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What Do You Believe Even If You Can't Prove It?
An anonymous reader writes "That's what online magazine The Edge - the World Question Center asked over 120 scientists, futurists, and other interesting minds. Their answers are sometimes short and to the point (Bruce Sterling: 'We're in for climatic mayhem'), often long and involved; they cover everything from the existence of God to the nature of black holes. What do you believe, even though you can't prove it?"
I believe in a kind and loving God. Keeping that belief is hard usualy because of the acts of man.
Let the flames begin.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The question should be simply "What do you believe?" Because if something can be proven, the issue of belief does not arise. And only idiots believe what what is proven as false.
I believe that if you are nice to others, even in small ways, that the world gets better.
I believe that if you are mean to others, even in small ways, that the world gets worse.
I believe that I want the world to be a better place, and I live each day according to that.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
Same here, I'm a firm believer that God and science can coexist, seeing as we don't know exactly how God works, and I'm not closed-minded on either end of the argument.
Yes, slashdot, it's possible to believe in God and science without being a damned fundie that makes my faith look bad.
i use linux and windows oh god how can i have an opinion
That the world's religions will have their armageddon - and it will be entirely of their own making and have nothing to do with the divine.
STOP. You're being farmed.
Please note: I.D. is billed as an "alternative" to evolution in which god exists.
The solidified and well-accepted portions of evolutionary models make no requirement, however, that you cease to believe in any gods.
Intelligent Design, therefore, while perhaps a good example of things to believe in without proof, has nothing to do with science and god. It has much more, however, to do with politically empowered people who don't understand science, and the people they seem to think are somehow disproving god.
Your ending statment, therefore, appears to have little to do with the rest of your post when it is put into the context of the post you replied to.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
I refuse to believe that our world contains the only life in the entire Universe. There have to be other planets with life on them out there some place.
As for the question of them visiting us, I am not so sure on that one.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Do intelligent design believers argue that God designed humans, animals etc directly or is it that God designed the physical laws of the universe such that everything could naturally evolve on its own?
Yes.
Both are valid schools of thought under the heading of "intelligent design"
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
You bet! Someday people will realize that the Bible is a book of THEOLOGY and not a book of SCIENCE.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
There aren't many people who say that the climate is not changing.
The difference is whether they say that man-made pollution is the primary cause or whether this is part of a natural cycle.
If it is part of a natural cycle, then there is no "proof" that changing our pollution will do anything.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I don't really see how that stacks up. First of all, I'm not looking for God to explain anything, and while some people might be, I think that many see it in quite the opposite way. There are things that we don't understand yet, and also things that are impossible for us to understand as we are now. And that's OK.
If you're talking about philosophy, guides to life, etc., this can certainly be separated from theology. Look no further than Jefferson's Bible.
I also don't understand how you take a complex system as an argument against intelligent design; I would tend to see it the other way. Or, as someone else said it: "It's unbelievable that something so mind-bogglingly useful evolved all by itself." In other words, it would take something incredible to set such systems in motion.
Do I believe with absolute certainty in a quantifiable vision of the Almighty? No, and I think that's how it was meant to be. I don't think that any one religion is supposed to get it completely right, and I think we're supposed to be responsible for living our own lives (but I don't fully agree with the Deists either). Based on the things I've encountered in my life, adamant total disbelief seems...unbelievable.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Of course, if it were genetics, according to Darwin, it would be a trait that should have been wiped out long ago since homosexuals cant reproduce.
Nonsense. Homosexuals, physically, are fully capable of reproducing - it's just that the sexual acts which are appealing to them don't result in reproduction. Regardless, I know no lack of people with gay biological parents who reproduced because they felt social pressure to enter into heterosexual relationships.
Additionally, recessive genes can carry for many generations, and if homosexuality is genetic, it's obviously controlled by a sequence of genes that are recessive.
Personally, I'm gay and I don't think homosexuality is genetic. I suspect that there are biological causes (e.g. hormone levels in the mother, etc.), but I'm capable of admitting that we don't know at this stage and it is possible that homosexuality is a choice. This is irrelevant to me, though, because even if it *is* a choice, it's my choice to make, and it's no one's business what the outcome of that decision is.
