What follows is a short email exchange between Barry Chung and myself. The exchange illustrates an interesting paradox: On the one hand, it appears that all of human life is absolutely insignificant and essentially meaningless; on the other hand, it's equally obvious that each and every one of us is exceptionally rare and precious. We are all literally cosmic lottery winners and our lives are the prize!
Food for thought. What perspective do you take, insignificant or blessed?
Regards,
-Steve
ps. Enjoy your prize! :)
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Email #1: Barry's message
Science tells us that we are but one among hundreds of millions of species that evolved over the course of three and a half billion years on one tiny planet among many orbiting an ordinary star, itself one of possibly billions of solar systems in a commonplace galaxy that contains hundreds of billions of stars, itself located in a cluster of galaxies not so different from millions of other galaxy clusters, themselves whirling away from one another in an accelerating expanding cosmic bubble universe that very possibly is only one among a near infinite number of bubble universes. Is it really possible that this entire cosmological multiverse was designed and exists for one tiny subgroup of a single species on one planet in a lone galaxy in that solitary bubble universe? It seems unlikely.
For a look at the alpha and omega of the Universe click on:
Drag the sliders at the bottom of this one to understand scale http://htwins.net/
Concept is interesting for illustrating things within things.
{Note: The first paragraph in the above message was copied from Michael Shermer's blog post on April 24, 2012: http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/04/24/shermer-in-seminary-school/}
