Friday, February 06, 2009

Butterflies, Seagulls, Politics and Preaching

"The butterfly effect refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay, accelerate or even prevent the occurrence of a tornado in a certain location. The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events" - wikipedia

In 1961, meterologist and mathematician Edward N. Lorenz was using a numerical computer model to rerun a weather prediction, and as a shortcut, entered the decimal .506 instead of entering the full .506127 the computer would hold. The result described a completely different weather scenario than predicted:  "One meteorologist remarked that if the theory were correct, one flap of a seagull's wings could change the course of weather forever."  In later speeches and papers, Lorenz used the more poetic tern butterfly.

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Wonder what might happen if the church stopped flapping its lips about politics, and dedicated itself to reaching people by preaching the gospel?

I'm guessing no man-made scenario could predict the result.

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