We made it to last night’s lecture on science and faith, offered by Dr. Sjoerd Bonting, an Episcopal priest and NASA consulting scientist, who offered (what else) a PowerPoint preso (pretty good one). Dr. Bonting is very interesred in chaos theory, and extends his interest philosophically and theologically, to include the fact that nearly every ancient creation theory cites chaos.

Millennia later, we know that chaos is a process that underlies much in our universe,including its ground state, endlessly perturbed by quantum fluctuation. Dr. Bonting, unlike those who study science 6 days a week (kind of where I am), and faith on Sunday, is unafraid to ‘pedal’ the notion that God might choose chaos as a way to act, should she so choose.

Dr. Bonting showed a classical chaotic system – moth poulation – and the math that he and others devised to determine the smallest change you could make that would alter the system. It turned out that altering one bit could produce large changes at an energy cost on the order of 10 to the minus 20th power, over a time span of ten to the minus thirteenth. A pretty tiny, and, perhaps, elegant balance. The other news is we felt well enough to go last night…

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