The mistake that many make, it seems to me, is believing that, without a conscious director, nature is incapable of producing order. This conflicts with my own view of the astonishing fecundity of the physical.
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imho this is not a quite correct formulation because thinking conceives events as by cause and effect.
Indeed one reason for the religious upsurge in recent years comes from the confluence of Genesis and Physics. In both instances there is an uncaused first cause. In genesis the Uncaused first caused is God. In Physics the uncaused first cause is the whatever it was that caused the big bang.
In both cases the uncaused first cause is outside of nature as we know it.
imho this is not a quite correct formulation because thinking conceives events as by cause and effect.Indeed one reason for the religious upsurge in recent years comes from the confluence of Genesis and Physics. In both instances there is an uncaused first cause. In genesis the Uncaused first caused is God. In Physics the uncaused first cause is the whatever it was that caused the big bang.
In both cases the uncaused first cause is outside of nature as we know it.
I suppose I'm not sure that the notion of "uncaused first cause" makes sense, although there's no denying its long pedigree. On most days, I tend to the view that there has always been something physical, just perhaps not in the form that we currently observe. A few months ago, I posted a link on another thread to the following very speculative article:
Anthony Aguirre & Steve Gratton, "Inflation Without a Beginning: a null boundary proposal" (2003, PDF format)
This article is almost certainly wrong. But it at least begins to approach the issue of how one might understand the possibility of a total—indeed, an infinite—physical universe that has neither a beginning nor an end.
Still, you raise reasonable points, as always, ckilmer.
Best regards...