Given the universe, even a universe devoide of matter as such but provided with the actual laws of nature, everything that exists could, and I firmly believe did, develop from and in this without outside, divine, supernatural interference. But that universe, with its laws! For one thing there is nothing inevitable…
Metaphysically speaking, no one paradigm is innately any better than any other. A universe that began at 9 a.m. on October 10, 4004 B.C. (which was official back in the seventeenth century) is intrinsically no less valuable for those who live by a belief in it than is our present uncertain universe, perhaps built like…