 |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
»
|
Ship of Fools
»
» Oblivion
»
Our galaxy has 200,000,000,000 stars & the universe has more galaxies than this (Page 1)
|
|
|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: Our galaxy has 200,000,000,000 stars & the universe has more galaxies than this
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
In roughly estimated numbers.
What can religion, Christianity, tell us about the wider universe and our place? I think the explanation that it means that humanity is really really special is a way of avoiding the implication that we are actually not so much a big part of the whole creation.
I think the knowledge of really how insignificant we are within the universe must tell us that our conceptions of God, of our place in creation, how special or not we are, are so far, at best, interim with our holy books, traditions and history, and we now require extensive additional thought and understanding.
I have limited ideas of where to start, but consider that we are, on earth, in a sort of not-so-lovely Eden, and our knowledge about the universe and our cosmic insignificance is serving to get us kicked out of this one psychologically. Because we really have, now, bitten the fruit. And we are greedily eating the entire tree, and the whole orchard, while we also find uses for the wood of the tree, and decide to build something else where the tree once stood. We know too much to not add to our mythology, wisdom literature and narrative about who we are.
Can we possibly write a narrative, a story, an explanation, that will serve us now? What does this story need?
[ 01. March 2015, 03:48: Message edited by: no prophet's flag is set so... ]
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
|
Posted
"...people who believed in a flat earth with the stars only a mile or two away."
[He was referring to medieval theologians. I handed him Ptolemy's Almagest, the standard astronomical handbook used throughout the Middle Ages. He read from it...]
"The earth, in relation to the distance of the fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point."
"Did they really know that then?" said my friend.
[I replied,]
"People usually think the problem is how to reconcile what we now know about the size of the universe with our traditional ideas of religion.... The enormous size of the universe and the insignificance of the earth were known for centuries, and no one ever dreamed that they had any bearing on the religious question."
--CS Lewis, "Religion and Science," in God in the Dock
--------------------
This is the last sig I'll ever write for you...
Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
|
Posted
That is actually not correct. They thought the Milky Way was it until into 19th century. They also held that the universe was a mere 200 million years old. The additional knowledge does ask us to do something. I have read about the consilience between religion and science. I find myself generally annoyed with religious people who don't know science, and science people who don't know religion. Because neither know what they don't know. I am hoping we can move beyond the usual responses.
And Lewis is incorrect on this, no matter how much I respect him, but people specifically do have the problem he says they do not.
[ 01. March 2015, 04:28: Message edited by: no prophet's flag is set so... ]
--------------------
Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ikkyu
Shipmate
# 15207
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
"...people who believed in a flat earth with the stars only a mile or two away."
[He was referring to medieval theologians. I handed him Ptolemy's Almagest, the standard astronomical handbook used throughout the Middle Ages. He read from it...]
"The earth, in relation to the distance of the fixed stars, has no appreciable size and must be treated as a mathematical point."
"Did they really know that then?" said my friend.
[I replied,]
"People usually think the problem is how to reconcile what we now know about the size of the universe with our traditional ideas of religion.... The enormous size of the universe and the insignificance of the earth were known for centuries, and no one ever dreamed that they had any bearing on the religious question."
--CS Lewis, "Religion and Science," in God in the Dock
That CS Lewis quote sounds to me like "no one ever dreamed that physical reality has anything to do with religion"
Well that only works if religion has no bearing on the real world.
Posts: 434 | From: Arizona | Registered: Oct 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Oscar the Grouch
Adopted Cascadian
# 1916
|
Posted
One question I have is about intelligent life. I can quite comprehend that there are many other planets where life exists. But how likely is it that intelligent life (similar to human intelligence) will come into being? 1 in 100? 1 in 1000? 1 in 1,000,000?
It seems to me that there is no guarantee that intelligent life will always evolve where life exists. Perhaps the chances of encountering other intelligent life forms are really small.
--------------------
Faradiu, dundeibáwa weyu lárigi weyu
Posts: 3871 | From: Gamma Quadrant, just to the left of Galifrey | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
|
Posted
Perhaps every bit of Creation is special?
And I do mean every bit, everywhere, even things we normally consider inanimate. We're made up of all sorts of smaller things. Maybe *we're* smaller things that make up something else?
--------------------
Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
|
Posted
Oscar, welcome to the Fermi paradox.
