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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: The Point of Time
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
I’ve been watching the BBC series, Wonders of the Universe, by Brian Cox, and it’s made me think of one particular existential question. The universe has been around for a long time, but we know it will be a very much longer period of time yet before everything ends at its eventual heat death. The universe will die in ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years. If you used single atoms as counters to represent each year, there wouldn’t be anywhere enough atoms in the entire universe to count it all out.
Conditions necessary for life in the universe can only exist for a tiny little flicker of an instant in all that vast stretch of time, and after all life has gone, the massively huge majority of the lifespan of the universe will yet continue as it decays immensely slowly into nothingness. As Brian Cox put it, quote:
As a fraction of the lifespan of the universe as measured from its beginning to the evaporation of the last black hole, life as we know it is only possible for one thousandth of a billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth, billion billion billionth of a percent.
What do theists believe is the point of all this 'created' time, if it is empty of and unobserved by life?
[ 05. January 2015, 01:09: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
For the glory of God
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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Alogon
Cabin boy emeritus
# 5513
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Posted
And the glory of the life that it nourished for that small fraction of the time it existed. I'm not ready to assume that we humans on earth are the only ones with our level of intelligence in the universe-- but if so we are, fine.
Does it make sense, however, for an atheist to expect the universe to have a point?
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Patriarchy (n.): A belief in original sin unaccompanied by a belief in God.
Posts: 7808 | From: West Chester PA | Registered: Feb 2004
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
Here's a visual aid. It's on a double-log scale, so the top is a lot bigger than it looks.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
What do theists believe is the point of all this 'created' time, if it is empty of and unobserved by life?
Is the underlying assumption of the question that time has a point, and that is to be observed by someone?
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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The Revolutionist
Shipmate
# 4578
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Posted
It's rather anthropocentric to suggest that the vast expanses of time and space are pointless without us being around to see them. The universe is made for the glory and delight of God, not us. Which makes God's love for us even more amazing when we put it into perspective.
"When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him?"
Posts: 1296 | From: London | Registered: May 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Presumably the same as the point of all the space we're not living in either
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Revolutionist:
It's rather anthropocentric to suggest that the vast expanses of time and space are pointless without us being around to see them. The universe is made for the glory and delight of God, not us.
Indeed. Getting away from anthropomorphism, I think we can infer that even God's well-known "inordinate fondness for beetles" is nothing compared to his apparent love of huge, empty voids.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
That's one of those questions you'll have to ask God when you get to heaven.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
And there is an anthropocentric attitude which assumes that because "life" has to be like us, and so life can only exist when it it like us.
The vast emptiness of space must be something that God celebrates, because there is so much of it, both in terms of space now and in terms of a whole view of time.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
The point of time is the same as the point of space. These two amazing attributes of the created universe are the most basic conditions for what we celebrate as a free and independent existence.
The reason that it needs to be so large and empty is to make it possible for randomness to be its governing feature. This allows God to be invisible and undetectable, fulfilling the requirements of an apparently autonomous existence.
The point of all of this is that God is love and love needs three things:
- To have something to love.
- To be joined freely and reciprocally with what is loved.
- To make the object of love happy.
These three things dictate there there must be a universe that is not God and that there be beings in that universe that are capable of freely responding to God's love.
Time and space enable there to be an apparently autonomous existence that continues in existence according to constant rules.
The laws of probability are particularly important, since they practically define the lack of bias, or the lack of purpose, and effectively mask any divine plan. This is a cornerstone of human freedom.
None of this works if the universe isn't huge and empty, and time is just a function of space.
So the point of time is to enable you to do what you want, and not just what the Creator wants. The point of that is so that you can be happy, because God is love.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
What do theists believe is the point of all this 'created' time, if it is empty of and unobserved by life?
some theists (mostly process and open theists) do not assume that time is a created entity.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
The reason that it needs to be so large and empty is to make it possible for randomness to be its governing feature. This allows God to be invisible and undetectable, fulfilling the requirements of an apparently autonomous existence.
The point of all of this is that God is love and love needs three things:
- To have something to love.
- To be joined freely and reciprocally with what is loved.
- To make the object of love happy.
