TEE

I remember the Trans Europe Express (I was a young backpacker traveling from youth hostel to youth hostel), which I inadvertently boarded in Brussels. My second-class ticket was inadequate. It took all the money I had in my pocket to make up the difference. I got off the train in Strasbourg, which was as far as I could afford to go. A few days later, I went to the station to meet an acquaintance; I had a strong premonition that he would be there, altho I had no way to know that. But he showed up exactly when I thought he would. He was not amused when I told him that I had foreseen his arrival.

Heroism

A Sign of the Times, on a food truck on Gough near Hayes: "Shallots are for babies! Onions are for men! Garlic is for heroes!!"

Wow!

I read something the other day, in an article about the Wow! signal I think, which suggested that we are likely known to intelligent species, if there are any, within a radius of 100 light years or so from the sun. That is the length of time that we have been emitting radio and other signals that would be detectable in radio telescopes and so on. If this is true, and if they care to reply, it could be a very long time before we receive a signal of acknowledgement. It is unlikely that intelligent creatures from elsewhere have been here, since interstellar distances are so vast, that crossing them would take millions of years. There would be no need for such travel, since interstellar communication would convey enough information to make travel irrelevant. The Wow! signal apparently came from a source 600 light years away. If its source is intelligent, that intelligence cannot possibly know about us, since our signals are 500 years away from reaching it. We may be the first or even the only intelligent species in our galaxy, but there is no way to know that. We will keep collecting signals, and who knows......?

God as an object

God is not an object of knowledge, is not knowable in himself but only by his effects, like the universe we can know. If 'objective' means 'existing whether we know it or not' or 'whether we accept it or not' then God can be thought of as objective reality. But God is not an object among other objects; he is real without being objective. Since there is no class of beings of which he is a member, there is no objective standard to which to compare him. He is not 'a' being; he is self-existent and not dependent on any discernible laws by which his objectivity could be established as a member of a class of beings in objective reality.