Is anything eternal?

[raeanna74]

I believe the definition of Entropy is technically "a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work"
For a reminder the first and second law of thermodynamics is
1. The total energy of a system and its surroundings is conserved. In other words it energy cannot be created or destroyed.
2. The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. Or in other words The energy in a certain system becomes more "unusable" and dispersed over time.

This does not prove or disprove the existence of God and I believe it is truely impossible to do either. There are only two options in my mind -
1. God eternal. God created the universe or created the elements needed to start the evolutionary process.
2. Energy is eternal. Energy as we know it has always existed and was there to begin the evolutionary process.

I have a hard time believing that every 'law of physics' that our galaxy seems to be based on were null and void before our universe and will be so once again when our universe dies. Something had to start the process. If you want to go back to a big bang. Then where in the cosmos did the big bang begin. I have even heard that there once was another universe that imploded and our universe evolved from the energy left from that one. So where did that one come from? Either God or Energy are eternal - which is it? Or what is it that is eternal?

[Sweetpea]

Interesting topic and well thought out Raeanna.

I don't know if i believe in the idea of 'God' but i do believe in the idea of energy. It must have had an impetuous at some point, but now remains something that is self-renewing.

To me, the idea of energy in the world is eternal.
In the sense that it recycles, it begins, builds, ends and then renews... starting all over again, repeating in the universe over and over.

that is our physical life cycle... we start at Zero... and then we return to Zero in the end.

that is the cycle of learning a lesson, that is the cycle of having an emotion, a thought, that is the cycle of an action.


sweetpea

[Zyr]

People keep starting topics that cover areas of a theory I'm currently working on.

Anyway, as far as eternity goes, why can't it go back to the big bang? People have theorised that the big bang started from the implosion of a previous universe, which started from the implosion of a previous universe, etc.

Also, if the previous universe was the same as ours, as in, we are repeating the same thing over and over, the net energy loss/gain is zero.

"But it had to start somewhere" I hear you say. So God must have started it, being eternal, he was there before. But when did he start? If you can believe he has always been there, why can't the universe have always been?

Something else to consider, is that while you may ask "What was before the universe?", a better question might be "If the universe didn't exist, would there even be a 'before', or any concept of time?".

[meembo]

"Either God or Energy are eternal - which is it? Or what is it that is eternal?"

That's the mother of all scientific and philosophical questions, wouldn't you agree?

I think something eternal would be something absolutely true. Something eternal suggests a pinnacle of knowledge or understanding, reduced more and more to something beyond scientific inquiry. It would be a kind of knowledge unto itself that could never be wrong in any instance. Science moves in this direction. Science wants proof to demonstrate validity, and your question is a great expression of that. In the context of your question -- philosophical, with questions involving God -- I ask what your underlying assumptions are, especially since you stated your two options as essentially "God" and "Energy". Do you consider these options mutually exclusive?

Scientific inquiry in a philosophical context ("What is eternal?") is a near-perfect human question, IMO, in that it stretches both our intellect and our beliefs in the assumptions we make underlying the search for what is eternal or true. Intellect and belief work together to push scientific discovery to new places and levels. Human nature needs to sort what we see into meaningful understanding -- that is, science -- but the problem is that we as humans keep looking for and encountering and discovering new things. With telescopes and microscopes, for example, we discover more and more dimensions of "Energy", as you called it, both bigger and smaller than our grandparents ever imagined it to be.

This is not new to humankind, either. For instance, the laws of thermodynamics you quoted were first stated only about 150 years ago. In general terms, scientists developed those laws as engineers first started building engines, and discovered the principles of tranferring energy. Engines and industry transformed human life a great deal. Until then, almost all humans lived a subsistence existence, and now you and I type to each other on computers in our homes. It's no wonder that these laws of thermodynamics are now considered scientific bedrock, considering what that understanding has provided for us.

These laws are not universal in their usefulness, however. Sub-atomic physics are full of theoretical things that are inferred but not outright proven. Is this science or philosophy? Are things such as quarks and string theory valid, true (even as their proponents clearly state that there existence cannot be "proven") or are strings and quarks fanciful scientific belief? Are these things (and our understanding of them today) true and eternal?

The laws of thermodynamics are valid and true inasmuch as we understand what we see today. That does not make them eternal. Furthermore, Big Bang and evolution are perfectly useful ideas that serve a scientific purpose today that is valid for us us today. I believe in them myself. None of that makes them eternally valid either.

And what about the things we discover in the next five or ten or fifty years? Is it possible for us to understand anything true or eternal today, scientifically or not, when we clearly KNOW that we DON'T KNOW so very much scientifically? The Earth and the humans on it are much smaller today in relevance to the universe as we now know it than humans were to their world a thousand years ago, where their part of the world was essentially all that existed to them. How can we be closer to the truth of our universe if the idea of a universe is new and without limit?

I say that assumptions we make as scientific bedrock ("laws") serve a perfectly useful purpose, as long as we don't make the assumption that what we know today is perfect or unchanging, or eternal. Hubris is "excessive pride... a comparison of the self to the divine, the gods, or other higher powers". Humans are full of hubris, and throughout history we have repeatedly conviced ourselves that we understand enough to know the "truth". The human race has done this politically and scientifically and religiously over and over throughout recorded history.

