RE: Who's Burden of Proof?

The Christian God is Creator of all that there is and so He has to be essentially outside spacetime. Therefore, it may be that what appears to us random may not be random at all to God. It is so hard to speak of what process God uses to set up nature and how He interacts with the whole of creation.

Moorad

        -----Original Message-----
        From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu on behalf of William Hamilton
        Sent: Sun 11/30/2003 9:54 PM
        To: asa@calvin.edu
        Cc:
        Subject: Re: Who's Burden of Proof?
        
        

        Have you heard of mixed strategies, or genetic algorithms?
        
        In stochastic optimization there are situations where selecting
        strategy A with probability p(A) and strategy B with probability p(B)
        gives a better result than selecting purely strategy A or strategy B.
        That's a mixed strategy.
        
        Genetic algorithm are optimization/search methods which mimic natural
        selection. They are used to solve complex optimization problems with
        many variables.
        
        In both techniques chance plays an important role.
        
        Steve, as a sometime design engineer (but mainly a researcher for the
        past 20 years) I agree with your characteristics of design. Whether
        they transfer from a finite human designer to an omnipotent, omniscient
        Divine Designer, though, is IMO problematic.
        
        I have maintained for some time that I believe God employs randomness
        in genomes as a means of enabling life to adapt to changing
        circumstances. One might ask why God doesn't interact more directly
        with His creation, and I don't have an answer (does anyone?) But
        Scripture does document that He interacts very directly with humans.
        
        On Friday, November 28, 2003, at 01:37 PM, Steve Petermann wrote:
        
> Mark wrote:
>> what about quantum computing?
>
> I don't know about quantum computing, but I would assume that to be
> useful,
> the indetermancies of quantum events would need to be managed in some
> way.
> If that is true, then chance is not the dominant or controlling force.
>
> The reason I said "dominant" is because a good designer would not
> necessarily rule out incorporating chance in their designs. There
> might be
> cases where chance could interject some novelty into the design. That
> novelty could then be tested and its results accepted or rejected
> based on
> the purpose of the design. However, if chance is the dominant mode of
> design, then the designer could not assure that the goals of the design
> would be met.
>
> Steve Petermann
>
>
>
>
>
        Bill Hamilton Rochester, MI 248 652 4148
        
        
        
Received on Sun Nov 30 22:17:31 2003