Your contribution, The Pointless Universe, nicely sums up your basic attitudes and explains your well known atheistic stance. My comment is that this attitude is very necessary to the way we do science but that we should not confuse methodology with reality.

Shecky R: Uncertainty in physics means something very specific, and incongruous with the real social problem you cite. Unfortunately, physics doesn’t have anything to say about that debate, except as a metaphor, and please be careful to not confuse people about physics in trying to get them to see other truths.

Per: [impolite suggestion removed by moderator -- don't get nasty with fellow commenters, folks]

In your post you wrote

“Life on Earth doesn’t arise in fulfillment of a grand scheme, but rather as a byproduct of the increase of entropy in an environment very far from equilibrium. Our impressive brains don’t develop because life is guided toward greater levels of complexity and intelligence, but from the mechanical interactions between genes, organisms, and their surroundings.”

This is not a honest statement, and I think you know this. This is based on the assumption that we know the laws of nature to such an extent that a grand scheme can be ruled out.

We do not. Saying we do is just another form of religion, this time in science, or scientism, instead of some old text from the desert.

In my opinion its important to have an open mind and not allow oneself to say things like, now we know (and thus don’t have to ponder any more on it).

best, P

http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_4.html#kurzban

It’s a brutal (and much-needed) rebuke of the fantasy that is libertarianism.

These are lessons well learned by everyone, scientist included. Or to quote Sir Author Conan Doyle:

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

“None of which is to say that life is devoid of purpose and meaning. Only that these are things we create, not things we discover out there in the fundamental architecture of the world. The world keeps happening, in accordance with its rules; it’s up to us to make sense of it and give it value.”

Absolutely true but people create ideas too. A human who creates the idea of a Grand design or of a fundamental underlying truth of everything to make sense of the Cosmos or give it a value is in a prefect agreement with Sean: “it’s up to us to make sense of it and give it value.”

Humans are out there playing in a Cosmos which unfolds as a game. There are no ground rules cause the rules, as everything else, are part of the game.