His imagery is evocative, including his invocation of expanses of time that would dazzle anyone other than paleontologists and cosmologists."Expanses of time that would dazzle..." The expanse to which Noel Pearson refers is the claimed 53,000 years since the current aboriginies moved to Australia (it was not called Australia then, of course).
The vast expanse dazzles...what does this mean? Is it that a 'mere' 53,000 years is astonishingly great a period to contemplate in the span of human civilisation and relationships? Indeed it is. The vastness removes one from the period in question.
In our context, the very same effect operates when it is claimed by some Christian commentators that the world is really multiple billions of years old, and not the 6,000 odd indicated in the Bible. The vast period de-reifies both our creator God and our relationship to him. God, the person behind it all, becomes an abstract spirit, and we skirt the edge of animism, or panentheism because love with no exercise over eons is a lot like no love at all.