You are mixing two uses of the catch-phrase "Global Warming".
One use of the phrase is to claim that the world is getting warmer. Well, it is. There is plenty of proof.
However, there is another more liberal use of the phrase to claim that humans are at fault for the world getting warmer. That is lacking in proof. Sure, fossil fuels warm the earth, but by how much? How is that compared to cow emissions? How much is just the normal cycle of the Earth from hot to cold to hot again?
In the face of this lack of proof, some claim that if humans aren't part of the solution, they are part of the problem. This is a classic non-sequitur argument for fools that can easily be twisted into: if you aren't part of the problem, you are part of the solution.
I know you said to just look at the pretty charts in the National Geographic article, but I accidentally read it too.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
How would you know what a universe that wasn't designed looked like? Have you ever experienced a universe that was designed? "Design" is one of those things that we as humans recognize in relation to things not designed; we compare, say, a chair with a fallen tree. Both can be appropriated for the task of sitting, but one is designed and other other not (presuming, of course, we're talking about a knocked over). How would you recognize if the universe werre not designed?
BTW, if you're really interested in the question and not merely espousing it as a foundation for other less tenable beliefs, I recommend that you read Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not a Christian (And Other Essays)" and George Smith's ""Atheism: The Case Against God."
Wil
wiki
In fact, the opposite has been proven. Gödel's incompleteness theorem states that a powerful enough system cannot prove its own consistency. This implies that you can make any number of proofs that are valid within your system, but you can never know if the system itself is valid. Or, as I like to say, the only thing you know for sure is that you never know anything for sure.
Of course, the incompleteness theorem itself is derived by a system of which the validity is unknown...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
> On to my beleif without proof: I beleive that the big bang never happened... that time and space have
> always been and will always be continuous. It hit me that the universe can't expand inside of
> nothing... if nothing existed when the universe was infinitesmally small, not even nothingness
> itself, how can the universe expand into that? it doesn't exist.
What a pity that you don't actually seem to know what Big Bang cosmology states, and that, through ignorance, you simply can toss away the large amount of evidence for it (red-shift of distant galaxies, nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background radiation).
>
Most of my beleif that the universe didn't have a big bang comes from a deep seated feeling that I
> have that cannot be explained. I imagine most of the people they asked had the same reasoning for
> their beleifs.
The Big Bang theory isn't about beliefs as you seem to use the word. It's about the best explanation that fits the evidence.
> I also feel pretty good each time scientists revise the 'age of the universe' each time
> they're able to look deeper into space.
That's a pretty big distortion. It's stayed relatively fixed at about 13.5 billion years for quite some time now. Perhaps you could provide some citations here. I suspect that you get virtually all of your information on the Big Bang from science journalists, who, in general, are utter incompetents.
Here's a tip. Learn what Big Bang cosmology is. Learn what physicists mean when they talk about the Universe. In other words, read some books by scientists, and not crap from science journalists or daft strawmen by pseudo-scientific kooks who are themselves largely ignorant of the theories in question.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I find belief in a kind and loving God difficult because of events like the tsumani and the resulting suffering around some of the poorest areas in Asia and Africa. The acts of man, especially if one also believes in free will, doesn't afffect faith one way or another. Perhaps God is indifferent? That seems more of a challenge to me than disbeleiving God altogether.
WHen the gassing occured the UN wanted to sanction Iraq. The US blocked it. Why? Because we gave saddam the gas, we gave him intelligence, we gave him technology and we basically told him to gas people.
Think about that.
evil is as evil does
I believe that while other religions focus on what man has to do to bring themselves to God, Christianity is the only Way, in that it shows what God did to bring us back to Him.
I believe that there is such a thing as absolute morals, and what God said 4000 years ago is still applicable today.
No, I can't prove it. That's why it's faith, and that's why Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Having said that, Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ makes very convincing arguments.
As opposed to those adulterous heterosexuals who fornicate all day long and have children out of wedlock only to beat and otherwise abuse them. See, I can corner a small part of a population and project their faults onto the population as a whole. Does being straight make us the way I've described? No. Does being gay mean you spread disease? No. Can everything mentioned in both your post and mine be done by gays AND straights? Yes. Am I beginning to talk in questions like Donald Rumsfeld? Well, you post on Slashdot with the comments you have, not necessarily the comments you want.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
"Just because science CAN explain something doesn't mean that it WASN'T God".
