Dave Probert wrote:
>>I don't know that you can get such specific interventions out of that
to create conception in the midst of barrenness, healing where none
is expected, as well as all the serendipitous experiences that I attribute
to God each day.
I reasoned things out like this. When I stand before Him, I have a lot of
small things to thank Him for as well as the big things. I have trouble
imagining Him saying: no Dave. I didn't `arrange' for Joe to come along
when you were stuck in the mud. That was just a coincidence. I have a
very long list of such specific things that I am grateful for, that He
will be spending a lot of time explaining that He was `with me' in
a metaphorical sense, and my perception of that was largely due to
coincidence. It is the enumerable small things that I have trouble
believing you could obtain through tweaking the initial conditions.
Plus there are all the events in the historical books that are
specified as: it was a turn of events from the Lord. I don't see
how you could generate these from initial conditions either.<<
I would say that some of the things that do happen to us are coincidences,
like finding out that a girl I had a crush on in Junior High in Ardmore,
Okla. married a guy I was in English class with in Oklahoma City when I was
in High School and now the guy is the Assistant Principal at the local High
School where my children went here in Dallas. Or the kid I met in Study Hall
in High School in Oklahoma City had been in the same kindergarden class with
me in Cushing Oklahoma 11 years earlier. He had moved to New Mexico then
back ot Oklahoma. All coincidences. So why is it difficult to believe that
some of the help we receive is a coincidence? Some isn't, I grant, but some
probably is.
As to the major miracles, assuming the world is rather mathematical and
non-linear, one can program them into the universe. Tipler writes:
"Interestingly, the resurrection of Jesus (and the virgin birth, etc.) can be
put into the Omega Point Theory by hand--the universe we currently observe is
also a simulation--but it is not a natural thing to do, and it is not unique:
*any* miracle can be put in. In fact, the founder of computer science,
Charles Babbage, showed that *any* given miracle can be put into the initial
conditions of *any* deterministic physical theory in which the universe is
generated as a simulation. But if one miracle is put in *a priori*, where do
we stop?" Frank Tipler, Physics of Immortality, Doubleday, 1994, p 308-309
The same can be said for a nonlinear universe.
I quote again "...all whose names have not been written in the book of life
belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world." Rev.
13:8
Merry Christmas
glenn