Chance
&
Uncertainty

You know,

it's really quite strange that humans would feel

that numbers say something other than

the truth of what they live through in the world around them.

I mean, it's not just that thing with the coin toss.

Playing with the numbers to work out real probabilities

can throw up all sorts of oddities.

With 365 days in a year

it doesn't seem right, somehow,

that in any random group of 25 people

it is more likely than not

that two of them share a birthday.

Why would life feel different from the maths?

Well, it would seem that life is not numerically precise,

some things about life are in sync with number

and some are not.

As far as being the sort of thing you can measure and define by number,

we're sometimes this

and sometimes that,

but somehow both of them together.

What a state to be in.

And we function quite happily in it,

feeling like it's always this and that,

and ignoring the other that lies somewhere inbetween.

So when deciding what is true,

and what we choose to do,

are we just trying to find and follow our best guess?

It used to be thought that everything was much more solid

until Heisenberg came along

and showed that things were a lot less certain than they seemed.

But that only seemed to be relevant at sub-atomic levels,

in ways that didn't affect much else.

No one really thought that quantum theory

would be seen as an essential part of the workings of everyday life.

Until it was realised that the numbers

according to quantum theory

suddenly made it possible to explain

the subtleties of the sense of smell,

or birds ability to migrate vast distances

by seeing the earth's magnetic field.

Even more crucial to human existence,

the ability of the green leaves of trees and plants

to convert sunlight into chlorophyll,

and from that turn carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe.

Even closer to home,

quantum mechanics, with all its uncertainty,

is now used to describe and explain

the functioning of the human brain

and human consciousness.

Our self-awareness is not exactly chance,

but it's not exactly certain either.

It's probably best to recognise

that our perception is very much a deciding factor,

as it can be in experimental results.

From being in the state of that spinning coin, we make our lives real

by constantly choosing between heads and tails.

It feels as though we have past and future,

but what we actually have is an ever- changing

constant unquantifiable now.

We are like Schroedinger's cat

living in a point between the future and the past.

The future is the field of judgements and choices

made available to us at the will of the Creator,

On this journey into the future

we are given the choice between good and bad,

a preference for truth or falsehood,

generosity or meanness,

bravery or cowardice,

and all those things that are so hard to define in numbers.

An unformed future is made available to us,

and God the Shaper gives it form

according to what we choose,

and as the pen writes our lives in time,

all that is left behind us is a memory

of the life that has made us

and we have made

choices we have made and the actions we have taken,

from which to learn,

so we can pick the straight path,

the best way into the future,

learning from our experience

so as not to make the same mistakes again.