From: gordon brown (gbrown@euclid.colorado.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 03 2003 - 14:51:48 EDT
On Wed, 2 Jul 2003, Glenn Morton wrote:
> au contraire. I would argue that only with randomness can we actually have
> free will. The view in physics when Newtonian physics was thought to be the
> reality was that the future was absolutely predictable. They thought they
> could predict the future with absolute accuracy and that view, when applied
> to humans, leads to the nature/nurture debate. Are we determined by our
> genes or are we products of chance--i.e.,our environment. What they didn't
> know was that even Newtonian dynamics is not predictable due to nonlinearity
> in the equations. Thus the inability to predict the future is not limited to
> quantum. Even in Newtonian physics, objects behave randomly.
The way I use the terms, free will and chance are different. If my
decisions are determined by chance, I am no more responsible for them than
if they were the results of coercion.
It appears to me that on this thread some take predictability to mean
ability to predict physical events purely from physical laws. Since God is
outside time, it should be no more surprising that he knows what will
happen in the future than it is that he knows what has happened in the
past. Thus He knows exactly the ultimate outcomes of His actions, and
thus, whether directly or indirectly, determines those outcomes by His
actions. This applies whether or not these outcomes are predictable solely
from the laws of physics that He has established.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
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