Discussions of the far future are of major importance both in theology and folk religion. Many Christian authors have welcomed the scientific theory of the heat death of the universe as the ultimate fate of the universe as it was first proposed, while atheists and materialists back then commonly opposed the theory in favour of the idea that the universe and life in it would exist eternally. Nonetheless, in modern days, nontheists have largely come to accept the theory, while Christian eschatology is in conflict with the idea that entropy will be the predominant factor in determining the state of the far future, instead predicting God's creation of the New Earth and its existence into the far future. According to Mahayana Buddhism, an emanation of the Buddha-nature will appear in the materi