Free will vs. predestination.
Is our every heartbeat part of a greater plan or are we free to roam the landscape of our existence? Are we cogs in an engine or dust in the wind? Were you meant to read this article or did you choose to? This is the biggest question ever asked, the question that has creationists and scientists lined up opposite each other in a never-ending game of dodge ball. But fret no more, because Doctor Markus Phlimm, professor of chemical science at the Technical University of Dresden and prolific amateur philosopher knows the answer: free will does exist, but the chances that our actions are not predestined are infinitely small; everything we do now is entirely predestined and non-voluntary. Dr. Phlimm stresses, however, that this does not prove the existence of a god of any kind. On the contrary.
IndentDr. Phlimm, simultaneously Europe's greatest intellectual and its most notorious eccentric, is a demure, quiet man; well into his sixties, bearded, bespectacled, shy. His strikingly small stature is off-set only by the greatness of his mind and the idiosyncrasy of his ideas. Noam Chomsky, a great friend of Dr. Phlimm, once famously described him as "[t]hinking so far outside of the box that he needs a map to find his way back." As if to prove this statement Dr. Phlimm once claimed, in one of his more famous quotes, that Schrödinger most famous theory, his Cat theory, is “[a] bunch of hoopla […] because honestly, have you ever tried getting a cat into a box?”
IndentIn a press conference Dr. Phlimm announced that in his latest article, to be published in next months issue of Nature Magazine and already creating quite a buzz in the scientific community, he has found the answer to the mother of all questions: free will vs. predestination. Dr. Phlimm concludes that everything we do is predestined, but it’s how he gets to this conclusion that is, in traditional Phlimm-fashion, entirely left-field. The idea that Dr. Phlimm posits is that of the proto-life.
IndentDr. Phlimm’s theory is based on an off-beat variant of reincarnation; the moment you die you are also reborn. In Dr. Phlimm’s construct, however, you aren’t reborn as an 18th century monarch, or even as some random future John Doe; he states that you are reborn as yourself. Every time you die, your life, in a sense, rewinds to the moment of your birth, and everything, your entire life, plays out in exactly the same way as it did before. According to Dr. Phlimm, “[t]his theory […] explains two of the biggest mysteries: that of widely popular notion of ‘your life flashing in front of your eyes’ at the moment of death, and that of deja-vu.”
Indent “It is a cliché that the moment you die you see your entire life in your mind’s eye. It is a cliché because it is true,” Dr. Phlimm stated in the much-televised press conference he gave on April 29th. He continued: “It is true because in that moment, your life is restarted, rebooted if you like, and you start over. The fact that in this moment of death your entire life seems to be compressed to a fraction of a second only underlines Einstein’s already widely accepted Theory of Relativity, in which he, among many other things, states that the notion of time is relative and entirely fluid.” He went on to say that “[d]eja-vu is nothing more than a memory of that same moment in time during one of your previous lives, which are perfectly identical to the one you are currently living. You feel like you have experienced a certain moment before, because in actual fact you have.”
IndentBecause everything has to start somewhere, Dr. Phlimm posits that everyone has, or had, a proto-life, a first life. It is in this first life that you were subject to no restraints whatsoever; no previous life existed so your entire life was unwritten, a blank page ready to be written on with the pencil of free will. Every subsequent life, however, is an identical copy of that proto-life. Every life lived after that all-important proto-life is devoid of free will and follows the blueprint of the proto-life to a tee. “Since the amount of lives a person could live is infinite,” Dr. Dr. Phlimm said at the press conference, “the odds that anyone of us present here is living his or her proto-life is infinitely small and therefore negligible.”
IndentIn reaction to the question from Dr. Johnson from MIT whether this theory proved or disproved the existence of a god or anything similar, Dr. Phlimm could not suppress a grin and a scratch of the head. “In the article I make some educated guesses regarding religion seen in the context of my construct, but I must stress that a guess, however educated it may be, is still a guess. I am not convinced I will solve the riddle of religion anytime soon, Dr. Johnson, but I promise to try harder in my next life.”
