If God is using convergent processes as a described above, then from our perspective I think it should appear entirely random. If we could see multiple such processes at work then we might see how it converges, but our sample size is N=1.
I’m not even clear on what @BenKissling means by “true in the absolute sense”. Is that a statement about with what degree of certainty we can hold a belief?
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Simply reiterating your analogy is not an explanation, as your dice have nothing to do with location. You’ve also oversimplified the mechanisms underlying locations in this context by several orders of magnitude; it’s not simply “chemical nature” or “structure.”
For example, in the case of somatic hypermutation I described above, my decision to get a COVID booster a week ago is locating the genomes of very specific cells (clones making antibody to the spike protein) and selective regions of their genomes (highly transcribed genes) for increased mutations. If that’s merely random, then IMO the term is no longer useful.
@BenKissling A simpler way to phrase what I wrote earlier about “convergence”, is that things which seem random at the smallest scale may be non-random at a larger scale. As with @mercer’s vaccine (just above), antibodies find the spike protein perfectly well using a random process. No one questions that all the antibodies will somehow fail to find targets - that just can’t happen.
The TE’s I know are not bothered by the randomness, as they tend to take a large scale view that results of evolution meet with God’s intent. I think that if we could all agree on the same interpretation of randomness, then there wouldn’t be any argument about whether or not God’s creative acts are random.
Thanks for posting, this has been a good discussion.
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And it’s worth noting that this happens by Darwinian mechanisms. The information was provided by the antigen (the spike protein), and the immune system evolved antibodies to bind with extremely high affinity in only two weeks. Identical twins will not make the same antibodies, so the information was clearly created de novo.
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From our perspective, randomness, both chaotic and quantum, is woven into the fabric of our existence. Mutation is just one example among many; there is nothing particularly special about it beyond its significance as a mechanism of evolution. So the question of God’s creative work really must reconcile divine sovereignty, transcendence, and imminence, with randomness in general. A statement such as “God’s creative acts cannot be random, so He cannot use evolution to create.”, invites larger questions in regards to a creation that features randomness throughout, with life defining consequences impacting on individuals and populations. As mentioned above, this includes our immune system and mutations leading to cancer, but more generally can scale to the random occurrence of natural disasters.
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I hope this thread doesn’t die before we get a better understanding of why we see random processes throughout the universe but God is allegedly somehow incapable, unwilling, or—for some other unknown reason—simply not using them to create the very things we observe being created by those random processes. I remain baffled.
Perhaps the quoted statement deserves its own thread without the “mere theistic evolution” specifics.
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I suspect this might have something to do with morality. If the world contains random events then some people might be coincidentally more or less lucky than others through no fault or act of their own, and that seems unfair.
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POSTSCRIPT: Just for fun, I submitted the aforementioned quotation from the OP of this thread to the Gemini Advanced AI chat system:
What do you think of this statement from an online forum: “But God’s creative acts cannot be random, so He cannot use evolution to create.”
The statement you read reflects a specific theological perspective often associated with certain interpretations of creationism or intelligent design. However, it’s important to understand that this view is not universally shared among religious believers and is subject to different interpretations and theological debates.
Here’s a breakdown of some key points to consider:
- Definitions of Randomness:
- Scientific Randomness: In science, randomness often refers to events that are unpredictable within the framework of our current understanding and models. It doesn’t necessarily imply a lack of cause or purpose.
- Theological Randomness: In theological discussions, randomness might be interpreted as a lack of divine control or purpose. This is where the statement’s logic stems from – the idea that a truly omnipotent and omniscient God would not rely on random processes for creation.
- Different Theological Perspectives:
- Theistic Evolution: Many religious believers embrace theistic evolution, which posits that God works through the natural processes of evolution to bring about creation. They may view evolution as a divinely guided process rather than a purely random one.
- Intelligent Design: Proponents of intelligent design argue that the complexity of life indicates a designer’s intervention. They might see evolution as too random and insufficient to explain the intricacies of biological systems.
- Young Earth Creationism: This view often interprets the Bible literally, suggesting a relatively young Earth and rejecting evolution as a mechanism of creation.
