There is not a hotter topic than this as can be see from reading comments of Internet articles concerning the existence of God, or the creation of this world and our lives. And not only a hot topic but very controversial to the point of name calling and outright insults slung back and forth between those submitting comments. The general degradation of the quality of comments appears to occur between the rabid creationists and the equally rabid atheists. The argument goes something like this: Atheist - if it can't be observed and measured it don't exist or, God only exists for the those afraid of death and the need for an afterlife to assuage their fear. Creationist - The bible says its so, so God exists and He created the world and you can't observe a spiritual being with the implements of this world. Faith is the answer. And many other arguments that are too numerous to list here, and besides these arguments on both sides of the aisle may eventually prove to be useless and misleading.
I believe in order to find the truth we must ask the right questions. And in order to ask the right questions, or at least questions we hope are right, we must use a bit of logic to find a basis of reality so we are not asking questions that pertain to effects rather than causes.
To begin, we must agree on something or else we can go on forever disagreeing. What we need is absolute truths, absolutes which we must all believe to be true no matter our persuasion. Without a basis of absoluteness we can never expect to arrive at a truth because of one of the laws of this world. This law is the law that says we are all able to individually perceive, and as such, we can then perceive differently no matter what we are perceiving. As an example: One person can perceive President Obama as God's gift to the presidency where another can perceive him as Satan's gift to the destruction of the United States. Why one chooses to perceive President Obama as one or the other is the subject of another blog, but I do hope you get my point. To emphasize the law of perception we only have to observe how many different Christian churches there are that each has a slightly different slant on Christianity and the way it should be followed and practiced. How many philosophy and psychology schools of belief are there? How often are scientific discoveries poo-pawed by other scientist that have taken a different view of how things work? So do we have any absolutes?
Let us consider eternity and infinity. Do these things exist? Now if we ask this question from our world view we have great difficulty grasping the concept of either of them because we live in a world where time and distance exists. Time and distance exists because we are able to observe and apply measurements to the things we observe, such as the length of our foot, the height of our bodies, the time it takes to go from point A to point B, or the years of our lives. We of course had to invent the symbols and language of mathematics and time to apply these measurements, such as feet, meters, seconds, minutes, years, etc. What symbols do we apply to infinity and eternity? With the exception of the infinite symbol used in mathematics (an 8 laying on its side) there is no such thing as a measurement of either infinity or eternity. Why? Because you cannot measure either one. In an infinite universe there is nothing to measure from and to, and in an eternal universe there is no beginning and no ending event to be timed. And in an eternal and infinite universe we can say all points are at the center and all times are now.
And we cannot observe either property and as such cannot apply a measurement. Does this mean they do not exist? And if they do not exist then our universe is finite and it has a beginning and an end. This argument fits with our world view of time and distance, but this puts us in a quandary. If our universe is both finite and not eternal that means there is something outside of this universe. If so, then again we are faced with conceiving there is no end to that something that is out there. Can we then say there there was never nothing and then suddenly there was something? This would defy logic and our current understanding of matter and energy. Something cannot come from nothing!
So can we agree there has always been something? If you cannot agree then continuing to read this blog will be a terrible waste of your time. But if you do agree or you are at least willing to consider there has always been something, then read on.
If there has always been something then we can logically deduce eternity is real and absolute, for what could be more absolute than eternity? As for infinity, we apply the same logic. There is no such thing as nothing so there can be no beginning and no end to the universe. Thus infinity is real and absolute. So we have just come to establish two things that we cannot observe. And if we accept these two things as real and absolute, then we can say they are truths, and absolute truths at that. But this too presents another quandary because this flies in the face of science and the scientific process. These are two items that we cannot observe, measure, quantify, etc. But without an absolute we do not have a basis to establish a truth, for without an absolute basis all arguments can only exist in the moment (time) and are susceptible to change as changes occur in what we observe. And we can all agree that change is real and observable in this universe. So science, using time and distance and all the measurements within a finite and limited universe are making these measurements without an absolute basis. Time and space are not absolutes and are creations from our observations, thus our scientific processes are only applicable to what we can observe, quantify, measure, etc.
However could we base our observations on the unobservable that has no applicable language or symbols? We do this by accepting the reality of infinity and eternity even though we cannot prove their existence because they fit very well into our mathematical equations. Actually, our math does not work without accepting their reality. How could we accept the laws of thermodynamics in that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed without accepting that matter and energy have always been here and will always exist - even though we cannot prove this. We accept this theory because it fits with our observations of matter and energy and the language and symbols we invented to measure the two.
