There is much philosophical and some theological discussion about things we have (and have not) been told about regarding how God operates in this world. This article is in response to a co-incidence: an article on weather, the rejection of co-incidence, sensing Japan's quake in space, an unexpected asteroid and the first Chaos maths. They all have in common one fact: there are things we don't understand about the complexity of how the world works about us. But let's look at them.
Unpredictable Dangerous Weather
Storms can bring great destruction and death, but predicting their precise path even one day ahead might be intractable, forever beyond human capability,
‘A tropical cyclone should develop later today or overnight and head away from the coast over the next three days,’’ a spokesman for The Early Warning Network said on Thursday.
Cyclone Sandra, set to form off the east coast, could head for Queensland.
‘‘What’s not certain is where it heads from day four and onwards. At this stage there is little confidence in any model outcome from day four onwards as none of them are showing any agreement.’’ ...
‘‘Over the next few days, further models runs will chop and change the track again,’’ the EWN spokesman said. Hopefully though we will start to see some similarities between models, longer term, to give us a better idea of where it is likely to head....There’s a lot of uncertainty about it. We’re entering speculation territory when we start looking into next week.’’ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/weather/forecasters-uncertain-of-cyclones-path-20130307-2fme3.html
All of the models are based on mathematical simulation of observed relationships. They find though that small input differences produce dramatically different outcomes. This is a true reflection of observed reality. Due to this, a hurricane- cyclone- typhoon may, or may not form, and if it forms it needs very little input to move it. How much does chance play in it? Does the God of the Bible let dangerous weather get out of hand that might kill his creation? This is something many might be refusing to face, preferring a secular view. But a lack of rain, which is also dependant on the same touchy inputs of the climate, affects all life and is fundamental to life. Is it chance one place may receive record levels of rain one year and in the same country another place nearby has drought?
I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD. And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. (Amos 4:6-7)
From this we may know that, if God chooses he can control those inputs to make chance into certainty, to achieve his ends. But let us think of the possibility that he might desire its randomness, that he designed it to have this characteristic.
Unpredictable Radio Wave Behaviour
During WW2 a female mathematician Mary Cartwright answered the call to help develop the maths behind radar.
Engineers working on the project were having difficulty with the erratic behaviour of high-frequency radio waves. ..
"The whole development of radar in World War Two depended on high power amplifiers, and it was a matter of life and death to have amplifiers that did what they were supposed to do. The soldiers were plagued with amplifiers that misbehaved, and blamed the manufacturers for their erratic behaviour. Cartwright and Littlewood discovered that ...the equation itself was to blame."
In other words, odd things happened when some sorts of values were fed into the standard equation they were using to predict the amplifiers' performance. Cartwright and Littlewood were able to show that as the wavelength of radio waves shortens, their performance ceases to be regular and periodic, and becomes unstable and unpredictable. This work helped explain some perplexing phenomena engineers were encountering.
The results unexpectedly obtained from the equations predicting the oscillations of radio waves are part of the foundation for the modern theory that accounts for the unpredictable behaviour of all manner of physical phenomena, from swinging pendulums and fluid flow, to the stock market.
Steadily increase the rate of flow of water into a rotating waterwheel, for example, and the wheel will go correspondingly faster. But at a certain point the behaviour of the wheel becomes unpredictable - speeding up and slowing down without warning, or even changing direction.
The recognition that chaotic behaviour is a vital part of many physical systems in the world around us came in 1961, when Edward Lorenz was running a weather simulation through an early computer. When he tested a particular configuration a second time he found that the outcome differed dramatically from his earlier run. Eventually he tracked the difference down to a small alteration he had inadvertently made in transferring the initial data, by altering the number of decimal places.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21713163
In WW2 they did not resolve it but rather avoided using the high frequencies that were unstable. The Creator who made light must have known that this occurs, as it always occurs. Did he design the the high frequency part of light to behave with more complexity (as there is nothing chaotic about it)? The way things are gives the effect of some randomness to that region of the light spectrum (radio waves are light with similar wavelengths to sound).
