LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
I was referring to our perception of Him.
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Freddy
Guest
So one’s perception of Him would be relatively small when we knew less.
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BT3241
Guest
If you believe humans are the center of all thing , all was made for humans and all that matters is humans than ya space doesn’t seem to have a purpose. Pretty small view.
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tomarin
Guest
I know the purpose of space - it’s the ‘final frontier’. An invitation and a dare to humans to try to colonize it. That’s the best I can come up with.
But since the distances are so vast (cf Douglas Adams) it seems unlikely we will be able to get very far since nothing can travel faster than light, so a bit of a catch-22 I’m sorry to say.
But since the distances are so vast (cf Douglas Adams) it seems unlikely we will be able to get very far since nothing can travel faster than light, so a bit of a catch-22 I’m sorry to say.
LeafByNiggle
Well-known member
It is always dangerous to draw definite conclusions (like “Space has no purpose”) from our inability to fathom the mind of God.
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PetraG
Guest
"The Desert Fathers believed that the wilderness had been created as supremely valuable in the eyes of God precisely because it had no value to men. The wasteland was the land that could never be wasted by men because it offered them nothing. There was nothing to attract them. There was nothing to exploit. The desert was the region in which the Chosen People had wandered for forty years, cared for by God alone. They could have reached the Promised Land in a few months if they had travelled directly to it. God’s plan was that they should learn to love Him in the wilderness and that they should always look back upon the time in the desert as the idyllic time of their life with Him alone.
The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else. So too the mountain and the sea. The desert is therefore the logical dwelling place for the man who seeks to be nothing but himself–that is to say, a creature solitary and poor and dependent upon no one but God, with no great project standing between himself and his Creator."
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Yet he also notes:
“Yet look at the deserts today. What are they? The birthplace of a new and terrible creation, the testing ground of the power by which man seeks to un-create what God has blessed. Today, in the century of man’s greatest technological achievement, the wilderness at last comes into its own. Man no longer needs God, and he can live in the desert on his own resources. He can build there his fantastic, protected cities of withdrawal and expermination and vice. The glitterinig towns that spring up overnight in the desert are no longer images of the City of God, coming down from heaven to enlighten the world with the vision of peace. They are not even replicas of the great tower of Babel that once rose up in the desert of Senaar, that man “might make his name famous and reach even unto heaven” (Genesis 11:4). They are brilliant and sordid smiles of the devil upon the face of the wilderness, cities of secrecy where each man spies on his brother, cities through whose veins money runs like artificial blood, and from whose womb will come the last and greatest instrument of destruction.”
People can fill the earth and subdue it, but the vastness of space is beyond that. Perhaps Providence foresaw that by the time we had approached subduing the Earth, we’d need a reminder that we are still small in the overall scheme of things and still depend on God as surely as we would if we were on a tiny raft in the middle of a huge ocean. Space is something so vast that we can never in a sane moment imagine ourselves dominating it. It gives us a tiny bit of perspective about the vastness of God, for God created it all, sustains it all and enfolds it all in his providential care as easily as we could hold a smooth and lovely pebble, nestled in the palm of one hand.
Generally speaking, though, when the Desert Fathers are the ones who have something to say, listen to that. Compare what you think to what they would say. That is a good ruler to use to keep one’s philosophies straight with reality.
The desert was created simply to be itself, not to be transformed by men into something else. So too the mountain and the sea. The desert is therefore the logical dwelling place for the man who seeks to be nothing but himself–that is to say, a creature solitary and poor and dependent upon no one but God, with no great project standing between himself and his Creator."
Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
Yet he also notes:
“Yet look at the deserts today. What are they? The birthplace of a new and terrible creation, the testing ground of the power by which man seeks to un-create what God has blessed. Today, in the century of man’s greatest technological achievement, the wilderness at last comes into its own. Man no longer needs God, and he can live in the desert on his own resources. He can build there his fantastic, protected cities of withdrawal and expermination and vice. The glitterinig towns that spring up overnight in the desert are no longer images of the City of God, coming down from heaven to enlighten the world with the vision of peace. They are not even replicas of the great tower of Babel that once rose up in the desert of Senaar, that man “might make his name famous and reach even unto heaven” (Genesis 11:4). They are brilliant and sordid smiles of the devil upon the face of the wilderness, cities of secrecy where each man spies on his brother, cities through whose veins money runs like artificial blood, and from whose womb will come the last and greatest instrument of destruction.”
People can fill the earth and subdue it, but the vastness of space is beyond that. Perhaps Providence foresaw that by the time we had approached subduing the Earth, we’d need a reminder that we are still small in the overall scheme of things and still depend on God as surely as we would if we were on a tiny raft in the middle of a huge ocean. Space is something so vast that we can never in a sane moment imagine ourselves dominating it. It gives us a tiny bit of perspective about the vastness of God, for God created it all, sustains it all and enfolds it all in his providential care as easily as we could hold a smooth and lovely pebble, nestled in the palm of one hand.
Generally speaking, though, when the Desert Fathers are the ones who have something to say, listen to that. Compare what you think to what they would say. That is a good ruler to use to keep one’s philosophies straight with reality.
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PetraG
Guest
(Well, that, and it seems that it may take a black hole to generate the heavier elements, and you can’t just put one of those in the refrigerator in the garage. They need a bit of real estate…and why not? What can one say about God’s creation, if not that it is marked over and over again by spectacular generosity?)
Why is space so vast? Well, why wouldn’t it be? God is vastly generous.
Why is space so vast? Well, why wouldn’t it be? God is vastly generous.
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