Re: [asa] Review of Behe in Books and Culture

It's not at all clear to me why this is not more a discussion about how
prayers are responded to.
Presumeably prayers are non-deterministic, if free will means anything.
And it is in God's response to our prayers where some nudging might be
necessary to nuance otherwise solely probabilistic outcomes (which of
course may otherwise be in complete compliance with an overall
designed-in development trajectory).

On the other hand, there seems to be no killer reason to think that the
basic physical Creation needs to be twinked occasionally (or constantly)
in order to achieve its basic intended purpose. Indeed, Creation seems
to be awesomely and intentionally constituted to manifest a truly
unimaginable number of constantly evolving alternative outcomes. From
the way that probabilistic behavior is ubiquitously and intrinsically
woven into the fabric of Creation, I would conclude that the normal
course of events requires no "adjustments" because it is doing precisely
what it was designed to do, in the way that it was designed to do it.
 From this, one could argue that the sheer immensity of the university
and the unfathomable number of possibilities that attend it makes it
possible for virtually anything to happen in time within the relatively
few constraints imposed on the system (the laws). [Those improbability
arguments seem to me to fall limply to the floor in light of this sort
of potentiality.]

In our own constrained domain of existence, we plant gardens, and then
await the result to develop and flower. We may nurture and protect, but
the seed/plant as designed does the heavy lifting in our behalf. We
generally do not need to intrude into a plant's processes to bring about
the desired floral display. Why would we think that God would bring
about a Creation which requires constant support to doo its basic work
properly? But now "flower arranging", that may be another matter entirely!

Or so it seemeth to me.

JimA [Friend of ASA]

Iain Strachan wrote:

> The collapse of the wave function is one of those deep philosophical
> questions that are unresolved.
>
> Some hold that it is to do with consciousness. The collapse (or
> partial collapse) of the wave function would correspond to a sampling
> of the probability distribution at any given time. But that sampling
> and what is sampled depends on the observer. In the Schrodinger's cat
> paradox, if a person inside the room opens the door and observes the
> state of the cat (dead or alive) then for that observer, the wave
> function has collapsed. But for a person outside the room in which
> the person is observing the cat, the wave function has not yet collapsed.
>
> I suppose one might say that if there is an objective reality at all,
> it might correspond to an omnipotent observer sampling the probability
> distribution of the entire universe? But I must admit the subject is
> very confusing. Is it God who seeds the random number generator that
> samples the distribution to give the state of the universe as it is?
> If so, then if so desired, the omnipotent sampler could make anything
> happen, no matter how improbable, provided the probability was finite.
>
> Iain
>
> On 7/12/07, Don Winterstein <dfwinterstein@msn.com
> <mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>> wrote:
>
> "...The underlying Schrodinger equation for the wave function IS
> completely deterministic...."
>
> Solutions to the Schroedinger equation give the wave functions but
> say nothing about how the wave functions collapse in particular
> cases. What this means, according to the accepted
> interpretation, is that the probability distribution is indeed
> strictly determined, but how the event turns out is undetermined:
> Where the event will lie on the probability distribution cannot be
> predicted.
>
> It's the probability distribution that is determined, not the
> outcome of a given event.
>
> The argument is that God can then force an outcome--cause the
> event to lie at a location he desires--without violating any law
> of physics. Those who prefer that God restrict his activity to
> this sort of manipulation do so because they like to have God
> controlling outcomes but don't like to have him violating laws of
> nature.
>
> Don
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Iain Strachan <mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>
> To: Michael Roberts <mailto:michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
> Cc: Ted Davis <mailto:TDavis@messiah.edu> ; asa
> <mailto:asa@calvin.edu> ; Louise Margaret Freeman
> <mailto:lfreeman@mbc.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 1:11 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Review of Behe in Books and Culture
>
> I must say I have a problem with this idea of God intervening
> "at the quantum level" - perhaps subtly biassing the dice
> throws in ways we can't detect.
>
> Despite the fact that from the observer's point of view it
> looks like the collapse of the wave function is probabilistic,
> nonetheless the underlying Schrodinger equation for the wave
> function IS completely deterministic (it's just a second order
> PDE) and it could therefore be argued that the time-evolution
> of the wave-function of the universe is not subject to being
> tweaked.
>
> Iain
>
> -----------
>
>
>
>
> --
> -----------
> After the game, the King and the pawn go back in the same box.
>
> - Italian Proverb
> -----------

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Received on Thu Jul 12 12:20:37 2007