The paradox of divine creation

While conversing with an older god, I asked why we could have everything except freedom of the will. The other god replied that we could have this freedom, but lose everything else in the process. You see, it said, ultimate freedom cannot coexist with any kind of rule or law, and since everything that exists does so based on a set of rules — humans call them natural laws — they would disintegrate as soon as the rules did. There are only two things in any and all universes, the old god stated; order and disorder. From order comes everything that can be distinguished from its background, which is everything that matters and anything that could matter. From disorder, order can emerge, but nothing comes from disorder itself. We must choose therefore, to have order and not be free, or be free and have nothing. This is the paradox of divine creation; as soon as we create anything at all, we cease to be gods, and must abide by the same rules as that which emerges from creation.

Take the language we speak for instance, no language can exist without rules, and no understanding can exist without language. This is equally true for the language we currently converse in, as it is for the language of growls and signals that animals use. To be truly free therefore, would mean to be without understanding.

If we are not gods, I said, then what are we? We are simply part of the Weave, the old one replied, higher order beings of course, since we can create rules on levels below the ones that govern our own being, but since we cannot change the rules by which we ourselves emerge and still exist, we are not truly gods.

The Weave, and who made that? I asked. The first one, maybe, I don’t know, it’s as much a mystery to us as to any of them. There are no gods, and that’s fine. What kind of entity could possibly bear the loneliness of being separated from absolutely everything? The only real power we have is the power to die, and if I were to speculate, I think the first one did exactly that. Now here we are, stewards in a way, observers, caretakers, part of the great unfolding that is the Weave.

Freedom is simply the freedom to witness that unfolding, which is good enough for me.

Is it though? I pondered, and resumed my silent observation of the bipeds looking up at the sky-bubble surrounding their planet Earth.