These three things dictate there there must be a universe that is not God and that there be beings in that universe that are capable of freely responding to God's love.[/QB]
In what sense can anyone be said to love something undetectable? Is there any functional difference between "undetectable" and "imaginary"?
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
Does time need a "point"?
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This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
Since with the Second Coming of Christ there will be a New Creation, and since it is revealed that humans will be present, the question has no basis. Whatever you wish to consider as the maximum time humans can still live in this universe, that is also the maximum remaining time of this universe. That may well be a long time, but certainly the universe will become uninhabitable for humans long before its heat death. Then - at the very latest - there will be something new. Personally, I would be rather surprised if this universe had more than a few thousand years left...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Yorick: What do theists believe is the point of all this 'created' time, if it is empty of and unobserved by life?
After all humans are gone, the angels throw a big party.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
As has been said before, time is just nature's way of stopping everything happening all at once.
Beware ascribing a "point" to the apparently vast wastelands of time. That way lies the Strong Anthropic Principle, a delightful example of self-important scientism disappearing up its own backside.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
I don’t believe there’s a point to time in general, nor, specifically, to the staggering superabundance of time during which the universe will continue to exist without any life in it, anywhere. What I’m trying to discover here is what people believe was God’s purpose in creating the universe the way He did- such that life is such an unimaginably tiny part of it? Can you speculate about 'what's the point' from His perspective? He created it, right? He must have had His own good reason for creating it the way He did?
I know it’s awfully biocentric to imagine the universe was created for life, but it seems to me that a universe completely devoid of life can have no meaningful existence- rather like that fabulous tree that falls unobserved in that remote forest. Furthermore, it seems clear that life is indeed very special to God- particularly human life- as I think is shown in scripture. What, then, do you speculate, would God want with such a vast and empty playground, in which nothing exists except to Him alone, for trillions upon trillions upon trillions of aeons? What will he do when He gets omnibored of looking at all those same old decaying black dwarfs and dissipating black holes?
My point is this: why do you believe God made the universe the way it is, in particular respect of its enormous, absolutely incomprehensively enormous, utter redundancy of space and time? There’s so much waste.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Adeodatus
Shipmate
# 4992
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
There’s so much waste.
Almost any great work of art is extremely wasteful.
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"What is broken, repair with gold."
Posts: 9779 | From: Manchester | Registered: Sep 2003
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Why though?
I believe the universe is the way it is because it’s bound to be that way, by natural physical law. The size of the universe in space and time is therefore necessary and inevitable (and staggeringly wonderful too). It strikes me, though, that its very size must beg questions of a belief system that states that the universe was created by a designing entity. Why would any god create it to be the way it is when so MUCH of it is empty of all existence?
I presume the answer to my own question is that the universe is the way it is because it’s bound to be so by the exact same ‘godless’ natural physical law, because that’s precisely how God made it (and it isn’t godless anyway)- but this is a tautology, and it doesn’t explain why He made the natural physical law to work in such a way that there’s so much wastage of space time. I assume He could have made the physical laws operate differently, so that the universe would die sooner after it became unfit for life, thus minimising creative waste. He made the universe operate under the laws of nature, which means so very very very much of it is lifeless (and therefore philosophically nonexistent)- and I’d like to know if theists could offer some sort of speculative explanation for this.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Pre-cambrian
Shipmate
# 2055
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by The Revolutionist:
It's rather anthropocentric to suggest that the vast expanses of time and space are pointless without us being around to see them.
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's Cat:
And there is an anthropocentric attitude which assumes that because "life" has to be like us, and so life can only exist when it it like us.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Whatever you wish to consider as the maximum time humans can still live in this universe, that is also the maximum remaining time of this universe. That may well be a long time, but certainly the universe will become uninhabitable for humans long before its heat death. Then - at the very latest - there will be something new. Personally, I would be rather surprised if this universe had more than a few thousand years left...
So yes, anthropocentrism is alive and well in Kleve.
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"We cannot leave the appointment of Bishops to the Holy Ghost, because no one is confident that the Holy Ghost would understand what makes a good Church of England bishop."
