Is the Universe friendly? Why are we still here..?

a reply to: WhateverYouSay

Agree. The dinosaurs were wiped out right on time. Immaculate control of space-time and matter/energy, to anticipate that rock from the origin of the creation, but there it is, and here we are! Praise God!

originally posted by: nOraKat

Also it does help that the aliens may be protecting our planet.

Maybe the aliens only tell the secret government that they are protecting us from meteor impact when God already had it covered from the beginning of time ie: no worries.

I don't trust them.

Then again, if they were protecting us, I wouldn't want them to stop, either!

I think when God tells a good joke that the aliens are the last to get it.

Surely everyone gets punk'd by the same joke.

This is in many ways the reason why I'm a Christian believer. lol

Saves us from excessive embarrassment, and allows us to also breath a sigh of relief that we and our world is not condemned but is meant to be saved, eventually.

Maybe it even saves us both from invasion and destruction. I honestly think it does, did, and will continue to protect us from harm.

So I'm going to be the eternal optimist in the face of a friendly universe, for now.

And if the natives were to get restless so to speak, I'd just point them to Jesus and say to them, he's my guy, what are you going to do? Then they get it.

I think there's something special about the Earth and the human being in the grand scheme of things that's also our saving grace - wouldn't THAT be funny?

Or did my mention of religious terminology already wipe the smile off your face?

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

the universe is not freindly nor unfreindly - it has no opinions or emotions - it just is

a reply to: ignorant_ape

But is there not an oughtness to the isness of being?

I would like to take this opportunity to say that I'm also very grateful for Earth's Moon.

It's a very friendly moon.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

I often am surprise at myself that I am still alive and kicking, for the time being, but when I move the frame and context outwardly, it just seems rather astonishing that everything's AOK. The sky hasn't fallen, but why not?

we've been here for around....few space minutes.

a reply to: MarioOnTheFly

Nevertheless, it's still a strange valley to find one's self in in some sort of post-modern, pre-apocalyptic phase.

Just a coincidence then and as luck would have it?

Did you see this video?



I tend to agree with him, the something rather extraordinary appears to be happening and we're right in the thick of it here in the present moment.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

I tend to agree with him, the something rather extraordinary appears to be happening and we're right in the thick of it here in the present moment.

I dont think that WE are extraordinary, in the context of universe. I think we give ourselves way too much importance on the grand scale. We are an electron inside a single atom of a single grain of sand in a Saharan desert...thinking we are...God's creation and somehow special. This moment in time you and I are living in...is by no means any more special then any other in the history of the universe.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

And what might their chip in our game be?

I don't know. Maybe they need us. Maybe they live the life of billionaires or whatever life, and without us what world would there be.

In the earth there are human beings, their destiny depend on themselves including what happens to the planet. We are in the learning process and ascending, nothing will kill us if we are going towards light. Loving consciousness cares for us and is calling us to awaken and we are following the call and ascending. If we have chosen the path of going towards darkness and crudification, then we could have even caused the destruction of the planet.

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

As long as there are women on Earth, everything is OK.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork
a reply to: seagull

I think all the evidence shows that it is (friendly). Hang on, just checking... (looks around). Yep, friendly as can be.

You might have missed the point in a way, in so far as our own presence sitting atop the totality of comic evolutionary history reveals that indeed the universe is and must be friendly to the experience of this present moment, which has certainly taken a long time to get here.

We are not atop the totality of cosmic evolutionary history; humans are only existing in the blink of an eye of the total of cosmic history, and the cosmic "what's to come"; the universe still has a lot of changing to do. We exist now because we can exist now. in about 100 billion years, the universe might be a place in which we humans cannot exist, but some other type of alien being someplace else in the universe may be able to exist instead -- a being who would not be able to exist during our present time.

I mean, it's not as if "now" is the only time in the universe (in time past or time yet to come) that could support life. Also, there have been mass extinctions on earth in the past, which could have possibly been associated with supernova or gamma ray bursts that bathed Earth with high doses of radiation -- high enough to kill off a large fraction of Earth life.

Another cosmic event (such as a gamma ray burst) that could kill all humans could happen again tomorrow, next year, in 100 years, 5000 years, or anytime in the next 50,000 to 100,000 years or more.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

I mean, it's not as if "now" is the only time in the universe (in time past or time yet to come) that could support life.

True, but at another level, it's always now, always was and always will be, to which I would add that there's something very peculiar and unique to the present configuration as it relates to life on earth, including the human experience.

Sounds highly solipsistic I realize, and you may call it a selection bias, but, when I take a good hard look at the Earth-Moon-Sun geometrical configuration and the human reproductive and gestation cycle, it's hard not to see the connection to something that we alone were intended to see and to recognize, at this particular epoch in cosmic evolutionary history.

It's highly meaningful and significant, the present moment, and if you take the time to listen to that presentation by Terrance McKenna, you might get a new perspective on it just how extraordinary it really is.

You see, the problem is that we cannot remove or eliminate the significance of it, not stand apart from our own experience and call our own self a "thing" of some kind.

I think the materialist monist and perhaps atheist viewpoint is too heavily biased in thinking of here and there, this and that, or of the particular thingness within the context of a now and then and future, time and history, including cosmic evolutionary history.

Now is all there is, and this is now, and here we are.

It's an utterly extraordinary position to be in, of the highest level of meaning and significance that one could possibly assign to it, and then some, when we consider the larger framework.

