Thread: Est Est Est Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Tortuf (# 3784) on
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Est Est Est. The phrase comes from a tale about a 12th century German Bishop going to see the Pope. He has a scout go ahead of him to Montefiascone to scope out the best wine in town. The scout was supposed to write Est (this) on the door of the place with the best wine. As the story goes the scout liked the wine in one establishment so much he he wrote Est three times.
All of which has nothing much to do with my topic, except that the frontispiece is labelled "This. This." and for darned good reason. Est, boys and girls, is a picture of thousands upon thousands of galaxies; some of which are at least 9 Billion light years distant. In other words, you are looking at unimaginably ancient history, and at objects that are so mind boggling large it is beyond human capacity to get a grip on how darn big even one of them is.
Seeing this picture and absorbing the implications of the picture (as much as I am capable of absorbing anyway) has gotten me to pondering how adequate my picture of God really is. Prompted in good part because of the generally excellent conversation on Boogie's In what ways does God give us freedom? thread.
So, because of Sunday School and because of my very human and therefore limited capacity, I perceive of God as this guy who created the world, and then sort of threw in the Sun and planets and stars so we could see something pretty at night and see anything in the day.
And, yea, that happened a while back. Thousands, maybe even hundreds of years ago.
OOPS.
The Earth is some 4.543 Billion years old. That means stuff in this picture is twice as old as the Earth.
How do you cope with a God that did all that?
Are there different Gods for different planets? (Other than Captain Kirk, of course.) How does God even keep up?
I don't know any answers. Though it might be another interesting conversation.
Posted by Bishops Finger (# 5430) on
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Dunno how we cope with a God like that - but he shows us in the person of Jesus Christ how he copes with us, no?
Oh, and thanks for making my head hurt........
![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
Ian J.
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
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Verb tense is important here. It is more accurate to say "God who is doing all that"
If you think that is bad then try to realise what omniscient really means. It means that God does not really work with the laws of science rather he knows the life story of every single quark. The orderly nature of the Universe, therefore, come as God's signature rather than his absence.
"What is a human being that God is mindful of him?" Yet mindful God is and cannot be otherwise. These are just some of the problems I have of talking of God existing. Something that exists must have limits, God does not seem to have these.
Jengie
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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The more mind-boggling bit is this from the article:
quote:
this image represents a tiny fraction of the entire sky; perhaps only one ten-millionth of it
To me, this goes straight here:
quote:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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I spend a lot of time on this website. It makes me feel privileged to be a speck on a speck within a speck within a speck.
But it doesn't really make me think of God, except to wonder just where she is in/through all this.
Is God 'dark matter'?
"First detected about 80 years ago, dark matter is thought to be the gravitational "glue" that holds galaxies together. The mysterious invisible substance is not made of the same kind of matter that makes up stars, planets, and people. Astronomers know little about dark matter, yet it accounts for most of the universe's mass."
Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
"What is a human being that God is mindful of him?" Yet mindful God is and cannot be otherwise. These are just some of the problems I have of talking of God existing. Something that exists must have limits, God does not seem to have these.
Jengie
"mindful God is and cannot be otherwise."
This is a faith assertion isn't it? That experience may contradict.
Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I spend a lot of time on this website. It makes me feel privileged to be a speck on a speck within a speck within a speck.
But it doesn't really make me think of God, except to wonder just where she is in/through all this.
Is God 'dark matter'?
"First detected about 80 years ago, dark matter is thought to be the gravitational "glue" that holds galaxies together. The mysterious invisible substance is not made of the same kind of matter that makes up stars, planets, and people. Astronomers know little about dark matter, yet it accounts for most of the universe's mass."
Wow, let this freak you out:
If God is dark matter...
And we are made in the image of God...
Then we are dark matter.
Posted by Tortuf (# 3784) on
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Just don't go here with this discussion.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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What, to Italian lessons?
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
"What is a human being that God is mindful of him?" Yet mindful God is and cannot be otherwise. These are just some of the problems I have of talking of God existing. Something that exists must have limits, God does not seem to have these.
Jengie
"mindful God is and cannot be otherwise."
This is a faith assertion isn't it? That experience may contradict.
Not really, I am saying that the way God is philosophically to be understood as aware. There is no automatic role on to the mindfulness being benign. Indeed, if things being the status quo is neutral, it would be best to think of this a neutral.
God the hunter of faults is also a Biblical image.
Jengie
Posted by Tortuf (# 3784) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
What, to Italian lessons?
Some jokes work. Some don't. Some go better when you check the sound.
Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Kelly Alves:
Wow, let this freak you out:
If God is dark matter...
And we are made in the image of God...
Then we are dark matter.
That could indeed explain an awful lot about us.
Funny all this, because just a couple weeks ago in work we were discussing the universe, dark matter, and so on and so forth. For some reason I, (not having heard or read it ), blurted out 'God could be dark matter'. My two atheist/agnostic work colleagues did stop and ponder this possibility for a moment.
And BTW, this isn't from someone who does hard sell evangelism .
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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I think "God is dark matter" comes dangerously close to a God of the gaps argument.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I think "God is dark matter" comes dangerously close to a God of the gaps argument.
But dark matter doesn't seem to be made up of gaps - it seems to be the 'glue' which holds the whole caboodle together.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Boogie: But dark matter doesn't seem to be made up of gaps - it seems to be the 'glue' which holds the whole caboodle together.
I don't think you should take the word 'gap' too literally here.
In a sense, dark matter is scientists' shorthand for "we don't know". We don't know what's pulling on these galaxies. Gravity isn't enough to explain it. So they put the term 'dark matter' there, but they really don't know what it is or how it works.
I can see the temptation of equating this with God, but the risk is: what if scientists do find out one day where this force comes from?
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I can see the temptation of equating this with God, but the risk is: what if scientists do find out one day where this force comes from?
They don't even know what it's made of, never mind where it originates. If we believe God holds the whole thing together then s/he must do it somehow!
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Boogie: They don't even know what it's made of, never mind where it originates. If we believe God holds the whole thing together then s/he must do it somehow!
Perhaps yes. And if you want to believe that God is dark matter, then by all means don't let me stop you.
But it is risky. "What is this force pulling on the galaxies?" is the kind of question Science is rather good at solving. I wouldn't be surprised if they found the answer in a couple of years.
[ 11. October 2015, 19:28: Message edited by: LeRoc ]
Posted by Jane R (# 331) on
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Tortuf: quote:
Est Est Est. The phrase comes from a tale about a 12th century German Bishop going to see the Pope. He has a scout go ahead of him to Montefiascone to scope out the best wine in town. The scout was supposed to write Est (this) on the door of the place with the best wine. As the story goes the scout liked the wine in one establishment so much he he wrote Est three times.
<tangent> Wait, the bishop's scout had the job of going ahead of the bishop and, ahem, *testing* the wine in all the taverns of each town he passed through? Presumably at the bishop's expense?
What a great job. <\end tangent>
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
Boogie: They don't even know what it's made of, never mind where it originates. If we believe God holds the whole thing together then s/he must do it somehow!
Perhaps yes. And if you want to believe that God is dark matter, then by all means don't let me stop you.
But it is risky. "What is this force pulling on the galaxies?" is the kind of question Science is rather good at solving. I wouldn't be surprised if they found the answer in a couple of years.
I don't "want to believe' it. I am simply speculating.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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We seem to be having some noise in the communication. Never mind.
Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on
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Yes I can understand the temptation of -- this is still a mystery to us so if must be something to do with God---- rather like the OT writers pointing to natural phenomena such as thunder and lightening and calling it out as God's doing.
Maybe it's mistaken to keep God as a far off mystery who is pushed further and further into the outer Cosmos the more science dimisses the current intangibles as merely natural.
I mean wasn't Jesus pointing to the wonder of it all......the here and the now? From the tiniest wind-blown particle to the mightiest force imaginable, or indeed with the help of science, a force beyond imaginable.
[ 11. October 2015, 20:54: Message edited by: rolyn ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
How do you cope with a God that did all that?
We certainly cannot. As mindboggling as the universe is, and it definitely is all you say and more, God is even weirder and more mindboggling.
The only way to cope with such a God is through Jesus. And when you think of the gulf between us and God, it makes the kenosis of the Incarnation all the more boggling.
Posted by Galloping Granny (# 13814) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
How do you cope with a God that did all that?
You stop calling God 'He'
GG
Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
How do you cope with a God that did all that?
You stop calling God 'He'
GG
Well, for starters... ![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Posted by SusanDoris (# 12618) on
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Super OP!! Some years ago I was at a conference where Prof Brian Cox was one of the speakers. He showed a photo of one small part of the sky taken from Hubble (I think) and pointed out that this picture contained millions of galaxies and that this was only a small section of space; also of course that there is more and more beyond. That is such an amazingly exciting idea.
Boogie - That's a web site I hadn't seen before - I've added it to 'favourites' straight away!
