Poythress Chance and the Sovereignty of God

A God-Centered Approach to Probability and Random Events
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4335-3698-4
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 368 Seiten

What if all events-big and small, good and bad-are governed by more than just blind chance? What if they are governed by God? In this theologically informed and philosophically nuanced introduction to the study of probability and chance, Vern Poythress argues that all events-including the seemingly random or accidental-fall under God's watchful gaze and are part of his eternal plan. Poythress tackles questions related to everything from natural disasters to the roll of the dice, explaining how God's sovereignty functions as the lens through which we study subjects such as science, mathematics, modern physics, evolutionary biology, human choice, and gambling. Comprehensive in its scope, this book lays the theistic foundation for our scientific assumptions about the world while addressing personal questions about the meaning and significance of everyday events.

Vern S. Poythress (PhD, Harvard University; ThD, University of Stellenbosch) is Distinguished Professor of New Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and Systematic Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he has taught for four decades. In addition to earning six academic degrees, he is the author of numerous books and articles on biblical interpretation, language, and science.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Poythress, Vern S.

Leseproben

INTRODUCTION

EXPERIENCES WITH UNPREDICTABLE EVENTS

One time, when my family and I were on vacation, I drove around a curve to find, directly ahead of me, a line of cars stopped dead because of roadwork. I put the brakes on hard, relieved that I had time to stop. But what about cars coming behind me? The highway, consisting of one lane in each direction, curved to the right, with a mountain rising just to the right of the road, and a drop-off to the left. The drivers coming in my direction could not see me because their vision was blocked by the mountain. Would they be able to stop in time? Should I run back to warn them? Should I blow my horn to warn them? If I blew the horn, would the sound be blocked by the mountainside? Before I could decide, looking backward I saw a car coming round the curve, too fast to stop. To avoid hitting us, the driver swerved left into the lane of oncoming traffic. Fortunately, no car was coming in the other direction, and he was able to stop in the lane to our left.

At that point I started blowing the horn. Too late. Another car came round the curve, again too fast. I thought, “It can’t stop. It is going to crash into us.” The driver braked hard but lost control, and the car spun 180 degrees. It ended up facing backward on the berm, squeezed between us and the mountain. The driver was emotionally shaken but physically intact. Now we had a car to our left and a car to our right. There was no more room. A third car followed, coming right at us, as our children in the back seat watched helplessly. It managed to stop a couple of feet behind us. Finally, the roadwork opened and we proceeded forward. All the people had escaped an accident. My family and I had escaped what seemed to be certain injury and a wrecked vehicle.

THE ISSUE OF CHANCE

What do we say about this incident? Some people would say we were “lucky.” We escaped “by chance.” It just happened to be the case that the oncoming cars found room to our left and to our right. Or was it the hand of God’s providence? We felt afterwards as if an angel had pushed the cars to this side and to that. God had sent an angel to protect us. But we did not actually see an angel. Nor did we see a hand reaching down from heaven to move the cars. Was it just our imagination? Was our escape a “miracle,” or was it just an “accidental” result of driver reactions and physical processes?

We escaped. But not everyone does. For every story of a narrow escape, someone else can tell a distressing story of not escaping. Someone tells of being in a horrible auto accident, nearly dying from the injuries, losing an arm or a leg, and spending months recovering. And the accident could have been avoided, if only the oncoming car had swerved a little earlier or a little later. Was the accident “by chance”? Was God in control? If I am ready to acknowledge God’s control when my family escapes an accident, should I also acknowledge that God is in control when someone else suffers from an unpredictable tragedy? Or do tragic cases involve pure chance, beyond God’s control? And if God is in control, did he actually plan the events beforehand, or did he just react to the unfolding events at the last moment?

Big accidents and near accidents have drama to them. But what about the small things? Yesterday I could not find my checkbook. Today I found it in a pocket of my briefcase where it did not belong. Accidentally, it must have fallen into the wrong pocket when I dropped it into my partially opened briefcase. It got misplaced “by chance,” someone might say.

What about totally unpredictable events, like the flip of a coin or the roll of dice? Every time we flip a coin, the result is unpredictable. It comes up heads or tails “by chance.” What do we mean by the word chance? What is it?

