Peter Ruest wrote:
....................
> PR: I don't have your competence in physics. So I don't want to try to
> discuss in detail the theoretically possible connections between quantum
> events, chaos processes, and what we, on the observational level, call
> randomness. However, experimental/observational science will not be able
> to trace these events and processes beyond the observation of
> randomness. I don't know how God determines which one of the N bases
> gets hit, or whether a given mutation evades all DNA repair mechanisms,
> or which one of several embryos survives, etc., and there are many more
> "random" events until a mutation is fixed in a species. Is it known that
> every type of such hidden selections (not natural selection!) is
> reducible to quantum uncertainty and chaos, as you state? As far as I
> know, Laplacian determinism is not much more than a supposition.
You're interested in the matter as a biologist and I as a physicist.
I think a good arguemnt can be made that "random events" and "coincidences"
can ultimately be understood in relation to quantum uncertainty and/or
classical chaos. I.e., those are the things that make Laplacian determinism
unrealistic. But in any case, the categories of "random events" and
"coincidences" seem to me simply too vague for us to be able to get a handle
on if they aren't connected with QM and chaos. A focus on the possibility of
God's action at the quantum level gives us something definite to work with
both in physics and in theology - though it may leave us some distance from
possible applications to biological phenomena. & the question of how
definite results are produced in quantum measurements & what God's role in
that may be is important even if one isn't concerned about biology.
>
> ___________________________________
> > PR:
> > My proposal only involves these critical events relevant for biology.
> > Others may possibly have
> > occurred in cosmology (cf. the anthropic cosmological principle). I
> > suppose events not critical for
> > anything may be left to genuine chance (cf. my paper "How has life and
> > its diversity been
> > produced?" PSCF 44/2 (June 1992), 80-94).
> >
> > GLM:
> > I find such a proposal vaguely troubling, though I can't easily
> > put my finger on the difficulty. If
> > some wave packet collapses are "left to chance" then we've dropped the
> > principle of sufficient
> > reason. Perhaps we need to. But then to say that God determines the
> > results of some of these
> > collapses means that there is a sufficient reason for the results of
> > those measurements. Thus God
> > could provide a reason for all the other measurements, but doesn't.
>
> PR: Again, the principle of sufficient reason is a philosophical
> supposition, not a requirement of logic. But even if it were true, it
> wouldn't follow that God would have to "provide a reason" for _all_
> measurements. If we look at it from a theological viewpoint, God may
> decree that a certain mutation happens, in a second case he may decree a
> spectrum of possible mutations, and in a third case he may just do
> nothing, having decreed the mutation mechanisms with their stochastic
> properties at the beginning of life.
Again, you're focussing on biological issues but the problem is
broader than that. It involves every case of an electron being observed in
one place rather than another. I agree that we aren't required to accept the
principle of sufficient reason but it seems to me, as I said, "troubling," to
have to drop it and say that some things happen for no reason at all. & this
is especially so because we would not be saying simply that there is no
natural cause that it happens that way. We would be saying that God is not
even the cause of that event.
> > OTOH, having God engineer the results of all measurements -
> > especially if this is done
> > directly & not in cooperation with any hidden variables - would return
> > God to the position of the
> > absolute controller of all events, though now as the power behind the
> > throne instead of the absolute
> > monarch.
>
> PR: I don't feel such an absolute control of all events would be
> scientifically, theologically, or philosophically required or helpful.
Agreed, but we have to say that God causes (a) all (b) some or (c)
none of the events at the quantum level.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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