Okay, this post is about how I can believe in the power of prayer and still remain a small “a” atheist.
I am alive today, I am completely convinced, because thousands of people who I know and who I am completely unfamiliar with were pulling for me to survive. They prayed, they thought hard, they all wished me to recover.
I cannot believe in a God that allows young children to suffer agonizing death. Nothing in me can find justification for that to occur. Therefore I must believe that whatever “greater power” exists in the universe, it must be unconscious, uncaring, in fact not a thinking being at all. It’s just a mechanism inherent in the design,if you wish to call it that, of the universe.
The three laws of thermodynamics state in effect:
You can’t win
You can’t break even
You can’t get out of the game.
Those are the laws of entropy, the measurement of total disorder in a closed system. However if this were factually accurate then stars and galaxies could not form in our universe. All it would have is a cloud of cooling gas. So in localized areas, reversal of entropy is possible as long as the total entropy of the closed system continues to be the same.
Now It gets weird.
In subatomic physics they have broken the components of atoms down to particles called quarks. Each particle has multiple dimensions described by physicists with names like flavor, color, spin, etc. If two such quarks share precisely the same dimensions, as I weakly understand it, and one quark is affected by an outside influence, its matching quark, no matter how far away, responds as if it has received the same influence. It does not matter how far apart the two quarks are.
This is the idea behind Science Fiction’s instantaneous communicator. It violates Einstein’s “no faster than light” limitation. It means that instantaneous communication across vast distances is possible. It has been tested in laboratories and is freaking out the physics community. It may mean that faster-than-light travel is possible.
Here’s my theory:
We as thinking beings are able by thinking the same thing at the same time, to affect local entropy levels and reverse entropy in a localized space. In my particular case, me.
Scott Adams, author of the Dilbert comic strip, set himself a goal through what he calls “the power of positive thinking” to become the highest-paid cartoonist in America. The odds against him were astronomical, but apparently he pulled it off. By himself. (But maybe his fans helped.)
I am firmly convinced that all these people out there wishing me best, praying for my recovery, and asking thousands of others who do not know me at all to do the same are responsible for reversing entropy and saving my life.
You can accept that or reject it, I do not care. This explanation works for me. I cannot stop thinking in a manner I consider to be rational.
Please argue away in the comments.