RE: [asa] Random and design

How would you calculate the probability that a particular Armenian boy born in Havana, Cuba would marry a particular Armenian girl born in Providence, Rhode Island? There is a lot of info that would increase the probability calculated considerably by someone who knew that my mother wanted her children to go to the USA and always wanted her children to marry Armenians. Of course, there are more additional facts I can give. However, is there someone that knew more that would make the marriage inevitable? This without eliminating the free will of all involved.

 
Moorad

________________________________

From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of David Opderbeck
Sent: Wed 11/22/2006 9:04 AM
To: Don Winterstein
Cc: D. F. Siemens, Jr.; asa
Subject: Re: [asa] Random and design

If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and sovereign, I don't see why any of this is such a big deal. Of course, omniscient doesn't mean knowing things that don't exist or violate basic principles (such as the law of non-contradiction) and therefore can't be known, omnipotent doesn't mean being able to do things that are contradictory and nonsensical (like making a rock too big for God to lift), and sovereign doesn't mean mechanically dictatorial such that all freedom is excluded. But once you have a balanced and historical understanding of God's attributes, there's no problem with where God "stores all this info" or how He knows things that are undetermined according to QM. Mr. Beaver famously said Aslan isn't a "tame" lion; we could modernize it and say God isn't a computer with limited bandwidth and memory.

On 11/22/06, Don Winterstein <dfwinterstein@msn.com> wrote:

        Dave,
         
        I don't see it that way. I understand that you are contending that, in order for God to foreknow his people, he must foreknow in full detail all events that lead to his people, including the QM choices that every particle in the sequence makes, all the way from the big bang. That gives me a headache just thinking about it. I would hope that God would have better things to do with his cognitive apparatus--whatever it is--than store all this info.
         
        The model I like instead is that yes, God knows the outcome, but there's an infinitude of different ways of reaching it. I visualize God as one who gives a nudge here and there when the world starts taking routes that don't look promising, but otherwise he lets it ferment on its own without such interventions. (Let's not at this point get into what "on its own" might mean!)
         
        And yet--as I've stated here before--I credit God with doing a whole lot better job of running my life than I would have done on my own. That is, things have meshed extraordinarily well in many different ways despite rather than because of my best efforts. So I see him as intimately involved. At the same time I feel free as can be, apart from just a bit of pressure to do for him what I need to do.
         
        So I see God controlling things behind the scenes but not at all like a puppeteer. It's as if things just work themselves out on their own; but I give God the credit. This may be nonsense, but it's the most accurate description I can come up with. The older I get the more clearly I see his hand in my life, and this perception makes me believe he does more than a little behind-the-scenes nudging.
         
        In your terms I'm combining unpredictability with precise prediction: the process is not fully predicted, but the final outcome is. And this is possible because there's an infinitude of routes to an acceptable destination, i.e., a destination compatible with God's foreknowledge. (One possibility is that God knew us at the outset as spiritual beings but didn't know how our physical bodies would turn out. He let the world decide that.)
         
        The big difference between us is that I see God as one who continually interacts in ways that have creative significance while you see God as one who knows it all in detail at the outset and somehow has set it in motion to arrive at its known conclusion. Does this sound right?
        
         
        Don
         

                
                ----- Original Message -----
                From: D. F. Siemens, Jr. <mailto:dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
                
                To: dfwinterstein@msn.com
                Cc: asa@calvin.edu
                
                Sent: Monday, November 20, 2006 10:25 AM
                Subject: Re: [asa] Random and design

                 
                Don,
                The impossible problem is that God's knowledge must encompass the results of quantum indeterminism and human freedom of choice, neither of which is logically predictable. So all you have to do to validate your outlook is to combine unpredictability with precise prediction, or show that there is neither indeterminism nor freedom. Otherwise, p&~p is not only false but impossible in the strongest sense. This doesn't depend on some logical postulate.
                Dave
                 
                On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:10:37 -0800 "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com > writes:

                        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 <mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com> >
                          Cc: mrb22667@kansas.net<mailto: mrb22667@kansas.net <mailto:mrb22667@kansas.net> > ; asa@calvin.edu<mailto: 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
                         

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
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