What is luck that all our swains commend her?

Randomness just means that God gives us free will and we are not all just characters in a movie. Randomness means I can type A or I can type B.

Being in control does not mean controlling everything including each choice we make and not just ours but everything.

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It means exactly that.Controlling everything.Expect our choises

As an example, the state lottery is set up that the numbers chosen are random. They cannot predict who will win. But someone ultimately wins every time, and the state takes its cut. Or you can substitute casino for state. Las Vegas was built on controlling random processes.

So, what’s the difference between “contrived randomness”, i.e. created artificially as in lotteries and casinos, and “true randomness”? Surely, they’re not the same thing, otherwise–I’d think–we’re off on a hunt for the guy who came up with the latter.

Nope.A genius mathematician or the guy who created the algorithm could find the lottery easily.Unless the lotery is created by a single algorithm that the programmer has no power over it .Which in that case you come to my conclusion.If a programmer doesnt have power anymore on a algorithm then he cant engage with it period.Hense if God cant control something he cant engage with it.Take our thoughts for example

It is not based on an algorithm, but on falling balls in a basket, so not so predictable. Now, slot machines, maybe, as I really don’t know. But to carry the analogy further, if you are a card counter in the game of Blackjack, you can change to statistics so that can predictable win and thus control the outcome on the game. God can control the odds, and can wait for the desired outcome, yet leave what happens in between to the process he created. All it takes is time, and God has eternity.

In randomness however theres not a “desired outcome” .You dont know what the outcome is.What you are saying is that God knows that out of a random situation a bad outcome will be the result but refuses to change the odds to avoid it correct?If thats the case then God is cruel

Good question, Terry. Perhaps contrived randomness is not really random to an all knowing God, and true randomness does not exist. Hum. There goes my free will.

Still, if the universe, including us, is just a machine, I think that it is sort of pointless. God would say,” Well, that worked.” Then put it on the shelf and go on to his next project. It seems some degree of randomness and with it, free will, is necessary for meaning to be present. It is sort of the difference in raising a garden and going to the grocery store, for those of us who garden.

Not true at all. I have a desired outcome when intake people on a natural history hike. However, despite some things being scheduled in and part of the talk, about 50% of it is random. A random client pointing to a random plant or animal or natural structure and I talk about it if I know about it. If not, I move back from a specific species to a genus, family or some other clade it’s involved in or a ecological niche that type of animals fits and keep them entertained and learning.

So lots of random stuff. After all I don’t make snakes magically come out when they hear my voice.

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How does that answers or discredits at any point my argument above exactly?

By proving that randomness does not equal lack of a overall plan. That free will and a plan don’t counter react one another. Not for us and even less for God.

What has randomness got to do with free will?I never stated they counter each other .Have you read my previous posts?

Great example. A less knowledgeable guide might not be comfortable allowing the clients to have a say in how the tour goes. They may want to force everyone down precisely the same route during which they talk about a preset series of plants and animals. Stick to a script, and they’ll appear to know what they’re doing.

Someone with wider knowledge doesn’t have to control things so much in order to appear in control. They can allow clients to point out their own interests. They can stop to discuss the random critter that crosses the trail. Their client’s freedom and the trail’s randomness won’t keep them from succeeding as a guide – or keep God from succeeding as God.

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I’ve wondered, if the Fall had never happened and we all were still in the Garden of Eden, what a one chapter version of Scripture would look like: IMO, it would go something like Genesis 1 with the last verse being: “And a good time was had by all, and God saw that that was good.”

I’m not the right person to consider the difference. I’m quite happy to get my produce and plants from the store, although I have enjoyed my wife’s gardening, when she did, and brief visits to gardens.

Although I’m familiar with the reasoning, I have a different perspective, belatedly understood/discovered/revealed (?) found in recent years.

I suspect there’s a difference between robots and human beings. I don’t think it’s possible to hypnotize a robot, but it is possible to hypnotize a human being. I’ve seen it done and have yet to see a robot hypnotized.

If the cosmos–including us–is “just a machine”, it might indeed seem sort of pointless. As MarkD said:

But, … inspired by Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 13: “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”), my perspective suggests that “transformation” and “hope” dispel the universe’s pointless-ness and FOW-less Determinism’s meaningless-ness. [FOW-less = missing Freedom of Will.]

Rooted in the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, we “automatons” have cause to believe that life in this world is not “all there is”. The transformation is not over until the divinely desired transformation is completed and the transformed see the Transformer “face-to-face” and know Him even as they are now known. Faith in “cause to believe” gives the believer “cause to hope.”

Hebrews 11:1. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

As I suggested to MarkD: “… “hope” is the stuff that prevents fatalism. In my case, it’s not unfounded hope based solely on Bible verses, but hope encouraged by Bible verses vindicated by and founded on those who have loved me more than I deserved and when I deserved nothing.”

IMO, the unfinished story of the Gardener’s work is greater than Carlo Collodi’s "The Adventures of Pinocchio.

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Regardless of the perfect randomness of the fall of the dice of our lives, God determines the perfect outcome for all: we all arrive at the starting line of eternity perfectly equipped.

Nope. Even God can’t know what number entropy will come up with.

God is perfectly fair in His non-intervention in His material as He is perfectly fair in His intervention in His transcendence.

P.S. Passing by, I read that sentence again and it occurred to me: what if “randomness and with it, free will” are somebody’s way of saying: “Hath God said?”

[quote=“NickolaosPappas, post:38, topic:46027”]
Randomness means out of Gods control.
[/quote].

Yes, and No. It means out of God’s direct control. In that sense the universe is random, because while God could exercise direct control, God does not.

In fact God will not exercise direct control on the world until the coming of God’s Kingdom at the end of time, when God’s Will shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. It would be nice if that change would be done in a peaceful manner, however the Bible indicates that it will not.

The end times when the world is cleansed of sin and injustice will be a traumatic event, reflecting no doubt the amount of sin and injustice in the ancient world. It seems that some people today think that they are hastening the end times by destroying God’s Creation, which is absolutely false, and puts them on the side of the Lawless One.

The way that God exercises control over a random process is perhaps is explained by the way humans do. Thermal energy us random. Add flame to oxygen and gasoline vapor and you get an explosion of thermal energy randomly expanding heated air.

However when you use gasoline to power a car the gas and the oxygen is compressed in a cylinder where a sparkplug ignites it and the explosion propels the piston to turn the drive shaft and move the vehicle in the direction indicated by the steering wheel. Thus the random explosive movement of the gasoline does not change, but it is guided in such a way that it moves the car in the desired direction.

Thermal energy is random, other types of energy is not. Nature is not simple. It is complex and diverse. Efforts by science to portray it simple are doomed to disaster. I refuse to go along such nonsense.

Reality is neither random nor determined. It is both within limits set by God and guided by God. Sadly a mixed system is not allowed by dualistic Western philosophy, which needs to change.

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