This addresses the question of why, given a huge universe with lots of potentially habitable planets, we haven't met anyone yet.
Particularly annoying is the thought that even if we did spot evidence, the logistics of making contact are just beyond difficult. Consider the problems Mars One is looking at and scale them up, well, almost infinitely.
As to the OP, well, I'm another CS Lewis fan. I think there has historically been more cosmological awareness than people give our ancestors credit for, that there is room, à la Perelandra, in God's universe for other intelligent life, and that (also à la Perelandra), room even for other Eden-type narratives and whole realms of existence of which we are ignorant, even if I suspect that not to be the case.
On the issue of scale, it just points up the words of the Psalm "what is man, that you are mindful of him?"
--------------------
Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
That is actually not correct. They thought the Milky Way was it until into 19th century. They also held that the universe was a mere 200 million years old. The additional knowledge does ask us to do something.
The timespan issue is, by order of magnitude, more than half way there. (Two hundred million squared is forty thousand billion.) There's a greater disparity in the size. Still, I think in each case, the numbers are so huge as to make the differences irrelevant for the purposes of imagination.
The significant difference between Ptolemaic cosmology and modern cosmology, which Lewis comments on elsewhere, is that Ptolemaic cosmology has an absolute down - towards earth.
--------------------
we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
I’m very interested in a proper discussion of the issues raised in the OP. I have often seen the problem of our cosmic insignificance dismissed by theists as though it doesn’t matter, or, worse, with a sort of Zaphodian immunity to the Total Perspective Vortex- ‘we Children of God are so staggeringly insignificant in the Grand Scheme of Things that we MUST be really really special, for He made us in His image, amen!”
As well as our planet and even its vast galaxy being relatively physically teeny, life itself, which everyone keeps going on about, is ever so small temporally. Our intelligence has only just emerged, after a very long time during which not much happened (at the point of 11:54pm on 31 December on the cosmic calendar, with the Big Bang happening on 1 Jan). But that’s nothing compared to the mid boggling brevity of ALL life appearing and disappearing in the universe as a whole- life in all its imaginable alien forms.
The universe is very old in human terms, but 13.8 billion years is stupendously, staggeringly, immensely young in terms of its own lifetime, even at the lowest estimates of that. Brian Cox illustrated it thus: "As a fraction of the lifespan of the universe … life, as we know it, is only possible for one thousandth of a billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billionth of a percent.”
What does this mean? Well, for a start, it makes my tax bill seem much less vexing. It also implies that our tendency to imagine ourselves as in some way important or special or Chosen or Loved or whatever is just plain daft. We’re less than almost nothing.
It also makes me contemplate the nature of an alleged deity that would create a universe which is so overwhelmingly void of life. I mean, what do you think your your imaginary god will do for all those trillions and trillions and trillions of massively prolonged epochs after the last black holes have evaporated and in which photons, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons will fly about meaninglessly from place to place, hardly ever encountering each other?
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
orfeo
Ship's Musical Counterpoint
# 13878
|
Posted
So we're collectively a small piece of the cosmic ballet. And? Is that really any different to the proposition that each of us, as an individual, is just one person out of billions, and probably a not very important individual at that?
Christianity has been perfectly capable of existing in a form that says to every little person on the planet, "you matter". We say that God is prepared to talk to and listen to each and every person.
I don't see why that would change when talking about us just being one planet out of billions of populated ones. Either you believe that God can drill down through all that, or you don't. If you believe God knows your name out of all the billions on Earth, then expanding into the wider universe isn't changing much.
[ 01. March 2015, 07:12: Message edited by: orfeo ]
--------------------
Technology has brought us all closer together. Turns out a lot of the people you meet as a result are complete idiots.
Posts: 18173 | From: Under | Registered: Jul 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
Yes, I don't buy the insignificance argument; to make it, you have already stepped back (intellectually), from the human subject. So, it's a kind of tautology - oh look, if I look from far away, things look far away!
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
I think the problem here is one of scale. It’s very hard, nay, impossible, for us to get our heads round the reality of our insignificance, but if we could I think we'd take it much more seriously.
But cognitive obstacles aside, let's try to run with this for a moment. Let’s imagine the god-created universe as a three-hour epic movie. In this movie, ANY possible form of life ANYWHERE can only exist for a single nanosecond, and human life on Earth for a gazillionth of that nanosecond. Yes, the tiny little bit where stuff happens in this film is wonderful, but what does its brevity tell us about the movie itself, and its screenwriter?
