The Fate of the Solar System and the "Will of God".
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all fundamentally optimistic religions, insofar as they predict that, after a bit of a rough passage, the Universe ends definitively, with a final Triumph of Good over Evil, an everlasting reward for the good, and everlasting punishment for the bad. Setting aside the whole question of the justice of everlasting punishment for finite wrong, we have to ask whether or not this picture is actually compatible with what physics tells us is going to happen to the Earth, the Solar System, and our Universe. There, alas, the picture is far from being optimistic: as far as the Earth is concerned, we know that, because of the steady and relentless increase in the Sun's luminosity over time, in 1.1 billion years' time, the mean annual surface temperature of the Earth will be so hot that there will be no liquid water on the planet - all the rivers, lakes, seas and oceans will just boil away. The result of that , in turn, given that water vapour is a gree