Does anyone ever...

[Montgolfier]

...think about creation and the begining of time and wonder how it all started, then try and imagine what happened before that, and then what happened before that etc.. Until you realise that there could never have been a start to it all and that it has (and will) exist for eternity


This thought plagues me from time to time and it fills me with a really haunting feeling that I can't quite get my head around


I cant ever imagine a time (alive or dead) that I will understand the true meaning of it all.. how can an eternal source of knowledge ever be processed and understood?

[jonesie]

swim always starts thinking too deep normally and ends up scaring
himself, lol, swim likes to try and suss the meaning of life out while
tripping his nut off, not the best time to try and figure that out i reckon

[raven3davis]

SWIM does the same. This stuff started happening especially after he started taking psychedelics. It is a double edged sword, it is good in some ways but bad in others. Sometimes SWIM gets depressed thinking about these things because there is just so much information missing that swim really would like to know but feels like he will never know. Then on the other hand, thinking about this stuff makes SWIM realize that there is a lot more to life that what meets the eye, and all dark things will eventually be cleared up. It really stimulates my mind thinking about these kinds of things though.

[dillydude]

Name everything that you can exactly remember before you were born, now stop and think. Now tell me everything that you did last night while you were sleeping. And finally for a last thought, try real hard to figure exactly were all the miracles of things such as your first born son come from.


I'm not try'in to offend anybody, or preach to people. I just want to know if there is an all mighty God, and if there is, is he or shein the form of what we're all told.


I once heard that, " Believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear." ( A bit of a contradiction, don't ya think. )


If you've got the answer's to the questions, and they're the right ones, you could be an earthly leader.


One of my friends had just commited suicidefivedays ago, he was intoxicated and feeling guilty about a family issue. It would of been nice if he knew whom or what created miracles. He might still be here to tell us.


Sorry if I came off as being blunt or rude, but I just want to say that most all of us on this forum, and beyond altar our moods with some kind of toxins, and sometimes think as we would never think usually . Venting and forums like this one is a certain form of release for us all to express our thoughts, opinions, and knowledge. So hence the question , thoughts on creation, well right now I'm thinking who made all this big ............( fill in the blank).


Edited by: dillydude

[Solidly-here]

If you "buy" the concept of Creation, then God was there before the Universe.


MrCheese ponders the imponderable: "...think about creation and the begining of time and wonder how it all started..." Then go back-in-time at least one second before that.


Some of the main-stream Religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) believe that God said: "Let there be light." Quickly after this (and for the next 6 days) the Universe, and everything in it, was Created. This means that God was sitting in Heaven at the time of Creation. So, the quick-and-easy answer is: Before the Universe was, God was.


Since God created the Universe so that I could be born (thousands, or Billions, of years later), I don't much care what "life" was like before Creation. (If all goes well, one day I will find out the answer to to this question.) In the mean time, however, I amhappy that I was Created. So, thanks for making the Universe for me; I'll try to take good care of it while I am alive.

[Montgolfier]

I am one of those people that 'buy' creation, after all all this stuff can't have happened by accident, there must have been some sort of planning involved.


My problem is this, so you decide you have a creator - great. But where did he/she/it appear from? what were they doing before they decided to 'create' all this stuff? Just laying back and relaxinga bit? is it a lone creator or a whole bunch of godlike freaks getting up to creative mischief to see what possibilities they can create?


and who created this creator?


when you really start thinking along these lines it completely does your head in because our pea-size brains find the concept of eternity difficult to comprehend.


Like you say 'raven3davis' I'ts a double edged sword, on the one hand Im glad certain substances have given me the brain lubrication to think about theoretical and mystical things, but sometimes I wish Id never bothered getting into psychedelics, and going through life not needing to question my existence would have been the best way

[nirvana]

read a brief history of time. its a great book, hawking takes
nothing for granted. i havent finished it yet, tho, so i dont know
what he concludes.

my thoughts are that there is not a god. it just seems too
improbable, too human, and too much like trying to give undue
meaning to our tiny, narcissistic existances.

the big bang, fine. maybe at that time, the tiny dense particle
was the parameter of infinity, maybe some energy shit started
expansion, and the same sort of thing gave earth atmosphere
and substance enough to provide life.

i am a nihilist. i dont believe in anything religious. not god, not
afterlife, nothing. some people hate this . . . but to me its
comforting that after i die its all over.

