PILLAR SIX: CHANCE IS THE OPERATING PRINCIPLE OF THE UNIVERSE

Though chance can’t cause anything.

1. Chance, luck, fate, coincidence, accident are only words that are interpretations of

why a single extraordinary, “out of the blue” event occurs. It may be a trivial occurrence, or it may be a catastrophic or even life-changing one. These words imply there is no purpose to life, that life may really be chaos at heart, just a jumbling together of random events. But that’s only the atheistic view.

2. Life, however, is made up of “natural” laws which can be pretty much predicted.

There are always statistical probabilities—or odds—for things to happen. Chance events always have an underlying cause—in fact, usually many causes. If you roll a die, the odds seem to be that you will roll a six one out of every six times. But we know that doesn’t work out. The height and the force with which you throw the dice changes every time you do it, so the results are unpredictable. You, and not “chance,” have determined the result. You have made a choice—naturally or automatically. Chance had little to do with it. There are also the physical laws affecting the dice.

3. Suppose you are driving and your car is hit at an intersection by another car that

runs the red light. Is it “chance” or “coincidence” that you happened to be at that

intersection at that moment? But look at all the factors involved: how fast you were driving, whether you were wearing a seat belt, whether you had either stopped for or driven through a yellow light a couple of intersections back, the traffic, the time you left your house instead of a minute earlier or later, maybe even the time you got up in the morning. Likewise, there would be an equal amount of similar factors for the other driver, plus whether he was drunk or using a cell phone, of fell asleep. Those are all unwitting choices we make, not knowing that they would lead to an accident. At the same time we can also prevent the accident by making deliberate choices, such as obeying the speed limit, slowing for intersections, looking both ways, or not using our phone.

4. Current mainstream scientific thinking says that a singularity of dark matter

(whatever that is) caused an explosion, a Big Bang, and instead of doing what

explosions usually do—destroy—it created the universe with its stars, planets,

galaxies, etc, which, if the universe were to go back together again, would be enormously—astronomically—larger than it was at the outset. This presumably happened “by chance.” Then at some point, by chance, somewhere on the favored planet earth a teeny, tiny single cellular life form with DNA and RNA eventually reproduced and evolved into the incredible variety of life we have now of plants, insects, birds, reptiles, animals, and human beings, who have amazingly complex bodies and brains. Now which is more absurd? That that scenario all happened by chance or that a supreme intelligence created the universe and all life? Actually the first scenario would make more sense if there were many original single cells, but that would put an even greater burden on chance. By the way, there are many alternative theories to the Big Bang, especially by atheistic scientists who are uncomfortable with the idea that there would need to be a Big Banger, God, to set it off. That is, it implies a Cause, not Chance.

5. Around the turn of the twentieth century, there was a style of literary fiction called

naturalism. It’s greatest writers were Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Hardy, Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, and Emile Zola. They declared that human beings’ behavior was totally determined by three factors: heredity, environment, and chance. We are subject to our genes, our situation in life—upbringing, social status, education, etc.—and unpredictable occurrences that could change the direction of our lives. Certainly there is a lot of truth in this view, but not the whole truth because we have free will and often can overcome the effects of these forces. We can choose to live moral and healthful lives, work hard, invest money, go to college, take medicine, wear seat belts, diet, exercise., and so on. Even someone whose genes predispose him to alcoholism can give up drinking. An African American born in poverty may become a rich basketball player or even President; a notorious gang leader can become a noted evangelist. People can change.

6. The other side of the coin was expressed in the mid-twentieth century by a

philosophy called existentialism, most notably by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. This view says we have total free will. We can choose what we do every moment of our lives. In so doing we create who we are. There is also a lot of truth to this. For example, at breakfast you not only have the possibility of a variety of food choices, but, if you wanted, you could jump up on the table and sing, you could read the newspaper or watch the news, or you could stab your spouse. Actually the options are virtually limitless. However, we are held in check by heredity, environment, or chance. We don’t dance on the table because we would look foolish, we don’t stab our spouse because we’d go to jail, and we don’t eat scrapple and grits because there are none in the house.

7. But many people today have bought into the existentialist view. They tell their

children they can be anything they want in life. In the West the highest value is freedom. People want to be free to determine their own lives. Atheists who were once “Christians” say they now feel “free.” Free to do what? To smoke, drink, do drugs, have promiscuous sex? All those activities have the power to lead one into deeper bondage. The Bible by contrast says that believing in Christ frees one from the bondage of sin. Or maybe atheists feel free from any constraints put on them by a religious organization, even though those restraints are meant for their own good. But atheists are not free from all the other restraints of society and their own bodies and chance. The Christian, at least, when bad things happen (by chance?), can have the comfort that God is ultimately in control.

8. People may somewhat superstitiously say that everything has a purpose. Even

Richard Dawkins says evolution, though it has no design, seems to have a purpose

(though he also says it’s purposeless). This almost sounds like God micromanages

our lives. Christians do, indeed, often see God’s purpose, God’s will, in what happens in their lives. But if that is so, does God’s control work like chance does? No, we still have free will to act or react. We might say that what chance does is give us opportunities. When an accident or tragedy occurs, we can despair, give up, complain, do drugs or alcohol, or do something radically stupid. Or we can try to fix it or grin and bear it or even try to make the best of it or pray, or, as the Bible suggests, rejoice or be thankful. Sometimes short term bad luck can result in long term good luck. I have had seemingly bad happenings turn into much better happenings than would have occurred if the bad hadn’t happened first. Sometimes when I’ve prayed and turned the situation over to God, the immediate result, despite being the opposite of what I wanted, would be in the long run something better than I could have imagined. But whatever the results, the trusting in God through it all gives a Christian a peace, a comfort, a hope that he or she otherwise would not have had.

9. The Calvinist brand of Christianity says that God predestines those who are to be

“saved.” But this eliminates chance only in the theological area of salvation However, it raises the question of how much, if there is a Biblical God, He intervenes in people’s lives. Some theologians say God “calls” the believer; some say believers “earn” their salvation; some say believers “choose” to accept the grace God offers. And do we have “guardian angels” which sometimes look out

for us and guide or protect us? These are questions that don’t have only one . answer. The ultimate answer is that a Christian should respond to any situation in a

way that is in keeping with Christian belief. The point here is

that chance does become an opportunity.

10. This is, I think, how life under God is. We’re on our own, chance happens, we

adjust, life goes on. We can curse God and die or praise God and live. Or we can ignore God and be subject to the wind and weather and our feelings and despair and grit our teeth and maybe come up with a solution, or we can accept it as God’s will and go forward with hope and belief. Yes, there’s chance and free will, but there is also design and God’s grace. It may be that in an atheist’s life everything is a matter of chance, but in the believer’s life there seems to be divine coincidences also. Books that discuss more deeply the idea of chance are Not by Chance by a Jewish scientist, Lee Spetner, and Not a Chance and The Invisible Hand (which discusses the work of Providence in the Bible and in modern life) by Christian theologian R. C. Sproul.

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. The fact of the matter is that atheists don’t believe totally in chance, or else they

wouldn’t be trying to get people to choose their way of life, nor could they put so much emphasis on science, which shows evidence of design.