1 Like
The TA (Teaching Assistant) I had for one of Professor OldTimer’s increasingly rare undergrad courses said that the department not only had to put new rules in place when there was competition to get into his sections. They also had to deal with the TAs wanting to be assigned to his sections. This was not only because they wanted to hear him lecture but because the course over-enrollments would mean per-overload-student bonuses for the graders and section TAs. Eventually, the department established seniority rules for the grad assistants and everybody got moved around more with less free choice.
By the time I was in grad school, there was more limits on section size and it was much harder for undergrads to get schedule changes just in order to get into a favorite section. Computers assigned you and that was about it. Changes were difficult. So it was not unusual for students from another class to just take empty seats at the back of the big lecture hall even though they weren’t actually in the course. Today such courses would be videos and available on the net.
The funny stories and the illustrations were the best part of the classes. It was the closest I ever came to a Socratic methods experience.
He had a funny story about Douglas Hofstadter on the Stanford campus when Hofstadter was just a young kid, a conversation they concluded something like twenty years or something later when Hofstadter was at Michigan I think it was.
1 Like
There is a huge difference between unpredictable because of the complex nature of reality and randomness.
Evolution is determinant in that it is governed by the ecology. I am glad you agree with me on this point, Eddie. It is predictable to a large extent also. We know that climate change will bring changes in geography, flora and fauna. We just cannot predict exactly how they will change.
Thus evolution is not random, not without cause and effect. That is why we study it. That is why we need to study ecology. That is why we need to use our God given minds to protect God’s green earth, before it becomes Human’s brown earth.
1 Like
How many realities do we live in? One. It is meant to be a description of reality which is not indeterminate. Now that is not the world humans live in with their calendars and their schedules.
Nonetheless Dawkins & Co. claim that this random. indeterminate physical reality is the ONLY world, only reality that humans live in. We are not arguing with the Christian scientist that has somehow reconciled a dualistic Reality, but with the materialist non-believer who claims that Darwinian evolution gives us a accurate understanding of what life is all about, when it does not for scientific reasons as well as theological reasons.
Random as used in evolution means what Dawkins wants it to mean, non-teleological, without meaning or purpose. If this were a true description of the way things are, then that would be fine, but it is not. Again the answer is not that complicated, Evolution is a mixed system, with both random and determinate aspects, but the result is determinate. Case closed.
Thank you for your witness.
Sadly there are times and places when the good is the enemy of the best. In some ways Darwinian evolution is good, but it is not the best. Our understanding of Christianity in some ways is good, but not the best.
What we need to be doing as people of God is to be seeking the best, rather than trying to defend the good that we know. This applies to everyone, including people of science and Muslims.
Islam appeals to people who want definitive answers. Christianity demands that we think for ourselves. That is what we need to do, and not take scientific “facts” as true just because they are “scientific.”
This topic was automatically closed 6 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.