Well, personally, I just think it's turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down.

Ebert: It took me a certain effort to keep the turtles out of this entry.

This was one of those articles that lured me in 6 inches closer to my computer monitor- completely riveting! And "it's just that knowing what I know, I would rather be a human than a goldfish," that's pretty funny! : )

terrific stuff. one small nit - captions on the images would have been nice.

Roger, you delight me, as always.

Thank you for sharing your gift of awe with us in your poignant writing, Roger. Somehow, reading your words and viewing the known universe video, I feel more grounded than ever.

"I find that Art can shout to me across a few years or centuries, and it carries the same message: 'Yes, I exist, and you are not alone.' "

I think I love you.

Nice post - kinda leaves you speechless. Trying to comprehend it intellectually just seems to end up in creating mental fractals. One way of looking at evolution is the universe becoming self-aware through sentient beings. Another is that I know absolutely nothing. Beautiful pictures!

Yeah, it's all a big mystery. Everything is caused by something which preceded it ... but what caused the first thing, that first quantum fluctuation which caused the Big Bang?

Ay, there's the rub.

What puzzles me the most is that when we imagine the Big Bang, we imagine this infinitesimally small singularity sitting there in the vastness of space, waiting to blow up.

Trouble is, science tells us that time and space actually came out of the Big Bang. So there was nothing "around" this singularity, not even empty space, as all space was inside the singularity.

Likewise, there was no such thing as a "before" the Big Bang, because that which we call "time" was trapped inside this singularity as well, only to be released, so to speak, once the Big Bang occurred.

I don't know about you, but I find it very difficult to picture something that has no before and is surrounded by nothing, not even space.

Then I figure that right after we die, the whole mystery will instantly become clear to us, because we won't be constrained by human thought patterns anymore, such as our inability to visualize hyperspace.

Ebert: Encouraging, if we can indeed still visualize. I believe thought is a function limited to our present our equipment.

Thank you for this piece of art *smile*

Ah, thank you for this post Roger. So much here to contemplate.
So eloquently written and argued. A treat for us. With such awe-inspiring photos too.

Science is a wonder. The concepts truly are beyond comprehension at times. Not only spatially, as in comprehending "light years" when I've just driven 1000 miles this week and thought that was pretty far. But time as well. Can I really comprehend thousands or millions or billions of years when my personal experience is limited to my 70 or so years plus my parent's years plus my grandparent's years?

I'm just going to enjoy the scope of wonder and amazement that you've expressed in this excellent article on my first pass through, and agree with that sentiment generally.

I reach different conclusions than you do with those observations, granted. For example, what jumps out at me first is your observation of what is uniquely human:

We see, we know, and we know we know.

It's more than that, to me. As I've argued before, we uniquely have the capacity to know that we know about the divine. To ponder the infinite and the transcendent. To ponder not just our intelligence, but if that is the product of an intelligent transcendent creator. To ponder not just the creation, but the creator.

But, I'll come back to parsing the differences.

First pass, I'll just revel in our shared amazment at the vastness.

And I'll enjoy the eloquence of your expression of the questions. Beautifully written.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw

Carl Sagans pale blue dot. I thought of this the whole time as I read.

With the numbers we're confronted with in the Universe, if something like intelligent life can exist one place, then it exits in many, many places. And given the infinite vastness and sizes we're confronted with, size means nothing. To what Hubble sees, we're dust. To a neutrino, we're an entire universe. Pascal noted that we're caught between two infinities. We are not small. Not large.

Given all the information we've gathered about the universe, the holy grail of discovery is still life. I no longer feel small nor insignificant when I look into the night sky. Of all the things we've discovered in the Universe, Earth remains the true wonder. And Man the most fascinating. I'd rather be a human than a goldfish...or a quasar.

Great read. Thanks, Roger.

Thanks for this elegant article, Roger. It articulates many things that I feel quite nicely. A lot of people can't understand how someone can go through life without the consolation of believing in divine guidance, or life after death, but I think the wonder of living in this universe and being able to discover it is consolation enough.

Personally, I view an infinite universe full of new discoveries just like I view a well-stocked library. There are more wonders in the world than I can hope to discover and more books in the world than I can hope to read--which is just the way I like it. Always something new.

Thanks again.

The need for humans to compress their understanding of existence into something small enough for them to easily understand and explain will sadly keep most people from ever accepting that firstly, there are things about the universe that make sense but perhaps not to us, and second, that not knowing everything about the way the universe works is not necessarily a bad thing. We place vast importance on explaining everything, which is motivation for a portion of believers in both religion and science.

Another thing that is very galling is to have it explained to me that I must be missing the wonder of existence in order to subject things to the logic of scientific explanation. Can I not see wonder in the photosynthesis of a flower, in the course of the Mississippi, in the life and death of stars, without believing a supreme being created it all?

I accept that I cannot explain everything, but that doesn't mean I will accept an answer that does not make sense.

I'm a computer science student, and next year I'll be doing my PhD in astroinformatics, which aims to discover the knowledge hidden within the masses of data being now generated by telescopes.

The universe is elegant and beautiful, and science reveals that beauty. Frankly, I don't need an explanation beyond that. Indeed, what science has revealed is stranger (and more wonderous) than the cosmology of any religious text.

I have muscular dystrophy, and I'd much rather think that the world just is - we can understand its mechanisms, but the "why" is something we need to bring to the table. How is it comforting to think a God has knowingly let so many people suffer?

I'm just happy to be a part of this great cosmic dance. And my life has the meaning I've attached to it--no more, no less.

Beautifully written! While you and I don't share the same point of view, I always appreciate the way you express yourself on such matters.

I began following you years ago for the movie reviews and you've been a wonderful source of inspiration on so many other topics ever since. You're a credit to your profession!

Thank you, Roger. Beautifully written.
I hope you are doing well.

"Yes, I exist, and you are not alone. "

Have you read (or less ideally, seen the Twilight Zone 1986 episode of) Theodore Sturgeon's "A Saucer of Loneliness?" Sturgeon had a way of speaking across the immensities between one human mind and another. It's a sweet telling of this desire.

Thank you for this.
It seems difficult to speak of our present condition and safer to be in the history of our planet's past or in the future of sci-fi wherein we have already made the choices needed to become a spacefaring species.
I wonder if this is our moment of evolutionary breakthrough. Seeing images like the video posted at the end makes me pleasantly humbled in thinking that humanity is just beginning. Is evolution, and the expansion of the universe, conspiring to pull us off of Earth and into our galactic neighborhood? Kubrick seems to think so and I'm inclined to agree with him.

Even though it was written in jest, I still think one of the best descriptions of the incredible size of the universe and how we perceive it is by the late Douglas Adams in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

It is a form of "chauvinism" to depict the universe as we do. As beings composed of matter made of the most unlikely of elements from the most unlikely of circumstances (a star literally had to explode for us to exist - talk about winning the lottery). Even if there are 80 million or 80 million million Earth like planets, we and everything like us will always be the exception to the rule. As your video shows, the vast overwhelming majority of the universe is cold, dark and empty.

Dear Roger,

I especially connected with your last section regarding "consolations". My greatest passion is music, so I am similar to you in that I also connect with art to find my consolation. But much of what you were saying reminded me of this excellent quote from Einstein. It has almost become a mantra for me, and it taps into what you were talking about with curiosity:

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science".

Thinking about the infinite, it makes me feel like a jerk for pointing out a typo in the second sentence of the eighth paragraph: s/b "me" and not "be".

Awesome.

Ebert: Blast! I corrected that but it didn't take. Thanks!

"Yes, I exist, and you are not alone."

Next time someone on one of the fanboy movie sites where I chat asks me why I prefer Ozu to Nolan, Fellini to J.J. Abrams, Bergman to Spielberg, I will paraphrase this quotation.

I will explain that I cannot imagine myself believing it if it were spoken by a robot, a superhero, or a hobbit.

How I long, now, for my pet goldfish to tell me, though, "Oh, you dummy. Didn't you read what Roger wrote?"

The scope of this piece reminds me of an essay by the naturalist Loren Eiseley, who wrote great, deep things about evolution and nature and our place in it. The conclusion:

"In a universe whose size is beyond human imagining, where our world floats like a dust mote in the void of night, men have grown inconceivably lonely. We scan the time scale and the mechanism of life itself for portents and signs of the invisible. As the only thinking mammals on the planet -- perhaps the only thinking animals in the entire sidereal universe -- the burden of consciousness has grown heavy upon us. We watch the stars, but the signs are uncertain. We uncover the bones of the past and seek for our origins. There is a path there, but it appears to wander. The vagaries of the road may have a meaning, however; it is thus we torture ourselves."

"Lights come and go in the night sky. Men, troubled at last by the things they build, may toss in their sleep and dream bad dreams, or lie awake while the meteors whisper greenly overhead. But nowhere in all space or on a thousand worlds will there be men to share our loneliness. There may be wisdom; there may be power; somewhere across space great instruments, handled by strange manipulative organs, may stare vainly at our floating cloud wrack, their owners yearning as we yearn. Nevertheless, in the nature of life and in the principles of evolution we have had our answer. Of men elsewhere, and beyond, there will be none forever."

-- Loren Eiseley, "Little Men and Flying Saucers," The Immense Journey

But I'm not so sure cats can't comprehend the universe. Mine seem to think they are the center of it... ^..^

You refer to time. Maybe this is a fruitful concept or thing to examine for a ray of hope or shred of doubt.

Awesome post. Glad you wrote it and it glad I read it. Who needs an afterlife when it's such a wondrous miracle and mystery to have been blessed with even a glimpse of this one?

You said that you admire the fact that you can conceive the universe at all. Have you read Douglas Adams's book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? That's the work that made me start realizing humanity's position in an infinite universe. If you are interested, I suggest the "Ultimate" version, it has all five books and all have their own wonder and creativity in it, albeit satirically scathing.

I am reminded of one of the parts in the book:

"Population: None.

'It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.'"

And you dont think there is just a wee bit of centrist sentiment in the assertion that the universe created something to be its witness? A wee bit of anthropomorphising the universe?

A bit selective re what you choose as examples of this "seeing" (I believe you meant experiencing)? Certainly the leaf beatifically turning towards the sun shares in the great experience. Does the doe being ripped apart by jaws revel in the splendour also?

Ancient societies knew enough that nature was red in tooth and claw. Only we who are so removed feign to wax poetically, ad nauseam.

I too catch myself meditating on the sheer wonder of existence. However, a reflection that is not tempered by awareness of the horror and ultimate futility of all suffering is simply dishonest and so much populist chatter... secular sermonizing.

Try a little thought experiment - imagine if you were omniscient and eternal. You saw all for many many lifetimes. Do you think that would be endlessly fascinating? Or hellishly monotonous? In reality, unless one was an utter imbecile, the experience would resemble the latter. Now, expand this experiment into the wild ether yonder. Do you not think that life, say even a universe teaming with the stuff, would not simply be essentially the same - a struggle for survival, simply because that is how the organism works? Knowing that no matter how high the climb it inevitably would be doomed. Over and over and over again - times 30 to 80 million, locally. And is this not the flip side of the bane of eternal life - knowing that no matter what one did, what risks one took, life would simply go on.

Ebert: I stated that badly. Rather than say the universe "created," I should have said, "it happened that organisms developed by random mutation that were able to observe the universe."

Thank you for your post. I'm glad I found it. I especially liked your take on art: "Yes, I exist, and you are not alone." It made me think about what psychologist Erich Fromm says intrinsically drives people -- faced with the scariness of vast emptiness, we do a million things, directly and indirectly, to be close and fuse with one another -- to not feel alone. If evolution led to that, I like to think that underneath the chaos, there's something good -- and there's reason to be optimistic about what happens to our atoms, through the rest of infinity. But who knows.

Great article, and the video took me back to my childhood; I have never forgotten "Powers of 10", and the impact it had on me in grade school in the '60's. I've introduced my own son to it, and I'll show him this video as well ... what a marvel. Thank you.

"It doesn't depend on being thought about"

Nice one. ;)

Great article, intriguing and certainly piqued my curiosity.

However, knowing what you know about the universe/earth/science in general. You still refer to evolution as a "theory."

Why is this? Are you just being politically correct or is this what you truly believe?

Ebert: That's the correct term. A scientific theory is a carefully defined matter. Science is wisely wary of "laws."

The 2nd law of Thermo Dynamics dispels the theory of evolution. Quit buying into this pseudo science BS!

Ebert: Sorry, but actually, no it doesn't. That's an Urban Legend not even believed by proponents of Intelligent Design:

http://bit.ly/gyFH0C

http://bit.ly/g8DCBt

If science could avert a single earthquake or tsunami, I'd accept the Theory of Evolution. We experience nature and react by naming and classifying, attempting to give it form, as if to lull her into passivity. Alien life? Evolution. 9 letters to decode a mystery.
Adam did science, in Genesis 2:19-20, naming and classifying every created thing, yet it was not enough; so a further mystery was added: Eve. Woman is a far greater mystery, one that can be talked to, sometimes.

Echoes here of Nabokov's 'Ada'*:Terra dimly perceived from Anti-Terra, in dreams and by the insane.

*His greatest novel, despite what people say.

I feel like a jerk, too, but two sentences picked me up and threw me right out of this post, which was otherwise completely engrossing.

"I have some idea of how many 'miles' away the planet Mars may be. I understand its light reaches us after a delay of some minutes."

I realize Roger must know that Mars is not the source of the light, but the phrase "its light" suggests otherwise. It gave me pause as I analyzed what I was reading.

"But when we see light from a star that has journeyed four million light years, all I really understand is that the star is forever out of the reach of my species."

If you could go back a couple hundred years and tell people that someday soon we'll be able to fly from New York to California in a few hours, with luck everyone would give you a wide berth--the alternative would be to lock you up as a raving madman. We won't begin preparations to travel to those stars in my lifetime, but we may manage it someday, using methods that would look like magic to you and me.

I have to hope we'll try, anyway.

My all-time favorite irony is as follows:

"You need to exist in order to experience the disappointment of discovering there's no after-life."

Meaning if Death is indeed THE END and all she wrote, you won't ever know. Unless the last thought you have before you die, is "there's no after-life" and you believe it to be true, despite confirmation beforehand. Then, yes, you will get to experience a massive bummer - but for reaching for it now.

"Hah! Take that, smug cosmic forces! I embraced it! I died in a self-made pool of my own disappointment! You're not foolin' me... I'm not getting sucked into your lie!" - foolish person

Whereas...

"Oooo! Death is approaching! Hello..? Over here! Totally excited and ready to see cool stuff, dude..." - and then the lights go out.

You fall into the truth smiling either way. However it turns out. You'll either find yourself starting a new journey, or never realize there isn't one.

How perfect is that?!

Which for me, takes all the scariness out of death to replace it with wonder... and the tantalizing prospect of getting to snoop around and explore and see loved ones again. Kitties and puppies too. :-)

Very Saganesque post!

One minor quibble, though.
"These are planets that scientists believe are at such a distance from their suns that earth-like life is possible." isn't exactly correct. The graphic represents the Kepler mission's findings so far. None of the exoplanets is both Earth-sized and in the "habitable zone" of its star. I fully expect that such planets will be found, it's just that we haven't detected the first one quite yet.
Soon, grasshopper, soon!
:^)

Ebert: Oops.I've corrected that. Actually, I read that the discovery of such planets was thought to be inevitable.

Thats is unpossible. Everybody knows that the world and its space is only 6400 years and 6-7 days old. The teaparty knowed me that.

Roger,

As always, I find your pieces imminently readable & thoroughly engaging. Alas, when it comes to reading your thoughts on this subject, I feel more sad & confused than anything. I'm assuming I represent the minority of my fellow readers when it comes to all this, & that's okay...And please believe that my sadness & confusion doesn't come from a place of pride or condescension as one who disagrees, but from a genuine place of, "I just don't get it & I so desperately want to..."

Now, it's not so much the scientific specifics I'm referring to - I freely admit to much of it being over my head, through general ignorance or otherwise - but it's the conclusions made by those who lean so heavily on scientific observation that gets me. You, Hitchens, Sagan, Dawkins & so many of the readers of your blog clearly hold a genuine conviction that it's logic/reason alone that guides your conclusions, with "faith" being completely removed from the picture.

It seems to me, though, that your conclusions are just as much a faith-based conclusion as mine (as a follower or Jesus) are. We both hold conclusions which we strongly believed are backed by solid evidence, on a number of levels; we both hold conclusions, however, that cannot be unequivocally "proven" through scientific method.

I cannot "prove" the existence of the God I believe in & have dedicated my life to (as a full-time pastor in a local church), nor can you disprove His existence; I cannot "prove" that Jesus is "the agent of creation," the one through whom God created the universe & the one Who continues to hold it together, but neither can you "prove" that He isn't. Both viewpoints are backed by solid observation at certain levels, & those observations can carry you pretty far along in either direction, depending on how you approach or interpret them; but at some point you're left with questions that cannot be answered through scientific observation alone & you have to exercise a certain level of faith in something.

If Immanuel Kant is right - & in this regard, I think he is - there are two main "boxes" involved here: (1) the "natural" world, with the things we can observe, test, make factual conclusions on, etc. & (2) the "spiritual" world, made up of things we can't normally observe with our five senses, or test through the scientific method.

From my perspective, it seems like you, Hitchens, Sagan (etc.) become annoyed by (or simply disagree with) people who try to use information/opinion rooted in Box #2 to make demands on things in Box #1, or to use their views related to Box #2 as an excuse for ignoring evidence/facts from Box #1. (Personally, I admit to doing the former, while trying to never do the latter.)

I would argue, though, that the same is true in the opposite direction. It seems to me that Dawkins (& others) try to take evidence/facts from Box #1 & make definitive conclusions about the ultimate non-existence of something (or Someone) in Box #2, when such definitive conclusions are impossible to make. There's nothing in Box #1 that can lead to a definitive, scientifically provable conclusion about anything in Box #2...thoughts, opinions, general observations? Absolutely. Verifiable, conclusive scientific facts? Absolutely not.

Which gets me back to the issue of faith & my feelings of sadness & confusion. From the "spiritual" side of things,your conclusions obviously bring about a level of sadness in me (as they should, given what I profess to believe & the life I've chosen to live...I'd make a pretty poor pastor or follower of Jesus if they didn't effect me on that level.)

From the "intellectual" side of things, I become genuinely confused as to how people who so strongly champion logic & reason can't (or won't, in some cases) exercise that same logic & reason to recognize the inherent element of faith in the conclusions they've chosen to make. It's clearly not faith in God or some other "spiritual" reality, but it's faith nonetheless: faith in science, faith in observation, faith in our human faculties, etc. We're both putting our faith in something, it just seems like I (& those like me) are the only ones openly admitting or acknowledging it.

