Season 3 Podcast 231 "What is Real, Pt 2, Laplace's Demon"
“What is Real, Pt 2, Laplace’s Demon”
The purpose of Podcast 231 is to distinguish between science and religion. Because of scope, in this podcast I shall discuss the attributes of science. In Podcast 232 Pt 3, I shall contrast it with the attributes of Christianity. I have decided to do it via a parable, a rather strange parable. If you haven’t listened to Podcast 230, “What is Real, Pt 1, Introduction,” let me encourage you to do so before listening to Podcast 231. Podcast 230 provides the context for Pt 2.
In Podcast 230 I mentioned that the following allegory had a rather peculiar origin; therefore, before presenting the allegory, I shall tell you the events that inspired it.
On a beautiful afternoon, Linda and I were riding our side by side on the multitudinous dirt roads of the heavy foliaged mountains of East Tennessee where we spend a lot of our time lost. Cautiously we stick to roads, not trails, though some of the rocky, rain-gutted roads are not passable with a regular vehicle.
We carry neither map nor GPS. We simply follow where the roads take us, exploring any new detour. We especially like sparsely travelled, narrow dirt roads winding up steep mountains. Even when lost, we don’t turn around. We keep driving until we see something we recognize. It is not too daring. All the roads eventually lead back to the same place.
One time though we hit the jackpot. I don’t remember the name of the mountain, and I don’t remember the name of the road, but it was perfect for an ATV. It was in frequently traveled, one-way up and one-way back. It was a very narrow dirt road, rocky, rugged, and steep that led up a very tall mountain. The mountain was cone-shaped and on its little round top was a fenced in, unmanned satellite station monitoring airline traffic. It was on the north side of Interstate 40 and had a magnificent, unfettered view of the Smoky Mountains. Ever the writer, as I stood on top of the mountain with the monitoring station behind me, a strange thought came to my mind. I created an imaginary station of my own in which I had every technological advancement at my disposal. In my imagination I was a genius mathematician, a number cruncher, a guru, if you will, sitting on top of a mountain with instant access to all the information in the world. I asked myself the question, what would happen if I could predict the future, say an accident on highway 40 during a snowstorm. Back to the details of that later.
Perhaps a year after that experience, Linda and I were again riding our side-by-side, only this time with some friends. They were more experienced riders and far more daring and faster, much faster, but I led the entourage because I knew how to cross Interstate 40 on the back roads to go to Cataloochee, North Carolina. On the way we drove by the cone-shaped mountain. Confused, I took a wrong turn and we dead ended at someone’s house on top of another mountain. We retraced our path. I saw my mistake and we drove over another very steep, very winding dirt road that led up the mountain on the Tennessee side and down the mountain to the North Carolina side. We went under Interstate 40 and came out at Waterville. We crossed the Pigeon Forge River on a one-way wooden bridge, and continued on a dirt road on another steep mountain that led to Cataloochee where my own ancestors settled in the early days of America.
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