That's what Occam's Razor is for. As in the simplest explanation that fits the evidence is usually best (paraphrase). God, being unprovable, will rarely (if ever) fit these criteria.
To be a little more constructive than the parent:
I believe, though I can't prove, that the universe presented to me by my senses is not an artifact of my own existence but exists separately from me, is consistent and will remain consistent after I am dead. (i.e. the universe isn't a figment of my imagination).
I believe, though I can't prove, that other entities that resemble me in appearance and behavior (people) have the same kind of agency and observer status as myself and therefore have value similar in kind to myself. (i.e. contrary to the assertion of the psychopath, I believe other people really are people).
Once you accept those predicates as lemmas (and variations, like having empathy for the pain of animals, or using tools to enhance your senses), a great number of things become "very likely". However, we don't need to "prove" any of it, because there's very little value to "proven" once you have "really, really likely". All we need is enough consistency to make predictions reliable and you can live a full and happy life in this world. Most/all of the people I've observed actually demanding proof for things are those behaving defensively in a "faith-based knowledge vs. reason-based knowledge" discussion.
Yes, I am an athiest. No, I'm not hostile to Christianity or Christians: I just stopped accepting that there was a need for God and lost interest (except as a hobby of studying myth in literature and culture).
Regards,
Ross
Sure, God wanted us to be intelligent, but took 3 billion years of fucking around to get to it.
....
Right
ID is an escape hatch for those who cannot deny the obviousness of evolution but don't want to give up their need to belief in God and, ergo, an afterlife.
What has striken me most the last few years, is the arrogance ... that Science will Have All The Answers. Eventually we will comprehend everything
... have faith that there is a God (paraphrase).
Here's the thing: no other method comes anywhere close to the scientific one for generating real knowledge about the observable universe. Science keeps on generating better understanding, so either the universe is infinitely complex, in which case we'll never stop generting better science; or we'll eventually run out of steam due to our admittedly tiny minds - I doubt this one since we already so most of our science using mind-tools like oh, books, computers, etc to help us understand it; or we will eventually know it all. In a loose sense of "know". Much of the world doesn't know the venerable physics of Einstein and Heisenberg very well; and even more sadly, many deny the even more venerable biology of Darwin.
You often hear people come with arguments like 'but God can't exist' or 'we don't need God to explain the universe'. Sure, if you think that man can eventually comprehend everything there is to know about the universe, then you can make those claims.
So either we can know all, or we need God to explain it? false dichotomy.
Religion/faith is all about the step after that.
A totally meaningless sentence.
I personally do
What testable predictions about the observable universe result from this assumption? If there are none, you must entertain the posiblity that your statement has no meaning.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Regretfully, the number 7% includes opinions of non-scientists that are allowed in the National Academy of Sciences, namely mathematicians.
Mathematics is the first science to get it right. When your precious "scientists" were making up goofy cosmological models to account for idiotic presuppositions, it was the mathematicians that set them straight. At the beginning of the modern era, all real scientists were first and foremost mathematicians. Tomorrow, we may find out your most precious "science" was fraudulantly doctored, but 1 plus 1 will always equal 2. Period.
The above quote, by the way, shows you know absolutely nothing, nada, zip, zilch about mathematics or science. Anyone who has taken high school chemistry ought to know better.
Uhm...
Orgasmic vaginal contractions are rather easy to feel. Even if you can't feel it when you're doing the deed with your wang, you should be able to feel it if you're using your fingers or your tongue.
(Wait. I'm on Slashdot. 99% of geeks here have never gotten that far.)
Many women become hyper-sensitive to clitoral stimulation immediately prior and after orgasm. Meaning that the intensity is not comfortable, or even painful.
If she's enjoying clitoral stimulation and then stops enjoying it very suddenly and urgently, you can be pretty sure she had an orgasm.
If you guys can't grasp this, then seriously, turn off the computer, put away the porn, and go find a girlfriend. Seriously.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Just because media science promulgates arrogance, does not mean that science is arrogant. Any scientist that says "this is the right answer, the total truth, forever" is arrogant - but they don't say that. Your media scientist is a straw man.
