EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE
Posted on June 25, 2010 with 0 comments
Why does the Universe seem to make sense? Why do the planets appear to follow discreet laws of motion and gravity? Why does energy seem to be conserved? Why are chemical reactions predictable? There is nothing that suggests this need be so. Given tremendous periods of time and random events such as proposed by scientists, why would we suppose that some kind of order would come from a massive explosion, the Big Bang?
Would it not seem just as likely that such a chaotic event would lead to purely random subsequent events, that disorder, entropy would overwhelm the Universe and that any pockets of order would soon be dissolved in entropic doom?
Evolution is a series of random events, each selected by the environment to succeed or fail. But they in turn change the environment that selects the next random changes. Even the biologists that believe in the process admit that it is a chaotic affair that has required huge spans of time and random chance. They also admit that the trend is sloppy and that many living things do not survive and the trend can just as easily be towards failure as towards higher and more successful forms.
I will tell you why. Because we decided that the world should make sense. We accepted that hypothesis purely on faith. And then we conducted the experiments that would demonstrate that the world makes sense. And when we found what we thought was evidence that the world was a reasonable place, we congratulated ourselves for discovering it. It is the basic assumption of every scientists and reasonable person that the world ought to make sense.
It is quite impossible to prove the assumption that the world is rational. It is a tenet of faith, every much as belief in Mohammed or the Immaculate Conception. Scientists take for granted that the laws and rules we discover on this earth are Universal and in effect on every part of the Universe, and have always been since the beginning of time.
Many scientists have themselves expressed their amazement that the Universe is an orderly place and seems to be described in terms of mathematics. Richard Feynman has observed “Why nature is mathematical is a mystery. . . . . The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle.” It cannot be proven the scientific laws have always been the same, or that they are the same everywhere. In fact, occasional discoveries are made, such as recent events in quantum physics, that perhaps the laws do change, or that we do not understand them.
So science itself, and reason based upon it, is built upon a faith based assumption that the Universe is orderly. And scientists never seem to ask where the order came from.
Would it not seem just as likely that such a chaotic event would lead to purely random subsequent events, that disorder, entropy would overwhelm the Universe and that any pockets of order would soon be dissolved in entropic doom?
Evolution is a series of random events, each selected by the environment to succeed or fail. But they in turn change the environment that selects the next random changes. Even the biologists that believe in the process admit that it is a chaotic affair that has required huge spans of time and random chance. They also admit that the trend is sloppy and that many living things do not survive and the trend can just as easily be towards failure as towards higher and more successful forms.
I will tell you why. Because we decided that the world should make sense. We accepted that hypothesis purely on faith. And then we conducted the experiments that would demonstrate that the world makes sense. And when we found what we thought was evidence that the world was a reasonable place, we congratulated ourselves for discovering it. It is the basic assumption of every scientists and reasonable person that the world ought to make sense.
It is quite impossible to prove the assumption that the world is rational. It is a tenet of faith, every much as belief in Mohammed or the Immaculate Conception. Scientists take for granted that the laws and rules we discover on this earth are Universal and in effect on every part of the Universe, and have always been since the beginning of time.
Many scientists have themselves expressed their amazement that the Universe is an orderly place and seems to be described in terms of mathematics. Richard Feynman has observed “Why nature is mathematical is a mystery. . . . . The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle.” It cannot be proven the scientific laws have always been the same, or that they are the same everywhere. In fact, occasional discoveries are made, such as recent events in quantum physics, that perhaps the laws do change, or that we do not understand them.
So science itself, and reason based upon it, is built upon a faith based assumption that the Universe is orderly. And scientists never seem to ask where the order came from.