Infinity

All Is Perfectly Centered

In an infinite universe everywhere is perfectly centered

Infinity is one of those concepts that’s hard to wrap our finite wits around.

But this much can be said with certainty: position yourself anywhere at all within an infinite universe and you will find yourself equally far from the outer edge of that universe in whichever direction you look, i.e., exactly infinity away — which is a good definition for perfectly centered, wouldn’t you say? Equally far in any direction.

It will be infinitely far between you and the hypothetical edge in every direction, precisely. And were you to move a trillion light years to your left, say, or to your right, you’d still be exactly and perfectly centered.

The infinite one is very large universe.

Scientists today estimate that our own, observable universe is about 93 billion lightyears (give or take) in diameter, and while that sounds both impressive and almost unbelievable, it’s nevertheless smaller than a grain of sand when compared to the infinite one. Infinitely smaller. There literally is no end to infinity, and here is where the word immeasurable sees true light of day.

Now, while we’re on the subject of hard (or impossible) to measure quantities. Today, most Christians in this world believe, and many deeply at that, that if, when you die, you have the misfortune to be dispatched to Hell, to an everlasting Hell no less, you will, by definition stay there, burning in Hell’s fire for, yes, eternity. Eternity.

This begs the question: how long is eternity? Well, it’s infinitely long.

However, however (yes, I have two howevers):

However-One: Neither Jesus of Nazareth nor the Hebrew Bible our Lord and Savior preached from ever say that, anywhere. There is no everlasting hell in the original scriptures, nor did the concept cross Jesus’ mouth. In fact, our current hell was made up from whole cloth by really stupid and selfish and profit-motivated idiots somewhere in the First Century of the Common Era (Tertullian one, if not the chief, of them) and it’s been kept alive and reinforced as a belief and threat ever since — why abandon such a profit machine?

Yes, to this day Bible-thumping preachers around the world emanate this specter of eternal pain to overwhelmed and cowed congregations, the better to drive up weekly contributions.

I guess the (bad) logic was (and still is) that if a human being does not see the Christian light by the light’s own strength (as did Saul aka Paul), then we’ll have to scare the bastards into believing (and contributing).

But Hell is a lie. A boldfaced lie. Spouted with aforethought. By the guys that Jesus would have a hard time forgiving (although, in the end He would, of course, nice guy that he is).

However-Two: Remember the definition of perfectly centered in infinite space? Well, the same principle applies when it comes to infinite time, i.e., eternity. You should, in other words, have the exact same amount of time-distance, i.e., eternity, in whatever direction you look from where in time you find yourself; but for time’s sake, to make it simpler to visualize, let’s just consider two directions: future and past (ahead and behind).

Yes, if you wake up in Hell (for your sins) and look ahead in the future direction: as promised by the thumpers you’ll see eternity. However, if you turn around and look behind toward the past, you’ll only see as far as since you died and entered Hell, say fifteen minutes.

Therefore, and this is a HUGE therefore, Hell cannot be eternal for it violates the principle of all directions. An eternity cannot have a beginning. It must be eternal in all directions.

So, since the Hell propagated by the thumpers has a beginning, it cannot be eternal. I don’t know how they overlooked this, but this is one thing that the Fathers of Hell didn’t think all the way through when they made up this fantasy.

Sorry, I got off on a tear here, but this is something I have a hard time seeing eye to eye with, those who lie about Hell to scare their fellow humans; if anyone deserves to populate such a hell it would be its greedy disseminators

Anyway, back to the Infinite Universe (versus ours).

I don’t think that something (like our own Universe) that consists of finite objects such as atoms and rocks and suns and malls and oceans can be infinite; there’s a definite clash of fundamentals here.

Now, I don’t know what it looks like at the far edge of our Universe — though I know there’s a restaurant there with a good view, courtesy of Douglas Adams. Perhaps he’s been there, and can tell us.

© Wolfstuff