(Date Posted:24/06/2007 07:25:59)
This is the Andromeda Galaxy - it looks a lot like our own. Not that I've ever stepped back far enough to check out their similarities but there are many many more just like it to show that even our galaxy is just one collection of spinning matter in what is an immeasurable expanse of space and 'stuff'. And the interesting thing about our Milky Way galaxy (named after the famous chocolate) is that it's not actually big... it seems big because we're so small, but it is not huge, it's not immense and it may or may not be infinite. The incredible amount of galaxies that make up what we can see of our universe may in fact be just one cloud amongst many universes, for all we know.
These steller bodies are moving and colliding and collapsing and there's evidence to suggest that this particular universe (perhaps like all the others) are expanding and collapsing and have been doing so for billions and billions of years, and perhaps have been doing so forever. There's no need to mystify the idea of time, because before we were intelligent enough to acknowledge and measure the movement of heavenly bodies we were happy to hunt by day, sleep by night, and die when we got too old to pump blood through our brains. Eternity isn't a supernatural concept best left for gods to calculate. The universe simply was and is and always will be... no matter how many pigs fart methane into the atmosphere of our little blue green orb.
Douglas Adams mused that the universe is so big and so randomly chaotic that the chances are that somewhere somehow there is vegetation or lifeforms growing that could be useful to any interstellar hitchhiker. One planet somewhere surely has shifting spanners growing from trees and animals that could easily be used as mattresses. I think it's extraordinary enough that this planet was lucky enough to have a temporary run of life on it long enough for it's inhabitants to design and use a shifting spanner. When you consider the incredible numbers of planets spiraling and circling throughout this vast cosmos you must entertain the thought that for some bursts of time a planet will be in the right place with the right conditions to allow moss to gather on it.
Now, if I were lucky enough to have been born into a planet that had the 'golden' measurements of being close enough to a sun, and protected by various larger planets around it, I'd feel very fortunate, and I do. This particular planet probably isn't the first to have encountered such idyllic conditions but you have to stand in awe of the probability factors involved because you happen to be on it. Of course it seems like someone created it only because you aren't one of the impossible inhabitants that couldn't have possibly lived on the multi-billion other planets that can't sustain life.
You're bloody lucky to be alive and I seriously don't blame anyone for inventing a god to praise to. Every culture we know of usually does. It's perfectly natural and normal to sing to the sky in appreciation, because most of the people we share the planet with don't seem to really appreciate existence enough to really marvel at it with the wide-eyed wonder it deserves.
Many people I've spoken to recently say that there must be a god, because the scenery here is bloody tremendous and a lot of female boobs look really really good. But this planet actually looks like crap compared to watching the Wallom beasts swimming through the molten mountains of Somtranus V in the Andromeda galaxy. We have no basis of comparison and of course every type of vegetation filled crevasse looks quite interesting. The rock and continents have been shifting and eroding for billions of years to make many varied and interesting formations. It's a weather beaten planet that has evolved wildlife and vegetation over an unbelievable amount of time. It's when we try to fit it into the mythical six days and six thousand years of bible time that everything looks like it's science fiction.
And boobs look wondrous because if our programming didn't allow that then we would have died off ages ago. Of course boobs don't look appealing to all mankind, but that's ok... there's enough of us who do to keep the population rolling along until we collide with another planet and simply cease to be. Somewhere, sometime, another species will come into being that appreciates the landscape around them and may even have mammary glands that the other gender finds appealing.
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“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic” - Darwin
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