And to go from that next halfway point to the destination you must again go half way. And this problem goes on infinitely. What does this mean? It is impossible to get from one point to another, because the distance can be infinitely divided in half, meaning any distance between two points is infinite.
Democritus proposed that all things in the universe, all that exists, are made up of an indivisibly small particle which he called the Atom. These atoms could come in different shapes and sizes and were the foundation of all existence.
But the question came up: What is between these atoms? Clearly not everything touches everything else, so what is it that is between these atoms? Well it was essentially what is called the Void. What is the void? Well it is nothing at all, because everything that has existence is made of atoms, so the void is something non-existent. Between atoms is a void of nothing. We may not matter to God, but God could still matter to us. A perfect, non-benevolent God might be an appropriate object of admiration, imitation, contemplation, or perhaps even worship.
If God created this universe because it contains complex phenomena united by simple mathematical laws, then knowledge of this fact would give you a new reason to rank complex, ordered, imaginative creativity above frivolous pleasures. Everyday moral life is all about balancing competing goods.
So even a small change in comparative importance could make a significant difference. Theism promises a reciprocal relationship with a personal God. AP cannot promise this. Axiarchism promises a world governed by human-friendly values. AP cannot guarantee this. Atheism promises a universe where we create our own values. AP cannot deliver that either. But if we came to believe in AP, we could still study, contemplate, or explore whatever it is that truly matters in the universe.
We could try to mirror the cosmic values in our own lives. His research interests include our obligations to future people, the demands of morality, and the relationship between God and morality.
What a striking theory and certainly an eye-opening position! In an AP mindset, subjects on the fringe of what is considered academia — such as fields in psychology which study alterations of consciousness — have a degree of merit as much as the scientific method. If more of us embraced the alternate of AP, or at least considered it, it could be invaluable for people to cultivate meaning in the world.
Thanks for publishing this on here, I just happened upon it as a student of philosophy, however it has given me a lot to consider and perhaps it allows for those who ponder it a chance to draw from all of their human experience.
AP from my basic understanding of reading the above, gives humans a new lease on trying to come to terms with the universe and meaning — whether that of value happens to transcends the human experience or not! Your email address will not be published.
Search for:. Tim Mulgan May 15th, Tim Mulgan asks whether the universe could have a non-human-centred purpose. About the author Tim Mulgan. Pingback: Mini-Heap - Daily Nous.
Leave a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Read Next Identity Threat May 2nd, It merely reinforces the knowledge that light travels very fast indeed.
If God exists, one question would be whether they would be bound to the laws of sciences such as physics Credit: Alamy. Things get a bit more interesting when you consider how far light has travelled since the beginning. Or rather, the observable Universe's existence. As time goes on, the volume of space increases, and light has to travel for longer to reach us. There is a lot more universe out there than we can view, but the most distant object that we have seen is a galaxy, GN-z11, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
This is approximately 1. But when the light "set off", the galaxy was only about three billion light years away from our galaxy, the Milky Way.
We cannot observe or see across the entirety of the Universe that has grown since the Big Bang because insufficient time has passed for light from the first fractions of a second to reach us. Some argue that we therefore cannot be sure whether the laws of physics could be broken in other cosmic regions — perhaps they are just local, accidental laws. And that leads us on to something even bigger than the Universe. Many cosmologists believe that the Universe may be part of a more extended cosmos, a multiverse , where many different universes co-exist but don't interact.
Inflation is an important theory because it can explain why the Universe has the shape and structure that we see around us. But if inflation could happen once, why not many times? We know from experiments that quantum fluctuations can give rise to pairs of particles suddenly coming into existence, only to disappear moments later.
And if such fluctuations can produce particles, why not entire atoms or universes? It's been suggested that , during the period of chaotic inflation, not everything was happening at the same rate — quantum fluctuations in the expansion could have produced bubbles that blew up to become universes in their own right.
But how does God fit into the multiverse? One headache for cosmologists has been the fact that our Universe seems fine-tuned for life to exist. The fundamental particles created in the Big Bang had the correct properties to enable the formation of hydrogen and deuterium — substances which produced the first stars.
Could quantum physics help explain a God that could be in two places at once? Credit: Nasa. The physical laws governing nuclear reactions in these stars then produced the stuff that life's made of — carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.
How come all the physical laws and parameters in the universe happen to have the values that allowed stars, planets and ultimately life to develop? Some argue it's just a lucky coincidence.
Others say we shouldn't be surprised to see biofriendly physical laws — they after all produced us, so what else would we see? Things look far more difficult with the emergence of mind. While we think we know some of the preconditions of life, and some of the substructures of primitive organisms, we do not have the slightest idea on which evolutionary level mind emerges.
That's simple. The rational mind of man was created by an intelligent and rational Creator. He is all-powerful and all-knowing, and so it was easy for God to create both the body as well as the mind of man. Consider for a moment the mathematical precision of human DNA. Francis Collins is the director of the Human Genome Project. Collins stated, "I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.
As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God's language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God's plan. Perry Marshall noted, "Dr. He discovered that these ratios are highly mathematical and based on 'Phi,' the Golden Ratio 1. This is a very special number, sort of like Pi. Since God's mind is obviously a million times more advanced than the human mind, it was a piece of cake for the Creator to place this mathematical perfection into the DNA of Adam and Eve.
Who believes in that Adam and Eve stuff? Christ said, "Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female. And we have all descended from that first man and woman. It requires faith to believe that God is an eternal Being who created man at a special time and place.
On the other end of the spectrum, it requires far greater faith and a blind faith at that to believe that something came from nothing. Scriptures reveals the origin of the cosmos: "By Christ all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him and for Him.
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