>What I haven't gotten a grip on yet, and I think it is key, is the
>relationship of chance and God's sovereignty. Donald MacKay has
>sought to articulate two different levels of chance, in order to render
>the term useful or palatable to the Christian theist. I'm not sure
>I have caught the distinction, or have understood the proper (i.e.
>Christian) way of talking about "chance."
>
I mentioned awhile back that I felt the characterization of evolution
as relying solely on chance to be a strawman. Chance + selection is
no longer chance. I feel though that some would like to have their
cake and eat it too, i.e. after emphasizing this point they would like
to turn around and key in on the chance element in order to conclude
purposelessness.
Polkinghorne has an interesting discussion of this in _Science and
Creation_, concluding that the interplay between chance and necessity
can be viewed in terms of God's love (free will) and faithfulness
respectively. Here is an excerpt:
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The most striking example of all of the fruitful interrelation of
randomness and orderliness is provided by the insight that it is
the interplay of chance and necessity which characterizes the
evolution of the universe (galaxies and stars are gravitationally
enhanced fluctuations--cosmic termite tests one might say) and of
life (replicating molecules aggregating in the amino acid soup of
early Earth) and of humanity (natural selection of genetic mutations).
The significance to be attributed to these facts has been widely
debated with conflicting conclusions. To some, such as Jaques Monod,
the role of chance is evidence of meaninglessness in the process of
the world. To others of us it has seemed that the potentiality
thereby exhibited as being inherent in the properties of matter--
a potentiality which is explored through the shuffling operations
of chance-- is so remarkable as to constitute an insight of design
present in the structure of the world. I have written elsewhere:
When I read Monod's book I was greatly excited by the
scientific picture it presented. Instead of seeing chance
as an indication of the purposelessness and futility of
the world, I was deeply moved by the thought of the
astonishing fruitfulness it revealed inherent in the
laws of atomic physics ... the fact that they have such
remarkable consequences as you and me speaks of the amazing
potentiality contained in their structure. From this point
of view the action of chance is to explore and realize that
inherent fruitfulness.
[...]
The world created by the God of love and faithfulness may be expected
to be characterized both by the openness of chance and the regularity
of necessity.
-- John Polkinghorne, _Science and Creation_, Shambhala, 1989.
This reminded me of some comments by Popper:
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I think that science suggests to us (tentatively of course)
a picture of a universe that is inventive or even creative;
of a universe in which _new things_ emerge, on _new levels_.
[omitted description of various levels of emergence-- BH]
I think that scientists, however sceptical, are bound to admit
that the universe, or nature, or whatever we may call it,
is creative. For it has produced creative men: it has produced
Shakespeare and Michelangelo and Mozart, and thus indirectly
their works. It has produced Darwin, and so created the theory
of natural selection. Natural selection has destroyed the proof
for the miraculous specific intervention of the Creator. But
it has left us with the marvel of the creativeness of the
universe, of life, and of the human mind. Although science
has nothing to say about a personal Creator, the fact of the
emergence of novelty, and of creativity, can hardly be denied.
I think that Darwin himself, who could not "keep out of the
question", would have agreed that, though natural selection
was an idea which opened up a new world for science, it did
not remove, from the picture of the universe that science
paints, the marvel of creativity; nor did it remove the
marvel of freedom: the freedom to create; and the freedom
of choosing our own ends and purposes.
-- Karl Popper, "Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind",
_Dialectica_, vol. 32, no. 3-4, 1978, pp. 339-355.
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Brian Harper:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=
"I believe there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468,
044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,031,296 protons in the
Universe and the same number of electrons." Arthur Stanley Eddington
:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=:=