[~ot] why is programming so fun?

[BCS]

Reply to Walter,

> Gregor Richards wrote:
> 
>> and so they think "Wow, given the extremely low odds that a protozoan
>> would appear by random chance, we must have been created by a higher
>> power!" Idiots.
>> 
> My difficulty with the higher power explanation is one is left
> wondering
> how the higher power came to be. Did a higher higher power create
> it?
> And you know where that is going <g>.

The same question can be asked of any origin of everything theory; "where 
did that come from?"

The way I like to think of it is a higher power is, somewhat and loosely, 
analogous to the author if a book. It is totally outside the story, can know 
anything, can create anything and can do anything. However they are constrained 
by logic, consistence and, according to some authors, the 'free will' of 
the characters.

One, somewhat flawed, view is spelled out in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" 
by an address ending in "...the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the 
Mind of God."