The Anti-Christian conspiracy, page 49

Originally posted by masqua
Science, for the past 150 years, is the anti-Christian conspiracy.

If you consider the quest for knowledge to be a conspiracy against Christianity, then you are admitting that Christianity is not itself involved in such a quest. I agree on that point.

Originally posted by masqua
When Einstein or Hawking made statements which attempt to bridge this gap, I see it as a hopeful sign.

You would be well served to understand what these men are talking about in regard to religion before being too hopefull.

Einstein equated religion with the belief that the universe will continue to behave as it has behaved. Is that what you have in mind? Interestingly, such a belief is axiomatic in that you can not function if you cease to accept consistency of the universe. This is not in the same category as religious faith.

Originally posted by masqua
The 'If' with which you begin, indicates, at least, a willingness to entertain the actuality of such an entity (as I do).

Of course I'm willing to entertain such ideas. One caveat though; you must consistently define 'god' before it becomes legitimate to discuss the actuality thereof.

Originally posted by masqua
However, I fail to follow the logic you provide within the Central Limit Theorem, other than perhaps how the particles, which constitute all matter, will react to induce a seemingly natural order.

That's pretty much it. At the lowest levels, uncertainy rules the day. But as you add up all these uncertainties, the limit approaches certainty according to the central limit theorem. At the everyday level we observe, the number of such uncertainties involved in a single observation are so mindnumbingly huge, that we can not even begin to notice the remaining uncertainty.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, an example might help. On a sunny windfree day, drop a single grain of sand from a two story building. You have no idea where it will land. The odds it will land in a 10 foot circle perpendicular to the hand that dropped it are not bad. If you expand that circle to 20 feet, the odds are even better. By 100 feet, the odds that the grain of sand will land within such a circle are a virtual certainty. Now drop a second grain, then a third. Continue this untill you've dropped 100 trillion grains (this could take a few minutes). You will notice a pile of sand. Without touching the pile, make measurements of it's diameter and height.

Now repeat the experiment and make the same measurements. You will see that the diameter and height of the pile are the same.

But how can that be when you consider the individual grains can fall all over the place!? We can predict what will happen in aggregate, even though the fundamental particles behave randomly. This is the result of combining the central limit theorem with measurements of limited precision.

Causality works the same way. It is not fundamental within our universe as best we can demonstrate (although there are theories that use hidden variables to assume fundamental determinism, it can not be proven thus far, and is an unnecessary assumption).

Rather, causality appears to be the result of the central limit theorem. If Einstein had realized this, he probably would not have made his "god does not play dice with the universe" statement.

But if it's true that at the most fundamental levels, reality is not causal at all, then there is no longer any philosophical reason to even suspect the existence of the universe has a "cause".