It

has become fashionable, and it is nothing more than a fashion, to believe that the universe is dumb, stupid. That intelligence, values, love and fine feelings reside only within the bag of the human epidermis, and that outside that, the thing is simply a kind of a chaotic, stupid interaction of blind forces, and our intelligence is an unfortunate accident. By some weird freak of evolution we came to be these feeling and rational beings, more or less rational, and this is a ghastly mistake because here we are in a universe that has nothing in common with us, that doesn't share our feelings, has no real interest in us: we're just a sort of cosmic fluke. And therefore, the only hope for mankind is to beat this irrational universe into submission, and conquer it and master it.

Now all this is perfectly idiotic. If you would think that the idea of the universe as being the creation of a benevolent old gentleman, although he's not so benevolent - he takes a sort of "this hurts me more than it's going to hurt you" sort of attitude to things, you can have that on one hand, and if that becomes uncomfortable you can exchange it for its opposite: the idea that the ultimate reality doesn't have any intelligence at all. At least that gets rid of the old bogey in the sky - in exchange for a picture of the world that is completely stupid.

Continues at Deoxy...