“Contrivance proves design,” accurately observed William Paley, “and the predominant tendency of the contrivance indicates the disposition of the designer.” Know then the disposition, revealed as it must be through design, through the architecture, and one may know the Designer.
If we assume a designer, a Creator, then what does the most conspicuous of all created things, the Universe itself, reveal? Here we are not canvassing the nature of Creation—its uncontainable urge to self-enrich is uncontroversial and requires no defence as the observation is un-prosecutable—but rather the shape of Creation itself.
Why is it presented as it is?
On first inspection the urge is to perceive the universe as something extraordinarily altruistic, a benign gift endowed by an originator being who is draped in astounding generosity. A second, broader, more sincere and unbiased inspection returns, however, a vastly different conclusion.
What truly is the universe but a treacherous perversion of scale? Is not this thing that has so conspicuously conspired to commission thinking life little more than an obscene, yet deeply personal, private joke—a perilous vagary designed to thoroughly mistreat and abuse in every possible way the very instrument it was instructed to craft: the curious, explorative mind?
In any survey, from any perspective, the universe reveals itself to be studiously absurd: a reckless exploitation of proportion where the residue of grand cosmic choices—life—is directed into existence on mere specs of dust falling through a hazardously huge vacuum of life-annihilating cold and radiation.
In an uncensored sentence: The observable universe is a hostile and frightening corruption of the senses; an immense machine so finely tuned to (under exceptional circumstances) birth minds, only to then release those stains of creation to confront the scale of something that is manifestly incomprehensible.
Consider the reality:
The human mind is grown inside a 0.0013 cubic meters crystalline calcium phosphate box on the 149 million km2 rocky surface of a 510 million km2 planet that is falling in a straight line over curved space at 108,000 kilometres per hour inside the gravity well of a 6 trillion km2 star on a 250 million year sojourn around the centre of a galaxy containing some 400 billion stars and trillions of planets and moons. The immediate solar system appears to end at the Kuiper Belt, its outer edge a mind-stunning 7 billion kilometres away, yet the outermost reach of the Heliosphere is still another 5 billion kilometres further out. The furthest object, however, within the Sun’s gravity well, Sedna, marks the solar system’s diameter to in fact be a sense-jarring 287 billion kilometres in length. The solar system though is tiny, wrapped inside the 142 trillion kilometres wide Local Interstellar Cloud which is in turn nestled within the Local Bubble that stretches to an intellectually absurd 8,000 trillion kilometres in length. The Local Bubble is however clothed inside the 28,000 trillion kilometres across Gould Belt, which is housed within the Orion-Cygnus arm measuring a bewildering 94,800 trillion kilometres in length.
That is the human minds immediate neighbourhood; a postal address in a medium-sized, 950,000 trillion kilometre diameter galaxy that is falling through space at 3.5 million kilometres per hour toward a colossally proportioned object—the so-named Great Attractor—located some 2 billion trillion kilometres away, that is itself hurtling even faster toward the eminently more massive, sense-wrecking Shapley Supercluster four-times further out.
The Milky Way galaxy is however enclosed inside a 26 million trillion kilometres across bubble with 25 sister galaxies, itself encased inside the Local Group with some 54 galaxies and stretching some 93 million trillion kilometres. This parish of galaxies is located inside the Local Sheet measuring 216 million trillion kilometres from end to end; an incomprehensible size, yet an almost invisible wispy node perched inside the 1 billion trillion kilometres in length Virgo Supercluster. Home to over 100 galaxy groups and more than a million galaxies, the Virgo Supercluster is however but a smoky wart within the unfathomably proportioned Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex at 9.3 billion trillion kilometres from end to end, boasting thousands of galaxy groups and billions of individual galaxies. As ungraspable as the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex is, it is but a single thin filament—a dirty blotch—in the web that makes the observable universe: a flat, ruthlessly cold sheet whose edge lies a thought-haemorrhaging 430 billion trillion kilometres away from earth in every direction.
