Living Universe?

[Boerseun]

Kinda smacks of the Gaia theory, in which the Earth is a huge, living organism.
We have the rainforests being the lungs, cleaning our air of CO2 and chucking O2 back into the atmosphere, and then the whole tangled web of different ecosystems relying and consuming each other. Somewhere there's a balance, and given enough time, the planet should find it. Until Man comes along, which can be said to be either the brains of this organism, or some sort of infection poisoning everything and causing Gaia to suffer.
And then we can zoom in to our own cells, which is self-reliant to a big extent. After you die, they can keep individual cells off your body in little petri dishes, and they'll go on living for years.
So - to invert your question (for argument's sake): Are humans individual organisms, or are we just large collections of individual cells living in a symbiotic relationship? And is consciousness not just the collective result of a bunch of neurons living together for the greater good? Kinda like a Portugeuse Man'O War, where the whole (what we would think of as organism) is just a colony of individual organisms perfectly capable of coping on their own?
Interesting topic...

[paultrr]

Yea, seemed like Gaia theory or new age neo-paganism to me also. Most new age ideas as they orginated where panthiestic based or naturlism based to begin with. I think if one followed that general gist out that as far as human's go we would be but one part of a greater whole.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Originally Posted by paultrr

One possible solution besides invoking quantum entanglement like paths is to suggest it does so slowly which would then suggest one is dealing with a very slow thought process.

Maybe that's how you reconcile the whole "seven days" thing with the actual 15 billion year age of the universe.

TFS
[let's see, carry the one, divide by three million....]

[tarak]

The entire perceivable universe could also be a cell of just another living organism.

[tarak]

The cell has undergone several divisions and produced many more universes and imagine.

[tarak]

Our universe must also be aging and oneday it will die like the other ones.

[insight]

Originally Posted by TheFaithfulStone

Maybe that's how you reconcile the whole "seven days" thing with the actual 15 billion year age of the universe.

TFS
[let's see, carry the one, divide by three million....]

that's quite mathematical, but not logical in sense. God created everything, who knows he created another parallel universe?

[Beatnik307]

Originally Posted by insight

that's quite mathematical, but not logical in sense. God created everything, who knows he created another parallel universe?

in the old testament, God talked to people and intervened with events all of the time...where is that these days?

Does this mean that God is bored with our universe and is talking right now to some parallel Moses or Noah somewhere else in the multiverse?

[insight]

Originally Posted by Beatnik307

in the old testament, God talked to people and intervened with events all of the time...where is that these days?

Does this mean that God is bored with our universe and is talking right now to some parallel Moses or Noah somewhere else in the multiverse?

that could be possible and no one knows. His power is limitless to say.

[bumab]

Originally Posted by Beatnik307

in the old testament, God talked to people and intervened with events all of the time...where is that these days?

Interestingly enough, even taking the biblical record completely literally, God only intervenes directly (beyond talking) once every several hundred years, so who knows? maybe the rate is the same!

For what it's worth.