Re: [asa] Random and design

Dave,

We've gone over this before. I still believe--similarly to George, I think--that God is eternal and not confined within our space-time but that he also experiences event sequence in a way that makes it possible for him to have real interactions with his world and with humans. George argues from Christ (as usual), while I argue from Christ as well as general human experience of God, including my own experiences (as usual). If we can't follow the logic, we're certainly no worse off in that respect than we are with QM.

There are some issues on which I can't yield to logic even if it makes me look unreasonable. Logic, after all, is based on postulates, one or more of which could be incomplete or mistaken. And QM shows to a degree that the world does not always honor human logic. Our logical postulates come out of our experience, but our experience has been largely irrelevant when it comes to particles. What else might our experience be irrelevant to?

Although I accept Paul's statement that God foreknew us, I'd be willing to entertain unconventional interpretations of the details. But I don't know what you take to be the "impossible problem."

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: D. F. Siemens, Jr.<mailto:dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
  To: dfwinterstein@msn.com<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>
  Cc: mrb22667@kansas.net<mailto:mrb22667@kansas.net> ; asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Saturday, November 18, 2006 10:45 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Random and design

  Don,
  This is correct if God is confined to time. But if God is eternal in the
  sense of being timeless, then the path an electron took-takes-will take
  will not need to be determined in a picosecond. It is simply known.
  George doesn't like this notion, for he insists the Father felt the death
  of the Son _when_ it happened. I contend that if this is the temporal
  situation with the unincarnate deity, then we have an impossible problem
  with human freedom as well as with indeterministic quanta. Paul had to be
  wrong when he declared that those God foreknew pre-creation he _has_
  glorified.

  On Fri, 17 Nov 2006 22:33:00 -0800 "Don Winterstein"
  <dfwinterstein@msn.com> writes:
  <snip>

  Fact is, if God can determine why an electron "decides" to go to one
  location on the interference pattern rather than to another, he must be
  able to read the electron's "mind" in maybe a picosecond. If the
  electron doesn't have a mind but just responds in knee-jerk fashion,
  ...well, it's all so hard to comprehend. We don't know how to think like
  particles. Nevertheless, it still seems reasonable to me that God would
  be able to extensively influence the development of the world by
  manipulating particles within their probability distributions, all
  without violating any physical law.

  But as for whether physicists now acknowledge hard limits--no one I've
  heard of. What they're likely to readily acknowledge is that the world
  is far stranger than our predecessors knew. And it is experiment, often
  suggested and illuminated by theory, that tells us this.

  Don

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Received on Mon Nov 20 11:11:00 2006