My Problems with the Heat-Death of the Universe

According to the current theories regarding the physical state of the universe, at some point in the far distant future, the universe will fizzle out. A great literary tagline would be from TS Eliot -- and this is the way the world ends, not with bang but with a whimper. All energy across the entire universe would equalise, and all would become the background radiation that causes the white static on old television sets.

This is the 'heat-death' of the universe. It is not preventable. It will happen. In some odd number of trillion of years, unless we are wrong about the nature of physics (the second law of thermo-dynamics), the universe will stop. There will be no more useful energy, no more transfer from potential to actual. Nothing. It will just stop.

I worry about the heat-death of the universe because the question becomes, is it all worth it? This great experiment in meaning called humanity will cease; there will be nothing left, no one left to tell the stories to. History will no longer matter since history will stop. The matter of history, the energies in motion stop moving and time comes to an end.

So, is it all worth it? If it all ends in nothing, why do we bother creating and growing? To formulate it more philosophically, if meaning is entirely contained immanently, and all immanence will one day be dissolved, why bother? Now, there would be a radical approach that could define meaning immanently and still acknowledge the heat-death of the universe. But there is an entirely another plane to think about: transcendence.

Transcendence normally denotes something other than the universe: God, spirits, the supernatural. But for me, it is most interesting to deal with transcendence in immanence. The transcendences that reside within this mortal coil and its surroundings. Because in that case, there may be hope. It's all theories and speculations. All ideas and foreshadowings. All hopes and dreams. Is this the way the world ends? Could there be a world without end?

Such a world would be worth building into it, investing with our meanings, our stories, our energies, for we would last and join in a community of others coming before and going after -- from the last acts of love, peace, and compassion to the expiring of the last organism, praying in the silence of the void. To perhaps the whole resurrection of the whole cosmos, where all things are restored, newly created, bought back, are remembered. I do worry about the heat-death of the universe, but I also hope that there will also be something beyond the universe; Something, Someone, who loves and keeps this creation. Faith is knowledge of things not seen (or really seeable). And I hope for life abundant.