In European Thoughts of Middle Ages and even in the modern Western Thoughts of most of us, Randomness is equated with un-Godly characteristics!
In other words, Random systems are far away from any God, and concept of God cannot contain Random systems. After all God is perfect and thus anything God makes has to be perfect, orderly systems are perfect, yet Random systems are imperfect.
Western antique concept of Perfectness originates from perfectly shaped and polished structures in opulent buildings of the affluent, or posh attire perfectly garmented snugged to the shape of the body, or Consonant notes pleasing to the ears; symmetric patterns indicate Perfectness; asymmetric patterns render imperfections.
“Scheiner, a Jesuit mathematician at the university of Ingolstadt (near Augsburg), wished to preserve the perfection of the Sun and the heavens and therefore argued that sunspots were satellites of the Sun.”
Source: http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/sunspots.html
To those European the concept of perfection for the Sun was that of a perfect disk or globe and therefore sunspots were troubling, if God made the Sun, then it has to be perfect since God himself is prefect, then how could there be random smudges on the surface of the Sun?
Today most of us with Western education and exposure to Western media and ideals suffer from the same antiquated concepts of Perfectness.
In all these there is a single central theme: man walks in his village, man fathoms what is perfect what is not, man imposes the concept on God and God’s creation. “God has to be like this (my idea) or God is not perfect and therefore there is no God”.
This lack of perfection has been projected into stochastic or randomized systems i.e. a deterministic system is perfect, a non-deterministic system (subject to randomness) is imperfect.
God CAN only make deterministic systems or there is no God whatsoever, non-deterministic systems are far from God.
These European thoughts have plagued even the most brilliant of their scientists:
In 1943, Einstein, in conversation with biographer William Hermann, concerning what is real and exists versus what is but mental constructs, stated the following: [2]
“Nature doesn’t know chance, it operates on mathematical principles. As I have said so many times, God doesn’t play dice with the world.”
Source: http://www.eoht.info/page/God+does+not+play+dice
Note the rendition: God is also white European male look alike, just a little bit bigger. Therefore it is the White European Male who determines the concepts of perfection and what is Godly and what is not and even if there is a God.
Those who have studied the Kolmogorov Complexity Theory, could rebuttal:
“ONLY God can throw a dice!”
To build a machine to throw a random dice or software algorithm to generate random number sequences is indeed an impossibly hard task, and indeed beyond our known engineering capabilities and theoretical understandings.
Random Mutations or Natural Selection are traditionally key proofs for lack of God in nature, since obviously the observed underlying processes of nature are Randomized.
However one understands that it is impossible for electro-mechanical machines designed by a human mind, without tapping into the surrounding entropy, to algorithmically generate Random systems, this Rahi (Author) extends the concept that:
“ONLY God can role a dice”
i.e. create Randoms systems.
Therefore Randomness or being non-deterministic is actually Divine, it is the artifact of a Super Being’s doings, not of a human endeavour! Therefore Random Mutations or Natural Selections are something of God’s doing, indicating the performance of a super-task by a super-being .
In 1994, Stephen Hawking, during a debate with Roger Penrose, at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, University of Cambridge, about whether or not Einstein was wrong in his God does not throw dice statement, gave his opinion that:
“Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can’t be seen.”
Source: http://www.eoht.info/page/God+does+not+play+dice
These are the weaknesses of thoughts in our Western education:
- Random systems are imperfect
- Deterministic systems are perfect and God only makes Deterministic systems or infer there is no God!
- Random systems are subject to probabilities and statistics, thus afar from God
- Random systems are chaotic, God and Chaos cannot mix
Remark 1: Random systems do not require a priori probabilities per Kolmogorov Complexity. The latter is an achievement in understanding Random systems free of any probability measures.
Remark 2: Chaotic system could rise from deterministic system, not all Chaotic systems are Random.
Randomness the foundation of Water-based life:
The Random jitter of water molecules in the cells of all living beings is the key source of molecular motility and energy. There is no water-based life unless there is Randomness of water molecules. The Perfectness of life has foundation on Randomness.
Randomness the foundation of Neuronal-mind:
Neuronal Noise is the very foundation of our molecular minds. The operations of our minds are not possible unless upon the Random foundation of Neuronal signals.
Coda
Randomness is the endeavour of Super Being performing Super-Tasks.
© 2016-2002, Dara O Shayda
Salaam Sayyidi
This is illuminating.
Thank you.
Sayyadi Dara, May HU give you more effulgence.
This article is such good news for my perplexity. I had thought for sometime now that scientific laws are a ‘veil’ between us and HU. It is in the sense that the scientific laws seem to provide explanations of the daily phenomena of our lives so that we do not need HU for any of these explanations or understanding, or to help us in the processes of living.
And then there is a supposed remark by Hawkins (someone mentioned it to me) that what God is He who is squeezed between man’s knowledge and his ignorance, meaning as man’s knowledge increases the space for God to exist shrinks; so scientific discovery can cause God to run into extinction.
And I am thinking that these things are ‘veils’ between us and the truth. My thinking is based on two things. First, that science is fundamentally “incomplete” so that it cannot lead to total knowledge. There are fundamental obstacles for science to provide us with answers that are either complete or precise. These limitations are built into science itself, for example through the finiteness of the speed of light, through the existence of uncertainty principle, and through the probabilistic nature of events per Quantum Physics. And now you point out the fact that universe is fundamentally ‘chaotic’ and only God can know the certainty that lies behind the chaotic happenings.