The true answer is always "I don't know" - but the person who has studied the available evidence will say - "the available evidence points to this or that conlusion". It does not mean that that conclusion is true, only that the available evidence points to it. When more evidence becomes available, the pointed at conclusion will change to more accurately reflect the available evidence.
So it's not a question of "possibility" but one of evidence. Faith is what you believe in when you don't have evidence. There's ample evidence out there to make a decision if you look at it without being brainwashed from birth.
What a rational person can do is look at the known facts about the christian god and decide from the available evidence if they make sense given your own personal experiences of the world. If you have a vision and god speaks to you, then there is no way for me to dissuade you from a belief in god. However, your evidence is personal evidence, and it's based upon personal experience, and is in no way valid for convincing me that there is such a god.
Even if you do have a personal revelation and believe in a god, how does that help you know the attributes of god. Unless god tells you he's omnipotent, do you know that he is. Perhaps your revealed god says "I'm the god of the christian bible, and everything in it is true", and there you are, you can now be a truely rational christian. Hopefully you'll ask your god to do a bit of proof for you, to give you some more tangible evidence. Why would god make you a rational being if the one thing he asks you not to be rational about is his own existence?
Most people on this planet who believe in a god do so for no other reason that that's what they were told when they were little. They're not just told that there is a god, but which particular brand they're to follow. That's not rational, that's just hearsay evidence and means nothing.
That's why the rational course of action is to be agnostic until proven otherwise. If you've been proven otherwise, then that's fine - I'll respect that, but don't go thinking that your evidence has any meaning for me because the only evidence that matters in this issue is very personal. Everyone has to discover their own answers to these questions and make them fit with how their own brains work. That why religion in it's current "one size fits all" mentality doesn't work, for even in a specific branch of a specific religion there are vast differences in the details of belief, and that's because the religion was not personally revealed to each and every member, but passed on from one person to another in such a way that does not account for the differences in each individual.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Because once you accecpt that those entities are similar to yourself you must realise that they, like yourself, have the capability to manipulate their environment.
Because you are part of their environment, they have some power over you and you some power over them. Since they seem to exhibit a sort of herd mentality, it would seem foolish to antagonize them as the herd itself is significantly stronger than the sum of its parts.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
> Why is this modded insightful? It's a complete misinterpretation of the Establisment Clause. There
> is no "prohibitions against teachign{sic} religion in public schools". The only thing the Establisment
> Clause prohibits is a state sponsored religion.
Teachign a religious belief, even a cleverly hidden one like ID, in a public school is state-sponsored religion. Parents are perfectly welcome to put their children in private schools if they wish them to be taught about the Intelligent Designer.
ID evolved because openly teaching Biblical Literalism to public school students was pretty much squashed a long time ago. It's the floorboards of the wedge strategy (along with the premise that somewhere somehow something is wrong with evolution). Watch an ID advocate. In mixed company they will refuse to say anything about the alleged Designer, while among like-minded inviduals, this Designer's secret identity is quite obviously the Judeao-Christian god.
In other words, ID is nothing more than a lawyer's version of Biblical Creationism, specially designed to get around that little ol' problem of pushing Biblical Literalism upon kiddies in public schools.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
This has been going on forever.
How true, but this applies to everyone equally.
For every petty dictator we supported in the Cold War, there was a petty dictator supported by the Soviet Union as well. I noticed that East Germany was absent from your listing. There are many more in that listing as well, I assure you.
And what about colonies? Every major power in Europe was just itching to get into Africa in a big way. Do you think they brought the natives foreign aid?
How do you rate the French involvement in Algeria or the Ivory Coast?
To contantly jump on the US for having made poor decisions as a nation undermines the great sacrifice that American citizens have made in keeping major conflict from arriving at everyone's doors world-wide. You and I can criticize the decisions as ill-informed or malevolent, but please don't forget that the US doesn't make them without perceived threats from abroad.
There are still Americans who believe in John Adams proclaimation that "Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy."
Living up to that proclaimation has been difficult and has meant the sacrifice of a nations treasure.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
You are reaching with that conclusion. *No* physical evidence. How about the Big Bang?