It tells me we imaginated him in our own image, that's what.
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
But that's to pre-load and pre-empt the discussion. I could equally say that via humans, the universe becomes aware of itself. Where do I begin to think about it? There isn't any particular place.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
I'm sorry, q, I don't follow. What I'm trying to do here is precisely not define reality as a product of our consciousness, but as objectively extrinsic to it as taught by the Judeo-Christian creator god model.
My question here is this: If a god exists outside of the universe, who created it, why did he make us so very small a part of the whole? For my question to have carriage, one must try to perceive our relative position here- hard though that is- which would demonstrate very manifestly that we are not even remotely important by any definition of the word. And if we are unimportant, then so is god, right?
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
Yorick, I just see you arguing in a neat circle. Humans are insignificant, therefore (wowzer), humans are insignificant. Formidable.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
|
Posted
A interesting question does a drop of water matter more or less if it is in a village pond or an ocean?
In other words if we are infinitessimally small in comparison to the Universe does it matter how infinite the Universe is?
The only problem with Mousetheif argument is that he dates it from the middle ages and yet at least poetically the immensity of the universe has been grasped since the days of the writers of the psalms.
The problem is not that God should care for humanity but that God cares about the detail of the way subatomic particles behave in individual interactions.
Your God is too small.
Jengie
[ 01. March 2015, 08:31: Message edited by: Jengie jon ]
--------------------
"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
I'm sorry if I'm going round in circles- I do find this thing hard to articulate.
The thing about insignificance is this. Christian theists claim that God created us, and that we are special in His eyes- indeed, we are created in His image, so there is something of God in us.
That concept seems at great odds with the reality that we are such an insignificant part* of His creation.
* and this is where that idea loses purchase, I think because the scale of that insignificance is so hard to grasp.
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
|
Posted
Perhaps we can embrace insignificance. I really like anything that backgrounds my tax bill. And feeling ever so special can get in the way of friendships and being in a good team and a sense of belonging to greater causes, movements and times.
I'm increasingly struck by the importance of the so recent emergence of language, awareness, and the development of human self-understanding as a corporate thing, as we move out from crude theisms and simplistic anthropologies towards better ways of living together. This baby computer revolution has long strides to make with us, too.
--------------------
My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
|
Posted
For an infinite God the whole many zeroed universe is precisely as significant or insignificant as a single atom.
Then again, are created beings with infinite consciousnesses possible?
--------------------
Refraction Villanelles
Posts: 464 | From: Southern England | Registered: Jul 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
This reminds me of Blake's grain of sand - tiny, yet all-embracing.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
The problem is not that God should care for humanity but that God cares about the detail of the way subatomic particles behave in individual interactions.
Does He indeed? Well, doesn't that make our insignificance all the more resonant to you? For surely, we play a very insignificant part in a cosmos full of subatomic particles.
[ 01. March 2015, 08:45: Message edited by: Yorick ]
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
|
Posted
The struggle between significance and insignificance throws some light on the more personal issue. "Made in the image of God" is I suppose the ultimate expression of human significance. But it is a dangerous precept unless balanced by a genuine humility.
On all sorts of levels, the night sky seems to induce in many of us a sense of awe, an awareness of our smallness in the scheme of things. Maybe those things have changed by degree since the Psalmist's soliloquies, but the abiding link seems to me to be that sense of awe, by which we can "connect" with the Psalmist, however wrong or approximate his understanding of that the night sky actually was.
I think for some people, the now-known scale and age of the universe is a kind of "reductio ad absurdum" of historic notions of God. It doesn't function that way for me. I really only know two things about God. He's God, and I'm not. Night sky awe functions as a kind of window for me, through which I can "see", or "connect with", the unimaginable Creativity of God.
--------------------
Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
For an infinite God the whole many zeroed universe is precisely as significant or insignificant as a single atom.
I’ll go with that. Although we are such a tiny part of the whole (and the tininess is unimaginable, but if it we could imagine it we’d instantly soil ourselves, and the whole is unimaginably big but if we could imagine it we’d instantly lose our minds) we are nevertheless ‘special' to our creator. Fine. He loves us like a googleplex big thing even though we are so mathematically approximate to zero. It's comforting.
