I had written: It isn't eternal, since nothing is outside of "time".

Jun 23, 2012 -- 3:42PM, 57 wrote:

57:Now you seem to be talking in circles.  In your previous post you said..."No.  It never "just appeared".  It existed at the very beginning of time/change.  It never did not exist."

So, which is it?

Perhaps I should clarify the statement "It never did not exist", because I think its context, and therefore its intended meaning, is getting lost.

By that phrase, I'm simply reiterating that whatever existed at the beginning of time -- which I call the "cosmic egg" -- didn't appear out of nothingness.  It didn't fail to exist prior in time to its existence.  It doesn't exist in the same form now, but it is still with us in the sense that it has been changing, and what we see today is a product of that change.

What you should understand is that I don't see the universe as swimming in an ocean of time.  Rather, the universe is that ocean (of spacetime).  Time is simply a way of conceptualizing the change that is always happening.

So, the universe (by which I mean all of physical reality) is and has been changing, but it also has a start in the cosmic egg.  Imagine Doctor Who with his TARDIS, and he and his sexy but chaste companion have decided to travel back in time as far as they can.  What I am saying is that they will finally reach an earliest instant which they can't travel beyond, because there is no longer any time (that is, change) to go beyond.

What the Doctor would see at that first instant with his TARDIS isn't "nothingness", but rather the cosmic egg (an existing thing, not nothingness) already in the act of changing into something else.  Why is it changing?  Because the cosmic egg is "in time".  It is in its very nature to change, just as it is in the nature of the universe we see today to change.

So, the cosmic egg is not eternal in the sense of being out of time.  It is subject to time.  It doesn't exist in some infinite past.  It has a definite beginning to its change, and so it is a finite entity.  It isn't anything like what people tend to mean by the word "Eternal".

eudaimonia,

Mark

Jun 26, 2012 -- 5:44PM, wohali wrote:

Never did find out what a "deluted atheist" is...............

Ah, but we never cared. I doubt that we're going to be eaten up by curiosity.

Jun 26, 2012 -- 5:47PM, Ken wrote:

Jun 26, 2012 -- 5:44PM, wohali wrote:

Never did find out what a "deluted atheist" is...............

Ah, but we never cared. I doubt that we're going to be eaten up by curiosity.

I'm pretty sure it's just a misspelling of the mixture of 1 part atheist and 1 part water....

Jun 3, 2012 -- 7:34PM, 57 wrote:

I give you the motor protein

Please do tell us how this incredable machine came about by random chance. 

The fact that he's used the phrase ' came about by random chance' just makes it obvious to anyone that he still doesn't have a clue as to what the theories about abiogenesis or evolution state.

Jun 28, 2012 -- 7:41AM, Kwinters wrote:

Jun 3, 2012 -- 7:34PM, 57 wrote:

I give you the motor protein

Please do tell us how this incredable machine came about by random chance. 

The fact that he's used the phrase ' came about by random chance' just makes it obvious to anyone that he still doesn't have a clue as to what the theories about abiogenesis or evolution state.

Seems like Kwinters need to go back to school. 

Then again maybe she believes random chance wasn't involved in the formation of the motor protein.  Perhaps she believes God directed the mutation to the precise spot(s) required for the motor protein to function....and there was no chance mutation that occurred in just the right place at just the right time.