Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Religion and Probability

By 'God does not play dice with the universe', Einstein seems to mean: 'God exists.  God's activity is governed by rigorous Reason.  Therefore, the laws of Nature are necessary.'  However, since dice-throwing evinces statistical regularity, the proposition is also consistent with: 'God exists.  God's activity is spontaneous and singular.  Therefore, statistical regularity in Nature is the product of artificial construction.'  Now, each interpretation, on its own, can be dismissed as dogmatically arbitrary.  But, in conjunction, they show the implausibility that both God exists, and Nature is inherently probabilistic.  In other words, Dewey's ambition to reconcile Religion and Probabilism seems to underestimate their antagonistic, if not antithetical, relation.

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