back to religion

I do have a kind of faith. A faith in the greater good, perhaps, in some kind of emergent whole. I wonder, is this a proof of God’s existence:
When we look at any system, any system at all, we discover that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Emergent properties are everywhere. A car is so much more than the parts that constitute it. And a cell, well, a cell is certainly much more than the molecules it contains. And we see this emergent design principle at all levels: the colony is more than the ants; the human is more than her cells; the corporation more than it’s employees. And on and on. At every level there are emergent properties that the constituent parts cannot perceive: the ant can’t see the colony; the organelle can’t ‘see’ the cell; the individual cannot see the behaviour of the crowd. So, by induction, so to speak, there must be properties emerging from the sum of all the perceivable parts of the universe: every other system has emergent properties, so it seems certain that the system we call a universe (or, if we want to start more modestly, we could take it one galaxy at a time, but ultimately we’ll reach the same point) must also have emergent properties that the constituent parts of that universe cannot perceive.
That means us. There must be properties of our universe that are not perceptible form our level, but only emerge from a viewpoint of a level up. And perhaps, just perhaps, we can call the system as a whole, complete with its emergent properties, God. And even if we don’t give it that name, it exists as something greater than we can know. It must do. Every system is greater than the sum of its parts – that is the lesson of complexity and emergent design.