- Philosophical and Theological Debates:
- Free Will and Divine Action: The concept of randomness in evolution raises questions about the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human free will. Can a divinely ordained process also involve randomness? How does God interact with the natural world? These are topics of ongoing philosophical and theological debate.
- God’s Nature and Methods: Different religious traditions and denominations hold diverse views on God’s nature and how God interacts with the universe. These views influence how they interpret concepts like randomness and evolution in relation to creation.
Conclusion:
Ultimately, the statement you read reflects a particular theological viewpoint that is not universally accepted. It is important to recognize the diversity of religious beliefs and interpretations regarding the relationship between God, randomness, and evolution.
It’s also crucial to distinguish between scientific and theological understandings of randomness. While science focuses on observable phenomena and testable hypotheses, theology explores questions of faith, meaning, and purpose that may not be fully addressable by scientific inquiry.
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Then again, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
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Sarfati actually had a similar criticism, but he wanted to talk about the more broad bias towards AT against GC, and he sent me this article on it. I think I may just cut that entire section. It’s just too much to talk about every kind of mutation and whether or not the biophysical basis of it is random or not. The argument stands on the basis of the example from evolutionary biology. It’s enough for my argument to say that the theory, and not just evolution but all models of mutations, model them as random. @Dan_Eastwood has asked for a definition of random. When I see a mathematical model of randomness, the straightforward physical interpretation of that is “uncaused.” Even the Encyclopedia Britannica entry you posted says this at the beginning of one of the paragraphs:
“Most mutations occur spontaneously and have no known cause.”
Since they have no known cause, the theory must model them as uncaused, and that is clearly incompatible with God causing them. Again, it doesn’t matter what you think is actually true. We can only evaluate the theory that we have. And when you compare the mathematical model of randomness, that is no known or proffered cause, with the doctrine of creation which claims a very specific cause, they are incompatible. My problem with Murray and Churchill’s paper is they seem to know that, but they are refusing to admit it.
I’m not, and none of this was inspired by him.
It sounds like we’re agreeing here, but I suspect if we delved into the details you, like most scientists, would be a scientific realist. My suspicion is that here you are talking about epistemology and lack of certain knowledge. But you are still treating scientific theories as propositions which must be either true or false. You just accept that we lack certainty they are true. Instrumentalism says that scientific theories are not propositions at all, and therefore they cannot be true or false. They are tools. Tools aren’t true or false, and they are not propositions. They either work or they don’t work. They are good towards their intended purpose or they aren’t. They aren’t true or false.
All I’m arguing here though is that if you take a realist view of evolutionary theory, you must view it as false if you take the doctrine of creation to be true. You could potentially interpret me as hoping to persuade some such as yourself to take an instrumentalist view of it. 
First off, I admit that the Molinist answer to this issue requires a separate treatment. My argument here is only in response to main argument of MTE. To my knowledge, Craig has been promoting this view for several years, but I do not know of any serious written version of it. Do you? I’d love to see it. I’m planning on doing a podcast on this article’s topic and then hopefully the next one on the Molinist solution. I’m not a Molinist, but I suspect that the Molinist solution to evolution/creation is going to look somewhat different than its solution to sovereignty/free will. Part of the reason I think is most philosophers tend to be concerned about moral responsibility when they talk about free will. The nice thing about uncaused physical events is that takes moral responsibility out of the equation. I think it has the potential to clear things up a bit.
My issue with this is that Molinism, at least in the free will/sovereignty issue which I have taken to calling Theological Molinism ™, does claim that human free will is actually, libertarianly free and that God chooses this particular universe to be exactly what it is. They would not say we are free from our perspective but not free from God’s perspective. Do you see what I mean? IOW, your first sentence is correct, but the second is not from a Molinist perspective. We would still have Libertarian Free Will (LFW) from both ours and God’s perspective. That just means that God does not causally determine our LFW choices. In the mutation case, which I call Scientific Molinism (SM), that would mean that mutations are random both from our perspective and from God’s. God is not causally determining mutations. This fits with my above definition of random as “uncaused.”
