Exploring Life's Great Questions
Insights Into the Nature of Existence, From the Physics of the Cosmos to the Purpose of Life
A view of our world, planet Earth, as seen from the Apollo 11 command module capsule on July 20, 1969. Credit photo to NASA.
Our World and Our Place in It
By John D. Carnahan
Our World And Our Place In It is a book I have written, currently in e-book form, that attempts to answer the great questions of life. Is there a God? What is His/Her/Its character and relationship to humans and the human race? What is Jesus Christ's relationship to humans and the human race? What is the face, character, and nature of God that we can see through the physics of our universe and the anthropology of our species to get a picture of what God may be like? Is there any evidence of an immaterial or spiritual world in our various world religions, our great belief systems, and certain unexplained phenomena? Is there life after death? What is the purpose of life? What are our absolute core values as human beings? Given all of the above, how should we organize ourselves economically? How should we organize ourselves politically? How should we organize ourselves for truth-seeking or religious purposes? What does the future hold in store for humans and the human race?
Our World And Our Place In It is available on this webpage as a FREE downloadable PDF file. Just click on the link below. It may be copied and distributed for FREE as the whole file, a larger portion of the whole file, or a smaller portion of the whole file. Just read the Copyright Notice at the very beginning of the book to make sure you include the proper attribution and the Copyright Notice for what you are copying so that others may redistribute it if they choose.
I have created a special Facebook Page for all to interact with the book. You can find it by clicking on this link: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61560216170346 You can also find it by typing into the Facebook Search Bar "Our World And Our Place In It". It should be the top Search Result. This Facebook Page and the Website email of john@ourworldandourplaceinit.com are both in their infancy. Please be patient with them for now. When I have both working smoothly I will remove this paragraph from this webpage.
If your laptop Internet browser is having difficulty reading the PDF (.pdf) file, you can get the file’s standard reader if you do not have it already installed at https://get.adobe.com/reader/ . Just set it then as your default PDF reader. If the difficulty is reading the PDF file on your cellphone, mobile, or pad, then go to the App Store for your phone’s or pad’s operating system. Generally, that is Google for Android and Apple for iOS.
Our World And Our Place In It is my life's work. It is my Magnum Opus. It is my hope that you and all of those who read this book will enjoy it, will find it insightful, and will find it inspiring. I wish every one of you the very best in your life and your future.
Sincerely,
John Carnahan
Email: john@ourworldandourplaceinit.com
Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The "Pale Blue Dot" you see just below the words "You are here." and the red arrow is us.
It's our planet Earth. It's our planet Earth, and Us, the human race upon it. The photograph was taken on July 19, 2013, by the NASA Cassini spacecraft while it was behind the planet Saturn. You can see the rings of Saturn in the picture. Saturn was eclipsing the sun, allowing the spacecraft's camera to look back at Earth and take its photograph without burning out the sensitive pickup devices on its retina. Earth is about 900 million miles from the spacecraft here.
This is the same type of picture as the late great Carl Sagan's famous "Pale Blue Dot" picture and speech. On Feb. 14, 1990, he asked NASA to turn the camera around on the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it was exiting our solar system, moving toward the edge of interstellar space, and take a picture of Earth. The pale blue dot in that picture was even smaller than this one, as Voyager 1 was nearly 4 billion miles from Earth then. In his book Pale Blue Dot, published in 1994, Dr. Sagan made a famous comment about the Pale Blue Dot. You can read those words, see the actual 1990 Pale Blue Dot photograph, and see a brief video of him speaking in 1990 at the Planetary Society website here:
Here is the Table of Contents for Our World and Our Place In It
CHAPTER OUTLINE FOR THE BOOK
(This Chapter VI. and Chapter VII. will be completed in the near future. The current e-book Chapter VI has multiple YouTube videos, all with hot links for each cosmological, astronomical, quantum physics, geological, and anthropological subject discussed. Most have multiple hot links. Some have full explanations of the content of the video. They are user-friendly. When this Chapter and Chapter VII. are complete, I will load the website with the new e-book and offer it for download. I will post a notice that the remaining two chapters have been installed. The book will continue to be a FREE DOWNLOAD. I just need some more time to finish these chapters. I just wanted to get everything else out now. JDC)
A. What are the face, character, and nature of God? Can we see through physics to get a picture of God?
The principle that we should apply is similar to the principle that the ancient Greeks advanced to understand the immaterial world. They said you get your metaphysics from your physics. You learn about the immaterial world from studying the material world. The concept is that the material world is patterned on the mind of the immaterial world. By seeing the design of the material world, we can get an idea of the thoughts of the immaterial world, or in this case, the Creator God of the Universe. We only see the shadow in the material world. But the shadow is created by the immaterial being. So, we get at least an outline of the image of the immaterial cause of the shadow. We have come to the conclusion that this is the best way to understand the true nature and reality of the immaterial world and the Creator God of the Universe.