Is this not precisely how the universe should look if fantasied by a defiled overmind? Is this not exactly how the universe should be presented if shaped by the careful hand of pure but unforgivingly patient malevolence? Who but the immaculate embodiment of malice would design such a contemptible thing? Indeed, is not the vulgarity of scale proof of an Omnimalevolent Creator, greater even than the finely tuned universe itself? Only a thoroughly corrupted, wicked mind could conceive of such impossible proportions and be in possession of the boorish inclination needed to then dangle such an offense to all reasonableness in front of the eyes of a curious explorer—a tiny, living, thinking organic vessel whom through tuning and coercion the Creator had ensured would one day rise to stare out longingly from the shores of their home-world prison.
Here we are all reminded that the most heartbreakingly impassable walls on Alcatraz, Norfolk Island, and Robben Island were not built of stone and mortar, but ocean and distance.
It is a merciless, sadistic, inescapable reality. The curious explorer is shown the prize, yet by the very laws that had fashioned her own mind is never permitted to take a single genuine step toward it. Her heart is shattered in a thousand ways, and then broken irreversibly upon learning that the entire incomprehensible thing is receding, pulling apart and disappearing at 275,000 kilometres per hour across every 100 billion trillion kilometre stretch.
Now, it has been said that if one stares into the abyss long enough the abyss stares back into you[1], and with that the Impartial Observer comes to feel the outermost impressions of the cold, calculating motive revealed through design. The universe, she sees, exists as it does to not simply humble, but abuse, denigrate, and humiliate the minds it was so expertly commissioned to birth. This is malevolence on an unfathomable scale, expressed through immeasurable waste stretched out between distances and times that cannot be understood. It is cruel, but not hateful, depraved, but not vengeful. This is considered pain, carefully presented in careless proportions to blister and disgrace anyone—or anything—that might momentarily dare to ever privately contemplate it is in control.
[1] Nietzsche, F. 1886, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
I believe that sophisticated Christian apologists like Randal Rauser shy away from using the design argument because they realize all too well the force of the converse argument.
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Not a truer word spoken, and great to see you Missionary. If we’re honest about the teleological argument, and look at what is actually before us, the results are appalling. The magnitude of waste speaks to absurdity, not “design.”
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I get this feeling I should pay some attention to this Randal Rauser. He’s on your radar, right?
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Besides my family and friends, the one thing that keeps me humble is the vastness of the universe.
If you think about it though I believe Nietzche is correct, if the universe was supposedly designed for us, why make so much of it inhospitable to us? Why make so much of it beyond our grasp? It is like having a free pass to the candy store, but you must cross a lake of fire to get to it.
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Precisely! Who but The Owner of All Infernal Names would place the nearest star system 40 trillion kilometres away—an expanse so vast that even if the most cunning and inventive of engineers could squeeze 10,000 Shuttle main engines into a single space-going craft the one-way journey would take a stupefying 165,000 years to complete; a timespan thirty-three times longer than human civilisation has been in existence. Consider then the time it would take to get to the nearest galaxy: Andromeda. Travelling at the speed of light—imaginable, yes, but physically impossible—it would take the voyager 2.5 million years just to reach its outermost barren arm. Precisely as it should be if minted by a maximally debauched architect, the cruelty is unparalleled and immeasurable. Stars and planetary systems are seen, calling the explorative mind on like teasing sea nymphs on the beaches of Faiakes, yet in the end any notion of serious exploration is nothing but imaginative runes thrown hopefully into the air.
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You sir, certainly have a way with words. Well put.
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That’s from the book, so I just copied it 🙂
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Ha! Welcome back to the world of the mundane blog scribbler 😉
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And much closer to home, if we just look at the planet we call home – that’s the part that would have been specifically designed for humans since that’s where we spend 100% of our time – that’s the planet with less than 15-20% of habitable surface, and where almost every non-stationary living creature able to survive only by eating other living creatures. Designed with love, indeed.
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Exactly. All life, and humans in particular, is being squeezed in tiny patches of earth where suffering can be maximised. In the book these are identified as Kill Zones.
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If I had to design a ‘Fire and forget’ system myself I’m afraid that as humane as my inclinations are I’d have to come up with a system of recycling much like the one we’ve got.
But that we are here now is no proof of a God/Creator, benign or otherwise. (And what did He Have against dinosaurs, hmm?)
