This is from another thread, but I think I should have posted it here (and I’d be truly interested in any thoughtful comments.)

No, it doesn’t. It’s still the same load of old bollocks as it was last time you posted it.

*Seriously *mate …

J

But if you’re a Theist, please explain why there are things that don’t mean anything.

There are a lot of believers (some here) who say “there is no such thing as coincidence,” and “everything means something.”

If that’s true, why did Ronald Wilson Reagan have six letters in each of his three names, why does the Hebrew Gamatra of Bill Clinton’s name, and his wife’s name add up to six hundred and sixty six, and why this “Barack Obama” oddity?

Is God warning American voters against conservative Republicans, and liberal Democrats?

If everything means something, maybe He’s warning Brits against your own Prince Charles?

laverdaduniversal.org/candidates.html

If everything means something, why all the mixed signals?
**
And if there is a Supreme Intelligence at the center of time and space, how can anything be coincidence?**

Is the existence of such “meaningless” things evidence against the existence of God?

If not, why not?

Seriously mate …do you have any thoughts on that?

I explicitly stated that the scriptures are not tea leaves. So no. They cannot be interpreted as such. And they cannot be controlled as such.

There is indeed a better expression for theists to use. I already mentioned it. Paranoid apophenia.

It really depends on your definition of “mean”, but as I don’t generally insist that everything has meaning, this person has fabricated meaning where there was none to be found. In the apocryphal wisdom of Freud, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”. There is no phallus. There is no substitute for your mothers’ breasts. And there is no satanic Barak Obama. If I maintained that meaning could be found everywhere, then the interpreted meaning here could simply be wrong.

Do you mean that God couldn’t foresee and control what was written in scripture, or that He couldn’t foresee and control the evolution and development of ancient languages and modern names?

Apophenia is defined as the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data.

But if there is a timeless Supreme Being (who knows each of us), how can anything be truly random?

**That’s the question I’m really interested in here.

What’s your answer?**

**That’s interesting.

Could you elaborate on that a little?**

Do you believe in a Supreme Being, and do you see Him as the ontological cause of everything that exists (including time and space)?
**
Then why would anything in this universe have no meaning?

Why would there be any random or meaningless data?**

(The truth is that I’m not really interested in what that web site has to say about Barack Obama, but I am interested in this question.)

Hi Michael

Last time I looked, it wasn’t a prerequisite of theism to believe that every single thing that happens has some special meaning. Are you seriously suggesting that, say, the accidental emission of gas through my upper esophageal sphincter after I’ve drunk a glass of Stella Artois is of cosmic significance?

As a theist, I believe that God is in ultimate control of my personal destiny, and of the destiny of the universe. But within that overarching framework he allows me the freedom to be myself, without which I might as well not exist at all. And indeed, he allows the universe the same freedom. As modern quantum physics tells us unequivocally, the behaviour of matter is *fundamentally *random and unpredictable at the quantum level.

I dare say there are (although none have stepped forward yet on *this *forum.) There are also lots of believers who said the world was going to end on [fill in preferred date here], but turned out to have got their apocalypses muddled up. Just because people believe stuff doesn’t make it so.

Well, obviously because he was a disciple of Satan, who bore the mark of the beast. Either that or because his Mum, Nelle Wilson, married a bloke called Jack Reagan, and they happened to like the name Ronald. (Uh-oh. Nelle Wilson Reagan. Another practitioner of the dark arts.)

Michael, my name is John Robert Parker, but my mates call me Johnny. Johnny Robert Parker. 666. Do I bear the mark of the beast too?

Come to think of it, St Francis of Assissi has 18 letters in his name. 6+6+6 = 18. Guess he must have worshipped Old Nick as well?

You see where playing this game can get you.

Michael, you *seem *- but do correct me if I’m wrong - to be arguing in favour of some sort of determinism, along the lines of that espoused by the likes of Sam Harris. Are you a closet Calvinist?

Seriously, if you are *seriously *interested in the question of whether everything in the universe has meaning, why have you twice posted a link to the You Tube ramblings of an obvious crackpot accusing the President of the United States, a Christian, of being Satan?

Hang on a sec. Barack Hussein Obama has 18 eighteen letters. 6+6+6 = 18. Oh my God! It’s true. We’re all doomed.

