On Tue, 19 Sep 2000 21:31:51 EDT, Denise LePage <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Does who we are come from our brains or from some metaphysical origin?
>  No one can say for sure.

Just as you can experience that a filet mignon or an ice cream cone
tastes good,
but you cannot prove to someone else that they taste good if they
refuse to put
it in their mouth, similarly, one can experience that - for sure -
"who we are"
- awareness - does not come from our brains, but rather is the
fundamental
essence of everything.

>My father is a brilliant physicist and devoutly religious.  He believes that
>the world, in all its intricacies, can't have been pure accident.

Fred Hoyle, a famous astronomer, and a mathematician friend of his,
once decided
that they should calculate the likelihood of the occurrence, by random
chance,
of all the conditions necessary for the first life to be created,
during what we
now consider to be the age of the universe.

The number they came up with, was equivalent to the likelihood of a
tornado
going through a large junk yard and creating a perfectly operating
Boeing 747.

After this calculation, the mathematician friend became, as you say,
"devoutly
religious".


--
Cheers,

Ken
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