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 many people feel, including me.

For most people, however, religion is a collection of dogma provided and
accepted to answer troubling ontological questions at levels tailored to the
mental capacity of the recipient.

Okay, they're frightened of the dark beyond and need a story at bedtime
to soothe them. But why do we have to discuss this at Krueger or
Poopie's level merely because they are incapable of discussing it at
ours? I hate it when Americans without resistance permit the
fundamentalists to claim they have *right* to set the agenda. That is
no different from the position in Teheran, and will end up in the same
sort of theocracy. (Note that in another thread Krueger has explicitly
made the same point, so he is either not as thick as we observe from
his audio antics or some sense is seeping into the fundamentalia of
even his kind of "Christian".)

Thus, we have the rather sophisticated
Eastern myths, which have in many ways inspired modern physics, and the
primitive Western myths, which are hostile to science. Prevelant in the
Western tradition is anthropomorphic deification. A fixation on Creation
disguises the conservation laws of physics, and obliterates the very real
question of whether there is actually a point in the timeline when these
laws were violated.

The present discussion is about whether discontinuity was willed or due
to some as yet to be discovered law of physics.

In my opinion, Western religion is a vehicle for moral education and
political control, which is not necessarily bad. However, for a single
individual to embrace both science and Western religion, a mind must be
divided into spheres of thought. Some individuals, particularly those who
work in areas other than physics, do this well.

I don't see any problem for a student of history. Even the Jews,
possessors of the oldest monotheism, implicitly admit that God was not
always there, or at the very least not fully fomed; this is the
implication of the revelation to Moses of The Law, of the ordering.
Thus the ordering religions can easily be viewed as social constructs
without any friction with the laws of physics. No dichotomy of mind, or
contortions with Darwin, are required.

But I get the impression you are a Calvinist, and that the Calvinist
doctrine overlays your melding of scientific philosophy. It is your choice,
but I do not find it an attractive one. It is the first cut of my razor.

I bleed. Again, as a professional intellectual, I am an infinite
sceptic. It would be foolish to believe that religious dogma influences
anything I do or say in real life. Of course, being born a Calvinist
gives one a certain confident latitude for speculative thought. The
communists, even in their dullest years, discovered that the
intelligent doubters were, when push came to shove, the fiercest
defenders of the faith!

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