ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (08/23/85)
>...There exists a God, a hideous evil damager >monster, who uses His entropic force to shatter everything from individual >human lives to the universe at large.... >...A perfect example: in the last article I mentioned the maxim about >how much easier it is to destroy than to create. This by itself is proof of >the existence of an unbalanced force, called entropy by scientists, which >is really the hateful will of the Damager-God.... >...There is no evidence for a directly >opposite benevolent creative force to counteract entropy's destructiveness. >People talk about ``nature taking its course'', but certainly it is unable >to do this. God, the willful force of entropy and destruction and evil, >permeates nature and corrupts it beyond recognition. [Paul Zimmerman] Such a revelation! Never before have I understood why the ancient Indian myth of the cosmic dance of creation was performed by Shiva, clearly one and the same destroyer you refer to -- entropy. But what you fail to realize is that entropy is its own OPPOSITE benevolent creative force -- new scientific theories of `dissipative structures' actually imply that dat ole debbil -- the 2nd law of thermodynamics -- not only taketh away (as entropy/death), but also giveth (evolution/birth), exactly like Yahweh, Shiva, and the Taoist force of chaos `Hun Tun': The behavior predicted by linear thermodynamics is stable, predictable, and tends towards a minimum level activity (ENTROPY). The depressing conclusions of traditional thermodynamic theories were a natural result of the computing power required to venture into the hairy field of nonequilibrium processes. The analysis of far-from-equilibrium behavior of nonlinear thermodynamic systems (which underlie the biochemical processes on this planet) has recently (1977 Nicolis & Prigogine) become tractable, by the study of `bifurcations' -- points where continued energy influx forces ever upward spiraling symmetry breaking choices that lead to global self organization of a higher level of complexity (EVOLUTION). Thus, Boltzmann's dream of discovering Darwinian chemical principles is being realized today -- I refer you to Ilya Prigogine's `Order out of Chaos'. In other words, without {entropy/dissipative structures}, there would be no YOU in the first place to rail out against your creator/destroyer! BTW, Paul, your flamage is magnificent....SMASH THE UNIVERSE!!! > Rich Rosen is right when he calls you all wishful thinkers. The >evidence is clear. It's staring you right in the face. But you choose to >think of the world as being run by a ``good'' God rather than a ``bad'' >one, because it makes you more comfortable and less frightened. Yet Rosen >and his fellow atheists and materialists don't see the writing on the wall >either. When faced with willful destructiveness eating away at the world, >the scientific types throw up their hands and say ``that's entropy'' or >something like that. Surely willful evil cannot be disposed of by simply >saying it's a natural force of some sort. Such evil can only be attributed >to an evil heinous Damager-God. A belief in the finality and irreversability of evil implies a refusal to accept the precariousness and the risk that attend all finite good in this life. -- Thomas Merton khronos ouketi estai -michael