Somebody please help me understand... 'random'.
I looked it up at Wikipedia...
"The word random is used to express lack of purpose, cause, order, or predictability in non-scientific parlance. A random process is a repeating process whose outcomes follow no describable deterministic pattern, but follow a probability distribution.
The term randomness is often used in statistics to signify well defined statistical properties, such as lack of bias or correlation."
'Random' lacks a cause?
Show me something... ANYTHING.... anything at all in the whole universe that you can absolutely say with confident certainty... "There is NO 'cause' for such & such."
So if I click Wikipedia's 'Random Article' link in the margin... it will somehow generate a page... for which there is no cause or predictability as to the outcome?
Whoa. Dude! Amazing! Presto chango... Page X !!!
How many of you believe that? [I have a little piece of ground in Florida I'd like to interest you in. Email me.]
Might we meet the creator of such a program? Would he agree that there absolutely is no cause nor predictability involved?
A 'random-numbers generator' has a creator. And he knows the cause (and pattern).
There are three possible camps of people who DON'T know the cause or pattern:
- Those who cling to their belief that there absolutely is 'no cause'.
- Those who admit to simply being ignorant of the cause, and don't care to find out.
- And the inquisitive, who see it all as a riddle, and look diligently for the answer.
Oh... and there's one more thing that troubles me...
What does that other thing mean there at the Wikipedia entry...
"Randomness has an important place in science, philosophy and religion." ?
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Author's Notes...
[Much of this sort of thing has driven me to start writing out my own personal 'Science Apologetics' thought-train. That is, document out loud what I believe in this realm, and why. It's been an interesting endeavor -- one I'd advocate. Try writing a cogent apologetic yourself, and let me know what you learn along the way.]
[Subsequent Note: R.C. Sproul has apparently written on this very topic in his little book called "Not A Chance". Click to read the first chapter online. Maybe even watch this video-clip as Sproul interviews Ben Stein. Ht: Tony Kummer, Said At Southern]
3 comments:
Its time the word 'random' gets redefined as I believe it often has a cause.
In my case, I randomly decided to try and earn 1 million in 4 weeks by blogging. I started yesterday. Never any harm in trying and yes people think I'm insane for attempting to do so which makes me more determined.
If it has a pattern it is NOT random. Elementary Statistics. A probability Distribution is not a pattern. If someone makes a random number generator they may know the mechanisms by which the generator works but they cannot know the pattern of the numbers generated or it ,by definition, is NOT random.
capekicks...
My goal is not to generate debate here, but simply to stir minds to reconsider what they may have accepted out of hand as 'fact'.
Simply not KNOWING the cause (and thus not knowing the upcoming outcome) is not at all the same as there not BEING a cause.
Example: If a numbers-generator were designed to start with the number 1 and be multiplied by some fluctuating electrical value produced by power-variations not known to the numbers-generator designer... then the outcome is unknown to the designer, but the outcome had a cause.
A basic foundation of all science (and logic) is cause-effect. All effects have causes. Nothing is truly random. It only has the appearance of randomness for lack of knowledge.
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