Do random events require God?

[Voco_proTatiano]

No. What part of " unpredictable does not mean uncaused" is unclear. Unpredictable only means that it is not known what factors or combinations of factors are involved in the cause.

For example, the path of a hurricane is unpredictable. Why? Because there are too many factors involved that change from what they were at the time one makes prediction until they actually influence the path.

Ok, you do not like ‘uncaused’ but you accept ‘unpredictable’
Do you then accept ‘absolutely unpredictable’?
If so, then these unpredictable events are unpredicable even by G_d, for if not, then they would be predictable, at least theoretically.
This then denies randomness.
You have to accept randomness as part of ‘free-will’.
It is this randomness which allows the universe to exist.
It is thus ‘free-will’ which allows the universe to exist.
It is the decision of G_d not to perceive the future which allows free-will, thus randomness, thus the existance of the universe.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Modern physics has identified events which are truly random in that they are not caused by any physical thing. They obey statistical laws, but those laws are such that they allow just about anything to happen, albeit infrequently.

Am I way off base in thinking that a random event is proof that God exists, because every event requires a cause? Do you think that God is the author of how those random events come out? If not God, then who or what determines them?

ISTM that​

• all events are random - including the typing of the post you are “now” reading
• that this does not affect God in the slightest, though it may well affect our notions & attitudes to God
  I don’t know whether the separation between event & place is ultimately sustainable - AFAICS:
• we are events
• the materials of our bodies are events
• people are places
  so that could say that “teeth happen”, “dental enamel happens”, & that sensations & perceptions happen. C. S. Lewis says somewhere that “God is a verb”. I think this is true.

Randomness implies - or seems to imply - something not random; something which, because it is not random, can be a yardstick by which to perceive randomness. If that is correct, one has to ask what that non-random thing is. But, there’s a problem: of themselves, entities are simply entities - judgements about them are “about” them; they are not them. IOW, to make judgements about things, one has to stand outside or act outside the things one is judging. Things as such, simply as the things they are, are not distinguishable: they are distinguished by something that is not them, that is “other than” them.

ISTM that this is the problem with arguments from design: the distinction is one we make, but it is not one based on what things are. We think of rattlesnakes as bad - but that is because they are bad from our POV; if we are nowhere near them, then they are no more dangerous to us than an orc out of Tolkien would be. Their badness for us is not bad at all: they are equipped to act as they do - it’s just our “bad luck” that their good coincides with our ill.

If things are, & if they need to be separated & judged by a thing outside them - such as an act of the intellect - ISTM that none is more random than another. Randomness is what we perceive, because it is we who are distinguishing between entities, & making judgements of value about both the entities, &, the inter-relations between them. For a human being to insert six inches of steel into another human being is neither good nor bad - murderers do it, as do surgeons. The moral difference is not in the material components of the act, but in the judgement on the way in which those components are related to each other, & to the moral status which may or may not inform them.

For steel to meet & enter human flesh is neither moral nor immoral - its moral character depends on its union with other things; just as stars are united in constellations not because there is any inherent communion between them,
but because we see them in a certain way. So with events, & their components, & (all ?) entities in the universe: with respect to themselves, they are not random. IOW - they are equally random & equally non-random. As for the yardstick - we are among those entities, so the yardstick is God. For only He transcends all created nature.

So ISTM that nothing in all creation is random, since nothing could exist or does exist outside God, Who Alone is truly “purposive” & Really Real. Randomness exists for us, & only because “we see in part”. We do not see all creation in a single glance - unlike God. Just to speculate: that may be why the Saints are not overwhelmed by millions of prayers - to be Whole, is to be infinitely One, & God has made each & all of them whole in Christ, so they “experience” other creatures in a unified manner. Sin disintegrates personality - the Love of God fuses it into a living union of love for Him & others.

Sorry about the length

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Wow, a lot of that went over my head, like the part about relative morality and standing outside the object we’re studying… But I understand your concluding paragraph:

So ISTM that nothing in all creation is random, since nothing could exist or does exist outside God, Who Alone is truly “purposive” & Really Real. Randomness exists for us, & only because “we see in part”. We do not see all creation in a single glance - unlike God. Just to speculate: that may be why the Saints are not overwhelmed by millions of prayers - to be Whole, is to be infinitely One, & God has made each & all of them whole in Christ, so they “experience” other creatures in a unified manner. Sin disintegrates personality - the Love of God fuses it into a living union of love for Him & others.

So if none of these events are random, does God actually choose how each quantum event turns out? And if God is choosing them, why do they seem to follow a statistical rule? Does God just tend to make choices that appear random?

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Wow, a lot of that went over my head, like the part about relative morality and standing outside the object we’re studying… But I understand your concluding paragraph:

So if none of these events are random, does God actually choose how each quantum event turns out? And if God is choosing them, why do they seem to follow a statistical rule? Does God just tend to make choices that appear random?

I think you are chasing yourselves up a gum tree.
Random events are random events, and totally unpredictable, within this universe, and without.
Randomness was the primary design feature of this universe, and without it, this universe cannot exist.
Without randomness, the universe could not come into being.
TThe creation of randomness is then, in essence the creation of this universe.
Without randomness, this universe could not exist.
Without randomness, it would be utterly pointless.
Randomness which is predictable, or controllable is not random.
It is randomness which keeps the condition of Schroedinger’s cat indeterminate.
When the box is opened, the indeterminance disappears, and the cat is either dead, or alive: not neither, and not both.
Thus it is, that if G_d were to look into the future, to see how randomness turned out, then the box would be opened, and the randomness would disappear, and with it, the universe which for its very essence depends upon it.
Were G_d to controll randomness, likewise, the universe would implode.
The creation of randomness is the creation of the universe, destruction of randomness is likewise, the destruction of the universe.
So, yes, random events do require G_d.
They require the let of G_d to remain random.

 

[mschrank]

All this seems to square pretty well with what St. Thomas Aquinas said about matter, it subsists in God but acts according to its own laws.

Of course, the quantum understanding of the nature of the atom does not say “God” did it- it just says that matter has a non-material basis. Democritus was wrong, the smallest parts of things are not atoms, but energy that doesn’t obey any of the same laws that things do in the macro-world.