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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: An idea of eternity.
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I sometimes think a lot about eternity, life after death and suchlike. I suppose it is my evangelical upbringing that seeks to understand it.
So I wanted to discuss one way of seeing this. As Brian Cox is fond of telling us, the universe will spend unknowable billions of years as all of the matter changes to energy, and all of the energy is dissipated. It struck me that, if we were to be considered to exist through that time, we would be, in all reasonable terms, eternal. If - in some sense - the energy fluctuations that we make were rcontinued to be reflected in the universe, then that would be a sort of eternity. No?
The problem I get is that traditional Christianity is quite hot on the "bodily" or "physical" resurrection. I can - sort of - get my head around a "spiritual" resurrection, in a different set of dimensions, in a different form of this universe. But a physical one is a problem. Some of my atoms belongs to Napolean. So who gets them?
But if we are made eternal by our presence, by the changes we make in the ultimate pattern of the universe, that (for me) makes my physical presence in the universe eternal, or near enough.
And I do accept that for some, the answer is simply "there is no such thing". That is fine, but I believe there is, and want to explore what it might mean.
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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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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
But a physical one is a problem. Some of my atoms belongs to Napolean. So who gets them?
Wikipedia has it that there's about 810 gigatonnes of carbon in the atmosphere (mostly CO2). The biosphere in total has 1900 gigatonnes. There is 36000 gigatonnes dissolved in water. I estimate the total weight in carbon of all the human beings that have ever lived as 4 gigatonnes. So assuming that's all mixed thoroughly about 1 in 10000 atoms that are part of your body have previously been part of another human being. There are a lot of atoms in your body(*) so that's still several billion atoms that were in Napoleon, but I don't think the atmosphere would miss them
(*) Understatement.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
If a butterfly flaps its wings in North Korea, is there an effect where I am, on the other side of the world? I could also query the movements of stars so many lightyears from me that it takes thousands of years to reach my eyes: which means we should reject astrology.
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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
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Proton decay means we have 2 x 10^20 billion years before the Cox Point.
200,000,000,000,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000 years.
Move a zero from the left to the right and that's roughly how many universe lifetimes there are left. There will be no stars after just another one.
But we won't need them will we ... the big New Jerusalem pyramid lamp will illuminate everything ...
How anyone can imagine a reality greater than, more real than ... reality is beyond me. As to how many of my carbon atoms will dance on the head of Julius Caesar ...
I just want all the current plant species to last so I can tick them all off. Whilst learning to be a concert pianist, Cambridge senior wrangler and general polyglot. We need Baxter-Pratchett step-Earths.
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Love wins
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I suppose it is a chronological butterfly-effect idea. That our existence will have ripples right through the long slow heat-death of the universe.
Is that eternal life? Is that compatible with a biblical view of eternal life?
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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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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
There will be a new heaven and a new earth.
Now will always be good.
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Love wins
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I suppose it is a chronological butterfly-effect idea. That our existence will have ripples right through the long slow heat-death of the universe.
Is that eternal life? Is that compatible with a biblical view of eternal life?
Problem is the Bible imagery is entirely locked in a universe that had a beginning in a human time-scale and by miraculous fiat, a recorded history right through to the time of writing, an earth at the centre of the universe with heaven in an above and beyond place. Jesus ascended because that's the direction to heaven, just like he'd descended to earth in his incarnation. The new Holy City comes down from heaven through the clouds. Just as the universe came into being at God's command, it would end at it. Through the history of the world one could see God's plan in restoring it to himself after it had been corrupted right at the very beginning.
The problem is the real universe isn't like that. Earth is a tiny rock orbiting a middling star (both in size and stage of stellar development) in what Douglas Adams described as the unfashionable western spiral arm of the galaxy. It formed 4.6 billion years ago, around half to two thirds of the way through the universe's existence so far, and the processes by which it did so, whilst not fully understood, are natural. For the first quarter of its history it was lifeless, then for nearly all the history f life on earth that life has been unicellular and prokaryotic. In the last few minutes, cosmically speaking, cells got their act together and formed eukaryotic multicellular organisms. It took a few hundred million years for them to really get their ideas together and produce stuff like dinosaurs and large mammals, and then, right at the very end, in a period too small to see on any linear geological history chart, humans appeared. And only in the last 10% or so of their history have they formed civilisations, cities, history, writing, and all that, as far as we know anyway. If there was a fall in human history, it happened near the end of the story as viewed from the present day, not the beginning. Which is a problem, because if it were just the fall of civilised humanity that might work, but it's not; to it are ascribed all ills that afflict the world, and even death itself, and a corruption of all creation. The reality is that death, disease, entropy and decay have been hard-wired into the universe from the very beginning.
