Dialogue between two believing scientists on how the universe is run JOHN-- >Funny thought [universal government, which is Plato's universe] coming from a staunch Republican conservative govt minimizer. Perhaps an atheist is just someone who thinks something the size of the whole universe can operate on its own laws without a lot of direct interference?
ROGER- According to my understanding of Leibniz and the Bible, after God had created the universe in six days, he wrote a computer program called the "pre-established harmony" on the seventh to run the universe forever onward and rested. He's still resting. In this program God allowed for free will and knew what we would do but did not cause us to do so. Luther believed that our free will only applied to everyday affairs, but in matters of salvation (good or bad) he chose for us. Note that God is in what Leibniz called the world of necessary logic, which is timeless (eternal), so that knowing before-hand is simply part of God's nature. > JOHN --->Also interesting. The universe does indeed seem to operate on some pretty iron-clad laws, and there are some who suspect that perhaps that's because the only way to have a universe that will support/create life is to have almost exactly the laws (and special constants) that govern our universe. ROGER-- That would be the pre-established harmony. Nonliving entities move by deterministic or "efficient" causation, but life does not operate by such iron-clad laws, it operates by what Aristotle called "final causation", which means it is goal-oriented and purposeful. It therefore has to have innate intelligence. JOHN- Personally, although I think the idea of a personal God is important, I do have concerns as to why an omnipotent, universal overseer who has already so cleverly tuned the universe to such perfection would need to continually need to tweak things locally. Seems very much like we need God far more than HE needs us. ROGER - The "tweaking" is indeed local, but it has already been programmed into the pre-established harmony. JOHN - >So, in order to consider a personal God, it seems to me that the real reason for locality is more about how "HE" wants me to become more like HIS ideal, and is offering opportunities. ROGER- No, we have free will, at least to some extent. JOHN-- Given that HE is out of time and space, that is a pretty neat trick, and I find it highly unlikely that any of HIS creations are at all cognizant of how or why or what HIS purposes are. But, I think the Universe itself is understandable, and probably exists as one of the simplest sets of laws that can work. ROGER-- Out of time and space means in eternity. The world isn't all law-governed (deterministic), for both man and nature have some degree of unpredictability, but this has been pre-programmed into Leibniz's pre-established harmony. JOHN- There is really already a lot of evidence to support that idea. And some evidence to support the idea that our whole universe is a tiny part of "everything." Already, it is pretty clear that most people really still have no concept of the scale of our little visible part of "our" universe, either in time or space. Most never even look up to see that there are actually more stars (and star systems) than there are grains of sand on every beach in our entire world - and that our entire world is less than a dust mote, even within our solar system, much less in the real immensity of space and time. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
