MAKING SENSE OF OLYMPIA

Wait. That's weird. God in Olympia. And 23.

David Scherer Water writing on his yellow IBM Selectric on Sept. 23, 2026.

David Scherer Water | The Jolt

Posted Friday, October 2, 2026 3:00 pm

David Scherer Water

By David Scherer Water

A year ago, I put out The Jesus Beat, a review of Olympia churches. Since then, local clergy and lay religious leaders have come out of the woodwork to talk my ear off.

Honestly, I've enjoyed it — even the attempts to save me. Alas, I've remained Jewish. There's just too much at stake culturally for me to give up on my people at this point, but thanks.

The conversations have not only strengthened my connection to my own faith; they've helped reinforce my belief in God. It's no single point that convinces me — it's the cumulative weight of them: the growing difficulty of experiencing all of this complexity, beauty, and improbability as meaningless.

These are my favorite things about the universe that make me, personally, unable to believe that reality is merely an accident.

• The solar ratio: The sun is significantly larger than the moon; however, to an observer on Earth, the two discs appear to be the exact same diameter. During a total eclipse, the two pass over one another and it isn't just close — it's precise. Yet, the sun is 400 times larger and 400 times farther away. Mismatched discs in the sky wouldn't present a problem; on most planets, that's standard issue. But our perfect symmetry is beyond uncanny; it has laid a poetic constancy across history that has inspired a great deal of human spirituality. (Source: NASA)

• The great stabilizer: The Moon's gravitational presence helps stabilize Earth's axial tilt, keeping it within a relatively narrow range. Without the Moon, Earth's axis could undergo larger chaotic variations, producing extreme climate swings. The Moon is enormous relative to the planet it orbits — about 27 percent of Earth's diameter, by far the largest moon relative to its host planet in the solar system. Mars, without a comparably massive moon, gives us a nearby glimpse of what a chaotic tilt looks like. Somehow, we got a giant gravitational stabilizer orbiting right beside us. (Source: NASA)

• Planetary dynamo: Earth has a magnetic field strong enough to deflect solar wind, which keeps the atmosphere from being stripped away by a constant stream of charged particles. Without that protection, maintaining the atmosphere and the liquid water necessary for life becomes nearly impossible. Somehow, beneath our feet, a planet-sized dynamo has been running for billions of years. (Source: NASA)

• Plate tectonics: Earth doesn't merely have continents; it's a geological recycling system. Plate tectonics continually moves carbon and other essential elements between the crust, oceans, atmosphere, and Earth's interior, helping regulate the conditions under which life can persist. The planet isn't just sitting here — it's cycling its ingredients. (Source: U.S. Geological Survey)

• Anomalous water: Unlike almost every other liquid on Earth, water expands when it freezes, becoming less dense as a solid than as a liquid. This single anomaly causes ice to float rather than sink. If ice sank, lakes, rivers, and oceans would freeze solid from the bottom up, extinguishing aquatic life and turning Earth into an uninhabitable ice world. Instead, floating ice forms an insulating blanket, preserving the liquid world beneath it and allowing life to endure. (Source: U.S. Geological Survey and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Looking beyond our solar system and galaxy, we find other clues.

• The cosmological constant: From Einstein's 1917 equations to more recent Nobel-winning discoveries of the accelerating universe, physicists have struggled to understand the cosmological constant — the intrinsic energy density of empty space. The biggest takeaway from this calculation is an appreciation for how extraordinarily sensitive the universe is to this number. For example, if the cosmological constant were even slightly different, the universe would have either collapsed back on itself immediately or expanded so rapidly that galaxies, stars, planets, and life could never have formed. (Source: NASA and The Nobel Prize)

• Low initial entropy: The universe appears to have begun in an extraordinarily low entropy state — a condition that made everything that followed possible. Physicist Roger Penrose has calculated the apparent improbability of such an initial condition at roughly one part in ten to the power of ten to the 123rd power (a 1 followed by a ridiculous number of zeros), a number so large that ordinary descriptions of probability stop being useful. Somehow, the universe began not merely existing, but existing in an extraordinarily ordered state. (Source: Oxford Academic)

• Fine-tuned forces: The relative strengths of the fundamental forces are remarkably consequential. Gravity is extraordinarily weak compared with electromagnetism, but that precise weakness allows stars to form and burn stably for billions of years. Alter the relationships among these fundamental forces and you alter the behavior of stars, the production of heavy elements, and the existence of planets. (Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

