Posted on 10/15/2009 8:15:58 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
What a splendid essay/post, dearest sister in Christ! Thank you oh so very much for writing it, and posting it here!
I find the irrational/transcendental numbers (such as pi) utterly fascinating. They seem not only not to be "random"; rather they seem to suggest to my mind the existence of deep structure underlaying the Universe.
Number theory is an "education," all by itself. Thanks to "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics." Or so it seems to me, FWIW.
We play Yahtzee a lot - it's a favorite of the elderly cousins - and so I'm used to thinking in terms of either five dice or 1 die.
But of course in throwing two dice, the sum of the two would more likely be 7 than 2 and 1 is impossible.
Nevertheless, whether 1 die, 2 dice, 5 dice or whatever. The likelihood of a particular number on a particular die is equally probable. Combinations or sums stem from that baseline. That's combinatorix.
you: Only if you want it to be.
I aver that order cannot rise from chaos in an unguided physical system. Period. There are always guides to the system.
Whether self-organizing complexity, cellular automata or chaos theory - there are always rules or initial conditions.
Number theory is an "education," all by itself. Thanks to "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics." Or so it seems to me, FWIW.
Thank you so very much for your insights, dearest sister in Christ, and for your encouragements!
Nevertheless, whether 1 die, 2 dice, 5 dice or whatever. The likelihood of a particular number on a particular die is equally probable. Combinations or sums stem from that baseline. That's combinatorix.
That's true. But that's also an exercise in mathematics. We're at a point where we seem to understand that too often the word "random" is used in situations where things aren't truly "random" in the mathematical sense, and that genetics and genetic changes that drive evolution is one of them. We also understand that evolution and abiogenesis are two different issues - there is nothing in ToE that addresses abiogenesis or disallows the divine creation of life. It only theorizes that it has the ability to evolve, and that it has happened over a long period of time.
Yet we keep going back to addressing it as if it explicitly requires a premise of spontaneous abiogenesis, and attempting to evaluate it using "radndom" in the absolute terms of mathematics.
We can plead for understanding between the sides on just such issues. And truly that is where this type of discussion belongs, not between us because we are evidently in agreement.
Agreed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.