The immensity of the universe (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Wednesday, September 16, 2015, 14:35 (3355 days ago)

An article in The Guardian a short while ago seemed to me to bring home the sheer magnitude and impersonality of the universe. Astronomers analysed starlight from more than 220,000 distant galaxies, and concluded that “the universe is slowly losing its twinkle”. This is because there is a progressive decrease in the formation of new stars, which they think peaked about 8 billion years ago. Estimates vary wildly, but there seems to be a general consensus that the observable universe contains between 100 and 200 billion galaxies, each of which in turn contains between a few thousand and one hundred trillion stars. That's just the observable universe. It is believed that the Milky Way has a black hole at its centre, whose mass is some 4 million times greater than our sun.-The figures may be tentative, but the immensity is beyond doubt. And so one can hardly be surprised if people are sceptical at the very idea of a single mind creating and controlling billions and billions of galaxies and zillions and zillions of stars. It becomes even more unimaginable if one realizes that new stars are being born and old ones are dying all the time (a macrocosmic parallel to life and death on microcosmic Earth). Could this cosmic coming and going really be purposefully directed towards some end? I can't help being equally sceptical at the idea that all this sprang from “nothing”, but that does not make it any easier to believe in a mind that can encompass hundreds of billions of galaxies. Far easier to believe in what is observable: namely, a vast expanse of energy and matter constantly changing as matter comes and goes, apparently undirected and purposeless.-“Easier to believe” does not of course equate to truth. My agnostic balancing act demands acknowledgement that the astonishing complexity of living cells and cell communities makes it “easier to believe” in conscious design than in blind chance as the creative force. BBella's solution to the dilemma is conscious beings from elsewhere in the universe, but as we have agreed, that only transfers the question of origin to them instead of us and our fellow organisms.-It seems to me that just as atheists wilfully close their eyes to the scale of life's complexity, theists close theirs to the scale of a universe in which our own planet is one of zillions of lumps of matter which in the course of time will disappear, seemingly with as little purpose as a grain of sand swirled away by the ocean. The human ability to keep the eyes closed is perhaps as remarkable a talent as the ability to keep them open.