God uses seemingly random events

Proverbs 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap,
    but its every decision is from Yahweh.
(World English Bible, public domain)

Some blog posts on chance versus God's omnipotence

Are there things that an omnipotent God leaves to chance? Or is every change in every particle in the universe ordered and directed by God? Clearly, the answer has to be that we do not know, but it's an interesting question. Here are some blog posts by other people on this subject:

Henry Neufeld believes that perhaps God used pure chance to get to where the universe is now, and he includes humans, and their intelligence. He isn't even sure that God directed things at the sub-atomic level. Interesting. I'll have to think about that one.

Here's one from a Christian involved in forecasting the weather, who says that it makes sense to pray for particular kinds of weather (and other things) in spite of God's omnipotence. Weather, of course, is notoriously unpredictable.

Thanks for reading. For more on what I think about these matters, click on the "randomness" or "chance" in the tags at the end of this post. Let's put it this way -- I haven't solved the problem.

Sunspots 275

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

 
Humor:
(Except that this is a sad note) Cathy, the cartoon strip written and drawn by Cathy Guisewite, is ending after 34 years of gentle humor.

Science:
The Panda's Thumb reports on experimental results indicating that seemingly directed growth in chick embryos is actually the result of random cell movement.

Computing:
Wired reports on the history of well-known symbols, such as that for the On button on this computer.

Christianity:N. T. Wright reflects on C. S. Lewis.





Image source (public domain)

Chance, yet again, in the Bible

Proverbs 18:18 The lot puts an end to quarrels and decides between powerful contenders. (ESV)

As often in Proverbs, this statement doesn't seem to related to the context, but to stand alone. It simply states a truth. Does this advocate using some sort of random drawing, rather than our expensive court system? Maybe, maybe not. But the statement doesn't seem to condemn the use of chance, whether it can be applied more broadly, or not.

I saw this in the July on-line Bible readings from the English Standard Version.

I've posted several times on "chance," and if you want to see other posts, click on the "chance," or "randomness" in the tags at the end of this post.

Thanks for reading. I'm glad you chanced by.

God and chance, continued

I'm supposed to be on hiatus, but this is too good not to pass on.

Quintessence of Dust has added to his comments on chance vs. the Intelligent Design movement. (Some IDers have claimed that God cannot work through "chance" events. Nonsense!)

He also refers to a note in First Things, by Stephen Barr, which considers what Thomas Aquinas thought about chance.

Both Barr and Quintessence of Dust quote Proverbs 16:33, which says, "The lot is cast into the lap,
but its every decision is from the Lord." (ESV)

I have previously written, here, about the one occurrence (or two, depending on how you count) of the word "random" in some versions of the Bible, and here, about chance.

Quintessence of Dust gives examples of chance processes in science, commonly understood that way, here.

Thanks for chancing by this blog, and reading.

God and chance

I wasn't supposed to be posting, but found something too good to pass up on, and that should be passed on.

Uncommon Descent (which I haven't been reading) is an Intelligent Design blog, and someone posting there apparently said that anyone who argues that God may have used evolutionary processes in making living things to be the way they are is a "spineless appeaser." Stephen Matheson posted a response, which includes the following:
2. I'm astonished by the casual claim that "Darwinian evolution" is "out of God's control" because of the role of "chance." Leaving aside some pretty clear statements about chance and God's providence in Scripture, I find the statement to be either a tautology ("Darwinian evolution is out of God's control because Darwin/Dawkins said it was") or a pronouncement regarding God's sovereignty that is anathema to me as a Christian (and especially as a Reformed Christian). In grumpier moods, or after reading some of the more obnoxious comments on this blog, I would suggest that such talk approaches blasphemy, but in any case I would not count myself among Christians who talk that way about God's world and his work. It's one thing to say you don't buy the Darwinian explanation, or to say that you're confused about the working of God's purposes in the midst of seemingly random events; it's another to declare that there are processes that God can't "control."

