"Howard J. Van Till" wrote:
>
> >From: Peter Ruest <pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch>
>
> > I don't know how a gambling casino computes its profit (= bias) from the
> > individual operations, probably just by a certain predetermined function
> > of input and possibly maximum output. But the casino metaphor doesn't at
> > all reflect biology. Geochemistry has no bias for or against life, and
> > biochemistry has no bias for or against a novel functionality.
>
> An honest gambling casino assures itself a profit by depending on the
> true randomness of each game so that it can determine the payout rates
> from the computable probabilities.
I take this to mean there is true randomness without bias between
different customers, but there is a bias between customers and casino,
else the casino wouldn't even be able to pay its running expenses. In
the biological parallel, the customers would be the different (viable or
non-viable) biological configurations occurring by chance (_before_
selection!). God would be the casino - except that he gives instead of
taking. Now we know that in biology there is only a very limited number
of viable "customers", but a virtually unlimited number of non-viable
ones, whereas in a fair casino the number of winners and losers would be
more or less equal.
> How do you know that geochemistry and biochemistry (plus all other
> phenomena that contribute to the Creation's formational economy) has
> no bias toward a system of life on earth? If you present that as your
> belief, that's fine. If you assert that as a self-evident truth, then
> I think it needs to be contested.
No, it's the firm conviction of virtually all of main-stream science
today! All ideas of teleology, while hotly debated among scientists in
Darwin's time, are relegated to metaphysics today. Natural selection has
an effect on survival, but not on the generation of mutants. I agree
with you that there is a bias toward a system of life on earth. But the
bias required for the realization of life cannot be accounted for
(stochastically) by known natural processes.
> > It's only
> > after the mutation that selection sets in (if it does at all). And the
> > mutational biases probably required for life and novel functionalities
> > to emerge are different for different cases. This means that if this
> > problem is to be managed by a single predetermined divine function of
> > the environment, this function would have to be transastronomically
> > complex, certainly even much more complex than the set of selections
> > (bias values) which would have to be applied individually whenever
> > needed ("hidden options").
>
> A "single predetermined function"? That sounds a bit hyper-Calvinist
> to me :) I see no reason to imagine that all details of the Creation's
> formational history were predetermined. I see contingency as
> authentic.
Sure, contingency is authentic. I am not a hyper-Calvinist. I believe
God "uses" randomness and contingency by _not_ predetermining the
majority of elementary event. But for the realization of a biosphere,
there still is a huge number of bifurcations that have to be decided or
selected in the right way in order for life to succeed. When did these
myriad decisions by the Creator happen, all at the big bang (your
"creation's functional integrity" or "single predetermined function") or
whenever needed ("hidden options")?
> > And we would be back to my question: where
> > was this function (a tremendous amount of information) stored between
> > the big bang and the time it was needed - in the creation or only in the
> > mind of God?
>
> If I understand you correctly, getting away from a wholly
> deterministic picture eliminates the need for this huge function that
> specifies all of that detail. Potentialities (present both in the mind
> of God and in the nature of the Creation) become actualized as that
> formational history occurs.
No, the huge function or huge amount of information required is not
dependent on a wholly deterministic picture. Information is required to
find a viable path through a maze of a transastronomical number of
possibilities. Potentialities never make a casino gambler win each time
he tries it.
> God's intentions, however, might be
> something like that of the owners in my (admittedly imperfect) casino
> metaphor: Some general type of outcome is assured (profit at the end
> of the day; sentient & morally aware life appears), even though lots
> of details (the outcome of each game; the particular species that are
> actualized in time) are open to contingency.
See above for contingency. - You seem to insist that what you call
"profit" and I called "bias" - in this case in favor of the "customers"
- has been stored in the creation from the beginning. And you seem to
insist that the only amount of bias required for realizing the lofty
goal of "sentient & morally aware life appearing" is the minimal amount
of information that can be transferred from the environment to the
organisms by natural selection. Do you have any evidence supporting this
belief?
> ....skip a lot....
>
> > I don' think you can show "God's hidden options" have anything to do
> > with coercive interventions. And you know that I don't believe in
> > process theology; I don't see any points of similarity between divine
> > persuasion and hidden options, but maybe you can show me some. And I
> > don't think there is only the space between coercive intervention and
> > process theology's divine persuasion.
>
> Think of the following as a sequence of concepts regarding the way
> divine action affects the outcome of creaturely events/processes:
>
> 1. coercive (overpowering, as in supernatural intervention)
> 2. selective (your proposal)
> 3. persuasive (as in process theology)
> 4. independent (as in classical deism)
OK, if you place these 4 very general descriptors onto a continuous
scale, their relative order might be the one you propose. This still
doesn't tell us much about the relationship between adjacent terms. We
have to go into the details.
> .... skip a lot ....
>
> I had said:
>
> >> My hypothesis is that the creaturely system to which God has given
> >> being (which includes atoms, molecules, cells, organisms and every
> >> physical, chemical and biological thing they are capable of doing) has
> >> the capabilities to actualize -- without divine intervention -- every
> >> type of life form that has ever appeared on the face of the earth. Of
> >> course, atoms, molecules and cells are themselves systems actualized
> >> from even simpler components.
>
> Peter replied:
>
> > If I understand you correctly, this means, in scientific language, that
> > life and all its complexity - up to humanity - arose by purely natural
> > means and in an undirected, random way, by self-organization of chemical
> > compounds available on the prebiotic Earth into living systems, by the
> > emergence, out of nothing, of an ever-growing functional complexity of
> > the living systems, by means of the action of environmental natural
> > selection and chance on living systems.
>
> The reference to "out of nothing" is very confusing. I have
> consistently spoken of potentialities (resident in the Creation as
> part of its God-given being) being actualized by the exercise of the
> Creation's God-given formational capabilities.
I am thinking of the information required for building the complex
functionalities in the biosphere (e.g. in the sense of the minimal
algorithm generating it). A minute fraction of this information can be
and was generated by the process of natural selection (the prebiotic
earth had a complexity transastronomically much smaller than the
biosphere). The majority of the information came "out of nothing" or by
means of divine hidden selection - of which I prefer the second option,
as the first one is scientifically preposterous. Why are cosmologists
talking of an infinity of universes (in principle never accessible by
science)? Because they think the probability of the one we know being so
fruitful by chance is so small as to be preposterous.
> > Now, this sounds thoroughly
> > deistic. Where is God's continual providential action? He doesn't seem
> > to have anything to do after the big bang. I don't believe you are a
> > deist, but I don't understand the link, in your view, between
> > "formational capabilities for actualizing these potentialities" and
> > scientific reality in the realm of biology.
>
> Here is where I find process theology interesting and potentially
> fruitful. It speaks of God's non-coercive action as an essential
> aspect of every event/process. Divine action is ubiquitous,
> non-coercive, but yet effective. That eliminates atheism, deism, and
> coercive interventionism simultaneously.
>
> Howard
I can accept the idea of "God's non-coercive action as an essential
aspect of every event/process" as a reasonable formal description of my
concept of God's "hidden options", although the latter suggests, in
addition, a concrete providential mechanism linking the theological and
the scientific realms. Do you permit that I still reject process
theology's ideas of God's lack of omnipotence and omniscience, of his
"development" and dependence on the history of creation, and of its
anti-trinitarianism (if I understood it correctly)?
Peter
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