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[[Personally, I don’t think a model like this does justice to God as First Cause. I think hosepipe’s astute remark — that “God does not make Bluebirds. He made Bluebirds that make Bluebirds” — indicates the manner in which divine Providence tends to work in nature (i.e., through secondary causes). Certainly it seems that God directs and guides the world and all therein according to his plan and purpose; but he doesn’t have to, say, directly mess with the (apparently random) quantum world in order for the “right” outcomes to occur in nature.]]

Not sure I’m following your line of reasoning here- God was indeed ‘first cause’, and it is my beleif that He created the genome to handle most mistakes thrown at it by designing the informaiton to adjust on the fly- this would take forethought and foreknowledge to code the metainfo to deal with intrusions- I’m not seeing how time constraints play into this? I don’t see that God has to keep ‘stepping in’ to adjust code ‘as needed’ as the code was ‘perfected’ (in the sense that it contianed all necessary info right fro mthe start to deal with problems- I’m not implying that all problems can be handeled, but rather that species specific info is able to handle most, but is still under hte curse and could potentially not be able to handle some, according to God’s directives at creation)

[[ In this article, he wants to know whether “randomness” in nature necessarily implies that nature is “unguided,” “unplanned,” and “undirected” in a sense that would contradict the notion of Providence.]]

No I don’t beleive so- God woudl know, being omniscient, what randomenss would do to species before it even occured, and would have designed creatures to either handle the problems or succumb to them according to His will. He very well could have created creatures to lvie for some itme, but die off- go extinct, and infact we know htis has happened, but it didn’t take God by surprise, as it were, when this happened- These die-offs are a result of sin, and were planned for.

As God directs everything, being omnipotent, even ‘randomness’ bows to His direction or rather is subject to His direction- this is another deep subject, as one has to wonder how somethign could be ‘random’ when it is ‘directed’ By God- but perhaps it owudl be better to state it is ‘used’ by God for His own purposes

[[The world does not have one story line, but many story lines that have little direct relation to each other.... ]]

I’m not sure I agree with htis- I think everythign is itner-related, and that an omniscient God sees all ‘independent lines’ (which are actually depenedent on other lines), and created everyhtign to either positively deal with, or negatively deal with, all possible ‘independent’ actions no metter what order they occure in (Which again, God, being onmiscient, woudl have already foreseen).

We’re only really able to see perhaps several ‘independent’ lines at a time (kind of like in a chess game- the best players can visualize quite a few lines of manuevers in advance) and htis I think limits our understanding, but if we were to be able to see all ‘indepenedent’ lines, I think we would see that they are all inter-dependent in actuality.

Ouch! Brain ache.

As God directs everything, being omnipotent, even ‘randomness’ bows to His direction or rather is subject to His direction — this is another deep subject, as one has to wonder how something could be ‘random’ when it is ‘directed’ By God — but perhaps it would be better to state it is ‘used’ by God for His own purposes.

Yes, I entirely agree the problem can be stated in that way, and such statement would be absolutely true. But this does not shed any light into the nature of randomness itself.

I think Alamo-Girl has the correct common sense (and mathematical) definition of a random event: I.e., it is an unpredicted event, meaning it's an event that a human being cannot ascribe to a known cause in advance of the occurrence of the phenomenon he observes. Since it has no ascribable cause, it appears to be "undirected," perhaps purposeless — just a freak accident maybe. Still, to me, you cannot obtain a highly ordered system out of a causal chain of freak accidents, not even if you can prove the universe is "eternal"; i.e., had no beginning.

Anyhoot, I'm not at all in-amicable to the ideas you presented in your last lovely post, CottShop. I just want to know what the term "random" means in the natural sciences nowadays. Plus for some strange reason I have some deep-set, maybe intuitive idea that "random development," via the general situation of contingency in nature, is what introduces novelty and change in a natural system, preventing it from becoming completely "static" — which to my mind is practically indifferentiationable from the physical realization of thermodynamic entropy.

Anyhoot, what I truly liked about Stephen Barr's article in was that here, we have a physicist, speaking directly to other physicists, regarding his proposal of the reconcilability of divine Providence and "randomness" in nature, as these terms are used in the physical sciences nowadays.

You mentioned that you didn't think that "time constraints play into this." By which I take you to mean that the very fact of the eternity of God, and His Purposive Will, fully accounts for all organic (and for that matter, inorganic) entities in nature. I totally agree with you. But that is not a scientific insight.

If you want to have a conversation with scientists, you can't just say "God did it!" No more than they can just say, "(Random) nature did it."

And that's what's so spectacularly engaging about this book I've been citing recently, Divine Action and Natural Selection. I've been aware of this book for well over a year now, from its early pre-production stages, when "editorial posture" was being fleshed out. It finally went to press last October — with what I'm satisfied to say is a proper and just editorial tone.

This book is a confab of scientists speaking among themselves regarding the hot-button issues of Darwinian evolution theory vs. ID. At bottom, it raises — and ventilates from various scientific and cultural perspectives — the issue of whether science and religion, faith and reason, are mutually-exclusive "magisteria," or whether they may overlap in a certain key sense.

The book's plenty pricey. But oh, worth every penny, IMHO! Whatta feast!

Thank you so very much for your kind birthday wishes for my Dad, dear brother in Christ! And also for your keen, perceptive essay/post!