Gravity is not even
Going from radio waves to sound waves,
The great Tohoku earthquake in Japan two years ago was so big its effects were even felt at the edge of space. Scientists say the Magnitude 9.0 tremor on 11 March 2011 sent a ripple of sound through the atmosphere that was picked up by the Goce satellite...
It has long been recognised that major quakes will generate very low-frequency acoustic waves, or infrasound - a type of deep rumble at frequencies below those discernible to the human ear. But no spacecraft in orbit has had the capability to record them, until now.
This sound wave even bounced around in the atmosphere as sound does in a room and the satellite picked it up again. But though this was an interesting fact..and leaves one wondering if an earthquake might affect the weather (if a butterfly might), the most interesting thing was why the satellite was up there.
Goce's prime purpose is to map very subtle differences in the pull of gravity across the surface of the Earth caused by the uneven distribution of mass within the planet.
These variations produce almost imperceptible changes in the velocity of the satellite as it flies overhead and which it records with those high-precision accelerometers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21730887
Once again we see how uneven something is that we take for granted as stable, gravity. Was it designed to be uneven for a reason? Gravity due to the moon, is a necessary part of tidal changes. Is there a need for a slight variation in gravity for control of something else, like the air and oceans? The map they have made from measurement of gravity to date is rather curious, as Europe and India are so different. As the earth moves then, there may be very small variations in gravity...
(As an aside satellites need fuel, or energy input not only to collect data but to operate at all,
Goce itself is running low on fuel and is nearing the end of its mission. Esa will lower its orbit in June to below 230km to try to obtain even finer detail on Earth's gravity field. The agency is then expected to command the satellite to come out of the sky and fall back to Earth in November.
Yet the moon has no fuel source...)
After the finding of the earthquake sound waves they are going to check that satellite data to look for traces left by the meteor that exploded over Russia, blowing out windows and injuring people. And speaking of random things and orbiting...about the same time..
Random Asteroids
In a story titled “Earth gets a rush of weekend asteroid visitors”,
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., - An asteroid as big as a city block shot relatively close by the Earth on Saturday, the latest in a series of visiting celestial objects including an asteroid the size of a bus that exploded over Russia last month, injuring 1,500.
Discovered just six days ago, the 460-foot long (140-meter) Asteroid 2013 ET passed about 600,000 miles (950,000 km) from Earth at 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT). That's about 2-1/2 times as far as the moon, fairly close on a cosmic yardstick.
"The scary part of this one is that it's something we didn't even know about," Patrick Paolucci, president of Slooh Space Camera, said during a webcast featuring live images of the asteroid from a telescope in the Canary Islands. http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=305878
We don't know just why there are so many bits of matter orbiting the sun in such random orbits and sizes that astronomers don't know of them until they fly past earth or burst in its atmosphere and cause injury. The one over Russia was not seen until it exploded. They orbit eccentrically and that is remarkable in itself. Matter is not distributed evenly, and though there is striking order with the movement of planets there seems seemingly random movement of many bits of matter, also, moving close to earth with some meeting the earth's orbit to spectacular effect. Just how random is the seeming randomness of these asteroids? The other side of the question is the day-to-day control of all moving objects in space. The pattern we see there also is order in movement and in addition remarkable randomness. When we look out into the universe, there also we find new complexity.
Are there co-incidences?
Then, while thinking about this complexity that looks like random effects, There is this article about Jewish thinking on co-incidence,
But I am more interested in understanding just what the saying—the fledgling principle of faith, that “there are no coincidences”—actually means. Is it simply a colloquialism that signifies our faith in God’s Divine Providence, His ability to intervene in earthly affairs to ensure that His is carried out on earth? Divine Providence and God’s intervention in nature are certainly widely accepted tenets of Jewish faith. But to say that there is no such thing as a coincidence sounds to me like a stronger claim; it suggests more than the assertion that God has the power to intervene in the natural order or even that He does so whenever He chooses. It implies necessity.
when we happen to observe two events that somehow share come common characteristic, despite having no direct causal connection, we call the shared characteristic of the two events a coincidence...
