The zerosum game of life
Although it’s often incomprehensible (I can’t do the math), I always enjoy reading about physics. It describes the architecture of the universe, while providing the foundation for the other sciences and thoughtprovoking analogies for everyday life.
In 1687, history’s greatest scientist, Isaac Newton, wrote, “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” Combined with the laws of conservation of matter and energy, this forms a basic tenet of existence: Life is a zerosum game in which you rarely get something without giving up something else.
For example, the decision to have children has a lengthy ledger of profit and loss. I can’t speak to the joys or vicissitudes of parenthood, but I have decades of experience with having kids. On the upside, my life has been less stressful, my finances less strained, and I’ve never met an orthodontist or rushed home to pay a babysitter. No 16yearolds ever ask to drive my car, and the last time I shared my home with a teenager I was one myself.
At the same time, I never got to take my son out for a beer on his 21st birthday, and I never saw, nor will ever see, his first touchdown, my daughter’s first date or either’s college graduation. And I’ve had to listen to years of snide commentary from people outraged by a decision that’s none of their business. No one calls parents with seven children “narcissists,” but if you choose not to have any, you’ll be called “selfish” and “unAmerican,” as if the country suffers from a shortage of people.
Flouting the divine command to “be fruitful and multiply” has inspired those holier than I to call me a “godless heathen.” I’m sure this epithet is meant to be shaming, but being a godless heathen turns out to be just one more lifestyle, with advantages and drawbacks in about the same proportion as choosing not to procreate.
In the courtroom drama, “Inherit the Wind,” Spencer Tracy delivers an eloquent soliloquy on the tradeoffs involved with supplanting religion with science and modernity. Although his character has consciously opted for knowledge and rationalism, he recognizes that progress seldom comes without loss. By way of comparison, he aptly applies a poetic metaphor on the downside of the advent of flight: “You may conquer the air. But the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.”
My memory of being “saved” is dim, but I’ve had a lifetime of experience with the ups and downs of being “unsaved.” On the plus side, I can spend my 10 percent tithe on myself, rather than on smarmy televangelists who don’t need it. I get to sleep in on Sundays, and I never miss the kickoffs of the NFL early games. I don’t have to reject science in favor of sectarian superstitions, myths and legends. And, most importantly, I’m not asked to feel guilty about doing harmless things that primitive holy men cataloged as “sins” back in the Bronze Age.
On the other hand, along with losing the comforting concept of heaven, we unbelievers are denied the use of the satisfying fiction of hell. While the religious right condemns us to perdition for everything from premarital sex and believing in evolution to voting for Democrats, and is positively giddy about our upcoming damnation, we agnostics can’t even speculate which circle of hell a member of the Trump administration will be consigned to.
Similar skepticism about the eternal soul prevents us from calling conservatives such as Steve Bannon, Alex Jones or Stephen Miller “soulless,” even though it’s obvious. We also have no deity we can blame for the world’s ills, and can’t even take solace in “thoughts and prayers.” The faithful ask, “How can you look at a rose and believe in god,” but the agnostic’s depressing response is, “How can you walk through a pediatric cancer ward and believe in god?”
Einstein’s iconic equation E = mc2 defines energy and matter as two states of the same substance: One can be converted to the other, but neither can be created or destroyed. Some see this byproduct of his general theory of relativity as a metaphor for mankind’s soul — formed from an indestructible energy, or life force, that makes it immortal.
Einstein was instrumental in the development of quantum theory, but his distaste for the weirdness of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle caused him to argue that, “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.” His distinguished colleague Niels Bohr’s bemused reply was that Einstein should “stop telling god what to do.” And physicist Stephen Hawking took it a step further: “God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws them where they can’t be seen.”
Scientists have identified virtual particles that emerge from a vacuum and disappear back into empty space, seemingly violating conservation of matter and energy. Cosmologists speculate that the Big Bang may have been a largescale manifestation of such an event, as the universe expanded from a subatomic black hole. Some godless heathens see this as a metaphor for how an individual human consciousness emerges from billions of years of nonexistence, endures a short, finite lifetime, then subsides back into the void.
This view is incompatible with a traditional afterlife, so one belief needs to be abandoned to accept the other. But which one? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has said that, “The good thing about science is that it’s true, whether you believe in it or not.” But that doesn’t help most of us all that much, because we still can’t do the math.