I think this entire line of reasoning is now outdated and simplistic. We will never fully explain the world by appealing to something outside it that must simply be accepted on faith, be it an unexplained God or an unexplained set of mathematical laws. Can we do better? Yes, but only by relinquishing the traditional idea of physical laws as fixed, perfect relationships. I propose instead that the laws are more like computer software: programs being run on the great cosmic computer. They emerge with the universe at the big bang and are inherent in it, not stamped on it from without like a maker's mark.

Can someone explain to me why positing ideas (like "laws emerge within the universe") that don't resort beyond the universe are any more believable than ideas that resort beyond it, when in each case the posited idea is frankly speculative and untestable?

Post Edited (jefscott) : 12/2/2007 10:04:04 PM (GMT-6)