You may be able to predict tomorrow’s weather with accuracy and precision, but because weather is a chaotic process, you will not be able to predict next year’s weather at a particular location with any degree of precision or accuracy. All you have about next years weather are long-term averages and distributions. Guessing of the mean is the best you can do, (and anybody can do)
I certainly agree and that was indeed an important implication of the very point I was making—but the fact that you saw a need to clarify it is an indication that I failed in stating it clearly. Even if forecasters had “complete” data from every point on the earth’s surface and in the atmosphere above (and even within the interior of the earth itself in terms of everything from heat absorption, reflection, emission, magma convection etc.), there would still be many variables left out involving the earth’s position in its solar orbit, moon and sun tidal effects, solar radiant energy and spectra factors, and so much more. The necessary data to adequately inform weather models are gargantuan beyond all imagination, making the traditional “butterfly effect” analogy look minor by comparison.
Such a complex topic brings to mind some of the bizarre polling results from the American public when asked questions like these:
“Do you believe God created everything in the universe?” A huge percentage of Americans replied affirmatively.
“Do you believe God understands quantum mechanics, RADAR, quasars, black holes, and every detail of the interactions of subatomic particles?” brought a more modest percentage of affirmative answers.
So perhaps that incongruence as well as the tendency of so many Christians to be troubled by the implications of “random chance” in the universe has roots in the same human foible: Our natural tendencies to anthropomorphize God lead us to project upon the Creator even our own discomfort and natural sense of limitation (frustration?) concerning random events and “unpredictability.”
Thoughts?
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I think that we are in agreement. The main point is that even if you had complete understanding on every state of every atom at the initial condition of a chaotic system and you had the most complete and detailed computer model of all the chemical and physical processes going on for every particle in the system, the predictive power will digress to the past means and distributions as time moves forward. In other words, you can never predict with any kind of accuracy too far into the future. The best you can do is to quote the past means and distributions. Weather is an example of a singly chaotic system as you can predict but not change the future results. The stock market, on the other hand is doubly chaotic system, as predictions made today can be used to change the future results.
Excellent question. I have tried to engage a great many “creation science” proponents on this very issue since the 1960’s. The most common response has been a blank look. I can always tell when I’ve taken them “off script”.
I know from my own experiences as part of the creation science movement through the Sixties and Seventies that one becomes very accustomed to addressing the same endlessly-repetitive FAQs and themes (e.g., “radiometric dating is evil”, “evolution is evil”, “atheists are evils”), that when a genuinely reflective and weighty issue was raised that hadn’t been droned to death in a hundred “creation weekend” conferences, there was a sense of… well… panic… and, with some of my speaker-colleagues, a tendency to attack the unfortunate and reckless soul who dared raise an “unsanctioned” question. (Unless it was delivered at the audience microphone in a hesitant, nervously quivering, sufficiently humble tone by an obviously obeisant inquirer, such a theological fastball right over the plate threatened the very authority of we, the August Ones at the dais, even when delivered in the form of a question.)
Just for clarification here - the mathematical concept of chaos is that the outcomes are completely predictable if one knows the exact values of all initial parameters. It seems like this is what @Mr.Molinist is saying but I’m not sure it’s exactly what @Patrick is saying. Of course being able to make perfect predictions would mean knowing the exact parameters of all molecules in the universe - that is not humanly possible but it’s definitely within the scope of God’s perfect knowledge.
To clarify, the mathematical concepts of chaos is that the outcomes are only predictable statistically, in a probability sense, not completely known. Take a hurricane (a chaotic system) , we can have better and better models to predict its course and continue to update its course but only predict in a statistical range where it is going. We can have all the initial conditions and models of every previous hurricane but the path of the hurricane is within a range of probability and for some reason goes to a highly improbable path that you could not predict initially.
@Patrick - this is actually inaccurate. There are more authoritative sources if you need them but you can simply see in the Wikipedia definition for Chaos Theory that:
Chaos theory is the field of study in mathematics that studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions—a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. Small differences in initial conditions (such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation) yield widely diverging outcomes for such dynamical systems, rendering long-term prediction impossible in general. This happens even though these systems are deterministic, meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.
This is what I was trying to say. minute difference in initial conditions or any time later leads to wild results. My hurricane description is such a system.
Nuno, I get what you’re saying about God’s omniscience (which won’t enter in to Patrick’s response since he doesn’t recognize what Christians are talking about here).