Posted by Golden Key (# 1468) on
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James Weldon Johnson wrote a poem called "The Creation", from his book "God's Trombones". It's up close and personal of what it was like for God. One of my favorite poems.
Folks who are not God-inclined might like it for the sheer storytelling and joy of it.
There are audios and videos online, too. I looked for the symphonic performance I saw on TV when I was a kid (60s or 70s), but couldn't find it.
Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on
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Posted by mouse:
quote:
We certainly cannot. As mindboggling as the universe is, and it definitely is all you say and more, God is even weirder and more mindboggling.
The only way to cope with such a God is through Jesus. And when you think of the gulf between us and God, it makes the kenosis of the Incarnation all the more boggling.
This. I think this it what it makes me reflect on: the absolute necessity of the incarnation as the only viable way of revelation for us to truly understand something of God. It's all terribly 'Barthian' even though he's horribly out of fashion these days.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
SusanDoris: Boogie - That's a web site I hadn't seen before - I've added it to 'favourites' straight away!
(There's plenty more websites like this. My favourites are Astronomy Picture of the Day, the Bad Astronomer, Universe Today and Space.com)
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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Thanks LeRoc - bookmarked!
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posted by Tortuf (# 3784) on
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So, assuming without any evidence, that there are sentient beings on other planets, what do they have to help them cope with a God who can create this vast universe?
For myself, I cope with this God by not trying to understand God, and instead open myself to God through prayer and meditation. Having experienced God in my life I am starting to be open to see God in everyone and everything. Instead of feeling small and helpless in the face of the vastness of the "else" I am starting to feel comforted and at one with God's creation.
Just a start mind.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Tortuf: So, assuming without any evidence, that there are sentient beings on other planets, what do they have to help them cope with a God who can create this vast universe?
They conquer it!!!
(I guess that's one way of dealing.)
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on
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OK, I can accept that the universe is vast, vaster than our ability to understand it - but I simply cannot comprehend such an ancient and vast object Earlier this year, there was the announcement that a new galaxy had been discovered, more than 13 billion years old. Can you understand that there is an object so far away that the light from it took so long to reach where we are?
A few points: we measure distances such as these in light years, the distance that light travels in a year. But the year we refer to is the present year that we on planet Earth experience, an earth that has been in existence less than half the life of the universe where we live. Does anyone know when our present year came to be?
And the speed of light - said to be a constant 300,000 m/s approx . Do we know that that is correct? And how (in simple layman's terms for any reference please)?
As for dark matter, remember Einstein's cosmological constant? He postulated it, then withdrew from that assertion. And then he went back to it.
Posted by Paul. (# 37) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Tortuf:
The Earth is some 4.543 Billion years old. That means stuff in this picture is twice as old as the Earth.
How do you cope with a God that did all that?
I think that creation, ex nihilo creation, is mind-boggling regardless of whether it's on the scale of a single daisy or a sky full of galaxies. God did something we can't comprehend. He happens to have done it on a vast scale.
Maybe it's because I've been watching videos on Graham's number but scale per se is not that impressive. Because as staggeringly big as it is - you literally can't fit the number in your brain - it comes from a relatively simple calculation that you set up and then simply repeat over and over. And it was discovered/invented/defined by a human being with a finite brain.
Creation on the other hand. Real physical, out of the nothingness creation, that's truly beyond comprehension. At least for me.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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Some interesting questions you're asking!
quote:
Gee D: Earlier this year, there was the announcement that a new galaxy had been discovered, more than 13 billion years old. Can you understand that there is an object so far away that the light from it took so long to reach where we are?
You seem to be mixing things up here. The fact that this galaxy is 13 billion years old isn't very exceptional. Our own Milky Way is older than that. I think what they referred to is that this galaxy is 13 billion light years away.
This is at the edge of where we expect to see galaxies. Remember hat when we look 13 billion light years away, we're really looking 13 billion light years into the past. Any older than that, and we're already so close to the Big Bang that we don't expect to see galaxies any more. So the interesting thing here is that we see the earliest galaxies that existed, very shortly after they were born. This gives us important clues about how galaxies came to be in the first place.
quote:
Gee D: A few points: we measure distances such as these in light years, the distance that light travels in a year. But the year we refer to is the present year that we on planet Earth experience, an earth that has been in existence less than half the life of the universe where we live. Does anyone know when our present year came to be?
Yes, when scientist talk about a 'light year', this refers to the current Earth year. Billions of years ago, it is quite possible that the Earth moved at a different distance from the Sun, so the length of the year may have been different, but they don't take that into account.
