Quote (Belarathon @ Aug 29 2015 06:24am)
I wrote this about 2 years ago and just stumbled across it again now while going through old files. How do you feel about it?
Most of us know that everything around us, including ourselves, is made up of trillions of tiny constituents called atoms. Words like electron, proton and neutron are familiar to us as the even smaller particles that make up the atoms. But what of the rest of the atom? Atoms are 99.9999999999999% empty space. Permeating this empty space are the invisible forces that hold the atom together, namely electromagnetic and nuclear force.
So if atoms are almost entirely empty space, and we are made up purely of atoms and invisible forces acting upon these atoms... then are we not also almost entirely empty space? And if so, why do physical objects feel as though they have such substance and mass? To say that everything that makes up the earth is 99.999999999999% empty space seems impossible to our intuition and senses.
Could it be that, given no original reference point, we as humans are experiencing the subjective illusion of solid substance? Perhaps it takes only the smallest amount of matter combined with a conscious awareness to project and evolve this matter into an observed universe.
Everything may be mostly empty space, but as we have no comparable universe that is built with atoms of higher density, this becomes our one true reality and the amount of empty space contained within us becomes irrelevant. Whether our atoms came about as 99% empty space or 50% empty space, although our universe would be much different, it would still be our one true reality. With no other universe to relatively compare it to, this one reality becomes our benchmark for "solid substance".
I guess fundamentally this means you turn a universe dominated by empty space into a universe teeming with life and beauty simply by existing in this dimension and being aware of your surroundings. Such is the power of your consciousness. By definition I suppose this would mean we are all gods. Neat!
I suppose that can be the case. But what's the take-away for life here on Earth?