"Peter Fairbrother" wrote in message
...
|I couldn't resist commenting on the title of this thread.
|
| Entropy as the supreme law of nature? It may be the "supreme law" of
| this universe, but I see no evidence that it is the supreme law of
| nature (by "nature" I mean the way all things are, including God as
below).
|
| How did this universe get here? Well, we don't know, but there
| is undoubtedly a lot of negentropy about. Let's say "God" created the
| universe, where "God" can be a thinking entity or a blind process as you
| please.
|
| Two possibilities arise: the negentropy was created by God de novo, or
| it was moved from a store of negentropy God has control of.
|
| If the negentropy was created de novo, then there is some process (God)
| which can create negentropy, and the law of entropy is not the supreme
| law of nature.
|
|
| If the negentropy was moved from a store of negentropy, where did the
| store of negentropy come from? Without descending into infinite
| recursion ("it came from another store, and it's turtles all the way
| down forever"), which I dislike, perhaps the store "just is", or even
| "just was".
|
| Then we ask, is the store of negentropy infinite in extent? If so the
| law of entropy is void for nature (as defined above). If not then the
| law of entropy may be the supreme law of nature - but I don't know of
| any evidence that that is the case.
|
| The answer may be ineffable of course, or even not exist (though they
| may be the same thing as far as we are concerned).
|
|
| -- Peter Fairbrother

If there can be no end and there must be a beginning, where's the middle?
Where/when/how/why did the contradictory postulates "In the beginning"
and "Forever and ever" originate?
The question is ineffable, never mind the answer; the analogy of time
to length is just too strong in our culture.
How long was a piece of a string? All day long. A piece of string has a
begin
and an end, except in spacetime when it spatially exists forever, somewhen.
Time has no begin or end, why should the Universe?