Creationism, Multiverse, Interdependence and my boss

My boss believes himself a success in discovering, patenting a chemical technique and setting up a company to market products produced thereof. Has he not done well?

However we the employers have a different view. It is very unlikely that we would be working for him had he failed to do these things. It follows that our boss is a success as a matter of necessity. It is not a remarkable thing at all.

There must be a million such entrepreneurs out there each trying their hand at success and some will make it and some will not. But we only hear, and work for, the successes. Does this then mean that the ones we hear of are actually successes?

A million monkeys tying at random on typewriters will one day produce a monkey that has typed the works of Shakespere. Does this monkey then elevated to the status of genius actually call itself genius?

So we demand reproducability and ask my boss and the monkey to do it all again: a new technology and the works of Plato. That is the acid test, but also an unreasonable test when we talk of such huge events as ones life's work.

Consider then the universe. The Creationists marvel at the wonder of the creation. The intricacy the improbability of it all. What chance that all the parameters are to quote baby bear - just right. But like my boss is it really - just right? The multiverse proponents argue that with a vast number of trials and errors of course it will be just right because universes that failed are no longer extant. And like the monkey hailed the genius or my boss believing in his success, would we be here to attest to our wonderful existence had it not happened (anthropic principle)?

It is easy to get wrapped up in the course of one's life, and overlook completely the chance event that it might have been. I say "might" because we don't know whether God made us or we evolved, (and I believe neither are really true). But if we do contemplate the possibility that we are literally like the words of Shakespere from that random monkey, hailed a genius in the face of sheer good fortune, and we realise the countless universes where we did not happen we understand 2 things. (1) that the substance of our existence is chance and not some "intention" or "purpose" but (2) we realise that the substance of our existence is as wonderful as "intention" or "purpose", it is the unimaginable workings of a universe before us, a billion, billion monkeys typing away in blindness, of which one has produced me. The monkey is no genius and I am no miracle, although looking back after the event - like my boss over his work - it is easy to claim or oneself all that has happened and try to embue it with some meaning, right, necessity, determinism and fulfillment. Of course before I was created who was there to plan to events that made me? How was I to determine before i was made how I would turn out? If I am born clever, determined, skillful, lazy, stupid, fast, slow, tall, short: what say do I really have? Surely we take what we are given with humility, be they qualities viewed as good or bad. They never belonged to us, they are gifts. Even if my boss is able to design a brand new technology: is he then a success? By all meanings of the word yes: but in reality can he really claim those qualities for himself? Did he decide to be good at what he does? If he did, then did he decide one day to make a date to decision to be good at what he does? Where within him did that success originate?

In place of all this maybe there is another way tho: neither Creationist and neither Chance. Isn't the key point that we find ourselves in a universe looking out and trying to make sense of it all. That in the end, whatever evidence or theories we find or fashion, it is the quests to make sense of that "looking out" that we seek. That wonder at the events that have unfolded to provide me with this moment of existence, but less wonderfully to claim those events for ourselves. To shore up the chance upon which we are built, to shore up the creation upon which we are built, to discover how to build ourselves and ensure our mastery of our place in the universe.

We are becoming like the eternal dog chasing its tail again. The myth of self-reference. The belief that we can really grasp a notion of ourselves that is complete and sufficient.

There is - and i still seek proof - a flaw in any statement of the form "I am...". Such statements cannot be.