When I was in my O level year I thought I had worked out how the end of the world would arrive
My attitude towards religion had, until then, been a thoroughly emotional one, based on a strong attachment to the language & rituals of Christianity, the music of the organ & the singing of hymns
This was beginning to change into something more questioning. Helped by a BBC schools programme which tackled the thornier issues, such as the problem of pain
It was also the time which Harold Wilson later characterised as the white hot heat of the technological revolution. The men in white coats were really on the verge of solving all the problems of the world
But that, I thought, would mean omniscience, & only God could be omniscient
I also knew that science proceeded step by tiny step, each experiment adding one more fragment to the sum total of human knowledge
So omniscience would arrive when a scientist somewhere in his lonely lab completed the experiment which added the final piece, & 'we' would finally know it all
And in that instant, before the scientist could even say eureka, we would just be subsumed into God. 'We' would no longer exist
The beauty of this idea is that we would be completely unaware of the end. I found that an oddly comforting conclusion
Now, I read in the tv listings, the Large Hadron Collider may be about to achieve just that end
Fortunately its a 50 million to 1 chance. I wonder if these scientists can also calculate the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow?
