[MD] are theism and mysticism mutually exclusive notions?

[pholden at davtv.com]

> [Platt previously]
> Well, I don't know what you mean by primordial chaos or pure randomenss
> other than what I said. In other words, I think it is our lack of
> knowledge that prevents us from knowing how a pair of dice will come up,
> or what horse will win a race. If we were omniscient, chaos and chance
> wouldn't exist. So if science ascribes power to the unknown as they seem
> to in explaining evolution, I see little difference between that and
> belief in a creative God.
>
> [Case]
> Primordial would be the kind of ooze that the ancient Greeks, Jews and
> Mayans thought the Gods came out of. Pure randomness would be, just
> anything could happen without constraint. This can't exist because there
> are always constraints. Even tossing a coin involves constraints like
> temperature and wind velocity...
>
> With regards to prediction of the future it just doesn't work that way.
> It is so much that we don't know what will happen as we can't know we
> have to wait and see.

Our ability to know is indeed limited. That's the point I was trying to
make.

> The future is not as fixed as people once thought.
> On the weirder end of the spectrum Wheeler and associates think there
> are infinite worlds splitting off from each other at each quantum
> decision point so that all the possibilities actually take place. Thus
> even a fifth dimensional creature looking backward and forward through
> time would see different things happening every time she rewound.

Infinite worlds splitting off is more like theological speculation than
physics -- or so says Burton Richter in an article in "Physics Today."

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-10/p8.html

> Evolution is not the kind of creative process you are imagining here. It
> more like what is left over when everything else dies or is discarded.

Well, something in life wants to survive and replicate. I call that
purposive and creative.

> [Platt]
> If you don't buy Chapter 11 I don't see how you buy the MOQ. Perhaps you
> grab the parts of it that happen to agree with your previous
> metaphysical assumptions, not that there is anything wrong with that.
> It's human nature to look for confirmation of what we already believe.
>
> [Case]
> What I detest about it is that in over simplifying and
> anthropomorphizing, Pirsig leaves himself open to the kind of mistakes
> you are making with guards to purpose. I do a bit of work on computers
> and I have no problem talking about how they think and act and break
> down on purpose. But it is just a way of speaking. This is the problem
> we run into when we take our metaphors literally.

A weak analogy to compare a life form to a  machine. The life form
wants to live; your computer could care less.  
 
> [Platt]
> I wasn't an actuary so didn't work with mortality tables. But it's my
> understanding that the tables they used were a combination of standard
> tables reflecting the American population as well as records of their
> own customers and those of other companies. A hazardous occupation like
> a jockey would be charged a higher premium than normal. Or, if you had a
> history of a killer disease, your rate would go up. Can't tell you much
> more except that insurance companies, using the law of large numbers and
> investing premium dollars they collected into stocks, bonds and
> mortgages usually made money.
>
> [Case]
> This is exactly how evolution works though. It is all about the law of
> large numbers. A organism is essential a collect of traits like hair,
> feathers, eyes, skin... A species is a collection of similar organisms.
> The similarity is determined by the probability that any individual has
> the right mix of traits. Within the species you can build actuarial
> tables with the distribution of these traits. So for example all most
> swans are white. Over time the distribution of traits in a population
> shifts. If it's cold out the hairiest are more like to breed and the
> population gets hairier.

I always thought evolution worked because living things wanted to
survive, not because of some mathematical distribution, though that may
play a secondary role.

> You could see the same process looking at insurance tables over time as
> the insurance company tries to lower risk certain traits get selected
> out. Like jockies and people with chronic illness.
>
> But I am usually wrong.

Me, too.

Platt 

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