Furthermore, if you want to take the position that seeming randomness that
is actually guided
to some purpose is deceptive, that implies that had we known the direction
of the guidance, then
the purpose could be understood.
If you didn't know the rules of chess and you watched the first six moves
or so of a single game,
the motions would appear to be near random (not a great example but you get
my intent). Since
we can not know God's thoughts, it's hubris to believe that with 'just a
little more information,'
we could figure out God's purpose. God wrote his salvation plan down in
the Old Testament,
but even Jesus' disciples couldn't figure out what He was doing until after
the resurrection.
David F Siemens <dfsiemensjr@juno.com>@udomo3.calvin.edu on 02/14/2001
09:18:38 PM
Sent by: asa-owner@udomo3.calvin.edu
To: gbrown@euclid.colorado.edu
cc: iain@istrachan.clara.co.uk, asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: More on Gosse's OMPHALOS
Gordon,
I found your response most interesting. Nothing that I know about is more
rigorously determined than the decimal value of pi, yet I understand that
the sequence passes all known tests for randomness. It looks as though we
cannot tell the difference between random and determinate sequences
without knowing how they were arrived at. If this observation expresses a
valid principle, then what we take to be a series of random events may be
determined by "forces" of which we are not aware. It follows that God
cannot be lying about "accidents" just because we think we've discovered
randomness.
Dave
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 15 2001 - 08:31:59 EST