But wait. What does Scripture tell us about WHY this god made us so insignificant? It doesn’t, does it? The Bible tells us we are important, and even that we are like Him- and the Incarnation proved it.
Its a massive contradiction, like a circular square.
[ 01. March 2015, 08:54: Message edited by: Yorick ]
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Patdys
Iron Wannabe
RooK-Annoyer
# 9397
|
Posted
But there is relationship between all subatomic particles and we would be missed.
Why do we assume we are the pinnacle of creation. If we are still birthing as a species, as the universe, then surely our potential is far from tapped.
Perhaps space is our future?
--------------------
Marathon run. Next Dream. Australian this time.
Posts: 3511 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
|
Posted
I don't particularly get the idea that God is "outside" the universe - God IS the universe (and maybe, probably, other things as well). The "outside" version places us, as you say, like teensy weeny goldfish or lab rats in a stupendously large tank, and raises all kind of other questions about what it is we were made from (if that something is not God).
--------------------
"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
|
Posted
I think the OP is basing itself of the false premise that physical magnitude or size makes things insignificant or unimportant in the eyes of God.
It doesn't follow.
[ 01. March 2015, 09:09: Message edited by: Evensong ]
--------------------
a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I think the OP is basing itself of the false premise that physical magnitude or size makes things insignificant or unimportant in the eyes of God.
It doesn't follow.
Yes. "Small" = "insignificant" is a human projection. "Awe" is something different, a kind of visceral response.
--------------------
Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
Have we got to that already? How quick you theists are to shrug your shoulders at interesting questions, and find an answer in 'God is a mystery to us'.
Easily satisfied much?
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
|
Posted
In fact, some mystics use the image of the hologram - the fragment contains the whole.
--------------------
I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pyx_e
Quixotic Tilter
# 57
|
Posted
Horizon (the BBC program) are very good at doing retrospectives. There was one recently on theories about the Big Bang was fascinating. My take on what they were trying to say was ........ It's a theory with as many wholes in it as any other and they have not overcome the issues of why the universe is speeding up, dark matter or black holes. Those theories have evolved and changed tremendously over the life of the Horizon series.
This has not stopped the scientific community treating each new theory as the received wisdom of the ages. They seem to bang on about how awful the church was for treating Galileo so badly while ignoring that many Christians throughout the ages have had a very scientific bent and Christian universities are the font of modernism. And further ignoring, for example, the fact the poster boy Einstein was a nightmare about quantum physics and got it wrong.
The universe is big, woo hoo. I don't understand the outworking of Christ's sacrifice, I don't understand how God created the universe through Christ, I don't understand love, along with the scientific community I don't understand "dark matter" ( you know that stuff they made up to make it all hang together, that they put so much faith in but have no proof of)........ God does what He does, my life is less about trying to prove Him wrong and more about trying to prove Him right. I try and do this by living faithfully to what I do know and being open to His revelation.
Not being able to understand something does not preclude my having faith in it.
As for intelligent life? Someone give me a ray of hope we will ever be able to communicate with them. Explain how that works. Once you have done that we can talk about whether it exits and why.
And as for Brian cox, every day I don't either open a Hell thread about that numpty or scribble his name in cow shit across the university campus quad is a good day for me. Sneaky, lank haired, worm-tounged jester of the liberal intelligentsia. Come the revolution he is going to be first against the wall and loved so hard he screams.
[ 01. March 2015, 09:37: Message edited by: Pyx_e ]
--------------------
It is better to be Kind than right.
Posts: 9778 | From: The Dark Tower | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
Pyx_e you’re fabulous. But I’m sure you know very well that the very strength of the scientific method is that it’s revisionist, and our understanding is only ever thought good until it is shown not to be, and it is the showing of the untrue that leads us to truth. Unlike religion, whose understanding of truth is absolute, science is always searching for its own mistakes. A more wholesome way of going about things, as I’m sure your friend Brian would say.
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Have we got to that already? How quick you theists are to shrug your shoulders at interesting questions, and find an answer in 'God is a mystery to us'.
Easily satisfied much?
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
If we've got that. What's the problem?
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Pyx_e you’re fabulous. But I’m sure you know very well that the very strength of the scientific method is that it’s revisionist, and our understanding is only ever thought good until it is shown not to be, and it is the showing of the untrue that leads us to truth. Unlike religion, whose understanding of truth is absolute, science is always searching for its own mistakes. A more wholesome way of going about things, as I’m sure your friend Brian would say.
