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The suns and planets that form the constellations of the billion billion solar systems and go pouring a tossing flood of shining globes through the viewless arteries of space, are the blood corpuscles in the veins of God; and the nations are the microbes that swarm and wiggle and brag in each, and to think God can tell them apart at that distance has nothing better to do than try. This is the entertainment of an eternity. Who so poor in his ambitions as to consent to be God on those terms. Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if He is as little as that, He is beneath it.
~ Mark Twain, a Biography
Concluding the ‘significant insignificance’ in the mind of God as it relates to our relevance on the planet and our relationship to, and from Him…
This world, and the universe beyond, are meaningful, and coherent throughout. The reason for this is that they were designed, at every level, by higher intelligences (different ones for each level) than ours. We are souls with minds inhabiting body, not bodies having a simulacrum of mind.
God is meaningfulness itself. The designs of things in the material universe were created in a higher reality, inclusive of this one, and we are all here to learn (albeit not all of us exactly the same things). With our individuality, and the ability to reason and to think with our minds, we are the children of meaningfulness; children of God.
Religions have been the bane, yet also the inspiration for higher thought, a higher reason than mere materialism (aka atheism) because the last designers of our world were those who became known to later man as the “gods” of ancient “myth”. They were real, and physically re-formed the surface of the Earth and the entire solar system, and they were worshipped for their transcendant powers in doing so.
They are the reason for mankind’s belief in “might makes right”, and they caused the religions of man to be for millennia, based primarily upon appeasement of the capricious and jealous “gods”, rather than upon a true moral philosophy.
Atheism is second or third-rate thinking, involving determined avoidance of the very idea of the higher reality and the overarching intelligence of that reality which underlies and absolutely guarantees our own.
Anyone who seriously thinks man insignificant should not be taken seriously in this, as they are actually dismissing meaningfulness itself, the substratum underlying our every thought. The universe after all, is still the universe, and mankind is very much a part of it, however overwhelming it might appear to be.
Ponder this little gem. In light of the current iceberg frenzy going on with the mean greenies, here is an occurrence that I am particularly fond of. Ice, H2O becoming less dense as it freezes, is one of those “miracles” that makes life possible on our galactic oasis.
Ponder also the ramifications, if ice was dense enough to sink.
Actually it is water that is truly anomalous. Water expands as it becomes solid ice. Thus it becomes lighter and floats on top of liquid water. Look at the sequence H2O; H2S; H2Se; H2Te; … These are from the same Group VI of the Periodic Table. The element is becoming larger and heavier as we go across that list.
Water is a high-boiling liquid (100 degrees Celsius), thus a liquid at room temperature. All the others are gases. Think about that. One’s first reaction is that water should be a gas! (Except for water, all the others have unbelievable stenches).
H2O is a polar molecule and is such a good solvent that almost everything dissolves in water, even if only to a tiny extent. God’s engineering makes parts of enzymes hydrophilic and some parts hydrophobic, resulting in their remarkable ability to carry out chemical transformations at body temperatures, and making dilute water solution seem miraculous.
Looked at from a non-chemical aspect, water is a miracle item. Think of it when you next have a beer or even a simple glass of water. Or a shower or tub-soak even.
Then consider this … If you travel at 99% of the speed of light in the universe it would take 100,000 years to travel across the Milky Way from the point of view of an Earth observer. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity the faster you travel the slower time flows inside the spaceship.
While at the speed of 40,000 miles per hour achievable with our present technology the “time effect” is negligible, but if you fly close to the 186,000 miles per second speed of light, time slows down to a trickle inside the spaceship.
If you travel to the nearest star and back at 99% of the speed of light you’ll complete the journey in a few weeks, but when you get back you’ll find that 8 years have passed for earthlings. Additionally, were you to travel at 100% of the speed of light (which is physically impossible because it would require an infinite energy), time inside your spaceship would be suspended.
Maybe you can wrap your mind around it because I can’t!
Understand that long before God created mankind and this planet for man to live on, he existed without mankind and was complete in himself. He never needed mankind and he still doesn’t need mankind – mankind needs him.
The Godhead consists of three persons in one and their interaction with one another never left a vacuum. They were fully in agreement when man was created. In Genesis 1:26 God declared: “Let us make man in OUR IMAGE and in OUR LIKENESS.” That was just before Adam was created.
Study the scriptures and you will notice after a while that all three persons in the Godhead are credited with attributes of deity in the Old and New Testaments.
Romans 9:20 is very succinct when Paul declares: “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?”
And in closing, there’s this: “We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.” ~ Sir Arthur Eddington, Space, Time, and Gravitation, 1920
To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of His colossal universe is proof that He is at least steadfast to His purposes; whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being equal and impartial, show that he is just and fair; these things, taken together, suggest that if he shall ordain us to live hereafter, he will be steadfast, just and fair toward us. We shall not need to require anything more.
~ Mark Twain, a Biography
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See also: Significant insignificance, part two
Check out: God’s barrier the physical universe
Add on: The Discovery of Gravitational Waves
See full: Our Significant Insignificance – The Universe and Us
And don’t miss God’s purpose for your life: The Potential of your Purpose
Plus C.R.Lord on Man’s Insignificance
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Soli Deo Gloria!