[lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 09:03:27 -0700
Lest the grammatically police are on their way: "get there on their own."
Lawrence
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From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Lawrence Helm
Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2006 8:55 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
There is another possibility, Mike. Instead of a flower pot hitting someone
on the head; which isn't very useful, consider getting a herd of cattle to
Montana in, say, 1870. The ranch had been purchased and a nice herd has
been purchased in Texas. It has been determined by the ranch owner that
this herd gets to his ranch. But the cattle aren't going to get their on
their own; so a trail boss is required. He knows how to do it. He hires a
few helpers and they drive the herd to Montana.
Your Catholic school teachers might agree with this. God did indeed create
the universe but not as the Deists believed, not as a hands-off universe
that needed no further attention but as a hands-on universe that required
attention from time to time. He didn't need to create the cattle. He'd
already created them (using the evolutionary process that we love so well),
but now they needed a little help to get where they needed to be.
In other words, who says that the universe needs to be utterly chaotic or
utterly ordered?
Lawrence
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From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Mike Geary
Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2006 8:32 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Final Finger of Fate
A.A.
>>There is cause and effect, absolutely. Beyond cause and effect,
inevitability has a supernatural quality to it, such as Robert Paul
mentioned. If you're walking down the street and a flower pot falls on your
head because a butterfly flapped its wings in Brazil, is it inevitable that
it hit *you* and not the guy in back of you? That's luck. Physics is the
pot falls down and not up. That it hits you is no reason at all, just
luck.<<
Apparently it's the word 'fate' that disturbs you, so let's leave it aside
and use the word 'determined'. In a determined universe there's no such
thing as chance or randomness (your 'luck'). Using your flowerpot scenario,
the fact that the flowerpot hits the person it hits is because THAT person
was there. THAT person was there and not another person because THAT person
and no other was THERE in that spot at that moment. And THAT person was
there as the consequence of a very specific chain of events. So, too, the
flowerpot falls as a consequence of a very specific chain of events -- the
two events coincide. Determinism, as I understand it, holds that in the
first nano second of existence all the history of the universe was cast,
we're just going through the inevitable motions now.
That's not a universe I want to live in, but I don't see how it can be
otherwise. I don't see how randomness or chance could possibly exist and
there still be a universe. What seems to us chaos and open-endedness is
merely the almost infinite variables that go into every equation. If one
knew the position and momentum of every particle of existence at that first
moment of existence then one could know the future. Then one might be able
to affect the future. Failing that we have to live with the illusion that
the world is open to our control.
This is my thinking at this point in any event.
Mike Geary
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