(Jan 21, 2024 02:39 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: This telescope has expanded the range of the observable universe yet there is still no sign that we are not alone. There’s even hints that there are other universes and that perhaps not everything came into existence at the BB but prior to it.
For theists, do these revelations make one wonder why all this is necessary? I imagine that God could focus more on us without there being more to care for. Still it’s kind of like whittling down a Sequoia to make a toothpick. Unless we are destined to fill the universe(s) with life I can’t see any purpose for so many galaxies void of intelligent life.. Must be some real exciting stuff coming to believers.
I think that the 'God' story made more sense in a small geocentric universe with only a handful of known planets in their circular paths overhead and the stars just tiny white dots on a black domelike firmament. All created maybe 4,000 years ago. That little universe with the Earth in its center did seem like a fishbowl for humans.
But space and time more or less infinite in all directions, with billions of galaxies each with with billions of stars, most of which probably have many planets. Plus an unknown number of brown dwarfs and starless rogue planets in the dark spaces between the stars and galaxies. To say nothing of black holes and neutron stars and exotic objects like that. As Carl Sagan used to chant in that voice of his: "Billions and Billions"! Lots of powers of ten.
That grandiose universe just seens kind of
excessive if it was created for human beings alone.
(Jan 21, 2024 04:52 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: I ponder the immensity of the universe we have only scratched the surface on for now. Trillions of galaxies each containing hundreds of billions of stars many of which harbor innumerable planets and moons. All that vacant real estate, wasted and useless from our own biocentric perspective. I suspect there are many more realms filled with beings we can't even imagine. We have to begin to think in terms beyond life, admitting the possibility of minds and consciousnesses out there unsaddled by the exigencies of physical matter and energy.
I'm also inclined to think that the universe is probably filled with perhaps inexhaustable wonders. Just a century of astronomical research has revealed a few of them. And I'm largely convinced that all of it wasn't created for human beings. I'm quite doubtful that it was created for any of its inhabitants, no matter how amazing those inhabitants might be to us.
I'm doubtful that the universe is a 'creation' at all, in any intentionally designed craftsmanship sense.
But that being said, I just feel intuitively in my gut that the universe has an
explanation, some reason why it exists at all and why its rules (laws of physics, logic itself) are as they are. I don't really expect that humans (or perhaps any other hypothetical aliens) knows what that that explanation is. Sometimes I think of it as
God, though not in an 'Abrahamic' way, but more in the manner of the ancient Greek philosophers or perhaps the natural theologians. (Ultimate explanation, source of cosmic order etc.)
It's the ultimate metaphysical question, and perhaps some of the elder races in the universe have devoted themselves to trying to figure it out, in some scientific/religious quest. (The grandest science fiction has imagined that.)
Quote:What should we be looking for, in a domain as infinitely variegated as the entire cosmos?
Our problem, perhaps the problem of all sentient beings, is that we are historically contextual beings.
Imagine a scholar 1000 years ago in 1024. That scholar wouldn't be in any position to ask the kind of questions that we today would consider most important to ask. (Scientific questions for one.) That medieval scholar's intellectual context wouldn't make it possible. So imagine what our own context today might look like from the vantage point of 1000 years in the future.
What
should we look for? How can we possibly know?
So (my opinion) is that our best course might be simply to observe. Try to gather as much data as we can, but resist as best we can the urge to jump to conclusions. Hypothesize all we like, but resist the temptation to confuse our hypotheses with ultimate truth. Our attempts to pontificate on the ultimate nature of reality today might look as foolish and laughable a thousand years from now as the certainties of 1024 look to us today.
Jan 21, 2024 02:39 PM
