[ARCHIVED THREAD] - How can eternity exist? (Page 1 of 3)
Posted: 5/8/2005 1:55:19 PM EDT
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Ok so as a christian you believe that you will spend eternity with God, personally this scares the heck out of me. How can there be no end it boggles my mind. It just goes on and on and on how can that happen, there is no closure? |
Not just matter of faith, but also science/astrophysics/mathematics. The biological human brain is just not wired properly to really get a good handle on the concept of "infinity" |
Pretty much as I've always seen it. We're linear creatures and it's just about impossible for us to wrap our minds around concepts the fall outside of those bounds. |
OR Ok so as a non-christian you believe that you will die and that's it, personally this scares the heck out of me. How can there be an end just boggles my mind. It just ends, there is no hope? You pick. |
Where was it before you were born? Do you remember those days? That's exactly what it will be like when you're dead. Enjoy the rest of your weekend! |
I think the better question is, if there is no end, could it be possible that there was no beginning? Even though it is generally excepted that we are the most highly evolved specie or the most intelligent created specie on this planet, depending upon which theory, myth, religion or fairy tale you believe there are a number of concepts that humans just can't sufficiently wrapp our heads around. Topping that list is infinity and eternity and some would argue that 1 million really can not be understood as in 1,000,000,000. Not in the sense that 1,000,000,000 is one more than 999,999,999 but in the sense that none of us have seen 1 million things all at once. I know some may be inclined to argue this point with me saying that 1,000,000,000 is easy to understand but what they are looking at is just a 1 and nine 0's. A 1 and nine 0's is not a million it is just a representation of 1 million. For example almost all of us have seen a case of .223. It holds 1000 rnds, that's pretty easy but have any of us seen 1,000,000 cases of .223 or 1,000,000,000 rnds of .223? |
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Pretty much sums it up, huh? |
Pretty much for me. As far as what I expect at death. But hey I could be wrong. and if so well I guess I am going to hell. 
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| At last check Scientists have found enough matter to "close" the Universe. That means that there's enough stuff in the Universe for the gravity of that stuff(called Dark Matter.) to stop the expansion and cause it to implode back in on it's self. That means that in the very, very distant future it'll all come crashing back in on it's self to explode once again into a Big Bang to start things all over again. Time is not linear, it's cyclic, it travels in a circle back to it's beginings, it's just that it takes a very long time for it to do it. Nature shows this, the seed grows to a tree, the tree makes seeds and dies, the seeds that the tree made grown into other trees, It's all one big circle, past into present into future back into past. |
Yeah, 1,000,000,000 = 1 Billion 1,000,000 = 1 million I recommend remedial math... 
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I'll admit that the thought of eternity scares the hell out of me. I've actually lay awake in bed and thought about it before until I almost had a panic attack. Just thinking about forever and ever and ever and ever... Granted, I'm hoping and praying that it will be spent with God. 
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Don't know bud nor do I have any memories of ever being there and I most certainly ain't God like some folks pro and con on this site think they are, so can't speak for him. I guess if he wants to send my ass to hell, heaven, or back to Earth that's his call and I can't speak for him. I can only account for my own actions here on Earth. Tj |
Get married. Ask your wife, "how was your day?" (you will then find your answer hiding in a can of Bud, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find that answer, not matter how many pfffft's it takes. Good luck Mr. Phelps. This post will self-destruct in 10 seconds) |
Something new begins of course. ANd when you die, worms eat you, then birds eat worms, then humans eat birds so they have the strenght to give birth to a new child. eternity. SGatr15 |
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Of course eternity exists. Before this moment there was/is an eternity. After this moment there will be an eternity. Exactly what part we play in it is the question. I find it amazing that those who espouse "science" and "reason" as their main judges also insist that death is the absolute end given that we have absolutely no way of measuring what happens after the death of a human being, or indeed of any being. We can barely measure consciousness in humans, and yet some are certain that there is nothing. There is no solid evidence to prove this, mind you, but they are pretty sure of it because of the accidental nature of our existence, which is also unproven.... The bottom line is that what happens after our death is a matter of faith. The Christian believes the tesimony of the Bible. Those who say there is nothing believe their limited senses and scant bits of information they can piece together and try to rationalize. They can't prove that it does exist, you see, so it doesn't. For a long time man could not prove that the world was round, you see, so it was flat. Man's knowledge at any point in history (including this one) is woefully inadequate to speak on such matters. Yet some refuse to acknowledge that. History will prove them as wrong as it has those who thought the world to be flat. The universe, you see, is limited to the confines of their skull in their philosophy. And yet the universe stubbornly refuses to fit in their box... Reason is a magnificent thing. But there are some matters that reason is incapable of apprehending. Reason can only stare into the distance in mute frustration. |
Most who you would have expected to know, did know that the earth was not flat. They had varying degrees of success with their descriptions, but few said 2 dimensions, nothing more...
You sound like you are about to call us 'soulless' because we take no flights of fancy. I assure you that we do, but we are grounded enough to not mix imagination, with reality. |
+1 You guys are a riot.  |
+1 Yup...and that is why I don't fear death... |
I have got to use that one!
