There is much writing about the dedicated balance between chance and necessity, allowing intelligent life-form to emerge. I’ve written a blog about this myself. With too much regularity, we will all be like robots without free will. On the other hand, too much randomness will not allow stale life forms to emerge. The interplay between chance and necessity is a process that transforms potential into actuality.
Although physical laws are very rigid, our future is still open. God gave us free will, but He also established initial conditions and boundaries to ensure that any fluctuations in the system would not cause it to go out of bounds.
Recently, I have read the book “God’s Providence and Randomness in Nature: Scientific and Theological Perspectives”. One of the articles talks about Chance, and Necessity might not be enough. Divine purpose needs to be part of the mix.
Amidst the pandemic, I delved into home gardening. The inherent biology of plants lays the foundation for growth (necessity), with the weather introducing an element of randomness (chance). Despite my best intentions, I struggle as a gardener, leading to the demise of most plants I care for. Consequently, the intricate interplay between chance and necessity doesn’t consistently yield favorable outcomes.
A proficient gardener understands that planting a seed in fertile soil isn’t enough to ensure growth. Regular watering, occasional fertilizing, and strategic pruning are essential steps. Similarly, the divine is not a mere planter who sows the seeds of life and lets them thrive autonomously. Nor is this higher power a magician conjuring existence with a wave of a wand.
Rather, our concept of the divine involves constant interaction with the universe. Just as a gardener tends to their garden, this deity perpetually nurtures the tree of life and provides the requisite balance to the soil.
In a previous blog, I introduced a feedback control model that portrays God’s interaction with the physical realm. The interplay between chance and necessity alone resembles an open-loop control system, which can lead to instability. By employing a feedback control system, God imparts His purpose without resorting to drastic interventions. This feedback mechanism has the capacity to realign the system with God’s intentions gently.
This model extends beyond the interaction between God and beings possessing free will. It also finds relevance in elucidating how God influences the course of human evolution. Our conception of God surpasses that of a mere intelligent designer who initiates life and then allows chance and necessity to dictate outcomes. As previously discussed in other blog entries, the hypothesis stands that God can utilize quantum fluctuations in tandem with chaos to influence the world. In this manner, divine intervention becomes superfluous.
Life presents us with an array of unexpected twists alongside moments of anguish and hardship. Amidst this seemingly purposeless journey, there exists an assurance: God maintains sovereignty, steering the entire world and the lives of each individual toward a meaningful purpose while giving us free will to choose. It becomes our pursuit to unveil this divine intent and harmonize our existence accordingly.
Embedded within our feedback control model is the notion that synchronization between our own desires and God’s intentions expedites our journey toward our objectives. When our will aligns with the divine, progress is accelerated, paralleling the principle that attuned feedback yields swifter outcomes, and we can achieve our full potential.