At 09:12 AM 07/09/1999 -0400, Bertvan@aol.com wrote:
>Do you believe the laws of nature were designed--or came into existence by
>accident? If you believe the laws of nature were designed by God, do you
>believe he did so for any purpose? Do you believe the universe is the
>result of accidental processes? The result of random, chance events?
A good many folks appear to assume that "design" and "chance" (or
"accidental processes" or "random events") are logically contradictory
terms. They are not. They may be contraries, but they are not
contradictory. Therefore, they are not mutually exclusive, nor can anyone
logically claim that if "design" is false, then the only alternative is
"chance." There may be an indefinite range of other possible states beyond
"design" and "chance."
For example, is your current waistline the result of "design" or "chance"?
I'm skeptical that people designate ahead of time what their actual
waistline will be twenty or thirty years down the road. But that does not
mean we would describe your current waistline as the result of "chance."
We could, in principle, trace various antecedent causes for your present
girth, and so develop a casual explanation for the size of your waist. As
scientific exlanations go, that would remove it from being the result of
"chance" or "accident." It seems to me that the most common account of
this kind of thing would be to say that a number of non-designed factors --
some that occur naturally, some that may be the result of my own behavior
-- combined to produce my particular waistline. It was neither the product
of "design" nor of "accidental processes."
>As a Christian, you must surely believe free will plays a part
>in the evolution of human thought and culture.
Could you say more about what you mean by this, Bertvan? As a Christian
who is doubtful about any robust notion of "free will," I'm not sure what
is the scope of your claim here. Just what is it that you think Christians
"must surely believe" about "free will"?
Tom Pearson
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Thomas D. Pearson
Department of History & Philosophy
The University of Texas-Pan American
Edinburg, Texas
e-mail: pearson@panam1.panam.edu