God’s big decomposition problem

I was going back through some old journal entries when I found this one. It was definitely entertaining enough to be blogworthy, so I made a few small edits to it.

If there ever was a God who is simulaneously good, omniscient, and sovereign, then it’s obvious that He does not operate on this world as a centralized controller. Human beings are not like the ocean’s waves that can be calmed by a single command, or the mountains that can be moved by a simple act of faith, or the universe that can be spoken into existence. Rather, we are autonomous agents with a significant amount of free will–so much in fact that our very existence has led many to doubt at least one of 3 characteristics of God described above. But what if instead, God worked in a decentralized manner? Then it is then possible for God to be good, omniscient, and sovereign, without having to control the outcome of every situation. I will use a model that stems from decomposition theory in operational research. Hopefully, tough questions like these that are hard to answer using conventional apologetics can be answered by modeling God’s purpose as a decentralized optimization problem. Suppose that God is trying to maximize some function, which we will denote “God’s glory”. “God’s glory” depends largely on human actions, but does not necessarily correlate with what makes each individual happy.* However, provided that the distributed mechanism is sound, the world will converge to “God’s maximum glory”. There are many popular distributed optimization approaches that exist, but for the sake of argument, I will just stick to the two most popular decomposition methods in engineering: 1) Dual decomposition: This is the mechanism that can be used to reveal God’s righteousness through judgment/punishment. Herein lies the idea of karma: if you break the rules, you get what you deserve. In dual decomposition, there are no constraints to free will. God does not say that you are incapable of sinning, only that if you sin, you will be “taxed” or “priced” for sinning. This provides both awareness and incentive for righteousness. A prime example of God’s dual decomposition involves the old testament nation of Israel: Seek the Lord, and be blessed; turn away from the Lord, and be punished. “Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” 2) Primal decomposition: If God decides instead not to punish people, but to directly influence/change people’s nature, He can accomplish this through primal decomposition. In primal decomposition, each person’s utility is not only a function of his own actions, but also an external coupling variable introduced by a higher (possibly centralized) agent. Primal decomposition can also have numerous levels of hierarchy. Then what is God’s primal decomposition? This would be His kingdom coming through His spirit and love, a direct allocation of resources to anyone who believes. First, consider how His kingdom is built: it started with Jesus Christ, who dispersed knowledge of God by teaching 12 disciples and many others during his ministry. Through his act of love on the cross, he demonstrated God’s love to sinners. His believers went out and shared this message with others, some of whom became believers as well. Likewise, God’s spirit is what marks us as saved. This comforter and helper is the variable that couples us with God. After all, Christianity is all about the relationship. =) What are important lessons to take away from decomposition: Scale: Different things require different amounts of time to come to fruition, depending on how knowledge, righteousness, love, and spirit of God are distributed among agents. Different hierarchical levels may also communicate at different frequencies, thereby dispersing the knowledge/blessing at different times–possibly even years into the future. In other words, God has his own timing, and a believer in the distributed nature of God’s workmanship will know to wait on Him. Temporary setbacks: Distributed optimization does not always require the state to improve during each iteration, only that in the end, “God’s glory” will be maximized. In other words, there is a place for suffering in a distributed environment, and suffering can often be on a path that leads to good. Therefore, one should not give up hope just because he is going through a tough trial. Miscellaneous distributed structures in Christianity: -The church (or gathering of believers) is and has always been run in a distributed fashion, usually with a shepherd periodically overlooking them. Just think about the apostle Paul and letters he writes to various churches. -Prayer: this is the channel given to distributed agents to communicate directly with the centralized agent, or God. If you believe in prayer, meaning that God listens and answers, then this is an extremely powerful means of communication. Some thoughts left out of this rambling that may be considered in the future: -I did not consider the dynamic nature of human beings. In particular, there are other game theoretical results for multi-agent systems where future reward is considered. In general, temporally-minded people have beta < 1, meaning reward that can be modeled in their minds as R(0)+beta*R(1)+beta^2*R(2)+…., where R(0) is the immediate reward, and R(t) is the reward at time t in the future (a continuous model can be used). Eternally-minded people have beta = 1. In general, people have beta < 1. God’s timelessness probably corresponds to time-averaging (beta = 1), so it is often difficult for humans with myopic vision to discern the will of God.

Clarification on my neutrality towards prop 8

Most of you might think that I would be a “yes” on prop 8 due to my Christian beliefs, but actually I am neither for nor against. As I see it, extending the *legal* definition of marriage to include couples of the same sex is very much a cultural issue that depends very much on how people view marriage. And as far as I see, on this issue, people do not vote based on pure reason, but based on their desires for equality of rights, for recognition, for protecting their children, free speech, whatever. Here’s how I see the so-called “justifications” for and against prop 8.

