The Ghost In The Machine

    The jig is up.  There's a ghost in the machine. What I am going to tell you is nothing new.  Every human being knows it in his bones.  Kings to paupers to prophets have yelled it in the streets since the beginning of recorded history, and I am quite sure, long before.  Entropy is a thermodynamic principle that happens at all levels of existence. Systems always proceed from order to disorder.  It is the path the universe is on. Entropy is a property of thermodynamic systems that says ordered systems will degrade to disorder to obtain equilibrium.  A glass of ice water will warm to obtain equilibrium with the air around it. Mathematics tells us that the universe and all its particles began as a singularity: everything was one.  Then there was an event and all matter exploded into the universe and, since then, all the particles in it have been expanding and cooling and becoming more distant from each other.  Eventually all particles will expand to distances where there is no relationship between them.  But there is a phantom force that counters this. Like the universe, all systems of order will naturally degrade to disorder unless acted upon.  I was born a collection of my mother's cells and the things she took into her body.  I was derived from the stuff of the universe that came together to form us all.  I will live a short time, all while the cells in my my body and mind go from order to disorder as I age.  Age is just malfunction at the cellular level: my particles want to be free of each other and return to the universe. That began the minute I was born. My systems will eventually break down and I will die and return to the dust that makes up my planet.  Eventually this dust will be returned to the universe as individual particles which will go out and continue their expansion into the void.  They will continue into the void of the distance between them and all the other particles.  I believe it plays out at all levels of existence.  People are social animals.  We band together in tribes.  In those tribes we try to develop relationships.  If not maintained, those relationships fall apart. There is a concept called social entropy.  Social systems degrade into chaos if not acted upon by some intelligence. And that, I think is key. If the universe existed as a singularity, with all matter in one place and then exploded and is expanding and cooling, what phantom force is countering it?  What intelligence?  Attraction and the relationships that are born from this attraction.  There is electromagnetic attraction between particles.  This caused particles to clump together in suns and planets and asteroids and galaxies and all of Creation. Attraction at the molecular level gave rise to the Earth and trees and single celled organisms and life.  I think God is made of attraction and what comes from it: relationship. In Christianity, God is at his atomic (indivisable) level is Relationship.  He is the relationship(s) that created it and hold it all together against its tendency to expand apart.

    We can see that man knows this in his expression of religion.  In Christianity, there developed this concept of the three-part Godhead: Father, Spirit, Son.  These three parts are said to be in constant communion, or relationship, with each other.  Humans are attracted to God and many have relationship with him.  The whole story of the bible is the story of the relationship between Man and God. Attraction happens all around us.  Humans seek each other out and band together in tribes.  Animals come together to reproduce. Molecules attract each other and create everything we know.  If God is the creative force behind everything we know, clumping things together to make more complex things, he is fundamentally born out of attraction. We too are born of attraction. We are attracted and we form relationships.  Out of these relationships we may fall in love.  And then we create life. "Man was made in the image of God." Man creates art and technology, cities and paintings and poetry. But these things degrade if they are not maintained. Cities fall to dust. Art is lost.  Philosophies born in men's and women's brains slide into the void of the forgotten past, only to be re-imagined over and over by honest and deep thinkers, generation after generation. I believe God operates constantly, always creating - countering the tendency of the particles of the universe to expand and fall out into increasing space.  Just like man's tendency to create. He is the attraction that counters everything expanding to be unrelated, without relationship, without dependence. The reason for this attraction in particles is electromagnetic, we know. But its existence smaller than the molecular level is still to this day largely unexplained. He/She/It is the ghost in the machine of the universe.  Without him, I believe it would all fall apart. Things that happen at a lower level get expressed at higher ones. The attraction between our electrons form atoms, and are expressed in molecules.  Our molecules' attraction is expressed in our cells.  Our cells' attraction is expressed as our bodies.  Our bodies' behavior is expressed in our minds as relationship.  Our relationships are expressed in our desire to group together. This is true of flowers and trees, and animals, and humans.  I believe we are attracted to nature because it is made of the same stuff we are and we long to be with it at all levels, and in it, He exists to be discovered.  Paul (the New Testament Rabbi turned Jesus follower) knew this and expressed it plainly.  He said there is no excuse, just open your eyes and look around in creation, and you will find God within it and over it.  This longing to get back, when we follow it, becomes relationship.  God has relationship with us and we have relationship with Creation.  God walks in the cool of the Garden with Adam and Eve (us). And we are attracted to relationship.  We do this with other human beings, with our pets, and with wild animals and nature.  Finding deep within us in the silence, when we can sit in it, that desire to get back to these relationships.  God is relationship in Christian thinking and he is the love that comes with relationship.  Man has been attracted to and has had relationship with God since the beginning of time.  We long to be with him.  And he, with us. Together, we are the perfect union: the atomic return to our source. Our source is the ghost in the machine of the Universe.