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Actually, its just the opposite. The universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate with no end in sight. Current thinking is this is a result of dark energy, but since dark energy hasn't been observed, no on knows for sure. |
Whoa, I am the exact same way (Christian afraid of Heaven), have been for as long as I can remember. I thought I was alone all this time... |
Bravo! Been there, done that. Good eye for the Zeros. Now since you are so superior in math, and the numbers they represent can you explain 1,000,000 in terms that can be concieved by the rest of us. Not the representation of 1 million on paper. Explain how one individual person truly understands that 1,000,000 is different from 100,000 or 1,000,000,000. When I am at home in the Phoenix area and I look up into the sky at night I see thousands of stars. When I go camping I look up and see tens of thousands more stars. After the admittedly malfunctioning Huble Telescope was place in orbit we not only discovered hundreds of thousand of other stars we discovered evidence of planets orbiting those suns. Not so many years ago Galileo was put under house arrest for suggesting that the Universe did not revolve around the earth. You may not be able to able to connect all of this together in one comprehensible train of thought but that just the way things are. |
Well, God, in his infinite wisdom... MIGHT just send Rosie O'Donnell to heaven!!!! No no no no you say. God would NEVER do that!!!!! Well, God can do whatever he pleases!!! |
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Ok let's make this quick as it's midnight. Materialists who only believe in matter and energy and nothing else have a bit of explaining to do when talking about the big bang... which some theories hold was a single state, point (a mathematical point) containing all matter and energy, just prior to going "bang". So if all existence was contained in that point.... where did it expand into and how could it expand beyond the sum total of existence? There would be no "where" for "it" to "go". As for time, time is the measure of change. So prior to the change in its state from mathematical point to billions and billions of galaxies with lots of moving parts... there was no time. After it went "bang" ("Let there be light") time began. Naturally those silly Christians took the loftiest ideas of metaphysics and added to them coming up with the silly notion of creatio ex nihilo...which come to think of it, isn't that far fetched anymore now is it? Moving on to eternity - the ceaseless state of being... in our case it's not eternity but immortality, since we all have a beginning in being (our soul's creatio ex nihilo into matter/energy at the moment of our conception) So we have a definite beginning but not an end. How so? Pay attention back there, you materialists! The fact that you are comprehending this English text is significant. Keep that idea in mind. Got it? Now think of Justice, Honor, Duty, Love, Hate. How many atoms make up the above concepts. Not the feelings you get or images you get, but the concepts themselves. For that matter how many atoms make up the concept of "If" or "no" or "or"? None. Concepts are neither matter nor energy. Percepts - what you perceive with your senses, may be energic, but the meaning...the "why" and "whatness" aren't. You see Roman letters arranged in a pattern, sequence, syntax... but you comprehend a meaning to them. They are the vehicle, the payload is the meaning you receive. The meaning you receive isn't the symbols themselves. So meaning doesn't change. 2+2=4 is a mathematical concept... it doesn't change. It's eternal right? Now pay close attention.... causality is one of the mind's first principles. An effect is either equal to or less than its cause. Now precisely because you are aware and capable of reading this English text, your mind is capable of understanding concepts. YOUR MIND therefore grasps what isn't material or energic. It understands the "isness" of is. It knows what is neither material or energy. But the brain is a physical organ...it has volumne (space) and moving parts (time). But an effect of this organ is not spatial or temporal, but eternal - truth of the meaning of concepts. Therefore the Greeks realized from simple deductive logic that there was something about man that wasn't mererly matter. That something they called various things, but we call it soul. Democritus and others thought the soul, as in animating principle of matter was itself physical. But others believed it wasn't matter or energy at all, because the order of matter isn't matter. Order isn't energy either. But this ordering principle of matter and energy somehow interfaces with matter to conceptualize states of being, through the Brain and other organs without being the brain and other organs. The spiritual soul that allows conscious mind to exist cannot therefore have parts - its not material. But it does exist in us: it's effect - conceptual knowledge which you are using right now to follow the meaning of these words is evident. Something in man isn't made of parts and can thus understand parts. It's not dependent on change, and can thus tell time... having no parts to fall apart, "it" cannot cease to be. It can cease to order the particular stuff it currently is principle animator of... but itself cannot be lost. (how could it?) Therefore the soul is immortal. Whether or not we get a body back is faith - we need a revelation for that - but the Greeks knew by 300 BC that our souls were indeed immaterial and thus immortal. |
Well said |
| time supposedly stops when you reach the speed of light, that would be an eternity I guess. Also supposedly time didn't exist before the Big Bang. I believe in the Big Crunch instead of the ever expanding universe, so time will cease to exist again if the Big Crunch ever happens |
There's the Aristotelian hypothesis. The net result is the altar before which Paul preached in Athens. |
Not really, no. |
Well said Professor... |
So, purely natural operations have produced a being which is sentient and rational but not imprinted with enough of the essence of its origin to apprehend its own surroundings? Those operations have produced a creature which can hypothesize entities outside and immune to the milieu in which they occur, but cannot apprehend them? Science cloned a mouse which can hypothesize scientists but cannot grasp the concept "laboratory?" |