Let me hit you with this one. Just fyi, this might be a bit shorter cause I got apps to write.
Ok, I’m going to assume you have a basic knowledge of protons and electrons. For a one sentence recap, protons and electrons are particles that make up our universe, and they have opposite charges, which mean they attract. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, maybe you should skip this post.
Now then, basically all chemical reactions are essentially protons, electrons, and other particles interacting with one another. Chemistry is the foundation of biology, so basically everything we humans do can be understood in terms of interactions between protons and electrons. Obviously, this is basically impossible in practice because there are ~10^28 electrons in a human body, but my point is that everything we humans do is a result of interactions between smaller complex systems of particles. This, of course, is basically tautological, and is something we just take for granted.
Now then, let’s for a moment, consider what I’ll call the “Conscious Particle” hypothesis. In this hypothesis, all subatomic particles are actually built up from much, much, much smaller complex systems, and are actually what we would consider conscious. While this may sound silly, it really actually isn’t. We humans have no way (as of now) to study the inner structure of electrons to the degree necessary to confirm electrons aren’t made up of smaller complex systems, and we have absolutely no philosophical way to determine whether electrons are conscious.
I imagine this idea still probably sounds a bit silly, but you’ll see why I’m using it in a second. Let’s say we have an electron, and I’m going to call him (look at me go, assigning particles genders) Fred. Fred is just your ordinary electron, going about his life, having fun. Fred can move himself around, but there are certain particles he likes and others he doesn’t like. Fred likes hanging around protons, so whenever he perceives one around him, he moves closer to it. Likewise, he really, really, doesn’t like other electrons, so when he sees them, he runs away.
So Fred’s life basically consists of running towards protons until he’s close enough, and running away from other electrons. He wonders what the purpose of his life is. It seems silly that all he does is run towards and away from other particles, but that’s just what makes sense, so he keeps on doing it.
What Fred doesn’t know is that he’s actually one of many, many particles making up a Golgi Apparatus, which is an organelle in eukaryotic cell. When the Golgi Apparatus wants to send out a vesicle, it sends a bunch of atoms towards Fred, and Fred just does what he’s always been doing, running towards protons and away from electrons, and before Fred knows it, the atom he’s a part of has bonded with another atom.
Now then, the Golgi Apparatus was packaging up a hormone to send outside the cell of which it is a part. This cell is one of trillions that makes up my body. The Golgi Apparatus was sending out the neurotransmitter in response to my wanting to type the letter “w” into the computer in front of me.
Why do I talk about this? Well, humanity is basically a complex system, and it is incredibly good at propagating complexity. Based on the progress being made my boi Elon Musk, soon we’ll probably be propagating complexity on an intergalactic level.
Perhaps what some people consider God is actually just an incredibly complex system of which we are a small part. Just like Fred is one electron in my body, perhaps humanity is one system that makes the super-complexity that is God.
And perhaps everything you do in your life, and everything that humanity does while it exists within our universe, perhaps everything that happens within our universe occurs simply in response to God’s desire to type the letter “w” into a keyboard, so that he can finish a blog post he’s writing.
Just a thought, Mr. Fox.