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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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Can’t say, I think yes. Go ask an animist in Africa if his god speaks to him. He’ll say yes all day long. But going on my experience I’ve read two books of those types, the bible and the book of Buda. Although I didn’t finish it I did not hear God speak to me through the book of Buda. BTW, the Talmud doesn’t count, that is a practical commentary of the Torah and the Tanach. Look, the key to having God speak to you through something that is written is that it must be something he said, in spirit, not in English, Greek, or Hebrew, but the true living meaning behind it. In general it is true that whatever the spirit behind some sacred writing is, it will talk to you if you open yourself. You only need to ask yourself who that spirit is before you accept what you’ve received and call it a nugget of gold. And if you are to trust that spirit you should make that spirit pass a few tests first. The nature of the spirit will manifest itself usually in some form of feeling you can understand. If you feel fear, call it a spirit of fear. If you feel love, call it a spirit of love, or peace, or joy, or anxiety, etc. For me when had that experience the feeling was peace, joy and love with dynamic, excessive and over flowing power. It didn’t take me long to figure out that it was the spirit of this God I was reading about.
I’ve come to find that the spirit world is not something to be taken lightly. It is to be taken very seriously. It’s easy to get caught up into spiritual activity and be left without any clue as to what’s really happening, often by over analyzing or letting your head not your heart do the walking. Spirits can manipulate just like people can. Like Luke Skywalker sometimes you just have to trust your feelings. I don’t think that just any spiritual experience is redeeming of the truth. Guard yourself and don’t just rush headlong into something that seems even the least bit off. Chances are if you have some God experiences it will be different than mine, so other than be careful all I can say is good luck and may God bless you.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Ed wrote: "The big bang theory has the WHOLE universe coming into existence at a point in time. There is nothing else... no concept of what is "beyond" the universe, there is nothing "beyond" the universe."
Meaning there is no matter beyond the universe.
The problem with this "definitive beginning" is that it goes against what the great British math whizz and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead dug into with his postulation that nothing (not thing = matter) comes from nothing. Stuff doesn't somehow just show up from nowhere unless you start using nonsequiters like "infinately small," and so forth. Infinity is by definition "measueless," and "small" is a contrasting adjective relative to a dimensional perspective.
I'm fascinated by the idea that there never was a definitive beginning, and that the Big Bang is just one of an infinate number of such events in the matrix of infinity . . .
And Ed, my request that folks state some vague orientation before posting is not arbitrary, if by that you mean based on or determined by individual preference or convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic nature of something. First, I've found that what people WANT to beliee vastly influences their "objective" take on the discussions and the perspective they adopt when posting. If you WANT to believe "God" created, by fiat, all and everything, the post needs to be viewed in that light because the "evidence" presenetd will ivariably be skewed in that direction. If on the other hand you WANT to believe that the many and the one can be once and for all be educed to material stuff and material laws, then we should be aware that this is the orientation from which the person is working, and that the evidence will be skewed in that direction.
Basically it makes it much easier to get some kind of objctive take on where a person is coming from, and in turn, makes it easier to understand. It's all perspectives, afte all.
JL
JL
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 9, 2005 - 01:33pm PT
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Largo,
That is certainly one idea out there. But for now anyway, it isn't science since it doesn't seem to be testable. Another way of looking at it is to consider that not only space came from the big bang, but time did as well. In that case, there wouldn't have been a "before". An idea from mathematics that might help is to think of a curve that gets ever closer to zero without touching it. "Time=0" would, in this sense, be infinitely far away.
If our physics keeps getting better, we might be able to push back our understanding ever closer to the Big Bang without ever getting to "time=0". If that was so, the very early conditions of THIS universe might remain outside our theories, let alone a EARLIER universe.
But I couldn't say that this is a better idea than yours. We don't know.
