THE END

Have you noticed that films these days don't say The End at the the end?  This turnover happened in the 1970's.  Now, there is a rolling credit list for grips, gaffers, etc.  One annoyance I have, though, is that all those production companies want to feature themselves at the beginning, taking up so much time.  Also, have you noticed how many producers there are on each movie?

Then there is the end to your life.  For many, this termination is just the beginning of a better existence in Heaven, or the equivalent.  And, boy, do Muslim male martyrs have a surprise coming:  not 72 virgins, but 72 sweet white raisins.  Not to say that other religions also will not be disappointed.  What you are promised has not actually been verified.

For me, the end will be nothingness or total blackness or utter gloom.  Now and then I convince myself that it will be eternal peace.  The plus side going for people of faith is that they have a psychological advantage, for they generally don't fear death.  I do, especially as I was born in September, and the days grow short.  Thanks to James Maxwell Anderson, who wrote the lyrics to September Song:

But it's a long, long while from May to December
And the days grow short when you reach September
And the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
And I haven't got time for waiting game

Here is a Gallup International poll dated 4December2023 of showing that 62% of the World population are religious.

The U.S. is at 60%.

24% in the World are not religious.

Ten percent of the World are atheist, with Hong Kong leading the list.

Here is another graphic by region of the world.

To recap the World average: 

• While 62% of the world are religious, 72% say there is a God.
• 57% think that there will be life after death.
• Life after death by country:

• 77% of Americans believe in life after death.
• 23% of people in Sweden and 20% of Japan believe in life after death.

I guess I spent so much time on religion because today is Sunday.  Twenty years ago, Sam Harris wrote The End of Faith.  Something that made sense to me as I was then writing my chapter on religion.  A decade ago, the BBC had a long treatise on Will religion ever disappear?  The answer was no, for:

Humans need comfort in the face of pain and suffering, and many need to think that there’s something more after this life, that they’re loved by an invisible being.  There will always be people who believe, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they remain the majority.

As I'm wont to do, I like to also provide my opinion--and look for more later on the matter of artificial intelligence--but my adjurance is that Homo sapiens will in time be superseded by AI, and this ultimate intelligence will not bother with folklore and the like.

Last year Scientific American had an article on Will Humans Ever Go Extinct.

• Homo sapiens evolved some 300,000 years ago.
• One view has it that humans will go extinct when the expanding envelop of the sun swells outward a billion years from now.
• But mammalian species usually only persist for about a million years.
• Our danger is that we could be instantly wiped out by a catastrophic asteroid strike, suffer a extinction level nuclear war, or succumb to the ravages of climate heating or a truly serious pandemic.
• It has been calculated that asteroids of 10-15 kilometers in diameter that killed off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago occur every 250 million to 500 million years.  But we've seen films where this was prevented.  So we might someday have the ability to prevent this end.  At this time, there is a 1.3 km asteroid with a one in 50,000 chance in hitting us in the year 2880.
• Some feel that artificial intelligence (AI) will eliminate us, and actually not that far into the future.

To survive, will we be able to conquer space?

• One LOW guess is that there are 10 to the 24th power solar system with planets in our universe.  A trillion trillion of them.
• Can we build the technology and energy source to escape our solar system?
• Last year, one of my postings was titled, WHY WE'LL NEVER LIVE IN SPACE.
• The more I look into these prospects, the less optimistic I am that us Homo sapiens will be able to ever make that giant leap.
• However, what's wrong if we do transition into an AI dominated society, and take credit for they populating the universe?  AI representatives will not have the biological and energy limitations we have.  
• Wormholes?

Of course, even our universe will have an end.  Maybe in a 100 trillion years. Watch a video of this ultimate conclusion.  Hmmm....looks like my end.

Yet, is there a way out of the Big Freeze and other pessimistic endings?  Well, there is the Big Bounce, a cosmological model that features continued expansion and contraction, an eternally cyclic pattern of the Big Bang and Big Crunch.  Watch this.

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