Working out how to make sense of the Biblical imagery set in a universe which isn't actually like the one we're in (Narnia is far more like the Biblical universe, if you recall its start and end, for example) is a major challenge and a headache. Does God step into natural history and prematurely end the universe on a human time-scale? If God is primarily interested in humanity (and given the nature of the second Person of the Trinity that doesn't seem unreasonable) then what is he going to do if the universe ends naturally in billions of years time, long after humanity has become extinct? Does he inaugurate the new heavens and new earth in this universe, with decay, death and the arrow of time still in place? What does he do then billions of years later when the spring finally comes unwound?
Don't ask me. I haven't a clue.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
So I wanted to discuss one way of seeing this. As Brian Cox is fond of telling us, the universe will spend unknowable billions of years as all of the matter changes to energy, and all of the energy is dissipated.
AIUI, the universe started with an unimaginable burst of energy, and that over the course of a few hundred million years that energy started to form matter. That matter has spent the ensuing 13 billion or so years turning back into energy which is then dissipated. I find the contrast staggering - a rapid formation and an extremely slow decline.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
From Hendrik van Loon's "Story of Mankind" (1921) - I read this as a child and it fascinated me.
"High Up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by".
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Don't ask me. I haven't a clue.
Super post!
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I'm not sure why the idea of an infinitely long period of time is appealing really. I am more interested in the idea of no time or the absence of time. This seems to be found in eastern religions, not sure if it's found in the Abrahamics, possibly in the mystics. I must have a look round Eckhart's sermons.
Eternity as no time has the advantage of matching some versions of the Big Bang, as creating time. Hence, there is no 'before' that.
I started to look into Buddhist ideas, but retreated in confusion, quite complicated. As others have said, the now is eternal, and is also the cross upon which I am destroyed.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
We're birds in a nest at the end of a little branch in a forest, trying to convince ourselves that it's all within the nest. We see some shell fragments, think there's another bird on the other side of the nest, but having just been born, can't see nor move and haven't seen over the edge of the nest. Meanwhile we're persuaded that trees don't exist, and we haven't thought of forests, and we haven't any basis to even conjecture about how our branch came to be. Trees are eternal. A bee might as well read a book with me (the bee is named Eric).
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I suppose it is a chronological butterfly-effect idea. That our existence will have ripples right through the long slow heat-death of the universe.
Is that eternal life? Is that compatible with a biblical view of eternal life?
I sometimes think about the fact that every single subatomic particle in my body has been around since the beginning of the universe and will continue to be around until its end.
A neutron in an atom in a molecule in a cell of my little toe was once part of a star. When I die (or lose my toe, I suppose) it will continue to exist as a part of the earth, or a worm, or a bacterium, or a tiger if I have a particularly interesting death.
Eventually, when the earth itself is destroyed by the expanding sun, that neutron will once again become part of a star. And when the sun itself finally dies it will become part of a planetary nebula, which may in time become part of a new star system.
And that's true for every single subatomic particle in my body. And in yours. We are stardust, and to stardust we will return.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
Marvin - I think you have grasped something of what I was thinking. That we are eternal, and the eternal nature of the particles - and the energy - that make us up may be all there is to our eternity.
Karl - I realise that trying to make it all work out in the context of a totally different worldview is complex. But as I believe that ther worldview was also valid and their writing was inspired by God, I want to try to understand - not by dismissing either the science or the Bible, but by trying to find ways in which they fit. I realise it might be impossible, but I don't think my understanding of God is incompatible with the reality we are in. So I have to try.
I like the idea of eternity, as long as it is eternity without all of the crap that is involved with living. That I find comforting, strangely.
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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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Hedgehog
Ship's Shortstop
# 14125
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
From Hendrik van Loon's "Story of Mankind" (1921) - I read this as a child and it fascinated me.
"High Up in the North in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak.
When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by".
"You may think that’s a hell of a long time. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a bird.”--- The Doctor in Doctor Who: Heaven Sent
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"We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it."--Pope Francis, Laudato Si'
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I suppose it is a chronological butterfly-effect idea. That our existence will have ripples right through the long slow heat-death of the universe.
Is that eternal life? Is that compatible with a biblical view of eternal life?
I sometimes think about the fact that every single subatomic particle in my body has been around since the beginning of the universe and will continue to be around until its end.
A neutron in an atom in a molecule in a cell of my little toe was once part of a star. When I die (or lose my toe, I suppose) it will continue to exist as a part of the earth, or a worm, or a bacterium, or a tiger if I have a particularly interesting death.
