You seem to be able to misunderstand almost anything!
At 05:54 PM 09/27/1999 +0800, Stephen E. Jones wrote:
>Reflectorites
>
>On Fri, 24 Sep 1999 17:26:48 +0000, mortongr@flash.net wrote:
>
>[...]
>
>GM>That is exactly what I think. It has always struck me as odd that casino
>>owners use chance to make millions. They design their machines to win more
>>than they lose.
>
>I presume Glenn means lose more than they win!
As Art already pointed out, the casinos rig their machines to win more than
they lose. Doing the opposite is stupidity and the casino owners are
anything but stupid.
>
>GM>This is design, yet it uses chance.
>
>First, if "casino owners design their machines to lose more than they win
>then this is indeed "design" but it is not really "chance". Indeed, I am
not an
>expert on gambling but I would have thought that casinos who rigged their
>machines to lose more than they win would be guilty of fraud!
No they wouldn't. It wouldn't be fraud at all. THey would be highly popular
among the gambling set!
I always
>thought how casinos did it was that the machines were random but the
>prize money took into account the chance of winning and deducted the
>casino's profit up front.
As I said, you seem to be able to misunderstand anything.
>
>Second, this might be Glenn's idea of evolution but it is not the mainstream
>Neo-Darwinist idea of "chance" (as in random mutation), which is what is
>taught in public schools and universities. Darwinists maintain that
>mutations are random in the precise sense that they are *not*
>systematically biased "to win more than they lose":
That was not my point nor my idea of evolution. If you can't get straight
what happens in a gambling casino, how can you get other things straight?
>Glenn is often making claims of what "Christians" are supposed to have
>said, with little or no evidence to back it up. Now maybe *some* Christians
>have said that "God can't master chance...he can't use chance" (personally
>I doubt that any have) but if they did that would not be a historic,
>mainstream "Christian" position.
> \
I know that you will misconstrue this but here is Henry Morris:
'Despite the attempts by liberal theology to disguise the point, the fact
is that no biblically derived religion can really be compromised with the
fundamental assertion of Darwinian theory. Chance and design are
antithetical concepts.' Henry M. Morris, "The Compromise Road," Impact,
177, March, 1988, p. i,ii
This clearly says that if it is designed it isn't due to chance. And since
Henry believes that God designed the universe this leads to the inference
that God can't use chance.
Scott Huse writes:
"The most logical and reasonable conclusion which can be reached based on
mathematical analysis is that complex, ordered systems, which so
characterize the world in which we live, never happened by mere chance but
are the handiwork of our Creator, Almight God." Huse, The Collapse of
Evolution, p. 69
This conclusion can only be logical if one has already rejected the idea
that God can use chance.
>Mainstream Christian theology has always stated that God can use chance.
[quotes snipped]
>So the real question is not, can God work through chance? But *did* he
>work *solely* through chance? The God of the Bible indeed worked through
chance
>at times but that is not the *only* way He worked.
Stephen, no one has ever said that chance is the only way God worked. I
can't think of a single Theistic evolutionist who would agree with that
statement. Since you asked documentation of me for my contention that
Creationists do reject the use of chance by God, please provide
documentation for the above assertion.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution