Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- 1 What is the problem?
- 2 What is chance?
- 3 Order out of chaos
- 4 Chaos out of order
- 5 What is probability?
- 6 What can very small probabilities tell us?
- 7 Can Intelligent Design be established scientifically?
- 8 Statistical laws
- 9 God's action in the quantum world
- 10 The human use of chance
- 11 God's chance
- 12 The challenge to chance
- 13 Choice and chance
- 14 God and risk
- References
- Further reading
- Index
13 - Choice and chance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- 1 What is the problem?
- 2 What is chance?
- 3 Order out of chaos
- 4 Chaos out of order
- 5 What is probability?
- 6 What can very small probabilities tell us?
- 7 Can Intelligent Design be established scientifically?
- 8 Statistical laws
- 9 God's action in the quantum world
- 10 The human use of chance
- 11 God's chance
- 12 The challenge to chance
- 13 Choice and chance
- 14 God and risk
- References
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
The discussion of free will and order at the end of chapter 12 brings us up against the central question of whether human choices which appear random can be really random. We must, therefore, attempt to unravel the intimate relationship of choice and chance. The first question here concerns in what sense human choices can be said to be random. The idea linking the two is that of unpredictability, which is the key characteristic of both free choice and chance. This leads on to a consideration of how God can ‘create’ chance and to the observation that total unpredictability, at every level, is impossible.
A PARADOXICAL SITUATION
Choice and chance stand in a paradoxical relationship to one another. If choices are free then, presumably, they are not entirely predictable; for if they were predictable they would be determined, in part at least, and hence not free. If chance implies lack of predictability, then chance events could hardly be the result of deliberate choice. Yet rational choices, when viewed collectively, do often appear as if they were random. If all happenings, which to us appear to be completely random, were to be attributed to God, then they would have to be his deliberate choices, rationally made, so it is difficult to describe them as totally random.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- God, Chance and PurposeCan God Have It Both Ways?, pp. 211 - 222Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008