Chance Has No Power

There is no such thing as chance. In this brief clip, R.C. Sproul demonstrates why it is illogical to appeal to chance as the reason why events happen or as the source of the world’s existence.

Transcript:

So, the premise that I’m going to give you, and this is what the philosophers and scientists of all ages have all agreed, that the word “chance” becomes a word to define our ignorance. We throw the word “chance” in the equation when we don’t know what’s going on out there. When we can’t do our homework analytically and come up to a cogent understanding, we begin to attribute things to chance, to the power of chance. You say, “But wait a minute, R.C. We play games of chance where the cards are shuffled randomly and the cards are dealt, and there are statistical odds that you can determine on the basis of the dealing of every hand of cards that you play.” That’s true, and I like to play cards, and I’ve studied mathematical possibilities in bridge and gin rummy and all the rest. And when I play, I play according to the odds, and it really helps me to know what the mathematical possibilities are in so-called games of chance. But it’s a game of chance because I don’t know how those cards were sorted. But the reason why I am dealt the hand that I am dealt in a game of bridge or in a game of gin rummy is because how they were arranged when they were shuffled the first time, how they were arranged when they were shuffled the second time, how they were dealt, you know, and in what sequence they were dealt, and so on. Chance was not some invisible demon that jumps into the middle of the card dealer and causes certain cards to be set in a certain sequence. Because there is no such invisible power called “chance,” because again, chance has no being. And since it has no being, it has no power.