07-10-2023, 01:36 PM
(07-10-2023, 01:12 PM)BengalYankee Wrote: Hi KillerGoose,
I am not going to twist myself in a puzzle to give you an answer, because I just don't know. Many religious "folks"[Pastors, Priests, Rabii's, etc] will spew their own comments. But again, I won't state I know the answer when I don't.
What I do know is that you have to have Faith. I have Faith in God and his plans. I don't understand all his plans and in some cases I don't agree with some of his plans, but even as a small child, his parents know best for him, like don't put your hand on the stove. A small child will want to put his hand on a stove, but woe the child when he does and it is hot.
Just like I said I don't understand God's "knowing" man would sin, let me ask you a set of questions.
1. If you went into space whether you were Superman or realistically in a spaceship and you went straight any direction in this case west. Time, fuel, food are not an issue, you just went one direction west, do you go forever in eternity? Do you eventually hit a wall? Do you eventually circle back to Earth?
Which brings me to the next question.
2. Since you don't believe in God when was the beginning of time? I assume you will say the Big Bang Theory? That is an explanation for this Universe, but what about the other multitudes of Universes? What preceded the Big Bang Theory? Nothing?
Something produced by nothing from nothing would, logically, have had to create itself. But if it created itself, it would have had to exist prior to its own creation, which means it must both exist and not exist at the same time and in the same way—an obvious contradiction and an utterly illogical conclusion. When the laws of logic are violated like this, reason and communication become meaningless.
In my humble opinion in the beginning there was always God.
Try to wrap around yourself and believe that. If not and you still believe in the Big Bang Theory, surely there was something before the Big Bang Theory and we do have multiple Universes[Multiverse]. See Marvel and DC[The Flash] movies for reference.
Try to explain #1 and #2 for me. I don't know, just like I don't know God's plans. For example, I don't know the end of time nor did Jesus.Jesus said, “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36; cf. Mark 13:32).
So when you ask a person, why did God do this or that know that you might not be getting the right answer.
I think these are great questions, and thanks for engaging in them. Just a note before I continue, I don't mean to be agitating with my questions. I know these conversations can be tense and I want to make sure that its known that my intention isn't to put you down for your beliefs or make you feel wrong. We just have opposing viewpoints, but these have also been genuine questions and not "gotchas" from my end.
I think the answer is "we don't know for sure" but it is very possible that you would continue going on for eternity, yes. The universe is expanding, and is expanding at faster than the speed of light. This doesn't violate our understanding of physics, either. Only physical objects are limited by light speed, but something like the universe is not. So, no matter how fast of a vehicle you make, you will never be able to travel faster than light or the universe itself. So, you will keep going for eternity. That is my understanding.
Time and space are interwoven - without space, there is no time. So, yes, the Big Bang would have been the beginning of time, or at least our timeline. The question that comes up often is "what was before" and of course, we don't know for sure. It is very possible that we will never know. One theory is that the universe may go in cycles of expansion and contraction. If this is true, then the universe would eventually stop expanding and begin contracting down to a singularity. At that point, it would explode again and start the process over. There are others but again, we have no idea. However, Stephen Hawking once made a comment on this very discussion that I found has sat with me over time. During a conversation of what preceded the Big Bang, Hawking replied "what is south of the South Pole?"
Well, the answer to that is "nothing". You can't go south from the south pole. You are at south. As I said earlier, time and space are interwoven. Without space, there is no time. The Big Bang theory asserts that before the universe, the entire universe was packed into a singularity that became so dense and hot, it exploded. We are able to see the remnants of that explosion in the cosmic background radiation. Anything that occurred before the Big Bang is simply undefined - time did not exist and we have no way of observing them. The universe was in a singularity, and it is possible that there was no beginning or creation of this singularity. Of course, it could also be that universes expand and contract. We don't know and may never know, but we do work to provide logical answers grounded in our understanding of physics. Using this method, we have been able to explain several previously unknown things about our universe. It has been effective, which is why we rely on it.
