GRGR (2) "great bright hand"
Paul Mackin
pmackin at clark.net
Tue Jun 8 14:47:55 CDT 1999
I can really dig MalignD's affinities between statistics and predestination and
of course it IS very Pynchonian when the things begin to topple and reverse
themselves. Wonder if anyone has ever seriously tried to explain the Divine
Grace thing using stochastic methods. By the way, there may be more that
just statistics going on in the age old religious question but also some of
that hysteron proteron as well. God knows what the poor schmuck is gonna freely
do before he (the poor schmuck) decides to freely do it.
P.
MalignD at aol.com wrote:
> In watching two strands--one about Poisson distributions, etc., one about
> religion, I wonder whether it has struck anyone else to see
> affinities--between predestination and statistical thinking. Some random
> thoughts:
>
> It is axiomatic to statistical thought that "the coin has no memory"; also
> axiomatic that, if the coin is flipped a thousand times, there will be
> something close to five hundred heads flipped and five hundred tails. What
> is true (or free), then, for the single flip is not true or free in the
> aggregate: laws of probability tend not to allow that ten thousand coins
> will come up heads.
>
> A similar tension exists in Calvinism between predestination and free
> will--between the free will allowed the individual and the predestined
> aggregate actions of mankind. Each man may or may not be elect or damned.
> Provided no certainty either way, he experiences the freedom to act--to
> choose a moral life, to work, hopefully to prosper--or not. Nevertheless a
> fixed (God-known) number of souls always come up tails.
>
> Calvinism grows out of the reformation's concept of grace and its rejection
> of the Catholic Church's (reducing it somewhat overly here) cause-and-effect
> theology of good works leading to salvation. So similar, perhaps, the
> conflict between statistical Mexico and Pointsman, the consummate cause and
> effect guy.
>
> On the other hand--
>
> In reformation theology, grace is absolute, all or nothing, paradoxical; one
> is separated from God or not; it is a qualitative state, not quantitative.
> This as opposed to the Catholic church's quantitative, relativistic
> notion--good works or their absence leaves one more or less close to grace.
> Seen this way, Mexico and Pointsman would seem to shift seats somewhat and my
> little analogy begin to collapse ...
>
> So, on another tangent: If free will is discounted (it has been asked about
> Calvinism), isn't God responsible for worldly evil? Calvin, answering,
> called the world "the theater of the divine glory," in which God's glory
> takes precedence over his redeeming and forgiving love (an apt God for a
> world war). The Calvinist God allows men to do evil in order that his glory
> may be revealed. Predestination reveals God's grace at work, in that all are
> not accepted blindly. What is given to some must be denied others. A
> zero-sum game, then.
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