KAEP, thanks for the laugh: it's always amusing, if a little bit sad, seeing someone confidently trot out the phrase 'second law of thermodynamics' as their magical trump card, when it's clear they don't really understand it.

Cronus, the best form of defense is attack, it seems: you didn't once attempt to answer my argument about deriving morality from God, instead choosing to launch a series of pre-emptive strikes against what you guess to be my beliefs.

But to answer your final question: well, *you* (and all Theists) self-evidently argue that your God acts on a whim.

'All morality derives from God', goes your argument. Which means that morality is what God says it is, neither more nor less. Therefore, it was purely up to God, when creating the Universe, to decide what was moral and what was not. God could just as easily have decided to make rape and incest the pinnacle of morality, if he so chose, and, voila!, rape and incest *would* be the pinnacle of morality. Because God said they are, and God is the ultimate arbiter of morality.

'Well, that's silly,' you may argue. 'God would never make rape and incest morally right, because they just *aren't*; they're evil, and God would never condone evil.'

But, if that is so, then you are admitting that moral truths exist independently of God. If God *couldn't* have chosen to make rape and incest virtuous, 'because they just aren't', then, ipso facto, morality *must* exist independently of God.

'So the marvel of an apparently infinite universe overcomes the sense of being forlorn!'

Who feels forlorn? I don't. I'm perfectly happy knowing that I live in this amazing Universe, perfectly majestic and wondrous in and of itself, needing no tribal sky-fairy lurking away behind it.

Not to worry Brian;
It will wind back, gradually, I hope.
More people will walk to the station, even if it is a half hour walk
or indeed more.
The cost of energy generally will impose an overhead on our economy
that will impact in ways most will not expect.

The motorways will be, if not empty, then have not enough traffic to
keep the companies from insolvency.

Food will be a lot dearer as well and the world's population will fall
at the same rate as the fall in oil production.

So all in all I think you will be very happy in that time if you are
lucky enough to live long enough to see it.