Meditations on Time, Part 1: My Childhood Fear of Living Forever

This is the first of a series of short posts entitled “Meditations on Time.” In this series I will explore some of my thoughts and experiences concerning time and the gospel.

Living forever hasn’t always been a pleasant thought for me.

I still remember when the notion of living forever first dawned on me. I was probably 4 or 5 years old. Prior to this time, I had believed in life after death, but I never had really thought about what that would be like. I remember having some kind of conversation with my older sister, and she said something about how in the next life time never ends. That idea was so foreign, I couldn’t even begin to fathom it. I asked my mom if this were really true, and she said it was. When I expressed that it sounded so weird to me, my mom replied, “Well, wouldn’t it be weirder if your life just suddenly ended?” I had to admit that I of course didn’t like that outcome either.

Therein was my dilemma. Both possible outcomes — living forever and ceasing to exist — frightened me.

Emergence, Chaos and the Meaning of it All – Finding Significance in the Natural World, Part 1

[This is a re-post from my personal philosophy blog. Check out my blog HERE.]

There are many things which are simply difficult not just to understand but to know at all.

Though I tried my best and still did horribly in my biology class in community college, there was one concept that I gleaned which I’ve found myself thinking about as of late. The concept is “emergence” or “emergent properties.” In general, emergence has to do with a system giving rise to properties which are not directly traceable to the component parts of said system. On the physiological level, emergence refers to secondary traits emerging unpredictably from the combination of various primary traits. In genetics, the primary traits are those which can be deduced from genes, and the secondary, emergent traits are those which come about from the combination of several of the primary traits.

W(h)ither Metaphysical Speculation

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” -Thomas Carlyle “Signs of the Times”

There has been an interesting conversation going on at New Cool Thang concerning the nature of God’s brain. Among the issues being discussed is whether God’s brain stores memory — or whether any brain stores memory at all. The idea that information is “stored” in the brain is very prevalent in Western culture and likely owes its origins to the advent of computer technology and theories of memory storage coming out of cognitive psychology.