Jay Ray
Posts: 92
Joined: Feb. 2006
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I just noticed this:
| Quote | Can any of you see that the possibility of the existence of an eternal being is
1) A reasonable assumption given the mystery of the existence of anything at all without cause
2) That such a being might accomplish things just as we do |
Anythings possible, I guess. I'm not so sure about reasonable. If we're to say that a concious, intelligent eternal being can exist, we have to acknowledge that this being was itself uncaused. But if we're to be open to the possibility that this concious, intelligent being can exist without a cause, why not skip a step and give the universe itself the same possibility?
We simply don't know for sure what caused our universe to happen. Down past the plank time, stuff is just unknowable. My best guess is that some physical process is responsible; I put nothing past quantum weirdness.
Of course, we quickly get into a chain of being type argument that ends up back where we started. What came before the big bang, and what caused that? And what before that?
That old joke:
A boy asks his father, "what does the earth rest on, dad?"
The earth is being carried on the back of a giant turtle, son.
The boy then asks, "But dad, what does that turtle rest on?"
Well, it stands on the back of an even bigger turtle, son. Dad knows what is coming next.
The boy naturally asks, "What about THAT turtle?"
Dad throws up his hands. Its no good, son! Its turtles all the way down.
I remember pondering eternity, both time and space, at the age of four, maybe five. I quickly became accustomed to the the idea. At the time I hadn't heard of galaxies, so I had this picture in my mind of the edge of our universe, where the stars ran out. But instead of just trailing off, there was this sort of hard boundary, like the whole thing was inside a box. What was on the other side of the wall? Was the wall itself forever thick, or was there another universe on the other side? And if there was another universe, what was on the other side of ITS walls? Turtles all the way. Forever never scared me. I enjoyed thinking about it. To this day, thinking about eternity puts me in a trance. The earth is gone, its just me and the dark sky amid a field of stars. I feel at home.
But then I have this friend. She's creative, cheerful, intelligent, very progressive. Eternity scares the crap out of her. A major preconception of mine was dismantled when we had this talk. She said that when she thinks about eternity, her brain kind of switches gears involuntarily and tries to start thinking about something else. It had never really occured to me that eternity could have a negative effect on someone, especially creative types.
I'm not sure yet what to make of this.
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