As I mentioned, I realize I'm likely in the minority when it comes to your primary audience, & that's okay. I truly am curious about the perspectives others have on the subject & would love to receive honest feedback on it. I genuinely want to understand where you & others are coming from, whether we ultimately agree or not...

With much respect,

deacon godsey
lawrence, ks

Ebert: Thanks for your care and thoughtfulness. With me, it's a matter of description. I attempt to describe what I can perceive and learn about without involving additional explanations which may be arbitrary.

Is it possible that when Jesus said he was the son of God, he was a man using the term God as symbolic? Why does what he said prove the existence of God?

"Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all:" ..

I was reading another religion argument on some message board and a religious guy was saying that atheists "believe in nothing, no purpose, no meaning -- the ultimate sadness." He said this in a quite hostile way, as if the emotional effect of a belief had any impact on its validity. No one corrected him. They just continued to find ways to make atheism more appealing to him by saying how it's MORE beautiful than the Christian belief, how its MORE emotionally satisfying... I felt that they were wrong as well. If I had an account for that particular site, I would have told the man that according to what we know so far, existence is rather sad and meaningless. And sometimes, people want to believe in something good and powerful watching over them. But that still doesn't prove that God's listening to our prayers. Last time I checked, good things were happening to bad people, and bad things were happening to good people... That religious man on the message board was just being dumb, trying to persuade others that God exists because the alternative is "sad."

Anyways, before I knew the true meaning of Deus Ex Machina (that it was a theater reference), all I knew was that it meant "God from the Machine." At the time, I took it to mean that all the matter and particles which make up our universe were the "machine," so to speak, the inanimate parts which acted and reacted together, and that God or consciousness came from them... came from a particular arrangement of necessary parts. AKA the brain. Or, any system which generates what could be considered life (an organism, I guess would be the correct term).

And then I thought, my brain is generating my consciousness (which I am currently using), but my brain is not the same brain that I had five years ago... Cells died, new ones took their place.... Over that time period, my brain must have undergone quite the overhaul. And yet here I am, the same person... I am alive in a different body. All it took to get here was time. When I die, who knows, maybe some other formation of materials will be suitable for my soul to continue its expression. Maybe when my brain can no longer hold what I consider Me, maybe that part blasts off into another dimension.... As opposed to simply ceasing to exist. But again who knows? The universe appears to be an infinitely regressing mandelbrot, nothing more, nothing less. Humans are still mortal, still confused, and still alone. If some great breakthrough comes about to transform our species, or if we make contact with another, I'll probably be dead by then. So I guess it'd be nice if nature had a back-up plan for me... Somewhere I could go other than my brain that could perform the necessary computations for me to continue existing.

I guess that leaves the door open for all sorts of spirituality and religion and God talk. But hey, that's life. Death, after all, is "the great mystery."

The quote I just sent is Hamlet becoming Hamlet. You seem closer to the quote you quoted.

Mr. Ebert, I've never commented before, though your essays have often moved me. I simply want to say how beautiful this is. I wept the whole way through.

I am. Whether I understand why or how, it does not matter. I am and I see and hear and touch and love. I am blessed by nature to have been me. And I constantly am awed by the miracle that has allowed me to be. Thank you for your wonderful article -- you have reinforced my belief that I don't have to know why...I just need to know everything I can.

Dear Mr Ebert

Are you sure its Evolutionary accomplishments

Contest for Truth, since anybody can say or write anything, who's telling the Truth, for the Bottom Line World View.

Demonstrate with a piece of paper by simply folding and cutting to reveal words and images, the Bottom Line, consistent with history be it political, religious or scientific or ?

Await your demonstration!

Thank you!

Your writing is compelling, poignant, and thought-provoking, but I have to be the stick in the mud: "There was Nothing, and then there was Something." The thing is, the concept of Something arising from Nothing is a physical and philosophical impossibility. Nothing that exists in the universe appeared out of Nothing; why should have the universe itself? Mustn't the whole abide by the laws that govern the parts?

You point out that "Some reject the Theory of Evolution because it offers no consolation in the face of death," but I think that's incorrect. I believe it's more accurate to say that they reject the theory of evolution because it offers no explanation for Something arising from Nothing. This is, I think, where we have to come back to your theory of the Causer.

If you see a work of art that cries out, "Yes, I exist, and you are not alone," the only logical conclusion is that somewhere, sometime, there was an artist who wanted you to know that. Your words paint a beautiful picture, but it would be madness to suppose that they came together because the printer exploded.

You seem to keep referring to the "Theory of Evolution" and the "Big Bang Theory" as one in the same. You do realize that the "Theory of Evolution" is a biological theory, and that the "Big Bang Theory" is a cosmological theory. They are two independent and unique theories; granted they are often accepted in conjunction with one another, they are NOT one in the same, as it seems you keep referring to them as.

Ebert: You are correct, and I did not intend to give that impression.

Something that has always bothered me about the Big Bang is how casually so many of us accept that it arose out of nothing. How do we know that? We don't. It is entirely more rational to assume that something existed before the big bang, even though it may currently lie out of our reach of understanding. When one has established with a fair degree of certainty that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, how does one reconcile this fact with the assumption that nothing preceded the Big Bang? Basic logic dictates that this is nonsense.

Why is it so inconceivable to think of the universe as infinite? Believers in god refuse to imagine a universe that has always existed, in one form or another, yet they have no issue with assigning a state of infinity to the alleged creator. (If one ascribes validity to the concept of creationism, one logically has to assume that god himself had a creator, who had a creator, etc. etc, and onward into... there's that word again... infinity.)

In this sense many proponents of a finite universe have struck me as somewhat religiously inclined in their thinking, whether they believe in god or not, based on how easily they are willing to ignore or bypass this fundamental gap in our knowledge.

Until we discover any inkling of a hint as to what caused the Big Bang to occur, we must be left to contend with the anxiety of leaving that question unanswered, unless we are prepared to rewrite the laws of physics altogether, relegating the nature of matter and the principle of cause and effect to mere arbitrary superstitions.

An understanding I have come to over the years is that the concepts of a beginning and an end have no meaning outside of human consciousness. It is only because our minds are finite, and we experience time as having discernible limits, that we feel compelled to project that fact onto the universe as a whole.

I once came across a diagram used in a physics lecture (the name of the physicist escapes me) illustrating an infinite chain of expanding and contracting universes, with each link representing a Big Bang. Now there's an idea I can wrap my mind around. It may be pure speculation, but at least it doesn't contradict or ignore one of the well-established and basic laws of existence.

Ebert: There is of course the Lee Smolin hypothesis that universes are created on the other side, so to speak, of Black Holes. That universes evolve. That those with more Black Holes reproduce more successfully. That could account for a given Big Bang. Of course it still leaves you with turtles at the bottom.

I particularly liked the paragraph that began "Some reject the Theory of Evolution because it offers no consolation in the face of death. . . ."

But way deep down, way deep inside you, you know that God is the answer.

Great post! And while I largely agree with most of your points I just have one point to make. You say:

"But what good does it do me to think of the universe as an unthinking mechanism vast beyond comprehension?"

and

"When I die, what happens?...The universe will not know or care."

Perhaps this is nitpicking, but I work in the field of Neuroscience, though not in Evolutionary Neuroscience. However, I have done a great deal of reading on the field and it has led me to a great revelation. As Carl Sagan once said, "We are star stuff," meaning that humans can trace their beginnings all the way back to the big bang and the particles created at that time. My point is that humans are the universe, too. It is not the case that the universe is only all of the stuff out there and we are but voyagers traveling through and pondering it. We are a part of it because we were born by it. And so we are simply the universe experiencing itself. The universe is a thinking mechanism because it has evolved into the human brain. And when you and I are gone the universe will know and care because everyone you know and love is the universe too.

On a certain level it all sounds like hippie BS, but if you follow the logic I believe it to be sound.

Keep up the interest in the sciences! We all have great interest in the arts as well!

Ebert: This I like. I always rather thought of myself as Star Stuff, but feared it would be immodest to share that.

One of the best posts I've read in a long time. Roger Ebert nails it; a must-read, I say. And the video at the end is both humbling and inspiring. Makes you want to go give all seven billion fellow inhabitants of this third stone from the sun a big hug.

You are a wonderful man, Mr. Ebert.

A quintessence of dust would be a good title for the next James Bond film.

How about them Yankees

A truly inspiring article. Just yesterday I was musing about the vastness of space, and wondering how on Earth scientists have been able to see so much. Even with high-powered telescopes sent into space, to actually see distant galaxes and millions of stars, and to be able to map them! My brain reels at the sheer complexity and enormity of it.

But for all we know, goldfish may prefer being goldfish to human.

Wow, this really struck a chord. I read those science magazines as well and just read that article in Discover a couple of days ago. Often I cannot fully comprehend some of the scientific concepts but it fascinates me endlessly.

In a previous issue of Discover there were a number of stories dealing with "The End" of various things. One comment in an article about the inevitability of death really intrigued me. Consider when life first began. A form of single cell life came into being when something clicked into place in it's chemistry. If it were possible you could trace a direct path from that cell over the billions of years it took to evolve to your own body. When you die it will be the end of the line for all the cells descended from that first one. This simple concept is mind boggling.

On the other end of the scientific spectrum consider when you are out at night looking at a star. Why can you see it? Because your eyes are capturing photons that originated in that star thousands or millions of years before. How is this possible? I ask that for a reason that's not so obvious. Take a step to the left. You still see the star. Take another step any other direction and you still see it. How is it possible the star is generating so many photons it can be seen anywhere in the universe within seeing distance of it's birth, ignoring dust or other celestial bodies that might get in the way. And not only that star, but every star. A scientific concept that has been debated many times is that if the universe is infinite, wouldn't there be an infinite number of photons resulting in a sky that is never black at night?

Absolutely LOVED this article. I'd like to disagree with one aspect, though:

////On every planet where a sufficient degree of intelligence has developed, the Theory of Evolution must eventually be discovered. It helps those beings understand how they are. It doesn't explain why they are. There is no reason the universe "needed" to evolve intelligent beings, but it has. It might have been inevitable because of the fact of Natural Selection.////

I am reminded of a quote by Hans Zinnser's wonderful book, "Rats, Lice, and History":

"It is only too painfully obvious, moreover, that neither the scientist nor the artist is ever a 'creator.' .... The most that the scientist and the artist accomplish is new understanding of things that have always been. They 'create' a clearer perception."

Evolution is only "true" in that it describes the workings of our universe in a way that makes sense to our limited modes of understanding. There's no reason to assume that other life forms, in completely different environments, possibly with completely different types of intelligence, would arrive at the same models of perception that we would. Actually, I think it's almost certain that they wouldn't.

This isn't a creationist or anti-Darwinist position. I'm just saying that natural selection is not The Truth, but rather the best model yet devised for describing the truth to a human mind.

Ebert: It appears to me that Natural Selection describes the way life works, and therefore would apply universally. That it is not unfortunately "the best model yet devised for describing the truth to a human mind" is indicated by the fact that something like 50 percent of the American population doesn't subscribe to it. However, more than 99% of all the earth's scientists do. I am assuming a fair degree of intelligence in my model.

Mr. Ebert, I am gratified and heartened to learn that you have attuned your consciousness to hear the cosmic Who.

Thanks for this piece, Roger. The universe and our origins are so awe inspiring; it breaks my heart when people can't believe it, when they cling to the comforting fables they grew up with, and then call us liars.
It's like we're all sitting in a grand movie theater, engrossed as the universe and all its exciting secrets are revealed on the big screen. We're fully enveloped in the drama when the creationist's cell phone rings, and her baby starts crying. They shout "This sucks!" They talk during the best parts. They kick your seat. Why did they even come? Perhaps they wanted to see the fantasy flick, but walked into the wrong theater. If only they could appreciate what they were watching, but that takes a certain degree of patience, experience, intellect, empathy, and humility...whereas the fantasy offers instant gratification for the unthinking mind.
I don't mean to oversimplify or generalize; I understand that there are nuances and varying degrees of religiosity, but I've had to deal with the most rabid of willfully ignorant creationists you could imagine. I fear that they are affecting educations. Science is as entwined with our culture as art was with ancient Rome. After Rome fell, however, art declined for a thousand years.

Have you read Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's 'The Phenomenon of Man'? His assertion is that evolution does have a direction and that is greater complexity and consciousness. The matter of the universe is becoming conscious. He influenced Marshall McLuhan with his idea of a noosphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Teilhard_de_Chardin

I don't quite understand these notions of the universe being an unthinking mechanism or "having no opinion". It does, and that opinion is your opinion, or mine.

We are not only the thinking arm of the universe, not only a vessel through which it can perceive itself, but we are IT itself, the big bang, and forever before, and forever after. Our consciousness does not have concrete boundaries, or even depth. It is itself the universe, an "I" that is as significant as any part or parts of the whole caboodle. After all, infinity divided by even the largest finite number imaginable is still infinity.

This is my consolation.

Ebert: I know there is a theory that something doesn't exist until it is observed. In local terms, until we evolved, strictly speaking nothing existed. I guess I'd like that message from the stars to say, "Hey, I see it too!"

"An artist can express my feelings as in the same way as an intelligent signal received from one of those 1,235 dots."

Then you, sir, are an artist. You nailed it. You took three of my most obsessed over mental topics (evolution, astronomy, and What-does-it-all-mean? musings) and congealed them into this beautiful bit of writing. Thank you, sir.

Regarding the usage of "theory of" versus "the law of" in conjunction with "evolution," my understanding is that it's both, or at least should be. It's like gravity: there's the law of gravity and there's the theory of gravity. It's a law because, drop an apple, it falls. It exists. It's also a theory because we are still working out the mechanics of why the apple falls and why the hell we can't see dark matter? why does it never touch anything? or seem to even exist at all except as a gravitational effect? Such should be Evolution.

Ebert: I see what you mean. Confusion arises because of the vernacular use of the word "theory." A scientific theory is a hypothesis subject to continual testing and refinement. Darwin's original theory of evolution was a brilliant insight, but has undergone great modification in the years since--and still is.

What is more interesting than these observations, is knowing that people over 2,000 years ago already understood this, before their views were declared heresy by Christians and destroyed.

"[T]he world was produced by the working of nature, without there having been any need for a process of manufacture, and that what your school declares to be capable of accomplishment only by means of divine intelligence is a thing so easy that nature will produce, and is producing, and has produced worlds without end. It is because you do not see how nature can accomplish this without the help of some kind of mind that, like the tragic poets, in your inability to bring the plot to a smooth conclusion, you have recourse to a god. Yet you would certainly feel no need for his agency if you had before your eyes the expanse of region, unmeasured and on every side unbounded, upon which the mind may fasten and concentrate itself, and where it may wander far and wide without seeing any farthermost limit upon which to be able to rest. Now in this immensity of length and breadth and height there floats an infinite quantity of innumerable atoms which, in spite of the intervening void, nevertheless join together, and through one seizing upon one, and another upon another, form themselves into connected wholes, by which means are produced those forms and outlines of the material world which your school is of opinion cannot be produced without bellows and anvils. You have therefore placed our necks beneath the yoke of a perpetual tyrant, of whom we are to go in fear by day and night, for who would not fear a god who foresaw everything, considered everything, noted everything, and looked upon himself as concerned in everything,—a busy and prying god? From this has come, in the first place, your idea of preordained necessity, which you call ε μαρμένη, meaning by the term that every event that occurs had its origin in eternal truth and the chain of causation—(though what is to be thought of a philosophy that holds the ignorant old crone’s belief that everything happens by destiny?)—and secondly your art of μαντικ , or divinatio, as it is called in Latin, which, if we were willing to listen to you, would imbue us with such superstition that we should have to pay regard to soothsayers, augurs, diviners, prophets, and interpreters of dreams. From these terrors we have been released by Epicurus, and claimed for freedom; we do not fear beings of whom we understand that they neither create trouble for themselves, nor seek it for others, and we worship, in piety and holiness, a sublime and exalted nature."
- The Nature of the Gods; Cicero, 45 BCE

Ebert: That is inspiring.

Thank you. I really enjoyed reading this, as I do all of your posts.

I won't say this nearly as well as you, as I am not a trained writer. Nor am I a Bible-thumper, though my post may make me appear that I am.

But I didn't see God anywhere in that post. It had to be intentional. In speaking of something so vast, incomprehensible, incalculable, one would have to strain themselves not to mention God. Some call this a crutch. I disagree.

Philosphy 101 talks about the '1st mover,' and I'm sure you are familar with it. I personally believe in the theory of evolution - you'd have to be daft not to - but at some point a molecule became a cell, which is akin to a stalk of wheat becoming a sandwich at Subway. I'm not aware of matter/molecules that are in a struggle akin to the 'survival of the fittest.'

To put it another way, a 1st year grad student could put together the carbon and trace elements identical to a oak seed ... but it wouldn't sprout. There is a spark of life somewhere that makes these things exist, that '1st mover.' That thing is a God. For me it is Jesus, and his father.

In your intellectual pursuits don't make the possible mistake of intellectual conceit. Human kind will learn amazing things and never know even half of our universe, our world, our earth. Perhaps that was for a reason.

Ebert: You are free to name it as God. But given the existence of matter, we now understand how life could have arisen. In my mind, I push it further back, to the creation of matter. The Big Bang is inexplicable, and we are free to attribute it to anything we choose.

I love, love, love this. I live with a five-year-old astrophysicist who watched the short film "Powers of Ten" when he was two, loves Hubble images more than cartoon characters and investigates these questions daily until my brain hurts. We sang Monty Python's "Galaxy Song" on the way to school this morning. I never expected these things from motherhood.

I try to connect his love for the infinite with art wherever I can, because as huge as science is, it has certain scary, unyielding qualities. Thank you for giving me a new way to consider it.

A "law" in science is a rule - a simple statement that expresses a fundamental principle, as in Newton's laws of motion, or the laws of thermodynamics. Newton's second law of motion, Force = mass x acceleration, doesn't explain WHY this is the way it is, but it tells us that everywhere in the universe, force will ALWAYS equal mass times acceleration, and successfully predicts the outcome of experiments.

A "theory", as scientists use the term, is an explanation of the relationships between phenomena, as in the theory of relativity, or the theory of evolution. Darwin's theory explains many different phenomena, and shows how they are all interrelated, but it cannot be condensed into a single concise statement or formula.

[It needs to be emphasized that a scientific theory has been thoroughly reviewed and critiqued and is almost universally accepted. The terminology for anything that has not been as deeply tested is a CONJECTURE or a HYPOTHESIS.]

Bobbo, that passage in Roger's beautiful essay made me think immediately of "A Saucer of Loneliness" as well. One of the finest things Sturgeon ever wrote. It captures the same sense of consolation of which Roger speaks. It's comforting, imagining that there could be such messages in bottles, cast upon the cosmic sea.

