>Sorry, I don't understand this line of reasoning at all.
I think I'm beginning to. While I disagree with Stephen, I thank him for
being more articulate about his concerns than many creationists. I have a
difficult time distinguishing Stephen's statement above (an Intelligent
Designer guiding and controlling an "evolutionary" process in furtherance
of a purpose.) from theistic evolution. But I do see that the "chance"
factor in evolution concerns him considerably, and is probably one of the
main differentiating factors between TE and PC in his view. I believe
Stephen's view is that God and chance are mutually exclusive -- that if
random chance was involved, God wasn't.
But what looks like random chance to a human investigator is not
necessarily random chance. There is a subjective element in randomness.
Davenport and Root (sorry, I don't have a more modern probability text in
my office at the moment) say of randomness:
...in fact, the reason for our inability to predict exactly
may be that
(1) we do not know all the causal forces at work,
(2) we do not have enough data about the conditions of the problem,
(3) the forces are so complicated that calculation of their
combined effect is unfeasible, or possibly
(4) there is some basic indeterminacy in the physical world
Wilbur B. Davenport, Jr, , and William L. Root
Random Signals and Noise
McGraw-Hill 1958
Three of the four sources of apparent randomness above involve man's lack
of knowledge or abilitiy, not any fundamental indeterminacy. To this list
I would add one more:
(5) We do not have appropriate models for understanding the
phenomenon in question (which may be the case with some
paradoxes in quantum mechanics) Furthermore, we may
not have the capability to develop appropriate models.
Of the five reasons listed above for describing a phenomenon as random,
four involve lack of knowledge or capability on the part of human
investigators. The processes are not necessarily random at all. Even in
D&R's case (4) it seems to me we must ask "indeterminacy from whose point
of view?" What seems indeterminate from our point of view may be totally
under control from God's point of view. Of course some would argue that
this really erases category (4) and makes it part of category (5), and I
would agree.
Bill Hamilton | Chassis & Vehicle Systems
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