Can Nature be on Auto-Pilot ?

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In my early years, I wondered about things that I thought no one else thought about.  Later, I discovered that many do, even such famous geniuses as Albert Einstein.

 

Einstein believed in a so-called, clockwork universe.  In that view, the universe was created by God (or, as he phrased it, the Mind of God), but that thereafter, God stepped away from His work and took no further interest in it.  He lets it run on its own.  This view has been likened to the idea of a clock-maker, who having finished his work, winds up his clock, and then (at least until it winds down) gives it no further thought.

 

The clockwork view is in contrast to a competing view, in which God (or in some views, even a godless nature) not only creates the universe, but continually monitors it in every detail, and sustains it by controlling it in every detail.  This view is the more Biblical one, in which God not only parts the Red Sea when called upon, but also, in the words of Jesus, not a sparrow falls without God noticing it.

 

There is also an intermediate view.  In such a view, a godless universe exists in a way we might loosely compare to a computer.  While I disbelieve in the universe being a computer simulation, what that view suggests is that some impersonal natural law does indeed “know,” in a sense, where everything in the universe is, its state, and what it is doing.  Countless computations (or an analogy thereof) are continually being made to keep everything in order.  Every electron, every quark, every galaxy, and everything that we do not even know about (strings, if they exist) is computed, and coordinated with each and everything else.

 

That view presents a particular possibility of catastrophe, which is that, if there is a single error, it could cascade into universal disaster, in which everything becomes chaotic, or in the worst case, nonexistent.

 

Both the clockwork view and the computer view fail to account for consciousness, whereas the Idealist view, or alternatively, the Creator view, does take it into account in a way that the other views would have to shoe-horn in as an unnecessary after-thought.  By “unnecessary,” we refer to the physicalist view that nature could exist exactly as it is (pending further discoveries) without there ever being any consciousness at all.

 

Idealism, of course, as does the Judeo-Christian view, takes consciousness as a given, an axiom, a fundamental reality, and is built upon that.

 

Even here, however, the question remains, can M@L, or God, create the physical universe (or the perception of one) and then let it run without needing to continually monitor it and keep it existing?

 

In physicalism, the only thing that really exists is material (and its associated principles).  In Idealism, the only thing that really exists is consciousness.  In Judeo-Christianity, God can intervene in the physical universe, but otherwise, He seems arguably able to let it run its own course.
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