your-god-is-too-small May. 2016 | Page 166

God Does Not Play Dice By - Steven Lo I don't think I'm starting a wave of protest or rioting when I say that Albert Einstein was a genius. But I'm not talking about E = mc2, or relativity, or the countless thought experiments concocted in that crackpot brain of his. No doubt those were important contributions to science and the world at large, but enough with the same old accolades already. How many different ways are there to ride the same dick? No, the genius I'm referring to is something other: an Einstein quotation that's never been given its due credit. It's been publicized, recited, used for argument often in the last 75 years, but never has it been lauded as especially genius from the genius, because no one has ever perceived the words as I recently have. And the quotation goes like this: "God does not play dice with the universe." At the time of utterance, the statement probably came off as "oh, that's nice," just another bite-sized Einstein axiom about the universe and the laws governing it. Nothing special, right? You read it just now and, if I'm not being too presumptuous; there was nothing in the line that inspired awe from or moved you to tears. That's because axioms, though dulcet to the ear, rarely possess the strength necessary to shatter those higher, more fortified emotional walls. P a g e | 166