Eventually, when the earth itself is destroyed by the expanding sun, that neutron will once again become part of a star. And when the sun itself finally dies it will become part of a planetary nebula, which may in time become part of a new star system.
And that's true for every single subatomic particle in my body. And in yours. We are stardust, and to stardust we will return.
What kind of stars?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
What kind of stars?
The big, bright, burny kind.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Ohhhhh! Made from what?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Burning what?
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Love wins
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
Most stars are mostly hydrogen and helium, though all the other elements up to iron are also present. And I guess technically it's not burning so much as nuclear fusion releasing energy in the form of heat and light.
Now, did you really want a physics lesson or were you trying to make some oblique point in as obscure a manner as possible?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
They burn atomic particles into other atomic particles. They convert some of the matter into energy. So all of the big toe is still there, in a different form.
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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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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Most stars are mostly hydrogen and helium, though all the other elements up to iron are also present. And I guess technically it's not burning so much as nuclear fusion releasing energy in the form of heat and light.
Now, did you really want a physics lesson or were you trying to make some oblique point in as obscure a manner as possible?
So fourth generation stars will be made from our hydrogen and helium depleted ashes?
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Love wins
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I like the idea of eternity, as long as it is eternity without all of the crap that is involved with living. That I find comforting, strangely.
This is pretty much what keeps me interested in a concept, (The Christian afterlife), which otherwise makes no sense at all. I do get wondering about who else is going to there, which can be a minor earthly worry.
The 'Cox eternity' seems wondrous, vast, explosive,dramatic, unimaginably complex etc. No one can deny the impressive revelations of science, but the only thing it offers me in terms of the Eternity is something dusty and chaotic with an unappealing sense of cold pointlessness to it.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
The Cox eternity is certainly vast. Nowt else. Red dwarves will sustain worlds, life for a hundred universe lifetimes to date. But ... not as we know it Jim. And everyone will be there, in the sublime. Forever. One moment at a time.
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Love wins
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Eternity as no time has the advantage of matching some versions of the Big Bang, as creating time. Hence, there is no 'before' that.
That is eternity, no beginning, no end, no time. Time as we know it came into existence with the big bang and will end at the complete crunch* - and we can know no other time. Nor for that matter can we know where the energy came from to create the bang nor where it goes to at the crunch.
*Accepting that the current thinking is that the end will be no reverse of the big bang.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
There will be no crunch *, the universe will expand forever with ever attenuating energy. So the supernatural thing that creates universes has no time dimension?
* ah. So why propose it?
[ 21. September 2017, 14:42: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gee D:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Eternity as no time has the advantage of matching some versions of the Big Bang, as creating time. Hence, there is no 'before' that.
That is eternity, no beginning, no end, no time. Time as we know it came into existence with the big bang and will end at the complete crunch* - and we can know no other time. Nor for that matter can we know where the energy came from to create the bang nor where it goes to at the crunch.
*Accepting that the current thinking is that the end will be no reverse of the big bang.
I suppose the relevance to religious or spiritual thinking, is that some people claim to experience no time, or timelessness, as it might be called.
However, we are no further forrard, as such experiences remain private. No doubt they are exciting, illuminating, numinous, and so on, and also frightening.
A Sufi friend of mine often says, well, there is no past, there is no future, what are you worrying about? Well, I'm not worrying really. I am carried aloft on wings of finely spun chocolate.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Proton decay means we have 2 x 10^20 billion years before the Cox Point.
200,000,000,000,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000 years.
Move a zero from the left to the right and that's roughly how many universe lifetimes there are left. There will be no * stars after just another one.
* new, the star production rate has fallen 97% in 11 billion years. To still nearly 5,000 a second. Throughout the entire visible universe. Which only has the capacity for 5% more stars. Ever. There will be red dwarfs for trillions of years. "They're dead Dave".
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Love wins
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Proton decay means we have 2 x 10^20 billion years before the Cox Point.
200,000,000,000,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000 years.
Move a zero from the left to the right and that's roughly how many universe lifetimes there are left. There will be no * stars after just another one.
* new, the star production rate has fallen 97% in 11 billion years. To still nearly 5,000 a second. Throughout the entire visible universe. Which only has the capacity for 5% more stars. Ever. There will be red dwarfs for trillions of years. "They're dead Dave".
That 5% at 5k a second is still 300 Ga mind. Call it a Ta as it's slowing down, about 95% every 10 Ga ... pretty asymptotic. So slight hyperbole on my part, but basically, bugger all going on after a few universe lifetimes and then a tad less for a hundred with just red dwarves and then ... somewhat less for an insanely long time.