Shalom

Johnny

What I meant was that things can be said to have and not have particular meanings. Johnny “Roaring Lion” Parker asked whether his flatulence had any cosmic meaning. It doesn’t. But it could be said to mean that human bodies respond in a particular way when consuming certain sugars present in liquid bread. So though our bowels mightn’t determine destinies, they often do express a meaning. So it’s not that our data (Luke 10:18 or Johnny’s intestines) is entirely meaningless. It’s that we can apply certain meanings (of cosmic importance) where none should be found. As we’re specifically talking about meanings of cosmic importance, I shouldn’t have bothered to qualify my statement. Sorry about the confusion!

Like Johnny, I’m not a determinist. My God is so supremely omnipotent that he is at liberty to humble himself before his own creation and afford it the same degree of liberty and independence (including the freedom to corrupt itself and live in aionion chaos).

Andrew

Great post mate! While we may be divided by our long-entrenched cricketing rivalry, seems as if indeed we are all brothers on other matters. (Roll on the Ashes! )

By the way, I haven’t forgotten your challenges re Arminianism on corpselight’s ‘answering Calvinism’ thread. They are toughies, which I (an ex Arminian, with very strong residual Arminian tendencies) need to ponder on before I can come roaring back at you.

All the best

Johnny

While it may not be of cosmic significance, there could be a strong argument made that Stella Artois is ‘heavenly.’

To generate some response (which it did.)

You’re wrong.

I’m not arguing in favor of anything, but I have been questioning the existence of God for some time (and I am seriously interested in the question of whether everything in the universe has meaning,)

I know.

When those sounds stop, you die.

You mean not on this thread.

I’ve asked questions about coincidences before, and these are some of the responses I got.

I was hoping someone might say something more helpful here.

I get the freewill argument.

The evil men do is allowed by God, so that men aren’t robots.

But that only explains human acts, and it seems to me that it would only explain human acts that were of some importance.

(Would Reagan’s mother be any less of a person if his middle name was George?)

And what does it mean to give an inanimate universe freedom?

And does modern physics really tell us that the behavior of matter is “random and unpredictable” at the quantum level, or just unpredictable to human observers?

And how would God introduce randomness into the universe?

I don’t see how even you (in the universe, as part of the space/time continuum), could play dice if you not only foreknew how the dice would land, but actually caused them to exist, move, and stop moving.

And Theology tells us that God is outside the universe, and not part of the space time continuum.

If He’s the cause of everything, how would He introduce randomness, and where would it come from?

These are the questions I’m interested in here (not what someone said about Obama on the internet.)

I do thank both of you for responding, and I hope you have more to say.

Thank you.

As for Mr. Obama, I am 100% certain he is not THE antichrist. So the guy’s interpreted the data incorrectly, because you know, I’m an American, and I should know if anybody does. What was the purpose of it? My daughter, when she was just at that “babbling stage” said very clearly one time in my hearing, “Hot Dog!” Really made me do a double take. Purpose of same? Um, to get a laugh? Personally, I think it was random, but maybe God caused it to happen on purpose, just for the fun of it. Just fyi; she’s never been a fan of hot dogs.

I wonder whether God is simply using the methods necessary to use in making what He wants to make; a family of sons and daughters – children for the Father; a bride, a body for the Son, a sanctuary, a temple for the Holy Spirit.

He takes this great nothing (which He had to make to start with) and wrests from it a something. In the process there’s a lot of turmoil and what looks to us like catastrophe – in reality a few short years of agony at the most, but long, very long and painful years from the pov of those caught in the worst of it – especially the ones who survive the disasters, whether natural or man-caused. It’s hard for us, and we don’t understand 95% of it. He will make it all good at last; from the evil times He creates good and from the tears He creates joy.

I’m not being dogmatic here; just wandering around, trying to see God. He didn’t tell me this or anything – it’s just my musings.

Blessings, Cindy

Johnny, I’m very much grateful for both your view and your pondering (and yes, also your jocular posts). I eagerly anticipate your response (if you ever get the time; honestly, no pressure). I would dearly love to be convinced of universalism. I’m not sure it works, but I think free-will universalism is the most radically brilliant of all theodicies. I do honestly prefer my view to determinist-universalism though; I think determinist-universalism is almost as narcissistic and cruel as any other determinist eschatology.

