We had a discussion a while back about how God runs the universe. MJ said that it was theorized that God set it up from the beginning to be the way it is. I like that idea. However, I also believe that God still controls actions. Here's why.
When a mushroom spore sac explodes, it releases millions of spores. Each capable of producing a mushroom capable of producing millions of spores. Why isn't the forest completely overrun with mushrooms?
It is a well-known fact that mushrooms are a staple in the diet of many a woodland animal. God can control where each individual spore lands. If God needs more mushrooms over here, because of yearly migration, God directs them there. God can also just command some of the spores not to grow. Or God could overrun the world with mushrooms, and we would blame it on Global Warming. God can control the growth rate of a nearly infinite and inexhaustible food supply. God can care for his animals by ensuring that they always have mushrooms where ever they are needed.
John, have you ever seen a master pool player set up a complex shot, and then on one stroke sink every ball on the table?
The theory that God set the universe up and gave it a push does not necessarily mean either that He micromanages events thereafter or that He has no control over them. It could mean that He foresaw every time and place where mushroom spores would be needed, and arranged that first push so that the spores would be in the right places at the right times throughout all of history.
I am not saying that God does not micromanage events on a minute-by-minute basis, nor that He actually does control anything in detail. I am only saying that the fact that things fall into place does not mean that God intervened at this moment to make them do so--He might have hit the first ball with a view to hitting every other ball into their ideal positions through all this time.
--M. J. Young
John, have you ever seen a master pool player set up a complex shot, and then on one stroke sink every ball on the table?
Yes I have. Pretty impressive. The thing is, why would it have to be either or? Why couldn't God have set up a pool shot for the big things, and micromanage the small things? Who is to say what is big and what is small for an infinite mind? It was just an idea that I got last night when I was thinking about the Daywalker Zombies.
I would never say that God could not manage things the way He chooses to do so. My point is only that it's a losing argument to claim to know how He chose to do it.
There's an old Get Smart episode in which Max has to pose as a pool shark to get inside a KAOS establishment. To make this possible, his R&D department creates a cue ball which 99 can guide by pointing her lipstick at it. The hidden computer they're seeking is inside the pool table, and one has to make this complex combination shot to do it. We saw the KAOS expert make the shot earlier in the show; now Max takes the shot from the same setup, and 99 guides the cue ball such that it does exactly what it did in the original shot. No one watching it can tell the difference--and that's with only one ball being controlled.
That's certainly unrealistic; but it illustrates my point. Maybe God set everything up at the beginning such that every flap of every butterfly's wing would create exactly the right hurricanes in the precisely necessary times and places to accomplish His intentions, or maybe at this moment he's divinely manipulating butterflies in the Amazon to create the next one for us. How could we ever know, let alone prove, which is the case? Whether God made the perfect shot at the beginning of time that will sink every ball on the table exactly where he called it, or is using the electronic lipstick to move the ball where he wants it to accomplish the same thing as time progresses, He does it in such a way that we could never know.
So you might be right, but no one can prove it either way.
Oh, yes--and for Multiverser purposes, of course you're right, and of course you're wrong, depending on which universe this is.
--M. J. Young
"Why couldn't God have set up a pool shot for the big things, and micromanage the small things?"
And why shouldn't it be the other way around? For all of the adjectives used to describe God, the one I never hear is "Efficient". Science tells us that the Universe, as we understand it currently (which is more than we used to, and less than we will in the future) is governed by Chaos Theory, where infinitesimal changes in starting conditions lead to dramatic ending differences. But with perfect knowledge and control of those initial conditions, why shouldn't it be possible for Him to "game the system" right from the outset. After that, it no longer matters how "improbable" we think any given step along the way might be. Of course, I believe in "Creation *through* Evolution", so...