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Love wins
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
There will be no crunch *,
Martin60 knows... He's been erehT ǝɹǝɥ┴ ┴ɥǝɹǝ THERE.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Doctor Who?
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Love wins
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
I like the idea of eternity, as long as it is eternity without all of the crap that is involved with living. That I find comforting, strangely.
This is pretty much what keeps me interested in a concept, (The Christian afterlife), which otherwise makes no sense at all. I do get wondering about who else is going to there, which can be a minor earthly worry.
The 'Cox eternity' seems wondrous, vast, explosive,dramatic, unimaginably complex etc. No one can deny the impressive revelations of science, but the only thing it offers me in terms of the Eternity is something dusty and chaotic with an unappealing sense of cold pointlessness to it.
I suppose the "Cox eternity" means that the physical universe has a sense of eternity. It may not be a positive eternity, but it means that the idea is not without scientific basis.
I am really wondering if there is any way that this eternity can be made to feel more positive? If there is any way that this can be seen in the positive light that I see it.
And I don't expect it to find a resolution here, or anywhere. I just think it is a interesting theory to explore.
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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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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
Strangely the idea of eternity, whether it be the continuation of atoms or a spiritual domain, doesn't seem to bother secular folk very much. I sometimes find that position enviable.
Folk do keep a sneaky eye on the musings of people like Hawkings and Cox, almost in the hope they might come up with a definitive answer regarding the continuum of everything. Like as though they are gurus in the world of science, the belief being that science will one day answer every question there is. How can it?
Still there is the search for how it all began. This seems to be the overriding curiosity for us, even if we were to disregard the the ending, or indeed meaning of any of it.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Gee D
Shipmate
# 13815
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
There will be no crunch *, the universe will expand forever with ever attenuating energy. So the supernatural thing that creates universes has no time dimension?
* ah. So why propose it?
Because that is the current thinking. A dozen years ago, it was a fringe thought. What will be the thinking in another dozen years? More discoveries will have been made, thinking changes with our understanding of these additional matters.
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Not every Anglican in Sydney is Sydney Anglican
Posts: 7028 | From: Warrawee NSW Australia | Registered: Jun 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
What is?
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Love wins
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
According to an eye-witness (Henry Vaughan, whose poemThe World begins "I saw Eternity the other night...") eternity is in fact a wedding ring.
[ 21. September 2017, 22:52: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
...or even 'Relationship' with God. Now this thing is beginning to make sense.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
Talking of eternity ...
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Love wins
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
I have been re-reading Karl's post which I thought was excellent and also Schroedinger's Cat's posts, which I have been thinking about a lot during the last couple of days. I tried writing a detailed response but I couldn't get the balance right! I still can’t, so I’ll just say that I find the ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ an absolutely amazing and fascinating book and, much as I’d like to, will not see the final results of all the Mars probes etc. All that will be left of me are some memories in family and friends until those fade too. I am so very lucky to have had a chance to live and be a part of it all.
P.S. I hope to be around for a good few more years yet!!! ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
[ 22. September 2017, 17:30: Message edited by: SusanDoris ]
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
Human understanding has always got a bit stuck on the sticky conundrum that is infinity and Eternity. Infinity cannot be comprehended so we feel compelled to seek beginnings and endings.
Having sought out the alphas and omegas we then become slightly disconcerted so move forward looking for a concept of the eternal -- an eternal cycle in our thinking. Hence we turn to the heavens. Whether we believe answes to lie somewhere in endless swathes of rotating rubble or whether they be held by Spirits in the sky our quest, and our objective is the same.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Carex
Shipmate
# 9643
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
Having sought out the alphas and omegas we then become slightly disconcerted so move forward looking for a concept of the eternal -- an eternal cycle in our thinking...
That's why test cricket was invented - to give an experience of eternity.
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rolyn
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# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
I have been re-reading Karl's post which I thought was excellent and also Schroedinger's Cat's posts, which I have been thinking about a lot during the last couple of days. I tried writing a detailed response but I couldn't get the balance right! I still can’t, so I’ll just say that I find the ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ an absolutely amazing and fascinating book and, much as I’d like to, will not see the final results of all the Mars probes etc.
I have gone back and read Karl's post too and agree with what you say. Also watch with great expectations the study of Mars and other planets in the Solar System.