INTEREST IN CHANCE

People are most interested in chance when a chance event makes a big difference in their lives. Why did my family escape the mountain highway accident? Why did another person suffer from a “chance” accident? We would like to know. Is God in charge of these “accidental” events or not? If he is in charge, why does he let bad things happen? Is God good or not? And if he is not in charge, what should we think? It seems that we are at the mercy of events that have no innate meaning. No one knows when we will have to suffer without purpose. That is not good news.

We see another dimension of human interest when people try to find out about the future. About some future events we can be relatively confident. We expect the sun to rise tomorrow. We expect to wake up in the same bed and the same room in which we went to sleep. Yet we also know that there are troubling uncertainties about the future. Will a violent storm or earthquake destroy our home? Will someone in the family get cancer? Will we be in a car accident? Some people consult fortune-tellers, palm readers, and astrological charts to try to get extra clues about events beyond their control. The astrologer may warn them not to make a big purchase today, because there is too much danger of making a disastrous decision. Or he advises them to stay at home because there is too much danger of an accident. Or they should go out because they may begin a promising romance.

Compulsive gamblers have a fascination with chance—in particular, the chance of making a “killing” and winning a fortune on a hoped-for “lucky” day at the gambling tables. Some of them think they can see patterns in the events. If a roulette wheel has come up with an even number seven times in a row, they may feel that it is time for an odd number to come up, so they bet on odd. They are finding meaning in the chance alteration between odd and even.

On occasion a gambler does have a so-called “lucky” day. He leaves the casino $500 or even $50,000 richer. But if he goes back, his one-day winnings will soon be gone. The casino would not be in business if it did not make a profit in the long run. So was the gambler deluded in his feeling that it was time for an odd number to come up, or time for a big win from a slot machine? Do the casino managers know something that the gambler does not know? And how do they know? What is the truth about chance?

CHANCE IN DARWINISM

Chance events play a role not only in ordinary life but also in some scientific theories. In particular, chance plays a key role in the Darwinian theory of evolution. According to the standard Darwinian account, all the forms of life that we can observe today originated through chance events in the distant past. Darwinism says that the first life originated by chance. Once the first life existed, chance mutations led gradually to other forms of life; chance matings between living things led to new combinations of genetic material; chance deaths and escapes from death that befell living creatures led gradually to increasing fitness among the survivors. Chance changes in the habitats sometimes led to separation of species and various pressures on “fitness.” As a result of accumulating eons of such chance events, we enjoy the diversity of life that we see today.

What do we think of this Darwinist account? To evaluate Darwinism as a whole is beyond the scope of this book.1 But it is appropriate to ask, what is this idea of “chance” on which Darwinism builds?

CHANCE IN SCIENCE

Chance and uncertainty also play an indispensable role in science as a whole. Some people might think that science is mostly about certainties rather than uncertainties, namely the certainties of scientific laws. They are thinking of laws like Newton’s laws of motion that completely determine the outcome, once we know the initial conditions. But not all scientific laws are of this kind. The laws of quantum mechanics intrinsically involve uncertainties. So do the laws of statistical mechanics. In this kind of case, most individual outcomes cannot be predicted, but a scientist can predict the average outcome or the probability of a particular outcome.

Moreover, virtually all forms of scientific experiment involve chance and probability. When scientists are trying to find new laws or regularities, they may repeat an experiment several times, or even hundreds of times, and obtain a record that includes chance variations. Even in a simple measurement like the measurement of a distance or a weight, there are minute variations when a scientist performs the measurement a second or a third time. For example, a scientist weighs a chemical sample on a precision scale and finds that it has a mass of 3.27 grams. If he weighs it a second or a third time, he obtains the same result. But if he tries to obtain more accuracy, he may find variations. A first weighing gives the result 3.2703 grams. A second weighing 3.2695 grams. A third gives the result 3.2698 grams. The exact result is unpredictable.

After data have been collected from repeated measurements or repeated experiments, scientists analyze their data to see whether they reveal important regular patterns. The analysis uses mathematical methods that take into account the variations in experimental outcomes. These methods reckon with what might be called chance variations that occur in the midst of an experiment designed primarily to explore regularities rather than chance variation itself.

CHANCE IN SOCIAL SCIENCES

Chance also plays an important role in many areas in social sciences. Social sciences study human beings. And any one individual human being is not completely predictable....