This post is another one of my big thinking posts, a lot of it is about how my thinking around creation / religion and God had changed. Don’t get me wrong here, there are no answers to this and it’s likely I never will find the answers but generally I’m talking about observation of the universe and how this affects us.
Now you’re wondering what on Earth I’m on about… so let me explain. I guess it starts with my upbringing, it was kind of complex and let’s leave it at that but basically I had two parents from two different religious points of view telling me how the world was and God / Jesus and it and things like astrology and the belief in our connection with the natural world or the universe is complete trash.
I accepted and defended this view for many years because as a kid that’s what I did. But I still had many questions and even now I have questions and I’m not going to list them all but this was one thing I accepted.
Roll on some years (too many) and I’ve lived a bit and experienced a few things.
One thing that happened was in 2014 I had my year of hell, anything that could go wrong did and in a major way, I lost a lot. In trying to seek an answer for this I found out that in the world of astrology Saturn entering your sign is a destroyer / life changer and guess what – Yup Saturn was in my sign around that time. Coincidence? Maybe but as I have said before about coincidences – the universe is rarely so lazy.
A few years on from this and space exploration and research from the likes of Hubble is showing us an amazing universe full of not just stars but galaxies.
And guess what, they’re all connected.
Take a look at the picture above – a galaxy with a supermassive black hole at it’s centre with stars and planets and all kinds of other things circling around it.
Look at this one too – what a jewel, the sweeping arms of this galaxy formed somehow by some process we cannot fathom… maybe. What an amazing creation. Now don’t start thinking that I’ve turned into some kind of atheist here becasue no. My thinking is far beyond the simplicity of deciding whether there is or is not a God and all that stuff. I think that there MUST be a creative force in the universe and we have no possible way of understanding it. We cannot.
Delving into my favourite world of science fiction and look at Star Wars, they called their creative entity the force. A faceless thing which as Yoda said ” surrounds us and bind the universe together.”
What I thought was really inspiring about this was the force is named simply in the way it is perceived. Even the Jedi never referred to it as a person whether acting for good or evil. There are so many hangups on what ‘God’ is or who he is and our minds constantly think of him as human. This kind of thinking has caused so much grief over time, anyway – I digress.
Looking at a smaller portion of our universe and how our solar system and planets move through space is really fascinating…
Look at how they’re moving… they’re connected, everything in our solar system, our galaxy and our universe is connected. This is a fact, when we look at the world and the life on it, this great machine is connected with one entity affecting the existence of others, making the machine that is planet Earth work. We are part of that, despite what everyone says, we are part of this machine. We are connected.
So, the question I have to ask is this. If the starts, the planets and the living things are all connected to Earth and the universe, if all these things go on regardless of what we can do, is it really so impossible that the universe can affect us, how we feel, how our lives progress, how things pan out?
We know so little about existence that we cannot possibly know how it works. So why are we told so often how it works when in reality nobody knows. But this I have decided, what I was told when I was young was probably incorrect.
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Reblogged this on Catch The Moon, Mary and commented:
Love this!
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Thank you ššš
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Absolutely fascinating Simon. Science, religion, astrology, metaphysics, there are so many realms and aspects to reality that itās hard to know whatās true.
What I do know is that nobody knows much of anything!! Not really! But I do agree with you that everything is connected. I donāt believe in coincidences, but I do believe that everything happens for a reason and that there are signs along the way that bind us and connect us, even when we donāt understand it. Thought provoking post.
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That’s what I goes to achieve with this… Thought provoking. Thanks for reading š
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Always a pleasure.
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The word connection has so many different meanings.
I feel that all of us have experience some sort of connection in our lifetime. Once we experience a connection our thoughts change. Maybe the experience answered a question or created new ones.
Whatever it is the experience proves we are all connected to something. We’re not a bunch of super balls bouncing off a wall.
Good stuff. I love posts that make me think. You always do that. š
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Can’t say I put much merit in astrology specifically, but I think I agree with your overall point. There’s a lot we don’t know about our universe, and we should keep an open mind.
As someone who’s been through my own year of hell, I have to say there were a lot of things I was raised to believe that ended up making my problems worse. Those old beliefs led me to make certain assumptions about the world, which led me to make certain decisions, which then turned out to be bad decisions.
So I guess what I’m saying is: if you can’t change your underlying beliefs, then you’re going to just keep repeating the same mistakes for the rest of your life.
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That’s the thing, we have to adapt to what’s going on around us. We need to learn our way through life.
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Hi Simon.
Basically. Who’s to say.?