I have to wonder though as to what actual difference it would make to humanity's thinking, and to that of philosophers, if life was discovered elsewhere. Elation may soon turn to a subconscious feeling that our place in the Grand scheme of things has been further diminished, while the puzzle of the Eternity will still be with us.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Martin60
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# 368
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Posted
Sapient life elsewhere is an utter absolute certainty. A fact as good as any other. Until we can sample the polar plumes of Europa late this century we won't find any life in the Sol system, if it's there. Even if there had been on blue Mars, there will be no incontrovertible fossil trace. But our one in a trillion galaxy alone teems with life with which we will never communicate in any way. Next century we may detect extrasolar planetary atmospheric water vapour and oxygen, which will just prove what we already know for a fact. Sapience is universal and isolated.
[ 23. September 2017, 11:03: Message edited by: Martin60 ]
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
quote:
Originally posted by SusanDoris:
I have been re-reading Karl's post which I thought was excellent and also Schroedinger's Cat's posts, which I have been thinking about a lot during the last couple of days. I tried writing a detailed response but I couldn't get the balance right! I still can’t, so I’ll just say that I find the ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ an absolutely amazing and fascinating book and, much as I’d like to, will not see the final results of all the Mars probes etc.
I have gone back and read Karl's post too and agree with what you say. Also watch with great expectations the study of Mars and other planets in the Solar System.
I have to wonder though as to what actual difference it would make to humanity's thinking, and to that of philosophers, if life was discovered elsewhere. Elation may soon turn to a subconscious feeling that our place in the Grand scheme of things has been further diminished, while the puzzle of the Eternity will still be with us.
This can never happen. Not for the vast majority of humanity. The privileged, privileged few already know.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
Human understanding has always got a bit stuck on the sticky conundrum that is infinity and Eternity. Infinity cannot be comprehended so we feel compelled to seek beginnings and endings.
Perhaps the concept of infinity is being more thought about nowadays. There must be many who are unaware of such things as the space station I suppose, but those who are regularly in communication with modern technology will certainly be.
The concept of eternity is rather different I think. It has unavoidable religious overtones. The etymology goes back to Latin but it would probably be quite difficult to go back further. quote:
The idea of Having sought out the alphas and omegas we then become slightly disconcerted so move forward looking for a concept of the eternal -- an eternal cycle in our thinking. Hence we turn to the heavens.
But we know that the heavens aren'tsomewhere in our near or far distant space! quote:
Whether we believe answes to lie somewhere in endless swathes of rotating rubble or whether they be held by Spirits in the sky our quest, and our objective is the same.
I personally do not have either a quest or an objective, other than to live my remaining years as best I can. Hopes and wishes are for family and for all young people who will be growing up during this century.
Plus, of course, keeping the tap class going until the very last minute!
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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rolyn
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# 16840
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Posted
Without wanting to sound presumptuous I would say your quest, (other than tap dancing to the last ), is that of having a healthy desire to gain knowledge as to our physical surroundings. Hence our interest in the various tin cans we are sending up to probe what appear to be a variety of dead and poisonous spheres of rock or gas.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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SusanDoris
Incurable Optimist
# 12618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by rolyn:
Without wanting to sound presumptuous I would say your quest, (other than tap dancing to the last ), is that of having a healthy desire to gain knowledge as to our physical surroundings. Hence our interest in the various tin cans we are sending up to probe what appear to be a variety of dead and poisonous spheres of rock or gas.
Yes, that is true! Interestingly, I am at present reading the part in 'Wonders of the Solar System' where Prof Cox talks of a cave in Mexico where a type of bacteria, called snottites, thrive on sulphuric acid!
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
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rolyn
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# 16840
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Posted
Yes I think this is something which is becoming more and more apparent, namely that life arises and exists in far harsher conditions than we ever thought possible. This may well mean that microbes exist in planets and moons which appear dead on the surface.
[ 24. September 2017, 13:24: Message edited by: rolyn ]
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
SusanDoris wrote:
quote:
I personally do not have either a quest or an objective, other than to live my remaining years as best I can. Hopes and wishes are for family and for all young people who will be growing up during this century.
Plus, of course, keeping the tap class going until the very last minute!
I find this interesting, as the ideas of purpose and goal and quest seem closely tied to religious thinking, and I suppose, feeling.
One thing I've noticed is how they've shrunk as I've got older. You could argue that this is because I have achieved certain things, so can now gently subside into irrelevance.
But life's purpose is an odd phrase - I suppose I like connecting with other bits of life, especially insects. Does this count?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
I have just watched a programme about the Cassini space mission, and been astounded at how awesome our solar system is.
I think scientific investigation shows us that the nature of our universe - our existence - is far more amazing than we could have imagined. And the idea of being connected to that is fantastic.
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take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
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