A very strange universe

[Justin_Swanton]

1. In eternal life, we will be able to explore all of that vastness.
2. True, but we won’t be spending eternity in these rather flimsy bodies; what we know as the human body is only the mold for a powerful, everlasting body (the pneumatikon soma) which will be immune to death or entropy. Just the thing for space travel!

ICXC NIKA

Yep, this is what I was thinking.

St Thomas Aquinas (or the writer who finished off the Summa), makes the point that the resurrected body of the redeemed will have the same attributes as Christ’s resurrected body. Two of these attributes are **subtility **(ability to pass through solid objects) and **agility **(ability to travel instantaneously to any place). In addition to these are the gifts of clarity, **immortality **and impassibility. The last of these means the resurrected body is impervious to any harm or injury, from whatever source.

This is all highly suggestive. Combine the gifts of subtility, agility and impassibility and the human body will be able to visit any point (I mean *any *point - the middle of a sun if one wants to) in the universe without need of protection. For me it is more than coincidence that a mediaeval theologian would have deduced precisely the attributes humans will need to explore a universe made known only by modern science. Too much like a jigsaw piece fitting into a puzzle. In this context the inconceivable vastness of the universe makes sense: we will have all of eternity to explore it, so the bigger the better.

Earth then, is a waiting room, a place to get ready, just big enough to accommodate the human race as it now is. In the next life it will become the jumping off point for much bigger things.

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

I apologize for being unclear. I wasn’t referring to designing a whole universe with an eternity etc., just a terraform system good enough to allow humans to live elsewhere. It seems to me that such a system wouldn’t necessarily require animal-on-animal predation. If it’s possible for a human-designed, human-sustaining system to function without animal-on-animal predation, I wonder why such a feature was deemed necessary by the intelligent designer that some claim is responsible for Earth’s system.

Your comment presupposes that we should be living in a perfect world. The Catholic teaching on the fall of angels and men eliminates this presupposition.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

[You may want to read Stephen Hawking’s *A Brief History of Time

, Carl Sagan’s The Varieties of Scientific Experience, The Dragons of Eden, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

This notion of inferring a purpose in the creation goes clear back and before to when the moons of Jupiter were first discovered and the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler inferred “with the highest confidence” that “those moons were made, not for us, but the inhabitants of Jupiter.”

I think as humans, we strive desperately to make sense of things - to attribute purpose to objects and phenomena. If it happens, it must be for a reason, a purpose, something to make [our] life meaningful. This is why we think the earth and the heavens and the galaxies were made for us, as the only known entity that can appreciate them (as we gaze in wonderment from our exalted position at the center of the universe. ha, ha.)

But I think science, and especially theoretical physics, calls that into question. This why I think Hawking claimed in a recent book that he had done away with the need for God. He thought he had explained the universe without using God to fill in the gaps. (He may have been a little premature.)

Stephen Weinberg once famously said: “…the more the universe seems comprehensible the more it seems pointless.” (pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/wein-frame.html)

Myself, I subscribe to the Anthropic Principle: If the universe hadn’t been made I wouldn’t be writing this!

Now, what’s your theory?

My theory is to work from the presupposition that God exists (one can’t fit everything into a single thread). Granted the presupposition, God, as the supremely intelligent and powerful being, created the universe. It is the characteristic of intelligence to act intelligently, i.e. with reason and purpose. Hence there is a reason why He created millions of galaxies situated at vast distances from each other in the inhospitable vacuum of space. Just exploring why He did so.

Stephen Weinberg was careful about how he said it, but he clearly doesn’t believe in a God:

“God” historically has not meant the laws of nature. It has meant an interested personality. And that’s not something we’re finding scientifically. It’s not something for which I see any evidence.

I could argue with that - just did in this thread .

 

[eschator83]

Hello Justin, it’s great to have you back with a new thread to motivate us. I regret I can’t recall off hand any prominent speculation on this topic that I admired. For me, it’s a good question that might haunt me until I found some response I thought was logical and plausible–I wouldn’t ever presume I might actually know the Mind of God.
But I think it’s reasonable that God has given us yet another glimpse in the expanse of the universe of the Grandeur and Enormity of His Nature, His Power, and His Truth. To us it’s vast; to Him it may be tiny and there may be many others we don’t even yet suspect.
I like St Paul’s statement (Rom 1:20): Ever since the creation of the world, (God’s) invisible attributes of Eternal Power and Divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what He has made. I think Paul realized (1 Cor 13:12) that there is still much, much more God has to reveal to us, but even at the present we still cannot bear it.
Blessings to you and to the poster (sorry to forget name–and I’m afraid to go back to find it and risk losing this) who hopefully inspired us all to read further in CS Lewis–come to our Ccom Lewis groups to learn more about him.

