"Andre Jute" wrote in message
ups.com...

Robert Morein wrote:
"Andre Jute" wrote in message
oups.com...

Robert Morein wrote:
"Andre Jute" wrote in message
ups.com...
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.

Andre, with all due respect, your post is loaded with religious faith,

Of course it is.

which
does not coexist well, or interact well, with scientific thought.

Rubbish. Religion sits perfectly well with science to men of the
slightest sophistication. All that is required is a supple mind to
reject the literalism of fundamentalists (1).

Perhaps it depends upon what we call religion. My religion is simply the
wonder that I live in an inescapable world of infinite illusion, and that
I
am one of the few creatures with the capacity and interest to realize
that.

I'll go along with that any day of the week. It is a particularly fine
statement of the way

[snip]
Just for the record, because I think you and I are having a
misunderstanding, I deny categorically that I have ever tried to "meld"
scientific philosophy with anything antithetical to it. That, if you
meant it, would be the unkindest cut of all to a rationalist.

Andre Jute

All fine and good, but the initial post still leaves me with a question. Was
"What God wants..." merely a rhetorical flourish? I am allergic to this,
for many people, the literal belief that the Universe is guided in a
teleological fashion. Historically, it has fueled much religious insanity;
"God wants you to be fruitful and multiply..." followed by calculations of
the "carrying capacity" of the planet, which, acccording to one religious
authority to be some 500 or 600 billion "souls."

So, "What God wants..." was bound to set me off.

The center of my speculation is that all logically consistent universes
exist. This allows me to vacate the concepts of "existent" and
"nonexistent". Razor redux.