Full disclosure: I was led to Sturgeon's story by the New Twilight Zone version, which like many other stories in that first season or two ("Paladin of the Lost Hour," "Her Pilgrim Soul," "The Star," "Time and Teresa Golowitz," "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty") was a thing of aching beauty in its own right. TNTZ is (or at least was) available on DVD. Much recommended.

And in some ways "The Star" is a different riff on some of the same themes we're discussing here today. Both the NTZ adaptation and Clarke's original story are well worthy of a visit.

An astronomer told me this:
Imagine the rim of your coffee cup as the orbit of Pluto -- six billion miles in diameter. At that scale you'd need an electron microscope to see Earth. Our galaxy would then extend from the Aleutian Islands to the Yucatan Peninsula. The rest of the universe doesn't even start there.

Now it's hard to drink my coffee and not ponder infinity.

Interesting and thought provoking. Also, it might give an understanding of Curly's declaration, "I'm trying to think but nothing is happening!"

Rog,

Thanks for this wonderful entry. It brought me back to my days as a philosophy student at Loyola University Chicago, where these sorts of discussions were not anecdotes, but course material to be carefully studied and considered. It also reminded me of Albert Camus' last few lines in "The Myth of Sisyphus":

"All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling. I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

When I get home from work this evening, I think I'll throw on a DVD that has collected dust since I graduated from college: "2001: A Space Odyssey." Or maybe "Contact."

Ebert: "You are free to name it as God. But given the existence of matter, we now understand how life could have arisen. "

I must have missed that. And I have actively searched for it, including demanding an explanation from biology professors at my university. I'm open to learning more. Could you, or one of your readers post links that describe how matter can turn into life?

As a reference, here is the point I made that Mr. Ebert was referring to:

"Philosphy 101 talks about the '1st mover,' and I'm sure you are familar with it. I personally believe in the theory of evolution - you'd have to be daft not to - but at some point a molecule became a cell, which is akin to a stalk of wheat becoming a sandwich at Subway. I'm not aware of matter/molecules that are in a struggle akin to the 'survival of the fittest.'

To put it another way, a 1st year grad student could put together the carbon and trace elements identical to a oak seed ... but it wouldn't sprout. There is a spark of life somewhere that makes these things exist, that '1st mover.' That thing is a God. For me it is Jesus, and his father."

I"d love to believe that there are other civilizations, but the so-called Fermi Paradox made me wonder. After all, the Earth has only been around for a third of the Universe's lifetime, and the Universe has been cool enough to support (e.g.) carbon-based life for quite some time now. With a hundred billion stars in each of a hundred billion galaxies, you'd think somewhere life had developed, and did it much earlier. So why haven't we seen it?

Great article. I tried to find this last night when I read your article, but only just now found it - an article titled:
"Death anxiety linked to acceptance of intelligent design: study"
at
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/03/30/death-anxiety-linked-to-acceptance-of-intelligent-design-study/

"Our results suggest that when confronted with existential concerns, people respond by searching for a sense of meaning and purpose in life," Tracy said. "For many, it appears that evolutionary theory doesn't offer enough of a compelling answer to deal with these big questions."

And 'they' say: "Ignorance is bliss."

Wonderful post. It goes up on my refrigerator alongside the yellowed and brittle clipped column by the WaPo's Joel Achenbach from some years back. Termite Hindguts and the Copernican Principle

It's very important to remember that our place in the Universe is not privileged, nor is our very existence important in any way. The unlikelihood of our time here is what makes it so remarkable and valuable.

I must have read this differently than most readers. Upon finishing, I came to the conclusion that you were definitely agnostic.

In this essay you assume that the human mind is an emergent property of matter--that you (and I) are conscious of our existence because of some complex interaction of the neurons that comprise our brains. Therefore, when we die our mind/consciousness ends as our brains dissolve.

This may very well be true. Certainly the majority of scientists, regardless whether they study the brain, believe so. But I would maintain that they believe this largely on faith, not because there is any real evidence to support it. Science has a very good track record at discovering material explanations for phenomena that were once thought to be the action of a god or gods. Most thinking people assume that mind/consciousness will be explained in good time.

Again, they may be right. But at present, on the relationship of mind to brain there is no evidence whatsoever. We are all in the position of trying to answer a question like this: There is a box. What is in the box? Without more information there is no way to even begin to exclude items or classes of items from the box. Pure ignorance reigns.

Consider this: solipsism is irrefutable. If I wish to claim that I am the only existing thing and that you and the rest of the universe are simply a product of my imagination, there is no way you can refute my claim. Nor could I refute your claim. Knowing that I have tried and failed to learn to juggle three balls at a time makes me wary of claiming that the whole universe is in my head, yet I cannot disprove it. On the other hand, I know the universe is not just in your mind. With you, I assume, it is the exact opposite.

So far at least, no theory of the brain needs the concept of mind. Indeed, science tends to reduce mind/thought/emotions to physical processes in the brain. There is nothing science knows or can know about you that requires that you have consciousness and a mind. It is no more necessary that Zeus to explain thunderbolts.

Since we don't have the slightest scientific understanding of the relationship of brain to mind, it is a little premature to assume that the end of one is the end of the other. Toss a coin.

Please excuse the pedantry in the midst of wonderful poetry- I, too, I'm enraptured by the poetry and wonder of the cosmos- but there's a few small, slight misunderstandings that I'd like to attempt to address... and isn't it nice to base one's wonder and speculation on the best available information?

First, the statement "Then I read that the next Hubble telescope will be able to peer six times as far into space and time as the one now in orbit" is a bit off the mark. The "replacement" for the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, will have a mirror (actually an array of mirrors) that is roughly 6 times the area of the HST providing, at a baseline, six times greater sensitivity to light. Moreover, the JWSTs cameras have been designed to operate in redder wavelengths of light than the HST, that will allow see more clearly into the earliest region of the universe where red-shifted galaxies are flying away from us at very nearly the speed of light. These galaxies won't be appreciably more distant than the most distant things we've seen with the HST, they'll just appear brighter and clearer. Any distance records that are set with the JWST will be somewhat more incremental.

Moreover, the JWST will not push our imaging of the universe any closer to the Big Bang than we've already accomplished with very sensitive microwave space telescopes such as the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) or the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). With these scopes, we've peered at something called the Cosmic Background Radiation (CMB), which is basically the light that was "set free" when the comic soup of matter in the earliest universe finally cooled enough for electrons to be scooped up into atoms thus allowing photons (that is, light) to fly freely. This light originated so far away, and so long ago, that the expansion of the universe has stretched it from visible light in to microwaves.

It's not possible to peer any further than this- roughly 300,000 years after the big bang, because, before that, the universe was too hot, too ionized, and too opaque.

Amazingly, however, careful measurement the slight variations in the CMB reveal the effect of the quantum fluctuation that existed in the first fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second- a fluctuation that left its imprint on the shape of the CMB and, eventually, the shape of the universe itself. These fluctations started off smaller than atoms and were stretched to cosmic scale.

So, not only do we already have a tool for looking back right to the beginning of the Big Bang, but we know that the very small (quantum fluctuations) have an effect on the very large (the overall mass distribution of galaxies in the universe.) Everything is connected!

Thought provoking post, Roger. How can any intelligent/curious person today not be excited by recent advances in astrophysics?
What's piqued my interest most lately is information theory and how it may provide the answers to the quest for the one unifying equation to explain how and why thing ARE. In a nutshell the theory, originated by Claude E. Shannon in the late 40's, postulates that information is a real and quantitative thing that forms the basic building blocks of everything in the universe. Astrophysicists today (even the stubborn Steven Hawking) have concluded that all information sucked into a black hole still exists on the surface of the hole's "event horizon".
Several mind-blowing books have explored the topic, the most recent being "The Information" by noted science author James Gleick. There was a good article about it in the latest issue of WIRED.

Fabulous. I couldn't agree more with your sentiment. You really should check out the BBC series "Wonders of the Universe" if you can - I'm pretty sure you'll love it. I have practically no astonomical knowledge but am absolutely hooked - I never thought that I could understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity, but it makes sense to me now! Check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zdhtg, and I'm sure you can find it on youtube too. Enjoy!

I'm reminded of Studs' epitaph, "curiosity didn't kill this cat".

Also, for a film critic, you do a better Carl Sagan than Sagan did.

I am a biological sciences senior at LSU. For four years my professors have preached the theory of evolution as if they know for certain it is responsible for the origin of life. As you wrote, it seems logical. However, I do not find it logical that organisms evolved from different atoms somehow enclosed in a membrane. It is said that DNA contains more information then the largest libraries on the planet. How can you spontaneously create information to build an organisms by mixing atoms together? That is like taking the pieces of a car, putting them in a box, shaking them around, and expecting a functioning automobile to come out. Study any function of a cell and you will see that the precision and purpose in the mechanism is too perfect to have resulted form chance. When you consider that a singe liver cell is far more complex than any computer chip man has created it becomes increasingly ILLOGICAL to imagine that we were formed from the random conglomeration of elemental atoms. My point is, its time to start recognizing that the THEORY of evolution is just a theory.

Ebert: With all due respect, I do not believe you are a biological science major. If you were, you would understand what a Scientific Theory is, and could not have written your final sentence. You have fatally confused the scientific and vernacular definitions of "theory."

@ deacon godsey,

You suggest that science and religion are similar in that neither can completely prove nor disprove, and thus are faith-based.

A few observations and points --

You do not value the processes of each. Reason occurs through discussion; it is self-critical. Faith occurs through receiving; it is self-referential. The value of reason is that it is most likely to correct stagnation and dogma in the pursuit of progress or best-practices. Faith cannot. Nor does faith need to, for should faith appear to be totally inadequate in the physical realm well, there are "after-lifes" as consolations. An irrefutable, non-false logic. On the same level, though, with any other gods or deities, or fantastic beliefs.

Also, one should not (as our good friend Roger) make a fetish out of the physical sciences. Science is not the only alternative to faith/religion. The humanities also inform and nurture the soul, even the soul that values reason. The arts, philosophy. These also express essentials about life, I would suggest even more so than physical sciences.

Again, reason, ideally, is a discussion, an ongoing dialogue open to being informed. When it does not perform ideally it begins to become faith. Faith, performed badly, wanders towards reason.

Finally, faith and reason are like oil and water. So because reason cannot make much use of faith, you consider it to be as non-porous - that is, as selective - as faith, and therefore, like faith.
Try thinking in terms of where each one leads, rather than what their absolute properties are.

Personally, I think it comes down to hardwiring/personality. Similar perhaps to things like sexual orientation.

Unfortunately, I think that the use of 'logic' or trying to make sense of things might be useless when pondering things outside of this universe or "before time". For all we know, the entire concept of 'logic' may actually be part of this universe, and anything outside of it (like God, or perhaps something else that we don't understand) is completely outside of 'logic' and totally beyond our comprehension. This is why it (somewhat) puzzles me when people try to use logic to explain why they do or don't think that God exists. (Of course, I concede there may not be anything outside of this universe.)
Neverlethess, it is still interesting to think about it and theorize. And right now, logic is all we have.

You're not telling me anything, Roger. No wonder you attract the absolutists: because neither of you are able to qualify your absolutes, you quibble over preferences. You have a firm grasp of the finality of death and the immensity of the cosmos (as we know them). How the latter is qualified by what goes on between the cradle and the grave is beyond your calling. Your solution is merely "more". I actually detect at least a latent cynicism in the notion that other planets with life is somehow comforting. We are surrounded by the stuff here and now. Problem is, its reality is in our face. Better to dream. I used to wonder why such notions of universe-deism found a natural voice in (pseudo)science. Now I know. You are much more comfortable discussing the mysterious and vagarious as though their splendour and contribution to the soul were self-evident. No wonder your religious brethren are puzzled over why you hold your viewpoint to be unique, even different than theirs. Too bad that, for many here, your brand of reasoning (such as it has appeared thus far) is as close as they will apparently stray.

You speak French. Read any...?

Best,
Scott

By an amazing coincidence--call it synchronicity--just last night I watched Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her with its brief but screen-filling close up of cream swirling in a coffee cup, the tendrils of the stirred liquid spinning into spirals that mimic both galaxies and fractal geometry, the infinite and the infinitessimal. It's one of cinema's great "world in a grain of sand" moments, showing us that we don't need a Hubble telescope to blow our minds. All we need is a pair of eyes that can truly see the things we merely look at every day.

About the possibility of sentient life on other worlds: I've always found the thought that we are alone in the universe a symptom of the same kind of human arrogance that gave us the Earth-centered Ptolomaic theory. There is probably life out there, but I hope it never notices us. Reasoning from the only basis of reason we have--the history of our own species--it seems at least possible that members of any 'intelligent' alien race, upon first sighting human beings, might say to themselves, "Hmmm...I wonder what that tastes like with barbeque sauce..." What I'm saying is that alien visitors might be more Gork than Klatu, and To Serve Man might turn out to be a cookbook after all.

It's so interesting how the theory of how life, stars and planets began and how it intertwindes with 'why are we here?' I have often wondered HOW or even IF they are connected and if so, why? Someone posted earlier about our brains being backed up on a sort of internal hard drive and that when we die, what happens. Roger, you wrote that you believe this particular information dies along with our body. So, then I have to ask myself 'what's the point in all of this?' What are we to learn here if, in the end, we all die and lose the knowledge we gained?

Buddhists speak of rebirth (reincarnation; cyclic existence), that we are here to learn something. Perhaps we're given more opportunities to 'get it right'. Obviously, there are various perspectives on Buddha's beliefs of rebirth in modern times but if it were true, I'd see nothing gained by continually dying and losing everything.

I do believe that space, time and 'why we are here' are one in the same question. The more we discover, the more we continually baffle ourselves with more questions. I suppose if rebirth is untrue, the only real way we can continually learn is to traditionally pass off information as we go along. I'm not even sure that as we strive to understand the universe and why things exist, that we're getting any closer. Perhaps space grows a long side of us; we're constantly playing catch-up.

I realize that you didn't draw religion into this article. I'm not even a deeply religious individual. However, I feel like it has a place in this article because all religions seem to base their foundation on faith and cause us to ask ourselves the question 'why are we here and where did this all come from?' I'd be intrigued to get your feedback on this thought.

When you say death is the end of life, is that what you prefer to belief, or something you are sure about?

Ebert: It's not what I prefer, and not something I am sure about. It simply seems self-evident.

As a Christian and a person that respects science, I am just not certain how God/the Big Bang Theory/the Theory of Evolution are incompatible.

While all things are possible with God, I certainly would not expect an omnipotent deity to create a physical/natural world all made from different things. If humanity was created to be the masters of the natural world, I would think that God would want us to understand the rules in short order. How else would the species propagate if not for instinct and later higher cognitive process which would lead to understanding the fundamental nature of life and the physical world.

Given everything we know and do not know, I certainly do not understand how to prove or disprove love and faith. Both often have no measure, sometimes overwhelm logic and reason, yet seldom exist without the other.

Also, I do not profess to be concerned about the beliefs of anyone else. While 99% of scientists believe in science, I am sure 99% of doctors believe in medicine, 99% of artists believe in art, 99% of teachers believe in education, etc. It's who we are and I am glad in it.

God bless, Roger as I am sure you wish good fortune on us.

Even though I do not believe in reincarnation in a literal sense, I believe there is a truth in the idea that whatever part of myself that existed before me existed in some other person. In times when I’ve felt depressed or lonely it has given me great comfort to picture in my mind the thoughts and feelings others might have had when facing similar struggles. I think one of the great blessings of religious traditions and liberal arts more broadly is that they connect people to the story of history in a human sense not just to raw facts but the entire human experience; a story of endurance despite struggle and disappointment. In some ways, I find it not so different than the story of evolution.

P.S. As an aside I'm not sure how related to your post these comments were but they are the response that was elicited none the less.

Do you think the question (of the persistence of life after death) has been scientifically answered, or can be answered in the future, or a meaningful question at all?

This almost made me forget how mad I was that this week's reviews aren't up yet.

Great post, Roger. I love it when you ramble beautifully through the cosmos!
You speak of grasping the distance of a light year. I've found a way to think about that that works for me pretty well.

An inch is to a mile, as an astronomical unit, (that is, the earth-sun distance), is to a light year. I look at my thumb, which is an inch wide, and I can ponder just how much bigger a mile is. Then I consider the distance to the sun. Light takes about eight minutes to travel that distance. A light year is as much bigger than that as a mile is to my thumb.

Another thought: If I build a tiny model of the solar system, with a little dot for the Sun about 1/100 inch in diameter, and an invisibly small Earth 1/10,000 inch in diameter an inch away from the Sun, the closest star would be over four miles distant.

Thanks again for the reminder of just how awesome a universe it is that we live in!

Although your post dances around the Theism/Evolution controversy, you seem to want sidestep it in favor of merely articulating your awe of the grandeur of space. Though I’m a Christian who doesn’t see Evolution as mutually exclusive from my faith, I’ll refrain from delving into that topic here, and simply join you in your wonderment.

The universe is absolutely perplexingly amazing, and the more we learn about it, the more it challenges our understanding of just about everything. The size of it alone boggles the imagination. Consider a moment the following.

When we look in one direction, we see at the furthest regions of space stars nearly 45 billion light years away. This is derived by calculating the speed with which light travels and taking into consideration the expansion of space itself. We also see similar stars in the completely opposite direction from where we are. Now, any sentient being on the first set of stars would see us as we see them. However, they would not be able to see the second set of stars, as the expansion of space and the limited speed of light would forever keep this parcel of the universe outside of their observable eye. Every point in the universe has a diameter that extends from it in which they can observe anything. Outside of that, nothing can be observed.

So, while we see the universe as being 45 billion light years from us, this is merely the limits of our observable universe. The actual universe is many, many times bigger. How much bigger? Well, from my understanding, if you were to take everything in our observable universe, including all of the 100’s of billions of galaxies and what not, and compress that to the size of the earth, the actual universe would be comparable to the size of our observable universe. Copernicus, eat your heart out.

Although the size of the universe is bewildering in and of itself, it is at least conceivable to understand. We get the idea of ‘big.’ However, there is a great quantity of the universe that lies outside our comprehension. Dark matter is something that cannot be seen, felt of heard, but can affect gravity. Dark energy is something that produces a negative gravitational effect on the universe, causing it to expand. However, with each bit of space it “creates” through expansion, it also fills, further accelerating the expansion of the universe. Adding just these two elements together, they actually compose 96% of the material in the universe. At best, we know and understand a mere 4% of the universe.

Digging deeper, we look at the real consequences of trying to harmonize the strangeness of quantum mechanics with general relativity. Doing so forces physicists, mathematicians and cosmologists to posit seemingly impossible scenarios in which an infinite number of universes coexist of which we are one. A conclusion drawn from such a scenario would be that not only is it possible for Elvis to still be alive, it is inescapable. This is not a thought experiment going wrong, but a real, tangible truth.

