It is beginning to dawn on mankind that creation is much larger and much older that we have previously imagined. All our religions developed under the Ptolemaic model – earth center, heaven above, hell below. That is why a religious update is so necessary. What does creation consist of really? Where are we within it? What is our purpose?
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8 Responses
The more we know the greater the mystery, it seems. The clip optimistically talks of “colonization” of those planets but given the sheer vastness of the distance, I doubt that we’d ever reach those planets — or that those planets that may be reached, would prove habitable. It seems as if the Cosmos was made so colossal so as to keep the habitable worlds apart, making their development and their destiny isolated — and not giving us hope that after we mess it up here, we could go elsewhere. We’d better don’t mess it up here — though we seem to be hell-bent on messing it up. But sure, God’s thoughts are much grander than we’ve ever imagined…
And who’s counting the parallel universes? 🙂
The vastness is staggering – about 100,000 light years (or 590,000 trillion miles) across. And that’s just within our own galaxy, just one of billions.
Carl Sagan was right: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
The sheer scale of the universe points to the folly of trying to base any update of religion on understanding it. But then religion has never relied on any understanding of external reality, and no founder of religion has ever based his teaching upon ideas about the nature of the cosmos. Unless we think God is sitting on a distant planet somewhere, these are not properly matters of religion. According to our great Judeo-Christian tradition, religious truth lies in such statements as that Man is made in the image and likeness of God, which gives us the Golden Rule, the basis of our moral universe. That, surely, is a far more interesting and fruitful universe to study. The other is just a diversion.
The immense unlikelyhood of there being intelligent life anywhere in our universe is described in “Improbable Planet” by Hugh Ross, PhD (Astrophysicist, Christian Pastor).
Fascinatingly, Ross explains Big Bang to present day life on Earth vis parallels between ‘secular’ physics as mathematicly described multifactor relationships, and biology and the necessary pattern of creation as described in Genesis [Old Testament].
Current models of the cosmos and its functioning bear many similarities to India’s detailed understanding from 1000’s of years ago, a sliver of which is detailed in ,— [See “The Holy Science”, authored ~ 100 years ago by the yogi master Sri Yukteshwar].The book coordinates Christianity, Christ, Western cosmology, and India’s cosmology//spirituality.
Modern discoveries in quantum physics today were anticipated ~ 1500 years ago and documented in Buddhist texts such as The Heart Sutra and The Diamond Sutra, as well as dissertations by ‘yogic’ Advaita Vedantists explaining the inexplainable SELF as Onlyness, No-Thingness, Silence.l
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A Statement from the Foreword of the Urantia Book:
0:0.1 (1.1) IN THE MINDS of the mortals of Urantia—that being the name of your world—there exists great confusion respecting the meaning of such terms as God, divinity, and deity. Human beings are still more confused and uncertain about the relationships of the divine personalities designated by these numerous appellations. Because of this conceptual poverty associated with so much ideational confusion, I have been directed to formulate this introductory statement in explanation of the meanings which should be attached to certain word symbols as they may be hereinafter used in those papers which the Orvonton corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate into the English language of Urantia.
0:0.2 (1.2) It is exceedingly difficult to present enlarged concepts and advanced truth, in our endeavor to expand cosmic consciousness and enhance spiritual perception, when we are restricted to the use of a circumscribed language of the realm. But our mandate admonishes us to make every effort to convey our meanings by using the word symbols of the English tongue. We have been instructed to introduce new terms only when the concept to be portrayed finds no terminology in English which can be employed to convey such a new concept partially or even with more or less distortion of meaning.
0:0.3 (1.3) In the hope of facilitating comprehension and of preventing confusion on the part of every mortal who may peruse these papers, we deem it wise to present in this initial statement an outline of the meanings to be attached to numerous English words which are to be employed in designation of Deity and certain associated concepts of the things, meanings, and values of universal reality.
0:0.4 (1.4) But in order to formulate this Foreword of definitions and limitations of terminology, it is necessary to anticipate the usage of these terms in the subsequent presentations. This Foreword is not, therefore, a finished statement within itself; it is only a definitive guide designed to assist those who shall read the accompanying papers dealing with Deity and the universe of universes which have been formulated by an Orvonton commission sent to Urantia for this purpose.
0:0.5 (1.5) Your world, Urantia, is one of many similar inhabited planets which comprise the local universe of Nebadon. This universe, together with similar creations, makes up the superuniverse of Orvonton, from whose capital, Uversa, our commission hails. Orvonton is one of the seven evolutionary superuniverses of time and space which circle the never-beginning, never-ending creation of divine perfection—the central universe of Havona. At the heart of this eternal and central universe is the stationary Isle of Paradise, the geographic center of infinity and the dwelling place of the eternal God.
0:0.6 (1.6) The seven evolving superuniverses in association with the central and divine universe, we commonly refer to as the grand universe; these are the now organized and inhabited creations. They are all a part of the master universe, which also embraces the uninhabited but mobilizing universes of outer space.
(….)
0:12.11 (16.8) In formulating the succeeding presentations having to do with the portrayal of the character of the Universal Father and the nature of his Paradise associates, together with an attempted description of the perfect central universe and the encircling seven superuniverses, we are to be guided by the mandate of the superuniverse rulers which directs that we shall, in all our efforts to reveal truth and co-ordinate essential knowledge, give preference to the highest existing human concepts pertaining to the subjects to be presented. We may resort to pure revelation only when the concept of presentation has had no adequate previous expression by the human mind.
0:12.12 (17.1) Successive planetary revelations of divine truth invariably embrace the highest existing concepts of spiritual values as a part of the new and enhanced co-ordination of planetary knowledge. Accordingly, in making these presentations about God and his universe associates, we have selected as the basis of these papers more than one thousand human concepts representing the highest and most advanced planetary knowledge of spiritual values and universe meanings. Wherein these human concepts, assembled from the God-knowing mortals of the past and the present, are inadequate to portray the truth as we are directed to reveal it, we will unhesitatingly supplement them, for this purpose drawing upon our own superior knowledge of the reality and divinity of the Paradise Deities and their transcendent residential universe.
0:12.13 (17.2) We are fully cognizant of the difficulties of our assignment; we recognize the impossibility of fully translating the language of the concepts of divinity and eternity into the symbols of the language of the finite concepts of the mortal mind. But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience—God-consciousness.
0:12.14 (17.3) [Indited by an Orvonton Divine Counselor, Chief of the Corps of Superuniverse Personalities assigned to portray on Urantia the truth concerning the Paradise Deities and the universe of universes.]
Four possibilities:
1) We are alone in the universe when it comes to sentient creatures.
2) There are lots of planets inhabited by intelligent creatures but due to distances and the cost of space travel, we will never meet.
3) There are lots of planets inhabited by intelligent creatures but they destroyed themselves so we will never meet.
4) They already were here and hated the place so they left.
I’m sure there are others without going into worm holes. traveling faster than the speed of light, multiple, endless universes and so forth.
Hui Neng, the sixth Patriarch of Zen explained very simply, “From the first there is nothing.”
Ramana Maharshi echoed this “idea” in his explanation of Ajata Vada, in which nothing ever happened… no creation… nothing.
The problem arises when an entity, using its very limited sensory capabilities tries to understand what the universe, or even this world, is about.
And we, of course, assume that any “life-form” anywhere in the universe has the same or similar physical and mental equipment (and of course speaks fluent English).