From: Ray Peck (rpeck@PureAtria.COM)
Date: Wed Nov 13 1996 - 13:33:29 MST
>Then came up the notion, which I've heard discussed
>before, that our universe may have been created by a physicist/hacker from
>some other universe. So, the question was, and still is, was our universe
>created by a conscious being? Is there some awesomely powerful being creating
>endless varieties of universes, tweaking with the parameters and seeing what
>happens?
When I was a kid, my mom made me go to catholic church, catechism, and
the whole bit. I was of course reading science furiously, and she
wasn't much of a catholic. This is just what I finally decided that
god was, if there was one: some guy running the universe as a
simulation. Sort of like Game of Life on a grand scale, he sets up
the equations, sets the constants and the initial conditions and
watches it go for a while before tweaking and starting again.
I came to this conclusion when I was maybe 10.
It was only later (a couple years ago) when I was reading "Atheism,
Ayn Rand and Other Heresies" that I found that in the old days, this
was called Deism, and that many of the US "founding fathers" held to
this sort of view.
Pretty interesting.
I go back and forth between this view and "hard atheism".
BTW, I find David's posts probably the most interesting and thought
provoking currently on the list. That may be because I've been on the
list for over 5 years, so I've seen most everything else rehashed 12
times already! ;-) But I don't think so. Kudos.
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