According to this site I found through googling, something like 106 billion people have ever lived. And Wikipedia tells me that the estimated age of the universe is 13.73 billion years.
So assuming that throughout history, people had an average life expectancy at birth of 10 years (again from the above site), then the collective time lived by all humans so far is over a trillion years. Each one of those people was an individual with his or her perceptions of the world, most of them had people they loved, things they enjoyed and disliked, happiness and pain. A trillion years of that. And that collective experience amounts to over seventy times the age of the universe.
Hmmm.
That’s the true part. The speculative or imaginitive part of me wonders what it would be like if reincarnation were true, but not limited by linear time: one could jump back and forth in history in his/her rebirths and be living at the same time as his/her other incarnations, such that a single individual has been reborn a hundred billion times and has lived over a trillion years.
There are over 6 billion people currently on planet earth. Every minute the equivelent of 10,000 years are experienced in the world. Every minute. Think about that for a minute.
Imagine if everyone could think about that for the same minute.
Humanity. Over a trillion years of combined experience.
Yes, I’ve had the same thought. What if there’s really only one consciousness… one individual, that embodies every living thing. Not just people, past present and future, but animals, and even extraterrestrial life. Of course, you forget it all, next time you’re born, which is why I don’t remember being you, or you remember being me. But I sure as hell wish I could remember being Monica Bellucci.
Maybe that’s where deja vu comes from. I have the weirdest feeling I’ve had this conversation before, because I have had it before, only going in the other direction. What a jerk I was/will be.
I went out birdwatching. A hawk killed a sparrow. Suddenly I realized that nature is one vast recycling machine, with death not only being a part of life, it fed into life. Without death life would not be possible.
All those Walt Disney nature films never prepared me for that. And I don’t know what quite to make of this.
Trips me out that all life ultimately comes from the sun. That is the bottom of the food chain. The hamburger I eat tonight is really just a converted form of energy from the sun.
Sitting at the dinner table, I noticed that one of my nieces looked almost like she was wearing mascara. She wasn’t impressed (her mommy envies her her eyelashes).
I then looked at my other niece–very blond eyelashes (just like mommy). Mommy said something about other niece getting a lot of things from Mommy.
Niece with blond eyelashes said “I didn’t get my eyelashes from Mommy, I got them from Jesus when he made me before I was born”.
As Mommy said–I’m sure not going to tell her she’s wrong, but it kind of put a damper on any discussion of genetics.
Not only that, but most of the material in the world around us is made from the debris of supernovas. Stars can create elements during their lifetime, but it is limited (I think our Sun can make up to iron, but don’t quote me on that) and much of that is trapped within the star’s gravity. Just think - all the gold on Earth is ancient, the remnants of a destructive and yet creative force so powerful it can spew forth the heaviest 3/4 of the Periodic Table from the lightest 1/4.
And since stars start of as mostly hydrogen, they can spend billions of years generating the above mentioned quarter of the Periodic Table from an element which is, essentially, just a proton.*
It makes you appreciate the heavy metals in life.
*Yes, there is an electron too. Yes, there are neutrons thrown in as well. Hence the term ‘essentially’
I hope this isn’t too stupid of a question, but I still don’t really get Christian theology.
I thought God was the one who made people, and Jesus was the one who saved people. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Jesus having “created life” before. Is this common?
There’s the kinds of theology that gets written about in books and there’s the stuff taught in Sunday School. Maybe this isn’t as common in Catholic religious education, but in the Protestant world there are all kinds of odd beliefs with no scriptural authority whatsoever:
This is from my own limited memory from a much younger time in my life, salted with later observations. It likely only applies to some Midwestern and perhaps Southern denominations.
[ul]
[li]Humans can become angels: In the Bible, angels are a completely separate creation from humanity, a breed both closer to God and lacking free will. The idea of a human becoming an angel is nothing you could get from either Testament as I understand it.[/li][li]The veneration of angels: American Catholics have Mary and the saints, American Protestants (to grossly generalize based mainly on (Southern) Baptists and perhaps a few others) have angels, which (as per above) are often the souls of departed loved ones. They’ll commonly talk of angels protecting and guiding them.[/li][li]Jesus creating things: The Triune is not fully unified: God is the Father, Jesus is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is what possesses you to speak in tongues if you happen to be a Pentecostal. They all hang out in Heaven and Jesus apparently gets to create cute babies.[/li][li]St. Peter at the Pearly Gates: Immediately upon death, you go to the Pearly Gates outside of Heaven. If St. Peter judges you worthy (by looking up your whole life in a book), you become an angel and are issued a harp and wings. If you are judged unworthy, you immediately go to Hell to be tortured forever. (Rapture expedites the process, in that the worthy are bodily assumed into Heaven while the rest of us remain on Earth for the Tribulations.)[/li][li]Satan is active on Earth: Satan has free reign not only in Hell (where he is a monarch, not a prisoner) but on Earth, and is constantly tempting humans to become evil so they can be punished. Satan’s goal in this is unclear. Why an all-powerful God would allow this is unclear. A lot of things are unclear.[/li][/ul]The people who hold such views universally claim to be ‘Bible-believing’ (their term) and may believe the King James Version is the direct, untranslated Word of God. (Even if they don’t, usage of any version other than the KJV is vanishingly rare. All Biblical verses are given in the archaic prose of that translation.)
John 1- Jesus is spoken of as The Word who was with God in the beginning, was also God (or Divine, if you prefer), and through whom was created all things, and without him nothing was created that was created.
That I, being an average Joe and not some Abraham or Einstein, will be lost in history and in less than a century or two will be forgotten to have ever existed bothers me sometimes and sometimes it eases my mind and brings me peace.
Then consider that “up” doesn’t really exist, and you’re just looking away from the earth into the expanding universe. Consider that you aren’t standing on the ground, it’s sucking you down. Imagine yourself on the “bottom” of the world, hanging by your feet if you will. Now spin your mental self around REALLY REALLY REALLY fast. Then throw it around a big hunk of fire REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLLY REALLY fast.
Thanks so much for the explanation, Derleth. The comment makes a lot more sense now. Most of my exposure to Christian belief comes through Catholics, as I’ve always lived in areas with many many Catholics. And what Protestants we have lying around are usually Episcopalians or something.
And uh…Friar Ted darlin’…quotes like that are a big part of the reason why I don’t get Christian theology! But seriously, thanks. I always like to hear relevant bible quotes, because it gives me a little insight into something that is really foreign to me, but is extremely important to many other people.
