Parables of the Kingdom/Is everything determined

The two reading were very different, however they had connectable similarities. Stephen Hawking questions the determination of all evolution in the universe; he argues that there’s no grand unified theory that determines how everything will be. He asks tons of rhetorical questions like: is who will be on the cover of a magazine preordained, and also asks- who determines what’s correct, since we all have equally possible wrong ideas with questionable validity. He starts off with the uncertainty in the universe and incorporates Darwinist ideas. The mass uncertainty in beginning of life on earth, the development of complex DNA that could pass off information due to being a product of survival of the fittest- this idea also applies to the free will of humans, which probably came from evolution of humans from primates; those that understood that they had unpredictable free will that also understood the consequences of their actions would have a better chance of surviving. He argues that if everything is determined then we don’t really have free will. But because our actions are unpredictable, we have free will and there’s no way that everything is determined. He explains that neither God nor science could explain the complicated functions in our universe. If God knew that the actions were to happen, then free will isn't free; it would've been “planned”. Also, there’s no set of calculations that could measure the millions of billions of particles within the human brain. The parables of the kingdom is not really about the same thing but ideas are reflected. The stories all are about a person or people that act in such a way that there are consequences for their actions. The story about the virgins the forgot oil in their lamps and the story about the man who saved his money instead of investing it both sort of show that the worth of the actions is up to the master. It was the master’s choice to not accept the virgins who forgot oil the first time, or to expect the servant to spend his money rather than to save it. This is a place where i find a similarity; the free will of the people in the examples led them to do things that had unpredictable consequences. Although some higher power was judging them for their actions, there was no instruction- they were almost expected to fail in order to teach a lesson. The people who failed were a product of survival of the fittest; they wouldn't have survived based on their ability to think about the consequences of their actions, however their fate was not determined ahead of time; it was up to them to make a free-will based decision.