A Cosmic Thought: 2024 edition

The supernatural has in fact been confirmed – it’s just way different than expected

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As humanity learns more about the found world – from the stones at our feet to the constellations – it becomes apparent that creation is far larger and more grand than once thought, the human family far older and more complex than once thought.

And we know perhaps one percent of what can be known. Imagine when we know two percent!

In a moment this essay will review some Big Question findings of science, with a particular eye on 2024.

First let me propose a way to understand recent findings regarding the cosmos and the history of humankind:

The supernatural has in fact been confirmed, it’s just way different than expected.

We have not found a glowing figure seated on a throne of glistening gold.

Maybe there is a God or gods, or other beings or classes of beings that are more than people but less than nature. As a Christian agnostic, I know that I don’t know. Maybe someday we will learn if there is a God or gods. Maybe we’ll never get that answer.

What has been found in the current generation seems to meet one definition of supernatural – not “beyond physical law” but rather “far more magnificent than people can comprehend.”

Albert Einstein, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Henrietta Leavitt and many other great minds of the near past died believing there are a small number of galaxies holding perhaps a few million stars. Current estimates have the universe at 100 billion galaxies holding at least a septillion stars.

That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gigantic objects bursting with power, most able to shine for billions of years.

One hundred billion galaxies! Perhaps more, perhaps an infinite number. Not a large number, a number without end!

That is “supernatural” in the sense of transcending human understanding.

Something created this enormity ex nihilo. Whether the something was divine, was deterministic or reflected a third basis of genesis not yet guessed, something made 100 billion galaxies.