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Sternwallow wrote
So, here we find ourselves with a thing, some 42 Billion light-years deep and likely even more than a hundred light-years deep according to some recent estimates. It is close to 13.7 Billion years old and it is undergoing accelerated expansion into an endless heat death where eventually even the black holes will evaporate to nothing. It is made of nothing but space down to some 8 decimal places or more, where the actual hearts of quarks reside. All of the material that makes up these consciousness, other than their Hydrogen and a bit of their Helium are the ashes of exploded stars, not part of the original big explosion. The tiny pocket of space where this key consciousness is found is destined to be literally eaten by its local star in about 5 Billion years and its ordinary sized galaxy will be completely disrupted by a neighboring galaxy collision (Andromeda) in some few 4.5 or 4.7 Billion years.
The density of the local space measured in units of consciousness per cubic megaparsec is laughably tiny, a number so very small that it approximates the degree by which the critical parameters of the universe are not tuned to be absolutely hostile to our form of life.
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Philboid Studge wrote
Lovely. I feel your posts should be accompanied by music -- something operatic. Wagner, maybe ...[Dang, I have only some thin arias by Ema Destinova from Lohengrin and the Flying Dutchman in iTunes. That won't do.]
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At least it probably won't wind up in the quotes thread.
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But what I want to ask you is this, re the measure of consciousness in proportion to the amount of hostile space surrounding it: Why is this laughably tiny amount important ? I'm not speaking for our Monist friend here, but I can imagine a theist will look at those forbidding odds as evidence* that a certain mutated ape is very special indeed.
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I meant it as a pre-emption of the whole idea that anything about us and the Earth was a purpose of some intentional conscious agency. God as a characterization of the universe would seem instead to have exerted nearly his entire power and skill to prevent life and consciousness from ever arising. Maybe the fact that we arose despite him is why god is angry enough to torment us somewhat constantly and nearly to extinction on more than one occasion.
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*I mean "evidence" in the theist sense, i.e., as "a sign" from the Eternal Ground of Being or what-have-you.
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OK
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P.S. In the end I put on Gounod's "Faust."
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My taste is very pedestrian; I would more likely have put on B's "Ode to Joy" #9, especially the part where it goes "ta, tata, ta, thump, ta, ta, tatata, long pause"
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Doesn't do your prose justice but it seemed appropriately diabolical. And check out Gounod -- he could be your older, less attractive sibling:
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You may be a bit reversed on that in these late days of lust, licentious debauchery and chemo but thanks for what I think was an intended compliment.