https://www.livescience.com/simulating-early-universe-inflation.html?utm_source=notification
If Time is immense and how we now experience Time is no more than a flicker of light in a massive outburst of energy how should we consider our own existence?
As a Christian scholar, I believe that life is a precious gift from God, whose omniscience is present in every moment and it is my job to appreciate the opportunity afforded by the gift of life which holds the potential for each and every one of us to have a share in the minuscule portion, the "flicker of light" in the "tiny portion of Time" which constitutes human history.
We can either be-come a part of light or darkness.
Natural laws are the temporal creation of the eternal upper force.
In this sense, time itself is a creation, a biological clock for day (activity, growth) and night (sleep, death).
“A little while and I will be gone from among you, whither I cannot tell. From nowhere we come, into nowhere we go. What is life? It is a flash of firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is as the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”
― Chief Crowfoot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowfoot
"Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind".
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Wolfgang, there is an article I found on here that goes into the Time issue of Bergson, with excellent results, dividing Time up. But in fact my question, given the article attached, concerns other universes calculated up to 4000 that preclude the Big Bang. Therefore we do not even inhabit a flicker. Our Time is much less than that even though we experience it differently. Of course it depends on how we structure Time, but its importance should never be ignored, and how we identify it and the processes involved.
The article anyway says in the end that no matter how we construct our species' identity we really, truly do not count. Creating environmental illusions of human eternity helps us deal with the problem of species' ego inflation and reality (whatever we chose that to be).
RE: "...how should we consider our own existence?"
Answer: In a state of sonder.
sonder n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
— The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Of course Karl, but of little genuine merit or impact. Fleeting thoughts that disappear immediately (Time wise) into dissipated mist. No footsteps in the sand as (Time wise) the sand does not really exist. The creation of energy that has no genuine impact (Time wise) on the vaster concerns around us.
"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."
When a wave cross through light, an electron is made. So, the life y for ever y apperly is deart, can be resurection. Fact, the DNA molecule have a sinoidal form, as a wave!.The light not deat.The Human race is light. Regards!!
Hi Wilkin! The following quote of Nick Hughes appears very apt concerning your question.
Nick Hughes: “When it comes to causal significance, it seems hard to deny that any individual, no matter how important they are in human history, will be insignificant in the grand scheme of things. We only have influence over a microscopically tiny blip of space-time, after all. But when it comes to value, humanity may be significant even in the grand scheme of things.
Here are a few interesting articles related to time and the human span of life.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/does-the-scale-of-the-universe-make-human-life-pointless-1.3235860
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/does-the-universe-exist-if-were-not-looking
https://www.sciencealert.com/time-might-only-exist-in-your-head-say-physicists
That's the point Stanley. Sonder is a synecdoche. At a cosmic scale (a "vaster concern", to use your phrase) no human concern has any more lasting significance than the fleeting moments of daily life. Ozymandias all.
Hi Wilkin! I think even though humans exist for a tiny blip of time on the grand scheme of things, yet their value if measured in terms of their achievements in developing socio-economic systems, scientific/technical marvels, and philosophical schools of thoughts are worth appreciation. Aren't their dreams of traveling to the stars awesome?
Every attitude to the worth of the human life whether that which views it as trivial and absurd, or valuable and marvelous serves a certain purpose. Eventually, all those purposes or ends, no matter how opposed they may look to each other, will make sense in the whole system of Everything.
Devinder, getting to the stars may not happen for a long while and by then, yes, we passage an equally insignificant iota of light and time.
Muthana, we do not figure in Everything, not even an atom of Everything.
Hi Wilkin! You are right that travelling to stars may take some time.But in the known universe only humans are daring to dream it and taking steps to do so. Their life cycle may be insignificant on the cosmic time scale yet their achievements are in no way insignificant.
Devinder,
Perhaps, but is it possible that simply other creatures are more sensible?
Hi Wilkin! Yes, it is one of the possibilities. Other creatures may be more sensible than humans or it can also be otherwise. I think main problem is the lack of effective communication among species. The communication barrier does not allow us to understand each others' level of sensibility.
As a Christian scholar, I believe that life is a precious gift from God, whose omniscience is present in every moment and it is my job to appreciate the opportunity afforded by the gift of life which holds the potential for each and every one of us to have a share in the minuscule portion, the "flicker of light" in the "tiny portion of Time" which constitutes human history.
How do we define Time?
How we compare to?
To having life is a chance that we have got it.
How to love some one is appreciation of live, not to dictate...
Hypothetical discussion....sometimes I believe yes it is true we exists only in tiny portion of time.......sometimes no....
Hussainsha Syed,
The hypothesis contained in the article with this question demonstrates our insignificance within a remarkably insignificant portion of time. We still cling onto the largely monotheist construction of human existence, which we should abandon.
Possibly, as the Universe had existed billions of years before humanity came and will continue to exist for billions of years after humanity has gone. Again, without loss of generality, it can be assumed that the birth and death of the Universe might have taken countless number of times before us and likewise after us.
Nancy, the gift of life which we exaggerate in importance because it is ours? Nevertheless, epiphanies can seem to stretch Time to remarkable lengths, outside of the norm but in the end result in endings and complete anomynity. Cherish the moment, even if it is only dust? Anyway, happiness is a snowflake away and if we live only in the present, all is good!
In agreement with Prof Nancy Ann Watanabe, I see every life as a precious gift from God. This is considering human life, but to look at it in the wider perspective, I feel that the whole of the animal and plant kingdom are so important.
When I was at work, I had a small cutting on my noticeboard about a little girl rescuing starfish:
https://www.thestarfishchange.org/starfish-tale
A story worth reading; everything has its own importance.
Ranjan is correct.
Humankind will disappear as well as its gods. Then what?
Stanley Wilkin , if humans manage to survive for another few billion years, they might become the gods themselves and will gain the capability of creating a new Universe. Maybe the current Universe was created by humans who lived in the previous birth cycle of the Universe.
Allow me first to commend your choice of topic Stanley Wilkin . I do agree with the notion that the whole creation, this magnificent universe by the Almighty should remind us that our whole existence is but a mere flicker not in the sense of light/darkness but rather in transience to another existence that awaits all and would everlasting. Only in that sense I find myself agreeing with both, you Stanley Wilkin but equally, in my own way, with Nancy Ann Watanabe .
Time is what we want it to be, how it relates to us. But that should not persaude us that we own and control it.
My goal is to demonstrate how insignificant we actually are but also to understand our relationship with time and its relationship with us. Time speeds from us and extends reality in ways we cannot grasp.
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