We have this 14 billion years old (maybe) Creation which is in diameter reckoned to be 93 billion light years in diameter. We have galaxies with billions of stars, clusters of galaxies and super clusters of clusters of galaxies, the observable universe has at least 200 billion galaxies.
And that’s the cosmological scale.
Now at the other end is the quantum scale and…..
Oh and here’s the Unifying Principal.
And here come the countless number of photons streaming from ‘Space’ onto us and through us.
Well, that’s a few random facts on the subject.
So,
Creation?
As we used to say in the late 1950s through to the 1960s ‘Dig it Man. Like…wow!’
In short I have no answers, I’m just pleased to be here and marvel at the whole shebang!
(Crazy, man…..Like…Heavy!….Like…Far out!- we had a way with words back in those days)
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Hi Roger, this is my whole point. Who is to say? We know so little yet claim to know so much. So we have too think and imagine really.
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As I replied to another of your posts just now.
The ‘whole’ is so overwhelmingly amazing in depth and scope.ā¦.
Everything is beautifully overwhelming at time, like being on a sea shore or looking up at a really starry sky. Thinking about the constituents of a grain of sand, or the number of forms the carbon atom can create.
Basically we cannot say anything is certain. We can have our own beliefs but we cannot say another person is wrong when it comes to working out the Universe.
This where I run into conflict with folk who insist Richard Dawkins’ book ‘The God Delusion’ is the be all and end all….. Too limited to my thinking. Sure it can be a powerful argument against the Creationist view of the Old Testament as being the literal truth, but otherwise…Believe it if you want, just don’t tell me I am wrong because of those writings.
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This is the thing. I think our philosophies and teachings have truth in them but are meant for us to try and grasp and grow from. They’re too confined for such an amazing universe!
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Exactly. We are such very, very young specks. We have so much to learn. Here’s hoping we are never so arrogant as to think We know everything.
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I think often we assume we do.
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The most competent of scientists will admit to failures and say this is how progress is made.
Nothing is certain (Unless the person hails from a very small number of males with degrees of some sort in some branches of Logic. Must give the whole subject a very bad name)
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This is the best way to be… have an air uncertainty about your knowledge.
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Brilliant post & loving the comments between you & Emma š although you both lost me ages ago š
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Thanks Sam, like I say I have no answers. I like to get people thinking. Haha… Where did we lose you?
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When it got to āafter my bedtimeā š
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Lol… That wasn’t before 9 was it? š
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No šš
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Hehe šš
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Well, Iām gonna have to disagree with you on basically most of what you just said, but I wonāt burst your bubble and tear it all apart, Iām not that mean š
Itās kind of funny though, if I were to write a post on this, Iād probably say exactly the opposite. The universe is not āconnectedā but unified by the laws of physics, astrology is bs, and yeah thereās totally a forceā¦gravity! Literally, universal mutual gravitation. As for an overarching thing thatās not necessarily a scientific āforceāā¦entropy, totally. But no force of creation.
Then again, thatās a paradigm in itselfā¦
(As for Star Wars being your favoriteā¦no comment. š )
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Haha… This is the thing with this big thinking. It’s literally thinking, no proof, just thought and perception.
Ok, your say it’s not connected but unified by physics. This is the same thing worded differently. If I could suddenly flick Jupiter away or into a different orbit, the solar system would be in chaos until it found a new equilibrium. We would likely be wiped out, that’s the kind of connection I mean.
Astrology from the view of science is bs, that’s the point. The ancient Chinese swore by it… Why’s that? And yes the force is gravity and we’re starting to find out that it does so much more than just pull planets together and hold us on Earth. But we don’t know what it even is yet.
What we’re talking about and agreeing to disagree on is separated by the fine line of perception.
(I grew up with Star Wars… That’s why. But then I grew up with loads of others too š)
Thanks for your comment… Loved it š
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That is precisely why I don’t trust it. By any chance, are you familiar with the MBTI?
The ancient Chinese swore by it but the ancient Greeks swore the Earth was the center of the solar system. Now astrology is no longer taken seriously by the world in general, just as the Earth is no longer believed to be the center of the solar system. It’s progress.
Like I saidā¦two different paradigms.