And the second thing is the impossibility of either consistency or completeness of such a system of science. This point is proved in results like Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem (which I came to know about through you).
For me, association with you has brought me transparency. Though I am thinking that this struggle of mine for transparency is itself a ‘veil’ that is keeping me away from God. Can you help me with this problem, meaning this situation where my efforts for God are standing in my way towards God?
Respectfully yours,
Abdur Rahim
Salaam Whisper and Salaam to Shakir and to the others here.
I am now officially moving to the next phase of my research and writings, 10+ years of traditional studies in works of Sufis and now time has come for original creative works of my own.
This article was probably the first one.
I believe, and wrote to a learned person for clarification that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is equivalent to lack of existence of a FINITE electro-mechanical computational device that could generate arbitrary length random sequences of tokens.
If so the two fit well for our argument:
Random Sequences requires fullest knowledge, which Incompleteness Theorem forbids! Or you might say: Randomness is a super-task executed by a Super Being.
Paraphrase again:
Our incomplete knowledge(s) of all things in cosmos, is equivalent to appearance of Randomness within our observations in cosmos.
Most beautiful: Neuronal Random noise a wonderful foundation for our molecular minds! our entire thoughts are built upon the Randomness, due to incompleteness of knowledge(s).
Salaam Sayyadi Dara,
Indeed this seems to me the blessed thing, to move onto the next phase of research.
The gut feeling I have is this.
1. Universe is definitive at every stage in all its dynamically varying states. It is neither probabilistic, nor random, nor chaotic in its existence.
2. The projection of this universe through the lens of human mind is probabilistic, random, chaotic.
3. This fact that the scientific projection is probabilistic is built into the nature of what man is. In other words when WA ALLAMA ADAMA ASMAI KULLEH, this defect or limitation was designed into this teaching. With respect to learning, man was placed by design into a bubble beyond which man could not know. The complementary universe was correspondingly designed to allow this bubble to exist in perpetuality.
This way of thinking is rather traditional, because it accepts the Quranic description. This has been my dilemma. Over time I have acquired a respect for Quran and the person of Mohammad. In my thinking and research I do not seem to be able to break cleanly away from these two. And correspondingly, my research is biased, not original, and proportionately not independent.
John Tromp reminded me of this theorem:
Chaitin’s Incompleteness Theorem says that there is some constant c,
such that a “formal theory of complexity t” cannot prove statements of the form
K(x)>t+c.
“formal theory of complexity t” means if you build an electro-mechanical machine, and say some finite length software running on it, if measured the size of the design for this machine (in bytes or crudely how many pages of blueprints) and say that size is t.
If so it can only verify the veracity of a statement that has length less than t (not an accurate statement but for now ok).
Say a molecule of water in a cave pool trapped for 1000s of years or random mutation in some organic molecule, is far beyond the reach of any formal theories (cognizable by human made machine or human mind).
To say a theory of physics or theory of evolution explains these tiny simplest systems of nature is invalid statement.
They can, in an INCOMPLETE fashion infer veracity of “some statements” for “some of these systems”.
Thanx to the Randomness a complete understanding of such systems is God-like, in the English language of the Western thought.
In language of Sufis we say “Hu knows”.
Origin of Randomness is Divine, not of this world, beyond the reach of human mind and machines.
I am truly ‘perplexed’ … for I have always thought that probability, i.e. “randomness”, was a clever invention of man that allowed a ‘pseudo-mathematical’ representation of nature that could not be rendered in a purely mathematical fashion, i.e. in a precise way – the way man can explain nature.
Here, I mean that I have always thought that God has nothing to do with man’s view and interpretation of His Creation, i.e. with the tools and methods man develops to explore his world.
However, He continuously gives man signs and hints about Himself and His Creation. He also gives man a Heart to see with, and know and understand.
Many – totally ignorant of the ‘complexity’ of mathematics, probabilités, deterministic or stochastic processes, had a glimpse of ‘things’ as they really are.
In a sense, it is man who creates the complexity needed to develop a proof of what he seeks to understand.
Complexity
Salaam hmissoumi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5t-oA796to
You see the jitter of the pollen on water, that is Randomness not invented by man.
http://thebiologyprimer.com/diffusion-and-osmosis/
This is another example of how Randomness is the foundation of Diffusion and transport of materials in and out of the cells.
As a matter of fact the Randomness could be thought of the foundation upon which the inside/outside of a membraned cell could be defined.
These are NOT Mathematical Structures as Einstein noted, these are non-Mathematical concepts which have Mathematica representation of some sort specially for their measurements, but they are more PROCESS like and more algorithmic.
These ideas are quite new in our thoughts in the West and therefore retail science readers have not caught up with them, thus some confusion arises from the kinda stuff I wrote and the college education and retail science exposure of readers and thinkers.
I can only grasp randomness – science/nature – as a “veil” thru which God may manifest Himself … and that veil is the extent of my knowledge of Him.
Honestly, I would not dare considering randomness – as perfect as it may manifest itself to us – an Attribute of God.
I did not say any place that Randomness is an attribute of God, as for instance Mercy is.
Salaam Sayyidi
You are a versatile genius. I wish I were like you.
Had I not come across this work, randomness would’ve been a Paradox for me.
Just out of curiosity, has anybody other than you done such work on Randomness?
Salaam Shakir
Most people who have such thought, albeit non-spiritual, are computer scientists not of philosophy nor religion backgrounds.
Computer scientists have fragmented views on these matters, however the most valid views.
Thank you for kind words
Dara