Sunday, March 8, 2020

The Argument Over a Deterministic Universe essays

The Argument Over a Deterministic Universe essays Not only is the argument over a deterministic universe widely debated but it is also one of the most challenging topics to completely prove one way or the other. To follow the pattern of the last few classes, I have slowly become fully chaos literate and I now believe that there is a completely reasonable answer to this baffling confrontation. The universe has been carefully designed and created by an all powerful, all knowing God. Most people today think of chaos as just another word for confusion, and they tend to have a strong dislike for confusion. Thus to them, chaos seems bad. However, there is a subtle difference between chaos and confusion. Confusion suggests a situation where things are jumbled together so that it is difficult to discriminate between the different elements in the mix. Chaos, in its common usage, implies a complete and irremediable lack of organization. Using this definition we can say that confusion can be fixed while chaos is an entity unto itself. James Gleicks book Chaos does a wonderful job of explaining chaos theory. Basically, it is the idea that there are implicit orders hidden throughout disorder. But this is only true in instances like Sierpinskis Triangle if, and only if, you follow rules set up before hand, else the result will truly be chaotic. In Richard Swinburnes book, Is There A God?, he writes, It is extraordinary that there should exist anything at all. Surely the most natural state of affairs is simply nothing: no universe, no God, nothing. But there is something. And so many things. Maybe chance could have thrown up the odd electron. But so many particles! Not everything will have an explanation. But the whole progress of science and all other intellectual enquiry demands that we postulate the smallest number of brute facts. If we can explain the many bits of the universe by one simple being which keeps them in existence, we should do soeven if inevitably we ...