Posts: 2314 | From: Croydon | Registered: Dec 2001
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Trin
Shipmate
# 12100
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Why do you believe God made the universe the way it is, in particular respect of its enormous, absolutely incomprehensively enormous, utter redundancy of space and time? There’s so much waste.
It being the case that you must be at least as theologically savvy by now as many who will consider themselves qualified to attempt an answer to this question, why do you think it is, Yorick? Assuming for a moment that God is real, of course.
Posts: 442 | From: UK | Registered: Nov 2006
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
It honestly makes no sense to me- I think it's a paradox that reveals the nonsense of the idea of a creative agent, so, yes, the bigness of the universe implies to me that there is no God. If the universe was designed and created by an intelligent entity, they must have had an internally rational reason for making it just the way it is, and not some other way- don’t you agree? The implication is therefore that God deliberately chose to make the universe to be mostly devoid of life (and therefore of existence), to a mindcrushingly huge degree. It’s the degree of the meaningless surplus of spacetime that begs the question, for me.
Think of it like this. The meaningful bit of the universe is that in which life may become existent and actually exist. This is the Gift. The Gift is wrapped in a Package, representing the universe in which existence happens. We know the size and shape of the Package, and we know the size and shape of the Gift. The Gift is the size of a sugar cube, and the Package is the size of a galaxy- hundreds of thousands of light years of wrapping paper. Why do you think God would package such a small (but wonderful) Gift in so MUCH wrapping paper if you believe that the wrapping paper only exists for the sake of packaging the Gift?
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Hawk
Semi-social raptor
# 14289
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
It honestly makes no sense to me- I think it's a paradox that reveals the nonsense of the idea of a creative agent, so, yes, the bigness of the universe implies to me that there is no God. If the universe was designed and created by an intelligent entity, they must have had an internally rational reason for making it just the way it is,
Why must He have had a rational 'utilitarian' reason? Are we internally rational? - I know I'm not. If I was building a universe, I know I'd make it ridiculously massive, just for the love of it.
That's what I meant by 'for the glory of God'. Why make the bare minimum necessary - why create only one thing? You seem to be assuming that God is an engineer - obsessed with utility, rational 'purpose', and efficiency, when I think the universe shows he's more of an artist.
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“We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know." Dietrich Bonhoeffer
See my blog for 'interesting' thoughts
Posts: 1739 | From: Oxford, UK | Registered: Nov 2008
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
Why must He have had a rational 'utilitarian' reason?
The universe is the way it is. >
God created the universe the way it is. >
God chose to create the universe the way it is. >
God could have created the universe in some other way. >
The universe is only the way it is because God chose it to be this way. >
This is the reason why the universe is the way it is. >
The universe conforms to God’s reason. >
... which is rational 'utilitarian' reason.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Hawk:
You seem to be assuming that God is an engineer - obsessed with utility, rational 'purpose', and efficiency, when I think the universe shows he's more of an artist.
Okay, if God is an artist, why do you suppose His meaningful creation is such a tiny little eenie-weenie smudge on such an unimaginably vast and meaningfully empty canvas? The picture is the size of a sugar lump and the canvas is the size of a galaxy. By such proportions, we must assume the ‘point’ of his artistic creation is the canvas, not the picture, which seems totally contradictory to the message of the Bible.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Yorick: Okay, if God is an artist, why do you suppose His meaningful creation is such a tiny little eenie-weenie smudge on such an unimaginably vast and meaningfully empty canvas?
Maybe He's a bit like Ad Reinhardt?
quote:
Yorick: By such proportions, we must assume the ‘point’ of his artistic creation is the canvas, not the picture, which seems totally contradictory to the message of the Bible.
To me the message is, that in spite of us being tiny little creatures in this really big universe, He still cares for us. Quite a strong message, really.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I know it’s awfully biocentric to imagine the universe was created for life, but it seems to me that a universe completely devoid of life can have no meaningful existence - rather like that fabulous tree that falls unobserved in that remote forest. Furthermore, it seems clear that life is indeed very special to God- particularly human life- as I think is shown in scripture. What, then, do you speculate, would God want with such a vast and empty playground, in which nothing exists except to Him alone, for trillions upon trillions upon trillions of aeons?