 

[Viki63]

“The silence of the eternal spaces terrified Pascal, but it was the greatness of Pascal that enabled them to do so.” — C.S. Lewis, “Dogma and the Universe” (from God in the Dock)

I’m not sure where, but C.S.Lewis discusses the size of the universe – if it had been made smaller, we would complain that it was boring, and think only a small God could have created it. Since it is large – immense – we complain that it’s too big, there’s a lot of “wasted” space. But God may be interested in other things besides human beings! He also seems to be into geology, biology, chemistry etc.

Remember, St Julian saw the universe, as small as a nut, and it fit in the palm of God’s hand.

 

[GEddie]

I’ve looked into that. Given the technology we have, we simply lack by a huge margin the resources necessary to build sizeable colonies in space, much less terraform planets.

Take the ISS. It cost something like US$150 billion, and yet it has the living space of a small flat. It can accommodate 6 people in quite cramped conditions, with minimal ablution facilities, basic food preparation, no luxuries and one domed porthole to look out of (take a look at the walk-through tour on youtube).

The big problem is getting payloads into orbit. Rocket power technology - like powered flight - is pretty much where it was in the 60’s - it’s no cheaper now to launch a capsule into space then it was 50 years ago. I believe a Soyez launch costs about US$100 million (a Shuttle launch cost US$500 million). As long as things stay like this we are not going to colonise space.

What about developing superior technology? Over the last 50 years scientific research has deepened tenfold our understanding of physics and the laws that govern matter, but has not come up with a cheap and easy way of getting into space and staying alive once up there. It seems to be a basic thing: there are only so many ways of flying in the atmosphere, and all the scientific research does not make atmospheric flight any cheaper and easier, just perhaps a little faster and safer. Ditto for space travel.

There seems to be a limit to the human manipulation of matter and physical laws: the more profound that manipulation is, the more difficult and expensive it becomes. Two brothers using odds and bobs could build the first flying machine, but it takes a whole government research project with hundreds of staff and millions of dollars to build the first atomic reactor. There simply isn’t an alternative to rocket power in order to get into orbit, and it is horrendously expensive.

BTW I had a look at the space elevator concept, but the incredibly long bands (50 000km length) that would be required would be vulnerable to damage by meteorites and other fast flying debris - there is no answer to that objection.

I think it an inescapable conclusion that there is natural limit to human control over nature, and it is a limit that precludes getting off the earth in numbers, though a couple of us might make a visit to Mars. Space is for a few heavily financed explorers, not for mankind as a whole.

While all of that is true, is is false to assume that cost barriers are fixed. You could have said the same about winged flying 100 years ago.

101 years ago, the first man flew across the USA. He took 49 days. His plane was followed by a trainload of mechanics and spare parts, all badly needed.

It would have been easy to say based on that example, that flying had no future. You’d have been wrong. ICXC NIKA

 

[Justin_Swanton]

While all of that is true, is is false to assume that cost barriers are fixed. You could have said the same about winged flying 100 years ago.

101 years ago, the first man flew across the USA. He took 49 days. His plane was followed by a trainload of mechanics and spare parts, all badly needed.

It would have been easy to say based on that example, that flying had no future. You’d have been wrong. ICXC NIKA

This is just the point. The first man to fly across the US did so only 8 years after powered flight was invented. And in those days it was something being developed by individuals and small groups, not big corporations and governments.

Space technology has had over 50 years of massive government backing to turn into what everybody wants it to become: a cheap and feasible way of getting into orbit and travelling at least to the nearer planets of the solar system. It has not done so.

Neither, come to think of it, has powered flight made any progress. The last big development was the commercial jet in the 1950’s. Since then flight technology has stayed pretty much in the same place, barring some i dotting and t crossing. There’s even talk of going back to propeller powered commercial planes.

Looks like a ceiling to me.

 

[cornbread_r2]

Your comment presupposes that we should be living in a perfect world. The Catholic teaching on the fall of angels and men eliminates this presupposition.