I think God could introduce “randomness” into the universe in two ways. He could introduce self-determined beings (humans) who can act independently from the decrees and purposes of God. And other spiritual beings may also possess free will (whether angels, whatever they are, have free will seems to be quite contested. I have absolutely no opinion on any created spiritual beings). But this doesn’t address randomness in the rest of creation. I suspect that the exercise of free will by those who can has upset any physical laws, subjecting the broader creation to the bondage of corruption and futility (instability and meaninglessness; Romans 8:20). If we must find any meaning within the senseless, chaotic and cruel it is that something has gone terribly wrong.

[size=85](Which reminds me of the wonderful song, “All the world is mad” by the brilliant (and quite Lewisian) band Thrice. This song is also the nicest presentation of Total Depravity I’ve ever heard.)[/size]

I hope we’re not seeing the emergence of a schism here - the dogmatists versus the hot-dogmatists

Hello Michael

Thanks for your post. Now that we’ve put the Obama business in the dustbin where it belongs, hopefully we can discuss the otherwise interesting and challenging points you raise. (I hear what you’re saying about posting the Obama link to stimulate discussion, but I do think you could have achieved the same ultimate result without giving the oxygen of publicity to an obvious dingaling. End of lecture. )

Not necessarily. Once you accept the principle that human beans (and indeed all animal life on this planet) have genuine freedom to act in a non-deterministic way, I would say that freedom extends down to *all *actions, even those of no moral importance whatsoever - eg me belching or trumping after a pint of beer.

Clearly, at one level a burp or a trump is an involuntary act, the natural, consequence of gas being released as part of the digestive process. But I would argue that because we are free to act as we will, I can actually hold that burp in and release it when I wish, within reason. (For nobody can hold their wind in forever. )

Now when it comes to morally significant acts, such as choosing to help or ignore a person in distress, it seems to me that the *empirical *and *experiential *evidence is unequivocal: we do have freedom to do one or the other. That is why Jesus can talk in Matthew 25 about the separation of the sheep and the goats, about differentiating, in some way, between those who used their freedom to do good, and those who didn’t.

Of course, this whole ‘freewill’ debate is one of the thorniest and most intractable in contemporary theology. It lies at the heart of the Calvinism / Arminianism dialectic, and it informs one’s whole worldview. For me, it is also vital to theodicy. I believe the only credible solution to the problem of evil is the ‘free will defence’, ie that the suffering and evil that exist in the world are the intrinsic corollary of God giving us – and the universe we inhabit – freedom to act or function according to our own lights. We humans are made in God’s image, ie with the ability to think and act for ourselves; we are able to make genuine, morally significant choices about our actions, and this is a very good thing, even though it entails the possibility that we will make wrong choices, and hence cause others to suffer. Similarly, the material world is ‘free’ to follow its own nature, and that means free to produce ‘good’ things like sun and rain and flowers, and ‘bad’ – ie harmful or causing suffering in humans – such as earthquakes and tsunamis and cancers and stuff.

If we take away that freedom, if we say it is a chimera, and that we don’t really have any choice other than to act the way we do, then I fear that we can only draw one of the following conclusions:

a) Suffering and evil are actually created or permitted by God for no discernible purpose – thus making him to be, in our human understanding, a monster
b) God cannot prevent suffering and evil, in which case he ceases to be God in any meaningful sense
c) God does not exist

Now I personally buy the argument put forward by people like Martin Zender that we are 'flawed by design’, because it seems clear to me that we need to be constantly reminded of our need for God, to be ‘dragged’ to him by Christ. My own personal experience is that often (to my shame) the ‘happier’ I feel in this world, the less I feel myself needing God’s love and support, and the easier it is to get by without him. This was essentially CS Lewis’ argument in The Problem of Pain. (And I guess it’s also a variation on the ‘soul making’ theory of Ireneus.)

But if, as Calvinism teaches, God can, at any time, override our illusory ‘free will’ and draw us to him, through irresistible grace, why does he not simply override our free will to sin, to cause suffering and pain, so as to make that pain cease? Why, indeed, doesn’t he just cash in his chips and end the cosmic game now? As CS Lewis has said (and I paraphrase from memory), “it makes you wonder whether the game is worth the candle”.

