Reflections

Just to warn you this is going to be a long post. One of my professors said something today about literary naturalism and human significance that really got me thinking. I did a lot of research this afternoon, and the results aren't too flattering.


Everyone knows that feeling, resting on their back outdoors at night looking at the stars, how it seems there has to be something bigger out there. It's kinda funny looking from the other direction, the stars at us. Look at this i. See that dot on it? Good. Let's pretend that's the sun. Put your finger on it, imagine all of your existence is in that dot. That dot is the single source of your physical light and warmth and life. The sun is a lot bigger than the earth with a diameter of about 110 times its size, if my memory is still working. Try to picture the earth compared to the model sun I just mentioned. A hundredth of the dot on the i. That's kinda small, I don't think anyone here has good enough eyesight they could ever see that. That's the entire extent of humanity. Everything you know, everything you've dreamed of and seen and believed is in that hundredth of a dot. This is the scale I'll keep refering back to throughout this.

Let's keep putting things into perpective. Let's imagine the next closest stars, alpha, beta, and proxima centauri. Alpha is a bit bigger than the sun, beta is a bit smaller, and proxima is considerably smaller. These stars are a bit more than 4.2 light years away from us.

To put that into perspective it's important to realize how big a lightyear is. The speed of light is 299 792 458 m/s. Convert that to yards and multiply it times the number of seconds in a year (figuring 365 days and 6 hours for leap years) that's 5,878,625,373,183 miles. Just for you jocks that's 103,463,806,568,031 football fields back to back.

Now, to keep things in focus, that's one single lightyear. As mentioned before the closest star, proxima centauri (it's not actually alpha) is a bit more than 4.2 lightyears away. I would calculate the number of our earths put together it would take to reach that for you all if my calculator could actually do the math. Trust me, I tried and it can't do it. The distance is around 23.6 trillion miles.


Let's go back to our original scale, shall we? Let's pretend the sun is the dot on this i and we are all on a planet the size of a microbe. I haven't measured the exact size of the dot on that i, but assuming it's smaller than the period with this font and not too far from half a millimeter then the i dot that represents proxima centauri is between 8 and 15 miles away from you right now. The centauri stars are the closest, the second closest star is over twice that distance, about 8.6 light years.

Concentrate really hard right now. That dot of the i is so incredibly big you're not even the size of a subatomic particle compared to it. The second closest star is so far away that if someone looking at that i dot on their computer screen the scale distance away from you exploded a sizable nuclear weapon it's possible you wouldn't even know it happened.

Keep concentrating..that's the first and second closest stars to us in this galaxy and they're pretty damned close. There are around 500 billion stars in this single galaxy, and I doubt all of them are that tightly spaced. Can you imagine 500 billion other i dots scattered around as far away as the edges of our planetary system (rough estimate, I don't think it's possible to know the scale conversion of that)? That's this galaxy.

Now that you get just how small you are in this galaxy, smaller than what you're probably able to visually imagine, keep going out. Looking out at a .04 degree side section (about 1/27,000,000th the directions we could look) we have detected around 3000 visible galaxies. Using things like infared or x-ray telescopes we could find many more galaxies in that rediculously small field of vision. Do you remember how many stars there are in this galaxy? 500 billion. That's a crapload of stars when you multiply it by over 3000 galaxies.

Still keeping things in perspective? Probably not, but some of you might be. Let's for a second imagine that we were looking at more than a 1/27,000,000th of the directions we could be. That would mean about 80 billion galaxies visible from the earth alone, not counting the ones detectable with more advanced technology I already mentioned that is already developed.

Think back a few paragraphs. Do you remember how small the earth is in relationship to our own galaxy? If 80 billion stars are visibly detectable from this piddly little microbe's arse of a planet even with all the interference from things like dust and unpredictable lighting how many galaxies do you think there are total? And how many stars do you think that is multiplying a modest few hundred billion stars per galaxy? I think it's a gross understatement that there might possibly be hundreds of billions of galaxies, each one big enough that compared to our little i dot sun you barely exist compared to they're the size of a solid sphere bigger around than our entire solar system. All several hundred billion of them.


Do you feel little yet? Because I sure do.

Which finally brings me to the point of all this. Do you believe there is any significance or meaning of humanity? Do we really mean anything? It would be a nice thing, but when you compare us to how big this physical reality is that's quite the stretch of the imagination.

I've never really though about the human place in reality before. When I think about reality I usually think about other people. The proverbial 10 yard environment. Like space isn't the absense of matter it just doesn't exist. None of that really makes any sense anymore.