So to believe that there are no coincidences, that nothing ever happens by chance, means that whatever happens had to happen exactly as it happened; if two events share a common characteristic, that characteristic is shared by necessity. http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/6078/features/who-says-there-are-no-coincidences/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=who-says-there-are-no-coincidences
After this point the article wandered as they didn't seek what the Bible says. Let us consider what has been observed in the world, and what Solomon observed.
Chance
Solomon observed the way people live in the world, which fundamentally hasn't changed. He noted this,
Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou go. I returned, and saw under the sun, that 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 happens to them all. For man also knows not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them. This wisdom have I seen also under the sun, and it seemed great unto me: (Ecclesiastes 9:10-13)
In other words there is a state of the world where there is some randomness. This is the way the world is designed. Rather than thinking of it as fate determined by the throw of dice, which is an analogy which lacks depth, we might think of it a bit like a random ball thrower for training an athlete. What point would it be if they got to know where the ball was coming from? We can know it was made that way,
Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he has made crooked? In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also has set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him. (Ecclesiastes 7:13-14)
Our prosperity, or our lack of it, may have nothing to do with us personally. But the servant of God will never lack bread or any good thing.
The angel of the LORD encamps round about them that fear him, and delivers them. O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusts in him. O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing. (Psalm 34:7-10)
We are going to have a bit of both if we live long. Adversity might come in many forms. The world about us is designed 'crooked' to have a dangerous 'edge' including storms, quakes, volcanoes, asteroids to the evil and foolish choices other humans make, all things that require an angelic guardian.
Randomness or something as close to 'pure chance' in complexity as it makes no difference to us practically, exists. Chance can happen. In fact it looks like it was set up to be that way at every level from radio waves, to gravity to weather (which affects us directly) to fame and fortune. The point is, what do we do with what comes our way? One thing we can know for sure is that if the Creator knows and if he so chooses, he can move things for us.. if we ask. We can ask for rain. We can ask for good things. We can ask for rescue from evil times. In fact the very seeming complexity and randomness allows the Creator, with a small tweak, to send rain or calm from storm... if we ask and if it fits his will.
We are creatures designed to see patterns and we like order. Once anything exhibits forms of random behaviour, it begins to be very difficult for human capability to understand fully. Once something is a defined by probability it's hard to know so much about it, or to be sure or certain of it. There is a song about how we might react to knowing this,
A Song of degrees of David. LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child. Let Israel hope in the LORD from henceforth and for ever. (Psalm 131:1-3)
This doesn't say we don't seek to observe, it says that once we observe and we are left in wonder knowing how much we don't know, we may hope and trust in the Cause of all things. The effective randomness of things means we can have no confidence in any outcome: there could be many outcomes. We can drift with it to death, or we can hope and trust in the maker of Creation to tweak it for our end good. If we seek the God of the Bible, then he does things and within the randomness things falls out for our end good. For those who love the God of the Bible, or have a part in directing the lives of others to God's plan, the nature of time and chance of the world is used in ways we cannot know. Some co-incidence might be useful, much of it might merely be a curio of humans making choices within patterns. A key factor that we are told in the Bible is that the Creator knows our thought and at the same time he knows what everyone alive thinks. As thinking is the precursor of choice, we can see how we might be moved in directions we didn't chose outright to our good and our ways directed. Taste and see,
A Psalm of David. O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. You know my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understand my thought afar off. Thou compasses my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou know it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it. Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hide not from thee; but the night shine as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. (Psalm 139:1-12)
If you liked this you may be interested in Free will | predestination
Or on Providence Providence in Kings and The spies
