While it is amazing that there are subatomic particles at all, it is even more amazing that they group themselves into giant constellations we know as “life forms” and somehow, en masse, move themselves about in a coherent and purposeful manner. In a very small part of this huge Universe, some of these groups of subatomic particles are called Human Beings.
Out of all the particles that combine to form atoms, which combine to form molecules, which combine to form these Human Beings, lost in this amazing sea of reality, one group in particular calls itself Bill Dunbar, and Bill Dunbar is in a very bad mood. Masses of groups of molecules collided with other masses of molecules, generally referred to as “cars,” and now Bill Dunbar is on foot because his car had all its molecules forcefully rearranged in a pattern that no longer performs the function to which it had been designed.
The Human Beings refer to this interaction as a “car wreck.”
A complex and totally improbable — yet completely real — system of particles which goes by the label of “automobile insurance” has, as Bill Dunbar just found out, ruled his car wreck as an “act of God” and refused to carry out its function. Bill Dunbar has decided to appeal this decision, and so to prepare for this, on the Human Date Coordinates of August 26, 2005, he has sought out an audience with a group of particles that goes by the name of Father Morris.
Father Morris is an expert of this concept that the Human Beings refer to as “God.”
“The problem you and everyone else faces,” Father Morris tells him, “is that really, when you get down to it, everything is an act of God. Because you see, God is Everything.”
“I’ve never understood that,” Bill Dunbar grumbles. “If that’s so, then God, Who is supposed to be Good, must also be Evil.”
“Yes,” says Father Morris, without further clarification.
Bill Dunbar’s intricate cloud of quantum particles detects nuances about the Father Morris cloud of particles. Photons bounce off one and carry information to the other — and vice versa. “So you’re saying God is Evil?”
“No, God is Everything,” says Father Morris. “There is a difference.”
“So what can I do?” asks the particles known as Bill Dunbar.
“Pray.”
Armed with this advice, Bill Dunbar walks seven miles to the infinitesimally small part of the Universe where he generally resides — while he’s not elsewhere — and he lowers himself to his Human Being knees and begins to pray to The God Who is Everything. The Universe. Information carried by subatomic particles is radiated in waves, instantaneously — via quantum entanglement — all the way through time and space to the Big Bang and then out again — as time, you see, is poorly perceived as “one-way” by Human Beings.
“Please God,” he prays, “show the Amoral Permanence Insurance Company of New Orleans, Louisiana what an act of God really is.”
Perhaps, he thinks, it is his imagination — but something tells Bill Dunbar that his prayer was heard. It is just something that he feels. The cloud of particles that makes him up interacts at a distance with all the other particles that makes up The Universe. The connection is there. The information is all very real.
Three days later, on Monday, August 29, 2005, the chaotic mass of subatomic particles known as “Hurricane Katrina” hits the Amoral Permanence Insurance Company — and everything else around it — and dunks it under 30 feet of water.
Bill Dunbar is stunned, and is also suddenly convinced The Universe is listening.
To everything.
Even his thoughts.
He vows that, from that point forward, he would think twice about what he asks of it.