A quote attributed to Einstein is, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” I wonder if a line should be drawn and defined between comprehension and apprehension. Allow me to elaborate. A group of scientists invented a machine that could measure data and then create logical ties between the data. The group attached one pendulum to another and had it dangle in front of the machine. The machine calculated the erratic behavior of this double-mass object over a period of time and then, without prompt, spit out a formula to describe what it saw: F=ma. It was an astonishing feat which circled the scientific globe. This machine was then used to correlate the impossibly difficult interactions within a cell. It did, and came up with alarmingly powerful equations that tied the data together. However, the paper remains unpublished. Why? Well, the scientists apprehend the data in front of them, but they cannot comprehend it. There’s no reason backing up their data.

In a sense, String Theory (or M-Theory), which is today the best theory available to potentially harmonize quantum mechanics with general relativity, was similarly developed. String theory was more or less an accidental discovery, and not just the next step in a series of rational thought processes. But it was a fortunate accident, in so far as it seems to be right. But, like given a formula without the reason on how we got there, we’re becoming further removed from comprehension.

At the end of the day, when the scientists can step back and agree on a Unified Field Theory that successfully ties all the loose ends together, will it be anything that we can really comprehend? Or, will it just be a series of equations, featuring derivatives of intangible concepts without any 'why' in its backbone?

How perplexing would it be if our best attempts to demystify the universe was itself a mystery?

Roger great post. I love the Plato and Socrates references because my belief In God came from those two. I read Plato's Phaedo and Plato's Republic and new upon reading that the soul was logically reasonable and made perfect sense. I have no scientific proof, faith is a tricky thing like that. I was a complete non believer and science was where I layed my claim. However reading the above pieces I could not deny what now I believe to be true. That we are souls having human experiences. That our soul was prior to us and will "live" on after us. I like the phrase that we our souls having a human experience, and the human experience is like a veil masking things. Some people's veils thicker than others. I did not find God in the bible, but in philosophy of those two. This was only a Month ago and maybe the feelings will dissipate, but I can not deny the absolute confirmation I experience in my brain. I would have to deny myself. Again awesome post. Funny thing this came out on Descartes birthday too.

I was watching the BBC News. A Muslim in London said, "The Qur'an contains such insights into science that it could only come from God."

I wondered if that was right. Thought I would check it out.

Tabari I:219 "When Allah wanted to create the creation, He brought forth smoke from the water. The smoke hovered loftily over it. He called it 'heaven.' Then He dried out the water and made it earth. He split it and made it seven earths on Sunday. He created the earth upon a big fish, that being the fish mentioned in the Qur'an. By the Pen, the fish was in the water. The water was upon the back of a small rock. The rock was on the back of an angel. The angel was on a big rock. The big rock was in the wind. The fish became agitated. As a result, the earth quaked, so Allah anchored the mountains and made it stable. This is why the Qur'an says, 'Allah made for the earth firmly anchored mountains, lest it shake you up.'"

Bukhari:V4B54N421 "I walked hand in hand with the Prophet when the sun was about to set. We did not stop looking at it. The Prophet asked, 'Do you know where the sun goes at sunset?' I replied, 'Allah and His Apostle know better.' He said, 'It travels until it falls down and prostrates Itself underneath the Throne. The angels who are in charge of the sun prostrate themselves, also. The sun asks permission to rise again. It is permitted. Then it will prostrate itself again but this prostration will not be accepted. The sun then says, "My Lord, where do You command me to rise, from where I set or from where I rose?" Allah will order the sun to return whence it has come and so the sun will rise in the west. And that is the interpretation of the statement of Allah in the Qur'an.'"

My theory is, Mohammed was a Terrorist, and he made up the nonsense to create a phony religion that justifies his acts of terror.

The angels who are in charge of the sun lay down on the ground to obtain the favor of Allah... then the sun waits for Allah to give the command to rise in the west.... which is just puffery to prove that Muslims need to obey the commands of Allah without question... and those commands come from men, not God, who think the spread of Islam means more than individual human life.

The statement that Allah created the Earth upon a big fish... the water was on the back of a rock... and the rock was on the back of an angel?

My point is, there are half a billion people in the world that honestly think this nonsense passes for "science." And they want to brand anyone who tries to tell them different as a "hater" and "Islamophobic."

In the latest version of his "A Brief History Of Time", Hawking offers up an alternate theory to the Big Bang - one that doesn't require a Bang or Crunch, and instead posits a possibility where the universe has simply always existed, similar to the rubber-band hypothesis.

I used to read your writing just for the reviews. While I did not often agree with your opinion toward a film, I did overtime come to understand how your viewpoint compared to mine and what aspects of cinema we mutually enjoyed.

Had I not stumbled on the ideas you express in your opinion columns I would have still thought you a good writer.

Thus it has been a joy to discover your other writing. There are times when I can hear Ray Bradbury in your voice. This piece for instance reminds me of Dandelion Wine. The sensation it gave me was the same one I had when when I first read the awakening Douglas experienced after his nose was bloodied wrestling with his brother; the sudden self-awareness that he is alive.

Verisimilitude!

Wonderful as always, Roger, thanks for this. I love how you can examine what we perceive and our theories that arise from those perceptions, finding beauty as you do so, and keeping an open mind.

The dear Deacon Godsey writes very eloquently above about his sense --- he calls it "sadness" --- of logic and reason at odds with faith.

As if admitting my faith (that is, my belief system designed to incorporate those things I can't prove) in science were equal to his faith in religion would somehow validate one or the other.

Science represents man's explanations of the natural world, based on observation of things as they are. Religion represents man's explanations of the ultra-natural world based on assumptions of things that cannot be observed.

One may not disprove the other, but each of us much choose if both are relevant or one is more-so than the other.

Sadness exists when there is a stake. As if science or religion must compete, and a winner can bask in glory while the loser sulks away, defeated. Truth is, the faiths --- scientific, religious, and any or all others --- are collaborative. You might want to stick one in Box #1 and the other in Box #2. That's fine, if you are a librarian or a file clerk.

I'm not that organized. The boxes are usually tipped over, and it all spills out all over the floor.

Mr. Ebert,

In all of your entries that I have read over the past year or so, this is the one that has finally compelled me to respond, if only because it give me a little joy in knowing that you will have had the opportunity to have read it.

What you have written here has struck me deeply, as it reflects exactly what has been preoccupying my thoughts and musings for these past six months or so, though it isn't so much your thoughts on Evolution and The Big Bang (though it is with those perspectives I find myself aligned); the words that I found myself so emotionally affected by were these:

"A message from light years away would probably miss me in my box of space and time, but I find that Art can shout to me across a few years or centuries, and it carries the same message: "Yes, I exist, and you are not alone."

Allow me to backpedal a bit and provide some context:From the age of roughly seven to the final year of high-school I identified myself with varying stages of conviction as a Christian; I attended Church every week, studied the bible with my father, et cetera. I am now nearing the end of my first year in college, and over the course of the past few months I have essentially shed that particular distinction, finding myself gravitating more and more towards atheism, or at the very least a skeptical agnosticism.

It was not a sudden, "Now I'm in College and Should Follow the Non-Theist Trend Stereotypical of College Intellectuals" decision; I had been grappling with my loss of faith for a little over two years, and only in entering college did I finally feel comfortable in declaring my conscious rejection of the religion that previously dominated my opinion of life, death, and whatever may come afterwards. I needed no knowledge of some benevolent deity or life-affirming mission of faith in order to feel secure in my life; I was and continue to be perfectly content to enjoy my life here on Earth with the family and friends I love. But as I lay in bed every night there was was thing that I couldn't shake, one fear ingrained in me from birth that even now offers my breath cause to hitch in my lungs:

What about when I die? For weeks and weeks I have been grappling with this existential dilemma, what many say is THE dilemma. For all of my confidence in my choice to reject organized faith, I had no idea how to grapple with the notion that when I die there may or may not very well be Nothing. No pearly gates, nobody to assure me that I am no longer alone. Nothing.

As the weeks have turned into months, I still find myself afraid, but I believe I am beginning to gain some comfort, and this is where all of my youthful existential ramblings actually achieve a kind of relevance to your above quote, Mr. Ebert:

"Yes, I exist, and you are not alone." I am a lover of the arts, sir, a passionate advocate of film and theatre and literature and (and I know you disagree with this) even the artistic possibilities of video-games. But that's a different blog, heh heh.

I am not only a lover of the arts, but an aspiring practitioner of them as well. I wrote and directed a few plays in high-school, and I have loved reading and writing for as long as I can remember. I am even trying to learn how to draw so that I may add a bit of visual flair to the stories and characters that populate my mind (and might I say your previous blog about drawing was quite encouraging in that regard).

But I am in danger of rambling again; the point is this: I wish to create, to express myself as an artist in some way, because I have so deeply been affected by the works of others myself. The films, books, cartoons, et cetera that have so shaped the way I see the world mean much more to me than any Bible ever could, because you are right, sir, in what are it all about.

"Yes, I am here, and you are not alone."

And as I contemplate my place on the earth, on the nature of life and death, I am coming to an understanding. This completeness that has come from the complementation of art and my own experiences as an individual is the essence of being that all art essentially strives to communicate. Transferrence is possible, in that way; where I have been, changed, comforted, educated and made more aware, so can I do the same thing with my work. And that, at the very least, is what I know will happen when I someday die. Somewhere, somewhen, somebody will pick up a book or turn a channel and encounter my art. Hopefully they will be touched by it. Hopefully they will be comforted in knowing that they are not alone.

I apologize for rambling; concision is not my strong point and I am admittedly a little nervous to be expressing myself in such an honest manner on the internet blog of an artist who has been very influential in my ongoing development into an adult. I admire your film reviews and your eloquence, if I may be frank, and I do not wish to make a poor impression.

But back to it. I simply wished to express, in my own obtuse and perhaps self-consciously eloquent way, an empathy and admiration for what you have communicated today. It has brought this reader a little joy in reading, knowing that someone I respect believes power of Art as I do. As I look out into the sky I have a very hard time believing that there is some benevolent creator figure watching out over all of us. I get scared, at night, when my thoughts drift to how time will shape and mold to its own ends my dreams of the future. I don't know if I will ever be a great artist, and the challenges of rising to my own lofty ambitions are often overwhelming. It is so easy to think of myself as alone.

But then I read Joyce or Vonnegut, or even my favorite comic book or perhaps a particularly insightful internet blog, and I know that isn't the case. With every word writ to page or image drawn to ink or thought made digital so as to share it with the world I see the works of human beings who are just like me: Filled with happiness, joy, humor and curiosity and, yes, fear and sadness and longing too.

But it is good to feel, if only for a moment or two, that yes, I do exist. And no, I am not alone.

So, the spaces in the "Captcha" are not supposed to be entered?
(My attempted comment was brilliant, but I failed the Captcha test; the comment was thrown away, and I haven't the heart to retype it)

Hi Roger.
Forgive my bad English. First of all I've got to say I consider you my guide line in movies matters. Ebert's reviews always fulfill my heart and my brain.

I think that using reason should lead to the awarness that not the whole matter can be exploited. Even if it does not mean we have to stop our investigation.Einstein said we're in a closed box we can't open. So, in a certain way, why should we deny each possibility? I think that my brain has to consider every kind of possible solution.
Why universal gravitation follows the law we all know and not a different one? Why we do not have innumerable states of aggregation?
All questions that do not have a real answer. Just because we have to go back and back and stop down there where we can't accede. Sciences concern a logical deductive-descriptive process.
Maybe randomness is the key. We got multiverse in which each possibility become real, so gravity works in different ways according to different universe. Is that possible? Can each universe allow life?
I don't know. We don't know. We know we don't know. And this is worthy according to Socrate.
I consider fables maybe everything related to god. Whether is the Catholic one or not.
But I consider the idea of a God a possiblity. I have to. Just because there is not something taking it off of my range of possibilites.
I separate god from god's common conception. I think at Darwin evolutionism as factual but this not avoid me that I have to consider god as a possibility.

Then the big matter related to faith. I consider my faith as a hope. I have no faith. I simply hope that there will be something more after death. It's just a hope. Is there really anyone saying: Well, i don't hope any kind of place in which justice and joy are forever?
Definitely I not (ahah).
My mum last year had a stomach cancer. I know you can understand me. So my hope is that each suffering is not vain. I have no faith it will be. Just an hope.

Ok, so my curiostiy push me now to ask you why "Where the wild thing are" got only 3 stars. But as a real good guy I'll not ask (ahah).
I think at you as one of the few persons I would like to pass a time with to stimulate my brain.
Bye

Roger,

You seem to think only in three or four dimensions, what about the other 6-7?

Spare 11 minutes of your time and watch this. Be ready to be blown away though :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCQx9U6awFw

Philippe

“Without giving it any thought, with no way to think it, the universe brought into existence a way of making itself seen.”

For me, that is the most intriguing sentence in the entire post. (I’ll even forgive you for anthropomorphizing the universe a little bit.) It got me thinking that perhaps an essential component of existence is awareness, and not in the philosophical sense.

What if: Existence = Time + Space + Awareness

And awareness is as different from time and space as they are from each other, but equally intertwined. I’m not ready to assign it special powers like omniscience or omnipotence or give it a name like “god.” I like the idea that given enough time and space it could manifest itself in any number of ways that we cannot yet observe or measure but which our consciousness is one.

Dear Roger,

So, to believe that nothing brought forth something, which went from non-living matter to living, which became sentient beings fluent in language, art, science, love, meaning, longing–– that's more plausible and preferable to believing in God? And less magical thinking in the face of leaps that remain incomprehensible to science and philosophy?
?"
PS- I've always loved your thoughtful movie reviews so I hope you don't find my question offensive.

Ebert: I don't know the answer to the statement, "Why is there something instead of nothing?" I do believe scientists have a pretty good idea of how life came to be. I don't believe in things I prefer to believe in, I believe in what I am led to believe in by my ability to reason.

Hi Roger,

I enjoyed reading your post.

Whenever I think about mankind’s increasing ability to peer deeper and deeper into the vastness of space I have to keep in mind that what we are peering into is actually the past. What we see when we look further and further beyond is not what is there now, but what it was billions of years ago.

As Spock would say…Fascinating.

I wonder what it actually looks like at this very moment in time. I bet it would look very different indeed.

And speaking of Space.

We used to think of Space as sort of a giant, dark, empty vacuum that was populated with stars, planets, comets and asteroids, black holes etc.. Everything is just kind of floating out there with only the energy, such as gravity, from all those billions and billions of bodies acting upon each other.

But we now think that space itself is actually tangible – not empty at all. And we know this not because what we can see, but because of what we cannot see. We used to believe that after the initial eruption of The Big Bang, all the Galaxies, Stars, Planets and various other detectable bodies created in the Universe would eventually start to slow down or even come back together by sheer loss of momentum and gravitational forces. Sort of a future “Big Crunch” if you will. But to the utter astonishment of Astronomers and Physicists, the exact opposite is taking place. All the detectable bodies in the Universe are actually speeding away from each other at a greatly accelerated rate.

What is causing this? There has to be something in all that Space, that we can’t actually see or even detect, creating this tremendous force. And this is where Dark Matter and Dark Energy come into play.

Think of it this way. If you scatter a bunch of M&Ms in what we once thought was Space – just a weightless vacuum - they will float there for a while, but eventually they will be pulled together by their Gravitational attraction. But sprinkle the same M&Ms on the surface material of something like a balloon, then stretch that balloon from every angle. What happens? It creates a greater distance between the M&Ms dotted throughout the surface of that “balloon” material. But at the same time the “stretching” is pushing the M&Ms further apart, they are also trying to come back together, albeit in a minuscule way, by the pull of Gravity.

As Space is “Stretched” – caused by this Dark Matter and Dark Energy - there is now more and more Space. And with more Space, more Dark Matter. And with more Dark Matter, more Dark Energy. Most Astronomers and Physicists believe that this is what is causing the Universe to speed apart at a faster and faster rate. Greater than the effects of energy like gravity from all the known and detectable bodies in the Universe can withstand. And no one knows what the effect of all that 'Stretching" will be. But I can't believe it will be pleasant.

But many Astronomers now believe that when the decedents of mankind look up from the earth and into the night sky, in a billion years or so, all that they will see is darkness with only few specks of distant light.

Come to think of it, maybe that is what is actually up there now – but it won’t be visible on Earth for a long time to come…

Excellent essay, Roger. In case you haven't seen this before, I'd suggest watching "Science Saved My Soul" by Phil Hellenes. It touches on many of the same themes you've addressed in your essay in a very touching way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6w2M50_Xdk

It's definitely worth the 15 minutes. When I watched it for the first time, as soon as it was over I watched it again.

If Ray Kurzweil is right, in 2045 or thereabouts we'll achieve virtual immortality with the human-computer meld. Undoubtedly that would lead to a diasporadic exploration of galactic proportions, interaction with other-origined awarenesses, and more natural selection than you can shake a celestial stick at. Far-fetched? So's a flash drive, thirty-four years ago.

A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist"
"However", replied the universe,
"The fact creates in me no sense of obligation."

Stephen Crane

In your piece you mention the universe as having no opinion. Not to sound too much like an existentialist, but what is the universe? Is the universe the space and time in which matter exists, or is it the sum total of its parts? If the latter is true, and we acknowledge that we are both its parts and opinionated through our self-reflexivity, I would say the universe is very opinionated, and very aware of itself through its human and possible other alien extensions.

Just something I was thinking about. And now, to "Contact."

Nice post again Roger. I love it when you get existential. Infinite depth down into each atom, infinite depth up into space.

ps Wow, Mr. Parsons really needed you to like Battle: Los Angeles. I mean NEEDED it. Good lord.

You earthlings have a problem with reality. It appears from up here you're afraid to leave it be... always trying to concoct new PILLS to make yourselves happy.

We tune into your planet several times a day. We study your reality in many different ways. We conclude if you'd leave things alone, they would be okay -- probably.

But we see you have plans now to colonize space. We do not want a visit from your poor puny race: for on your own planet, you can't get along with your birds OR your bees.

Stay down there until you learn how to face REALITY.

Thank you.

Bisbo, Ruler of planet Zignabob

PS how one can find an endlessly varying, spectacularly complicated, wordlessly delicate, unimaginably balanced and ultimately unfathomable limitless multi-conscious entity "comforting" because it doesn't mean a god damned thing also escapes us up here on Zignabob.

"None of this immensity is affected by what I think about it. It doesn't depend on being thought about. If it is true that our galaxy alone might contain 30 to 80 million earth-like planets, and if every one of them were occupied by sentient beings, it doesn't depend on what they're thinking, either."