Unsurprisingly, you fail to engage with traditional Christianity, which simply does not have the problems you are so keen to find. Firstly, angels (and their fallen brethren, demons) may very well have been around from the beginning of the material universe, thus filling it with plentiful life, even intelligent life, from the start. Secondly, this universe will end with the Second Coming of Christ and since we know from Genesis and St Paul that its fate is coupled to ours, it is not particularly daring to suggest that it will be resurrected from (heat) death into a new life. Nobody knows when this will happen, but assuming our current state of knowledge as true it is a few billion years tops (because interstellar space travel is just not going to happen with current physical laws, and our sun will almost certainly wipe us out when it goes red giant).
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
So yes, anthropocentrism is alive and well in Kleve.
As far as the material universe is concerned, certainly: we are the stewards of nature. But as far as creation is concerned, this is an unfair charge. I see humans as the "hinge of creation", the least of the spiritual world, the highest of the material world. Above us is the hierarchy of angels, and of course also God, though He is really "off the scale". We are basically the janitors around here, i.e, our stewardship for nature is not the top job, but a consequence of our own proximity to its low, material state. On top are naturally the highest angels, and beyond them God. That God lowered Himself to our state, the lowest that possibly can accommodate a Spirit, is what makes the angels serve us. And it is a popular theological speculation that Lucifer and with him many angels fell because they just could not accept God putting them into this position. So I would say that my worldview is theocentric and hierarchical, and as a consequence, anthropcentric concerning the material universe - but only concerning that.
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
It honestly makes no sense to me - I think it's a paradox that reveals the nonsense of the idea of a creative agent, so, yes, the bigness of the universe implies to me that there is no God.
Do you really feel that your life is lost in a void of space and time? Nobody around, nothing to do? My life actually feels busy and full to breaking point. Perhaps God is just happy to give us some appropriate perspective of the importance of it all...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
It honestly makes no sense to me- I think it's a paradox that reveals the nonsense of the idea of a creative agent, so, yes, the bigness of the universe implies to me that there is no God.
Maybe I didn't make myself clear. The point of bigness is so that randomness can have the desired effect.
You have to roll the dice a lot of times to get snake-eyes ten times in a row.
And without randomness you have a visible creator, which would ruin everything.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Perhaps God is just happy to give us some appropriate perspective of the importance of it all...
Then why do you imagine He would choose to demonstrate the importance of life by making it and revealing it to be so insignificant?
I can understand that the point of a very large and empty canvas can be to emphasise by perspective the tiny picture in its middle: by creating a vast amount of spacetime in which life cannot exist, life’s brief flicker is shown to be all the more precious. The lifeless spacetime around the tiny meaningful part frames its importance, revealing its rarity.
However, this begs the question of why God did not choose to fill His canvas entirely with meaningful, valuable art, which would surely give the actual picture itself more importance than any perspective it may be afforded by framing it as rare. Rarity is not importance- it is merely the context in which something has value. Rarity only adds to a thing’s value by effect of this context- its higher value is only the expression of its desirability/unavailability ratio. Why would God choose to play such a trick of perspective, when He could just as easily fill spacetime with actual real meaningful importance, instead of leaving it mostly as empty canvas for visual effect?
By showing life to be proportionately insignificant in spacetime, He may demonstrate its importance to Him, but this is at the expense of the importance of life to itself. If life is important in and of itself, why wouldn’t He fill His universe with proportionately more of it, even if this would be at the expense of His artistic trick of composition?
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
The point of bigness is so that randomness can have the desired effect.
You have to roll the dice a lot of times to get snake-eyes ten times in a row.
And without randomness you have a visible creator, which would ruin everything.
And why do you suppose there should be so much empty meaningless randomness continuing for SOOOO long after you've rolled your ten snake-eyes in a row? It's only taken 13.75 billion years of randomness for us to roll the ten snake-eyes (which is an extremely tiny amount of time, proportionately), and we'll soon be gone. THEN, the dice will continue to be meaninglessly rolled for a VERY long time. VERY.
Why?
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
I think you're being biocentric, Yorick. God is interested in more than life-as-we-know-it. Even if we are the ONLY form of life (and I suppose angels, we know about those a tad), why should God not value matter, energy, and so forth? He made them after all. And never consulted us in the making.