[Montgolfier]

I agree with you 'nirvana'in that I dont think there is a god in the traditional sense (an omnipresentbeing looking down on people andjudging their mistakes) - this is too human - a paranoid reaction to a troubled conscience.


But, I think you should try and keep your mind as fully open as possible on this subject. To simply say 'I am a nihilist' stops you being open to other possibilites.


I used to share the same opinion actually, that when I die thats it - nothing -and yes it is quite comforting and it makes you actually appreciate the time you have on earth more because you're not preocupied with the 'afterlife' like some people.


But then I realised a very simple but undeniable fact:


I just don't know. And neither does anyone else. No-one has come back from the dead and let us know what the score is.


So for that reason I have to accept that anything is possible.


For all I know when i die, a message will come up on the screen saying 'game over - please unplug your 'virtual earth' headset. Thanks for playing. - you scored 88% - would you like to try again? And i will realise that im just some highly advanced being on another planet playing some sophisticated role playing game, in which I played all the characters (unknowingly) for what seemed like 91 years, but in actual fact was only about 30 minutes!!


Ha!

[billyloner]

im not really sure what people mean when they say "think about creation and the begining of time and wonder how it all started, then try and imagine what happened before that"


explain to me how exactly something can happen before time, when the concept of something taking place before something else cannot be without time.


i do not believe in any god, one who created the universe by saying "let there be light" or otherwise. the universe is, and thats what i believe. the big bang created the universe and everything, including time. there is no 'before' the universe, no 'outside' the universe. the universe is everything.


this does not, however, rule out the possibility of other universes than our own. you might ask how can our universe be everything yet there may be something else? a very good question, and that is currently where im stuck.


none of what ive figured out may be correct, or all of it may be correct. its more likely to be the former, i admit. just my opinion though


i also agree with nirvana about the concwept of god being far too human. the idea of god seems, to me, to have arisen out of a fear of the unknown and a desire for everything to 'make sense' in a rational, human way. but im not sure that the universe would like to conform to our rules.


some people make the mistake of asking how the universe can be so well suited to humans and life in general, unless there is a god. the simple truth is that, without the universe being exactly as it is now, we would not be here to ask that question. if the universe was different, even slightly, we would not have developed the way we have developed, as we have developed in the universe as it is. but to say this 'perfection' prooves the existence of god seems to me to be blind faith.


im not really sure of any of this myself, you understand, and i dont think anybody ever will be sure of the nature of these things. i do, however, find it very interesting to think about and especially enjoy doing so when taking certain substances...

[Montgolfier]

Originally Posted by billyloner

explain to me how exactly something can happen before time, when the concept of something taking place before something else cannot be without time.

That's what Im talking about - the struggle to imagine eternity - it makes me uncomfortable - whatever god/religion/idealism you settle for cannot explain the fact that something happened 5 minutes before the start of it!!

[polloloco001]

i have been toying with the idea that perhaps various physical laws
were tested in an evolution type fashion until some that would work
came into being and triggered the big bang.

[Alfa]

All the sensations that we have are presented to us in a way that we can process and comprehend them. There is no perspective in reality, nor are objects still like we see them. Sound would become to overwhelming if we would become aware of everything we hear. Our psyche filters and arranges the imput we get. We are limited to the capabilities of our body and mind.


I think of time as a dimension, which we percieve chronological.Looking at altered states of consciousness,psychological disorders in particular, noteveryone percieves time as chronological. This leads me to think the chronological aspect of time is not an aspect of time, butthe way the psychearranges this imput. If time is not chronological of nature, then there is no beginning. Past & present co-exist.


BTW: God can not sit in heaven, if god is everywhere & everything. If god is everything, isn't that nature?

[Montgolfier]

Some really interesting points of view.


Does anyone have an answer to this question though:


Q) Why is there something rather than nothing?


To quote a chap called Wittgenstein:



"How extraordinary that anything should exist! My mind often seems to reel under the immense significance this question has for me. That anything exists at all does seem to me a matter for the deepest awe."








Edited by: MrCheese

[nirvana]

Originally Posted by MrCheese

That's what Im talking about - the struggle to
imagine eternity - it makes me uncomfortable* - whatever god/
religion/idealism you settle for cannot explain the fact that
something happened 5 minutes before the start of it!!


