The Law of Prescient Nature,
which I first read about in Jules Verne, is a fascinating idea.
I don’t know if Verne was the first to articulate it, but that’s where I first read about it.
It can best be shown by water, by water’s odd behavior. For example, in freezing: All substances become denser and heavier when freezing, except water, which becomes lighter and less dense. Thus, when ice forms at the bottom of the ocean near the poles, it floats up to where it can be melted by the sun. This simple fact makes life possible. Without it, the oceans would eventually freeze solid from the bottom up and all life would die…or, more likely, it would never have begun. The Law of Prescient Nature states that water behaves this way SO THAT life is possible. In fact, all those things in nature which make life possible exist SO THAT life can exist.
I’m not sure where I stand on whether or not this is true. All truth is opinion, including the phrase “All truth is opinion,” so I’m sure it matters not one whit at all. Interesting to think about, though.
It’s pretty amazing how important water is to life, how integral. What if it was the other way around, though? What if water is the real culprit, the real intelligence behind us? Perhaps we humans, who are made up of some 90% water, are really just vehicles for water, methods employed by water to move and to experience the universe in new and different ways. Perhaps water created us and uses us as mere bio-mechanical suits–as jeeps, if you will.
I am a water jeep, and although it appears that I am guiding myself through my own life, it is simply an appearance. Our sky is not blue, after all. It only looks blue because of the play of light on nitrogen molecules and the concept of ‘blue’ in my programming (which was coded by water). Blue is not a thing which exists outside of us. I am more water than anything else and water is the driving power behind me. When this shell that is me grows old and breaks down, the water will discard it and move on. I will return to the dust out of which water assembled me, perhaps to be reassembled anew by water in a different way–a wift of cloud, perhaps, or a sunflower.
There is another side to nature, one we rarely think about. As the only creatures (that we know of) that have “the Word”, the ability to speak and express and therefore create, the beauty of nature can be a cry for help, a silent cry. Say what you will about a breathtaking sunset (and you are the only one allowed to do so), but it is silent. Edgily silent. The more beautiful a moment in nature, the more it pleads to us to give it the one thing it doesn’t have: VOICE.
I don’t know or care what a person’s view on Gods or religions are, but if you honestly expect me to believe that this whole entire Universe appeared out of nowhere for no reason at all and is simply a mechanical clockwork churning meaninglessly in the void for no reason then you are expecting me to believe a lot. I’m sorry, being a reasonable person, I just can’t go there with you. My faith is simply not strong enough.