I have previously posted how my paternal grandfather Ginty was infatuated with organs, and some of that has rubbed off on me. Mozart apparently coined the organ the King of Instruments, an accolade many would have a hard time with. The operation of an organ flue pipe is similar to a flute or penny whistle. A stream of air is made to play over a sharp edge or labium which causes chaotic vortices which make a hissing or noise-like sound. This sound contains a continuous spread of frequencies rather like sunlight is composed of a continuous spread of colours. And certainly not seven! The tube-like body of the flute, whistle or organ pipe acts as a resonator and thus amplifies or selects a particular frequency (i.e. tone or musical pitch) and the result is the familiar flute like sound which includes the background sibilant hiss.
The point I am making is that it is possible to draw order (a pure tone) from chaos. The resonator can be thought of as a filter that only lets through what is desired.
I once read a Sci-Fi story in which it was proposed that all human learning and civilisation was no more than a filtering process and the hiss or noise that it filters is everything that is possible or, as they say, All The Things. And therefore anything is possible, given a suitable tweaking of the filter. In the story the proponent, to prove his theory, arranges a conference of world class scientists at which he announces that a foreign power had invented anti-gravity. This discovery clearly proved it was possible and he instructs the scientists find out how it was done and report back in a year's time. During that year several of the scientists independently discover the answer. It was only after each reports at the second conference that the proponent tells them that he had lied - no foreign power had in fact invented anti-gravity.
In this morning's meeting we were reminded of how great our God is, for example in being to orchestrate all the ingredients necessary so that at just the right time... Christ died for the ungodly. (NIV). But it's too easy to make a statement like this in retrospect - it is just such logic that the anthropic principle seeks to debunk.
In my diagram 'O' is the origin of the universe - Big Bang or Creation as you will. Everything coloured to the right is All The Things that ever there were, up to the present time. 'B' is the beating wings of a butterfly and the purple area is all that might have been influenced by this butterfly effect. Conversely everything that might have influenced me 'M' is shown in pink. That's a lot of stuff that had to be there at just the right time for me to be me. The anthropic principle says that, although it happened by chance, it had to have turned out as it did else I wouldn't be me. That I exist proves that this particular chance succession of events, unlikely as it may be, actually happened like it did.
Isn't it amazing that we humans, clever clogs that we are (didn't we invent the smart phone and the internet?), don't know why we are here and what happens after death.
Throughout the Bible there are instances of God's will being sought by casting lots, the principle being The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. (Prov 16:33). At the other end of the spectrum evolutionists ascribe all that we are, know and see to pure chance.
The laws of statistics (aka chance) require there to be a large "population" or number of events before the drawing of statistical conclusions becomes valid. Whilst the probability that a flipped unbiased coin will land "heads" is 50%, after one such coin lands "heads" it becomes a fact of history and the concept that it could have been otherwise becomes meaningless. So, if I lay out a fleece to determine God's will and the unlikely outcome occurs and I conclude that God is telling me to do X, is this really a valid use of the term "unlikely"?
If you determine your fate by casting lots you may believe that in fact God is determining the outcome, or you may put it down to chance. What difference would it make to an outcome whether or not God was there in the background somehow pulling the strings? After all, we are taught again and again (and here is my difficulty) that Christianity is "all by faith" and thus it is by definition impossible to demonstrate. But I see a flaw here, some circular reasoning, and I don't subscribe to this kind of "faith". Personally I reckon faith must be more than blind belief, that faith must have substance as its goal. The well known By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible can of course be read either that creation was a result of faith, or that we believe that God created.
I may take this line on faith, and I do, but I haven't seen much evidence of it working. But that's also provided for in the creed: And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Where does that leave me? Often I want to run away from It All - I hate the hypocrisy, religiosity, rote, expectations, language - none of which I see in the stories we have of Jesus' life. But I cannot deny those stories and What He Did makes me hold on... For the time being anyway.
We humans survive because some of us are prepared to doggedly believe the impossible, against all odds. Indeed I think all true Christians have to do this - it is what true faith does. Maybe this is why that something which we might call "good" wells up inside when for instance the Von Trap family make it over the mountains, or Ellis (in Mud) finds love in the place he least expected it or Hugo finds meaning after the devastating death of his father. These stories are tear-jerkers because they touch that very tender place even the hardest if us have inside. Stories like the one that Lucy couldn't remember about a cup and a sword and a tree and a green hill. Or the truth in the well known hymn:
There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all.
We may not know, we cannot tell,
What pains he had to bear,
But we believe it was for us
He hung and suffered there.
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin.
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven and let us in.
Oh, dearly, dearly has he loved!
And we must love him too,
And trust in his redeeming blood,
And try his works to do.
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