You say you are not arguing in favour of determinism. Okay, that’s fine. But what *are *you arguing for, then? As I trust I have made clear, I am an Arminian Universalist, who believes firmly in human freedom. With Andrew, I believe outcomes are not predetermined by God. But I should also point out that I don’t believe our actions are *completely *free in the strong libertarian sense - for we are subject to all sorts of compulsions and determining factors, genetic and environmental, which influence our wills. Only God is *truly, wholly *free.

Good question. I don’t know the answer, but I will offer you my own opinion, which is based on the limited scientific knowledge I have gleaned through my reading on the subject. (But bear in mind I’m a words man, not a physics and chemistry man. )

I think the ‘freedom’ of inanimate matter, and the true ‘randomness’ or indeterminacy God has somehow built into the fabric of the universe, is revealed in the fundamantal unpredictability of matter at the quantum level, as I have said. For example, when light, which consists of both a wave *and *a stream of particles - photons - strikes a mirror, it is an empirically verified fact that 95% of the photons will be reflected off the mirror, but 5% will pass through the mirror. The amazing thing is that it is *impossible *to predict which 5% of the photons will be the ones that pass through the mirror. They are all identical, and there is nothing in their physical make-up that determines which of them will be the ones that pass through the mirror - and yet it is certain that 5% of them will. Hence matter is stable, and behaves predictably, at the atomic level, but fundamentally unpredictable at the sub-atomic level.

Now like I say, Michael, I am no physicist, and I stand ready to be corrected by somebody who really understands this stuff. But hopefully I have at least given you some reason to believe in the possibility of randomness in God’s universe, and hence for believing in Him (and for retaining your sense of humour ).

All the best

Johnny

Hi Johnny, just some thoughts on all this:

I think God draws us to Himself through his Spirit and this may become ‘irresistible’ but at no time does the ‘irresistibleness’ violate ‘free will’. A crude example would be a couple who come to love each other and are drawn to each other irresistibly. I don’t think this would be regarded as a loss of free will; even though in the romantic sense we may talk of someone being ‘irresistible.’

If we really believe this and take it to it’s logical conclusion then our eternal destiny, salvation for all, that we believe as Universalists could not be guaranteed. We may say that God knows the outcome because he sees the future or is even ‘in the future’ - transcending time but if there has been no determinism then the final result of free will and chance might easily have worked out differently and I don’t see that salvation is ultimately the result of good fortune.

With you therefore, I think that this is true- not only in a sense that we have some in-built biases due to our sinful condition but also that in some way whilst we have freedom to act in many ways (including moral choices that effect other people’s choices) that God as the grand chess master always wins the game.

Cheers S

How does the inability of a human observer to predict which of the photons will pass through the mirror demonstrate that the selection of these photons isn’t done by the will of God?

If they’re inanimate, they’re all identical, and there is nothing in their physical make-up that determines which of them will be the ones that pass through the mirror, what else (besides God’s will) could determine which of them fall into the 95% that are reflected, and and which of them fall into the 5% that pass through the mirror.

How does this prove randomness?

And if God is the only non-contingent cause, how could He not cause the 95% that are reflected to be reflected, and the 5% that pass through to pass through?

I still don’t see how a Supreme Being could introduce randomness into the universe.

How do you play dice when you not only know how they’ll fall, but control both the spinning and the stopping of the dice?

I still don’t get that (and I don’t see how your appeal to quantum mechanics really suggests an answer.)

Fundamentally unpredictable to humans.

What you’re saying is that sub-atomic particles behave in a way that doesn’t appear to be governed by their physical make-up, or any known law.

What I don’t get is how that proves randomness.

If there’s a Supreme Intelligence above the laws of physics (above time and space), wouldn’t the presumption be that some things are directly determined by His will alone (and not by any law of Physics)?

How does the inability of a human observer to predict the precise sub-atomic particles that will constitute the 5% that pass through the mirror do more than confirm that presumption?

If it’s God’s will for particle x, y, and z to pass through the mirror in one instance, and God’s will for particles a, b, and c to pass through in another instance, and a human observer in unable to predict this, how does that prove that the selection of x, y, or z (or a, b, or c) is random (in the sense of being undetermined by God’s will, uncaused by Him, or foreknown by Him)?