IndentAt the very least, Dr. Phlimm's theory, still spelled with a lowercase 't' until it has proven its merit and conquered its spot in the Scientific Canon, will undoubtedly rustle some leaves in the community and gain its author some extra notoriety. At best, it will thoroughly alter the way humankind thinks and operates in ways we cannot foresee. The article will be published in the next issue of Nature Magazine, which will hit the stands at the end of the month.
IndentDr. Phlimm, simultaneously Europe's greatest intellectual and its most notorious eccentric, is a demure, quiet man; well into his sixties, bearded, bespectacled, shy. His strikingly small stature is off-set only by the greatness of his mind and the idiosyncrasy of his ideas. Noam Chomsky, a great friend of Dr. Phlimm, once famously described him as "[t]hinking so far outside of the box that he needs a map to find his way back." As if to prove this statement Dr. Phlimm once claimed, in one of his more famous quotes, that Schrödinger most famous theory, his Cat theory, is “[a] bunch of hoopla […] because honestly, have you ever tried getting a cat into a box?”
IndentIn a press conference Dr. Phlimm announced that in his latest article, to be published in next months issue of Nature Magazine and already creating quite a buzz in the scientific community, he has found the answer to the mother of all questions: free will vs. predestination. Dr. Phlimm concludes that everything we do is predestined, but it’s how he gets to this conclusion that is, in traditional Phlimm-fashion, entirely left-field. The idea that Dr. Phlimm posits is that of the proto-life.
IndentDr. Phlimm’s theory is based on an off-beat variant of reincarnation; the moment you die you are also reborn. In Dr. Phlimm’s construct, however, you aren’t reborn as an 18th century monarch, or even as some random future John Doe; he states that you are reborn as yourself. Every time you die, your life, in a sense, rewinds to the moment of your birth, and everything, your entire life, plays out in exactly the same way as it did before. According to Dr. Phlimm, “[t]his theory […] explains two of the biggest mysteries: that of widely popular notion of ‘your life flashing in front of your eyes’ at the moment of death, and that of deja-vu.”
Indent “It is a cliché that the moment you die you see your entire life in your mind’s eye. It is a cliché because it is true,” Dr. Phlimm stated in the much-televised press conference he gave on April 29th. He continued: “It is true because in that moment, your life is restarted, rebooted if you like, and you start over. The fact that in this moment of death your entire life seems to be compressed to a fraction of a second only underlines Einstein’s already widely accepted Theory of Relativity, in which he, among many other things, states that the notion of time is relative and entirely fluid.” He went on to say that “[d]eja-vu is nothing more than a memory of that same moment in time during one of your previous lives, which are perfectly identical to the one you are currently living. You feel like you have experienced a certain moment before, because in actual fact you have.”
IndentBecause everything has to start somewhere, Dr. Phlimm posits that everyone has, or had, a proto-life, a first life. It is in this first life that you were subject to no restraints whatsoever; no previous life existed so your entire life was unwritten, a blank page ready to be written on with the pencil of free will. Every subsequent life, however, is an identical copy of that proto-life. Every life lived after that all-important proto-life is devoid of free will and follows the blueprint of the proto-life to a tee. “Since the amount of lives a person could live is infinite,” Dr. Dr. Phlimm said at the press conference, “the odds that anyone of us present here is living his or her proto-life is infinitely small and therefore negligible.”
IndentIn reaction to the question from Dr. Johnson from MIT whether this theory proved or disproved the existence of a god or anything similar, Dr. Phlimm could not suppress a grin and a scratch of the head. “In the article I make some educated guesses regarding religion seen in the context of my construct, but I must stress that a guess, however educated it may be, is still a guess. I am not convinced I will solve the riddle of religion anytime soon, Dr. Johnson, but I promise to try harder in my next life.”
IndentAt the very least, Dr. Phlimm's theory, still spelled with a lowercase 't' until it has proven its merit and conquered its spot in the Scientific Canon, will undoubtedly rustle some leaves in the community and gain its author some extra notoriety. At best, it will thoroughly alter the way humankind thinks and operates in ways we cannot foresee. The article will be published in the next issue of Nature Magazine, which will hit the stands at the end of the month.