Jack D Capehart's blog

Belief is Just a Swallow Away!

Saint Merck Pharmaceuticals (SMP) recently announced a new
product, Gospills, purportedly able to relieve the symptoms of
atheism.  The very large white tablets, each in the form of a
crucifix are reportedly hard to swallow and so have been
manufactured with score marks so they may be broken into separate
"chapters".  Some side effects have been noted in clinical trials.
 Most notably; frequent church attendance, excessive reverence,
and involuntarily shouting "amen" or "hallelujah".  In rare cases
effusive charisma has been noted.  The tablets come in two
different strengths; 5 Billigrams for most cases and 10 Billigrams
for the stubborn cases.

When is "NOW"?

If all of the stars ceased to exist today, it would be impossible for us to ever determine this fact.  The reason is that they have been sending light our way for 14 billion years and it would take that long again for us to see the last of it.  It may have already happened.

Even if our nearest star, the sun, ceased to exist, we would not know for over 8 minutes.  The next nearest star to the earth could have ceased to exist 3 years ago and we would not know yet.

This line of reasoning leads us to the inescapable fact that we are always living in the past and we can only approximate an instant called "now" for those things which are very near to us.

So our eyes are a little like a time machine always seeing things in the past.  The moon is about 1.29 seconds away, the sun is about 8 1/3 minutes away, and Mars is around 14 minutes distant.
And, of course, we can see all the way back to about 14 billion years by looking at the most distant stars.