How about it? Is this just another appeal for "God in the Gaps"?
Bias is on both sides.
How so? You have irrefutable evidence of god's existence? Something testable and falsifiable?
I have an open mind. Fill it with something other than speculation and you will be able to convince me.
"Atheists want nothing more than to live their lives without God so they can live a life without any ultimate consequences."
Atheists (and I can only speak for the ones I know) want nothing more than to be left alone by religious people. They don't belive in god, so the threat of any "ultimate consequences" is moot.
We chose to be moral and good because it suits us, not because we fear for our fate after we die.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
It's religion that says "we have ALL the answers." That's the arrogance - claiming to have all the answers without proof. Where did the Universe come from? Science says, "we have this theory that seems to lead to what we see now, but if something changes, we'll change our model." Religion says, "We know! God created it! No debate necessary, no evidence needed more than this here book!"
-T
That is the point of the whole story: Belief on what can not be proven. Your question is sort of pointless because you can't prove it either way. You didn't RTFA or even the title of the story, did you?
It sounds like the title is about all you've read. The site and its articles aren't about things believed willy-nilly; the articles are experts describing their hunches based on their years of experience and synthesizing information outside their fields. It is not about experts having beliefs without cause--it's about experts having beliefs with cause but not rigorously proven (yet anyway). That is a critical distinction to make. To quote:
These questions are not about making vague statments and leaving them at belief; they are about stimulating thought and discussion--not about simply accepting a belief and rejecting discussion based on unprovability.
Aparently that has already been answered by the partent with a resounding Yes!.
That was a mistake on my part. The quesion was meant to be: Have you ever experienced a universe that was not designed?
No, not really. Design is one of those things that indicates intelligent origin, that's all. You can call a DVD player "designed", but yet you can't point to a naturally-occurring DVD player growing wild on some jungle or being mined from the earth.
You've just restated what I said: Design implies an abstraction (a function of intelligence) of a purpose from nature and then creation (by man) of something for that purpose.
Wil
wiki
Certainly you're entitled to your views on whether or not Jesus is the Christ, but you shouldn't misrepresent facts. Jesus made several claims to divinity -- both direct and oblique.
Matthew 11:27: Jesus claims an exclusive Father/Son relationship with God.
Matthew 26:63-64: High Priest asks Jesus if he is the Christ (aka the Messiah) and Jesus answers that he is.
John 8:58: Jesus states "Before Abraham was born, I am" The term "I am" is considered by Jews to be the name of God. (When God appeared to Moses as the burning bush, Moses asked His name. The response was "I am".)
John 14:6: "No one comes to the Father, except through me." -- while not a direct claim of deity, it's a very weighty statement of Jesus as Savior of the world. This is one of Jesus' statements that prevents most Christians from jumping on the "all religions are equal" bandwagon.
For more detail, check out Josh McDowell's Evidence which Demands a Verdict -- specificially, the chapter "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?".
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
US Bashers are hypocrites?
I guess they are, after all, nobody really wants to know the real truth, they just want whatever truth they get fed through the media or through their religious leader or through their president (often then filtered through the media too!)
Reminds me of the Republican ads being shown before the election, talking about how the Republicans were the "value" party, and listing all sorts of values they claimed to hold (gee, I'm glad you're courageous!). I guess those "liberal" tv channels must have cut the ad short, since not once was "truth", "justice", or "honesty" listed.
So, if The Truth is bashing the US, then maybe its deserved. US spoonfed Saddam (who wouldn't have been able to hold Iraq together himself) to have a secular friend against Iran taking over the region. Once Saddam was armed, he started misbehaving and killing people but the US chose to "overlook" that small flaw in his character for the continued security against Iran, until finally he invaded another country. Then Bush Sr. beat him down just enough to teach him that if he wants to slaughter people, he can do it within his own country.
Later, we invade Iraq, kill a lot of people, discover halfway through that we had no plans for an exit, no plans for a democracy (are we even going to pull off the hastily arranged election this month?), no weapons of mass destruction (and members of the government knew this, but failed to communicate it to anyone who could do anything about it other than fire them from the CIA, even after weeks of hunting in Iraq) making this an elective war which means that we could have waited in order to properly equip troops, rather than "going to war with the army we have".