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This reads like a very well tightened piece of poetry. This made me smile from ear to ear, and chuckle a lot. Absurdity reigns supreme in this version of reality, but when everything is based on theoretical supposition (that should cancel itself out), then there is a lot of room to be creative. Good, I say, if only to give cause to your prosaic mastery. 🙂
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Writing is re-writing, said someone far smarter than me 🙂
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Mastery of literary language still takes practise though, like years…and years, plus a few days. 🙂
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Nah, re-write a sentence enough times and something marginally beautiful will eventually appear 🙂
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Ha! Yeah, maybe that is how it works. The art splitting cats and skinning hairs… 🙂
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A truly diabolic suggestion: some 5 to 10 billion years from now, if I recall correctly, the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide, causing gravitational convulsions sending bolides in all directions. To say nothing of the even grander collisions that astronomers now foresee.
What better way to ensure maximum suffering for all life forms that will have emerged by then? One saving grace though: it’s not our problem. We’ll be long gone, when the Sun turns Earth into as literal a lake of fire as any sadistic Calvinist would wish.
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…and ruling over everything, Professor, is the unavoidable fact that this universe itself is finite, wiping clean any semblance of meaning ever conceived of. Diabolical, indeed 🙂
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Well, when you put it like that . . .
. . . ‘though there’s a chap down the road who insists he’s a perfectly happy alien.
Quite beautifully written John, and I assume this is an excerpt from your book?
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Indeed it is, inspired today by Insanitybytes rather odd attempt to discuss the design of Creation, and Coloursrtorm’s equally bizarre attempt at the same.
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lmao — those two are a trip. I’ve taken this below from a video clip “Stupid Design” where Neil deGrasse Tyson describes all the things that will kill us. This is an abridged version:
——————-
“Look at all the things that want to kill us. Most planet orbits are unstable. Most places kill life instantly – heat – radiation – cold. Galaxy orbits bring you near a supernova.
One-way universe will wind down to oblivion. That’s the Universe.
Earth:
earthquakes
volcanoes
tsunamis
tornadoes
hurricanes
lightening strikes
avalanches
2/3 of the planet inhabitable
freeze or starve on 1/2 of what remains
mass extinctions, climate shifts, killer asteroids
inner solar system is a shooting gallery
disease, birth defects, predators
Co, CH4, CO2
None of it is a sign of a benevolent anything living out there.”
—————–
I laugh out loud when I hear people claim that all of this was caused by the disobedience of two people in a garden. Another superb post, John. If anyone still has an ego after reading this, they are a lost cause.
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The pleasant design argument exists only the minds of thoroughly deluded souls like William Paley. To believe it one must blot out virtually everything in this world, and even then it requires such a tremendous degree of mental gymnastics that you cannot, in all truthfulness, call the individual sane.
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True that.
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Death From The Skies
The fairness of unfairness is in everything’s demise
Chorus:
These are the ways the world will end
These are the ways the world will end
These are the ways…
Odds of dying by asteroid impact: 1 in 700,000
The overall risk of dying from an impact in your lifetime is one in seven hundred thousand- somewhat less than being killed by a fireworks accident- but still more probable than being killed on an amusement park ride or by an act of terrorism.
Odds of dying by supernova explosion: 1 in 10 million
Supernovae happen about once per century in any given galaxy. Assuming the event would cause a mass extinction killing everyone on earth- the odds of you specifically dying from one during your lifetime are about 1 in 10 million.
Odds of dying by solar flare or coronal mass ejection: ZERO, but with an asterisk.
While a whopping big solar event can seriously impair or destroy a nation’s infrastructure and economy, in general it will not directly cause deaths. We have to rate this a zero chance for human fatality, but with an asterisk, as a nod to the destructive power it has in other ways.
Odds of dying by gamma ray burst: 1 in 14 million
Gamma ray bursts are dangerous from distances of more than 7,000 light years. You would have to be in the path of a relatively narrow beam to get hurt. Your odds of being killed by a GRB are one in 14 million. You’re about as likely to be killed by a shark attack.
