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General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: ~CB on 01/05/2015 22:12:01

Title: Could eternity (Or something alike) be a real concept?
Post by: ~CB on 01/05/2015 22:12:01
So today, while arguing with a theist on YouTube a weird thought struck my mind. Before I continue I would like to make it clear that I'm not claiming anything here. It's just a thought and I would like you all to state something that would make more sense in the context.

Let's begin! We all know that nature has it's laws and things do what they do as if they were designed to do so. For eg., gravity being so strong and weak at the same time. While you may argue that 'it's just the laws of nature, period!' or 'thinking over this will lead nowhere and is waste of time'... In my defense all I would like to say is, Universe couldn't have been born from nothing. It needs something to come into existence. Could there be something eternal out there or some entity with some other similar concept which we cannot understand, which made this universe? We talk about logic but that's, if thought about, the most logical possibility here.


Please don't even bring the word, god into this conversation. It would ruin the whole thing and my intention would go unanswered. Let's just assume that, that entity is some higher being who is eternal (Or any other similar concept you could think of), and we are in a game and this universe having billions of galaxies there are, each controlled by a player (The entity being the player). While there being many entities. [I know I could have made a better back story for entities but just try to understand my true intention and bear with me.]
Title: Re: Could eternity (Or something alike) be a real concept?
Post by: Don_1 on 02/05/2015 01:20:33
.........Universe couldn't have been born from nothing.......

.......Could there be something eternal out there or some entity with some other similar concept which we cannot understand, which made this universe?

You seem to have contradicted yourself.

It is my belief that the universe is cyclic, with no beginning & no end. All matter is eternal, though not necessarily always in the same state. The 'big bang' is the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.

Please don't ask me for any proof, as there can be no proof. By the same token, this theory cannot be disproven.

...... and here I have contradicted myself!
Title: Re: Could eternity (Or something alike) be a real concept?
Post by: ~CB on 02/05/2015 01:35:46
Oh yes, don't worry! I won't ask for proof. I just needed to confirm, that eternity is a possibility here;
However, it is quite hard to grasp such concept. I'm having a headache right now just thinking about it.
On a second thought... I shouldn't really post such topics, where there's hundreds of thousands of possibilities and where we, humans, can only offer speculations. IT IS a waste of time.
Anyways, I appreciate your reply!
Title: Re: Could eternity (Or something alike) be a real concept?
Post by: Ethos_ on 02/05/2015 01:53:35
Quote from: Don_1
 

It is my belief that the universe is cyclic, with no beginning & no end. All matter is eternal, though not necessarily always in the same state. The 'big bang' is the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next.

I tend to view our existence in a similar manner Don_1 ,and like you, I can neither prove that position nor can I disproven it. It simply affords me the greatest cerebral comfort when considering the  alternative positions on the subject.
Title: Re: Could eternity (Or something alike) be a real concept?
Post by: David Cooper on 02/05/2015 18:22:42
I see no evidence that anything can be created out of nothing, or turned back into nothing - things merely change in form. With Einstein's model of nature though, you go back to a starting point in time beyond which there was no time, so that causes a lot of people problems. Fortunately though, his model only makes rational sense if you add a Newtonian time to work in conjunction with the "time dimension" (to enable correct event meshing by running the ticks of the "time dimension" at different relative rates for different paths through Spacetime), and that Newtonian time does extend back before the big bang, so there is no real problem with it if you're using the correct version of his theory - the universe can exist back in Newtonian time infinitely, either as a singularity (or near-singularity) or it could go through an infinite number of expansions and collapses.
Title: Re: Could eternity (Or something alike) be a real concept?
Post by: PmbPhy on 03/05/2015 17:35:46
Quote from: Jasper Hayden
Universe couldn't have been born from nothing. It needs something to come into existence. Could there be something eternal out there or some entity with some other similar concept which we cannot understand, which made this universe?
First off the universe could very well have been born from nothing. It's quite possible that the total energy of the universe is zero. There is an amount of positive energy consisting of rest mass energy, kinetic energy, potential energy and field energy. There is an amount of negative energy which comes from the fact that gravitational potential energy is zero. The total adds up to zero. Alan Guth explains this in his book The Inflationary Universe. I uploaded the relevant part to my personal website here:
http://home.comcast.net/~peter.m.brown/ref/guth_grav_energy.pdf

As for coming into existence, that could be a result of a quantum effect. Sometimes things happen randomly merely because they can happen, i.e. have a non-zero probability of happening. This happens with the decay of nuclei.
Title: Re: Could eternity (Or something alike) be a real concept?
Post by: matthewpppppp on 06/10/2016 21:19:55
Think of existence as jello. Think of reality as vibrations in the jello. Everything you think, see, feel, experience is vibrations in the jello. Reality doesn't exit, only the jello exists. This includes any concept of time.