I've never really believed anything had a purpose, but after learning all that I don't know what to think. What do you all think? Do we have some purpose and meaning or is it blatant conceit and arrogance to think that? It's kind of hard balancing all this when you compare it with the human miracles like music and compassion and sex and ethics. There has to be something big influencing and developing our existance, but what? Is it just the result of the death of weaker society that causes the evolution of civilization or do you think it's something more?


I'm probably too tired to be thinking this much. Oops. Hopefully nobody minds, I just needed to get that off my chest.

Man, I go through the same thing everyday. Why are we here? Sure, in our minds we feel like big shots, but we don't really know whats out there. Maybe we're being watched all the time, like we're a reality TV show for some greater power. I've thought of so many different things. Man, it messes with my head.

We're born so we can die. Life is pointless. Get used to it.

I believe human existence is nothing more than millions of random events all taking place so as to bring us here. I don't believe there's a conscious being out there pulling the strings. When we ponder concepts like how the Universe is infinetly large or trying to get a grasp on the concept of eternity we really see how insignificant humanity is. I'll plug my book again...read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.

Kind of mind boggling when you try to conceive what existance really is. Never heard the "i" explanation before, just think if you went at a constant speed of our fastest shuttle. It would still take nearly a 1000 years to reach alpha centuri. Even if we tried using a shuttle to reach the nearest star, the amount of fuel it would take is more than the amount of matter in the universe. Even if you think of the speed of light, we are looking at the farthest galaxies as they were more than 10 billion years ago. Those galaxies are so far away it takes 10 billion years for their light to reach us. It takes 4 minutes for our sun's light to reach us. Contiplating the galaxy is like an ant contiplating the sears tower times a trillion. Don't think to hard on it though.

I've come to terms with life and death. We live and we die like a tree, ie one shot. What gets me is that there's 6 billion people in the world. It's our insignificance that bothers me. I mean, even if you feel special within your own little group, your family and your friends, you aren't ever going to amount to ****. That's realistic thinking. One in 6 billion man, what are the odds? You can live your life content and have meaning with your family, kids and all that but so what? So do 6 billion other people, what's the point in you? There's always going to be somebody better and all you can ever do is hope to come across a bit of cash so you can drink yourself to death. lol.

well the universe is mental all of it.

energy life force thats what holds the cycle u know of death and rebirth, energy constantly chnges from one format to the other but is not detroyed. kinda like a concept of god right.

literature, thought, art, science, etc..all we know all that closes and opens our minds. and we still know nothing.

what u can do is try to do the nest you can in this lifetime which u are concious of, then see what happens if anything happens at all.

we might end up as manure, or get reincarnated, of course by that time u wont even remember anything, just like u dont remember your birth, i think the human mind is connected to the unniverse god et all the body is a vessel and the soul part of the life force.

it seems to come in threes as well mind body soul...
harmony rythm melody
carbon dioxide, water and ammonia

this life is very clouded, when you take into consideration the ammount of effort it takes to do certain things and not get blown away by the flow ie ads, money, jobs, things which mean nothing compared to the great universe and the mystery of things, or you can look at it from a different perspective and see whatever rocks your boat.

i believe more in the harmony of chaos, and sometimes im too depressed to even feel hope, or any connection with anything

but i like the mystery. if its not there i wont know right cus ill be dead

Im just thinking about those distances between our planet and all the other planets and stars.

Imagine the distance between our planet and pluto(the furthest planet away that we know). Now imagine how big the unviverse could be. The distance from the sun to pluto could only be a small dot in size compared to the whole universe.

Goddamn if this thread isn't a deep one. We're all not going to read what everybody else has to say but will submit our own personal opinions with the full expectations that everybody will read and understand it as well as we do. Who isn't alone, even those of us who are getting laid. And by us i meant you.

Read two books: 1) The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins and 2) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawkin. Both are excellent and will enlighten you .

if you understand them, it then starts to get really interesting as you start to comprehend the vast interweaving complexity that permeates everything. No need to deflect the question of where do we come from with space-aliens or any other supernatural entity.

The Blind Watch Maker also by Richard Dawkins is another good one.