Sure it does. The universe is vast, but the portion of it you need to be most concerned about is quite small, and much of it is within your sphere of influence. If you push, it has to push back.

Surely you've had times in life where you chose to trust that things would go in a favorable direction, and the world came through for you. If you hadn't trusted, where would you be now? And just as surely, you must have at some time presumed to much, and suffered a loss that a more skeptical person would have avoided. Hope lies between presumption and despair, and the lives that we build for ourselves-- the universe we live in-- get shaped by the beliefs we bring with us; despairing people end up in despairing worlds.

What you think about the far-off Andromeda Galaxy may have no impact on something so unimaginably remote, but what's that to you? The part of the universe that has the most impact on you cares very much what you think.

Ebert, stop getting trolled by the creationists

There's no need to educate these people or explain rationality to them.

Nice article btw.

Reading stuff like this always reminds me of this Lovecraft quote:

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

The first sentence in particular has always stuck with me (the rest might be a little too gloomy/paranoid). From the sound of a lot of Lovecraft's writing I think he might have been truly frightened by the unknown.

Here's my thought. The universe is about 13 billion years old. Many billions were spend creating heavier elements that would allow for planets. That gave us the ability to have an Earth, which is about 4.5 billions years old. So, it took 4.5 billion years for life to evolve on Earth to get an Ebert. Well worth the wait! Now, how long until the next Ebert script is brought to the silver screen?

Darwin's theory was meant to describe biological processes, though it certainly appears to be at work more broadly in the Universe. Some combination of the existence of randomness, motion, time, and whatever the opposite of randomness is. Would what we call life and intelligence be inevitable on other worlds, or merely probable enough that it is likely? We'll know if and when we can observe it, or (as in the case of many discovered planets) the effects of it. But even beyond life itself, there is a beauty to it all, and it all seems to make sense to minds that did, after all, evolve from it. Does it just come down to "things are the way they are because they got that way"?

Although your post dances around the Theism/Evolution controversy,

"Dances"? How about "Clogs bad Riverdance imitations, until the 2nd floor neighbors complain"? ;)

Once again, we get all the earmarks of the Atheist Who Wants to Start Up the Conversation Again Because Nobody Else Was:
The attempt to sound Deep, as this will give the same old ideas Creativity...Blithely ignoring the fact that more general the Deep Thoughts Go, the wider and wider paintbrushes are being swept, until we're back in the "safe territory" of Good People Believe Science, and Bad People Are Scary.

And once again...it's fear. Not fear, so much as insecurity--Insecurity that unless the discussion was on no less important and indisputable a scale than THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE, some nasty person might bring it back to personal issues again...And strip aside the facade to reveal that dangerous little notion that the author's attempt to show what a Deep Rational Thinker, Unaffected by Two Thousand Years of Deluded Civilization, might in fact be (heavens) an opinion, which like all opinions held by mere mortal human beings, can be WRONG.
Allow me to be nasty....So, slow week, was it then, Roger?

Roger,

You know how most of the time, when someone says, "With all due respect...",/i> it's typically followed by a statement veiled under the guise of respect, but it's actually a sarcastic criticism or spiteful personal remark? In all honesty, this is NOT one of those times...I very much respect you as a person, writer, thinker, etc. I also very much respect the other thought posters on your blog. As such, I would like to respectfully respond to the statement/question you posed at the end of my original post...

First you stated/asked, "With me, it's a matter of description. I attempt to describe what I can perceive and learn about without involving additional explanations which may be arbitrary. Is it possible that when Jesus said he was the son of God, he was a man using the term God as symbolic? Why does what he said prove the existence of God?"

I think we likely disagree on what is actually "arbitrary" & what isn't. For me, I don't view my faith in the existence of God - or His role as the Creator of the universe - as "arbitrary" in the sense of being plucked randomly out of thin air, or as being removed from thoughtful reflection about what I see, experience & observe. My faith, by its very nature, is not inextricably "dependent" on the "physical/observable evidence" involved, but neither is it completely devoid of evidence on its behalf.

RE: Jesus...the question shouldn't be whether or not it was "possible" if Jesus was speaking symbolically when identifying Himself as the Son of God - of course, anything is "possible."

The bigger issue, I think, is what was He likely saying/intending based on the best available historical evidence - of which there is a significant amount to draw from - & what were those around Him at the time perceiving Him to say/mean. It seems highly unlikely that the Jewish leaders of the day would have been the least bit threatened by someone they thought to be "symbolically" referring to themselves as a general "son of god." It's much more likely that they believed He was actually claiming to be the Messiah & identifying Himself as uniquely connected to the One they identified as the one true God of the universe - & as such, they vehemently accused Him of blasphemy & succeeded in having Him crucified.

Then there's the question of how the Roman leaders viewed Him, & the threat they perceived Him to be in terms of His claims to be the "King of Kings" & "Lord of Lords" - a direct challenge the divine claims of the Roman Caesar - either pre-crucifixion or post-resurrection (which, contrary to the opinions of some, has a significant amount of solid, historical evidence in its favor & no equivalent claims or explanations to the contrary that hold any historical water. I would specifically point you to the work of the widely respected historian & scholar N.T. Wright & his books Surprised By Hope & The Resurrection of The Son of God.)

Finally, re: your question...I don't believe anything anyone says "proves" the existence of God; I do believe, however, that there is a significant amount of evidence to point in that direction, not the least of which is - as I mentioned above - Jesus' resurrection from the dead.

I guess what I'm trying to say - albeit poorly, I'm sure - is that I don't believe "faith" & "science" are "at odds with" or "in competition with" one another, or are "mutually exclusive" from one another. I genuinely believe they can & should interact & inform one another.

Ultimately, though, I do believe that when it comes to the origins of the universe, the purpose of man's existence, what happens when we die, how to understand & address the problem of genuine evil, etc., scientific observation is insufficient for making definitive statements/claims about the non-existence of a divinity of any kind (whether it's the God of the Bible or otherwise) & intellectual integrity demands acknowledging a certain level of faith in the process of forming our conclusions/beliefs/opinions, one way or the other.

With continued respect,

deacon godsey

Ebert: I agree in theory, but am wary of believing something just because it is said to be true, absent testing by the scientific method.

Thumbs up to this entry! Currently reading The Grand Design.

Roger, ever hear of Nick Bostrom? Supposed to be a super-duper genius. Not a regular, run of the mill genius.
Bostrom convinced me that humans finding life or proof of it's existence outside Earth is real bad news for the species. I'd prefer to let him explain but it is fairly simple insofar as it goes. Question is: Where is the great filter?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GnkAcdRgcI&feature=channel_video_title

(FYI: At 6:28 in the clip they get into this question.)

Ebert: "It's not what I prefer, and not something I am sure about. It simply seems self-evident."(..that dead is indeed dead..)

As self evident as that a feather and a stone, dropped from atop a leaning tower, would reach the ground at different times; or that time is absolute, not relative; or that the complexity of life requires intelligence to create it?

Matter changing to intelligent matter over the course of time to look back upon itself and its surroundings with a sense of awe!

You're not telling me anything, Roger. No wonder you attract the absolutists: because neither of you are able to qualify your absolutes, you quibble over preferences.

Basically, because an athie believes himself to be Absolutely Right, he must go out and find someone to by symbolically Absolutely Wrong, and hold them up in front of the rest of the reasonable moderate population and say "booga-booga!" to show how scary it is not to be Absolutely Right.
This is presumably to show that Athies are Normal People, because they're not Scary Book-Burning Religious Extremists/Creationists They Saw on CNN. At least, that's the message they hope to project...What it instead projects is the image that Athies are cynical bigots who would rather be paranoid of the entire world around them rather than reach out to them. When the attempt to show themselves as Normal and Deserving of Sympathy backfires, they try to reason that yes, they may be arrogant cynics, but well, what does cynicism matter, when we're all just Dust In The Wind, Dudes? (To borrow Bill & Ted's philosophizing with Socrates.)
Nice try, Carl Sagan...But it don't work. A cynic is a cynic, and a paranoid bigot is a paranoid bigot. They don't get sympathy no mater how many volumes of SCIENCE! (insert Thomas Dolby riff here) they throw at the rest of the belief-balanced world...But heavens, I must be an Evil Creationist for saying it! No. I'm just a person who gets out his door once in a while, says "hi" to people on the street, and holds doors open for little old ladies.
Your fears of the "unknown" are the people you see on the bus and the subway. Try conquering those fears, and you'll understand a lot more of the universe.

Bill Hays wrote:
I was watching the BBC News.
(I rather suspected as much.)
A Muslim in London said:
Something Evil and Extreme, I'll be bound.

Instead of pretending you've expressed any actual opinion here, Billy-boy, let's familiarize ourselves with a few Internet terms: What is a Kook?
Here's a term that's been around for a good twelve years or longer, since the very invention of the Internet, and yet has deeply specific meanings: It's said that every forum and board--and even Usenet groups, back when such things existed--had at least one Kook, never less than one, and rarely more than two or three. Like the Court Jester or Village Idiot, they had to form a single minority, to symbolize what the rest of the court or village was NOT...Ie., that the rest of the forum or board could live their lives comfortably in the assurance that they were not.
And over the life of the Internet, the aspects of Kook-dom started taking on specific recognizable aspects:
- The Kook could be recognized in that he lived to post on only ONE subject, no matter what the conversation was. Either the Kook posted post after post on his own area of interest, while the rest of the group ignored or laughed at it, or he could steer any conversation topic back to his own area of interest, lest there be someone who hadn't read it yet, or that he was "just starting to make progress" in new converts.
- The Kook believed entirely in his own popularity, indeed, necessity to the group, in that he was its intellectual life and soul, and would never be so disloyal as to LEAVE it, even though the rest of the group loudly wished it.
- When faced with the idea that he was not the popular life and soul of the board, the Kook often went into conspiracy-theory mode, first believing that one lone meanie lived to torment him...And then, when it turned out more than one tomato was flying, believed that that same meanie had "poisoned" the regular readers against his poor, innocent outspoken First-Amendment views. (Which aren't, btw, but that's another thread.)

There are a dozen other Audubon Spotter's Guides, Bill, but you get the basic drift: You wear the gold-plated tin badge of Official Kook, First Class on this board, because there's always one, and if there was another one, we'd have noticed by now.
Nobody wants to hear about the Evil Muslims who Want to Blow Up the World, Because They're Crazy. Believe me, when you post five times in the same thread, we should know Crazy by now. I'd say it was doing a public service in helping prove the "Paranoid bigot" theory in full-color illustration, but frankly, we've had a bit too much of it already for it to be any new thrill. And the reason I point this is out, on a side note to Roger is, if you're going to keep beating this dead horse in an attempt to look Right...you DESERVE to have The Kook keep darkening your virtual doorstep, believing that you're his bestest war-buddy-pal in the revolution. It's not our name on the blog.
I wish I had the chance to go into further detail, however, I have already gone against agreed-upon net-protocol by making the Kook aware of his own recognition in the first place. On Usenet, we used to say "Play with trolls and you get to keep them; play with Kooks, and you get to keep them forever. As you might expect, the rest of us don't particularly want to.
If you don't want the dog to follow you, don't keep throwing him scraps of meat.

Great article; thanks for sharing your views on the universe! One question though...do you think somewhere, on one of those 30 to 80 million possible earth-like planets out there, someone has created a video game that could be considered art?

Roger,

I find it a little ironic that you write so eloquently on this subject, but when it comes to science fiction films, you believe raise questions that the creators didn't ask. Often, an answer to these questions is fairly obvious to me or becomes obvious if you think in the context of the environment in which the characters operate.

I always got the impression you liked science fiction as a kid and then decided you outgrew it at some point.

I often think of Carl Sagan's book, "The Demon-Haunted World, Science as a Candle in the Dark." He offers this quote by Samuel Butler (1667): "A credulous mind...finds most delight in believing strange things, and the stranger they are, the easier they pass with him; but never regards those that are plain and feasible, for every man can believe such."

Every atom in us--every atom on Earth--was borne by supernovae: the elements essential for life's genesis and evolution were forged in distant, long-dead stellar furnaces; jetted into the lonely void by a star's violent death, these elements glided through the cosmos for eons before coalescing with other nomadic atoms into a solar nebula around our newborn sun. Guided by gravity, an embryonic Earth formed inside that solar nebula; after a magmatic childhood, life developed on that adolescent Earth. Almost four billion years have passed since life emerged: billions of species have struggled into existence, only to be eternally erased by evolutionary whims: large-body collisions, anoxic holocausts, climatic catastrophes, etc. But throughout this flux, there has been one constant: the atoms borne by supernovae. Again: every atom in us--every atom on Earth--was star-forged. Look at your hands: the atoms in your hands were born in ancient, long-dead stars; the atoms in each hand--each finger--are from different stars. Millions of light years were traveled by these dispossessed atoms; when two people hold hands, they bring the cosmos together. I can't express how I feel when I consider the distance and time traveled by my atoms--traveled by me, in a trillion pieces. http://tiny.cc/k17ic

Superb article Roger.

Its a golden age for 'pop science' readers. Anybody can now (try to) get to grips with the basic outlines of numerous beautiful ideas. Ideas that thousands of intelligent people have dedicated their lives and careers to investigating.
We owe a great debt to the scientific writers who see the importance in explaining complex ideas to the lay person.

For all those on this thread who embarrass themselves with naive questions and petty religious-flavoured quibbles: READ. Read about science and REALITY.
We are not long for this world, so lets try and learn as much as we can about it, while we're here.
Otherwise, we might just as well have been goldfish.

To me the message of great art is, "Here's how you live; you need emotional distance between you and the person you live with in order to live together; you are two individuals living together."

I don't know if "You are not alone" is the message of art, because that goes without saying; I didn't create the art, so someone else must have.

So, I think art is the illusion of spontaneity, and that the nature of spontaneity tells us how to live with each other with that distance to let us be individuals and art is to, perhaps among other things, to translate that message, or nature's message, of how to live with each other from within nature; so, in a sense artists are translators of the universe, and spontaneity is also kind of the infinite energy, behind that message: and I think the nature of spontaneity is a sudden yet gentle energy.

Roger said: "But given the existence of matter, we now understand how life could have arisen."

I'm open to being educated. Can your or one of your readers that are so hostile to religion point out to me where I can learn more about how matter evolved into life? I subscribe to evolution, and single cell organisims evolving into more complex organisms. But I haven't found where it explains how carbon soup becomes a cell. You seem pretty certain of it, so 'link' me.

Ebert: This may be of assistance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

I'm not 100% sure about this, but I heard that the patterns in the universe are very similar to those found in brain cells (look at this picture)

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/pc/neuron-galaxy.jpg

There are some who believe the universe is all the part of a brain/mind of something greater.

Hi Roger,

Excellent post! I really enjoyed it. As a Christian, I don't believe the universe thinks either. But that isn't an argument against the philosophy that the universe is itself the creative product of rational thought. It's not an argument against the philosophy which says mind preceded matter and not the other way around.

I've always found it interesting that so many people can look at a painting of nature and describe it as a creative work of art, but when they look at nature itself, they scoff at the idea that a reasonable and intelligent person should use the same description for nature.

Ebert:...is indicated by the fact that something like 50 percent of the American population doesn't subscribe to it. However, more than 99% of all the earth's scientists do.

That 99% is a fairly self-selecting population, don't you think?

If you sat through your undergraduate classes and were not sufficiently persuaded by the arguments for the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection, how likely would it be that you would go on to become a professional believer-in-the-orthodoxy ("earth scientist") rather than say a quality engineer at a manufacturing plant like the larger percentage of the American population do?

Ebert: Not many Americans are either scientists or engineers. In the matter of evolution, they believe what they have been told. Although very few followers of mainstream Christianity and Judaism believe in the literal truth of the Bible regarding Creation, depressing numbers of Christian and Muslim fundamentalists do. That their beliefs fly in the face of reason and show disrespect to their own intelligence is quite sad to me.

Snooki says the universe is just one big baddass badong. Study it hard, but party harder. She knows.

When it comes to the Big Questions, I find myself constantly having to balance my cold rationality with my equally cold experience (dare I call it "evidence"?). For example, my rational side says we may well be little more than a quintessence of dust--I have no problem with that idea.

But on the other hand, I somehow have to square that with the fact that when I was sixteen years old, spending the summer in an old European home, I saw an apparition that was clearly human-like in form, and persisted long enough for me to see it clearly (this, just a few days after my closest friend at the time tragically died of spinal meningitis, by the way; that may or may not be relevant, but I bring it up because--well, because you just never know.). I'm not prone to hallucinations, rest assured, I was wide awake, and most importantly, held no prior beliefs one way or another about such things as "ghosts"; yet this fell squarely into that general description. (It scared me nearly to death, by the way.)

I've had a number of puzzling experiences like this through the years, almost as dramatic, and all totally uninvited. So while my rationality wants to simply dismiss these experiences as nothing more than anecdotal, I also know that's not an entirely "rational" approach to take either--after all, stories of rocks falling from the sky were considered anecdotal or hallucinations until Ernst Chladni came along and branded them as "meteorites." Sure, the senses can be fallible--just as they can be reliable sometimes, too.

So where does that leave me? Simply, I've learned to keep an open mind about such things, and not simply subscribe to what the "experts" proclaim--be they scientific or religious in nature. I'm as skeptical of the skeptics these days as I am of the preachers and true believers. I try to think for myself, and balance what I read with what I've experienced. That's all.

Thank you for a thoughtful article, Mr. Ebert. As a teacher of English Literature, what excites me about the possibility of other intelligent life in the universe is that an alien species would have so much art and literature of their own to share with us if we ever met. I find one of the greatest joys of living in being able to read the literature of people who lived in vastly different cultures and time periods than my own. Not only is that experience enjoyable, but it rewards me by opening my worldview and increasing my empathy for humans who are strangers to me. Imagine meeting an alien species and gaining access to an entire civilization's worth of new history, art, and literature. What a mind-blowing experience that would be.

An a completely separate note, I like this passage by Carl Sagan from his book "Pale Blue Dot." It's his reflection on a picture that the Voyager probe took of Earth from about four billion miles away. I like the humanity of Sagan's perspective here.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." -Carl Sagan

Einstein once said only two things are infinite, the Universe and human stupidity. And he wasn't completely sure about the Universe.

Roger Ebert wrote: "What we are left with are the cosmic shadows on the wall of Plato's cave."

That is a lovely sentence. Great post.

Another poster wrote: "Adam did science, in Genesis 2:19-20, naming and classifying every created thing, yet it was not enough; so a further mystery was added: Eve. Woman is a far greater mystery, one that can be talked to, sometimes."

Now that is just silly. Why do people enjoy statements like that? Is it the search for an adversarial relationship? Is it the desire to not try very hard to communicate with objects of affection or desire? Meh.

