Two things have been mixing in my brain this morning…
Last week while we were back in my hometown my step-brother turned 21 so we went out with my parents and took him to the “casino” to have him play $5 worth of slots. I’m not going to go into my thoughts on the morality of gambling, but it did get me thinking – we’ll get to that.
Recently a lot of the theology-heavy blogs that I read have been talking about Darwinism, neo-Darwinism & Theistic Evolution. One that I just read talks about evolution in terms of design versus chance and argues that evolution cannot be reconciled with design because evolution is inherently based on random chance . I think he’s arguing from a definition of evolution that is over-specific and therefore does not address the real debate, but I’m going to ponder on a spin-off point.
Chance.
As I drove away from the casino I pondered “chance” and its relationship to the sovereignty of God. It’s important to remember that “chance” is only descriptive, not prescriptive. We say that a coin has a 1:1 chance of coming up heads or tails because when we flip a coin that is what happens. Chance itself does not exist, what we call “chance” is only a description of reality – an article on LiveScience.com talks about this:
Perceptions of risk factors can change over time simply because more is learned. The chances of an Earth-impacting asteroid killing you have dropped dramatically, for example, from about 1-in-20,000 in 1994 to something like 1-in-200,000 or 1-in-500,000 today.
Notice the language that the author uses, “the chances… have dropped.” Reality hasn’t changed, only our ability to accurately describe it. The likelihood of outcomes on a coin-toss being 50% only describes the perfect coin, but if actually tested each coin may be 50.000001:49.999999 or something similar. So, my question is whether God is actively working in that .000001%
Here are some questions to ask… which I don’t have an answer for:
- In what way is God sovereign in chance-related situations?
- Is his involvement based on the gravity of the win or loss or on every throw? Is he actively the muscles in the hands & arm (as well as every detail the dice-manufacturing process) to guide the number to come up in every throw? If he does influence/control every throw does it go all the way back to our DNA and his choosing of each molecule that would control our hand’s development?
- If he does choose each gene, does he do it with an “eye to” every movement that muscle will ever make therefore influencing/controlling every pen stroke we make, every handshake, every die-throw and every catch we make (or drop) in every sport we ever play?
- Our DNA is determined by every generation that has ever come before us. Did he have an “eye to” our DNA and it’s dice-rolling implications as all 128 of our great-great-great-great-great grandpas’ gametes merged with each of our great-great-great-great-great grandmas’ gametes? (And every generation before and after that?)
- Does God choose to work within finite rational “chance” paradigms on things like coins & dice? (This one feels like a silly question, but I feel that it should be asked as well.)
How you answer these questions does influence how you perceive the validity of Theistic Evolution as a Biblical/Christian creation model.
Any feedback or ideas?
