The Creation Game

So it came to pass that the Lord in Heaven gave the angels a treat. Lacking omniscience, the angels dearly love a game of chance (especially Michael, John Travolta’s guardian angel). The Lord described His gift as the “creation game.”

The game would begin with God’s creation of a universe, something new that would then evolve over the eons governed only by the laws of physics and random chance. Michael immediately began taking book on what would occur. (Yes, gambling is OK in Heaven.)

In order to facilitate ordered predictions, and more fun, God created time and started the clock moving at the instant of creation. He created the simplest interesting universe with just three dimensions and Euclidian geometry. Objects would move in straight lines at constant speed except when influenced by the few forces the Lord allowed. Objects could have mass, or not, and massless objects (say light) would move at constant speed (even when measured by moving coordinates) also in straight lines except when influenced by massive objects.

That’s about it. The angels were giddy with anticipation.

Then the Lord started the game with a spectacular fireworks show, as the new universe burst on the scene at an infinitesimal point filled with stupendous energy. Gabriel called it the Big Bang. For a few instants the blast of light energy expanded superluminally. (God allowed light to move faster than its normal speed for a while -- it made for a spectacular sight.)

Then elementary particles (Thomas called them “quarks”) began to form. Strange things these were and the angels were delighted. By one second on the clock, quarks had come together to form protons and neutrons and those had begun to fuse together to form the nuclei of helium, deuterium and lithium. This hot process continued for about three minutes when the temperature fell to one billion degrees and nuclear reactions shut down. Not an angel predicted any of these events, still they were well pleased.

Michael speculated that the nuclei might become more interesting and indeed they did after about 10,000 years when they accumulated little electrons and became atoms. The angels wondered how big the atoms would get. Then they all took naps.

When they awoke the clock said three million years and a new fireworks show began. Here and there in the expanding universe stars blinked on and the angels were enthralled. The angel Judy won her bet with angel Millie (also known as Snuggles). The angel Maggie predicted that some stars would get close enough to become sort of bound together and she won a big prize when galaxies began to form.

But then the game got boring. For billions of years nothing much different happened. Oh, most of the stars became surrounded by big chunks of matter (someone called them planets). While their motions were pretty ellipses, not much else was happening. The angels asked the Lord if the game was over, and begged Him to make the universe do something else. So the Lord took one of the planets and said “Watch this.”

The planet He called Earth was formed at about 10 billion years on the clock. It was very hot, but after half a billion years had cooled enough to support what the Lord called life. He asked the angels if they thought life would arise by the random interactions of the Earthly particles. Would it happen spontaneously? Most of the angels said “Yeah, sure it will… NOT!” But angel Burt was ambitious and he bet angel Bill that it would happen, so the Lord said to wait and see. And they waited and napped and waited and… … nothing. Bill won.

So God created these amazingly complex single-celled living organisms. Contrary to what the angel Charles (aka Darwin) assumed, the cells were not “simple lumps of protoplasm.” They were neat information processing machines comprising some 50,000 proteins in fabulously intricate algorithms of communication and synthesis, or so said Heaven’s librarian, the angel Mary Jo. The Lord said it was nap time.

When the angels awakened nearly three and a half billion years had elapsed. Sleepy heads all. They looked at the Earth and what they saw was surprising. Nothing had changed at all, still only single celled life, lots of it, but no more complex than before they napped. The angel Ginger asked God if there would ever be creatures on Earth that looked like angels (cute ones like Ginger). Again God asked the angels if they thought it could happen by chance, and something He called natural selection.

Angels Dori and Merna argued that it would take an explosion of complexity and information to go from single cell-ers to creatures with bodies and feet and ears and stuff. Angel Doc said “No way, Jose.” He was right. So it came to pass that the Lord created the Cambrian Explosion, when nearly all the animals were born. The angels noticed there were even hairy creatures that were shaped like them, though somewhat short of forehead. The Dinosaurs were neat, especially the Velociraptors.

But the animals did not develop angelic traits. No poets, no paintings, not even duplicate bridge. They were boring and went on their hunting-gathering ways for 500 million years. Angel Dave insisted that the apes were getting smarter and would some day become Britney Spears, but angel Skip did not see the point. Angel Melanie begged the Lord to breathe some humanity into one of the best looking lineages.

The Lord said He would do that one better by giving them souls, so they would be in His likeness, and like the angels.

And here we are.