Excellent and thought provoking as always. A friend of mine lost her mother and will lay her to rest today. I think I will send this article to her. I think we all fail to see the wonder of how we came to be and are at a lost when we discover how short our lives are when it's over.

Thanks Roger.

Two comments:

1) Roger, you haven't explained well how do you think two inanimate atoms or particles can come together and form what would be a cell or a basic unit of life. I do think that this mystery is not that yet cleared for today's scientists but I'd like to see your sources for whatever you have or can gather. I think it should have that kind of Big Bang mystery attribute where you could have different explanations in term of what caused it and how.

2) Whoever answers God as the reason for the beginning of life, has just renamed the mystery at hand and give it another name. Its purpose is to satisfy curiosity and ignore intrigue.

Ebert: This may be helpful:

http://thetim.es/ea2WI2

Or would you prefer I tell you it was magic?

I believe that we should remember that the true path and purpose (if you ascribe a purpose) of biological evolution is not a linearly upward progression towards perfection, whatever that is. Rather, the purpose of evolution is developing at least a serviceable adaptation to one's environment so that one can survive. Evolution can oscillate and twist forward and back to achieve that adaptation. Darwin himself stated that it isn't the strongest or smartest organism that will ultimately survive, but the most adaptable.

The human is not the acme of evolution, and is not "superior" to his/her fellow creatures. He/she is merely adapted to a particular environment, just as other animals are adapted to theirs. Like any other creature, if the human fails to adapt, he/she will perish.

I remember a comment from actor John Cleese, after the premiere of "A Fish Called Wanda", where he stated something to the effect that we really shouldn't denigrate (gold)fish, because they can breathe underwater without artificial aid, and we cannot.

Thank God for Roger Ebert!

Great article, could it be that the recent far-flung Contact "review" was the inspiration for this one?

Just a minor correction here though:

"On every planet where a sufficient degree of intelligence has developed, the Theory of Evolution must eventually be discovered."

Theories aren't "discovered", they are "postulated". Facts and processes are discovered, so perhaps it would be better to say that the aliens would eventually discover the proscess of evolution.

Take care!

Roger Ebert wrote: "I do believe scientists have a pretty good idea of how life came to be."

The Wikipedia article on Abiogenesis highlights the myriad models and hypothesis out there, along with the problems with each one. The most that science can say is that life "may" have come about this way or that, but so far the models don't even come close to solving the complexity of the problems involved.

I enjoyed thought about the moon on Jupiter potentially containing life. You asked yourself why you would care about such a thing, you simply do. I feel it is a basic human nature to find validity within the natural world, to believe that we are simply not alone. It doesn't matter that there will never be a realistic way of reaching out physically interacting with such life, but rather to simply know that we are not in this fight alone, that existence (be it conscious or not) of some kind is out there, and that we are not alone, marooned in the dark.

I am currently taking a class in college that I believe you would find interesting. It is about human morality and how the idea of death affects our action. That the acceptance of death specifically in those that are terminally ill allows for the individual to lead the life they truly desire. What I see however is that humans will always be in search; searching for a hand to pull us out of the void.

Would you agree?

Ebert: "It's not what I prefer, and not something I am sure about. It simply seems self-evident."

As evident as the earth is flat and the sun goes around the earth?

Ebert: No, as self-evident as that all men are created equal.

Besides, the Earth is not self-evidently flat, if you give it some thought.

A wonderful post, yet again.

We can neither prove or disprove... nonsense. Change the definition, the postulates, you'll be surprised at what you prove.

There are 4 bases in DNA. The order, the construction, determines the information of the gene, of the chromosomes, of the organism. All life.

The placement of two atoms also contain information. Distance, gravitation-mass, charge, et al, are the information. As there are more than two atoms, there is much more information to be had. The telescope can only collect the information impinging on its sensors, though.

It is all about the advance of information. As yet, one organism dies, and information passes in generations or in context.

You are responsible for the information you pass. What will it be, gloom, confusing sadness, hate derision? Or will it be of love, of the pursuit of something grander. You live on in the wine that is poured, lo the grape was crushed. It is 2011, I will not see a hundred years on, but I can see thousands of years back because the information was shared. We are but links in an evolution of information.

And what of consolation? Our years are as small to time as your dust to the universe. The consolation is in what you share, in what you love and the pursuit of something grander. To me, there is no greater joy than seeing someone helped along the way.

Roger,
Thank you for all your articles. They have made me realize that I haven't really taken the time to know what I really think about these issues (ie. God, the meaning of life if there is no God, what it means to be human, what art is, ect). I think, as someone that was raised very religious and was given a double helping of fear towards the concept of burning in hell for being bad and being an unbeliever, that the implications of there not being a God really scare me.
What if there is no God? What if there is nobody waiting for me after I die to pat me on the head and tell me that I was a good boy. When I first started to really think about that the thought so terrified me that my mind refused to accept it. My brain just sort of did a whiteout.
I think that what your articles have done is give me the courage to honestly examine who I am and what I really believe. And I think that is what art really is. Maybe art is different for everyone but your art has touched me. For that I thank you.
This is just a side note but every time I see something about how big the Universe is I think of the scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where, as a form of torture, these aliens would put someone in a chair and with some kind of technology would force into the mind of their victim a true knowledge of just how vast the Universe is and how small they were in it. So in their mind the person knew how truly small they were. Imagine how awful that would be.

This is one of your most brilliant and eloquent posts. The thought that there are 30 to 80 million earth-like planets in our galaxy alone is incredibly inspiring and tragic. Like you, I simply can't comprehend the vastness of space. What if we find a planet that harbors life one billion light years away? How would we ever communicate with them? How long would it take to send them a message? Could their civilization even survive long enough to receive it?

It's overwhelming enough the learn about the vastness of our own human history, all of 5000 years or so. What will human our society look like in 1 million years? Eventually, our sun will die. At some point, all of the human race must pack onto some giant spaceship and venture off into the universe looking for another planet on which to survive. Imagine how many human lifetimes it would take to reach such a destination, one billion light years away! It is known that nothing can go faster than the speed of light, and I doubt that the human body could survive under such conditions. What will become of us? While I can't see a solution now, I can only hope that millions of years of an ever-growing base of scientific knowledge will provide an answer.

It would take a round trip of more than two million years to change a message with a source a million light years away. We have no reason to believe an organix civilization can exist even for a tiny fraction of that time.

Hi Roger,
Thanks for the excellent article. A question: how large is the universe, in your opinion? Because if it is infinitely large, then if we look hard enough, we should be able to find planets that are exact copies of this one. If the universe is finite, then that implies the universe has outer boundaries. However, this wouldn't rule out infinitely many other bounded universes, at least one of which should have a copy of our planet. Therefore, not only do I think we are not alone, I also think we are not unique. Just thought I'd share.

Ebert: The universe has no boundaries because it is curved.

Fact: Atheists have to pay for sex or they never get any. That's why they're always so grumpy.

...and tootling obsessively about what they are afraid really does exist. There is a special hell for cheap government spies, though.

Been in bed too much lately, myself. Not for getting laid, the exuberant exercise exempts that otherwise horizontal sloth.

It's windy season here and I've got a bed on the deck upstairs. When I'm not on it, there are usually a couple of dogs snoozing on it. When I am, they're still there.

If I had to choose between a night at Hef's mansion with all those genetically sculpted blondes or one on that outdoor bed in the Spring wind with a couple of warm, fuzzy dogs... well... sorry girls, but you talk too much.

It's pretty close to a primeval sky here. A moonless night casts starlight visible on the ground. I see what the ancients saw from high towers in Babylon. They made use of the stars in ways that we don't and not for modern-style astrology.

The sight is an awe realer and more vivid on the emotional Richter scale than photos, or attempts to wow oneself artificially by dutifully imagining some "Big Bang" -- which never happened anyhow. If you happen to be a child, pretending about Santa Claus is more fun (I knew there was no Santa. I had to grow up some to realize there was no "Big Bang" and no "entropy").

I can see three-dimensional relationships among the celestial clusters, the planets plainly a hand's reach away, the wind blowing dramatically across the surface of the earth where I lie. There are different colors. There are "dark" areas. There are foggy luminous areas, stars so numerous they outnumber the sand grains blowing across this valley, the whole Great American Desert, Mongolia's and Africa's sand grains combined. Leaning deeper into what I'm looking at, these staggering areas of individual suns look like part of a powder.

Squint and concentrate on those distant fog-beds and one can sense them moving in some way. Maybe my mind is anticipating their movements, moving like clouds, but in a trillion of our puny years' time, aware of their own sensations among themselves, perhaps electromagnetically like the minute components of an earthly cloudy sky.

I close my eyes and can feel those sensations in myself. I'm making them myself. They're not being made by some biological brain-glitch predetermined by imaginary genetic goblins. I'm quite conscious that I'm imagining this.

Open my eyes again and there are the stars again, and the wind blowing away every other consideration but this one. This little part of the universe I'm seeing, an instant googol perplex of matter and space visible by eyes inner and outer, is my creation. I feel it the same way one feels his pulse and the actions of various organs moving through his body.

...you can sense these things while in the city, too, if your mind isn't habitually noisy with fragmented gobs of undigested thought. "Do the noises in my head bother you?" Isn't a groundless joke in this society.

The dogs hear coyotes a-hooting and have to join in too. You city gringos would probably run for a big hotel to get away from these canine songs. But so intent am I and the gorgeous, enormous vitality of this night sky on each other, the high decibels of the dogs seem just fine. The congress of consciousness between me and these star-fogs "billions of light years away" continues, kindly encloaking the enthusiastic melodies of the dogs on my bed.

What's the difference between reading studies about sex and having sex? If during the act all you can do is think about what you read in a study, you've got a little problem with reality, there, bud. You're out of touch with your own. Literally, you're out of your senses.

So too with these obsessive arguments banging an imaginary "Religious Truth" against an imaginary "Scientific Truth" like a toddler banging alphabet blocks together who doesn't understand the letters on them.

You bang heated meaningless words against one another. It's a substitute for acquiescing to the validity of one's own mind and inner sensations. These need no justification from the flapping corrosions of religions or sciences as society presently tries so dutifully to continue to believe in.

Try not to let these tales get you into trouble. Religious fanaticism is boiling even in this country and "evolutionary theory" has allowed justifications for people to extinct whole masses of each other.

It's just that people who fear the independent sensations of their own minds may cling to decorations that meet with social approval instead. Science? Theology? Fiddle faddle.

I see so many sentences that go "I use reason." There's usually such a martial stiffness to them, a parrot would be ashamed to imitate reasoning that badly. An individual's conscious sensations are data. What reason arbitrarily deletes data that doesn't fit a theory? That's "Truth-making," the quickest road to Falsehood there is.

(Fewer than half of my postings have shown up on your blog the past few months, Rodge. Don't know why that should be, unless this new improved format was government-designed.)

Fact: Atheists have to pay for sex or they never get any. That's why they're always so grumpy.

...and tootling obsessively about what they are afraid really does exist. There is a special hell for cheap government spies, though.

Been in bed too much lately, myself. Not for getting laid, the exuberant exercise exempts that otherwise horizontal sloth.

It's windy season here and I've got a bed on the deck upstairs. When I'm not on it, there are usually a couple of dogs snoozing on it. When I am, they're still there.

If I had to choose between a night at Hef's mansion with all those genetically sculpted blondes or one on that outdoor bed in the Spring wind with a couple of warm, fuzzy dogs... well... sorry girls, but you talk too much. You'd drown out the wind bitching about it.

It's pretty close to a primeval sky here. A moonless night casts starlight visible on the ground. I see what the ancients saw from high towers in Babylon. They made use of the stars in ways that we don't and not for modern-style astrology.

The sight is an awe realer and more vivid on the emotional Richter scale than photos, or attempts to wow oneself artificially by dutifully imagining some "Big Bang" -- which never happened anyhow. If you happen to be a child, pretending about Santa Claus is more fun (I knew there was no Santa. I had to grow up some to realize there was no "Big Bang" and no "entropy").

I can see three-dimensional relationships among the celestial clusters, the planets plainly a hand's reach away, the wind blowing dramatically across the surface of the earth where I lie. There are different colors. There are "dark" areas. There are foggy luminous areas, stars so numerous they outnumber the sand grains blowing across this valley, the whole Great American Desert, Mongolia's and Africa's sand grains combined. Leaning deeper into what I'm looking at, these staggering areas of individual suns look like part of a powder.

Squint and concentrate on those distant fog-beds and one can sense them moving in some way. Maybe my mind is anticipating their movements, moving like clouds, but in a trillion of our puny years' time, aware of their own sensations among themselves, perhaps electromagnetically like the minute components of an earthly cloudy sky.

I close my eyes and can feel those sensations in myself. I'm making them myself. They're not being made by some biological brain-glitch predetermined by imaginary genetic goblins. I'm quite conscious that I'm imagining this.

Open my eyes again and there are the stars again, and the wind blowing away every other consideration but this one. This little part of the universe I'm seeing, an instant googol perplex of matter and space visible by eyes inner and outer, is my creation. I feel it the same way one feels his pulse and the actions of various organs moving through his body.

...you can sense these things while in the city, too, if your mind isn't habitually noisy with fragmented gobs of undigested thought. "Do the noises in my head bother you?" Isn't a groundless joke in this society.

The dogs hear coyotes a-hooting and have to join in too. You city gringos would probably run for a big hotel to get away from these canine songs. But so intent am I and the gorgeous, enormous vitality of this night sky on each other, the high decibels of the dogs seem just fine. The congress of consciousness between me and these star-fogs "billions of light years away" continues, kindly encloaking the enthusiastic melodies of the dogs on my bed.

What's the difference between reading studies about sex and having sex? If during the act all you can do is think about what you read in a study, you've got a little problem with reality, there, bud. You're out of touch with your own. Literally, you're out of your senses.

So too with these obsessive arguments banging an imaginary "Religious Truth" against an imaginary "Scientific Truth" like a toddler banging alphabet blocks together who doesn't understand the letters on them.

You bang heated meaningless words against one another. It's a substitute for acquiescing to the validity of one's own mind and inner sensations. These need no justification from the flapping corrosions of religions or sciences as society presently tries so dutifully to continue to believe in.

Try not to let these tales get you into trouble. Religious fanaticism is boiling even in this country and "evolutionary theory" has allowed justifications for people to extinct whole masses of each other.

It's just that people who fear the independent sensations of their own minds may cling to decorations that meet with social approval instead. Science? Theology? Fiddle faddle.

I see so many sentences that go "I use reason." There's usually such a martial stiffness to them, a parrot would be ashamed to imitate reasoning that badly. An individual's conscious sensations are data. What reason arbitrarily deletes data that doesn't fit a theory? That's "Truth-making," the quickest road to Falsehood there is.

(Fewer than half of my postings have shown up on your blog the past few months, Rodge. Don't know why that should be, unless this new improved format was government-designed.)

In various regions of the Congo, there are currently women whose faces are blotted with acid. Fathers are forced to rape their daughters. Children are turned into soldiers.

How many people in Africa are dying from AIDS?

How many children are forced into prostitution in the Red Light District of India?

At this very moment, how many husbands are beating their wives for not putting away the dishes on time?

How many people are in prison in Houston, Texas?

How many homeless are wandering in New York City?

How many business executives are stealing from their minimum wage employees?

How many dictators are ordering genocide from their air conditioned palaces?

How many nuclear weapons are stock piled in this country?

I see the arguments posted in this blog, and I think you've all forgotten how many problems exist right before our eyes. All this quibbling about the creation of life, about the mysteries of the universe, can wait a couple centuries.

"Not even super computers can adequately organize and assess their vast findings. Amazing discoveries may be buried within the data."

I'd like to add a tantalizing thought to this statement.

Computers never sleep. They never get tired and they never get bored. We may provide them with data we have gathered, tell them how to analyze the data, and then stand back and see what they find. It matters not that it may take a long time, nor even that many iterations of new instructions may be needed to make use of the data. Discovery will occur. What do you suppose it will look like ?

Ebert: If all the data from the Hubbles is crunched, I would except some information to be discovered that apparently was sentient in origin. If none does, that would prove nothing, since Hubble at every distance is only receiving the transmissions from a tiny wedge of time. The closer a source is to us, the better the chance of it coinciding.

I believe that most people that do not believe in evolution simply do so because of a lack of understanding of the theory. To all those people I recommend Richard Dawkin's book called The Greatest Show on Earth.

It explains in great, easily understandable details what is evolution, how it works, how it started, etc..

It also compares natural selection, which drives evolution, with artificial selection like all the new breeds of dogs created by man over generations by careful selection of mating partners.

While reading this, I couldn't help but think of the film adaptation of Carl Sagan's wondrous novel Contact, and the line spoken by the great David Morse near the beginning of the film. His character's daughter, Ellie, asks if he thinks there are people on other planets, to which he replies, "I dunno, Sparks. I guess I'd say, if it is just us.......seems like an awful waste of space."

Truer words have never been spoken

Hi Roger,

Regarding where we spend eternity when it's our time, I am of a mind with Frisbee-ology. We believe that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and you can't get it down.

Ta-dum. Okay, bad April Fools Day joke.

Credit to some comedian or other long ago on the Tonight Show.

Back to serious discussion of your excellent topic...

Dear Roger,
I highly recommend you read the short story called 'The Last Question' by Isaac Asimov, which can be found in his collection "Nine Tomorrows", if you haven't already (it's only about 13 pages long). It will give you a greater vision of the universe and tie it up nicely with the idea of 'God'. Asimov himself once called it The Greatest Science Fiction Story Every Written, so if you don't like it, you only have him and me to blame.
Cheers!

Oh one other thing:
Although I still can't really grasp how 'something' can come from 'nothing' (perhaps it is merely a problem of meaning and linguistics), I can at least begin to accept it when I hear the Buddhists say that essentially something and nothing are the SAME thing.
However, I find it harder to believe that intelligence can come from nothing.
I refuse to believe that intelligence can develop from an entirely materialistic evolutionary process.
The great amount of intelligence that exists on our world in animals, plants, and so forth, as well as in the universe at large, would seem to imply some kind of greater intelligence behind it. You can tell me that if you have enough monkeys typing in a room, eventually you will have Hamlet, but who can honestly have 'faith' in that?? To do so would seem just as preposterous and unlikely as it would be to believe in a 'God' (if not moreso!), don't you think?

I wrote that in a comment earlier that didn't get published, but it said that it is ironic that the indifferent without-opinion-universe created, or happened, intelligent life, but it is the stupid the insisting on being judgemental that often create geniuses, as Einsteing also said "success is the greatest revenge", no doubt thinking of the anti-semitic teacher who said he would never amount to anything.

