Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Louis VI]

Time is a concept of things that have a beginning. If there was always matter, why would there need to be spontaneous creation? Isn't spontaneous creation the same trap as the thought that somebody must have made it? What do we lose by just assuming that matter always existed, that it's time that is limited? You'd have thought Einstein would have freed us from thinking of space and time as fixed and eternal and immutable when in fact time is relative and limited, and it's the substances of the universe, in singular and/or multiplicity of forms that exists. The real question is what stiumulates and starts change, the conversion of matter from one form to another, and this is easy to answer if you start with the assumption that things are in flux. So to summarize:

Which belief is least absurd?

a) Creation by a Sentient Being
b) The Big Bang
c) The timeless nature of things

[geldedgoat]

[Fox]

[Sergio Stefanuto]

Prof Hawking apparently said:

[geldedgoat]

[Leon]

[Fox]

[The Happy Warrior]

[Louis VI]

We have watches and count numbers and call that time. Yet when on holiday in beautiful tropical settings the only time we keep is by the movement of the sun, as the weather and the sea and the resort can seem pretty constant in their movements. Now imagine the sun didn't set or rise, then of what purpose would talk of time have? What sense would sentences including it provide if it made no difference? One could try to take a transcendent perspective, to talk from outside of it, and say time has stopped or continues nonetheless because of what happens outside of that place, and that is what we so often do. It is satisfying to say someone created the universe and simply not ask who created the one who created things. Yet why stop there? Who or what created the one who created things and who or what created that thing or person? It's turtles all the way down, as the saying goes. In the very question about the beginning of all things is the assumption that there is a beginning, and the moment one contemplates the possibility that there was no beginning, just a constancy of things in various forms transforming, then the search for origins loses its grip and indeed sense. Similarly, you can believe that something came out of nothing because that answers the question of origin. Any answer is better than no answer at all, some would say. But perhaps, just perhaps, we are being silly when we think we are being deep, that we are projecting the conditions of our life onto the things of the universe: the beginning and end of all things instead of the transformation and flux of things in all sorts of forms.