I’ve been attending the local Astronomy Club the last few month. And last Tuesday I took my new Christmas telescope out (Orion StarBlast 4.5 EQ) and took a look at Saturn.

Wow!

I was using a 6mm, 66deg. eyepiece which if I have my math right, gives me about a 75x magnification.
Numbers aside, what did I see? A small white ball with a white band around it with an actual black line around the inside making it obvious I was looking at an object with rings!

It’s a little thing because we’ve all seen Saturn in books, in full color, huge and able to make out the individual ring bands, and what I can see is small and white and a single ring. But it’s so much more REAL when you see it with your own eyes! I can imagine what Galileo must have felt like. Pointing his telescope at the bright white dot in the sky and being shocked to discover a ring around it!

And, of course because I’m always thinking about it, it made me think of our and God’s place in the universe. I’m in amazed awe at this incredible creation, and all the more convinced God is not personally involved in humanity, individually and we are not the center of his world, so to speak.

Look at it up there. The universe is infinite. If the solar system, from the sun to Pluto (which would take a bullet 10 years to reach from Earth) were shrunk down to the size of a quarter, how big would our galaxy be in comparison?
A mile? A few miles?
Try the size of North America. Imagine finding a single quarter in all of North America. That’s how significant our solar system is in our own galaxy of billions of other stars.

Now consider that we are surreounded by galaxies with light years of empty space between them. We have in our field of vision in this infinite universe billions upon billions of stars, and have already been able to observe dozens of other planets around them. At one time we thought we were the center of the universe, and now we know we’re nothing but a speck of dust.

So, to what purpose does the universe serve in a human-centric view of the universe supposedly created by God for some plan for us? What purpose does the billions of other galaxies serve in God’s plan for us? Why make quasars? Why make binary galaxy pairings? Why make 99.99^(infinity) X 10 % of the rest of the universe? God could have created the universe any which way, and he chose to create it so that we are an insignificant speck of dust in endless space. Human science fiction authors have come up with much better scenarios for universes that reflect a God-human centered creation. The evidence of our actual universe just screams “Humans on Earth are insignificant!”

Humans want to feel significant, if not superior. In relationships, careers, just living. It’s why every ancient civilization put humanity at the center of creation in their myths and religions. It’s just natural for us to assume we’re the most important thing in all creation. It took a long time to figure out we’re not at the center of the universe. We’re a small planet near an average star on the edge of an average galaxy surrounded by countless galaxies. But we hold onto the idea that we are cosmically important. That the universe was made for us for some reason. That all these other galaxies hold no other purpose aside from the express purpose of being there for us for some reason, to fulfill some plan of God’s.

It’s really very arrogant and absurd.

It’s possible life is important on a cosmic scale, in general. Certainly not Earth life in particular. It’s possible that if God created life specifically, based on the infinite nature of the universe he created it elsewhere as well. And it’s possible that the slow evolution of life throughout the universe will lead to some goal. But I doubt it. From my point of view, as a human, life is pretty amazing! I value it greatly, and find wonder and amazement in the fact that these machines made of bone and flesh are animate and capable of action and thought! We are indeed godlike, from our point of view.

But cosmically, we’re no more (or less) amazing than a black hole, dark matter, quasars…. We are a result of the evolution of the universe, one of the countless ways molecules came together to form yet another fascinating feature of this universe. And we think we’re that much more important than anything else because we ARE that something.

But as I look out at Saturn, at that one of countless beautiful and amazing giant beyond our comprehension objects out there in space, I glory in the awsomeness of it, and am humbled by my awareness of my place in it.

CNN.com – Milky Way’s warp caused by interloping galaxies – Jan 10, 2006

Whoa!

From a chain e-mail going around.
Funny AND clever.

10 reasons Gay Marriage is wrong:

1. Being gay is not natural. And as you know Americans have always rejected unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.

2. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because, as you know, a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4. Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed. The sanctity of Britany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6. Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

7. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

8. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.

9. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

“Robertson suggests God smote Sharon”

“God says, ‘This land belongs to me, and you’d better leave it alone,’” [Pat Robertson] said.

Two questions:

1: What does the creator of an infinite and awesome universe want with a small piece of land in the Middle East as his own; what makes Israel more his than any other part of the world?

2: If Israel more than any other piece of dirt on this planet is so important to the omnipotent and omniscient ubercreator, why not put someone he could trust in the position of governor for his land? If omniscient, he knew Sharon would do this, so how cruel is it that he then would smite the guy? If he can give a guy a stroke, how about maybe “hardening his heart” against the forces that would tear Israel apart. I mean, all throughout the same Bible Robertson quotes, God is all the time affecting the hearts and minds and playing with the free will of people, why not do that with Sharon instead of put the guy in a coma?

Robertson is such a complete prick.

To sleepy to provide all the links and references to articles and podcasts I’ve encountered lately on this subject (see the last blog of mine on the “Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth”,) so read these and enjoy doing your own research:

Jesus and the Egyptian “son of God” Horus
Jesus and the Greek man-God of a virgin birth, Dionysus — who was also crucified

Apologetics spend a LOT of time and effort in pointing up the differences between Jesus and the various mythological figures that came before that bear striking similarities. That’s fine. I don’t think anyone’s trying to claim that Jesus is a carbon-copy of a pre-existing myth figure. For each individual myth figure, there are certainly a lot more differences than similarities to Jesus!
I do find it interesting though that while Jesus is not wholy similar to any one pre-existing myth figure, every major aspect of Jesus individually is a near exact clone to some previous mythology that the early Christians would have been very aware of.

After all, Jesus also shares a curious amount of similarity to pre-existing Jewish heroes, like Moses, as well. And the Old Testiment God(s) bear(s) striking resemblance to many pre-existing Canaanite and Ugarite and other regional gods. So, why not the son-of-God/God-made-flesh as well?