August 30, 2022—The future of things, and the point thereof
Google says that “cosmology” is:
noun
the science of the origin and development of the universe. Modern astronomy is dominated by the Big Bang theory, which brings together observational astronomy and particle physics.
- an account or theory of the origin of the universe.
Wikipedia has an article titled “Timeline of the far future”. The article spans an unfathomable stretch of time from the near present all the way out to \(10^{10^{10^{56}}}\) years in the future. As of this writing it cites 209 references from a broad range of sources, including many who are highly regarded by the scientific community. In its own words:
While the future cannot be predicted with certainty, present understanding in various scientific fields allows for the prediction of some far-future events, if only in the broadest outline. These fields include astrophysics, which studies how planets and stars form, interact, and die; particle physics, which has revealed how matter behaves at the smallest scales; evolutionary biology, which predicts how life will evolve over time; plate tectonics, which shows how continents shift over millennia; and sociology, which examines how human societies and cultures evolve.
The article draws on a wide range of people from a wide range of fields.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that article presents a sketch of modern cosmology.
What does the future hold?
You probably have a good idea of how tomorrow is going to pan out. For most people it’ll be very unsurprising. You’ll wake up, eat breakfast, go to work, and so on. Tomorrow you’ll eat lunch because you won’t want to be hungry before suppertime rolls around.
Later this week or perhaps later this month you’ll have a bill to pay. If you don’t pay that bill then you’ll be sent to collections. And so you’ll go to work and will earn your paycheck. And you have other things that you’ll want to do in the future, so you make plans to spend your paycheck on those things too.
You probably do a great many things because you foresee something in the future. In a word, future events drive, control, motivate, and govern your actions now.
What ought you do today? It depends a lot on what the future will bring.
Is it going to rain this afternoon? Then you ought to bring an umbrella with you when you go out.
How many market cycles have you lived through and afterward thought “I ought to have distributed my investments in a different manner”?
Are you working hard on a large project now because you believe it will be important in the future? In that case you attribute value to your present work because you anticipate that the outcome of your work will be valuable in the future.
These are the most distant events anticipated by the Wikipedia article I linked to above:
| Years in the future | Description |
|---|---|
| \(10^{10^{76}}\) | Beyond this point, it is almost certain that the universe will be an almost pure vacuum, with all baryonic matter having decayed into subatomic particles, until it reaches its final energy state, assuming it does not happen before this time. |
| \(10^{10^{120}}\) | Highest estimate for the time it takes for the universe to reach its final energy state. |
| \(10^{10^{10^{56}}}\) | Around this vast timeframe, quantum tunnelling in any isolated patch of the universe could generate new inflationary events, resulting in new Big Bangs giving birth to new universes. |
To put it crassly, modern cosmology says everything is going to fizzle away into nothing.
And then it’ll start over again. These “new inflationary events” aren’t one-off events; it’s cyclical.
Have you ever read Ecclesiastes? Here’s how chapter one starts:
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.
Ecclesiastes is basically an apologetic against the worldviews that were competing against ancient Hebrew thought at that time. Those worldviews thought that history was cyclical, and Solomon’s book makes it very clear how pointless such a history would be. On the other hand, history in the eyes of the Hebrew Bible is linear with a definite beginning and certain goal.
Modern cosmology falls squarely in the sights of Ecclesiastes.
Not only are you supposed to believe that nobody will ever remember or care about anything you do. You’re also supposed to believe that the same thing is going to happen to someone else somewhere else. Over and over again forever.
Why should you go to work tomorrow? According to modern cosmology your work is going to fizzle away and be forgotten. And then eventually someone else somewhere else is going to do whatever you are going to do tomorrow, whether you do it or not. So why not just stay home?
On the one hand you can get away with whatever you want because nobody is watching, or if they are their opinion doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things because they’re destined to be just a fizzled out nothing.
But on the other hand there is no glory in anything you do, because you also are destined to be just a fizzled out nothing.
To put it simply, there is no “oughtness” to modern cosmology.
In sharp contrast, the Bible is very clear that history has a date of manufacture. That was a few thousand years ago when God started saying things.
And it is also clear that history is on a very intentional trajectory leading through a series of intentional events planned and executed by a sovereign and wise God.
For example, the Day of Judgment is coming when “the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (2 Peter 3:10).
There is a God who made you. Therefore you are accountable to him. Furthermore he has fixed a Day of Judgment and has gone to great lengths to make two things clear: you are a sinner who is not able to make it through that Day; and there is a savior who is able to bring you through unscathed.
Not only ought you to go to work (because God said so in 2 Thessalonians 3:6–12)—it’s possible for your work tomorrow to be eternally significant (because God will reward whatever service is rendered to him—Ephesians 6:7–8).