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echo: skeptic
to: STEVE KEMP
from: Fredric Rice
date: 2002-12-19 20:06:38
subject: Everyone is a skeptic...

MR> On the other hand what if history is already written
mr> and the positive or negative aspects of scientific
mr> activity are merely the different paths upon which
mr> humanity arrives at its predestined future?

sk> IF it's already written? What the fuck is that? An argument?
sk> Since when is there predestiny? And since when is that even
sk> a prospect?

It's the Clockwork Universe argument if no gods or goddesses
are invoked.  Given a known initial condition and the physics
which govern the behavior of all attributes and aspects of
everything in the initial condition, everything that takes
place is already pre-ordained by those very self same physics.

My sitting here and pounding on another hapless keyboard would
have been written into the very fabric of the Universe at the
inception of the Big Bang and nothing could have derailed me
from having done so because everything is pre-ordained not to.

True, currently chaos reigns supreme because Quantum sciences
discover that chaos is the base reality however who's to say
that a closer look beyond the hoped-for GUT finds that we are
in fact in a Clockwork Universe?  Not that it'll do us any good
since the clockwork is far too complex to predict, of course.

    http://www.skeptictank.org/  http://www.skepticfiles.org
           frice{at}skeptictank.org   <

~*~  These experiments weren't  conducted by Joe Blow these people know
     what they are talking about. you  don't! - Keith Jones

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