Just because you find it boring and intimidating doesn't mean God does.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Yorick: However, this begs the question of why God did not choose to fill His canvas entirely with meaningful, valuable art
Who says He didn't? There is some pretty interesting stuff out there in the universe, even if it isn't life.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
Just because you find it boring and intimidating doesn't mean God does.
Well, now who’s being anthropocentric? You’re proposing that God would be interested (in a human sense) in observing (in a human sense) the immensely slow (in a human sense) decay of the universe to its heat death.
But the notion that God would find the dying cellestial objects somehow fascinating seems highly dubious to me, given how totally anthropocentric scripture is. Genesis suggests that man is the pinnacle of creation, but that would make it almost absolutely flat.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Unsurprisingly, you fail to engage with traditional Christianity, which simply does not have the problems you are so keen to find.
Right. The universe has, since the very beginning, been populated with intelligent angels, and it will end and be resurrected at the Second Coming of Christ to our planet at a time no later than its destruction by the expansion of our sun, and all this will happen because Genesis and St Paul say so.
That's depressing.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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moron
Shipmate
# 206
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
My point is this: why do you believe God made the universe the way it is, in particular respect of its enormous, absolutely incomprehensively enormous, utter redundancy of space and time? There’s so much waste.
Your thread reminds me of Chesterton's 'cosy little cosmos'.
Posts: 4236 | From: Bentonville | Registered: May 2001
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
Only if you think that's the end of it. Which isn't the traditional view of Christianity. Universe 1.0 has a limited lifespan, which according to my understanding of the Bible is related to the presence of human beings in it, but once that gets rolled up like a used garment, God is going to move onto Universe 2.0.
[x-post with 205]
[ 06. April 2011, 12:20: Message edited by: la vie en rouge ]
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
Posts: 3696 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
The problem you seem to have, Yorik, is that looking as a form of life that can only exist for a brief period, you are asking why the universe is not more focussed around yourself. Whereas you maybe should be asking how astounding it is that any form of life can exist that can comprehend its own insignificance.
Turning the question around completely, how do we know that the universe is not the new earth and the new Jerusalem, meaning that we will continue to exist in a non-corporeal form for a significant proportion of the history of the universe.
Putting it another way, how do we know that life will not evolve along with the universe, to exist within the universe, at least for a considerable portion of its life? And we do not certainly know that the stories of the future are accurate. They are predictions based on our current knowledge. Our current knowledge is not perfect, and is especially challenging when we are talking about the universe. I am not suggesting that the cosmology theories are wrong, just that there is a huge amount that we do not know, and that we cannot yet comprehend ( dark matter being a prime example ).
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
how do we know that life will not evolve along with the universe, to exist within the universe, at least for a considerable portion of its life?
We know that conditions in the universe will become unfit for any life, anywhere, relatively soon, but that spacetime will continue for an unimaginably long time afterwards. This is not a matter of belief; it is a matter of known fact.
Now you could piss about with this all you like, by proposing that our knowledge may be wrong, or that things will change within a few billion years (the blink of a ludicrous eye) when Jesus Comes Again to reboot the universe, or that a flying spaghetti monster will rewrite the laws of nature with one wobble of His noodly appendage in 2012, or whatever. But those are the facts as we do indeed know them, and I think there’s enough of staggering interest to be going on with already, without having to posit all kinds of silly and obviously contradictory nonsense.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
(because interstellar space travel is just not going to happen with current physical laws, and our sun will almost certainly wipe us out when it goes red giant).
You mean fast interstellar travel, of course. We can go as far as we like so long as we're not bothered about how many generations it takes us to get there!
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
I apologise for the tone of the above post. IngoB's fantastic forecast has seriousy fucked my head up, and I find I'm all ranting.
Ignore my outraged skepticism, if you will.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
The point of bigness is so that randomness can have the desired effect.
You have to roll the dice a lot of times to get snake-eyes ten times in a row.
And without randomness you have a visible creator, which would ruin everything.