*


*

its really all about infinity . . . its so unimaginable. i feel like i
have a decent grasp of infinity and the expanding, spiraling
universe (i like godel's theory), and yet . . . it still catches me off-
guard occasionally and im just like "holy sh*t . . . and we think
were important!"

before the start of time, there were no five minutes with which to
measure it.

the lack of time is true nothing.

[oggy]

Smoke salvia and you'll see the the other side. This is not real time.

[oggy]

Originally Posted by MrCheese

Some really interesting points of view.


Does anyone have an answer to this question though:


Q) Why is there something rather than nothing?


To quote a chap called Wittgenstein:



"How extraordinary that anything should exist! My mind often seems to reel under the immense significance this question has for me. That anything exists at all does seem to me a matter for the deepest awe."

Nothing does not exist!! It cant, if there was nothing when you died then how are we here right now??

[Nagognog2]

"God is all powerful and can do anything. God created a weight that was too heavy for him to lift."

[Montgolfier]

Originally Posted by oggy

Smoke salvia and you'll see the the other side. This is not real time.

- Fully agree !!

[Montgolfier]

Nothing does not exist!! It cant, if there was nothing when you died then how are we here right now??

I don't understand the 'if there was nothing when you died' bit. I havnt died yet so how would I know?

[oggy]

But how come we're not at that part yet of the nothing then we wouldn't remember this and there for this never happend.


Or when you die and there is nothing at all not a thing to even think about then how is there something right now?


Argggggggg there cant be nothing it just doesn't make sense. Even when I smoked salvia there was still something even tho everything was not real and turned intonothing, nothing was still something.

[billyloner]

Originally Posted by MrCheese

That's what Im talking about - the struggle to imagine eternity - it makes me uncomfortable - whatever god/religion/idealism you settle for cannot explain the fact that something happened 5 minutes before the start of it!!

there was no time, therefore there was no before, and there will be no after. all that exists exists within the confines of the universe - and this includes the dimension of time.


time did not exist. nothing existed. as somebody pointed out, there was nothing. there was something. i cant even really say "there was nothing then there was something" because even this relies upon a cause / effect temporal relationship. if you know what i mean.


its like asking "what was life like on this planet before this planet was formed?" before this planet was formed there was no life on it and life was like nothing. except in this case one of them cannot occur without the other. but the universe is time, and time is the universe.


its very hard for me to explain my point of view when every explanation i think of requires me to say "before" the universe was created... i just hope i make a tiny bit of sense

[Montgolfier]

I think I understand what you mean. It's illogical to think about time 'before' or 'after' the universe (with its laws of physics/time etc) because there probably 'was/will be' no such thing as time 'before/after' things as we know it.


DAmn! Now Im even more confused thinking about infinity without the dimension of time! aggghhhhh!

[Solidly-here]

A body has to step through time one day at a time.


One part of being a Human Being, is that I am forced to live my life on the planet Earth. Here on Earth, time is a part of living. The Earth rotates every 24 hours in relation to the Sun. Each morning when I wake up, another Day has passed.


Then there is Eternity: the timeless existence. My mind (or soul, or heart) can step into Eternity. At this time, the whole concept of time is irrelevant. In the end, I must always step back into the reality of Time, but in the mean-time I can live outside of time.


When I meet someone I haven't seen for 20 years, I don't just meet him, I see (and feel) what I did the last time we met. I have gone back in time, and am re-living feelings and thoughts from deep in my past. When I regress to a former time, I have stepped out of reality. This is part of the Eternal.


Sometimes, when I look into the future, it becomes very clear. Now, whether or not it ever happens, it HAS happened to me already. This is a piece of the Eternal.


I don't know why people worry so much about the concept of time. Even if someone only lives to be 40 years old, it is so long, I could call it an eternity. Life is NOT short ... it's long. And thanks to time, clicking off a day at a time, I have some point of reference to have in common with my Human existence.


If anyone is unhappy living in the reality of time, just throw your calendar away. In a year or so, things will seem to change. Time will have a different feeling (and effect). The main problem with living off-the-calendar is that everyone else will still be addicted to it. But live in Eternity as often as possible.