1) Yes on prop 8: This can include a wide range of people, from conservative parents to various religious groups. I will use Christianity as I am most familiar with what the bible says about marriage.

Many claim that gay marriage should not be tolerated because it goes against God’s institution for marriage, which should be between one man and one woman. This might be true for “Christian marriages,” but aside from the argument of separation of church and state (which I actually find a weak argument for various reasons, more on that later maybe), there is another reason why I find this argument weak. If one argues that biblically, God ordained marriage to be between one man and one woman, then he must also be willing to accept all other laws regarding marriage that God has ordained. For example, divorce should be outlawed except in the case of (reported) abuse or extramarital affair. Jesus himself said that a divorce is a sin unless the spouse has cheated or abandoned you. But people get divorces just because they “don’t love each other” anymore, or they don’t think it’s “working out”. The question then is, if you are fighting so hard to make gay marriage unconstitutional in order to “protect” marriage, why aren’t you working half as hard to change other marriage and divorce laws?

2) No on prop 8: (Marriage is a right, not a “right thing to do”.) Most arguments stem from the fact that marriage in America seems to mean nothing more than a lifetime commitment between two individuals. In this case, gay marriage is a simple extension of straight marriage, by allowing a minority the same rights as the majority. It is no different from interracial marriage extending from same race marriage. But according to this logic, it also means that incest between a brother and sister is an extension of straight marriage, and hence should be tolerated. And taking it a step further, you have to consider polygamous cultures, such as Muslims and Mormons. Why can’t a wedding involve 3 or 4 people? Is there anything wrong with that? Arguably no, granted that the meaning of this word “marriage” can be amended to include lifetime commitment between a *group* of individuals.

3) Why I am neutral: This has nothing to do with being indifferent, but rather the fact that I see marriage as a purely cultural ideal. I don’t believe laws are made based on logic so much as they are based on a mix of beliefs, power to enact these beliefs, comfort with these beliefs, and personal desires. In America, where we are inspired by a mix of Christian monogamy, separation of church-and-state, and Disney romances, we believe in marriage primarily as a binding commitment of love between two (and not more) individuals, traditionally between man and woman, though less so today. In Muslim countries, as in many ancient cultures, men are accustomed to have multiple wives. In remote regions of China, some women have multiple husbands.

Given different meanings attached to the word marriage, which may stem from numerous religious, philosophical, or cultural ideals around the world, America will eventually choose its meaning. (It will probably coincide with that of the ancient Romans.) Regardless of what is chosen in legislature, there is no difference in the great calling for Christians to live holy lives within, or in pursuit of, God’s definition of matrimony. The question is how far should we go to change restrictive laws regarding marriage, divorce, abstinence vs protection, restricting pornography, etc. Or how far should we go to grant everyone equal opportunity to pursue their desires for “marriage”, whatever it means. I have no real answer for that, so I will just leave it up to you to ponder the slippery slopes of conservatism and liberalism. In the end, however, I speculate that most of us voted based on our own desires more than based on pure logic. It’s human nature.

The moderate independent,

Foo

The Probability Factor in the Creation vs Evolution Debate

In this post I want to examine the debate of creation vs evolution from a different angle. I am neither in favor of one or the other, but before you dismiss me as an ignoramus, hear me out. Indeed, I am somewhat Christian by “faith”, though I do have several qualms with philosophical aspects of Christianity. Nevertheless, in the realm of science vs religion, I believe that there is a very important aspect that has been left out of the public debates, most likely because the average listener/debater is not an expert in probability theory. However, I will try to present this argument in a simplified manner using a numbered outline..

1) The theory of evolution is often viewed at a very macroscopic model with too many unknown variables and is thus difficult to verify, even if the probabilistic principles driving various aspects of the theory are sound.

At the top level, you have natural selection determining which animals “tend” to survive and which “tend” to die. This is largely based on the existing environment and the survival and propagation of a particular species, which is correlated with certain “favorable” traits obtained through either mutation or sexual reproduction. Note that the number of factors (e.g. environment, interactions and behavior, genetic traits) are huge and therefore very difficult to analyze jointly. Experiments can only verify that certain aspects hold statistically in isolation (or using only a small subset of factors). Complete, joint experimentation is too complex and takes too long to conduct.

2) There exists a truly probabilistic element in the universe, namely, that particles exhibit probabilistic wave functions.

I’m not a physicist, but from what I know that according to quantum mechanics, before observing any particle, the particle exists only as a probabilistic wave function which collapses upon observation. It is entirely possible (though not probable) for a baseball to be thrown horizontally and yet curve upward into space. In any case, to analyze sexual reproduction or gene mutations at the quantum scale is intractible. Hence evolution is still modeled based on statistical experiments at a higher level. Hence, while some mistaken quantum physics to support the theory of evolution, this is not true, though it is philosophically “consistent” with evolution.