(If you want to become very technical, scientists define the second in terms of oscillations of a specific Cesium atom, they set the year as a fixed number of seconds, and they define a light year as the distance light travels in that amount of seconds.)
quote:
Gee D: And the speed of light - said to be a constant 300,000 m/s approx . Do we know that that is correct? And how (in simple layman's terms for any reference please)?
We know that this is correct, basically because the constancy of light speed is what gives us Relativity Theory, and this theory is an important basis of how we think about the Universe. This theory has been experimentally confirmed to an extremely high position in the movements on Mercury and in clocks that we put on satellites. We also see it confirmed in all phenomena we observe in the sky.
quote:
Gee D: As for dark matter, remember Einstein's cosmological constant? He postulated it, then withdrew from that assertion. And then he went back to it.
Hehe, the cosmological constant is closely related to dark energy, and that's one of the things about which scientists say "we don't know".
Posted by Nicodemia (# 4756) on
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I always assumed God was or could be Dark Energy
Seems there more of that than dark matter.
Posted by Tortuf (# 3784) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
They conquer it!!!
Well, of course. Let that be a lesson to me.
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on
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Thank you Le Roc. Yes,my first point was muddled and would have been better expressed as you suggest. But my inability to be able to comprehend that in any but the purest intellectual sense remains.
I was aware of the type of definition of second etc in the terms you set out, even if I could not quickly remember the particular detail. Your answer does get to what I had imagined, namely that our present year may well not be what it was some 4 billion years ago. I'd be very surprised if the time Earth took to circumnavigate the sun did not take a long time to settle to what it is now (assuming that it is precisely the same each year now - my suspicion is that each year it is slower by an amount too small for us to measure).
Your answer to my 3rd point highlights an ambiguity in my expression - what I meant to ask is has the speed of light always been what it is now? Was it perhaps different in the first few million years after the creation to its present. And how do we know one way or the other?
Your answer to my cosmological constant point is exactly what I was getting to. Sometimes we just do not know despite inconsistencies in the theories and the answers given to the formulae. Einstein was honest.
A final fascinating point: even in a universe and galaxy as old as ours, there are new stars still being created, vast areas of extremely high heat in the nebulae. Yet over the 13,5 billion or so years, the average temperature of the universe has dropped to barely above 0 degrees K. It is indeed an enormous universe.
[ 12. October 2015, 11:16: Message edited by: Gee D ]
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Gee D: But my inability to be able to comprehend that in any but the purest intellectual sense remains.
I'm definitely with you here. 13.6 billion years ago, 13.6 billion light years away ... Our minds will only ever be able to comprehend that in an intellectual way (if that).
quote:
Gee D: Your answer does get to what I had imagined, namely that our present year may well not be what it was some 4 billion years ago. I'd be very surprised if the time Earth took to circumnavigate the sun did not take a long time to settle to what it is now (assuming that it is precisely the same each year now - my suspicion is that each year it is slower by an amount too small for us to measure).
The length of the year is determined by the distance of the Earth to the Sun (by Kepler's laws). We know that some planets in the solar system have migrated (gotten closer to the Sun) billions of years ago. For example, Jupiter has done that. I'm not sure whether we know anything whether the Earth has migrated or not. A quick google didn't give me anything.
But this doesn't have any influence on our definition of the light year.
quote:
Gee D: Your answer to my 3rd point highlights an ambiguity in my expression - what I meant to ask is has the speed of light always been what it is now? Was it perhaps different in the first few million years after the creation to its present. And how do we know one way or the other?
I don't think it was different. Our current cosmological models are based on the assumption that the speed of light has always been the same. These models explain what we observe in the Universe very well. If the light speed had been different, our models would have been proven false right away.
quote:
Gee D: A final fascinating point: even in a universe and galaxy as old as ours, there are new stars still being created, vast areas of extremely high heat in the nebulae. Yet over the 13,5 billion or so years, the average temperature of the universe has dropped to barely above 0 degrees K. It is indeed an enormous universe.
The rate of new star creation in our Milky Way is around 7 per year. Between now and Christmas, a new star will be born (how appropriate). Isn't this wonderful?
Yes, I'm rather happy that entropy isn't zero yet ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posted by Ambivalence (# 16165) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
The fact that this galaxy is 13 billion years old isn't very exceptional. Our own Milky Way is older than that. I think what they referred to is that this galaxy is 13 billion light years away.
