Eschatology and Evolution

The end of days-studied in a field known as eschatology-is of interest to many over the ages. This article considers a few eschatological ideas and the way they relate to evolution theory as well as cosmology. If evolving planetary doom means the end of days will be soon can there room for change or rescheduling of the hour?

Eschatology to many means a prophetic vision of the end times of either the world or its people. Alternatively it may refer to the end of a civilization or even the Universe. Traditionally eschatology has been regarded as something more of a religious field -although in the early times of mankind before vast right-wing polysyllabic words arose that could describe with a sociological objectivity human areas of belief such as might be regarded as religious end times eschatology could also be said to have included a unified field of primitive religio-philosophic-physical speculations about the nature of the experienced world-environment. Thus Ragnarök and Brahma along with the plain of Tilmun were out there with Janus the Door goddess and the vast turtle of labor carrying the world upon its back. At least like Aristarchus the idea of a rotation of the Earth or land was a primary element of the explanation.

Humanity never developed a comprehensive explanation for the reason that the Universe exist nor did it find an exhaustive, unimpeachable description of the physical boundaries. Instead it learned that time is an implicit characteristic of matter that is itself convertible to energy explaining rather nicely I suppose that energy can present a time aspect when it becomes matter and loses it inversely as it converts to energy. Cosmologists can speculate perhaps if time was included in finite quantity at an initial singularity with alpha and omega being equal or if energy existed at singularity or mass and if it was a finite quantity and is so, why? Why did an initial denouement of energy or mass filling the singularity cut off at a particular place without having exhausted the initial supply?

Christian eschatology has three fundamental fields on the reformed side of things. One is a premillennialist belief that John's Book of Revelation described future events that mostly haven't yet happened. That viewpoint has some logical difficulties. One is that for the saved Jesus lives in a real sense in their spirit in some mysterious way. That indwelling spirit is the being born again belief and is the first resurrection post-mills believe. Logically it might be absent from the pre-millennialist paradigm wherein Jesus won't appear until the end time. There is something of a different criteria for the kingdom of God existing in part right now on Earth too.

Post-millennialists believe along the lines wherein Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within you, that the kingdom of God is drawing in new believers and that the world will gradually increase the number of Christians until the real end times that could be soon or way down the road even unto the distant future (when the time of the gentiles is fulfilled). Christians in the post-mill scenario are a dampening of the doom that results from a pagan or atheistic world that is always seeking to increase its power. Christians should eventually become a majoritarian polity though evil still does exist in-the-world.

One might regard the fact that it requires just a small minority of Bolsheviks or terrorists to throw a wrench into social stability or establishment even when the establishment is a corrupt or oppressive minority itself; evil minorities are historically not uncommon ruling political powers seeking to expropriate the private property and economic independence empirically in order to establish networking collectives dominated by oligarchy, plutonomy, aristocracy or dictatorship. Annihilating marriage designed to protect the poor and middle-class interests in order to theoretically reconfigure society to a spineless white meat boneless product increasing profits for the rich is a usual method for turning the clock back to the year zero socially speaking so that the timer may begin all over again to the drummer bought and paid for by the sponsors. When these sorts of things happen believers may look for one coming in the clouds to change the changlings back to a less politically antipathetic form.

End times paradigms exist thus in many contexts. Some require active human participation, others have a deterministic fatalism such that it is all pre-determined clockwork ticking along like a wave of bombs biding there time until explosion. Some are of a Universal and physical kind-a third kind one might say, without a plain end-somewhat silly for an end-times theory I will note.

Cosmologist with humble and uncertain origins of the singularity that started the big band or inflaton or collision of symbolic membranes such as occurs in the 1812 Overture may consider the end of the Universe as a very distant future event that would be the conclusion of the highly organized energy at the start of the Universe that expanded losing its organizational coherence in the time-process and ran down to a cold and low energy state with matter perhaps as energy dispersed in powerless isolation as basic elements. Whatever it is that make up quarks-perhaps one-dimension brains-would be equally spaced away from each other perhaps a few trillion miles and that could be said to be an uncertain yet probable end time.

Except that evolution as a process of degradation of organization materially speaking could evolve not more complex forms on the way to the cold dead end, it could evolve non-existence at any time too. There is no guarantee that evolution could not move molecules or quarks to some mysterious presently yet pre-determined configuration that poofs mass and energy into coherence again with a return to the One singularity. Coherence is sort of an odd word as physicists use it for cosmology and quantum affairs. They regard mass as a kind of entanglement of energy quanta in a field that decohered from the field to take the form of mass (matter) as if it were a sacrificial lamb found by Abraham in a bush to take the place of a son for a sacrifice, or better-a cosmology theory to sacrifice.

I am not very comfortable with the idea of energy quanta existing decohered from a meta-Higgs field yet still going through the hoops of a singularity and expansion as degrading organization with some life formation from complex, expensive molecule on the way-it seems a little like having two different theories in one that makes one or the other so contingent that it is hard to be fashionably cool. If one knows that a particular cosmology theory is something of a joke-or at least a little Buddhist illusion resembling yet still real, it is challenging to take it as seriously as if it were a ninja turtle carrying the world on its back.

Energetic particles of quanta have existing forces such as the strong force that keeps quarks together. It is hard to imagine how they would break down. In a Higgs and meta-Higgs field however all things are possible for the imagination at least.

In the end of the universe isolated quanta would still exist in a meta-field and might be regarded as the final phase of decoherence before returning unto the one true field of fields. Maybe only only in complete end times isolation could an energetic quanta be so relativistically dissociated from other particles that it could be considered to be matter-as-energy for-itself. Energy however seems like an event instead of a thing. Energy must be some sort of intrusion through micro-entanglement into the space of nothingness that humans regard as the Universe. So when it is really run down that field fluctuation return generally produces nothing for observers entangled in the field to observe nor any observers either. It makes philosophical writers wonder what is happening on the other side of the field that yielded the entangled state of energy that seems to be the matter of this Universe,-or perhaps, what is happening all the time 'up there' in the heaven beyond the quanta entangled in a steady state form that seems to be this Universe?

The answer to what a sponsoring field is like isn't that of a myriad Universes. A myriad Universes could be produced simultaneously or in an order and progressive profusion however that would be beside the point in question such that one wonders if the field progenitor of Universes with an abundance of energy sufficient to light up a infinite number of Universe into being has much of a concern about how much time it takes (just kidding)

There are some controversies about all of the various forms and potentials for end times scenarios synthetic and given by Revelation. There are those who trust a particular theory and desire the extinction of any sort of rival theory of course however with the all things must pass thought in mind the astute interpreter of end times theories may find that though some seem to have more merit than others none are entirely comprehensive nor even necessarily mutually exclusive and exhaustive as the very interpretive terms and literal values of rival theories may be in error or inaccurately understood. That amazes one considering how God could keep track of all of the various theories of end-times for-Himself.

Jesus Christ as the way to renormalize the spirit unto a form acceptable with God transcends the time whorls and relativistic networks of space-time and potential space-time that are circumstantial formations of the physical cosmos. Reason overcomes evolution in a sense always transcending and surpassing its deterministic parameters in some senses yet remains within it as a product or quality of the field-entanglement itself. Quantum uncertainty within the field and within the mind of an individual may be enabling conditions that let the soul or living identity of an individual in-the-field become within the transcending kingdom-of-God even while remaining within the steady state decoherence of the Universe-field quanta. When the worldly existence of an individual or of the species will end is difficult to know exactly yet be assured that there are a number of elements working to bring that situation to exist if unintentionally through economically fueled mass extinctions and global warming gas emissions. One never knows though maybe 'we shall overcome'.