In The Beginning...

by Blueblades 17 Replies latest jw friends

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  BurnTheShips

  Now think of our 3D reality existing within a 4D hypersphere where time is a fifth orthogonal direction. And think of East as cause and West as effect. If time wraps around the hypersphere, then any individual line of causality will meet its (Eastern) "cause" if it traces its effects down the 'Westward' line, and will meet its (Western) "effects" if it traces its causes down the 'Eastward' line.

  A number of cultures have had a cyclical (rather than linear) view of Time.

  Maybe we still think the Earth is flat.

  BTS
• 

  BurnTheShips

  Does an end have a beginning........and a beginning have an end? ....ooooooh deep!

  Maybe every beginning is another beginning's end. Oooooh! BTS
• 

  DJK

  I think the last guy to start a book that way had no reliable documentation to quote from.
• 

  Narkissos

  @ DJK:

  "But ah! Despite my will, it stands confessed,
  Contentment welleth up no longer in my breast.
  Yet wherefore must the stream, alas, so soon be dry,
  That we once more athirst should lie?
  Full oft this sad experience hath been mine;
  Nathless the want admits of compensation;
  For things above the earth we learn to pine,
  Our spirits yearn for revelation,
  Which nowhere burns with purer beauty blent,
  
  Than here in the New Testament.
  To ope the ancient text an impulse strong
  Impels me, and its sacred lore,
  With honest purpose to explore,
  And render into my loved German tongue.
  (He opens a volume, and applies himself to it.)
  'Tis writ, "In the beginning was the Word!"
  I pause, perplex'd! Who now will help afford?
  I cannot the mere Word so highly prize;
  I must translate it otherwise,
  If by the spirit guided as I read.
  "In the beginning was the Sense!" Take heed,
  The import of this primal sentence weigh,
  Lest thy too hasty pen be led astray!
  Is force creative then of Sense the dower?
  "In the beginning was the Power!"
  Thus should it stand: yet, while the line I trace.
  A something warns me, once more to efface.
  The spirit aids! from anxious scruples freed,
  I write, "In the beginning was the Deed!"

  Goethe, Faust.
• 

  Kenneson

  Maybe this is the end of the beginning instead of the beginning of the end.
• 

  rmt1

  Don't know / can't tell if anyone is actually bothered by the unsearchableness of the first springs, but here's how I'm not bothered: My cathexis or emotional attachment to the question approaches the horizontal asymptope of zero (x-axis) as the logarithmic scale of what may have passed before us grows beyond my immediate comprehension.
  
  Eg. An oscillating model of universal Big Bang and Big Crunch, universe after sequential universe, does not present any conceptual problems other than the question of when and how it began. So this model is a little too comprehensible and so I have mental energy left over to be bothered.
  
  Eg. A serial Big Bang model where a new universe erupts out of the cold head-dead dissipated state of the previous, is also sort of a blossoming idea, very comprehensible, and causes the same problem.
  
  Eg. A parallel Big Bang model, where there are multiple universes forming simultaneously as bubbles in a higher-dimensional foam- now that's a little hard to get around, because it requires a spatial relationship between universes with Hubble expansion throughout. It's an annoying model so I don't give it too much concern.
  
  Eg. A Copenhegan multi-universe by itself doesn't answer the when how of the beginning. But a multi-universe that is the result of a collision between two higher dimensional branes (membranes, but 4th dimensional) starts to wear down my concern about beginnings pretty quick.
  
  To sum: I hope to think I have some rudimentary assessment about how unspeakably insignificant I am in comparison to what's out there, that the emotional attachment of my observing 'I don't know where the beginning is' approaches zero, and indeed the emotional attachment of the question begins to approach zero, so that I don't ask it.
• 

  quietlyleaving

  that text from Faust is very relevant to us xjws because of our destabilised condition and also because of the human desire to see things in a fixed absolute state rather than in a fluid state of becoming. Goethe was ahead of his time imo.
• 

  Blueblades

  Most of us are awash with beliefs of all sorts. We are steeped in the common sense and prevailing wisdom of our culture, traditions, communities, profession, family, and friends. Because belief is very personal for each of us, a discussion of belief and knowledge comes from many different directions.

  Blueblades