Re: [asa] Random and design

The idea of an infinitude of possible routes is well suited to what we know about the course of organic evolution. Organisms of many kinds flourished and then went extinct. How many of them were necessary for humanity? How many could have been replaced with alternatives without significantly altering the final outcome? Were dinosaurs really necessary? The fossil record suggests almost anything could have happened. In the end, I trust, God would still have wound up with some sort of creature "made in his image." Probably we'd have looked different--maybe a lot different, but we'd still be capable of knowing God. And God wouldn't have had to store every minute detail in his memory but could have let things largely determine their own course--

which, to all appearances, is what he did.

Don
  
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: D. F. Siemens, Jr.<mailto:dfsiemensjr@juno.com>
  To: dfwinterstein@msn.com<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>
  Cc: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 11:37 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Random and design

  This is an "all roads lead to Rome" with a vengeance. How are there an indefinitely large (quasi-infinite) set of routes all of which end in the same perfect place? Sounds like "six impossible things before breakfast."
  Dave

  On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:34:27 -0800 "Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>> writes:
    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<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>
      Cc: asa@calvin.edu<mailto: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<mailto: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>
          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 Thu Nov 23 09:18:21 2006