The Late, Late Game

I recently took my family to Atlantic City for the weekend. One night after the big Omaha game broke up, I settled into a very friendly late-night $10-$20 game, where everyone seemed to know each other and six of us chipped in to send out for Chinese food.

After losing with kings full to a royal flush, one of the more outspoken players asked me if there was a poker god of bad beats. We chatted about the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, who had numerous gods that presided over various functions. We concluded that since most poker players are totally bored with hearing about bad beats, it was probable that no god would be interested. But we did note that every ancient society had a river god!

From there, the table talk further deteriorated to individual religious beliefs as to whether prayers for a good last card are answered. One player actually seemed to believe that he had the power to make a flush or straight whenever he concentrated and made a "leap of faith." But he had only a few chips in front of him. Too much of that "leaping" stuff, I guess.

It turned out that I had had previous communications with one of the quieter players in the game, who had e-mailed me about several hands we had played in an online tournament. He said he had always valued my advice on poker and then asked me, quite seriously, whether or not there was a God and an afterlife. At about this time, the Chinese food arrived. Everyone at the table was deeply involved in the religious discussion, but no one offered to say grace.

Einstein, one of the greatest minds of all time, believed in God and found great satisfaction in "the Reason that manifests itself in nature." The fact that we exist proves there is intelligent life in the universe. And with billions of stars in each of billions of galaxies, it is extremely likely that there are many more advanced life-forms than ours. Just think about where we humans will be a thousand years from now if we don't destroy ourselves. Even 100,000 years is a mere blink of the eye in geologic time. Other civilizations might actually be millions of years more advanced than we are.

In merely several hundred years, medical science and robotics may merge such that man can live much longer with artificial body parts. We may eventually evolve into robots with greatly expanded mental-computing capabilities. Or, we may learn to control our biological evolution with DNA and other bionics. One of the more interesting speculations is, would a near-godlike entity be mostly biological or a machine/supercomputer? Advanced life-forms may evolve biologically, although probably as a product of controlled evolution.

If the definition of God is an entity with all knowledge (all knowledge would also be all powerful, and so on), even if there had not been a God at the moment of first creation, God or a near-godlike entity has probably evolved by now. And there might have been other universes before our present orderly universe. It also seems likely that if there is no God now, there will eventually be one in the future – unless we "intelligent" life-forms destroy the universe first.

If God already exists – which I believe is most likely because of the mathematical order and design properties of this universe – did he specifically design and create us or merely allow us to evolve? Would he want to micromanage our lives? From the perspective of fish living in a fish tank, the human who feeds and takes care of them is like a god. But that human does not actually determine the natural life span of each fish. There is also some possibility that we were created to provide interest or entertainment.

We know from quantum physics that the exact position and velocity of a particle cannot be calculated (the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). That implies that we have free will, and therefore time travel into the future is highly unlikely – unless somehow we are reliving what has already happened.

Mathematicians know there is at least one other dimension, from the curvature in space-time (I once proposed to do my thesis about "inner space"). My 1970's predictions that the near-infinite density at the interior of a black hole compresses into a whirlpool of mass through the singularity into inner space now seems more likely, because of observed swirling motions just outside the event horizon.

Mathematics can describe many physical aspects of the universe, but many things behave randomly, including the cards you are dealt in poker. Does it seem likely that a supreme being would intercede in these random occurrences?

As we all sat there philosophizing, eating our Chinese food, and playing poker (no one ever suggested taking a break), the "leap of faith" player offered to bet me $20 that he would make a flush. There were two diamonds in the flop, so I happily took the bet since the odds (with two cards to come) were almost 2-1 against making the flush.

The turn card was not a diamond. He closed his eyes and meditated. I liked my chances. But the last card was a diamond! I tossed him four red chips. What was the name of that river god?