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.