Eventual odds of dying by death of the sun: inevitable
Eventual odds of dying by galactic doom: inevitable
Eventual odds of dying by death of the universe: inevitable
These are the ways the world will end
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I’ve got an idea! I’m going to make a universe for people! First I am going to make it mostly vacuum so they can’t live there, but then I am going to spread out the bits they can live on so far that they will find it almost impossible to get from bit to bit. To make it even harder, I will impose a speed limit that further limits their ability to travel around. So, my people will be forever isolated, unable to move around in even their own galaxy. Then I will duplicate that galaxy say 100, no 200 billion times, so if they ever get the idea they might want to explore even their own galaxy, they will know that going farther is completely impossible. They will wonder why I created all of that other stuff … it will drive them absolutely mad!
Bwah, hah, hah, ha!
WTF? He created all of this for us? He must not like us, then.
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Bingo! Agoraphobia served fresh, daily 🙂
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Love this. The omni-malevolent creator idea is the most theologically sound argument I’ve ever read or heard. It exists in pure form without the need for apologectics of any kind. Simply beautiful. I’m opening a church here in Chicago for the omni-malevolent creator. I’m calling it: “Starbucks On A Bad Acid Trip.” It looks like a Starbucks on the outside, but when you come in and get your coffee, you find it’s been laced with bad acid. You drink it and writhe in psychotic agony for an hour reliving all the pain you’ve ever had in life. All the while, the Creator is grinning. Hee Haw!!!! My kinda deity.
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Remember Dr Maarten Boudry? He’s renamed “apologetics” “aggravatics” for us dealing with the Evil God. I think that’s brilliant 🙂
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I agree.
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Boudry is really my kinda guy. Love how he thinks.
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Fun guy to have a beer with, I suspect.
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I’d love to have a few beers with him and come up with another plot to twist the minds of idjit theologians everywhere. Fun, fun, fun!!!!
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I cannot fully express how much I love the way you write.
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I cannot fully express how much that means to me 🙂
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😀
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I’m an atheist, and I love your blog. But I don’t see the malice in a hypothetical superpower building a universe that is ridiculously large and complex with some beings that are relatively small. It’s okay to enjoy the range of human capacities in the world we inhabit and to be creative/inventive in what we can accomplish and experience in our short little lifetimes. Existentialists who find those limitations somehow boring and assert that life can have no meaning just because space is big – I don’t really agree with them at all. Also, comparing the ponderance of the size of the universe compared to the scale of human existence to being imprisoned in Alcatraz doesn’t make sense to me? Humans are naturally social and innovative creatures – locking them up in a prison away from civilization is abusive because it inhibits them from enjoying their humanity; humans being confined to one planet instead of being free to visit galaxies devoid of lifeforms does not. My two cents worth.
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Hi Tiffany
You’re absolutely right, it’s not essentially hateful or wicked, rather utterly absurd, “a reckless exploitation of proportion.” The universe is indifferent, thoroughly, hopelessly indifferent, and to present it in such scale (if we’re to assume a Creator) is to humiliate the minds it is presented to. And the prison analogy is explained further in the book, but it revolves around the fact that 1. we cannot leave, not in a meaningful way, and 2. we have nothing to compare this cell to, which means we paint it as our wonderful garden. What alternative do we have?
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On a small scale, if we humans have nasty people we lock them away where they can’t do any harm (except to each other).
So perhaps ol’ God has done the same~?
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Oh, poor lost deluded soul. That is just what Satan wants you to think! 🙂
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Bah, Satan is a fart in the wind compared to The Owner of All Infernal Names 🙂
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But how do you know so much about what Satan wants, or possibly even about carrots? 😉
And how do you know, that you are not the deluded soul, who thinks just what the omnimalevolent god wants you to think? 🙂
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The Fin is on the right track!
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Inner witness of the wholey spirit. Dogged determination to not let facts impair conviction.
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“Dogged determination to not let facts impair conviction.”
Kinda like rejecting medicine that can save your child’s life because God told you it was evil .
Where does the lunacy end ?
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“The older I get, the more I realize what I do not know… and, what I do not know is very very frightening.” – anonymous
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Anonymous wrote some really good stuff 🙂
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His sister, Synonymous, wrote some cool shit, too. Though it does get rather repetitive after awhile.
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“The older I get, the more friggin’ hair seems to keep growing out of my nose and on top of my god damn ears.” Me, yesterday morning A.D.
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Me too, Jeff. I need an industrial-strength hair plucker thingy!
