Friday, September 3, 2010

Random Thoughts About Randomness

If there were no God, could things happen randomly?

If there were no God, could things happen chaotically?

Oh by the way, randomness and chaos are mathematically different. In a random sequence, each event is independent of all other events. In a chaotic sequence, each event is highly dependent on all previous events in an incomprensibly complex pattern. Not that this difference is much noticed by the common folk, you understand.

If there were no God, would logic be valid? Or to put it another way, if there is a God (or several Gods) would his omnipotence be restricted from doing anything self-contradictory or otherwise logically impossible?

If there were no God, would the principles of arithmetic still be valid even if there was nothing to do arithmetic on?

If there were no God, could mathematical functions, such as conics, sinusoids, exponentials, etc. be conceptually meaningful even if there was nothing for them to describe?

If all the above questions can be answered "yes" and I suspect they probably can, but I can't prove it, then doesn't that suggest that everything that all known laws of physics are based on can exist without God?

If all that's true, then in the absence of God, what could stop the universe from existing?

When radio was first invented, radio hams began noticing that the laws of physics describing how their radios work bear a striking mathematical similarity to the laws of physics applicable to other topics in physics.

Then a Nobel Prize winning physicist named Richard Feynman came along and wrote a series of lectures on physics in which he explained how all the laws of physics in all the topics in physics are based on these same few mathematical principles.

And just yesterday I read something about how Stephen Hawking has said essentially the same thing in a new book, based on even more evidence than Richard Feynman had available to him. I haven't yet read Stephen Hawking's new book, but I'm looking forward to doing so.

1 comment:

Captain Poolie said...

I used to have such fun with questions like these in my college theology classes. Nobody has an answer, but everybody tries. Quite entertaining.