Not quite. This is basically the same arguement which says the second law of thermodynamics means evolution could not have occurred. What is missing is the cosmic vastness and geological timeline. The amount of time between those dice rolls and the number of tables. You’re right in that the next roll will kill off whatever order has occurred in this localized area we call Earth and the Solar System. If this roll is a massive meteorite/comet impact or the sun going nova doesn’t matter. Still, while the dice are sitting still on our particular table(the solar system) with both numbers matching it certainly appears to be ordered to an observer who can’t see beyond that instant in time. It would also seem to stretch belief to see dice in an apparent state of order on the table for someone limited to seeing only that table and not the myriad of other tables in the room with their innumerable pairs of dice in all kinds of various configurations. Broadening the view in space and time brings localized order into perspective as simply a point in the range of possibilities.
I think part of the reason I get so confused trying to keep the sundry metaphysical frameworks straight is because they seem to overlap at times, and worse, become so trivial the more they strive to agree with empirical observation that I wonder why anyone bothers with them.
Take Deism, which appears to be the belief that while there certainly is a Creator who deliberately brought the universe into being, this Creator does not reveal Itself to us except in the natural laws and phenomena of the universe, which we grow to comprehend through the rather materialistic approach of observing it with our senses. Oddly, the Deists of today claim they deduce the existence of this Creator rationally as the only plausible explanation for existence itself, perhaps especially in light of all this wonderful “design” manifest in nature. It’s a belief that really seems to be begging the question, if you ask me; and I’ve never understood why “I don’t presently have a testable explanation, and hence have no firm opinion” can’t suffice when contemplating the seemingly inexplicably improbable, or the incomprehensibility of the putative lack of “first causes”.
As it is, if this Creator is the Designer of nothing more or less than the world revealed to our natural senses (aided when necessary by those physical instruments we use to enhance those senses for the needs of careful observation and measurement), its “purpose” might well be severely limited to the creative act, depending on how orderly and deterministic the universe is allowed to be. Presently we can’t say with certainty, but the evidence thus far seems to suggest that the universe is not amenable to determinism, or, at best, allows a severely weakened form of determinism rendered even more feeble by chaos. Indeed, the very laws of nature that govern literally everything about how matter and energy behave in the universe might be purely random parameters that would have been impossible to predict with certainty prior to the epoch of cosmic inflation, which, while occurring a miniscule fraction of a second after The Beginning (or is it “The Recycling”?), was still in the future of the creative event, and hence isolates the future of Creation from it. If we are to pay attention to nature, what purpose could this creator have had except to light the fuse, so to speak, and watch the pieces fly wither they would without foresight?
I simply cannot see the point in being what must be a “deistic evolutionist” if such is even possibly the case. Or, rather, I cannot see the point unless I assert things about the universe that would appeal only to some arbitrary sense of aesthetics, rather than what can possibly be known by the only means of knowing Deists appear to believe are valid. Deists make less sense to me than Creationists, in that respect.
And it seems if theistic evolutionists are not simply to be deists of a sort, they would perhaps need to insist that God must do more than what the laws of universe might allow for a natural being to alter Creation’s trajectory from Beginning to a purposeful End. If so, I see no other cause for certainty of teleology in the universe as we thus far know it than arbitrary aesthetics, the sort that requires miracles. It’s possibly “ID-lite” at best, and utterly unnecessary in any other respect except as the God of the Ultimate Gap, being all those things that can never be tested, hence can never be refuted, and thus have no relevance to the natural sciences in any legitimate way.
Given this, how is it that theologians concern themselves with these matters at all, and how is it that scientists keep alarming them? I wish the two each had a universe of their own.
Back to back!
Belly to belly!
Well I don’t give a damn
'Cause I done died already!
Back to back!
Belly to belly!
It’s the Zombie Jamboree!
IOW, the Mods are going to lock down this zombie thread right quick. The OP may feel free to raise the question again in a new thread that includes a link to this one.
Icerigger, I have no problem with you starting a new thread linking to this one. The issue with resurrecting old threads, particularly in GD, is that people will read the thread without noting the dates and pick (or resurrect) old fights with posters who are no longer here to defend their positions.
Feel free to open a new thread with a link to this one, but this one is closed.