Re: [asa] Random and design

Randy,
I think you're being too exacting. To give an arbitrary example, if
there
are 10,000 nuclei of an element with a half life of 100 years at time t,
then at exactly 7+100 there will be 5000 nuclei of that element. So long
as I spout examples, we can have exact numbers. But how will you count
exactly 10k nuclei, or 5k? Unless radioactive decay is different from
other phenomena, there is a standard deviation attached, even though it
is not usually mentioned when equations for an event are given. Given
the
multiple problems of events and their measurement, how will you
determine
whether something is compensated? I don't see that there is a principle
of the thing.

Consider a genome. A cosmic ray zaps one of the nucleotides. How can you
tell whether it was deliberately aimed by God to make that change or
just
happened? Is God responsible if there is a deletion that changes the
reading frame and not if the nucleotide merely codes for a different
amino acid in the protein's sequence? If vice versa? What did God do or
fail to do that duplicated and modified the sex-linked genes that
give us
elements of color vision? How would you go about detecting the hand of
God in the changes? Is God micromanaging every change or generally
supervising? How do you know?

I rather like Luther's statement that natural laws are the masks of God.
It fits Paul's statement that in Christ all things hang together.
Providence operates continuously, so I thank God continually. But I
can't
say that he is in the rolled oats but not in the farina, or vice versa.
Dave (t'other one)

On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 21:08:27 -0500 "Randy Isaac"
<randyisaac@adelphia.net> writes:
Dave,
     Although I usually agree with you, this time I would suggest
that, at
least for me, the issues are reversed. Though there may be hermeneutical
questions remaining regarding Gen 1&2, the ones you cite don't seem to
create a significant problem for TE as far as I can tell. Nor does the
mechanism. Whether natural selection is sufficient or whether other
mechanisms play a role doesn't have much impact on TE.
     But I do struggle with the randomness question. I've said that
before
and I haven't resolved it yet. I would state it a little differently
than
Gage but I do think that is the core problem. We often glibly say that
scientific randomness does not preclude divine guidance. But wouldn't a
system subject to supernatural guidance of any kind show, in some small
way, a physical deviation from randomness? If not, then is there any
significance to the divine guidance?

     Let's think of an example. Consider a collection of radioactive
atoms. Physics can tell us quite precisely the probability that any
given
atom will undergo a radioactive decay in a given period of time. If
under
divine influence an atom decays earlier than it would have without that
influence, then to keep the divine action 'hidden' there would have
to be
some compensating atom whose decay is delayed so that the aggregate
stays
within the scientific expectations. (ok, so we can't detect individual
atoms but it's the principle!) Such a scenario would indeed be quite
indistinguishable scientifically from the case without divine guidance.
But would it really have resulted in a significant effect on our
universe?

     Another way of talking about it is to speak of systems as canonical
ensembles. The behavior of the ensemble is well defined but the
individual elements may have random behavior. If the behavior of that
system were subject to divine guidance, the ensemble would need to be
invariant (to avoid scientific detection) but the elements might vary.
Yet any element whose behavior is modified must be countered by another
modified element to keep the ensemble behavior coherent.

     In other words, if a random system shows no evidence of being
guided
naturally and we insist that it can still be guided divinely, is there
really any meaningful influence? Or are we just making an untestable
faith claim?

     Randy

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Received on Wed Nov 22 00:22:15 2006