• Creating carbon: The strong nuclear force, which holds atomic nuclei together, occupies a very particular neighborhood. Change it, and you break the nuclear reactions that forge the periodic table. Carbon is an especially strange example: inside aging stars, three helium nuclei must come together through a remarkably improbable sequence, and carbon-12 happens to have an excited state at almost exactly the right energy level to make this process work. That carbon then becomes oxygen and an assortment of other elements. Eventually, some of that stellar debris becomes planets, rocks, trees, blood, brains, and me sitting here wondering what the hell is going on. The laws of physics seem extraordinarily fertile. (Source: The Nobel Prize)

• Major mystery: Roughly 95 percent of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy, neither of which we understand. Everything we can see — every star, planet, person, tree, and cup of coffee — accounts for less than 5 percent of reality. We call the rest "dark" simply because we don't know what it is. That leaves a lot of room for God to hide — or to operate a great gizmo of love, mystery, and magic. (Source: NASA, NASA and NASA)

And then you start looking at the machinery of life itself.

• Biological software: DNA is not merely a molecule; it is an information storage system containing the instructions for constructing and maintaining living organisms. It can be copied, transmitted, read and translated into proteins. Somehow, a microscopic chemical structure contains an operating manual for life. (Source: National Institutes of Health)

• Self-repair systems: Every living cell contains molecular machines capable of copying DNA, identifying damage and repairing it. The molecule that carries the instructions for life comes pre-packaged with systems to proofread and fix its own mistakes. (Source: National Library of Medicine)

• Optical engineering: The human eye is a ridiculous piece of biological engineering. Light enters through a variable aperture, passes through a lens that changes shape to focus at different distances, hits a light-sensitive surface containing millions of photoreceptors, and is converted into electrical signals that the brain translates into a coherent visual world. We don't experience any of this as a complex computation — we just open our eyes. (Source: National Institutes of Health)

• Photosynthesis: Plants, algae, and cyanobacteria take sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, and turn them into chemical energy while releasing oxygen. The overwhelming majority of energy supporting life on Earth stems from this extraordinary trick of turning light into food. (Source: OpenStax and U.S. Energy Information Administration)

• Molecular motors: Bacterial flagella are microscopic rotating propellers made of proteins assembled into extraordinarily complex molecular machines. At this scale, biology doesn't look like goo; it looks engineered. (Source: Nature Reviews Microbiology)

• Material mastery: Despite decades of high-tech effort, we have yet to manufacture anything that matches the combined strength, elasticity, and toughness of spider silk. Artificial versions are getting closer, but the spider remains a far superior materials engineer. (Source: Natural Library of Medicine and Annual Reviews)

• Avian flight: Birds navigate vast distances using combinations of landmarks, the sun, stars, olfactory cues, and Earth's magnetic field. Some migrate thousands of miles only to return to a single specific tree. We still don't fully grasp the underlying mechanisms. (Source: Cornell Lab of Ornithology)

And then there is the number 23, which may be trying to tell me something. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Put 23 people in a room, and there's a greater than 50 percent chance two of them share a birthday. Earth is tilted at 23 degrees on its axis. Element 23 is vanadium, named for Vanadis — another name for Freyja, the Norse goddess of fertility and magic. Vanadium isn't just any element; it's industrial Viagra — a trace amount makes steel substantially harder. Without vanadium, our ability to erect skyscrapers would be diminished, and modern civilization would have a lot less big dick energy.

I had been noticing the number 23 everywhere while writing about God, only to realize that God's most famous quick-start guide has 23 right in its title: Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

And an even stranger one: Numbers 23:23 contains the phrase "What hath God wrought." That phrase was famously chosen by Samuel Morse for the first official telegraph message in 1844.

At this point I'm beginning to suspect God might have a favorite number. Or I might simply be very good at noticing 23.

Is God the great galactic computer? Is God a man on a throne with a long white beard? Is God the collective love of the universe? Is God something else entirely?

Why does the universe have a trajectory from simplicity toward complexity, from complexity toward life, and from life toward observers like me writing articles like this? The answer seems plain.

I'm not sure what God actually is, but I am sure that God exists. I am certain that there's something out there beyond our immediate reach that is trying to reach us.

I'm so grateful to all the people who have reached out to me over the last year to talk about religion.

Let's keep the conversation going.

David Scherer Water writes his column on a yellow 1973 IBM Selectric II. He then reads his first draft out loud into a smartphone, sends it as an email to himself where it goes through a final polish before reaching you. As the world moves deeper into words churned out by robots, David remains committed to an offline brain, a stack of paper, and the friction of ink. Please support his work by becoming a free or paid subscriber to his Substack.