B. The Big Bang, including the current description of the expanding universe.
C. Energy and matter. E=mc2. The speed of light.
D. Special Relativity. As a body approaches the speed of light, time dilation, relativistic mass, and length contraction.
E. General Relativity. Space-Time. Gravity.
F. Star formation. Heat and light in the universe. A campfire in the wilderness. Supernovae and heavier element formation.
G. The number of protons in a nucleus determines the different elements.
H. Planetary formation and the formation of the Earth.
I. Galaxy formation and galaxy cluster formation.
J. Universal constants.
K. Neutron stars. Pulsars. Magnetars. Gamma Ray bursts. Quasars.
L. Black holes and supermassive black holes.
M. Dark matter and dark energy.
N. The nature of light. The wave-particle duality.
O. The physics of the very small and quantum mechanics.
P. The double slit experiment and the principle that observing a physical action affects the action.
Q. Quantum entanglement.
R. How does the universe end?
S. The evolution of the human race. How did this happen?
T. The concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to the nature of God.
U. Five extinction events in earth’s history.
V. Unified field theory of God, physics, and evolution.
The Unified Field Theory that unites God, Creation, and our Purpose in the Universe is the flourishing expansion of the Big Bang of the cosmos with the flourishing purpose of humankind. As the universe expands and flowers, so do we as humans here on Earth. We see the one true God in the physics of the expanding Big Bang Cosmos and the expansion and development of a flourishing life for each human and for humanity on Earth.
W. Final conclusions about the existence and nature of God.
X. Inspiring thoughts on cosmology, quantum physics, and life from Stephen Hawking.
(This Chapter too will be completed in the near future. When it and Chapter VI. are complete, I will load the website with the new e-book and offer it for download too. I will post a notice that the remaining two chapters are now installed. The book will continue to be a FREE DOWNLOAD. I just need some more time to finish these chapters. I just wanted to get everything else out now. JDC)
A. The case for other religions and the evidence of spiritual activity.
1. Judaism
2. Islam
3. Hinduism
4. Buddhism
5. Other Eastern religions
6. Pagan religions and spiritism
a. Ancient.
b. Modern
7. Ghosts, the Paranormal, and the Occult
8. U.F.O.: Unidentified Flying Objects.
9. Near-death experiences.
B. Conclusion to the above: There is evidence of spiritual activity in the world and in world history.
C. The case for God generally.
1. The intuitive evidence for a God of everything and everyone.
2. Karma?
A. What is the evidence that humankind has a spiritual connection to it? Soul, mind, and will.
B. Where is that life after death? Is there a heaven and hell? What does that place look like? What is lifelike there? How long will we be there?
A. Why are we here?
B. To flourish personally.
C. To flourish as a global society.
A. Good and evil.
B. Why be good?
C. Am I my brother’s keeper?
D. The golden rule.
E. Human history.
F. Change, constant change.
G. The nature of thought.
H. The individual and the corporate.
I. Happiness
J. Honesty.
K. Equality.
L. Liberty and responsibility.
M. Love
N. Man and woman.
O. Hope.
P. Endurance.
Q. Sacrifice
R. Work.
S. Personal production versus consumption.
T. The environment and our relationship to nature.
A. First principles of government.
B. Government by consent
C. Investigatory system vs. Adversary system of justice.
D. Universal Human Rights government must protect and advance including The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948.
A. How do you think someone comes to know if something is true?
B. God (as seen through Theism and common intuition)
C. Humanism
1. Humanist manifesto III
2. The Amsterdam Declarations of 1952, 2002, and 2022
3. The Humanist Ten Commandments
D. Reason
E. Science
F. Conclusion
A. War in the future.
B. World government.
C. Four future dangers.
D. Is the world getting better and better?
E. The United States' role in the future.
F. Will the world succeed?
Our World and Our Place In It
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