ABSTRACT
A radically alternative approach could lead to a theory of origins that is robustly insensitive to initial conditions in the way that life is, and which is realistic in the sense that it would rely only on empirical evidence and would not attempt to reduce nature to some idealist scheme. Moreover, chance can only be eliminated if initial conditions are either derived from theory or are somehow rendered irrelevant. However, initial conditions would be irrelevant in a universe that is somehow insensitive to them. Initial conditions present a double dilemma. On the one hand, they cannot be derived from theory; on the other, if they could be so derived it would imply that nature is nothing more than a deductive system. If "something" is to come into being from "nothing," it must do so either instantaneously, without cause, or else through a gradual transition from one state to the other, whatever that might entail.