3) What is often measured is the “average case” or “high probability” behavior, not the “ground truth”.

This is hopefully self-explanatory and is related to the above argument (intractibility). A simple illustration is brownian motion (the precise behavior of molecules) for an object at rest (a macroscopic, average behavior). One might perform kinematic experiments based on modeling the object as a whole, instead of accurately measuring the precise locations and trajectories of its individual particles.

4) The laws guiding the universe are assumed to be stationary.

Stationarity is a concept derived from the theory of random processes which states that what has happened, is happening, and will happen in the future (as time goes to infinity) will always follow the same distribution. Stationarity is an extremely important assumption required for the scientific method to hold, since, given that a result is validated, then it has always held in the past, holds in the present, and will always hold in the future. Otherwise all experimental results are meaningless.

5) 3-4 makes a strong case against young earth creationism, but only “with high probability”.

Stationarity can make a strong case against young earth creationism for two reasons: it supports the big bang with high probability. If the physical laws have always held as they do now, based on astronomical data there should be a singularity (with very high probability) around 13-14 billion years back in history. It also makes a case for the accuracy of radioactive carbon dating.

6) Interestingly, young earth creationism is also consistent with scientific theory based on 3 and 4.

Why? If the world indeed operates based on nondeterminism, then however negligible the probability of young earth creationism, there is still a non-zero probability that universe arranged itself accordingly in 7 days, just as there is a negligible (but non-zero) probability that the universe exists in its current state at the present time! To understand this, one needs to remove the paradigm of thinking in terms of “wholes”. We are not discussing the average behavior of macroscopic objects, but rather each individual quark, boson, muon, etc. in the observable universe. The reason why our observed universe has near zero chance of existing is a simple consequence of the sheer number of particles in the known universe, and the fact that they each exhibit probabilistic wave functions.

Hence, even if observable evidence points to the big bang “on average”, the universe need not always behave “on average”. Christians believe that with God all things are possible (though not necessarily probable)–and in this case God needs only operate within His own designed physical rules! Hence young earth creationism is consistent with scientific theory under the “guidance” of a non-quantum Cause.

7) Young earth creationism can not be experimentally verified. (i.e. it is philosophically valid, but can not be considered science.)

Unfortunately, due to its extremely low probability of occurence, it is nearly impossible to experimentally validate the 7 days of creation theory. The only tools that can be used to support young earth creationism is suggestive evidence (e.g. almost every nation had a “dragon” in its mythology/folklore, suggesting that humans might have lived among dinosaurs). Otherwise, it must be accepted by “blind faith”.

Another way to think about it is the following: If you saw a “miracle”, could you repeat it?

Conclusion: I am not the most eloquent writer, but hopefully this post has helped you to think “outside the box” regarding the debate that has been all over the news since… 1844. And hopefully those of you who are on different sides of the spectrum can develop an appreciation for one another’s viewpoints.

The Discipline of Lent

I was never familiar with the Christian discipline of Lent. I guess I would have said that Lent is too traditional; it’s something more commonly observed by Catholics or “conservative” Christians, much in the same way Muslims celebrate Ramadan.

So how come I decided to observe Lent this year? Well, a guy in my small group brought up the idea of Lent. He said he was going to reduce the time he spent watching TV and to use that time for something more productive. I thought for some time and said, “Yeah, I think I spend too much time playing computer games.” It then occurred to me that I should take the 40 day challenge, something that I’ve never done in my entire life since age 7: I would go completely without computer games.

If you want to get technical, my decision should also involve video games, but since I do not own a console, I decided to let that slide. After all, ever since the SNES went out of date, I haven’t been big on console games, and any time I had access to a console game, it was in the presence of many people. So I admit, I did play a little Guitar Hero and Wii tennis in the last 2 weeks, but these games were for the purpose of IRL socializing (and not so much IG socializing), which was part of the reason why I wanted to fast from computer games in the first place.

2 weeks have elapsed. I have not survived 2 weeks without games since sophomore year in college. There were times when I really did think, “I’m sooooooooooooooo tired. One little game wouldn’t hurt. After all, observing Lent was my own free choice. It’s not that God commands me to observe Lent; breaking it is not a sin.” I even started to think of Lent as a legalistic practice–and since I am under grace and not under the “law” anymore, I do not need to do my best to observe Lent. As long as I understand the “spirit of Lent” (i.e. to not let gaming control my time), then I have fulfilled the practice of Lent.

