thermodynamic death and cosmic purpose

[SA_mkhya (Sâmkhya)]

According to modern cosmology, the universe is heading toward its “death”, a thermodynamic death, namely, a dark, cold and lifeless state, in which no more energy will be available (if I properly understood)

Since several months ago, I have related this gloomy prediction to the existence of a creator.

The problem is this: if living beings, and more precisely intelligent beings, able to know and worship their creator, were the goal of the creation and the evolution of the universe, how could a dead universe be justified to exist? What could be the purpose of a universe in which there is no more intelligent beings, and in which new ones cannot appear?

To my mind, as soon as the universe will be no more able to harbor intelligent beings, God would have either to annihilate this meaningless universe, or to intervene in order to re-shape the universe so as to make it hospitable again.

And you, how do you see the relation between a prospective thermodynamic death and the cosmic purpose?

[Uccisore]

I think most religions that teach there is an All-Loving Creator God also teach that He will intervene long before we have to worry about the heat-death of the universe, don’t they? I guess I don’t see this as being a problem for anyone, except perhaps a deist.

And you, how do you see the relation between a prospective thermodynamic death and the cosmic purpose?

Well, the fact that the universe will one day die a final death means that the universe is a unique event, and that makes the notion of a cosmic purpose much more easy to believe, I think.

[SA_mkhya (Sâmkhya)]

One could retort that God would have been wiser to build a self-sufficient universe, one which does not need to be re-shaped to escape death.

Why does the fact that the universe is a unique event make cosmic purpose easier to believe?

[Uccisore]

Assuming that an eternal material Universe was God’s plan to begin with, I suppose. Again, I don’t think most religions have ever taught that, so I don’t think the argument applies to them.

As to your second question, unique events are kind of weird in nature. The fact that universe started at a certain point, and will end at a certain point, instead of being a cycle that goes on forever, makes it easy to believe that the cause of the universe is just as unique. I don't think this is something that can be argued for, it's just a sensation.

[SA_mkhya (Sâmkhya)]

As a matter of fact, the second law of thermodynamics (which I am referring to here) has been used as a proof of existence of God, kind of scientific version of the kalam argument.

[Nick_A]

Sâmkhya

According to modern cosmology, the universe is heading toward its “death”, a thermodynamic death, namely, a dark, cold and lifeless state, in which no more energy will be available (if I properly understood)

This is a natural misconception IMO when the universe is not considered in the context of scale and relativity.

I wouldn’t want to get into this off the cuff so to speak but basically Man is a microcosm and as such is really a mini universe. You know how we breath in and out. We don’t just breathe in once and breathe out once and that’s the end. Breath is a continuing cycle.

The Hindu idea of the “breath of Brahma” suggests that what we define as the “big bang” and eventual death of the universe is actually just a breath of Brahma in a repeating cycle of breaths that is incomprehensible for us considered in linear time.

Maybe the following will make this idea of Brahman a bit more understandable.

theosociety.org/pasadena/etgloss/br-bz.htm

Brahman (Sanskrit) [from brih to expand] Sometimes Brahma or Brahm. The one reality, “the impersonal, supreme and uncognizable Principle of the Universe from the essence of which all emanates, and into which all returns, which is incorporeal, immaterial, unborn, eternal, beginningless and endless. It is all-pervading, animating the highest god as well as the smallest mineral atom” (TG 62). It involves both essential consciousness and substance, and is the spiritual background of the kosmos, the Cause of all Causes, what is commonly called the Unmanifest Logos: “Brahma, the Noumenon, never rests, as IT never changes and ever IS, though IT cannot be said to be anywhere” (SD 1:374). As the fundamental cosmic fountain of consciousness and spiritual substance, Brahman is the fundamental or cosmic self which, in the case of an individual being, becomes the kshetrajna, the spiritual sun within the individual. Thus the essential self of every being or entity from cosmos to physical atom is this Brahman itself, which is the cause of the familiar saying “tat tvam asi” (you are that).

Through and from Brahman derive the various cosmic Brahmas, the expansion of the One into the many. Brahman does not put forth evolution itself nor create, but exhibits various aspects of itself by means of emanative evolution. The Hindu Puranas say that Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva are the primordial energies of Brahman, the divine neuter. There is a clear distinction between the impersonal, supreme, all-pervading, immanent, beginningless, and endless cosmic principle, whose essence is consciousness-life-substance, and the various Brahmas; for these latter are the periodic manifestations of the highest energies flowing forth at the beginning of each manvantara from the neuter Brahman, and into which these various Brahmas are ingathered again when the cosmic cycle reaches its close and pralaya ensues.

Philosophically, as the supreme cosmic principle of any universe, Brahman is enclosed within its veil or sakti, called pradhana; just as Brahma is similarly infolded within its inseparable sakti called prakriti, and on a still vaster plane mulaprakriti enfolds parabrahman. We have thus: parabrahman-mulaprakriti, Brahman-pradhana, and Brahma- or Purusha-prakriti.

What could be the purpose of a universe in which there is no more intelligent beings, and in which new ones cannot appear?

There wouldn’t be any purpose. Universal purpose is manifested basically in the opposite but complimentary flows of evolution and involution that comprise and maintain the universal scale of being as it manifests its lawful “fractions of the whole” or what we call “things” that serve the purpose of the transformation of substances.

Evolution can only evolve so far without consciousness at which point it begins to break down and become part of the flow of involution or into lower levels of creation… That’s our problem but we just don’t know it.

[tentative]

Once again we’re back to the time is linear/circular issue. I will simply re-state what I said before. Linear time with an ultimate beginning/end is almost exclusively a western idea. Nick_A references the Hindu concept of circularity where beginning and end are simply manifestations of coming and going (Brahma breathing in and breathing out) without end. Our myoptic view is always something begins and ends with discrete linear ‘steps’, but this is illusion. A good percentage of the world population does not suscribe to linear time as ultimate reality. Religions based on linear thought may be ‘convenient’, but the conclusions based on such thought are completely subjective and have no more credence than any other ‘guess’.

JT

[SA_mkhya (Sâmkhya)]

You could acknowledge that the second law of thermodynamics supports the view of a linear time.