THE END ? OR A NEW BEGINNING ? (
Page 1 ) |
|
| “Death is but
the divorce of two entities, the body and the soul.” Socrates |
| The doorbell rings. I open the door to face a small
group of people, some with Bibles in hand. I let them in and ask them
to be seated. Without wasting much time on introductions and formalities
they launch into the business of the day. These kind people have walked
all this way to help my family and me, knowing somehow that we are
in danger. They have come to warn us that the end is near, that there
are signs that the world is coming to an end pretty soon. Fighting
the initial reaction to argue, I turn the tables on them saying that
I already had clear knowledge that the world is coming to an end in
a few years if not days. I told them that the world should come to
an end for each of them and for me at the time when we die. That will
be the end of this world as far as we are concerned. That will be
the day of reckoning, the day of the second coming, the day of judgement.
Every one must be prepared for that day when the sun shall darken
and the foundations of the earth shall shake. It could be today, any
day, in another twenty or fifty years. After that there will be only
the new heaven and the new earth. On that note we all said a prayer
and they left. But not without leaving a few nagging questions in
my mind. Will there be a real end of this world? In what sense and
manner and when? There are various scenarios that we can consider
depending on what we mean by the end. It could be: |
| 1.Extinction of the human species |
| This could come about by a variety of causes. Depletion
of ozone layer to a high degree can allow lethal radiations from space
to reach the earth. These radiations could mean the gradual if not
sudden disappearance of man. |
| It could be the result of global warming, the temperature
becoming too high for human life. This is not impossible if not now,
in the distant future. This warming could be due to reasons from the
earth itself, like greenhouse effect caused by the emission of too
much carbon gases from man made vehicles and factories or this could
be due to solar activity. We could reach a stage when the radiant
energy from the sun is too much for man to bear. It still may support
other forms of life, especially the heat loving organisms found in
and near the volcanic vents in oceans. |
| More likely candidates for the destruction of humanity
could be meteors or comets that come on a collision course with the
earth. One or more large meteors or comets hitting the earth at close
intervals of time can wipe out much of life from the face of the earth,
the first to go being the most vulnerable one, which is, of course,
human life. We read about US space agencies planning to intercept
such dangerous intruders by sending nuclear powered rockets that may
help reroute them away from the collision course or to shatter them
by nuclear explosion on them. It is believed that some 95 million
years ago the dinosaurs that ruled the earth in those days had become
extinct by such a calamity. Some 250 million years ago almost 90%
of the existing life forms were destroyed by some such causes. Some
scientists think that the impact of certain meteors could have also
caused or accelerated volcanic activity and thus most of the surface
of the earth became inhospitable. |
| A very real hazard, which can make us extinct, is self
– destruction. A few mad persons with nuclear, biological or
chemical weapons of mass destruction can bring about Armageddon any
day. Thus there could be many ways by which humanity can be wiped
out from the face of the earth and we could call that an end of our
world. |
| 2.Extinction of life: |
| Any of the above mentioned causes or a combination
of them could wipe out all traces of life from the face of the earth. |
| 3.The death of the earth: |
| Could this happen? The answer is yes. During a later
stage of its evolution, the sun is likely to increase in diameter
becoming a red giant. At this stage some of the nearest planets including
the earth would be gobbled up by the sun and pulverised into plasma. |
| 4.The death of the sun: |
| Sun, like every other star, has a limited life span.
It was born about 5 billion years ago, out of the ashes of another
star. It is estimated that at present it is middle-aged and may live
another 5 billion years, when it would cease to radiate energy as
it does now. It will be dead. None of us will be there to witness
it though. |
| 5.End of the story: |
| The grand finale is to come according to some astronomers,
in billions of years from now, and according to others in trillions
and trillions of years, when not just our solar system or galaxy but
the entire cosmos will cease to be. But the scientific community is
still short of an answer as to how this will happen. If there is to
be such an end what is to happen to all the matter that make up the
billions of galaxies consisting of billions of stars, to all the gases
and dust clouds that fill the space between stars and galaxies, not
to mention dark matter and dark energy? To me the answer seems simple.
All the matter will go back to where it came from – to God.
For, the cosmologists tracing the origins of this expanding universe
has finally reached a point from which they cannot go any further.
They have reached the shortest time interval that can be defined by
science, the Planck time, after the origin (creation) of the cosmos
when the size of the space was the smallest space definable by science,
the Plank space. Where this came from they do not know. But we know
that it was from God. In a similar way all this will end up in God.
The words from the Bible “I am the alpha and the omega, the
beginning and the end” seem apt and meaningful in this context. |
|
