Quote:
Sinfidel wrote
Francis, our visiting scientist, with his goldfish dilemma, has unearthed a paradox which will doubtless baffle Cosmologists for decades to come.
In his brilliant equivalency of the edge of the universe with the glass boundary of an aquarium (surely a Nobel is forthcoming!) , one cannot help but wonder about the boundary at the edge of the universe. Is it transparent? If so, undoubtedly it offers a view out into nothingness. In the absence of light, nothingness must look like a black wall. So, how can one determine whether the edge is transparent into blackness, or is itself a black wall? We have great faith in Francis ability to resolve this fundamental dilemna of modern physics!
In either case, we are still left with the puzzle of how the "shadows" of the "gods" are visible in the blackness of the void. Surely, Francis can enlighten us!
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Your question is reasonable.
There is no analogy nor allegory that exactly duplicates all conditions of the situation it is analogizing.
I took note of a few things when creating it. I took note of the fact that, although the Bible talks about a burning bush that speaks and is not consumed by the fire, the movie the Ten Commandments has a burning bush that speaks and is not consumed by fire. I thought of the cloud of death in Egypt and the cloud of Chinese pollution over Los Angeles a few years back.
I concluded that, to the ancients, we might be thought of as gods. Then I asked where the gulf of power and intelligence was very great, and settled on goldfish. After all, our power over them is great. We control, whether they mate, if they are comfortable and whether they live or die.
If humans had an entity that controlled whether we mated, whether we were comfortable and whether or not we lived, a lot of people would conclude the entity was a god.
There is no glass wall on the edge of the universe, in fact there is no evidence and no theory that indicate the universe even has an edge. The aquarium is the fish universe if you will. It is not a precisely equivalent analogy. I have never seen one of those in any context.