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Gosh! I love reading about space, the stars, the planets etc, but this was incredible! Thank you, Mr Nietzsche, & thank you Superstitious Naked Ape for blogging it!
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Thanks Gip! Big numbers can be fun 🙂
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The whole setup intrigues me. The shapes, the forces, the elements… Heliosheath, heliopause, the shock wave that comes where the solar wind meets the interstellar wind (wow, wind, in space? I suppose we’re talking radiation, right?)
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I’m not really sure. Are photons also classified as radiation?
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Photons, no. Protons, yes. 😀
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So, protons are in photons, so overall the answer is, Yes, it is just radiation!
If Matt Rave pops in we can ask him for clarification.
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😀 Good plan!
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I ended up more knackered just reading all those numbers than I did pushing the final kilometer of my morning jog!
You write so well, John, I am almost moved to buy a hat just to take it off to you. Will get me a copy of this.
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You haven’t’ already? I’m shocked! 🙂
It was a fun exercise, I will admit that.
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It truly is (almost) impossible to comes to terms with these figures.
Even with ”Warp speed ahead, Mr Sulu” or any number of Tipler machines the universe will likely remain impenetrable and unfathomable.
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We can’t effectively comprehend them. Not truly. When Andromeda crashes into the Milky Way galaxy in 5 billion years trillions upon trillions of stars, planets, and moons will come together, yet no one expects a single collision to occur… that is how great the distances are between the stars.
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Trillions will come together—are you planning a re-up of the Big Bang here, or some other orgiastic exercise for Gods?
Has no great scientific brain fed all the trajectories through a computer and worked out … oh! (Oops, dum dog). But hey—I ain’t gonna sweat it. Not unless someone manages to convince me that reincarnation is for real (and then, boy oh boy, will I ever sweat!).
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The problem here is the Creator has painted His Creation with perfect and impenetrable naturalism. By design His hand can’t be seen. We can study the teleological stains, but that is it.
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Yup. I know if I were to create something for a particular species, I’d surround it with a huge irradiated vacuum. 99.9% of the universe would be inhospitable to supporting it.
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Me too! And make three-quarters of the planet inhospitable 🙂
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I think that’s the definition of conservatism.
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Wonderful post. I had to look up a visualization of it, and they all came up short. This was the best I could find.
http://astropt.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/national-geographic-the-universe-map.jpg?474103
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Gorgeous! Just comparing the size of stars is too much for comprehension.
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I bet those stars are popular with the ladies. 🙂
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Of curse, the big ones are the most creative 🙂
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I think I’ve just a blown a few circui— ook geekle bloogle fleep
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VY Canis Majoris is the true definition of colossal.
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It boils down to a question of scale.
To a flea an elephant seems large. To an elephant a barn could seem large, and to a barn the USS JFK would be large. To the JFK the moon would etc etc all the by increments to the dreaded Canis Lupus or whatever.
Scale, scale, all is scale (and viewpoin)t.
So, if big G is everywhere in the universe at all times, then He (She?) actually IS the universe—’Uni’ being ‘one’, and there’s only one universe, and the only thing as big as the one universe is itself; and Big G is as big as the universe … ye gods, this gets simpler by the minute.
You may leave a donation in the box on the way out …
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In one direction, that’s Pantheism, reversed it’s Scott Adam’s god God in his book, God’s Debris… but I don’t think that has a fancy ism title.
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Duncan also has to few things to say to those who believe the universe and us humans were designed well by someone nice. All hail the Keeper of the Dark Shell!
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B’ahahahahaha!! That’s brilliant!
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Poor Jimmy … such a cheery wee optimist, too …
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Dear John, since SOM hasn’t chimed in here with juvenile insults yet, I figured I’d just do it for him, you delusional, psychotic, hate-filled atheist, you.
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You forgot, “Hallucination” 😉
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Damn it! I’ll never forgive myself for that, you hallucinating, delusional, atheistic denier of reality, you. 😀
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There you are, perfect!
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I’m glad you brought it up yourself, thank you.
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🙂
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hah! And thus we see that religion is indeed just human-invented nonsense if anyone can do it 🙂
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OK, I’ve read all that guff and all them numbers. But you’re missing the point:
Jesus loves you!
So there. Compared to that all else fails into vanity, no?
