With much trepidation, I enter this fray.
At 11:08 AM 2/24/00 -0700, John W. Burgeson wrote:
>Dave wrote:
>
>"Burgy wants God to be surprised, as he is surprised, by what he does. "
>
>Not quite. I don't "want" that -- I simply see it as a pretty obvious
>implication from the biblical record.
>
>"The only way for God to be surprised
>is if his knowledge and power are limited."
Or self-limited. There is a way to unite both views of free will in
nonlinear systems. God can foreknow the results of someone's life and still
be surprised. It lies in nonlinear systems. I have mentioned the
philosophical implications of Sierpinski's gasket before in relation to the
phase spaces of nonlinear systems. Sierpinski's gasket is a gasket with no
surface area that has a finite perimeter. It is created by drawing 3 fixed
points (A,B,C) and one movable point (M) on a plane like this:
.A
.M
.B .C
Take a random number generator and that gives integers between 1 and 3
inclusive. If the generator gives 1, then move M halfway to A. If it gives
2 then move half the distance to B and if it gives a 3 then move half the
distance to C. After 20,000 or so movements of the M dot, marking each
location it lands on, you will have created an image of Sierpinski's
gasket. You can see it at
http://home.flash.net/~mortongr/sier.gif
While one cannot know what order the output of the random number generator
is, i.e. the observer is surprised at the direction the M dot moves. He has
a 1/3 chance of guessing the direction of each move. His knowledge is
incomplete. However, the observer KNOWS beyond any doubt that after 20,000
trials or so, Sierpinski's gasket will most assuredly appear. This object
unites chance and determinism into one object.
I submit that humans are nonlinear similar to those systems. With this as
an analogy, God can know that our lives will produce a particular pattern,
even though he may not entirely know the way we will get there. Via this
type of Divine knowledge, God can fore ordain the elect--knowing who will
and won't end up there, but we have free will and God can be surprised by
our actions.
I would go a bit further and suggest that our genetics predetermins much in
life. There are those anecdotal examples of twins adopted and raised apart
who do things very similarly to their twin.
"Raised together, twins are unusually close, sometimes developing
their own private language. But even when they are reared apart,
twins show amazing similarities as adults. Twins Jim Springer
and Jim Lewis, separated at birth in 1939, were reunited 39 years
later in a study of twins at the University of Minnesota. Both
had married and divorced women named Linda, married second wives
named Betty and named their oldest sons James Allan and James
Alan. More coincidences: both drove the same model of blue
Chevrolet, enjoyed woodworking, vacationed on the same Florida
beach and had dogs named Toy."~Heredity: They'll be the Same, But
Different", Newsweek, Nov. 8, 1993., p. 62
"I quote from a recent article in Science:
'When Oskar Stohr and Jack Yufe arrived in Minnesota to participate in
University of Minnesota psychologist Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr.'s study of
idential twins reared apart, they were both sporting blue double-breasted
epauletted shirts, moustaches, and wire-rimmed glasses. Idential twins
separated at birth, the two men in their late 40s, had met once before two
decades earlier. Nonetheless Oskar, raised as a Catholic in Germany, and
Jack, reared by his Jewish father in Trinidad, proved tohave much in common
in
thier tastes and personalities--including hasty tempers and idiosyncratic
senses of humor (both enjoyed surprising people by sneezing in elevators).'
And both flushed the toilet both before and after using it, kept rubber bands
around their wrists, and dipped buttered toast in their coffee."~Steven
Pinker, The Language Instinct, (New York: Harper/Perennial, 1994), p. 327
**
"Another pair of identical twins meeting for the first time discovered that
they both used Vademecum toothpaste, Canoe shaving lotion, Vitalis hair
sonic, and Lucky Strike cigarettes. After the meeting they sent each other
identical birthday presents that crossed in the mail. One pair of women
habitually wore seven rings. Another pair of men pointed out (correctly)
that a wheel bearing in Bouchard's car needed replacing. And quantitative
research corroborates the hundreds of anecdotes. Not only are very general
traits like IQ, extroversions, and neuroticism partly heritable, but so are
specific ones
like degree of religious feeling, vocational interests, and opinions about the
death penalty, disarmament, and computer music."~Steven Pinker, The Language
Instinct, (New York: Harper/Perennial, 1994), p. 328
"People find these discoveries arresting, even incredible. The discoveries
cast doubt on the autonom9ous 'I' that we all feel hovering above our
bodies, making choices as we proceed through life and affected only by our
past and present environments....And despite what critics sometimes claim,
the effects are not products of coincidence, fraud or subtle similarities
int he family environments (such as adoption agencies striving to place
identical twins in homes that both encourage walking into the ocean
backwards)." Stephen Pinker, How the Mind Works," (New York: Norton, 1997),
p. 20-21
Even death seems programmed by our genes:
"There is also evidence in favor of the genetic determination of longevity
in humans. For example, studies with twins show that genetically identical
twins on average die thirty-six months apart; their lifespans are very
similar. By comparison, fraternal twins die seventy-five months apart, and
randomly selected siblings have an average time between deaths of 106
months. The closer two individuals are genetically, the closer their life
spans." William R. Clark, Sex & the Origins of Death, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), p. 82
As usual, I have chosen the perfect position from which to be shot at by
everyone. Start shooting.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 24 2000 - 21:25:01 EST
