Religion is a business. God doesn't exist. Life will go on forever under it's own power. We are temporary minds trying to feel immortal.
Life will go on forever under it's own power? That's an incredibly interesting proposition. You are suggesting that life, something that for as far as we know for certain began here on earth only billions of years ago, has been around eternally, and will continue to be around eternally? This is certainly as bold as stating that there is a God. And there is no more proof in your corner than there is in mine. But, the difference is that I can say that I have experienced God on a personal level. That you cannot offer. And again I ask you, if we are only part of the evolutionary process, then why are we led to seek a higher being? What evolutionary purpose does that serve us? If there is indeed no creator, then why would we evolve to believe that there is one?
The way I understand it, supposedly there were several different speces of human-like beings (neandrathals, homo-erectus, etc.). All of these except homosapiens (us) died out during the last ice age (about 12,000 years ago iirc). Based on the bones and other fossiles of neandrathals et. al, it's believed that they were actually more physically equipped than homosapiens to survive the ice age, because they were stronger (for hunting) and had more hair (for warmth). But obviously, at least according to the best of our experts' knowledge, they died out and we survived.
Humans don't have fur, claws, sharp teeth, or other genetic tools that would help us survive in that environment. But we do have our intelligence. Intelligence is one of our primary evolutionary "strategies" for survival. They speculate that we survived because we were the most intelligent; smart enough to build a fire, make a good shelter, fashion crude hunting tools, make clothing from animal skin, etc. That's how I understand it anyway.
On to the point, part our survival strategy using intelligence involves learning to predict the future where it is required for survival. If I see dark clouds, I make preparations for rain. If I stab the buffalo in the butt he won't die, but in the heart he will. Etc... Predicting whether or not a volcano will errupt involves understanding WHY it erupts. Without a better explanation, everyone started out believing that God (or multiple gods) caused it. To summarize, we are evolutionarily lead to believe in a higher being, because our survival strategy involves using our intelligence to predict the future. If that's not possible, we fill the gap with something that (hopefully) makes sense until we learn otherwise. I.e. until the 1800's they used to think rocks melted into lava because of coal and oil burning underground. Now we know differently.
The universe is almost certainly not infinite. There are various evidences for this but one of the simplest is this - If the universe were infinite (and by extension populated with stars at the same ratio throughout) then any place you looked in the sky would contain a star. The night sky would be literally solid stars.
The above is known as *Olbers Paradox*. The foremost answer to this paradox is that the "observable universe" is finite. One must also remember that existant light photons farther away than our cosmic horizon (our current peer-back capability)
have not yet reached us[1].
A secondary reason for Olbers Paradox is that as our universe expands,
distant light becomes more redshifted (2). In astrophysics, "z" is the notation which denotes redshift. The farther one peers into the universe, the greater the value of z. Contrary to intuitive thought, this increasing value of z applies not to celestial objects per se, but to the accelerating fabric of the universe.
1.) Maybe the light hasn't reached us yet, or maybe it has been dissapated (sp) by asteroids, dust, black holes, sub-atomic wind, etc.
2.) That's right, blue light shifts to red for the same reason police sirens lower in pitch as they go by - the frequency (relative to the observer) is getting lower and lower. It's the Doppler Effect happening to light waves. But after red light, the frequency keeps lowering to the infared spectrum. So any way you cut it, Olbers Paradox doesn't cut it.
Due to the quantum nature of our universe, particles of matter do indeed pop in and out of existence. In science these are known as *virtual particles*. Virtual particles always pop into existence as oppositely charged pairs and eventually annihilate one another. The longevity of the virtual pair is dependent on size... the greater the size the shorter the lifespan.
I just wanted to point out that those same physicists also claim this is the beginnings of time travel technology. They say those particles live up to 16x their normal half-life, and thus they are traveling into the future. :shock:
Smart people tend to be a little whacko sometimes. :rofl