Indeed!

Thanks for reading.

Random Designer

I just finished a book by Richard G. Colling, namely Random Designer: Created from Chaos to Connect with the Creator. (Bourbonnais, IL: Browning Press, 2004). Colling's thesis is that God uses the randomness in nature to accomplish His purposes.

Randomness, and seeming failure, writes Colling, doesn't bother the Creator:
But to the Random Designer, real failure simply does not exist! A string of separate events that appears devastating from our limited perspective is not even a setback for Him. (p. 69)

Colling is clearly a believer, and a scientist. He is not happy with all believers:
For some religious people, it is simply far too tempting to automatically attribute anything that is not easily understood to a supernatural cause and to inappropriately interpret scripture as a literal scientific textbook. (p.123)

The book is well written, and accessible to an intelligent non-scientist. I was especially interested in what Colling had to say about the immune system, which, as he says, generates the tremendous variety of possible antibodies by random shuffling of a relatively small number of genes. At least in this phenomenon, God seems to use randomness to achieve his purposes.

Thanks for reading.

Choice and 20th Century physics, 1

I continue a series of musings on the question, "does anything at all really happen by chance?" This post is the third on that subject. The first two consider what the Bible has to say on the subject. (Here's the second, which has a link to the first, or, better, click on the "choice" label at the bottom of this post.)

Modern physics seems to say that almost everything that happens to sub-atomic particles is due to chance.

This belief is known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. (I have posted previously about Werner Heisenberg.) This principle states that it is impossible to determine both the position and speed* of sub-atomic particles precisely. Some positions are more likely than others, and, if you know what you are doing, you can produce a graphed curve describing the likelihood that the particle will have each possible position, but the exact position is uncertain. A similar statement could be made about the speed. As a result, electron positions cannot be known, but are described as wavefunctions, or orbitals. They are often shown as blobs or clouds in chemistry texts.

Does this mean that everything at the sub-atomic level is due to chance? As I see it, not necessarily. It means that nothing at the sub-atomic level can be predicted absolutely by physicists, except as a statement of the probability that certain things will happen, something like predicting that there will be a 30% chance of rain. Unlike (we suppose) weather prediction, which will get better and better as we learn more about what causes weather events, and are better at detecting these causes, prediction at the sub-atomic level has fundamental limits -- it isn't ever going to get any better, if the theory is correct. Just because something can't be predicted doesn't necessarily mean that it's actually random, however.

Einstein was notoriously uncomfortable with this idea. He is said to have quipped (probably in German, not English) "God does not play at dice." (do a Google search on this phrase -- in quotation marks -- if interested.)

Some have speculated that this sub-atomic (quantum) uncertainty is a physical basis for free will. That may be so, but there are at least a couple of problems with this idea. First, just because physicists can't predict something doesn't mean that God doesn't control it. (God must at least allow sub-atomic events, but I suppose it is possible that He really does let some or all of them happen at random. It is also possible that every sub-atomic event is directed and controlled by God.) Second, it is not clear that chance events on the sub-atomic level could be responsible for the brain activity that leads to choices. The sub-atomic, after all, is orders of magnitude smaller than a nerve cell. To have such events change the action of nerve cells, at least one of which would be expected to do something if an individual chooses, would be roughly as if random impacts from dust particles in the air changed the direction of a moving car.

I'll probably have more to say about this later.

Thanks for reading.

*It's really not the speed, or even the velocity, but the momentum, but I'm trying not to be too technical here.

Ahab's arrow

I recently began a series (don't know how long it will be -- I'll leave that up to chance) on whether anything really really really is due to chance, as opposed to directed by God. I'm not expecting to give a definitive answer to this question. Better minds than mine have failed to do this. Here's the first post. In it, I pointed out two uses of the word chance in the Bible.