So I say let all the believers in shallabaloo have their conversation just for the sake of conversation; I mean, I know I don't always have conversations that aren't less than essential. (and for the people who are going to interpret this comment as saying that these type of beliefs affect public policy, I say I can't hear your face in Bill Maher's a*s.)

Actually, interesting as these musings are, one of the conclusions of the theory of quantum mechanics is that an observer is *required* for existence - nothing can exist without someone/thing actually being aware of it.

Maybe counterintuitive, especially for those of an existentialist bent, but it does seem from the evidence that yes, the Universe does need us, or someone like us, in order to exist at all.

Hi Roger,

A favorite quote of mine:

"Either you believe that everything is a Miracle, or that nothing is."
Albert Einstein.

That represents a choice which everyone must make. Either you believe that God (pick your own definition) is the Creator, or that Mufasa had it right and we are all merely part of the Great Circle of Life.

Also, any argument which elevates Intelligent Design by comparing the works of Humanity to the grand machinations of the Universe is inherently flawed. Humans are a work approximately 14 billion years in the making, but we've only existed for something like 0.00005% of that time. That's about how much the current rate of inflation is devaluing your money every minute; so small you don't even notice it. It's been 7 decades since the first computer, 20 centuries since Jesus was born, and maybe 1500 generations since our parents were neanderthals. The objects and knowledge Humanity has built in that time cannot be compared to the processes which Nature has wrought during the life of the universe. Give us another billion years, and let's see if we can build something comparable to the workings of the stars.

We do not even know how complicated the universe is. Every time we look into it's mysteries, new ones unfold. Intelligent Design proponents will always be able to use the mystery and wonder of the Universe to close their eyes and loudly proclaim that they see farther than everyone who doesn't hold their beliefs about how and why we exist. Science is not a religion, and Religion is not a science. The boundary is drawn between an idea that can be tested against the physical world, and an idea that can only be believed. We will never see an article in the journal "Science" about a daring new idea on the cutting edge of Intelligent Design, or a mathematical proof of Belief in the Bible.

How cruel would God be to give us a life without discovery, where everything was understood, where there was no room for new ideas? Why would faith matter to Him, or to you? We need the unknown to find purpose, to remind us to be humble, and to give us hope.

"To the well organized mind, death is merely the next great adventure" - Dumbledore

"Blessed are they who don't see, and still believe" - Jesus

P.S. For the record, I'm Catholic, so my ideas are framed around Christianity. I'd like to see some input from Hindu and Buddhist backgrounds here, but unfortunately that task must be left to someone else.

You should understand at least one thing very clearly; everything you've just said depends on thought. Therefore, it should be obvious that thought is the creator of the universe. Thought plays a trick and tells you that the universe and all its objects exist independently "out there," and you fall for it hook, line, and sinker. This is the primary delusion of science and materialism. But when thought is in abeyance, as in sleep or profound meditation, there is no talk of a universe out there and no experience of one, either.

So if you wish to actually measure something, measure a thought, its length, breadth, and duration. But you cannot use another thought to do so, which would be absurd and would defeat the exercise. Of course it cannot be done, and furthermore, it's not worth doing.

Ebert: That thought has been created in the universe is beyond useful discussion. That it created the universe seems paradoxical.

Ebert: "No, as self-evident as that all men are created equal."

With due apologies to Thomas Jefferson, (and my own skepticism about the word "created"), this is the truth which history continues tragically to prove to have been the least self evident of all. In any case, far less so than that death is the "be all and end all." Furthermore, the two statements are on contradictory poles.

Heya Roger,
I wish I could read all of the comments, and perhaps my sentiments have been expressed already. Your wonderful article touches on this, and I find a lot of spiritual satisfaction in this observation by Carl Sagan...
I'm paraphrasing, but Sagan says "we are made of stars and we are a way for the cosmos to know itself." I'm an ex-Catholic, now atheist, and I find that to be the most poetic, meaningful, and spiritually uplifting thought I've ever encountered.

Hmmm. Beautifully written, beautifully illustrated with reminders of the vastness in which our tiny Earth exists. Yet ... I sense something missing. Yes, evolution exists. Does that mean that God does not exist? If it's stipulated that we humans have the relatively rare (stipulated, not unique in the universe) intellectual ability to consider the nature of the universe and our place in it ... then what's the next step?
Speaking as an old backsliding Presbyterian, I submit that the next step is to admit that we, for all our intellectual hubris, are not the pinnacle of creation -- and that there are entities, and planes of existence, that are still beyond our comprehension. Why not? Look at what we've learned in just the last 50 years that was previously beyond our comprehension! If anything, what we learn just tells us how much we have yet to discover!

So what is religion, really? Some pass it off as just dogma to be rejected and overturned with new knowledge. I say, start by looking at the Bible as an evolving document -- one that was started by a bunch of semi-literate sheepherders and finished by the restive subjects of the Roman Empire. Really study it, not as some Absolute Word, but as a chronicle of the evolving relationship between Humankind and ... something we don't understand but choose to call God.

So... is religion all that different than science? Both are forms of inquiry that may never be "finished" in any ultimate sense of the word. As we probe the universe with our physical tools, we assimilate the images with our senses and emotions. Are we so hide-bound that we are afraid to probe that which we CAN'T sense, physically?

Just a 70-year-old, backsliding Presbyterian, engineer, programmer, ex-motorcycle racer --- askin'

Ebert: I'm with you in the concept of our Search.

But I'm uneasy with Searches that commence with a priori assumptions.

Time doesn't seem to carry much meaning when measured against space. A second can be thought of as a fraction of moment, small when compared to the time it takes for light to travel.

Within that second are infinitesimal measurements of time that can be reduced to an arch approaching an absolute zero or no value. I don't doubt it exists but it is difficult to imagine. I would have to forgo all usual visualization in place of ways to look at life I don't possess (and probably never will).

There is something to be said about the Mozarts who seem to tap into something you and I don't. Imagine what is possible if we used all our brains?

Is zero or nothingness of mass, distance or time possible? I don't know. Some people think the universe isn't expanding but just getting smaller and smaller. Imagine an infinite vacuum that gradually approaches "zero". Temperature probably has no meaning there nor does distance or light. Since light cannot escape what's on the other side? The ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey is as good a guess at any at this point.

Roger, as for my comfort I suppose I haven't found it. I would have to say it comes from love... Indeed, what greater aspect of all creation could there possibly be?... out there. You'd be hard pressed to find something more unique and meaningful than that. I don't think that requires expert opinion or analysis.

...You explained how cats were a certain way. I will say I believe more people to be like cats than I think we know of. I wouldn't trade places with any of them. However, I do envy them sometimes. Sometimes its better not knowing. But if I didn't know things, how would I know that someone like you exists for instance?... I wouldn't want to live in a universe like that.

Ebert: "I believe more people to be like cats than I think we know of."

And perhaps, for that matter, More people should be.

I'd like to throw a relevant bit from a movie in to the discussion.

I had a mortality crisis at 10 that was ugly. At about 11 I came across "Houseboat" with Cary Grant & Sophia Lauren on TV.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMs_NGPKlXw

There's a scene where a father explains to his son, whose mother has died not too long ago, why there is death, and why there is nothing to fear about death. His sentiments seem remarkably similar to yours.

There are two places where words in his speech imply some religiosity, but I think that had to be included because it was 1958. :)

This clip consoled me greatly at 11, and it still does now.

Several people have mentioned the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The closest I have come to a Total Perspective Vortex moment was seeing the Hubble Ultra Deep Field photo. It's a shot of a very small patch of sky (supposed to be the equivalent of about 1 mm square at a distance of 1 meter), and being so small there are only seven stars (they appear to have crosses over them in the picture). But it's competely covered with spots of light - everything else, large and small, is a galaxy, about 10,000 of them in this little tiny piece of sky. The immensity of the universe is truly mind-boggling.

The only thing that happens by itself is degradation and destruction. To look at the methods by which things happend, such as the Big Bang and Evolution (which are in the end unprovable as they are unobservable) and use them as a final explanation is silly.

Science is nothing more than glorified Journalism. Scientists can never explain why something happened; their cause and effect is a sham. Scientists are simply reportors who record Ad Hoc evidence. "I saw this, then I saw this." Can't say why or how really.

I could weave a wonderful story that no one could ever prove wrong for how existence came into being. The Big Bang and Evolution are examples. Nobody sees evolution happening; there are no monkey men; no between species. All you really have to do is give folks a reason to write a higher being out of the equation and they'll jump all over it, Westerners in particular. It's easier to live a life you know is wrong when you convince yourself that you make your own right...ofcourse that only works until you crash and burn and America is owned by the Chinese because we all vote people into office who promise to give us money for nothing, but that's another story.

If you can't see this for Science Fiction I think you'd make a great Scientologist. I'm sure Tom Cruise would welcome you with open arms.

Ebert: Evolution has in fact been observed.

The Theory of Evolution is not a final explanation, nor has it been proposed as one. It is a hypothesis that grows from observable facts. It has nothing to do with politics, which is why Chinese and American scientists, and virtually all scientists, subscribe to it.

Things beyond human understanding are beyond human understanding.

"Ebert: Evolution has in fact been observed.

The Theory of Evolution is not a final explanation, nor has it been proposed as one. It is a hypothesis that grows from observable facts. It has nothing to do with politics, which is why Chinese and American scientists, and virtually all scientists, subscribe to it."

The observation of evolution (in a laboratory) has one appalling 'a priori' assumption: the conditions/environment that lead to the observation would be carefully created and designed by an intelligent being outside of the system i.e., intelligent design.

Most theories in the physical sciences have predictive power, however limited, a feature not shared by evolution. Id like to say we will evolve into beings that can breath carbon monoxide and greenhouse gases but is anyone predicting this reliably?

The claim "all scientists" should be read as all "biologists". Its like lumping philosophers in with sociologists..If we take the "all scientists" argument as true, then science is a collective judgment, that the majority holds truth. So when 150 years ago a majority of scientists believed the biblical account of Creation, that was true because of the infallibility of the majority.

Ebert: What's your opinion of Creationism nowadays?

Roger, meaning is paramount to me as an artist (and to you as a writer I would think). I can't fathom meaning, or any other non-physical reality (love, beauty, ingenuity, truth), emerging from mere matter alone any more than I can fathom a film review emerging from ink and newspaper, or light on a computer screen. Nor can I imagine our DNA coding, enough information to fill 400 volumes the size of an Encyclopedia Britanica, arising solely from the matter that holds it. You may have reconciled these issues to your satisfaction but it seems to me intelligent skepticism is no less logical or justified a response.

Inspired by Roger's use of Hamlet, I'm little more today than a bunch of quotations buzzing around my head and colliding as if bounded in a nutshell. Emerson cantankerously wrote that he didn't care for quotations: "tell me what you know," he said. Yet he quoted frequently. No wonder he said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Then again, if curiosity is inevitably the desire for a change in one's understanding, it is wise to have as few consistencies (in terms of belief, not actions) as possible.

The cosmological questions are worth asking, no matter how many comparatively mundane (serious, but mundane) problems we face. "All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." (Oscar Wilde) And now some are looking even beyond them.

Wallace Stevens puts forth the most stunning answer to the existential age in his essay called "The Necessary Angel." He basically accepted the existential premise, but he argues that the human creative imagination, in all its forms, has the power to give meaning to that which is otherwise essentially meaningless. Philosophers, poets, composers: these create meaning, and meaning that can be real to us. Moreover, because the universe either had no higher meaning or has none that is directly accessible to our senses, nothing can overrule it. That is what he is talking about in "The Idea of Order at Key West." In it, a woman sings next to the sea, and the speaker who is watching her is trying to figure out the connection between her and nature. They seem to have some connection, but he knows that the sea is not a spirit that can inspire her, and that her song, which is language, has no essential connection to the sounds of the natural world. Yet her song changes the perception of the world that the speaker and his friends have:

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

That blessed rage for order is the insistence human beings have that the world mean something, for all meaning is a kind of order, a protest against randomness. And it is a blessing (not a word Stevens used often), for in seeking meaning, we make meaning. That is why the speaker, after the woman's song ends, perceives the world as something more arranged, something deeper, something enchanted.

Plato's cave notwithstanding, we live a rhetorical existence, not an idealist one. The world we live in is the one we define. We operate from certain assumptions, until experience (broadly defined) forces us to modify them. When that happens, the world changes for us. (I speak here both of individual experience and for our collective scientific knowledge.) Thus, I am happy to accept all certainties as provisional. As someone who regularly teaches logic, I view absolute arguments with a gimlet eye.

Keats had it right when he defined the highest genius, one "Shakespeare possessed so enormously," as "Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Note the key word irritable. Facts and reason are wonderful things, and often or even usually worth reaching for, but they have their limitations.

Years ago, a commercial used to run for Tootsie-Pops. In it, a child brings a Tootsie-Pop to a supposedly wise owl and asked it how many licks it would take to get to the center. The owl tears off the wrapper and begins to lick, "One . . . two . . . three -- [kraaaaaccckk]" -- he bites it. "Three," he answers, apparently not recognizing the question as a Zen koan.

That is how I feel whenever I see anyone try to settle the metaphysical questions in absolute terms, either by pointing to some supposedly holy text or by insisting that all metaphysical speculation can be answered by science, or if it can't that that proves it's a delusion. Neither position seems defensible to me.

The older I get, the more I come back to Whitman. Funny, because I loathed him when I was twenty. By the time I was thirty, I grudgingly admitted there was something to him. By thirty-five, I was writing about him. Now, in my forties, I recognize that if I am still reading poetry on my deathbed, it will be him or Keats.

Specifically the 1855 Leaves of Grass speaks to me. The 1855 first edition is Whitman at his peak; almost every revision in later editions (and he revised those published poems constantly) is a retreat. Here is Whitman on science (the ellipses are his):

Hurrah for positive science! Long live exact demonstration!
Fetch stonecrop and mix it with cedar and branches of lilac;
This is the lexicographer or chemist . . . . this made a grammar of the old cartouches,
These mariners put the ship through dangerous unknown seas,
This is the geologist, and this works with the scalpel, and this is a mathematician.

Gentlemen I receive you, and attach and clasp hands with you,
The facts are useful and real . . . . they are not my dwelling . . . . I enter by them to an area of the dwelling.

Facts are information, but art and genius lie in ideas, not information. Human knowledge is like a suspension bridge: the facts are the secondary cables that hold up the road, but the main cables from which those cables hang and the towers that hold them up are, respectively, the ideas that connect those facts and the assumptions we begin with. Without all three -- facts, ideas, and assumptions (preferably assumptions of which we are aware and that we acknowledge) -- we get nowhere.

Here is Whitman on the ineffability of experience and awareness contrasted with the limitations of language:

My voice goes after what my eyes cannot reach,
With the twirl of my tongue I encompass worlds and volumes of worlds.
Speech is the twin of my vision . . . . it is unequal to measure itself.

It provokes me forever,
It says sarcastically, Walt, you understand enough . . . . why don't you let it out then?

Come now I will not be tantalized . . . . you conceive too much of articulation.

Not all human knowledge submits to articulation, or even to reason. And I say this as someone who depends on my reason every day as a scholar and teacher and writer, and who frequently has been charged with being too rational, too logical. I've often had a sarcastic "Okay, Spock" (or "Data," depending on the era) lobbed my way. But to think that our limited brains -- wonderful and awe-inspiring in many ways, but limited in the sense of not infinite -- can encompass all possible truth is self-aggrandizing in a way that would amuse even Whitman, who literally saw himself as infinite.

And finally, here is Whitman on cosmology:

I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I see, multiplied as high as I can cipher, edge but the rim of the farther systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding and always expanding,
Outward and outward and forever outward.

I am convinced that nothing the Hubble has allowed us to look at would have surprised him.

God does not exist.

the term "God" is just a placeholder for things we haven't figured out yet.

Before 1800, the Special Creation in Genesis was a perfectly good explanation for humanity. After Darwin, it was laughable.

If you look at the universe as a whole, there is no thought, no purpose. It's just there.

Humans MAKE purpose. without the human brain, there is no purpose.

check my hypothesis by looking at the wall chart showing the entire universe, and which parts have been photographed by Hubble. A whole lot of empty space out there going to waste because there is no purpose.

If you believe in a God, then explain the meaning of 9hfdmv in the Captcha. You can pretend there's a meaning to any random sequence. The fact that it ends in DMA means Roger should buy me a new car? that's as good a guess as "God."

Temperatures in the universe range from absolute zero to millions of degrees (take your pick of what scale you want to use - it doesn't matter). Life on earth lives at near the very bottom of the entire range of temperatures. Below where we are comfortable, chemical reactions slow and stop and nothing happens. Life is impossible because chemistry is impossible. Go a hundred degrees F higher and our blood is boiling and chemistry is going on so fast that the chemistry which supports life is impossible. Go even higher and 'stuff' simply breaks down, vaporizes and is radiated off to wherever it goes.

We simply could not be in any other narrow range of temperatures, not in this universe anyway. It is a miracle we are here, however we happen to be here. From zero to millions of degrees of heat we live down at the bottom in a range so narrow it could be thought of as a razor thin slice which could not happen by accident anywhere, let alone here. So here we are, the luckiest things in the universe (along with your cats and my dogs).

Thank you for this article Roger, I enjoyed reading it very much.

However, I feel I must take issue with one item: To suggest that humans are unique in their ability to be aware of their own mortality is factually incorrect.

It is well established that elephants mourn their dead and can recognise their own reflection in a mirror. They can also use tools, learn from one another and have a well developed language.

See this link for further information:

http://www.andrews-elephants.com/elephant-intelligence.html

If the Universe is infinitely expanding, what is it expanding into? A Void? Another Universe? The ultimate McDonalds? Seems each hypothesis is equally valid.

The latest theories indicate the Universe is expanding faster than the speed of light. Seems there is this mysterious chimera know as 'Dark Energy' that is overcoming its counterpart "Dark Matter' and everything is racing out of control in all directions.

Wonder though what that would like in the rear view mirror?

Guess we'll never know. We are hopeless trapped in a Cosmos governed by certain rules, like the Laws of Physics, and exceeding light speed pretty much breaks one basic tenet all to hell. You break one rule, you render useless all the rest. This then ends any chance of our ever finding out what's up at the ultimate Outer Limits. This expanded Macrocosm is operating under guidelines alien and unknowable to all things sentient and subject to the existing laws of Nature.

And how do we comprehend the boundaries of a place with no center - again it's expanding everywhere at the same time simultaneously? How do we perceive it's shape - an edgeless phantasm which dooms us to circle about inside forever? Huh?

Reader Kate speaks of Quantum Mechanics. That would have no more relevance here than the fundamental theory of Special Relativity. How do you make sense of a world where all atomic and subatomic precepts break down? I remember Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle - the impossibility of measuring space and time with absolute certainty at any given instance. Strikes me this confounding Universe turns that old chestnut on its heels. This is the realm of Absolute Uncertainty.