This is the main reason why I think MTE and Craig’s Molinist view are actually different solutions. On Molinism, one would not need to say that from God’s perspective, all mutations have a probability of 1. They should still be able to say that mutations are truly random, but God chose the universe where they actually occurred. Do you see what I mean?
This is why I’m not a Molinist. TM tries to get around God causally determining our choices, but in the end TM still models God as choosing how things turn out. IMO, that precludes free agents making the choice, because God has already made it for us.
Yes, I know. I’m also a B-theorist. But these are actually two different solutions to the free will/sovereignty issue. My position is called Boethianism, and simply says that because God is outside of time, He can know the future by observation. Knowledge by observation is not causation. Molinism tries to preserve God’s knowledge of the future in the classical theist sense where His knowledge is innate and not by observation. And that means He can use His Middle Knowledge to choose which feasible world to create. That means His choice is logically prior to ours and determines it, which Molinism claims to avoid.
Anyway, I’m not quite sure yet whether I think TM and SM are the same or different. I reject TM anyway, but my question is whether or not one such as yourself who accepts TM would necessarily accept SM. My suspicion is they are different in important ways.
“no known cause” =/= “no cause”
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I advise you to ‘quote’ what I actually wrote, and not pretend I wrote something else.
I have flagged your post.
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I agree that is a misquote and have hidden it. The original quote is,
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OK, we have come full circle on this, back to “Why can’t God be random?” I think this identifies an important point of disagreement; your interpretation of random differs from the TE interpretation of random. It seems that TE’s do not necessarily agree that randomness is uncaused, or (maybe) that randomness can divert God’s will. I discussed the idea of Convergence, where the outcome of many random events to a predictable outcome. In this case it applies to outcomes that God can predict, not us.
God surely understands math and probability. God could act in ways that may appear random (uncaused) to us, but are entirely “caused” at some higher level of knowing.
I agree that discussion of the randomness of mutations is beside the point. It is the cumulative effect of many small events, random or not, which lead to larger scale event that humans notice and care about.
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I would not subscribe to that dichotomy. Taking creation as divine agency, it seems perfectly realist to posit God as instantiating the Big Bang, and allowing evolution to run its course by what to us appear as random mechanisms. God could well have foreknowledge and teleological intent. That is a realist view in which creation and evolution are both true.
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A quick thought:
We can also say that radioisotope atoms decay randomly and spontaneously and have “no known cause” other than physics-at-work----and it happens spontaneously. Yet, what we observe in a stochastic sense with a large collection of radioactive atoms (such as in a rock sample) is a very predictable and reliable phenomenon known as a half-life. Therefore, I assume it is accurate to say that this is a random process which leads to a very non-random phenomena that is reliably predictable.
I would also assert as a Christian theist that this is yet another random process which God as Creator willed/caused the universe to function. It is an example of God creating by means of randomness.
I’m leaving for an appointment so I’ll will leave it to others to critique my analogy.
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Seems a perfectly reasonable, though untestable, position to take.
As someone else has already pointed out “no known cause” is not the same as “no cause.”
But several decades of molecular biology and biochemistry have identified many different causes of mutations, so I would even argue the claim should be considered false. I haven’t even heard of a mutation for which we do not know of candidate causes identified in experiments.
Just one piece of evidence that the statement is false is that in most modern phylogenetic inference, mutation is explicitly modeled as adhering to substitution-biases with known biochemical causes.
In any case I think that statement is also a bit confused. Evolution usually isn’t modeled at the level of detail where the chemistry and physics known to cause mutations is taken into account.
Most population genetics is numerical simulations rather than, I don’t even know how you’d model the biochemical causes of mutation… quantum-chemistry?
Mutations are usually just considered in terms of frequencies and rates of occurrence with no actual simulation of what the cause of them might be, but that doesn’t mean scientists actually consider them a-causal events. Heck, you might even model a scenario where you think (say) UV light raises the rate of mutation, but it’s not like the actual interaction between electromagnetic radiation in the UV-spectrum and the DNA molecule is simulated. Instead you’d probably just make some simplifying assumption that X increase in UV intensity will incur Y increase in mutation rates if this is a factor of relevance to the scenario being modeled.
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