There is only one occurrence of the word, random, in the Bible, or, rather, it occurs twice, in two places, as the same story is told in two of the historical books of the Old Testament. Here's one of them:

1 Kings 22:34 But a certain man drew his bow at random and struck the king of Israel between the scale armor and the breastplate. Therefore he said to the driver of his chariot, “Turn around and carry me out of the battle, for I am wounded.” (ESV -- the wording of 2 Chronicles 18:33 is identical.) There is a note at random, which says that the original Hebrew literally says "drew his bow in his innocence." The NIV also uses random here, in both books, but without a text note.

The story is this. Micaiah, God's prophet, told wicked King Ahab that he would die in battle. Ahab disguised himself so that he wouldn't be recognized. The man mentioned in the verse shot Ahab. He was propped up in his chariot for some time, and the battle continued, but he died of the wound.

Did the bowman have a choice in this matter? Was what he did really random? At least two versions of the Bible use the word, random, here, as I have pointed out, which implies that there is at least a weak case that the bowman did, indeed, act on his own. Here are the possibilities, as I see them. (I'm excluding another possibility, namely that this event never happened.)

1) The bowman had no real choice in the matter. God directed him, presumably without the bowman being aware of it.
2) The bowman had a choice. God is outside of time, so knew in advance that the bowman would choose to fire, and would hit Ahab, but didn't make him do it.
3) The bowman had a choice, and God, if you please, just got lucky in predicting that Ahab would die. I don't seriously believe this one, but listed it for completeness.

Now, if 1) is true, random wouldn't seem to be the right word in scripture. I know, maybe it isn't the right word, but over and over again, people in the Bible seem to have had real choices, so why not this bowman? Joshua told the Israelites to choose whom they would serve, for example. Solomon seems to have chosen to stray from worshipping God. The inhabitants of Nineveh seem to have chosen to repent, when they didn't have to. Ananias and Sapphira chose to lie to the church, or at least it sounds like they did.

If 2) is true, what would God have done if the bowman chose not to fire? Did He have a backup plan? The Bible says that Bezalel and Oholiab were given skill so that they could work on the tabernacle. It even says that Pharaoh was raised up so that God's glory could be shown when Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go, which doesn't sound like he had a choice in the matter.

I am, of course, musing on predestination and foreknowledge, which are knotty ideas. I don't have an answer to my own questions on this. Some people do, but they don't agree with each other. God knows.

Thanks for reading. Did you just happen to read this? Were you predestined to? Did you choose to? Let me know.

Is there such a thing as chance?

A couple of months ago, I posted on "Origins 101." Julana, one of my faithful readers and commenters, commented as follows:

I think it's hard to argue for the existence of chance, in a purposeful universe, when you posit an all-powerful, all-knowing God.
It may be more difficult to argue against determinism.

I heard a friend use the terms "God's permissive will" and "God's active will" once. I understand the intuitive concept, but wonder how they could be logically worked out.

That's a most interesting, and important, idea, Julana. If there is an omnipotent, omniscient God, then how can there be any chance? As C. S. Lewis put it in The Silver Chair, "There are no accidents."

To begin my further consideration of this topic, I went to the Bible. I found just two references to chance:

Ecclesiastes 9:11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. (ESV).

Our Lord, Himself, spoke of chance: Luke 10:31 Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. (ESV)

This is in a story, namely that of the Good Samaritan. I think it would be dangerous to take it as a proof text for the existence of chance in the world, especially in inanimate objects, since it is about a choice made by a (possibly fictional -- perhaps Jesus made up the story to illustrate His point) human being, but it seems to me that it would be dangerous to ignore the use of that word completely, either. As to the verse in Ecclesiastes, I'm not sure that that can serve as a proof text for the existence of chance, in the sense of events that God doesn't control, either.

Here's a post that considers chance and creation seriously.

I hope to consider this matter further in the future. I'm not sure that I will come to any definitive conclusions. Note that this blog advertises itself as "musings . . ." on various topics.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for your comment, Julana.