The August 16, 2021 issue of The New Yorker has a fascinating article about the new James Webb Space Telescope that will be launched soon. It will be much more powerful than the Hubble space telescope.
I liked the end of "The Youthful Universe." You can read it below.
Science truly is our best way of learning about "God" — if by that word is meant everything that exists. That's how I've come to view God.
Sometimes during my day I'll say, "Thank you God." I'm not thanking a divine being. I don't believe in supernatural entities.
Rather, I use "God" as shorthand for the marvelous reality that is evident everywhere from the mysterious quantum realm of the very small to the unfathomable vastness of the universe that will be explored by the James Webb Space Telescope.
So for me thanking God is simply an appreciation of the causes and effects inherent in the laws of nature that produced the thing I feel thankful for.
Once you get a taste of science, the offerings of religion seem horribly bland. Science, as the story excerpt below says, is about knowing. Religions are about believing, a much less appealing alternative.
The seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler studied the physical world for the messages he felt that God had written into the Book of Nature. Galileo, in fact, had supporters inside and outside the Church.
Sometimes people in power have been reluctant to acknowledge the truths that science uncovers. Each time we look farther, our universe gets larger. Or, depending on your perspective, we get smaller.
Astonomers take the position — an incidentally ethical one — of being radically in favor of knowing.
Bob Williams, the former head of the Space Telescope Science Institute, grew up in a Baptist family in Southern California, one of five children.
He'd wanted to be an astronomer since the seventh grade, when he received a pamphlet on astronomy in science class; he then saved his paper-route money to buy a telescope.
He earned a scholarship to U.C. Berkeley and studied astronomy there.
"My father didn't want me to go to college," he said. "He told me that if I went to get an education I would lose my faith. And he was right about that. We were raised to take every word in the Bible as literally true. But then I was learning about continental drift. About evolution."
Williams said that he is often asked about faith.
Many traditions use the term "God" to mean, basically, everything that is. In that view, the universe itself is the Book, and astronomers are reading it as it is.
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Very interesting indeed.
There are what I call the “dualistic” religions, such as Christianity, Islam, Sant mat 1, Judaism.
Then there are the non-dual religions such as zen, sufism, Sant mat v3 onwards.
The latter don’t have a personal God. Their “God” (if they even acknowledge any idea of God) is the state of oneness or “all there is”.
https://youtu.be/4Pp5mWs8k5I
Osho says there is no God. We get the concept of God from our parents. They look after us. God takes their place in our mind.
Oh
But science of which Galaxy U have in mind
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>> If “God” is all there is, science is the way to know God<< Well, writing cookbooks, or columns or discussing the description of puddings in debating clubs, is one thing; the experience of eating the pudding is something else. The proof, they say, is in the eating and not in the description. That holds for everything ... even gods.... if there is one to experience.
When you study reality, in any form, you are studying God.
Is there intelligence there? Yes. Just as there is intelligence in each organ of the body.
It’s just not the kind of intelligence we think of when we use that term. The intelligence in the creation is amazing. The universe is making new stuff all the time. Laboratories on a cosmic scale. All run by the robots of automation built into every cell!
People have used the word “God” to describe the indescribable. But then they continue to try to add qualities and definitions, which are hopelessly limited by ignorance.
From what we now know about this creation it is vastly more complex and beautiful, and occasionally horrifying, than anyone ever imagined. That’s how little we understood God.
And most of what is, is still a mystery.
When we discover amazing things about life, physics, biology, we are astounded. How could that be? A clown fish? How could that be? A jellyfish? A virus? Unbelievable!
“It can’t be!”
“I refuse to believe it!”
“The Zoo is pranking us! No way that thing actually exists!”
The creation is far more unbelievable than any religion.
Fortunately science leaves a wonderful carefully documented trail of bread crumbs so we can follow and understand how the hell that thing came to be.
And guess what? That unbelievably odd thing turns out to make sense as a part and product of this creation.
And with every discovery, Joy.
Religion is for people who can’t wrap their mind around how ridiculous, unbelievable, non – sensical, absurd and irrational this creation is (without some serious education)
The amazing discoveries of science should increase our faith, not weaken it.
But faith in what?
This life affirming, life generating and creative God that is all things.
Not the static old opinions. How can opinion compete with life itself?
Opinions, even those in “sacred texts” is an insult to God, when it gets in the way of our worshipful and thankful attention to all that is.
Knowing and believing…hmmm…two sides to the coin of life.
Of course, without Love, there is no buyer, seller, product or coin.
Let’s make Love our religion…shall we?
Ha! Bromides and platitudes, indeed.
Much Love, nonetheless.
If God is all there is, no one knew shit about God for most of human history.
All we knew were people trying to grab credit.
Dark matter is 25%, and dark energy about 70%, of the critical density of this Universe. That science can now study only 5% of this Universe.
I like what Albert Einstein said:
“The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all religion.”
However, you do not have to be religious or believe in God to be a mystic,
https://youtu.be/p2TTamr_X04?list=RDpSpf9bKK_Zk
Brian:- “Rather, I use “God” as shorthand for the marvelous reality that is evident everywhere.”
Fair enough, though whenever we attempt to describe this world, this universe around us we have to of course make do with thoughts, and thinking does of course help to understanding the world we inhabit, though it also feels that it can – eventually – explain everything.
Our minds are the storehouses of our experiences. What we can know is extremely limited and it is from such limited information that we attempt to ascribe meanings to the world, the universe, life and ourselves. But there are some things that do not, and may never, lend themselves to that which does not have – or needs – an explanation.
It maybe just our vanity, our ego minds that demand such explanations. It obviously seeks security (a natural reaction) through ideas, opinions, knowledge, beliefs and ascribing meanings for everything using terms such as mystery, creation, spiritual, love, consciousness and so on.
Often, all that may be needed is to just to be with our experinces and not to be drawn into thoughts and concepts that clamour to explain them.
“Often, all that may be needed is to just to be with our experinces and not to be drawn into thoughts and concepts that clamour to explain them.” – Ron E.
Good timing. Just thinking about how quickly things can go south. Sometimes you feel like you’ve done everything you can but still can’t get things “right”. Then the last thing you want to do is think…
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https://youtu.be/QoLKfSCdtpc
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https://www.space.com/black-holes-overrun-star-cluster-palomar-5-star-cluster?utm_source=Selligent&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20210709_SDC_Newsletter_Adhoc&utm_content=20210709_SDC_Newsletter_Adhoc+&utm_term=6162512&m_i=Pnkp5QLa3n%2Bk7BQ8%2B3ZBV43KiTzlohhGqg8K3JJknaRaBF0q7Bgd31KA3GREVULvKg7qUjkgMGv3phQ5%2BpQf%2BCzAaN5w%2B8k%2BPX&lrh=126d5c16aa49c0f2ff0f726520a8dfc88d9457796d0062e5c0636a89cc771a85
TIDAL STRIPPING
Let s hope that no scientist were there
The Initiated, . . . They left
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“The rest – everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter – adds up to less than 5% of the universe.” That is a quote from this fascinating article by NASA:
https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy
(this corrects the link)