I disagree that it presupposes a perfect world. Humans could still die in rock falls, drown in their bathtubs, choke to death on celery and slaughter each other, willy-nilly – all without the least bit of need for non-human animal-on-animal predation.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

Hello Justin, it’s great to have you back with a new thread to motivate us. I regret I can’t recall off hand any prominent speculation on this topic that I admired. For me, it’s a good question that might haunt me until I found some response I thought was logical and plausible–I wouldn’t ever presume I might actually know the Mind of God.
But I think it’s reasonable that God has given us yet another glimpse in the expanse of the universe of the Grandeur and Enormity of His Nature, His Power, and His Truth. To us it’s vast; to Him it may be tiny and there may be many others we don’t even yet suspect.
I like St Paul’s statement (Rom 1:20): Ever since the creation of the world, (God’s) invisible attributes of Eternal Power and Divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what He has made. I think Paul realized (1 Cor 13:12) that there is still much, much more God has to reveal to us, but even at the present we still cannot bear it.
Blessings to you and to the poster (sorry to forget name–and I’m afraid to go back to find it and risk losing this) who hopefully inspired us all to read further in CS Lewis–come to our Ccom Lewis groups to learn more about him.

Hello Eschator, nice to hear from you again.

I’m also a fan of CS Lewis and Chesterton - read Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man several times. Can you give a link to that poster you mentioned?

 

[Justin_Swanton]

I disagree that it presupposes a perfect world. Humans could still die in rock falls, drown in their bathtubs, choke to death on celery and slaughter each other, willy-nilly – all without the least bit of need for non-human animal-on-animal predation.

Animal predation and related issues were looked at in this thread - might be of interest.

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

I disagree that it presupposes a perfect world. Humans could still die in rock falls, drown in their bathtubs, choke to death on celery and slaughter each other, willy-nilly – all without the least bit of need for non-human animal-on-animal predation.

I was just trying to point out that if we start down the path of questioning divine design (a path that is probably not advisable but is something we like to do) you have to be careful, when looking at one detail such as animal-upon-animal predation, to try to sort out things that were part of the original design from those things that are a diminuation of the original design due to the entrance of evil onto the stage. Was animal-on-animal predation part of the original design? Is it something that developed after the fall? These types of questions are difficult to answer, but I think it is something to consider before jumping to statements like “x is going on in the world today, why did God design it that way?” The reason we pray “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” is that not everything that happens on earth right now is necessarily part of the original plan or design.

 

[Nimzovik]

There is something called the observable universe. Not to go into details, but suffice to say that there are areas of the universe that are unobservable and will for ever, literally remain so.

That is, we can never see what is there, contact it in any way, derive any information from it. Yet we know it is there. In fact, some of the observable universe is, as you are reading this, moving from what we could see to what we can never see.

There is, consequently, a small rock sitting in the shadow of a tiny crater on an airless moon orbiting a barren world in an average solar system lit by a dying sun in the outer limits of a pathetically boring galaxy which is part of the universe which was, literally, part of an existence that was forever separated from that which would become our existence.

If you can tell me what purpose that rock serves, then you will have described a reason for the universe.

That small rock has as much meaning as you do.

That ‘rock’ does not think. Emote. Procreate. Engage in social congress that alters the thinking of thinkers for generations and may indeed point the collective consciousness of humans into a whole other realm than the one that would exist if the ‘one, initiating thinker’ did *not *exist.

Consider Our Lord for an example. Or Einstein.

Ergo humans have far more voluminous effect (and therefore meaning) than said rock.

I say? Do you not think that one would get rather tired of the inherent despair in such a perspective as that which you posted? Is it possible that depression is the precursor, the progenitor, to such a perspective as put forth by those that do not believe in God?

Methinks the Theist can point at the relevant data and draw the conclusions they do with at* least* the same degree of validity, *logically *speaking as those that are A - Theist.

 

[ricmat]

Has anyone picked up on the fact that there is something distinctly odd about the universe inasmuch as one considers it as created by God. From the point of view of humanity one can say two things about it: it is incredibly vast and incredibly hostile to life.

1. Incredibly vast. Why create such a big universe? To impress us with God’s power? But the world by itself does that. We don’t need to know about groups of galaxies to believe in God’s omnipotence. So the universe is not made primarily to impress us.
2. Incredibly hostile to human life. With the exception of an extremely narrow band on planet earth extending about 6 km up and 4 km down, life cannot survive in the universe. You would die in space in seconds, a little slower on Mars, quicker on Venus or any of the gas giants, instantaneously if too close to any sun. Even if there are habitable oases on other planets (not proven), we cannot reach them. The universe is not made for us.

