Archive for June, 2009

Prayer and Probability

Posted: June 20, 2009 by datechguy in catholic, opinion/news, personal
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People often laugh at the idea of prayer imagine a grown adult asking an invisible power to adjust something for them. Prayer is also attacked as an assault on free will. For example the reporter who attacked pro-life people for praying that president Obama have a change of heart.

I have a theory on prayer, this is not to my knowledge based in specific theology, so someone who knows the church better than me can tell me if I’m committing heresy but consider the following:

How many things in life are actually certain? Very few. Spock’s example of letting go of a hammer and not having to see it to know has fallen not withstanding everything is subject to a certain amount of probability.

The medical field is a great example, you are always dealing with a level of probability on recovery from operations, risks from behaviors and so on. An excellent example is that we all know people who have avoided cancer and non smokers who have gotten it. This is a function of probability. Haven’t we all had close calls of one type or another? Or bad luck that has come hitting that one stone that was loose to trip and break a leg etc?

In my opinion this is where prayer comes in, I believe prayer can alter the probabilities on situation and actions. Since the actions are indeterminate (we don’t know for sure how they will go) it seems simply a function of luck. I believe that the power of prayer is basically channeling the intrinsic link between God and man and the community of saints to nudge probability. The stronger the link of the individual to God or the number of people involved prayer the better the chance of the odds moving.

That doesn’t effect the idea that God is a part of it, for example because a wind comes to help a becalmed ship and the wind is a natural phenomena that doesn’t mean that God allowed it to come.

This is in contarast to direct action by God that would be classified as a miracle. In that case you can have either objectively impossible action (Joshua and the sun) or an action so improbable that it seems to be no odds take place. (Curing of the blind man). Those are solid miracles.

Anyways that’s my theory. What do you think?

Update: Corrected awful spelling and grammar in post as it was rushed due to the party today.

party -30 hours

Posted: June 19, 2009 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Ok after a day of hands and knees on floors I have one more big cleaning to do. Blogging will be light or non-existent until I finish or if I hear of something that really gets my blood boiling.

And I’ve got to move my car before the dunk tank gets here but considering the forecast the entire back yard might be a dunk tank tomorrow.

“If we want to avoid making Iran a very nasty country…”

Posted: June 19, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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These word on Morning Joe today are one of the reasons why I have a hard time taking Zbigniew Brzezinski seriously.

The idea that if we even speak in support of the people in Iran that it will prevent us from talking them out of nukes or make them repressive.

Listen, these guys are going to blame all of this on us anyways. These guys aren’t going to become repressive, they already are. We aren’t going to drive them toward a bomb, they are already going there.

Forgetting the morality of it (which clearly says to speak up) and speaking practically, this is our best chance of accomplishing the downfall of the chief sponsor (as Yoda once said there is one other but that’s a post for another day) of terror in the world. It is a chance to do it without a military strike. These guys are very worried, particularly since we have 2 armies right next door.

We need to support these guys, both with public pronouncements and in small ways like the twitter update delay.

President Obama scoffed when his rhetoric was called “just words”, now he is unwilling to even deploy them.

There goes Apple acting like a business again.

Posted: June 18, 2009 by datechguy in tech
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If this was Microsoft then it would be considered an example of an evil greedy corporation trying to maximize profit:

The Palm Pre has been riding fairly high on a wave of publicity since its launch just a few weeks ago, so much so that Apple seems to have decided that it might be prudent to take a little wind out of the smartphone’s sails by announcing that, although the new device’s claim to be able to seamlessly synch with Apple’s iTunes store may be true at the moment, that may not be the case for very much longer. Sound a little draconian? Sure enough, but business is business

Now I don’t have an issue with Apple behaving like a corporation trying to maximize profit, it’s their company. It just drives me crazy when people act like Microsoft is the source of all evil when they do the same thing. Apple is a business, it has always been a business and anyone who thinks it is some kind of altruistic non profit is deluding themselves.

Via Glenn.

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