a God who would go to all that effort to trick people is a f***ed up God and people believe in that God are a**holes.

God doesn’t care if you believe that the universe began and has evolved without God’s help, as long as you acknowledge that it could have appeared a few thousand years ago. If you assert that could not have happened then you don’t understand statistical mechanics, quantum physics, or Baysean statistics. It may be highly improbable that our universe could have sprung into existence recently, but it is not impossible. Highly improbable things happen all the time. You, the author, this book, and your reading this sentence at this time are also highly improbable. Yet there you were, defying probability, and reading that sentence. If you can defy probability, so can the universe. And so can God.

God is annoyed at people who call themselves believers and deny God’s beautiful antiquing. They fear that if they admit that the universe appears to be billions of years old that the universe must be billions of years old and then atheistic scientists will use that admission to tear God down. Real believers have faith in God. An omnipotent God can’t be torn down by that or any other argument. She can create universes however She wants. She doesn’t need you to defend Her.

So-called scientists who use science to try to tear God down are bullies. They use their superior knowledge of the details of God’s creation to intimidate faithless believers. Scientists who understand the scientific method understand the scientific method can’t be applied to God’s existence. Scientists who bully believers are fakes.

Faithless believers annoy God, but fake scientists really piss Her off.

They piss Her off when they assert causation when the data only supports correlation.

They piss Her off when they carry out experiments without adequate controls.

They piss Her off when they claim that science has proved a result.

God loves the scientific method. It is one of Her greatest inventions. It pisses Her off when people misunderstand it, misuse it, or deny it. God loves evolution, Her very greatest invention, and it pisses Her off when people misunderstand it, or deny it. People can’t misuse evolution because evolution is so simple that bacteria, dumb as they are, use it. Viruses, which are dumber than bacteria, use it. However dumb you are, you’re not too dumb for evolution.

“I made evolution universal,” God says. “It doesn’t care what’s evolving. It could be hydrogen evolving to become the other elements; it could clouds of gas and dust evolving to become star systems with life-capable planets; it could be lifeless planets evolving to produce life; it could be simple life forms evolving to complex ones; it could be neural nets evolving into brains; brains evolving to become capable of language and culture; cultures evolving to develop complex ideas. It all works. Evolution produces incredible things.

“Evolution takes just four things: inheritance, variation, selection—and iteration. Put them together and a moron can produce everything that’s in the universe. You can be even dumber than a moron if you’ve got evolution. Using evolution takes no intelligence; it just takes time. Using evolution? Anyone can do it. Creating evolution? That takes intelligence. My kind of intelligence.”

All art is produced by evolution, God says. And so is all knowledge.

“The scientific method is evolution applied to ideas, which is kind of cool,” God says. “Start out with stupid ideas. Develop new ideas based on changes to old ideas—that’s inheritance with variation. The changes can even be random. Or stupid. It doesn’t matter. Then pick the resulting ideas that are most useful—that’s selection. Then repeat the process—that’s iteration. Each time you do it, the ideas get better. Eventually you get knowledge.”

“Given enough time,” God says, “you can use the scientific method to know everything that can be known. That’s not how I became omniscient, but it could get you close.”

Inheritance, variation, selection, and iteration are all that evolution needs, God tells us. It’s so simple and yet so powerful.

Everything evolves, including this metanovel, and its author.

You are evolving as you read it.