And if Jesus doesn’t … there’s always Allah and his buddy Jawohl (oops, Jahwey) (oops, wotever—and any one (or several millions) of others who all love you to bits, and are the sole unique pathway to the Divine Godhead Herself(s).
Frankly, John—you’ve got it made (and don’t forget a wee donation in the box on your way out) (as Moulterd says in the UK tv comedy series ‘Grace and Favour’— “Church don’t work fer nothing, you know~!)
(SFX: insert heavy sigh here followed by the words “All those numbers, and so little time to check them in!”)
(So take ’em on faith like everyone else does, ya dum’ dog!).
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Can’t collect, unfortunately, because the Creator does not seek to be worshiped.
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If He doesn’t (or She—it’s an equality age, no?) then His agents and agencies should all be fired.
(Or better, given an endless supply of rum and rifles—let ’em sort out the True name of God amongst themselves. Win/win, perfect definition thereof.)
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Here’s a panorama that will help put everything into perspective…
i.imgur.com/e9DJjCo.jpg (click on image to embiggen and then scroll down)
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Image didn’t load, Ron, but is it the one Brent posted above?
This one by Cary Huang is pretty crazy, too… From Plank Length strings to the observable universe
http://htwins.net/scale2/
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Let’s try this again:
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LOL!
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I have come to the conclusion that you, sir, are freaking brilliant. 🙂 It is a fine dilemma, isn’t it? We’re presented with unimaginable riches of exploration, beauty, horror, ugliness, gasping glories to behold, and not a chance in a million of ever seeing any of them. Nothing to do but wait until the Milky Way crashes into Andromeda and spins us sorrowfully out in space.
And this does read like poetry. I was trying to picture the late Carl Sagan reading it, but he’d a thrown in a few “billions and billions” here and there to keep us feeling too stupid to think about the big numbers.
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It’s a kind of house arrest, isn’t it? Or Robin Crusoe on a motile island which only ever glimpses lands just over the horizon. Maddening stuff.
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Very much so.
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A Camusian spectre, indeed.
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Camusian as in Camus?
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Yup.
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Hadn’t thought of it like that before, but I like it. You’re thinking the seemingly (outwardly) absurd actions of Meursault?
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Mommy … please will you buy me a supercluster? I can keep it under my pillow with my Bible; and Mummy, who’s the funky dude in the bed-sheet? Mommy, how does he know what ‘masturbate’ means, enough to forbid it … oh, of course, when you’re born of a virgin all else comes naturally. Well calloused palms, I see …
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so, everyone who hasn’t bought John’s book, go do so. You all need a real paper copy so people will find it all of our collections when we’re dead. The book belongs with things like Twain’s Letters from the Earth.
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Hahahaha! Not quite 🙂
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You’re too modest. It’s a wonderful work. At one point I took a “devil in lit” class. This would be such fun to have in something like that.
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Stephen Law from Cambridge has it and from what he’s said, and tweeted, is really liking it, so i’m hoping (maybe) he includes it in his courses. Keen to see how a professional apologist responds. To-date, no takers.
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I just ordered it from Amazon. After I read it, I’ll write a review there. I’m doubting apologists will have anything to say on it as it tosses apologectics out the window. Can’t wait to read it. Oh, does the Owner Of All Infernal Names exist in a timeless, spaceless, boundless, immaterial place? If so, from what I gather, there are A LOT of gods hangin’ out in that nowhere of a somewhere. 🙂
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He, Bedlam-Be-Upon-His-Name, resides in the chaos that existed before space and time were named with a temperature. However, it is proposed that He might in fact throw Himself into His Creation, simultaneously playing the role of torturer and tortured, predator and prey in specifically timed games, entirely unaware of His true identity. Can’t say any more here without spoiling it, but that possibility (which can be backed up with hard evidence) offers up a nasty twist in the plot.
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Ah, I figured as much. Can’t wait to read about him. Sounds like my kinda bloke.
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A real charmer, to be sure 🙂
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Ah, I’d dearly love to see that train wreck.
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Wow. If I were a believer, I think I’d be devastated right now.
I’d love to know the source of your astronomical details. You describe some things in detail that I’ve struggle to find information on.
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Hi SAP, which details?