The genius behind the Big Bang theory was a Catholic Priest.
At the time the scientific community dismissed the idea because it did not follow Greek philosophy and supported the doctrine of Creation too much.
[ 01. March 2015, 09:57: Message edited by: Evensong ]
--------------------
a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
The atheists are like Trin Tragula and his Total Perspective Vortex. The theists are like Zaphod Beeblebrox.
(No idea what I'm talking about? Listen here for a reading of the most relevant bit, or see here for a "technical" description.)
This is a total non-problem for Christians, exactly for the same reason why it's a total non-problem for Zaphod - thanks to God and Zarniwoop, respectively.
--------------------
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
| IP: Logged
|
|
itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
|
Posted
There is also the question of entanglement - it is assumed that the possible quantum entanglements arising from the time of the Big Bang were broken, but there is no proof that this is the case. The tiniest of acts here on Earth may have vast implications. Or we may be playing out a cosmic drama that is being unfolded elsewhere. Or both.
--------------------
"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
|
Posted
I agree with a number of posters on this thread. We're small, but we're not insignificant.
--------------------
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
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
Am I alone, then, in thinking that the scale of our smallness is important? If my metaphorical epic movie written and directed by Almighty God were three millennia instead of three hours long, and if all life in the universe played an infinitesimally brief cameo role that occupied a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second in it, that's the important bit.
Am I alone in wondering why bother with the rest?
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The atheists are like Trin Tragula and his Total Perspective Vortex. The theists are like Zaphod Beeblebrox.
(No idea what I'm talking about? Listen here for a reading of the most relevant bit, or see here for a "technical" description.)
This is a total non-problem for Christians, exactly for the same reason why it's a total non-problem for Zaphod - thanks to God and Zarniwoop, respectively.
Yeah, I brought up the TPV upthread, and suggested it's nothing to be proud of if you can kid yourself that you're important because you're the most insignificant thing in the universe...
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pyx_e
Quixotic Tilter
# 57
|
Posted
quote:
But I’m sure you know very well that the very strength of the scientific method is that it’s revisionist ......
And despite what some shipmates may argue so is the life of faith.
quote:
Am I alone, then, in thinking that the scale of our smallness is important?
As the man said "But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love."
You may be small, insignificant even, but given this gift, this life, your Love my light up things beyond your imagining.
For me this is what it is all about. The gravitational tumbling of a black hole 12 billion times bigger than our sun pales into insignificance when someone forgives, loves, hopes, heals.
For God the making of it ALL was but a breath, the saving of you cost His last breath. Such love.
--------------------
It is better to be Kind than right.
Posts: 9778 | From: The Dark Tower | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Pyx_e
Quixotic Tilter
# 57
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
The atheists are like Trin Tragula and his Total Perspective Vortex. The theists are like Zaphod Beeblebrox.
(No idea what I'm talking about? Listen here for a reading of the most relevant bit, or see here for a "technical" description.)
This is a total non-problem for Christians, exactly for the same reason why it's a total non-problem for Zaphod - thanks to God and Zarniwoop, respectively.
That's a bit weird, I just made a HGTTG/Zaphod ref/joke on the current Martin Hell thread. Am I channelling Ingob?
--------------------
It is better to be Kind than right.
Posts: 9778 | From: The Dark Tower | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Will H
Shipmate
# 4178
|
Posted
Are tall fat people more significant than short thin people?
If your yardstick measures physical size, then yes we are insignificant in the universe.
[ 01. March 2015, 10:46: Message edited by: Will H ]
Posts: 56 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
|
Posted
quote:
Pyx_e: For me this is what it is all about. The gravitational tumbling of a black hole 12 billion times bigger than our sun pales into insignificance when someone forgives, loves, hopes, heals.
This.
Christians believe that we are significant because we are significant to God. He made us and we have something of Him in us.
But the second reason, no less important, we are significant because we are significant to eachother. Yes, I'm talking about relationships between one tiny speck and another tiny speck. But these matter, and their size cannot be measured.
--------------------
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
| IP: Logged
|
|
itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
|
Posted
just to put some perspective on it APOD for Sun 1st March
--------------------
"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
agingjb
Shipmate
# 16555
|
Posted
There is nothing in Science (or Mathematics) that moves me towards disbelief.