And why do you suppose there should be so much empty meaningless randomness continuing for SOOOO long after you've rolled your ten snake-eyes in a row? It's only taken 13.75 billion years of randomness for us to roll the ten snake-eyes (which is an extremely tiny amount of time, proportionately), and we'll soon be gone. THEN, the dice will continue to be meaninglessly rolled for a VERY long time. VERY.
Why?
Several reasons:
- 1. In order for the system to work as intended the laws need to be constant. Constant means "for a very long time." If the laws change once life happens that wouldn't be constant.
- 2. The whole thing surely repeats itself innumerable times stretching into forever. I can't believe that life is a once-and-done phenomenon. Having very large numbers, very large spaces, and very long periods of time enables randomness to account for that.
- 3. Didn't you see "Men in Black"? In universal terms size and persistence are relative. From our perspective time and space are necessarily limited. Vast amounts of empty space and time seem unnecessary and wasteful. But in a larger context those concerns are meaningless. What does it matter if space is empty? Waste means nothing if the supply is infinite.
As others have said, our understandable problem with so much emptiness is anthropocentric.
It would be poor city planning to locate fire stations millions of light years apart. The apartment would be ruined before the fire truck was half-way there. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
But these kinds of things aren't a problem for God. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Freddy, the window of time in which the universe is and will be hospitable to life is very long indeed. Note that I’m not just talking about terrestrial human life here, but the conditions necessary for any sort of life (and I would assume the universe contains many different forms of life as we speak, just from the sheer mathematics of it all). Life must surely abound during this condition-permitting window, coming and going locally, as planets thrive and eventually become extinct of life.
But there will, eventually, come a time when the conditions of the universe become unsupportive of any life, in any form, anywhere. This eventual point will be reached relatively soon- relative to the vast outstretching of time between then and the very end of the universe. Thus, the huge window of time in which the universe may sustain life, as all its different species come and go- is but an infinitesimally brief moment in the overall lifespan of the universe, in the vast majority of which life will not be possible, in any form, anywhere.
It is this, much MUCH bigger post-life period of time that I’m wondering about.
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
After humanity has gone, God needs a loooooong time to think about what He'll do to us at Final Judgement. For my sins alone, he'll probably need an exasecond or two. This requires such deep thought, that He simply forgets to switch off the Universe.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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PixelPi
Shipmate
# 16160
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Posted
quote:
Posted by LeRoc
Originally posted by Yorick:
What do theists believe is the point of all this 'created' time, if it is empty of and unobserved by life?
After all humans are gone, the angels throw a big party.
Where's the 'Like' button when you really need it?
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I feel more like I do now than I did when I first got here.
Posts: 168 | From: United States | Registered: Jan 2011
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
From God's point of view "after" is no more significant than "before". Or indeed "north" or "south". Or "inwards" and "outwards". All just names for directions within the complex manifold surface of the multidimensional universe which God creates and observes.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
And without randomness you have a visible creator, which would ruin everything.
So if the Creator of the Universe made Himself manifest, say as a burning bush or a Jewish carpenter, that would "ruin everything"? I'm normally pretty critical of Christianity, but even I wouldn't go so far as to claim that its teachings ruin literally everything.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
From God's point of view "after" is no more significant than "before". Or indeed "north" or "south". Or "inwards" and "outwards". All just names for directions within the complex manifold surface of the multidimensional universe which God creates and observes.
Again, assuming that God is very much outside of the universe, which I don't believe. If God has voluntarily entered into the unverse, including time, that changes everything.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
And without randomness you have a visible creator, which would ruin everything.
So if the Creator of the Universe made Himself manifest, say as a burning bush or a Jewish carpenter, that would "ruin everything"? I'm normally pretty critical of Christianity, but even I wouldn't go so far as to claim that its teachings ruin literally everything.
It does no harm for God to appear to a particular person here or there. His biblical appearances are generally cast in a positive light.
The trouble would be if God were demonstrably present and in charge of every single person every single minute.
That would ruin everything, and I am pretty sure that no one would deny it. ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
But there will, eventually, come a time when the conditions of the universe become unsupportive of any life, in any form, anywhere...
Wow. I didn't know this.
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
It is this, much MUCH bigger post-life period of time that I’m wondering about.
I don't get why this is a problem. If there is a God why wouldn't He just do it all over again?
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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