Well, that is true. Lent is a discipline, not a law; and not following Lent is not a sin. In fact, many Christians have different views regarding Lent. I am part of the community that does not believe Lent to be something that a “devout” Christian needs to observe. Besides, you could pick any time of the year to fast from something, and you could pick any amount of time, based on your convictions. Personally, I think it would be even more useful to fast for a year from something that is more dangerous–like say, staring at hot girls that may cause you to stumble–than fasting for 40 days from gaming. However, by starting with something more manageable, I can say that this discipline (not law) has helped me better understand the meaning of Lent.

So what is the meaning of Lent?

Observing Lent is meant to symbolize self denial, in the way Jesus resisted temptation in the desert for 40 days. But moreover, it can be seen as an imitation of Christ’s sacrifice of love (Ephesians 5:1-2). This is not to say that those who perform extra acts of kindness during Lent, such as feeding the poor or helping people in need, are necessarily better people. However, I’ve realized that this act of self-denial has enabled me to give my extra time to doing good things I would never have imagined doing. If I had not freed my mind and my time from computer games, I would have missed out on some great blessings.

For example, I spent the extra 20 hours that I freed up last week to prepare a formal presentation of my own testimony/life story, and this was the first time I had ever organized the events in my life coherently and reflected on God’s presence and workings throughout my life. In fact, after the first 18 hours of preparation, I had a bunch of slides filled with facts about my life, but they also included some random emotional stuff and bitter thoughts. It wasn’t bad, but after showing it to my friend, he told me that it definitely had a little too much of the angry ME in it. Yes, my testimony is about me, but more importantly, it is about God working in my life. I could make subtle complaints about some stuff that I went through in college, or about this or that, but in reality when I look back, God has protected me and saved me from a lot of things, even if it involved putting me through suffering and hardship. Had these things not happened, I would not have known God; I would not have understood His goodness, His power, and His amazing love. My testimony was more powerful than I had previously imagined, not only to those who heard it last week, but to myself as well; it really was an amazing 10 years through which I came to know God.

My testimony presentation also gave me time to reflect on what God has been trying to communicate to me in recent times. I’ve never considered myself a leader; I’ve often felt too fearful and timid to be one. But after last Friday, I was very clear on God’s purpose for my life within the next year. I needed to grow up. I needed to stop being controlled by emotions such as fear, bitterness, or depression. I needed to trust in Him more, because after all, my life is in His hands. Remember Matthew 6. What is the use of worrying about my life when I can’t add a single hour to it? Seek His kingdom first and all shall be added.

In conclusion, fasting from gaming has been a sketch of the greater “fasting from selfish living.” After all, if I had chosen to to follow the worldly desires of my own heart, I would have been out working and making money long ago, and would have spent my free time exploring music, playing games, and dating/finding a wife (ok, now I’m just fantasizing ). I would have chosen a much easier life than the research I am doing now. But what is it for me to gain the world yet forfeit God’s calling for me? (There is a reason why I say this, but it wouldn’t make sense unless you’ve heard my testimony. ) I know that to love God and to trust in Him is far more important than gaining gold, fame, pride, or respect in this world. Yet the act of submission to God, and the pursuit of holiness and purity, are far more difficult than even the act of giving up computer gaming. I was able to narrowly escape from gaming 3 times in the last 2 weeks, but I can say I’ve stumbled way more often when it came to trusting and obeying God.

Anyways, just thought I’d share this to encourage Christians to prayerfully consider taking on the challenge of Lent. I almost gave up 2 days into it because I started off taking it lightly, but a friend encouraged me to pray seriously about it. And as a result, God has definitely blessed me through it.

Jesus Camp

(For the sake of readers, I’ve decided to shorten controversial posts to get straight to the point. The following youtube link was from Cactaur.)

Aside from all the chilling ideologies rising in pockets of America, Jesus Camp could be one of the most ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing. Apparently, some evangelical churches are brainwashing kids at a very young age to become soldiers in a war to convert America into a Christian theocracy.

As a Christian, however, I am strongly against it for two reasons.

1) Theocracies are biblically unsound. Jesus said that his kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). He had no intention of conquering the Romans who were currently ruling over the Jews, and in fact has no intention of ruling over the earth until his second coming (Revelations 20). Meanwhile, America is a democracy, and in the least sense, submission to authorities (Romans 14) should mean abiding by the constitution and the liberties it provides.

2) From history, we know of two examples of failure: a) the Old Testament Jewish nation, and b) Roman Catholism. What happens when you mix religion and politics? You get a crucified Messiah, the crusades, and burning at the stake. You get priests who make up extrabiblical laws to present themselves as more “holy” than others. The truth is hidden; corruption and ignorance abound. If the evangelical “culture” is already attacking biblical messages, I’d imagine a repeat of history if they were to take over America.