Chaos, Weather, and the Problem of Evil

In comments on my previous post (The God Wouldn’t Do X Fallacy), I made reference to a point I wish to develop further here. As another tool to help understand the points I’m making, you might want to familiarize yourself with Time and Again, a short story I originally wrote in 2003. (That story will function as an analogy of the argument I will present here; it is not necessary to read it to understand the argument though.)

The Chaos Theory was popularized in the late 1980s and early 1990s by non-fiction authors such as James Gleick (Chaos: Making A New Science, 1988), as well as fictional works like Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park. We’ve also seen the concepts in various movies, like The Butterfly Effect, named for a concept straight out of meteorologist Edward Lorenz’s computer weather models. Although exaggerated, the concept is that if a butterfly flaps its wings in China, in six months the weather in New York will be different from what it would have been (the exaggeration is merely on the length of time, not on the fact that there would be a difference).

In reality, this echoes back to a concept that humans have known for some time. For instance, in the parable that most school children know, we’re told: “For want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost; for what of a horse, the rider was lost; for want of a rider, the battle was lost; for want of a battle, the war was lost; for want of a war, the kingdom was lost.” Ultimately, losing the nail caused the loss of the kingdom.

In essence, therefore, the chaos theory is built on the fact that small variations in the initial conditions of a complex system will cause, over time, extreme variations. For the purposes of this argument, we will look strictly at the nature of weather as applied to history.

Since weather is a complex system, then it is true that a butterfly flapping its wings will alter weather over time. This is due to the fact that certain air molecules will collide with other air molecules that would not have been touched without the movement of the butterfly’s wings. Over time, these small changes build up, until the end result is vastly different from what it would have been. Thus, we know that if we sneeze, we have changed the weather at some point in the future from what it would have been. Unfortunately, we do not know how the weather is changed. In essence, it’s like shuffling a deck of already shuffled cards. We know that the outcome is changed by the extra shuffle, but we do not know how it has changed.

When dealing with time, specifically in the aspect of time travel, we often run into paradoxes. For instance, most of us have heard the problem of a man going back in time and accidentally killing his grandfather before his father was born. Since his father was never born, it means that the original man was never born either. But if the original man was never born, then he never existed to go back in time to kill his grandfather. Which means that his father was born, and the man did exist to go back in time to kill his grandfather, etc.

But the aspect that is overlooked is the fact that one does not need to go back in time and actively kill one’s grandfather for this to happen. If someone went back in time, the very fact that he existed in that time changes the very weather from what would have happened, just as surely as a butterfly’s wings changes the weather. The difference now, however, is that those in the future can see the effects. That is, it’s like someone who has been dealt a hand of cards going back in time and shuffling the deck before it’s dealt. He now can see that the cards handed are different. And those differences not only can add up to various extreme differences, but invariably must.

Weather can often be fatal. We just had fatal tornadoes in the news, and a fatal cold snap. Frosts and draughts are responsible for great quantities of lost food, which can lead to famines. Even if these changes do not occur immediately, simply “popping” into existence in a previous time will cause those events to be different. Famines that occurred before now don’t, whereas times that had no famines now receive famines.

Couple this with the idea of people meeting and falling in love, and you can see where the paradox can come back into play. Suppose that you go back in time a sufficient distance such that your popping into existence has sufficient time to alter the weather globally in minute ways. If your grandfather is killed by a draught before your father was born, you have the same problem as if you actively killed him. In the same way, if someone else did not die in a famine, becomes a love rival to your grandfather, and your grandmother marries him instead of your grandfather, you are left with the same dilemma. (Indeed, it is actually even more of a dilemma that that, since the individual sperm cell containing your father’s DNA requires a very narrow time frame in which sexual activity could have occurred.)

Now, the purpose of this argument is not to show problems with time travel! It is to demonstrate the vast, complex intricacies of our climate. All of these things had to have happened exactly as they did happen in order for us to be where we are today. And that is where the problem of evil comes into play in this argument.

If Adam and Eve had not sinned, we would not be here today. None of us would. Theoretically, other people may be here in our place; but one thing we know of for sure is that none of us would be. Likewise, if Cain had not murdered Abel, then Abel would have existed in order to change the weather just as surely as a butterfly's wings. All these little “insignificant” details add up over time.

Thus, in order for the world to be at this exact point in history that it current occupies, everything that preceded today cannot have been otherwise.

One final thing to note: the world as it currently exists is not final. It is still moving forward toward an ultimate goal: the goal that God has in place. Logically speaking, if that ultimate goal is the supreme good, then our current world of evil is a necessary step to gaining that goal. As such, in order for God to achieve His highest good, this would be the only means by which He could attain that goal. If this is true, then the atheist arguments against Christianity ring even more hollow than before.