Why then did God make it the way it is?

I’m looking for sources to any in-depth thinking on the subject. I have a little theory of my own but would like to hear what others think. Thank you!

This isn’t in-depth thinking, but here are my thoughts.

1. The universe is incredibly vast so that humans recognize their place in creation. Yes, we are children of God, and very special. But nonetheless, we are creatures, not the Creator. Adam / Eve wanted to be everything and know everything without God’s help - the first sin. The vastness of creation is meant to make us humble.

Apparently it isn’t working - just saw this article yesterday.

As children of God, we were created with the intellect to appreciate beauty and other transcendental concepts such as “vastness.” But not actually being God, there will always be things we don’t understand.

Read Job chapters 38-42.
Read Psalms8, 19:1-7, and my personal favorite
Wisdom 13:1-9.

1. The incredibly hostile universe - again, it is made that way so we appreciate God. The universe is not inevitable. Life is not inevitable. Life is not everywhere. Even life on this very “favorable for life” Earth (apparently) has only 1 “tree”. A unique event. We don’t HAVE to be here.

My 2 cents worth.

 

[tabycat]

Maybe God made tne universe so big and strange is to make and keep us humble.

 

[GEddie]

I’ve looked into that. Given the technology we have, we simply lack by a huge margin the resources necessary to build sizeable colonies in space, much less terraform planets.

Take the ISS. It cost something like US$150 billion, and yet it has the living space of a small flat. It can accommodate 6 people in quite cramped conditions, with minimal ablution facilities, basic food preparation, no luxuries and one domed porthole to look out of (take a look at the walk-through tour on youtube).

The big problem is getting payloads into orbit. Rocket power technology - like powered flight - is pretty much where it was in the 60’s - it’s no cheaper now to launch a capsule into space then it was 50 years ago. I believe a Soyez launch costs about US$100 million (a Shuttle launch cost US$500 million). As long as things stay like this we are not going to colonise space.

What about developing superior technology? Over the last 50 years scientific research has deepened tenfold our understanding of physics and the laws that govern matter, but has not come up with a cheap and easy way of getting into space and staying alive once up there. It seems to be a basic thing: there are only so many ways of flying in the atmosphere, and all the scientific research does not make atmospheric flight any cheaper and easier, just perhaps a little faster and safer. Ditto for space travel.

There seems to be a limit to the human manipulation of matter and physical laws: the more profound that manipulation is, the more difficult and expensive it becomes. Two brothers using odds and bobs could build the first flying machine, but it takes a whole government research project with hundreds of staff and millions of dollars to build the first atomic reactor. There simply isn’t an alternative to rocket power in order to get into orbit, and it is horrendously expensive.

BTW I had a look at the space elevator concept, but the incredibly long bands (50 000km length) that would be required would be vulnerable to damage by meteorites and other fast flying debris - there is no answer to that objection.

I think it an inescapable conclusion that there is natural limit to human control over nature, and it is a limit that precludes getting off the earth in numbers, though a couple of us might make a visit to Mars. Space is for a few heavily financed explorers, not for mankind as a whole.

This is just the point. The first man to fly across the US did so only 8 years after powered flight was invented. And in those days it was something being developed by individuals and small groups, not big corporations and governments.

Space technology has had over 50 years of massive government backing to turn into what everybody wants it to become: a cheap and feasible way of getting into orbit and travelling at least to the nearer planets of the solar system. It has not done so.

Neither, come to think of it, has powered flight made any progress. The last big development was the commercial jet in the 1950’s. Since then flight technology has stayed pretty much in the same place, barring some i dotting and t crossing. There’s even talk of going back to propeller powered commercial planes.

Looks like a ceiling to me.

The high-speed turboprop was abandoned, as it seems that it won’t provide the desirable increase in efficiency after all.

There may indeed be a hard limit in winged flight, but it’s not the technology, it’s the size of the world. There is just no need to go faster than Mach 1 for general transportation, when high-subsonic will get you wherever you need to be in a few hours. While it would be cool to be able to go from EWR to SYD in three hours through space, the market for such high-ticket transportation is not there, as the Brits and French found out to their cost with the once glamorous Concorde.

