Re: [asa] Random and design

In other words, freedom is an illusion, purely wishful thinking.
Dave

On Thu, 23 Nov 2006 06:18:22 -0800 "Don Winterstein"
<dfwinterstein@msn.com> writes:
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.
To: dfwinterstein@msn.com
Cc: 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> 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.
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>
  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 15:22:39 2006