Nascent Thinker | Contemplations Along The Way

Do I Believe in Divine Protection?

John Lof­tus asks:

Really, do you? Then why is it that God’s divine pro­tec­tion is indis­tin­guish­able from chance? And why do you act as if there is none? (http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/08/christian-do-you-really-believe-in.html)

Yep, I do.

But here’s a good ques­tion: what is chance? One of the def­i­n­i­tions pro­vided by Merriam-Webster is,“the assumed imper­sonal pur­pose­less deter­miner of unac­count­able hap­pen­ings”. Their other def­i­n­i­tion (which I like much bet­ter) is: “some­thing that hap­pens unpre­dictably with­out dis­cernible human inten­tion or observ­able cause”. As an exam­ple; if I throw a piece of dice into the air, we might ask, ‘what are the chances of it land­ing on six’? (1÷6^th) Aside from per­form­ing some basic cal­cu­la­tions on how many sides to a die there are, we really couldn’t say (I might throw a die as many times as needed, and still not role a six). The ‘chance’ involves how the dice is thrown, … (Read more)