I don't agree with your other idea. I'd rather consider what somebody is saying at this moment and not be tempted to just pigeon hole them based on where they say they are coming from.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Fingerlocks,
I'm not actually putting forth a theory, just tossing out some ideas. It's been 25 years but when I was grad student in Philosophy I had to take a stack of logic classes (didn't like them and wasn't much good at it either) but som of those ideas still stirr in my bean--so, phrases such as space and time "came from" the Big Bang are borderline hilarious. Aristotle struggled with the whole "first cause" or "efficient cause" thing thousands of years ago.
So far as time goes, in an infinate matrix time is, indeed, just an abstraction based on the flux of matter.
What I find most curious is that both "science" and fundamental bibilcal proponents seem hung up on the idea that there had to be a "start" to the whole thing, before which there was "nothing," or, in the absence of time, there was no "before." That sounds like magic to me, I don't believe in magic no matter how much fancy math is trotted out to "explain" how the universe suddenly appeared out of nowhere and from nothing at all.
JL
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Degaine
climber
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All this back and forth about the start of the universe and if there was a start, what was before that, etc., makes my brain wiggle inside my skull. Ditto for the "if the universe is finite, what is beyond that?"
Is time not a human construct? My dad always told me that there is no such thing as time, only change.
JL, do you know if the idea of a necssary "start" is a universal construct of all cultures/philosophies, or only part of western culture/religion/philosophy?
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WBraun
climber
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As confirmed by Vedic authority in reference to Largo’s point:
An important point is the creation is cyclic. Although this universe is created, it exists for some time and ultimately it will be destroyed, the cycle continues and another universe will be created, exist for some time and then be destroyed again. So the cycle is eternal and the material elements are eternal, they are conserved at the time of the destruction of one universe and the same elements are used for the creation of another universe. Also there is not just one universe. Everything we can see in the sky is within only one universe as there is a very thick outer covering of each universe so it is not possible for light to travel from one universe to another. Therefore, by our observations and experiments we can never detect these other universes. The only way we can know about them is if we get the information from someone who knows.
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WBraun
climber
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The well
The well is three-feet wide and the frog was born there and has spent all his life at the bottom of this well. To him that well is the universe and his senses cannot perceive anything beyond the well. So he tries to understand everything by relating it to his experience at the bottom of the well... So one day another frog hops into his well and says, "I have seen a vast mass of water. It is called the Atlantic Ocean." So our frog says, "Oh yes, is it twice as big as my well?" His friend goes on to say how vast the Atlantic Ocean is, but our frog can only think in terms of his well. To him his well is the entire universe, very important and big indeed... So he cannot even imagine such a vast expanse of water as the Atlantic Ocean. Our friends are no better off than the frog in the bottom of the well. Their view of the universe is no more expansive than the small circle of sky the frog can see out of the top of his well. Of course our Dr. Frog can look up into the sky and sometimes see blue sky, sometimes clouds, sometimes a black background with twinkling stars, and he can make so much science and philosophy to explain it all. But what use is such science and philosophy and what hope really has Dr. Frog got of actually stumbling on the truth?
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Ouch!
climber
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Werner, how long have you been involved in Hinduism? How did you come to it?
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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He's a ramblin for sure. Go climb something dude.
Thanks for your sentiments Lois, I certainly didn’t catch that from you. Maybe I was expecting a little from someone at least. Did you sense that? But like I said climbers in general are an open bunch, except for politics. Now if I had said GW was in my kitchen… would have been a newkya’ler meltdown.
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WBraun
climber
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How do you know I'm ramblin jay? I'm totaly backing you up and you are "thinking" something else is really happening.
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WBraun
climber
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Also
Jesus is an empowered incarnation (Saktyavesa Avatar) of God. His message is no different to the message of Vedas in the Bhagavada-gita, it is simply presented in a different way to a different audience.
20 years Ouch!
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Ouch!
climber
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Jay, if I get your drift, when you read something that strikes your fancy, is the writer speaking directly to you? Is that the same as revealed directly to you? For this to be the case, would not the writer have to have you in mind when he wrote it?
