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November 24, 2012

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No matter how vast the universe, it is miniscule compared to whatever is beyond it, or transcends it, or what it is expanding to or in. Actually, in this context, size is irrelevant. Big is always surpassed by bigger ad infinitum. The biggest is continually surpassed by bigger still to the point where the biggest is really small and, conversely, the smallest is surpassed by something even smaller to the point where it is really big and the whole thing gets turned inside out and suddenly the smallest becomes the same as the biggest and the biggest is the same as the smallest...all in a flash. No space, no time, no this nor that nor any thing at all but just this.

Certainly an anthropomorphic God concept is inadequate here but that does not preclude the existence of something un-name-able we may ultimately call God just for the sake of convenience.

Why does size matter?

Is a large granite mountain as interesting as a colony of ants?

There are other factors to value than size.

Here is something I ran across that is pretty retro --- but revealing in that, most certainly.

http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/atomic/society/examining/

Something happened when human science split the atom. This assault on nature was inevitably an assault on our old notions of "God". Nature was always the proof of God. It was God's earth. With Science, the triumph of being able to manipulate the very innards of nature, made us, more obviously important and influential on earth than Almighty God. "He" didn't and does not step up to stop all the tampering . The door is and was wide open to relentless discovery....and lamentably abusive applications for $$$ and power. We are very clever, naked chimps. Just not clever and insightful enough to stop our own, most probable, coming demise as a direct result of our chimp-ness combined with a bigger brain pan. So before we applaud "science" or "god" too enthusiastically we might want to look in the mirror and weep at the hairy beast with his finger on the button.

God could have sent his other children to different beaches. I'm a Christian but I wouldn't claim that creation ended on earth, or in the Milky Way.

It's true that we're astonishingly small but the comparison to a subatomic particle is apt. We're massive from that perspective.

Our sentience is evidence of our meaningfulness. Indeed, our brains, so paltry in scale, still have billions of neurons instantiating trillions of connections.

The idea that we're so small that God wouldn't care about us cedes a central claim of theism, omnipotence (and omniscience). That we are capable of making intelligible decisions is probably sufficient to warrant divine attention, which is effortless for God.

The sheer size of Jupiter and the Sun are enough to humble any man, let alone the size of the Milky way galaxy, the super clusters, and the Universe itself.

I really do hope that some day we'll be able to unravel the mysteries of this great creation, but in my heart I know we never will.

If anything, the sheer size and the nature of the Universe, something that to this day we don't truly understand is a testament to something much bigger and grander than us. Some people like to call this God and I'm inclined to believe them.

Something this mind boggling and unfathomable truly shows us how insignificant we are in the grander scheme of things, yet somehow we've been placed in the perfect spot in the universe that gave birth to life. The author calls it an "un-special" place, yet all scientific investigation has never revealed anything as "special" as the part of space we occupy.

The universe IMHO is God's way of showing us just how much more there is that we don't get. All we can do is theorize and even to this day something like gravity that we deal with everyday, still remains nothing more than a theory. Laws of Physics - completely moot in the face of a Black Hole.

If this doesn't teach humble us enough to realize that there is so much more to life that what we can perceive, I don't know what will.

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