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Bryson, Bill - On the environment as agent of change
Identifier
018659
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The changes made to the environment seem to be planned to make the environment conducive to the next incremental stage. The objective is an increase in functionality, but the functionality to be increased is via life, not the functions of the inanimate, which are simply there as agents of change.
In effect, we must look at anything that is inanimate as having functions which are there to serve the increasing functionality of the animate. Furthermore, we must also start to comprehend that these functions – all these laws – are capable of being adapted to serve whatever increment is planned next. The functions of the inanimate can be adapted as and when a change is required.
Olaf Stapledon – Star Maker
in general, the Star Maker, once he had ordained the basic principle ….. and created its initial state, was content to watch the issue; but sometimes he chose to interfere, either by infringing the natural laws that he himself had ordained, or by introducing new emergent formative principles, or by influencing the minds of the creatures by direct revelation
A description of the experience
Bill Bryson - A Short History of Nearly Everything
… with a molten interior … apart from much else, our lively interior created the outpourings of gas that helped to build an atmosphere and provided us with the magnetic field that shields us from cosmic radiation. It also gave us plate tectonics which continually renew us and rumples the surface. If the Earth were perfectly smooth, it would be covered everywhere with water to a depth of 4 kilometres.. we also have the right elements in the right proportions.................
Just how early in earth's history did life arise? The present date of 3.85 billion years is stunningly early. The earth's surface didn't become solid until about 3.9 billion years ago …. it is hard to avoid the conclusion that life arising as it could, was chemically destined to be...........
.........… We know that the Earth's magnetic field changes in power from time to time. During the age of the dinosaurs, it was up to 3 times as strong as it is now. We also know that it reverses itself every 500,000 years or so on average, though that average hides a huge degree of unpredictability. The last reversal was about 750,000 years ago. Sometimes it stays put for millions of years – 37 million years appears to be the longest stretch – and at other times it has reversed after as little as 20,000 years. Altogether in the last 100 million years it has reversed itself about 200 times and we don't have any real idea why [or how]. This has been called 'the great unanswered question in the geological sciences'............