As for me being a smartass again. OK, I'll give you that.
Answer me this. What kind of benevolent savior would waste time curing your wife's nicotine habit instead of tending to millions of his children who are starving to death and being raped and tortured in Africa, the birthplace of Man?
If you want to have a god, fercrissakes! Don't trivialize him.
Insert here. Werner's frog in the well with his limited imagination.
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Ouch!
climber
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"20 years Ouch!"
Thanks, Werner.
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Jay
Trad climber
Fort Mill, SC
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Werner. I'm sorry, just trying to be sarcastic, didn't mean it harshly. I take it back.
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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"All this back and forth about the start of the universe and if there was a start, what was before that, etc., makes my brain wiggle inside my skull. Ditto for the "if the universe is finite, what is beyond that?"
Same here, but I sort of like the wiggling for some strange reason. Google "Before the Big Bang" and really get your wiggle on.
I wonder if the whole thing isn't a default position because you can't quantify infinity, which is measureless. I don't mention this to avoid the tough questions, it's just that the tough questions are invariably about matter and how it got here and all of those arguments dead end with -- nothing at all, or, Quantum Mechanic's "spontaneous" creations owing to "no cause or reasons at all."
JL
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 9, 2005 - 06:00pm PT
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Largo, none of these ideas makes it as science, at least not yet. There are several different ideas floating around that share your “cycles of universes” concept. Maybe somebody could someday come up with a way of a testing a theory based on one of those. Sounds tough. You would get a Nobel Prize no doubt. Maybe two.
I’m not hung up on having everything start at the Big Bang. I was just trying to show that there are respectable ideas that DO have everything including time and space start at the Big Bang. Aristotle was quite the dude, but he was also writing back when mathematics was quite new. We have mathematical stunts that the Greeks never dreamed of. If they had, they would have written a different philosophy. BTW, this is true of somebody even as recent as Kant. Kant takes Euclidian geometry and “normal” algebra for granted in his ideas about time and space. He wouldn’t do it like that if he knew modern mathematics.
All I was trying to do is give you a glimpse of a way in which there might not be a starting “point” for space or time even if there wasn’t a “beyond” or a “before”.
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Fingerlocks
Trad climber
where the climbin's good
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 9, 2005 - 06:22pm PT
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Another one to wiggle your brain, Largo. Have you run across the idea that the early universe might have created itself? It’s one of those quantum physics deals. Roughly, it goes like this: at very tiny distances in space—and maybe time too—there is “uncertainty” in position. (Actually uncertainty in position/momentum.) This is the Heisenburg uncertainty principle you have probably heard of. Well if time is uncertain like that too, then the teeny weeny early universe might have “jumped” or ‘tunneled” a teeny weeny way backwards in time to the point of origin. And, yup, become its own parent. A very clever notion, but it smacks around the idea that causes come before effects, doesn’t it?
More respectable is the idea that our "universe" began as a rapidly expanding bubble that occured at some point in a prior, bigger, universe that might have very different physical properties. And that a new "universe" could start somewhere in our own. And what came before the "universe" that founded our own? You will like this one Largo--it is turtles all the way down--why, another universe.
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Degaine
climber
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Fingerlocks,
To make sure I understand you in layman's terms:
The egg actually came before the chicken, but the chicken went back in time to create the egg due to the proximity of the chicken and the egg and certiain properties of the time/space continuum.
Is that about right?
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Ouch!
climber
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Is this chicken and egg thing leading up to Humpty Dumpty?
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Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
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Ah, the old concept that the world sets on the back of a huge tortoise. And below the huge T--well, it's turtles all the way down. Classic shite, that . . .
Funny thing is the way thoughts arise from nothing into consciousness and then vanish into nothingness is close to the way "worlds" seem to come from nothing and return to nothing again and again and again.
JL
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