It could be we are just going through a phase of which we
are born then evolve to our second stage when we shed our
shell then go to the third level, etc.until we reach the
[final destination] Then again we might be born,die and
and rot in the soil of the earth, nothing more, nothing less. You can read all the books in the world you want,
including the bible, but the bottom line is nobody knows
for 100% what comes after death. I know a lot of you
that are christians are saying you have to have faith and
believe in the bible, Is it possible the bible was wrote
to promote some type of law and order in a land where chaos was running amok ? I am agnostic as you might have guessed
which is to say I really hope there is a heaven and I
hope I have the faith to believe before my time comes to an end, because its better safe than sorry, just in case. But
at the present time I am leaning more toward the big bang
theory [science] of how the universe was created. I hope
I am wrong. [ROCK ON ] Mark

Or even Douglas Adam's The Salmon of Doubt, which covers many if the grey areas eluded to in the last post.

Just one question for those of you who don't believe in a God, or at least something supernatural...

Where did all the matter in the universe come from if it was not created by a God? The God itself did not need to be created by something higher due to its nature, but rocks and gases and stuff can't have just appeared out of nowhere (at least I don't see how they could have). The big bang theory is all well and good except for one thing - it doesn't explain where all the matter in the universe first came from. Having read many, many theories about the origin of the universe, in my mind it has been narrowed down to 2 possibilities (since I believe the universe must have originated somehow) :

1) The universe just randomly appeared out of chance, and being infinite, there was the chance that conditions for life to appear would occur somewhere in the infinite universe, and it did.

2) God - God created all the universe.

Note that with Chaos Theory, the chance that an omnipotent God popping into random existence is equal to the chance that an infinite universe popping into existence. It all boils down to what you want to believe, hope, and faith. I choose to believe in God, I have faith that he exists and that there's something better after this life, and I hope I'm not wrong ;) (though would it not be better to be a Christian and die, and there turn out to be nothing after death, than a non-Christian and die, and it turns out that there is a God?)

I dont really like to think how the universe was created because it confuses me so much. Gasses and things dont just appear for no reason.

I do also hope there is an after life where everything is just how you want life to be... now that would be coool !

The problem with creationism is that it doesn't really answer any questions it only sidesteps them by using the blanket of..

"it is impossible to understand this as it was done by an ineffable omnipotent entity, and to try and second guess such an intelligence with the whit we are given is pointless on account that it is too vast. So we had just better stop thinking and do what we are told by the preacher who doesn't really have any more clue than the rest of us."

If you are going to adopt such a defeatist attitude you may as well stop there and go back to bed as you are only ever going to go round in circles.

The key is to think clearly and with out prejudice and certainly not to swallow the first dogmatic idea that comes along with out question.

Do not think I am criticizing religion, I'm not Im criticizing intellectual process.

Check out:

http://www.savagemind.com/encyclopedia/logicalfallacies

Originally posted by TheDirt
Where did all the matter in the universe come from if it was not created by a God?

I'm perfectly happy with the idea that a lot of things in the universe are and will remain unexplained.
For those who can't live with that way of thinking, there's religion.

I'm sure you are all familiar with existencialism

"who care's we are all going to die anyway"

Anyone read A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking?

all this stuff and more can be found within it's brilliant text

all of the matter we see around us came from the big bang, at one point in time billions of years ago all of the matter in the universe was in the form of a ball with zero surface area and zero volume

at this point curvature of space-time was infinite along with density, and all predictability and logic was non existent 1=2, e=2e, etc.

I don't know what im talking about

Originally posted by TheDirt
Just one question for those of you who don't believe in a God, or at least something supernatural...

Where did all the matter in the universe come from if it was not created by a God? The God itself did not need to be created by something higher due to its nature, but rocks and gases and stuff can't have just appeared out of nowhere (at least I don't see how they could have). The big bang theory is all well and good except for one thing - it doesn't explain where all the matter in the universe first came from.

It's just as easy for me to believe that matter and energy have always existed and never had a beginning as it is for me to believe that god has been around forever and never had a beginning.

Rocks and gases and stuff didn't just appear out of one thing. I think they've always existed. I don't think there was any 'beginning of time' thing for matter and energy the way christians don't believe there was a beginning of time and existance thing for god. You say god did not need to be created by something due to its nature, I'm wondering what it is about matter that is any different that forces it to have come from somewhere.

Originally posted by TheWizard
at one point in time billions of years ago all of the matter in the universe was in the form of a ball with zero surface area and zero volume

Well where did THAT matter come from? You didn't answer my question.

To Dr. Simon - I'm not taking a defeatist attitude. I choose to believe that all the matter in the universe and all universal laws (gravity, magnetism, rules governing atomic particles, evolutionary principles, etc.) were blueprinted by God... I don't just accept any garbage that a preacher throws at me either. I think for myself, and it's through thinking that I came to my beliefs (I wasn't raised in a church family - I was taught there was no God, and remained that way until I was nearly 17 years old).