Went out for dinner last night.

Why not? It was Halloween, and we had nothing in particular planned. We were both in costume, and Lisa had had a crappy day, so we splurged a little.

Lisa was dressed in her medieval wench outfit, complete with leather bustier and a lot of cleavage. Yummy.

For my costume, I stole an idea from last year's Halloween episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', and simply wore a stick-on nametag reading, 'Hello! My name is God.'

Gets a lot of attention, that one.

Anyway, so after being seated, ordering our meal and beginning to chow down on some cheese sticks, my mind turned to thoughts of predestination.

Just work with me on this, okay?

We tossed around the ideas of fate and predestination over at Joel's board a little bit back and pretty much came to no consensus at all. Here's my theory on the whole matter.

Let's say God exists. And by God, I mean any sort of higher power or powers with the ability and inclination to create their own little universe filled with shiny things and at least one tiny little planet with thinking beings on it who have no idea if the higher power really exists or not. God, by any other name.

One theory is that God created the universe according to a plan and everyone has a path they have been built to follow. Their fate, if you will. So it doesn't matter what you choose to do in life, because you were fated to do that, so there is no real free will, so you can lie around all day on the couch and drink beer because God wants you to do that. If that's what you are doing.

Or. God created everything and then said, 'Go to it!' and is watching to see what happens. Better than cable.

(There's a side theory to this one, that we're an experiment that God has forgotten about, and we'll all be toast once he remembers and goes to clean out his petri dishes.)

Assuming God had a plan, and given his general omnipotence, he could very well have designed the universe down to its tiniest gluons. He designed the stars and the moons and the Chihuahuas. He set into motion the very first atom, which bouncing into another, and they joined together, had a little atom party, got overly excited, and created life.

One of the precepts of science is that if a particle behaves one way under certain conditions, it should generally behave the same way under the same conditions at a later time. If you extrapolate this outwards, since we are all made of particles which can be predicted to act certain ways, then we ourselves can be predicted to act a certain way which is the sum of what the heck all our little particles are doing.

Get me?

This is predestination. A big set of actions and reactions ultimately programmed by The Big Guy With The Beard, like a gigantic pool table with an infinite number of balls.

Thing is, I have a hard time believing that God planned things like Cheese Sticks. What, he knew in advance that we'd have a hankering for melted mozzarella in batter, with a bit of salsa on the side for dipping? Possible -- he is omnipotent, after all -- but kind of ludicrous in my opinion. He's got better things to worry about.

On the other hand, if this is all a big experiment, then God didn't plan everything. He just built some stuff and let us go at it.

The thing with this is that we have a distressing habit of pushing the boundaries. Going beyond what we know and discovering what is at the edge of things.

If God didn't create and plan everything to the tiniest detail, then he must have set some broad parameters instead. We hate broad parameters.

So God says: "Okay. Here are the trees and the cows and you. Happy?"

Man: "Nice. What're the trees and the cows and us made out of?"

God (ready for this): "Organs."

Man: "Okay. What are they made of?"

God: "Huh. Well, little tiny building blocks called cells."

Man: "Neat. What's in the cells?"

God: "Um. All sorts of stuff."

Man: "Like what?"

God: "Oh heck. Um. Nuclei. Mitochondria's. Um. Other stuff."

Man: "Hey, this is getting interesting! What are those made of?"

God: "What? Um. Right. Well, they are composed of proteins and junk..."

Man: "What's in those?"

God (getting surly): "Well. Um. They are made of atoms! And atoms are made out of protons and neutrons and electrons. And they are the smallest things there are! So there!"

Man: (Pause) "So what are they made out of?"

So in this version, God is running around inventing stuff for man to discover. That's why we haven't found the missing link yet -- because he's busy figuring out what it is and finding some really out of the way place where we haven't looked yet to hide it. That's also why particle physics is so messed up. Because he's making it up as he goes along.

Anyway. This is why I don't believe in fate.

You know. Except for being with Lisa, of course. We were meant to be together.

This doesn't make any sense at all!

Yesterday, you talked about important stuff

Tomorrow, you get all mushy and stuff

Take me home, big fella