[eastbay]

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A natural Universe operating according to fixed laws is not necessarily a deterministic Universe.


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I don't see how something that is in accordance with fixed laws isn't determined by those laws.


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The LAWS are fixed. The outcomes of those laws are probabilistic in the theory.

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Evolution doesn't procede randomly. Evolution procedes according to random variation and non-random selection.


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You're saying evolution doesn't proceed randomly, it proceeds according to random variation. I don't see the difference.


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It seems clear that you don't know anything about science. I suppose that's hardly surprising.

You know how heat flows from hot regions to cold? That's an orderly process with structure, right? Do you realize that heat transfer on a microscopic level is just atoms wiggling around randomly, bumping into each other in a process that appears completely random on a local scale? But if you back up and look at the bigger picture, this underlying random process creates a bigger picture that has a very neat and orderly structure to it.

This is like evolution. It is only random locally. Globally, there is an emergent order from that randomness. That's what we see in the orderly progression of species.

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It isn't a question of physical difference. If free will exists for man it is because God is in control and allows it. If there is no God, either fixed law reigns, so all is determined, or chance reigns, so all is accidental.

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Is the random variation of atoms in a bar of iron accidental? And yet don't we see on a larger scale the very orderly flow of heat emerging from that underlying random process?

Why are you troubled by a universe where "chance reigns"? I don't think this implies what you assume it to imply.

eastbay