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The Marginalization of Earth
Tuesday's post of the picture of galaxy NGC 1672 reminded me of a quote from The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report, by Timothy Ferris, that I've been intending to post. So now seems like as good a time as any.
The Local Group stands toward the outer edge of a large cloud, variously called the Local or Coma-Sculptor cloud, which itself lies toward the edge of the Virgo Supercluster. So once again we find ourselves on the fringe of things. Not only does the earth not occupy the center of the solar system...and the solar system reside far from the center of the Milky Way galaxy...and the Milky Way galaxy take second place to Andromeda as the dominant spiral of the Local Group, but the Local Group is situated toward the outer limits of the Virgo Supercluster. Cosmography is discomfiting to anthropomorphists.
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So once again we find ourselves on the fringe of things.
Heresy!
Why do we mortals always want to "occupy the center"?
President John Taylor wrote about the same curious arrangement and came to a different conclusion: "While our planetary system rolls in perfect order round the sun, there are other systems which perform their revolutions round their suns; and the whole of these, our system with its centre, and other systems with their centres, roll round another grand centre: and the whole of those, and innumerable others, equally as great, stupendous, and magnificent, roll round another more great, glorious, and resplendent, till numbers, magnificence, and glory, drown the thought, we are led to exclaim with the prophet, ' O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! ' Romans 11:33." (Government of God, 4-5.)
So, Jackson County, out on the fringe of settlement in its day, couldn't really be Zion, the center place?
Clearly importance or value does not necessarily correlate with location in space or time.
Don't misunderstand me. I like the quote, but Mormons, of all people, should not find such things discomfiting.
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