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Re: GG: Background and foreground



From: Kate Clunies-Ross <goldbergs@TALK21.COM>
Reply-To: Kate Clunies-Ross <goldbergs@TALK21.COM>
To: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU
Subject: Re: GG: Background and foreground
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2002 09:18:30 +0100

Heavens, Bob, I never thought I'd see the Yellowstone Caldera and the
landslide -prone volcano in the Canaries mentioned on F-minor! whatever
next? Global annihilation by errant incoming asteroid, perhaps?

But I agree that God (if he/she is there) seems perhaps more  interested in
chaos than in harmony and order ....or perhaps it is just that the human
mind  tends to perceive as chaos
something as bewilderingly complex as the universe around us, even if
"order" is there among the complexity.


At the risk of going incredibly far off-topic for this list, there is one point I would like to add from a scientific perspective. I think you're right about the human mind seeing order as chaos. The thing is, all those things you've mentioned -- landslides, asteroids, volcanoes, etc, etc... all conform to the INCREDIBLY orderly and complex laws of physics. Don't necessarily equate "order" with good things and "chaos" with bad things. Bad things can be just as orderly as good things. The chemical and physical equations involved in calculating the eruption of a volcano show an incredible amount of complexity. If God exists, then, he/she/it is definitely interested in order. (If God wasn't interested in order, science would be non-existent, as things would happen without any cause or method of explanation. One of the great unsolved questions in science is, "Why should our universe conform to such complex and orderly laws? Why don't things just happen without any cause? Why can events be described mathematically?") The laws of physics and mathematics that control our universe definitely show us that God likes order. It just might not happen to be the kind of "order" we like, that's all...

Cris Watson

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