The tendency of Christians to say "raca, thou fool", contrary to explicit instruction, on the other hand ...
--------------------
Refraction Villanelles
Posts: 464 | From: Southern England | Registered: Jul 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
|
Posted
quote:
itsarumdo: just to put some perspective on it APOD for Sun 1st March
Here is a permanent link to that picture.
--------------------
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
| IP: Logged
|
|
IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Yeah, I brought up the TPV upthread, and suggested it's nothing to be proud of if you can kid yourself that you're important because you're the most insignificant thing in the universe...
You don't get it, do you? We are the most significant corporeal thing in the entire universe, indeed, all of the material universe is made for us. It is our right and duty to lord over it as stewards of (material) creation. In the broader picture, we are the hinge of creation, that binds together the material and immaterial domain: highest of matter, lowest of spirit. We have fallen from our natural place by sin, and as with any domain whose ruler is corrupted, so material creation has fallen with us. But God has chosen to raise us out of this misery even above our natural superiors, the spirits. God became man, raising humanity to the Divine - and now the Queen of Heaven, the highest creature of them all, is not an Archangel any longer, but a human woman.
You point to the cosmos and say it shows our insignificance. I say, witness the splendour of our realm, or rather, witness the poor foreshadowing of the much greater glory that will be New Creation, the domain of resurrected humanity. We will be co-heirs in Christ, we will be as Royal as we will be God-like.
And we do remember what ought to have been. All this science fiction with people zipping at warp speed to distant worlds ... it's an echo, a communal memory, of the place that was assigned to humanity before the fall. Come to think of that, probably most of the gods of the Greeks and other pagans are not really describing demons. They are mostly describing the "ought have been" of humanity in corrupted ways. Well, the world will again be our oyster when Christ returns and finally ends the rule of the usurper, of the prince of the world, who tricked us out of our domain. Book you place now, while you still can, and let's stride the new universe together in resurrected glory. Ad astra, to the stars...
--------------------
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
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Christians believe that we are significant because we are significant to God. He made us.....
See, this is where I get stuck. Where do you get that idea that we're important to Him? He didn't just make us, he made the whole fucking shebang.
Your idea that we're important to God goes against your own argument. We know, due to modern science, that life in all its possible forms occupies an incomprehensibly small part of the physical and temporal whole, right? We know that, in terms of the duration of the universe, conditions necessary to support life are vanishingly brief, and that the scale of this brevity is mindnumbing. Think of the way a single grain of sand would stand out individually on a beach covering our entire planet, and you're still so far from the scale here that you have to sart again.
I do agree that, if you happen to BE that grain of sand, then in that very particular sense you're important. But that's a very self-oriented perspective, isnt it? It's anthropocentricity gone bigtime. What is this single grain to the rest, or more pertinently, to a god who sees and knows all other grains?
You believe that God can know us and also every other thing in the universe, and that his transcendence of spacetime permits him a perspective of the whole that we are forbidden by our finiteness, right? He sees all the individual grains of sand. He watches the whole damn movie, all three thousand years of it, not just the fraction of a nanosecond of it in which life makes its cameo appearance. From that perspective, then, from God's own viewpoint, how is it that you must be important?*
* If the answer is something like 'It's a mystery', please don't trouble yourself.
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
|
Posted
Please don't talk like that, IngoB. You're frightening me.
--------------------
این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
|
Posted
Without single grains of sand there would be no beach. Without single stars there would be no universe. Without single humans there would be no human race.
Every particle matters.
Do they matter to God?
I'm not sure.
I think God is either in and through every part of everything or s/he doesn't exist. If the former then s/he is elusive in order to give us freedom - no other reason. Christianity? It has a bit of the truth - as do all other religions and none. "Take the best of them and make the best of it." is my motto. We are here on Earth for a short enough time without wasting too much ink on the whys and wherefores. Most religions (and those with none) have 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' That'll do for a religious text - none other are needed imo.
[ 01. March 2015, 12:28: Message edited by: Boogie ]
--------------------
Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
Pages in this thread: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
|
Contact us | Ship of Fools | Privacy statement
© Ship of Fools 2016
UBB.classicTM
6.5.0
|
|
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Printer-friendly view
