Lionel wrote:
Andre Jute a écrit :
Since you alehouse philopsophers want to waste your time on the
unknowable, here is one for you, entirely on-topic, of course (1).

A well-known, much-proven concept in physics is Entropy. You will find
it in the laws of thermodynamics which control the formation and
dissolution of the universe. Entropy is disorder, randomness easily
mistaken for amorphous chaos.

Now, all religions try to order human affairs towards a goodly end.
Okay, except Mohammedanism, which orders its affairs to the conquest of
the world, but still to the greater glory of Allah, so that their
terrorism is only despicable because outside the councils of
fundamental Islamism, philosophically and however we fail in practice,
we hold the presumption of peace as a near-ultimate good, in fact a
near-universal axiom. And, okay, and except for Satanists, who worship
chaos. But for the majority of religious people in the world, and in
the founding of all the great religions (with the two exceptions
noted), order out of chaos was the prime imperative. The same applies
to the secular religionists such as democrats, marxists, etc: their
prime imperative is not to do no harm (Star Trek isn't reality,
Virginia) but to impose order on some desirable sub-universe.

Now posit a Lord of Creation who puffed out a universe, or many
universes. I am not presumptuous enough to judge him, but the Laws of
Thermodynamics put his followers in lose-lose-lose situation.

If he created them to create order in the sub-universe he created for
them, increasing entropy will eventually destroy the garden of Eden he
created for them ("this best of possible worlds" -- Voltaire, Candide).
They lose.

If he did not create them to be his servants in ordering the
sub-universe he gave them, they are rats in a laboratory forgotten by
its maker, treading the mill to entropy because that is all they know.
They lose.

If he is indifferent to them and created them as an unnoticed accident,
a byproduct of play or thought or work (we Calvinists believe God keeps
office hours from 9-5 four days a week), the more fool they to believe
he ever noticed them. They lose.

So what, Dédé ? This only lead us to the limit of your "imagery".

Are you pretending that *our* universe finishs at the horizon of your
imagination ?



This is all intelligent design, and the accidents thereof, for even God
cannot be perfect. The question is, why should an Intelligent Designer
choose Man, in an obscure corner of an obscure galaxie in an obscure
corner of the Universe, to be his central work or art -- and to be his
PR spindoctor! It dinna scan, friends. It's pure hubris.

Andre Jute
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(1) Of course my topic is on-topic, Virginia. Entropy is a measure of
the random errors (noise) in the transmission of signals. See? Audio!


Actually, Lionella, in my "imagery" as you have it, outlined all the
possibilities (related to current religions) for an Intelligent
Director to have created man: servant of order by design, servant of
order by miscomprehension on the part of man, indifferent by-product of
another activity shorthanded as accident. Any of the many other
possibilities you may think of (I can think of hundreds) will not be
related to the current major religions which are the context of this
discussion clearly delineated in my introduction.

And no, I am not suggesting that the event horizon and my "imagination"
coincide. My imagination is boundless.

I am suggesting that the event horizon and *your* imagination coincide
if you cannot see that the religion of order out of chaos is a valuable
survival tool for man, regardless of how it is explained to primitives
like Krueger by voices in the stone. You should read "A History of the
Jews" by Paul Johnson, a practising, faithful Catholic with an
implicit, unshakable belief in God. He makes my point again and again
and again, most pointedly where he ascribes the survival of the Jews to
principled social organization.

In that context, the rather unoriginal statement that the middle
classes are the foundation of a decent society is, wait for it, a
religious text. That is why the devil's spawn hate the middle classes;
Lenin thought the bourgeoisie the major obstacle to his vision of world
chaos from which he would grasp control by murder.

HTH.

Andre Jute