EYE HATH NOT SEEN, NOR EAR HEARD...
Redux: "Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before - But How?"
A friend in another forum continues to insist that mankind’s future lies out among the stars and that imaginative geniuses like Elon Musk will show us the way. I responded to this friend in an earlier post: “BOLDLY GO WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE - BUT HOW?”
Continuing in this same vain, that same friend recently and incorrigibly posted the following:
“Because of earth's fragility and because I am convinced that human consciousness is unique, I believe strongly in Elon Musk's quest to hedge humanity's bets by ensuring humanity thrives off the earth. Musk's crusade to seek to populate humans on other planetary bodies represents the revival of a necessary and proper human pursuit to advance human progress and to secure the future of human consciousness.”
Here are my further thoughts on the subject:
Does my friend seriously think that somewhere in our own solar system or out in the vast cosmos we will find an environment as friendly or friendlier to human life but more robust and less fragile than Mother Earth? If such an environment varied in even the slightest from our exquisitely fine-tuned Earth (see the Fine-Tuning Argument), we could not survive. The universe was built so the Earth could exist, the Earth was built for man, and man was built for Earth.
IMHO, as I argued in my earlier piece, Musk’s crusade to seek to populate humans on other planetary bodies represents A Big Fat Pipe Dream - fodder for sci-fi novels and movies, nothing more. I say this not because I am opposed to the idea - I’m not - but because I am a realist and consider it a distraction from what really matters (see below).
In the unimaginable vastness of the universe, within the paltry scope of our fleeting and fragile mortal existence, locked in the steel cage the laws of physics have built for us, it simply will never happen. Mortal man will never go to the stars to live - nor, in his rational mind, should he want to. Though it might indeed exist somewhere out there a trillion light years away - and good luck finding it - talk about looking for a needle in a haystack - there is presently zero hard evidence that there is in the entire universe another environment as luxuriously hospitable to us human beings as Mother Earth.
Whether one holds to a belief in God or not - and especially a belief in the restored, fine-tuned Christianity revealed to the world by Joseph Smith - the hard reality my friend seems to choose not to deal with is that creation - or the Creator - has, by means of the immutable and non-negotiable laws of physics - and for a specific, well-explained purpose - especially well explained in modern-day revealed theology - locked us in the vault of our goodly planet and thrown away the key. Whatever happens to us as individuals or as a human family, our destiny will unfold right here, under Mother Earth’s blue skies.
In our own solar system neighborhood, on our little blue speck floating in the heavens, we are surrounded with absolute inhospitality - indeed utter hostility to human life. Beyond that are other stars in our own galaxy - the closest star is 4.2 light years from us - and, much farther away, other galaxies - environments utterly alien, unknown and unknowable to us - all stretched out at distances so vast, so unimaginably great - the closest, Andromeda, is 2.5 million light years away - as to bar us - again by means of those immutable laws of physics (the speed of light) - from any realistic expectation, within the limits of our current mortal sphere of existence, or the grasp of any conceivable extension of our knowledge, technology and civilization - from ever getting from here to there or there to here (click for the cool theme song to Star Trek Enterprise).
In other words, practically speaking, there is no "reaching for the stars" for mankind. As a means to solving humanity's most basic challenges - what my friend styles finding a way to "human progress and to secure the future of human consciousness" - what I would instead argue is mankind's confrontation with human evil and physical death - my friend is, I believe, wasting his time thinking the solution lies somewhere out among the stars.
Why would things be set up in this way?
To focus our attention on the task at hand.
Again, as I said earlier, I am not a luddite. I believe it is naturally incumbent upon man to extend his knowledge and power over the natural world to the fullest extent he can - to reach as high and as far as he can. Indeed, as much as is possible, let's go out there and have a look. Let's continue to extend our eyes, ears and legs and, by means of our nifty machines - that don’t need to breathe, eat or stay warm - do a walk-about on Mars or any other “heavenly body” our technology can reach.
But it is also incumbent upon us not to delude ourselves by imagining up vain fantasies. We ought to understand that we are dealing with two very different and distinct spheres of things. Nowhere in the imaginable realms of human knowledge and power - nowhere in the physical universe, wherever man might go or imagine himself physically going - is there escape from or a solution to the absolute problems that have plagued mankind from the beginning - physical death and the alienation from good that flows from evil.
Those latter inexorable realities - death and evil - fall into the realm of metaphysics - and in that realm we - those who have eyes to see and ears to hear - have good, proven information and instruction as to the nature of our circumstances and how to proceed in order to get the maximum bang from our brief flickering moment, our fleeting allotment of life energy - the investment of our intellectual, moral and spiritual buck.
We know why the world was created - "We will build a world, place mankind upon it, and prove them now herewith, to see if they will do all things we have commanded." And we know the outcome of this divinely engineered grand "Plan of Salvation". “Those who choose well will share with us the riches of eternity - Eternal Life.”
The eternal condition of man - what my friend calls "the future of human consciousness" - will be determined not by escaping to the distant reaches of the cosmos, but by how each one of us, during our brief moment of life right here on Mater Terra, orients himself to the conflict of good and evil. Everything else in life should get second billing…
Short of an understanding of the pertinent metaphysics - or a denial of it - the hard and unnegotiable mortal reality facing mankind is inevitable extinction. Within the unforgiving bounds of mortality, we will never get far from our little blue speck floating in the sky - again, thinking otherwise is a sanguine pipe dream, a distraction - and, should we manage for a few billion more years to avoid destroying ourselves by means of the evil that has ever raged triumphant among us - highly unlikely, in my view, given the inveterate, unregenerate evil of the human heart - the ever-present Natural Man - and the ever-increasing destructive capacity of our weapons - we will nevertheless all be burned to a cinder in the all-consuming heat of our Sun when, approaching its death, it runs out of nuclear fuel, turns into a red giant, expands its flaming arms to embrace and incinerate Earth and all life on it.
Fortunately, we have all the information and evidence we need to hope for better things. Under the loving, guiding hand of the Creator, our Heavenly Father, who made everything we can see - everything the James Webb telescope can see - placed our spirits in these exquisite, incredibly complex living machines - a complexity hardly understood and not remotely matched by anything human beings have created or can hope to create - and gave us life in this beautiful world, a better fate awaits his human family - even the worst of us.
For my part, imperfect creature that I am, I aspire - hoping against hope - one day, when this brief blip of life is over (not buying green bananas these days), to see what is promised to those who come to a correct understanding of things and do what is right in God's eyes:
"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared for them that love him." - I Corinthians 2:9
Right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, reality vs. fantasy, order vs. chaos, law vs. lawlessness, justice vs. injustice, patriotism vs. treason, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, happiness vs. misery, God vs. the Godless…
Take your pick.
If you can be fooled, you will be…
These are the times that try men’s souls…
Torquemada