This is at the edge of where we expect to see galaxies. Remember hat when we look 13 billion light years away, we're really looking 13 billion light years into the past. Any older than that, and we're already so close to the Big Bang that we don't expect to see galaxies any more. So the interesting thing here is that we see the earliest galaxies that existed, very shortly after they were born. This gives us important clues about how galaxies came to be in the first place.
It's a little more complicated than that - because the universe is expanding, we can see galaxies which are much further away (in light years) than they are old (in years, which can never be older than the 14 billion-ish age of the universe); the radius of the visible universe works out at about 50 billion light years when expansion is accounted for.
Whether the visible universe itself accounts for all Creation is another question.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Ambivalence: It's a little more complicated than that - because the universe is expanding, we can see galaxies which are much further away (in light years) than they are old (in years, which can never be older than the 14 billion-ish age of the universe); the radius of the visible universe works out at about 50 billion light years when expansion is accounted for.
Agreed
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on
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Or whether the universe is so vast that light from the extremities has yet to reach where we are - and any answer to that might lead us to an understanding that the universe is even older than we presently think.
Thank you for your tolerance Le Roc. I do think that your statement of present theory:
I don't think it was different. Our current cosmological models are based on the assumption that the speed of light has always been the same. These models explain what we observe in the Universe very well. If the light speed had been different, our models would have been proven false right away.
has strong elements of circularity to it, even with the addition that the present models give a good explanation of what's going on.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
Gee D: Or whether the universe is so vast that light from the extremities has yet to reach where we are
Yes (but with the caveat that the universe doesn't have 'extremities').
quote:
Gee D: and any answer to that might lead us to an understanding that the universe is even older than we presently think.
Not very likely. The reasons to believe that the Universe is slightly less than 14 billion years old are pretty solid. (I don't pretend to know all of them.)
quote:
Gee D: I do think that your statement of present theory: [...] has strong elements of circularity to it, even with the addition that the present models give a good explanation of what's going on.
But this is how science works. Our models of how the Universe evolved over time are testable. Our models assume the light speed was constant over time, and they work. No model that assumes it wasn't constant does. Observations are the judge of that.
The speed of light isn't just a number. It is related to the Theory of Relativity and to the structure of the Universe in a very intrinsic way. If it had been different in the past, we would have seen the effect of that right away.
Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
Or whether the universe is so vast that light from the extremities has yet to reach where we are - and any answer to that might lead us to an understanding that the universe is even older than we presently think.
These are entirely separate questions. The physical size of the observable universe is determined by the age of the oldest galaxies, the speed of light and the expansion rate. As time progresses (on a scale where the entirety of human existence is a point), it's certainly possible that more universe becomes visible (although this isn't guaranteed to be always true) but this won't alter estimates of the universe's age.
When the universe was small and hot, it was basically a plasma, and opaque to light. The remnant of that opaque plasma is the Cosmic Microwave Background, which means I get to refer to one of my favourite references, the delightful Alpher, R., Bethe, H., & Gamow, G. 1948, Phys. Rev. 73, 803. (Gamow added Hans Bethe to the author list to make it cuter, something that Ralph Alpher always resented.)
The best measurements of the age of the universe (about 13.8 billion years) come from the anisotropy of the CMB. They are somewhat model-dependent, but are unlikely to be far wrong; estimates from other data come up with numbers in the same ballpark.
[ 12. October 2015, 23:32: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
Posted by Gee D (# 13815) on
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Thank you both for your comments. Not sure that I understand them properly, but shall mull over them.
Posted by Ambivalence (# 16165) on
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Two quotes come to my mind when I think of our place in the world.
From Julian of Norwich:
"He showed me a little thing like a hazelnut, round as a ball, lying in the palm of my hand.
I looked on it in my mind's eye, and wondered what it could be, and I was answered like this:
'It is all that is made.' "
and from Tolkien, in the Ainulindale:
"And this habitation might seem a little thing to those who consider only the majesty of the Ainur, and not their terrible sharpness; as who should take the whole field of Arda for the foundation of a pillar and so raise it until the cone of its summit were more bitter than a needle..."
We're middling in size, on the scale of the whole universe as we know it; at once tiny and enormous. Gets me.
With respect to dark matter, there are alternatives (MOND &c.) which propose modifications of gravity over large scales and which (in some respects) predict the real shapes of galaxies better than dark matter theories do. Very much a minority theory but worth keeping in mind.
Posted by balaam (# 4543) on
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A bit of a tangent but...
I find it equally amazing to look at the detail as well as the big picture, such as this meteorite through a microscope. Even in the smallest detail the works of God are amazing.
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