So I guess if you could somehow manage to escape our little ordered Cosmos into this strange new Macrocosm, you'd have an even chance disappearing to Nothingness, morphing into something subject to a whole new Cosmic rulebook, or evolving into a Royale with cheese.

Ebert: As I understand it, the universe isn't expanding "into" anything; it is simply expanding. There is nothing for it to expand into, because it is all there is.

Tom Dark wrote:
So too with these obsessive arguments banging an imaginary "Religious Truth" against an imaginary "Scientific Truth" like a toddler banging alphabet blocks together who doesn't understand the letters on them.
You bang heated meaningless words against one another. It's a substitute for acquiescing to the validity of one's own mind and inner sensations. These need no justification from the flapping corrosions of religions or sciences as society presently tries so dutifully to continue to believe in.

Exactly: The Athie is, if nothing else, a master of self-justification, and knows a hundred escape routes to run away from his own personal public image...After first, of course, dropping a useful smokescreen, like the escaping ninja of a Japanese epic.
The Athie searches to schoolyard-offend and find sympathy at the same time: He wants to eat the cake of public shock, and attack the nasty unreasonable goblins causing those headlines he fears from his CNN every night, and he wants to have the cake of being considered Just A Nice Average Guy, too:

If the Athie is accused of not being public sweetness and light, he will bring up harrowing poor-chidhood tales of fundamentalist parents and Catholic school teachers hammering hellfire dogma into his head, while the violins play.
If the Athie is accused of throwing stones at his neighbor's glass houses, he will immediately grab the most extreme example and say "Yes, but look how SCARY my neighbors are!"
And if the Athie is accused of adding 2+2 to equal a smug and rather badly researched 7, he will immediately leap on the shoulders of giants to say that well, it's not his opinions that might seem strange to us, it's SCIENCE! It must be true if it's in a book! (And how familiar does that sound?)

The Athie uses his faith in The Religion of Science not only as his sword, but as his shield (to hide behind): It rarely matters what scientific facts are cherrypicked, from astronomy to anthropology, just so long as one can be found to twist a rather poorly and overgenerously misinterpreted passage of scripture that the Athie believes is at fault of two thousand years of thinking...At which point, such validation offers the Athie the Get Out of Arguments Free card, with which he may attack and all of his imagined enemies at will, abandon and, of course, personal glee. Well, there it is you see, you wouldn't argue with Stephen Hawkings, would you, Voodoo Doctor Mbumbwe?--Now go sacrifice some more chickens and scare some more children, while we SMART people rule the world!

...Roger, Einstein never even freakin' knew you.
If the desire to Shock and Awe us with the science of the cosmos is "revenge" for an earlier generation trying to shock and awe you with Hellfire or Crucifixion Guilt, well, then you should know by now how resistant some reasonable people can be to the propagandic power of shock and awe. If the larger cosmic issues seem to escape us, then it's probably because we're still looking the more detailed image of a narcissistic jackass trying to avoid, belittle, scapegoat and second-class his neighbors with what he clings to believing is complete, holy and indisputable moral impunity.
Where I come from, there ain't no such thing.

"There are many ways to be consoled. Everyone deserves to find their own way, and find such peace as they can."

Yes, and so I seek consolation. I write in the small hope that you, a man whose insight I respect, might have some response for me.

I'm a born again atheist with a Christian wife who doesn't know my recent change of beliefs. Every argument you present in this post I believe as well. If she knew I shared your views on life, the universe and everything, she would leave me and take our son with her. And honestly, I don't fault her for that; that's what a Christian ought to do in this circumstance.

But what does the protagonist of my story do? Lie to preserve the family? Tell the truth and lose it? Somehow fool myself back into the fold? It's reminiscent of the Hell scene from What Dreams May Come. Do I choose to stay in the pit with her rather than lose her? If that was the only way to save us, and it was possible, I would do it.

Is there a way for everyone here to have a shared peace?

I'm not asking you to make the decision for me. I know the choice is mine. But as you say, we seek our own consolation and peace, and my search has brought me here. I've always valued the clarity of your thinking, and my clarity is in short supply right now.

Two items:

1) I tend to lean toward the view Robert Wright states in his book "Nonzero" (last chapter). It's not crazy to ask that there may be a direction/goal/point to the universe/life.

2) Roger, I value your movie reviews. I find that my taste in movies is very close to yours. So, as long as the atoms making up your existence stay organized, please continue to review movies.

The more we understand about the universe, the smaller it seems we are. I think that is the true consolation of religion, that it makes man important in the story of everything. Not that we need it to do so, just that I can understand why it is comforting.

To me, it's more comforting, though, that the universe is logical, that it has physical laws that govern what happens and what cannot happen. A world without such laws, to me, simply does not make sense. And I always see religion as striving to say that there are no laws, that anything can happen if God wills it. That, to me is a universe without order, and in such a universe there cannot be physical laws.

Ebert: The universe is not expanding 'into' anything; it is simply expanding. There is nothing for it expand into.

Aha, a proponent of the Nothingness Principle. I associate the nothingness hypothesis with void theory.

Contemporary theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate (Physics), Steven Weinberg, says, "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."

Maybe the Pointlessness Principle is more appropriate. I don't know. Anyhow the topic sure is fun to think about. Great entry and comments. First heady one I'm reading all the way through in awhile.

You know, Roger, whenever I say anything that I think might tempt fate, I always knock wood. Do I really think there's a dryad left in there that can help me avert misfortune? Of course not. It's a superstition, and I know it, I just do it because it makes me feel better.

Keep pushing your "evolution agenda." People can believe whatever they want, but that's no excuse not to think things through. Evolution makes sense based on immense amounts of evidence. The theory keeps getting tweaked as more and more is discovered. If people don't want to believe in evolution, moon landings, or whatever, that's fine, but they need to realize that everyone else is likely to. For good reason.

Roger, you are the only writer whose articles I read based solely on the fact of you writing them. I would dearly love to engage in discussion on what you have given us but frankly there is just too much meat in this meal to know where to begin.

However I would like to comment on a comment. Your comment was that you believed that the information in our brains died with us. I am not convinced that that is even possible. Information cannot be destroyed. Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. That means that everything that exists now has always existed and always will exist as long as the Universe exists. Just maybe not in its original form. The Universe is expert at recycling. Everything gets broken down and used again. Including the energy that made up our personality. But it isn't ever lost. In a way even death is ultimately meaningless.

Ebert: Information as a concept is a different matter than the information arranged as my memory.

And if the universe expands indefinitely, eventually won't each atom be alone in a void? What happens then?

Excellent post Roger. The universe is interesting and I love what you say about art at the end there.

Ebert: As I understand it, the universe isn't expanding "into" anything; it is simply expanding. There is nothing for it to expand into, because it is all there is.

Now how does that idea make any sense at all?

With respect, that idea reminds me of the quote Dennis Prager uses a lot when discussing the ivory tower of the university:

"Some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual will believe them." - George Orwell

I prefer "foolish" to "stupid" if I was writing the quote, but I think that quote stands up well to experience.

Speaking of experience, do you have any human experience of something physical expanding that did not expand "into" an adjacent space or medium?

Ebert: Actually, it makes perfect sense. From your point of view, how would you describe or explain what you believe it is expanding into?

I'd just like to say that I agree with the message of this blog (read the tweet), because if we figured everything out, we wouldn't be human anymore: which is why "intelligent design" is a form of atheism; it's saying "here's the designer, Steve, so there's no reason to have faith anymore; just blindly follow....Steve is his name."

But, as I said, I'm for letting people believe what they want so they can keep the conversation going and oh, lord, can buy them a Mercedez Benz....or Steve...and he's right here, if the IDer's have their way.

Very good article.
When I read your musings, I'm often reminded of your original review of Kieslowski's 'Red'.
'Think about these things, reader. Don't sigh and turn the page. Think that I have written them and you have read them, and the odds against either of us ever having existed are greater by far than one to all of the atoms in creation.'

Dear Richard Nanian,

A brief response to your lengthy post. Or rather a staring point for these thoughts.

I strongly relate to much of what you wrote, but only because I believe the meaning we traffic in is distinct from, and as vital as, physical matter. After all, if our ideas and passions are merely chemical reactions and the firing of neurons then why bother writing and reading these posts? How can we assign any weight to such reactions in and of themselves. They are devoid of significance. Can a meaningless universe give rise to creatures capable of creating meaning out of meaninglessness? Isn't that a self-evident contradiction? Obviously there is meaning. We can't exist without it anymore than we can go without water or air (a scientifically proven reality). Do you honestly believe (do your neuron's affirm) it's all self manufactured in an otherwise meaningless universe?

PS: I'm wrestling with these ideas myself, not trying to be offensive.

It's a great essay, and I won't repeat what praise others have given, other than to state that I agree.

Yet, in your review of "Source Code" you state:

After all, space travel beyond the solar system is preposterous, and yet we couldn't do without "Star Trek."

Why does the man who wrote this brilliant essay that has generated so much wonderful debate and comment feel that way? Many, many esteemed scientists do not at all think it is preposterous. And many of those other life forms you think are probable out there may have a thousand or a million years more experience in understanding science than we do.

Why is it preposterous?

I wonder if it is the opposite. Maybe it is common.

Well, yeah, Eric.

I thought I came close enough with that posting to merit a rewrite of it for my blog, which I did, click on my name for it. For you lazy minded, the whole of my message is "pay attention to your own senses. Stop obeying magazines that tell you not to."

As these pot-bangings of the self-righteous Lilliputians against the forever faithful stalwarts of Blefescu wear on, I'm pleased to see a little increase in postings of the more intelligent opinion, namely, both kingdoms are fulla crap, holes, and bass-ackward cocksurety blanketing both nations like Japanese nuclear radiation the papers are telling you is nothing to worry about lately.

Noting over the couple years of arguing here that vanity has forced the cocksure junior scientists to allow a little lip service to duh, er, we don't know everything... but ANY DAY NOW we will, an' you tea-pottiers shore are stoopid, a-hyolt. Us science types kin pernounce werds like "immense body of evidence," a-hyolt.

Of course "thought forms the universe," Rodge. Unless you're thinking bass-ackward, in which case, it looks the other way around. You yourself are "a thought."

I'm not REAL certain, but didn't Einstein theorize that people think things, then go do some of them? Or is that still too controversial to consider regarding the origins of anything?

I don't find the direction this line of reasoning goes comforting at all. But I do find Lilliputian and Blefescuan intellectuality alike highly stultifying. It's like whizzing around on a mental mobius strip all one's life, greatly excited about the same sights over and over and over and over and...

No, there hasn't been any observation of Darwin's evolution taking place in any laboratory. There are thoughts that say this is what's been observed. There are more perspicacious thoughts, such as conduct the behavior of these words trotting out of my keyboard here, which say there hasn't been.

...if somebody clocked the Amazin' Randi with a hammer in the right spot so he had an "NDE" and turned to Jeeeeeezus, he would now be exposing how these wicked scientists make it look like evolution is happening under their microscopes.

As I've been saying from the start, this stuff is on the way out anyhow. You're looking at fluff pieces in magazines. Adding an "agenda" to this fluff, despite whoever slobbered out a compliement for it, doesn't do Lilliput any good nor make the stalwarts of Blefescu any smarter.

But I hope soooooooome liiiittle teeeeeeeny crack opens up here by way of my postings and of those who endeavor to perservere similar among these know-"almost"-everythings in their little beaver hats.

Reply to: I write in the small hope that you, a man whose insight I respect, might have some response for me. I'm a born again atheist with a Christian wife who doesn't know my recent change of beliefs. If she knew I shared your views, she would leave me and take our son with her. Lie to preserve the family? Tell the truth and lose it?

My answer (not Roger's) is "Courage."

If you keep your new beliefs secret, it won't be much of a marriage. You have to work hard at a marriage, and every person has the right to be in a happy marriage. So, give your wife some respect. Challenge her to give up her Christian beliefs and her Imaginary Friends and move into the 21st Century with you.

Work on your arguments. Learn more. Expect her to do the same.

If she tries to take your children, go to court and stop her.

and, if she can't join you, say good-bye and move on to your Next Life. In our society, people get divorced all the time. You don't realize that a Christian wife is holding you hostage, holding you back, until you've left her behind. then, you find it's actually a Better Place to be in.

It's traumatic to say goodbye to Imaginary Friends, or an old car, or to watch a house burn to the ground with all your possessions. And yet, life goes on. find the courage to move forward. Maybe you can lend her some of your courage.

On Google News, there are 4,300 newspaper articles about Terry Jones burning a Koran. Muslims are trying to fight America's Freedom to attack religion.

Let me quote a Guardian article:

.... Staffan de Mistura, the top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, placed direct blame on those who burned a copy of the Muslim holy book in Gainesville, Florida, last month, stoking anti-foreign sentiment/

"The demonstration was meant to protest against the insane and totally despicable gesture by one person who burned the holy Quran," he said. "Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of offending culture, religion or traditions," de Mistura said. "Those who entered our building were actually furiously angry about the issue about the Quran. There was nothing political there." (end)

My question is, IFf Freedom of Speech doesn't mean the freedom to offend established religions or traditions, what does it mean?

Talking to your wife... and asking her to grow and learn... might take courage. But the concept of marriage would seem to require you to talk to her about it..

There are great civilizations spread across the Universe . . . but have they visited us? That's actually a more pressing question.

http://ufopartisan.blogspot.com/

...if somebody clocked the Amazin' Randi with a hammer in the right spot so he had an "NDE" and turned to Jeeeeeezus, he would now be exposing how these wicked scientists make it look like evolution is happening under their microscopes.

BUT, as it so happens, one of the Evil Bible-Thumpers Out There (namely, Peter Popoff, who sued Randi for telling the world he used an earphone, thus inventing the whole cliche' we now see in movies, and basically sucked away all of Randi's genius-grant million before he could enjoy it) had Persecuted Him In Public--Proving that anyone with anything resembling some denomination of faith was clearly Vindictive, Fundamentalist, Jealous of Smarter People's Attention, and Out To Get Him.

Ran across a bumper sticker the other day: "Militant Agnostic: I Don't Know, and You Don't Know Either."
If that sounds a tad, erm, familiar, it should--I'm not sure whether the maker of the bumper sticker thought he'd made it up, or was so under the revolutionary-fervor spell of St. Bill that he/she thought his spirit had entered them to be but one follower of His Anointed Word. (And, as Keith says, it's hard to hear with his/her face in Maher's a*s.) Evidently, they were so scared by documentary movies about red-state kids praying to George Bush, that they themselves were willing to pray to a cable-network comic to relieve their fears.
Was also struck, however, by why an Agnostic (who, by Webster's, is willing to admit they're not sure, as opposed to having Figured It All Out) felt such need to assure the rest of the entire world that they were militant about it. If armies have massed for war, who are we fighting? Are we using guns? Have they reinstated the draft? Will I have to learn to like Canadian beer? Well, have to admit, it's certainly a change from all those sneaky world-domination church-going folk talking about "loving your neighbor"..
If you were to ask such "militant" folk, you would find out they DO have an enemy: All those People Out There that they see on the news. Like the survivalist still getting into his camos and fighting paintball wars every Saturday, the Militant Athie/Aggie(?) has his guns polished and ready for all those hordes of "teabag Christians" ready to storm his front porch and convert his wife, loved one, or children...Even your friends or neighbors could be one!

Practically every Athie poster here so far has felt a need to come forward and TELL us that they are one. (And, to prove how much they don't need a deity figure, say "Bless you, Mr. Ebert, I'll follow you to the mountaintop.") Telling someone else you are one seems to be the most holy sacrament of the practice, whether you actually believe in it or not.
Now (as opposed to the equally buffoonish Fundamentalist folk, who have the need to put "Christian Plumbing Service" on their trucks) the New Testament has a very clear stance about whether or not you should need to tell someone what belief system you belong to: Mr. J was of the opinion, that, frankly, you shouldn't have to--What you believe in should be perfectly obvious from the acts you do for others.
Or to put it simply, who is the showoff trying so hard to convince with their membership badge?...Me? ;)

RE: "Matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed."

With a slight re-wording, say "matter-energy" instead of "matter and energy" that would be true on a local scale, but it is false as worded since matter can be turned into other forms of energy, as in a fusion reaction, and vice-versa. On a grander scale, according to General Relativity, it is not true even with my re-wording. I am not an expert in GR, but physist Sean Carroll of the blog "Cosmic Variance" is, and that's what he says. For those who don't believe in General Relativity, its predictions, such as the precession of Mercury and gravitational lensing, have been confirmed, and your GPS devices would not work accurately if they did not take it into account.

I know it's hopeless to argue with those who won't accept anything outside their immediate experience; they should have enough historical awareness to know that the same arguments of personal incredulity were (and are) made by those who thought the Earth was flat and that the Sun revolves around it, but they don't; however, when people are wrong on the Internet someone should point it out. (Yes, it has happened to me on occasion also.)

As for the article here which generated the comment which I quoted, paradoxically it made sense to me and it didn't. It made sense because it described many of the same feelings I have, and it didn't make sense because the universe is probably a bit too complex for us apes to understand it. Anyway, I liked the article.

If you want to read something beautiful regarding the inception of the Universe and Mankind from an Orthodox Christian's perspective, check this out:

zephyr.gr/stjohn/sixdawn1.htm

I know you are not religious... but for some reason the way you spoke here reminded me of this.

Thank you, sir, for an exceptionally fine piece (which is saying a
great deal when it comes to your work).

You echo my own thoughts to a great extent, except for one subject. As much as I have always sought consolation in the fact that I *am* when faced with the fact that I eventually *will not be*, I've never been able to find any there. Ever since I first grasped as a child that there would come a time when I would end, it's remained a cold terror in the back of my thoughts.

As near as I've been able to determine, no one else I know lives with this particular sort of dread. Some rely on belief in an afterlife, but most of my like-minded friends and family basically shrug at the topic. "What are you gonna do?" They're right, of course. It isn't useful to worry about something so absolute and unavoidable. But that knowledge hasn't made the fear any easier to manage.

I'm glad that knowledge of the self makes knowledge of the annihilation of the self worthwhile for you. Unfortunately, it's never been true for me. I would that I had never existed at all if I am to return to non-existence. Of course, wishing I'd never been born is even less useful than wishing I wouldn't die. Both desires are equally futile, no matter how frightened I may be. It may be the height of cowardice to fear that which every other living thing on this world (and incalculable others) has faced, but there it is.

Be all that as it may, thank you again for sharing this.

Thank you Roger! I find it comforting that you are still there.
Another guy who loves movies, and wonders about it all.
You're a good guy, Roger. And you are not alone!

Sam Longoria
Filmmaker
Hollywood CA USA