I understand what you're saying, don't get me wrong, but some say that we actually reside in a non-localized, holographic universe through an eternally unfolding present moment that conspired in eternity to bring about this moment.

The present is where it's at, and the human experience is meaningful, not a meaningless absurdity.

To bear witness to the occurrence of life is the greatest gift, and it would appear that the universe is the ultimate free lunch.

originally posted by: AnkhMorpork
True, but at another level, it's always now, always was and always will be, to which I would add that there's something very peculiar and unique to the present configuration as it relates to life on earth, including the human experience.

Sure, but in a few billion years, a Zorkian on the Planet Zork that is in some far away galaxy -- a galaxy with conditions inhospitable to human life, or Earth life in general, could say "there's something very peculiar and unique to the present configuration of the galaxy and universe as it relates to life here on Planet Zork".

The type of life we have in the universe today found a way to thrive in the conditions the universe has today because that life is the type that COULD develop and thrive. The type of life that can't develop in the conditions the universe has today (not surprisingly) didn't develop.

However, in several billion years, maybe the conditions of the universe will change in such a way that another type of life will thrive (one that can't thrive in the conditions the universe has today), but HUMAN life (and the rest type of life we know about) would not be able to exist.

We aren't necessarily special, and those Zorkians would not necessarily be special. Human existence is fleeting, and when the entire history the universe is considered, and the entire historical record of life in the universe is considered, human existence would have been just an almost imperceptible spec on that entire history of the universe.

Sounds highly solipsistic I realize, and you may call it a selection bias, but, when I take a good hard look at the Earth-Moon-Sun geometrical configuration and the human reproductive and gestation cycle, it's hard not to see the connection to something that we alone were intended to see and to recognize, at this particular epoch in cosmic evolutionary history.

The Earth-Sun-Moon geometrical configuration has enough variances (i.e., the Moon is only sometimes the same apparent size as the Sun) that I don't think it's anything more than a coincidence. Besides, what significant role does the apparent size of the moon being similar to the apparent size of the Sun play in human development?

a reply to: AnkhMorpork

Somehow I missed your reply.

think all the evidence shows that it is (friendly). Hang on, just checking... (looks around). Yep, friendly as can be.

Really? All of it? There's ample evidence of things being quite the opposite of that. Black holes eating stars that may, or may not, have life on the planets around it, isn't horribly friendly. Galaxies colliding with other galaxies, to what effect on life there, we'll never, ever know. Doesn't seem friendly to me.

You might have missed the point in a way, in so far as our own presence sitting atop the totality of comic evolutionary history reveals that indeed the universe is and must be friendly to the experience of this present moment, which has certainly taken a long time to get here.

You're positing on scant, actually no, evidence that we're sitting atop of galactic evolution, because of the mere chance that we're still here? 'course, I can't refute that claim, nor can you prove it. Conjecture is seldom, if ever, proof.

The dinosaurs lived on this planet for many hundreds of millions of years, yet one, in the grand scheme of things, tiny rock went a long ways towards destroying them. Humans have lived, in whatever form of primate, on this planet for a pittance of that time. We've ridden on Dame Luck's skirt tails for a long while now, and as any gambler knows, luck eventually changes. There is a history of mass extinctions on a global scale in the fossil record--not once, not twice, but multiple times. Our presence on the, to quote you, top of galactic evolution is due only to fortune. ...and like all good luck, it will end at some point.

a reply to: seagull

Maybe my unbounded eternal optimism is without basis and maybe I have a selection bias and a solipsistic POV.

I could be mistaken.

But if the universe is soon proven to be an interpenetrating, non-localized, holographic, informational matrix, then you could also be..out of congruent alignment with the truth at the heart of the matter even now.

In the more here and there, then and now materialist monist viewpoint, that all appears to make perfect rational sense, but if the paradigm shifts away from the Newtonian, Cartesian perspective in favor of a monistic idealism (consciousness is the ground of all being and becoming), then it's possible, you have to at least acknowledge that, that what I'm suggesting may be infinitely closer to the mark, even if we are walking through a valley of the shadow of death and find ourselves poised at the leading edge of a precarious wave that could break in another direction at any time.

What is, is of the highest degree of significance and potentially meaningful value that could possibly be assigned to it.

As it traces and winds it's path through the zero point field with nothing forgotten and everything that is of value, stored/remembered, and the rest discarded along the way, then we are and this moment is what was preserved, and not discarded, and included and not excluded.

If it has the very least bit of meaning and significance, then by extension it means everything and is of the highest significance imaginable.

That's a paradigm shift or reframe within the context of eternity, as it has chosen us out of an infinite domain of possibility.

At the heart of what I'm suggesting is the repudiation of the idea of a random happenstance.

It evokes an intentionality and mutuality or shared, mutual experience.

One side says it's just blind luck, the other that it's highly meaningful and significant simply by virtue that it's actually happening, the occurrence of life, as we sit on top at the leading edge of the entire cosmological evolutionary process.

Maybe it doesn't float your boat, but for me it makes be sit up and go ah HA! with a childlike giggle.

And neither can we stand apart from ourselves or our own experience and call ourselves and our experience nothing but a "thing" in a thingness universe of here and there, then and now, this and that.

We broke away for no reason from a place of observation and participation that the ancients understood clearly, for them because they didn't know any better and for us, because we now do.

In parting, I'd like to post a couple of videos to help us ponder over the idea of cosmological history and evolution, but without excluding our own observation and experience as intrinsic to it's own intentionality towards you and being there to observe it and have a sharing in the experience of what it means to be alive as we are.