Sunday, June 01, 2008

Randomness is often overlooked

I listened to the coolest NPR program the other day. A physicist talked about how humans try to apply rules to everything in their lives. While rules sometimes are useful, very often they can't be used to explain the whole situation. The concept relates to every facet of life. Here are a couple facets that I frequently think about.

Sports At the end of the game, the victorious team is considered the better team. All sorts of analysis are used to back this up. But a lot of times, this is ridiculous. Case 1: The Spurs beating the Suns in the playoffs this year. Because this happened, the Spurs were considered this really good and experienced team that knows how to win championships. But in all reality, the scenario could have been completely different. What if Tim Duncan missed his truly fluky 3-pointer to force overtime in Game 1? My point is that in the game of basketball, little tiny things that are basically lucky happen all the time. Case 2: The Rose Bowl between Texas and USC was a really close game. Vince Young eventually triumphed over Matt Leinart. I can just picture the NFL teams discussing prospects among themselves on draft day. "Vick won the game, he is a better quarterback." Because of this, Young was drafted #3 and Leinart #10. Just like the basketball example, it's possible that other small factors could have played a role in Young's success other than his skills alone.

Religion I have already talked about this here, but we tend to explain things in the church a lot. Elder Jones got a baptism because he is a good missionary. Person A is happy because she reads her scriptures every day. In some cases these rules can hold water, but life is so complex that we must also consider randomness into the equation.

Business It is very difficult to explain things in the business world, yet people try to do it all the time. At the 2008 Macworld conference & Expo, Steve Jobs unveiled the newest and coolest Mac products. Because some people were disappointed in the products, the stock price fell a lot. In the space of a month, it went from $200 to $120 a share. At its lowest moment, people were saying that Apple wasn't keeping up with their innovative ideas and blah blah blah. Was the stock justified in dropping so much so quickly? Let me remind the reader that the stock has since rebounded back to around where it was. In my mind, the cause probably involved an element of randomness.

Politics True or false: John McCain was the best Republican candidate. I would say false, but there was something very important that started happening when his campaign was literally in the dumps - the surge in Iraq started working. The policy, which was so unpopular with the American public because they had seen so little military success among the insurgents, started working. The policy to continue the course gave McCain the much-needed legitimacy to win New Hampshire and he milked that momentum until Super Tuesday. All the analysts explained that McCain won because of his experience and bla blah blah, but honestly I think he just got lucky. He was in the right place at the right time, and that to me is randomness creeping in.

Now what does this all mean? Some people would use randomness to explain that God does not exist. They would claim that religion is used as a crutch to explain things like the meaning of life, why we're here, etc. I would argue the opposite. When something happens that can't be explained, it's possible that it can be explained by Someone. Just because we don't have the big picture, doesn't mean that it isn't out there. When making explanations, keep in mind an important Arabic phrase Masha'Allah( ما شاء الله) which means God has willed it. Because in many cases, that is the only reason that it happened.

Listen to the complete radio program
here on Windows Media Player or here using Real Player

6 comments:

Linda said...

very interesting...i'll have to listen to the program later! you know, so I can argue about this later.

trentathon said...

Linda, I look forward to it, although I have a feeling that I will end up agreeing more than arguing.

kia said...

For some reason this totally reminds me of the Proverbs/Ecclesiastes/Job literary string in the OT. It is one of my favorite things to study.

In short, each seeks to explain the covenant relationship we have with God. Proverbs sets forth the "rule" of the covenant relationship, which it presents as a simple cause and effect (ie, if you keep your covenants, God blesses you, if not, He curses you). Ecclesiastes recognizes that the "rule" doesn't always seem to be true (ie, sometimes we don't get the blessings) but the preacher ultimately reconciles this inconsistency with the conclusion that sometimes we have to wait until the next life to receive blessings from keeping our covenants.

And...the best (in my opinion) is Job which completely blows the "rule" out of the water by sharing a story about really bad things happening to a very righteous man. Job's friends attempt to apply the "rule" to him and so conclude that he must be unrighteous and Job even turns to the Lord in confusion over why his reality doesn't match what it is supposed to be according to the "rule" of the covenant relationship set forth in Proverbs.

The Lord's answer (in Job 38-41) is essentially a beautifully poetic version of your final conclusion:

Randomness happens, and ultimately the Lord is God, the Great I AM, the Source of all knowledge. And just because He doesn't reveal His purposes to us, it doesn't mean that He isn't there, or that He doesn't love us, or that He doesn't have a purpose for the seeming inconsistencies and randomness in our lives.

Anyway...that's kind of a super-long way of essentially saying...true dat!

trentathon said...

Very insightful analysis kia. I want to study the Bible more...

Ben G. said...

I don't think Michael Vick played in that game.

trentathon said...

you are correct G. thanks, i made the change