What do you believe in - God or Nature?

There exists the believe in a singleton god who has created everything and who is the reason of existence for our world by merely thinking it. Then there also exists the belief in spirits, the animism and the belief in nature. Nature is animated by different spirits be it in the form of humans, animals or other livings. There are of course also the spirits of the deceased or more than this all the spirits who do currently not have a physical likeness. A nascent living or even just a physical object can thereby be animated by a spirit who uses the physical object to express his/her will. Shall the spirit stay there for longer then the capability of sensory perceptions needs to be given via that object. Then there also exists the belief in strict mathematics which can be expressed by the belief of our world emerging through the execution of symbol manipulations. This is definitely not absurd if we consider the progress of nature sciences in recent times and the mathematical methods they apply.

For now let us come back to the belief in a singleton god as it is wide-spread in western religions and systems of thought. If we believe that there is a singleton god who is alone and needs to think our world for it to exist then we need to assume that this god would need to become mad in a little while at least if he would keep to have human traits. We as humans do always depend on other humans or at least on our nearer surrounding to communicate or get in touch with. If you lock a human being in a dark and naked room then he or she will fully loose the context for reality with dramatic consequences within in a short while. Now it is at least in Christianity the way that the human being has been created as the image of god which means that there is an inherent similarity between god and humans which could hardly err in such a fundamental property of human beings.

Is it the way that god has just created our world and then walked away apart from enacting occasional interventions on our world? That may sound much more plausible. Let us examine this model for its explanatory power. However if this applies we can not assume god as singleton cause for our world because then there needs to be a mathematical mechanism besides god that keeps executing our world. As far as good. Now let us come the explanatory power of the myth of creation. We do not want to deny that it is possible to create something that is more complex than its creator - and this is the only case where the explanatory power of the myth of creation is greater than zero. There is absolutely no sense in explaining something by something more complicated.

Now if the world is more complicated than god himself then he can not have full control over our world. Let us further check this thought for its plausibility. We as human beings who have proven themselves in nature and formal sciences know just too good how hard, complex and difficult it is to create something. We are far apart from re-creating artificial live not even as 1:1 copy of already existing live which is far more easy and does not require deeper understanding. We can not even create a much simpler form of live.

On the other hand there is a principle in modern physics called self-organization which means that more complex structures can emerge on their own out of chaos. However it is still a mystery to physicists how it really works. Someone who adheres to the belief in spirits will interpret the principle of self-organization the way that a spirit can manifest his/her will as she/he likes wherever something is governed by chaotic processes; at least a spirit who has not fixedly bound herself/himself to a fixed physical likeness. The personification of nature forces like wind and weather arises from a similar principle.

For now let us come back to the belief in the mathematical definability of our world or of everything that exists. According to the view of the author everyone who believes in the animateness of our world by spirits (animism) is also free to believe in the mathematical definability of our world. Consequently we may research for the basic reason of our existence this way. Let us start with a pure random generator that creates a truely random sequence of bits or bounded integer numbers. If we just waited long enough at this random generator then every structure which exists in our world would some day appear in the random sequence. Now the objection is valid that a dead sequence of numbers will remain a dead sequence of numbers. It can not reflect the animateness of nature. However if we just add a second property things can change radically: The property to apply a structure on top of its own or on a part of its own. Suddenly we have created a sequence of execution into our dead pool of numbers; something that changes over time. Now the thought that self-similarity is a fundamental property of nature may come into our mind. Just think about a fern leave: Each leave of a fern looks like a small fern on its own. When it comes to physics you may think of the apple manikin a depiction of the mandelbrot set which is also highly complex, self-similar and created by a comparably simple mathematical rule. Also in these structures a part of the structure is similar to the whole structure like when things emerge with the self-application of a structure on (part of) its own.

In a fact we have already laid the base for the compatibility of a formal or mathematical creation myths and the belief in the animateness of nature. A spirit can thereby be interpreted as a structure with self-application upon its own which always happens to emerge new thoughts in exchange with its environment; a structure which is self-contained by its own.

However there also still exists a thought enrooted in the past centuries of scientific evolution that we will soon know all the nature law or at least that this would be possible by principle. We can extend this thought by simulating the brain of a living and thereby anticipating its future decisions. According to chaos theory such a simulation could yield very different decision results than the living will take on its own later. The way of thinking does however not deny that this would be possible without problems. Furthermore all other processes in nature could be simulated by a good enough knowledge of nature law.

However a short view of mathematics can teach us that we may not even succeed in attaining accurate knowledge of nature law. Encryption mechanisms have been devised to work without surrendering the secret they hold - a secret in the form of a private key. Something like this could also exist in nature or the nature laws. Then something would be measurable but the underlying laws which govern the measurements could never be reconstructed.

Concerning our processes of thoughts we may even arrive at similar assumptions. Albert Einstein has once told that when you see a clock you may only envision but never know the basic mechanisms that make the clock work. In computer science we can actually recreate biological systems with neuronal networks up to a certain degree. However it seems to be absolutely impossible to find out how a neuronal network has arrived at a certain decision. Even if you add an explanation component to the neuronal network the explanation it produces will be fundamentally different from the way it has arrived at its decisions. We all know this as humans: We decide with our heart and explain things with our intellect.

Independently whether we will ever be capable of simulating a complex system like the brain of an animal or not the belief in the animateness of nature will retain its validity. Why should there not be a spirit who may manifest his/her will in a structure created by humans?

The fact that we may not look into another spirit or soul to foresee his/her decisions will be maintained. We need to see that the principle of data encapsulation which is enacted here is a fundamental principle in computer science or more accurately in the object oriented programming paradigm. As such it is part of a majority of programs written by humans (especially of bigger programs). Thereby it is also not possible to foresee in advance what a living will do in the future because its thoughts will only manifest themselves a very short time in the living before they are enacted (Apart from the fact that we currently do not have a method to decode thoughts.). The spontaneity of spirits remains because spirits arrive at decisions due to parameters and values that are only known to themselves and can never be measured from the outside.