I also find it highly amusing that you believe we are the sole source of freedom on this planet. I can see how people could say "we saved Europe" in WW2, but I'd like to hear how crushing Japan or Germany saved South Africa or Mexico. Not to mention that our own freedom was largely conferred to us with French support.
I suppose though that what America giveth, it taketh away, as the Bush Administration did when it tried to imprison our own Citizens without charge or trial, until the Supreme Court schooled Bush on the bill of rights (Jose Padilla was "detained" in 2002, and finally has a trial scheduled for this month thanks to the SCOTUS decision, however he STILL has not been charged with a crime). Though maybe you're right about the source of freedom spiel, just last month Britain saw the light and their indefinite imprisonment law got busted too.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
As for me, I think it's strong evidence that something is happening that we don't understand.
Feel free to attribute anything we don't currently understand to "God", it's your right; humans have been doing it for thousands of years. Of course, thousands of years ago it was twinkling lights in the sky and occasional crop failures; today it's the big bang.
Personally, I'm perfectly comfortable accepting that that there are still many, many things about this universe that we cannot explain; furthermore, I'm confident that given enough time, we might even figure out the answers to some of those things. There will always be mysteries to keep us puzzled and searching for answers. In the meantime I don't need to imagine an all powerful mythical being to feel better about it.
I read Usenet for the articles.
"This means the Big Bang was "tuned" to produce exactly this density. The odds of that happening by chance are estimated at 1 to 10^50."
This kind of thinking is freshman 101 philosphy talking. You obviously have little grasp of the very large numbers, even less grasp of the infinite. This kind of talk leads even more stupid people into believing in miracles, and gods, and all sorts of magical mystery tour fluff.
Experience thinkers go well beyond your primitive and immature logic. It is well known that in a universe of practically infinite time that all numbers less than infinity might as well be 1. So while I'm not a die hard believer in the big bang theory, whatever happened only had to happen once! And based on any kind of random chance, no tuning was neccessary. Better yet, in infinite time, not only does this theoretical universe come into existance, but it does so an infinte number of times. All that, and together with all the other random universe type probabilities.
The question, and this has been pondered many times by advanced theologians, philosophers, and scientists, is...is this universe the only logical possible universe that can exist? If this turns out to be true, then not only do gods get demoted to janitorial duty, but they don't even get paid. This is basically saying that any god would have no choice in the creation of a universe...there is only one possible one that could ever be created.
This kind of thinking makes perfect sense when you go into deep analysis on how we are able to think and know truths. In our everyday lives we know things by definition. We made up those definitions based on sensory perception. Definitions need to be logically organized, otherwise the world is utterly incomprehensable. For example, the color of the sky can never be both black and white at the same time. We've created an intermediate word for that defined as "grey". Also, you cannot pick up a thing that is both square and round, or lift a thing that is both heavy and light. You would never say to a person "Go pickup that heavy box, it doesn't weigh much." Our entire experience of the universe is based on the languages of definition and logic. We see a "color". We define that "color". If the color changes, the only way to know that it did was to compare it to the originally defined color.
If there is only one logically possible universe, then what is the requirement that it changes over time? Quite possibly so that it can work out all the permutations of what -is- possible. But that is not a "purpose". That is only "what it does". The next question that arises is...if the universe is working out all logically possible combinations over time (perhaps at the quantum level), then are the number of logically possible combinations infinite?
Any beginning computer programmer knows that a memory with a finite number states cannot logically produce every number in existance. So if the universe has an infinite number of states, in a sea of inifinite time, is there an algorithm that would produce a series of logically possible states that occur once and only once...that cannot repeat? Even calculating PI will eventually produce a series of repetitive numbers that occur at ever decreasing frequency.
Is there only one logically possible universe?
For insight into this kind of thinking google on the "Bekenstein Bound" of quantum mechanics.
Also read...
"The Physics of Immortality", Frank J. Tipler
and,
"The Anthropic Cosmological Principle", John D. Barrow & Frank J. Tipler
Note: I personally don't always agree with the nature of the material presented in the above books. Nevertheless I find the reading to be absolutely facinating.