Can I just point that Star Wars is more fantasy than sci fi? There’s no science in thereātheir explanation of how the world works basically comes down to religion. And when the bad guys mock Vader’s “religion,” he chokes one of them and says he “finds their lack of faithā¦disturbing.” He doesn’t deny that it’s a religion or a faith. He’s basically a religious zealot that went crazy trying to convert everyoneāthe most annoying kind, in my opinion. (No offense intended, I promise. I’m not trying to insult Star Wars. Or, more accurately, I’m trying my best not to insult Star Wars š Probably best that I don’t talk about it with fans at allā¦)
Hitting “send”ā¦kind of afraid I’ve said something offensive somewhere in hereā¦
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I didn’t say I trust it… Just that it cannot be totally dismissed.
Good point on the Greek thing. I can’t come back on that except that the Greeks worked out that the Earth was round and it’s side and now we have the flat Earth clowns.
Of course… Two different things.
Ok, ok I know. Star Wars is space opera not sci fi… My bad š
Let’s be realistic about something, the have been more wars over belief than anything else on this world. No one has gone to war over science. So yeah… It was kind of the thing to centre it around.
Let me know when you’ve said something offensive… Your can’t offend me that easily š
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So do you know the MBTI? I’m curious because your big thinking makes you seem to me like an iNtuitive type.
Yeah, well, post-fact society and all thatā¦there’s so much distrust in science and the media these days I’m not surprised we regressed.
I dunno, I thought maybe ragging on Star Wars would be offensive. I’m pretty hard to offend too but if you know how to push the right buttonsā¦and the Star Trek/Star Wars fault line is one of those buttons. I have to say that unfortunately being a loyal Trekkie means I’m decidedly not a Star Wars fan, so I try to stay out of those arguments. (Obviously I don’t always succeed.)
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I do know about it and took the test if you’re interested see here:
https://theislandofsi.wordpress.com/2018/08/16/im-starting-to-work-out-who-i-am/
I don’t think that people have lost faith in science, I think it’s too do with needing something to believe in that’s not worked out on a computer.
Too many others ragging on about Star Wars would annoy them but you know I’m not like that. I like Trek too but both annoy me as well.
I consider myself to be open to a sci fi and take it for what it is. Lol… Your didn’t succeed here š
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Interestingā¦maybe I don’t understand the MBTI as well as I thought, I guessed you’d be NTP or NFP (wasn’t sure on I or E). I myself oscillate a bit but I’m mostly ISFP. Sometimes I’m more of an extrovert and sometimes more of a judgerā¦but generally ISFP.
There *is* a lot of distrust in science, though. There’s the whole alt-facts movement (which is ridiculous! completely defeats the point of factsā¦).
I know you doā¦that’s why we get along š Lol jk, but as I have said so often recentlyāStar Trek is my world, astronomy is my life. Not exaggerating.
Doing my bestā¦I mean, I have criticisms that rip apart basically every character, plus criticisms of the concept as a whole, plus criticisms of the strength of the writingā¦and all I said was that it’s not sci-fi. I think I’m doing pretty well.
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The thing is with the test is that it often measures your base point of comfort or strength. But life does things to you so you nice away from that but it’s always your point of strength.
I know…. I like your astronomy.
Yeah, I guess you did do well š
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Well, when I’m in my element I’m pretty darn extroverted. People who know me only through my interest in astronomy think I’m an extrovert, hands down. But in life, I’m content with basically no friends, having more people to manage is exhausting. (I do need people though, if I hole up in my room for too long I start to lose touch with reality. But I think that’s just part of being a primate. We areāgenerally speakingāsocial creatures.)
Yesā¦I’ve noticed š
You ever want your favorite “sci-fi” show well and truly dismantled, you know who to ask š I wouldn’t do that though, I mean I hate it when people rag on Star Trek to me.
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I would have thought you were more introverted but there you go. Shows how I can get things wrong.
Glad you noticed.
I don’t mind you dismantling my favourite sci-fi but I won’t ask you to. I get that it isn’t perfect but then neither is star trek. In fact it often annoys me.
Basically it’s all part of bring different… š
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Huh. Interesting. Well I guess it all comes down to my in person interactionsā¦people who know me face-to-face but haven’t met me outside of astronomy usually think I’m an extrovert. I’ve seriously gotten comments about how I’m pretty much as far out of my shell as you can get, and if I ever mention being an introvert, everyone around me is surprised. It’s kinda interesting.
Star Trek is anything but perfect, I agree with you there. It’s messed up its own canon so many times and so much of it I just laugh at cuz sometimes it’s so stupidā¦and listening to ST technobabble is especially amusing now that I have a better understanding of science. But the idea of a future where so many planets coexist as part of one great Federation really appeals to me, I hope we can get there one day but we have trouble unifying one country, let alone a planet or a federation of planets. And DS9 in particularā¦the characters are awesome.
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