Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- 1 What is the problem?
- 2 What is chance?
- 3 Order out of chaos
- 4 Chaos out of order
- 5 What is probability?
- 6 What can very small probabilities tell us?
- 7 Can Intelligent Design be established scientifically?
- 8 Statistical laws
- 9 God's action in the quantum world
- 10 The human use of chance
- 11 God's chance
- 12 The challenge to chance
- 13 Choice and chance
- 14 God and risk
- References
- Further reading
- Index
8 - Statistical laws
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- 1 What is the problem?
- 2 What is chance?
- 3 Order out of chaos
- 4 Chaos out of order
- 5 What is probability?
- 6 What can very small probabilities tell us?
- 7 Can Intelligent Design be established scientifically?
- 8 Statistical laws
- 9 God's action in the quantum world
- 10 The human use of chance
- 11 God's chance
- 12 The challenge to chance
- 13 Choice and chance
- 14 God and risk
- References
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
Do statistical laws offer space for God to act in the world? It is first made clear that such laws are not represented primarily by probability distributions but by the basic processes underlying them. One possibility is that the laws are illusory in the sense that God is actually acting in every event in a way that mimics chance. Another possibility is that God acts only occasionally at particularly significant junctures. In this case his purposeful action would be masked by the mass of genuinely random happenings. It is concluded that neither explanation is satisfactory and hence that God's action is more likely to be seen in the behaviour of chance happenings in the aggregate.
ROOM FOR GOD'S ACTION?
From this point in the book onwards, chance plays a positive role. It is no longer to be seen as a threat to theistic belief which has to be ruled out, but as part of the richness of the creation. In the present chapter I investigate whether so-called statistical laws, which involve a chance element, offer a degree of flexibility which might create the space for God to act without disturbing the general lawfulness of the world. Having dipped our toes into the water, so to speak, we shall move on in the following chapter, to see whether the ideas carry over onto the broader canvas of the quantum world.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- God, Chance and PurposeCan God Have It Both Ways?, pp. 116 - 135Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008