Yeah and the reasons are typically, because this particle hit those particles which then hit those particles, which then split up in to these particles which hit those particles...ad nauseum. - Alex Scoble

Of course, quantum mechanics adds a lot of weirdness to that: this happened because a particle got hit by a particle that was part of a pair of particles that randomly appeared in the vacuum, or that happened because this particle was entangled to another particle light years away, so a lot of times, the actual reason is unrecoverable from observation alone, but, if anything, this is more evidence that the universe is probably not sane. - Victor Ganata

yes. - Andrizzle Gizzle

Victor, I agree that the person who has been given free reign in this universe right now is not sane. At the same time, there is more than enough foundational construct to the universe that is sane to hang on for one more day....and He very much hopes that you do. ;) - Melanie Reed

Melanie, can you tell me what happened with Rome and the abortions? - Andrizzle Gizzle

Dragon, without coopting Victor's thread for more than a quick reply (perhaps leading to a future blog post from me) that Roman empire/civilization no longer exists. That is what happened. They rotted from the inside out because of the dissonance between their values and the reality of their actions. There are many books from scholars written on the subject and the nature of that subject has also been dealt with in literature. Ovid deals them quite a blow. - Melanie Reed

I don't claim to know anything about any God and/or Gods. Could a weakly god-like, nearly omniscient/omnipotent, non-corporeal intelligence exist in the universe? As Murray Gell-Mann (and TH White) put it, anything not forbidden is compulsory. - Victor Ganata

Or, to put it another way, the Flying Spaghetti Monster could very well be out there, somewhere. - Victor Ganata

What if its all completely random and we either find or manufacture reasons to give ourselves a sense of order and comfort? Just throwing it out there. - J. Abdul-Qahhar

J. Abdul, If it was all random, we wouldn't have been able, by calculation, to put a man in a rocket, send him up and back to the earth safely. Waiting is an occupation paid by trust. - Melanie Reed

It's true, the universe could just be a stochastic fluctuation in the level of entropy, nonetheless giving us the illusion that the universe has persisted for billions of years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... For all we know, we could all be plugged into the Matrix. - Victor Ganata

All hail his Noodly Appendages! - Sumotuwe