Hey, Noel just pointed me to this site, Ask Ethan, and on all things cosmology, he looks like a goldmine, plus he has an “Ask” section, which I dare say I’m going to inhabit
View at Medium.com
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I love Ethan Siegel’s blog!
I was wondering where you got the details on our cosmic neighborhood, such as the Gould belt, or the Local Sheet, and their respective sizes. I’ve seen some of that on Wikipedia and in occasional articles, but you seem to have a better source of information.
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Ah, no, Ethan didn’t help me with that. The Interwebs did, and a lot of calculating/converting/screaming/red wine 🙂
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Serendipity strikes!
Sean Carroll just posted this, and linked to this:
http://io9.com/why-is-the-scale-of-the-universe-so-freakishly-large-1719048488
http://io9.com/why-is-the-scale-of-the-universe-so-freakishly-large-1719048488
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Thanks! It’s always humbling to remember that we actually can’t directly comprehend the very small or the very large. We can only think about them through metaphors and analogies.
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Wonderful stuff John: many thanks.
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Cheers, Mick
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Size is all relative, as is time. You might say it’s relatively large and relatively a long time, from our perspective.
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Great point! From our perspective, yes.
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Great post John! You missed one final amazing part of the universe. Despite that massively large universe, most of it is nothing. And when you look at the micro-universe it is also mostly nothing. The universe is essentially empty almost any way you look at it, except through the eyes of life. So despite the fact this is almost nothing, it is everything to us. It seems to me that God is wasting a lot of space. Lol. Must be his Feng Shui.:)
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Cheers Swarn! Yes, the master builder does have a soft spot for waste. He filled the single-celled amoeba proteus with a staggering 670 billion base pairs in its genome, whereas a 5 trillion-celled human being has only 2.9 billion base pairs. That’s clever!
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John: This was an amusing and even somewhat elegant myth. A Gnostic Creation Myth, if you will.
The discussion is now 350 comments. Endless parsing or God’s soveriegnty and the meaning of free will et al. But the original post was pretty neat
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That was good, thanks for sharing it.
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Pingback: The “Omnimalevalent God” – Or How the Atheist Ruthlessly Murders His Own Argument | Silence of Mind
John Zande, I have for quite a while enjoyed Your writings, staying in the shadows. From the moment I discovered Your ‘Omnimalevolent Creator’, it rang some distant bell. Only I couldn’t identify it. Some theme or thread that was rather elusive. Until today while at work I realized what it was. In my teens and twens I used to read everything of the Romanian Philosopher E M Cioran, on a regular schedule. Later I stopped because to me he talked too much about a ‘god’-thingie I couldn’t make sense of. A short trip to my attic and a bit of reading cleared everything up:
“A film about wild animals: endless cruelty in every latitude, “Nature”, a torturer of genius, steeped in herself and her work, exults which good reason: there is not a moment when what is alive fails to tremble, to make others tremble. Pity is a strange luxury only the most perfidious and the fiercest creature could invent, out of a need to punish and torture itself, out of ferocity, still.” – Emil Cioran
Very nice also in german (another of my languages):
„Ein Film über wilde Tiere: rastlose Grausamkeit in allen Breitengraden. Die , ein auf sich und sein Werk stolzer, genialer Folterer, triumphiert nicht ohne Grund: In jeder Sekunde erschrickt und erschreckt alles, was lebt. Das Mitleid ist ein seltsamer Luxus, den nur das perfideste, das wildeste der Lebewesen erfinden konnte, aus dem Bedürfnis, sich zu bestrafen und sich wild zu quälen.“
There You are and here it is. Make of it what You will.
Regards
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Hi BG, great to meet you.
That is an awesome find, thank you. I hadn’t heard of Cioran before, but I suspect I’ll be using that quote in the next book. Pity is a torture of itself. That is wild! And true. Ignorance can indeed be bliss, but once seen, many things cannot be unseen. If a person possesses even the shallowest vein of compassion they cannot but help to be appalled at the violence which saturates the world.
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Being a compassionate person myself, I think Cioran is a stony road, to…
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I was looking through some of his quotes, and it’s not light reading, that’s for certain. Like this one:
“If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.”
― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair
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I think going beyond Cioran is like going north of the North-Pole 😉
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LOL 🙂
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