So yes, if somebody’s knowledge of initial conditions and all the applied rules were infinitely precise, and if all those applied rules were deterministic in their nature (a big “if”, and one which appears to have been shot down by the robust version of qm uncertainty) then a deist God could by virtue of infinite mathematical abilities calculate out everything to the end. All chaos theory does is reinforce for us how infinitely sensitive any chaotic system is to its initial conditions or any other influences. So there is no such thing as a large chaotic system being immune from particle movements “too small” to make any difference. There is no such thing as “too small”, which forces everything (like long term weather forecasts) to get lost in that QM world of uncertainty.
If one accepts that (or has rejected a sort of Laplacian Deist God in any case) there is no need to think God is limited by such things like we are. If time is laid out before God as something to just “be seen” all at once as it were, then let all those uncertainties be as robust as anybody could wish – they will only be uncertainties to us. Or if God knows something about buried levels of determinism that we just can’t/haven’t uncovered and that look very stochastic to us at the levels we can see, then maybe that is true instead. Either way I agree with you. God is sovereign over it all which is a matter of trust for us.
Above, where I wrote “if somebody’s knowledge … were infinitely …”, there is the inherent contradiction if that somebody is themselves a member of that universe of which they supposedly have infinite knowledge, there is no way they could be so complex as to know it all, but then also know themselves as a very subset of what they know.
That is why God – the ground of all being who is outside the universe, is the only viable candidate for omniscience.
This is indeed the critical distinction - if ALL initial conditions are known then the system is purely deterministic. Since it is impossible for humans to know all initial conditions then the best we can do is short-term probabilistic predictions. But if one did know all initial conditions (as Christians believe God does) then there would be no randomness in the system. This is also what the purely mathematical definition means regardless of any theological implications.
I agree with most of your points, including the deep implications of God being outside of time and space - events would not be random to God even if things appear random to us in our linear understanding of time (i.e., there is no randomness in past events - things happened or did not happen with probability 1).
Randomness in QM is an interesting open question - as far as I know it still has not been shown that our inability to predict outcomes is not just a limitation of our inability to measure enough “hidden” variables. I know current results point in the direction of inherent randomness but has there a definitive proof for this?
I know current results point in the direction of inherent randomness but has there a definitive proof for this?
I don’t think anybody could rightly claim there has been definitive proof that this is the case, though nobody would know that from the way things are often described. The “hidden variables” approach is certainly a much less mind-blowing option, but as we’ve learned since Einstein, God’s creation doesn’t always favor the “non-mind blowing” alternatives!
At the base level, it is all quantum mechanical, electrons changes states spontaneously. No it is impossible for anyone (including God) to know what electron is going to change energy states. Macroscopically, this give a statistical nature to the whole system - the hurricane.
Yes, the proof is called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Relationship. QM is the most precisely experimentally verified of any theory in science, even more so than gravity.
Seems like there is also a misunderstanding of this concept here - what the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states is that we cannot estimate the values of both the position and the velocity of a particle with precise accuracy. This does not mean those values are unknowable, only that we cannot precisely measure them.
Incorrect. We cannot KNOW the values of both the position and the velocity of a particle with precise accuracy. As soon as you squeeze the position of a particle into a tighter space, its momentum goes to infinity. Same can be said about a particle’s energy and time duration.
QM is very well tested and verified with extraordinary precision. The universe is quantum mechanical for all energy, matter, and radiation(fields and waves).
Do you have a primary source proving this exact distinction? What I mean by this is a peer-reviewed paper in a physics journal or at least a recent textbook used at a top research university.
Every so often we go through this discussion because people do not understand evolution.
The problem is CHANGE,. not randomness. There would be no evolution without change. There would be no life without change. The issue is not randomness vs order, but How does God create change in a orderly universe?
If Adam and Eve has not sinned, but continued to live in the garden without clothes or a house, eating food they picked off the vine or tree or bushes, things would be fine, but there would be no change or history or religion. In other words there would be no people like us.
Where does change come from in evolution? It comes from genetic Variation. Genetic variation has several sources. It comes from sex. When a male and a female produce progeny, these new forms of life are unique in their genetic makeup. It comes from mistakes in the duplication of genes. It comes from radiation which can change genes.
Order is seen as the opposite of change, but God creates through change. Therefore God created orderly change in evolution using randomness to create genetic Variation, and ecological Natural Selection to validate and preserve orderly, positive, creative change. Genetic Variation creates the many possibilities for change, while ecological Natural Selection preserves and spreads those particular possible changes that fit best into the current ecological niche.
God does not have to be Absolute to carry out God’s Will. The fact that God plan is a plan of change indicates that God is NOT Absolute, but works with the natural world God has created and the human world God has created to create the perfect, free, and dynamic world that is truly worthy of us and the God we worship…
Please @Patrick,
Are you saying that if I know where I am, I cannot not know how fast I am moving?
If so maybe I can use this info if I get a speeding ticket.