The travelling salesman problem and Jesus.

I remember the first time I came across the concept of P (polynomial time) and non P problems in mathematics; roughly corresponding to tractable and intractable problems, the latter being ones that are not able to be solved in a finite amount of time.

The travelling salesman problem (TSP) is... "given a list of cities and their pairwise distances, the task is to find the shortest possible route that visits each city exactly once and returns to the origin city." (Wikipedia)

The surprising thing is that this is not only computationally difficult, but that it is in fact an intractable problem not able to be solved by simple formulaic methods in polynomial (finite) time. That once you go beyond a surprisingly small number of cities to be visited the complexity of the paths grows so exponentially that it cannot be calculated in a knowable finite time by human methods. Using computers the problem with less than 100,000 'cities' easily takes decades in CPU-years and a problem solved for 85,900 points (on a circuit board) with "Concorde TSP solver" took an equivalent 136 CPU-years to solve (Applegate 2006, from Wikipedia Jan 2013 TSP page).

So why have I brought this up you might ask? It so happens that the TSP was what once sparked a mental exercise for me during a debate with a friend during my years in medical school who was an evangelical "born again" Christian, when I imagined Jesus as having to take on a role as a cosmic travelling salesman.

I remember at the time reading on various ancient astronaut theories purporting to explain human existence on Earth and this led me to examine the Christian account of Jesus in the light of a broader cosmology. Through a series of "what if" type questions I realised that Jesus may have to be a travelling salesman of sorts, when viewed on the scale of a universe.

I want to make it clear from the start that I have no inherent problem with Jesus' message of love and so on. His moral message and lessons. In reading (so called) "red letter" bibles which highlight Jesus' spoken words, much, if not all of what is highlighted is very reasonable and worthy of thought and contemplation. Therefore it's not this which I see as problematic or in question, but rather the doctrinal aspects which place Jesus in a cosmic quagmire which logical reasoning cannot save him from. Some might say that even trying to debate religion from a logical standpoint is futile, but I think it's worthy of at least some thought, even if it is just as an exercise.

The way I see it, the doctrine surrounding Jesus; namely his unique life and especially death on Earth, for the sake of all human sins, pins Jesus down firmly to the confines of this planet. An earthly message that is therefore limited in space and time.

Christian doctrine limits Jesus' role to the inhabitants of this planet Earth and to a very short period of its existence at that.

As I see it, in the stupendously vast space of this Universe that contains the Earth and the several billion light years worth of matter and energy, it seems inconceivable to me that we are "it". The be all and end all of existence.

That amongst that vast expanse of space no other intelligent beings exist, existed or will ever exist. This is surely a matter of debate itself but I am simply allowing to myself the plausibility that other extraterrestrial intelligent life existed, exists or will exist.

I should explain that I feel that a Creator's role in creating life, intelligence and consciousness is not limited to being a one off "materialise a human pair from nothing on Earth" deed.

While I think our existence is created (based on rational thought), I see it as a creation from design by a Creator who put into place the needed elements that would in time become the things necessary for our existence. Given that the necessary elements span the entire universe, I believe that similar events that resulted in us are very possible, and even likely elsewhere in the universe.

Now if we allow for extraterrestrial existence of life, intelligence and moral truth then it stands to reason that a Creator's mercy would extend to those other worldly beings also and hence the need for notification and "salvation" of them too.

This leaves the Christian Jesus, the somehow divine one of doctrine, the one that lived and died on Earth as a unique once only event with such immense consequences in a difficult position.

Christian doctrine is refuted in the case that extraterrestrial beings exist, since it creates in Jesus a travelling salesman problem to solve since he or some version of him would need to live and die on those other planets and places too presumably. The hundreds of years of Christian councils, schisms, religious men, historical events and debates that resulted in Christian doctrine would need to happen presumably on all those planets too since "red letter" bibles which have all of what we know Jesus to have said, do not elucidate the doctrine of salvation from a so called "original sin", another seemingly unique one off event. An event that logically cannot span the whole universe and condemn all of its extra-terrestrial inhabitants too, but I digress.

The problem of Jesus having to be a "travelling salesman" and enacting a life and death that cleanses the entire universe, disappears however, if the doctrinal element of a unique earthly death which is all saving, is discounted and Jesus therefore becomes like all of us... only human.

This leaves the Creator in turn free to inform and inspire all the various creations apart from us whether they exist or not, in ways not dependent on the doctrines conceived by earthly men.