In space, there is nowhere our natural bodies can live, and so there are no “destinations” for mass travel. If that ever changed (but how?) no doubt the technology would be found to meet the need.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Moontown_Rabbit]

In space, there is nowhere our natural bodies can live, and so there are no “destinations” for mass travel. If that ever changed (but how?) no doubt the technology would be found to meet the need.ICXC NIKA

What if in the next couple of centuries some innovator figures out how to sustain an economically viable fusion reaction? If we had a nearly unlimited amount of energy at our disposal, maybe we could build a self-sustaining colony on the moon. Sounds crazy, but so would television to a guy in ancient Athens.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

This isn’t in-depth thinking, but here are my thoughts.

1. The universe is incredibly vast so that humans recognize their place in creation. Yes, we are children of God, and very special. But nonetheless, we are creatures, not the Creator. Adam / Eve wanted to be everything and know everything without God’s help - the first sin. The vastness of creation is meant to make us humble.

Apparently it isn’t working - just saw this article yesterday.

As children of God, we were created with the intellect to appreciate beauty and other transcendental concepts such as “vastness.” But not actually being God, there will always be things we don’t understand.

Read Job chapters 38-42.
Read Psalms8, 19:1-7, and my personal favorite
Wisdom 13:1-9.

1. The incredibly hostile universe - again, it is made that way so we appreciate God. The universe is not inevitable. Life is not inevitable. Life is not everywhere. Even life on this very “favorable for life” Earth (apparently) has only 1 “tree”. A unique event. We don’t HAVE to be here.

My 2 cents worth.

Interesting. On the subject of modern science I have the growing notion that much of what is touted as establish scientific fact is either someone’s theory that has not yet existed long enough to be refuted, or otherwise is an agreed consensus by the scientific community based on presuppositions that have not been properly tested.

***Real ***scientific certitude is not that easy to establish, especially when history comes into the picture, as in the origins of life and of the universe in general. Question: how much of evolution is established fact and how much is consensus-building, wishful thinking, and artists’ impressions? (don’t answer!)

I’ve had the chance to see this kind of thing in a debate over the size of oriental armies in antiquity (eg Persia), where a careful examination of the hard evidence blew away the consensus of accredited historians, built on the dictates of contemporary military logic that did not apply to the armies of that time.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

The high-speed turboprop was abandoned, as it seems that it won’t provide the desirable increase in efficiency after all.

There may indeed be a hard limit in winged flight, but it’s not the technology, it’s the size of the world. There is just no need to go faster than Mach 1 for general transportation, when high-subsonic will get you wherever you need to be in a few hours. While it would be cool to be able to go from EWR to SYD in three hours through space, the market for such high-ticket transportation is not there, as the Brits and French found out to their cost with the once glamorous Concorde.

In space, there is nowhere our natural bodies can live, and so there are no “destinations” for mass travel. If that ever changed (but how?) no doubt the technology would be found to meet the need.

ICXC NIKA

Personally, I would find a trip to another continent in 3 hours or less very cool, but not price of a Concord ticket. The concord failed because it was too expensive, not because it was too fast, and there was no way to keep it fast and make it cheaper. Spaceflight is essentially a failure for the same reason.

 

[GEddie]

Personally, I would find a trip to another continent in 3 hours or less very cool, but not price of a Concord ticket. The concord failed because it was too expensive, not because it was too fast, and there was no way to keep it fast and make it cheaper. Spaceflight is essentially a failure for the same reason.

Lamentably, an increase in speed is an increase in cost. The designers of Concorde though the market would absorb that cost. They were mistaken.

There is no market for mass space flight because there is nowhere to go. As long as we have “earthly” bodies, we cannot make our homes in space. That does not mean that future generations will not go out there to exploit physical resources.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Justin_Swanton]

What if in the next couple of centuries some innovator figures out how to sustain an economically viable fusion reaction? If we had a nearly unlimited amount of energy at our disposal, maybe we could build a self-sustaining colony on the moon. Sounds crazy, but so would television to a guy in ancient Athens.

There is already enough energy from solar power for a moon-colony to be self-sustaining. The problem is an energy source that is cheap, safe, and can get one off the earth.

Construction work in a vacuum is really tricky. Most of what one would need for life support et al. would have to be created on earth and sent up - you can’t build a factory in space - and so we are back to expensive rockets. The ISS is a real case study. It represents the combined effort of several first-world countries and yet it is really very small. It can’t even get too far away from the earth otherwise it would leave earth’s protective magnetic field, becoming exposed to solar particles. A moon colony is much more of a headache, though a small one is feasible and apparently in the works.