Here's where "God" comes in, as I understand it. God can be understood in part as a euphemism for an order or validity of things we believe but can't see or prove. In no way do I mean to imply that there is anything invalid about these assumptions, and it's pointless to deny that the scientific world uses these assumptions every day. Gravity, a force that every child understands, defies all attempts for science to reduce it to simpler physics. We understand it when we see it, and we assume it's presence throughout the universe, but we don't know what the attractive forces are between an apple and the ground, and between the earth and the sun. God then becomes one part of the explanation of what we see -- if nothing else, a metaphor for the belief in the existence of a truth and an order and a possible understanding of what we see. This belief in God doesn't take the place of a scientific understanding, nor does it dictate the direction of scientific inquiry. God represents the the bridge between appreciating our existence in our world as people and understanding and explaining it scientifically. I believe that kind of faith is absolutely essential to all scientific progress.

You say "I have a hard time believing that every 'law of physics' that our galaxy seems to be based on were null and void before our universe and will be so once again when our universe dies." Then you ask what is eternal. I say that something truly eternal is God-like, an ultimate, unassailable truth. No human will ever shake hands with God. No scientist can ever explain everything in "eternal" terms, because we don't have minds that organize thought that way. We can't really imagine what "eternal" means, philosophically and scientifically. We see beginnings and ends, literally and metaphorically, all through our lives, and we want to apply that framework to everything else out there in the universe.

I think science works much better on a smaller scale, moving step by step in small, logical progressions. The world and the universe are uncovered slowly. Slower explanations always help me understand! If there is something eternal for us to know, scientifically or otherwise, I believe we certainly aren't capable of knowing it, but we are driven by our belief in it.

[raeanna74]

I guess what I'm getting at is that either you believe that somewhere SOMETHING came from nothing or you believe that something is eternal. I have yet to meet someone who believes that ANYTHING at all can be formed from nothing. SOooo that means that all those people who I've met, whether they believe in God or universal consciousness, or are atheist they must have faith that there was something that began the universe or that it has always been and in that case perhaps it will always be. I guess the more I think about it, one either has to have the faith that something out there is eternal OR that something was formed from absolute vacuum/nothingness. Which do you choose? Or do we just ignore this concept and close our minds to what the possible beginnings were for our existence?

[RedbeardUH]

There is an overwhelming argument that the quantum world produces SOMETHING from NOTHING. Like out of nothing comes an electron and a positron. They pop up out of nowhere (that we know of) and zoom about and collide into each other and disappeare. This keeps in line with the 1st law of thermodynamics.

It seems that the best evidence science produces is that the quantum world can indeed produce something from nothing. Of course, this could merely be a limit of our science.

[Ch'i]

Great topic, it's one I've thought about from time to time as well.

I guess the real question you should be asking yourself is what you believe in.

[Zar]

I agree that this is a great topic. Personally, I don't believe in a God, as the origins of most of today's organized religions seem to be rooted in human machination and power-mongering, from what I've gleaned from my studies (Council of Nicea anyone?) Also, science continues to steadily chip away at much of what we used to use religion to explain to us.

So, personally, it's a question of what physical process caused the universe to be as it presents itself today. And, as said above, we're a long way from fully explaining that process. Science doesn't definitively know why the universe came from nothing, or what was around before that, or a lot of the answers to the big questions. It may get there in time, or it may not.

Sometimes I get the feeling, that when we try to answer these deep, underlying questions, that we're sort of like ants trying to do calculus, despite our big old brains.

Nevertheless, the attempt to at least define and ponder these questions does seem worthwhile.

Going purely from my gut instinct, I'd say that no, nothing is eternal. I believe that, somehow, something did originate out of nothing. I (and no one else, to my knowledge) can scientifically prove how this happened. The current scientific evidence points to the universe continuing to expand infinitely and eventually completely succumbing to entropy, so that all that's left is a lot of far-flung, lifeless material. But I'm no authority . I'd say no one really is, but some are more than others.

[Ch'i]

A new idea just occurred to me. I was thinking about the idea of reincarnation, and then a statement from one of my favorite shows Battlestar Galactica "This has all happened before, this will all happen again.", and how my dad accused me of thinking non-linear.

What if the timeline of our universe' existence is not linear, but circular.
What if, speaking linearly, the first "big bang" was the result of the final "big crunch"?

It seems odd that something can just "be" without cause, but why not? It's not like we've done this before...? I think the greatest break-throughs in science and philosophy come when a person extends his/her thinking beyond that of what they inherently believe about the reality in which they are surrounded; If I never heard, saw, or felt water move, then how would I know it could?

[Willravel]

Ch'i, you're talking about the theory of the symetrical big bang. The idea is that the big crunch brings everything back together, the big bang happens, stars form, planets, etc., then the big crunch happens the exact same way it happened before. Each big bang is exactly the same, down to the subatomic level. This means that all variables are predeterminable and this also means that there are no alternate dimentions or timelines, even in the possible case of time travel and time augmentation.

I consider it the most boring of the big bang based theories. It's the Billy Crystal of the big bang theory world.

[Ch'i]

I consider it the most boring of the big bang based theories. It's the Billy Crystal of the big bang theory world.

Maybe we could try role reversals?

[Mantus]

Or what is it that is eternal?

Indeed.

We have a subjective concpet - eternity. Then we create a subjective concept (beginning of the universe or God) to explain that subjective concept. Then we add subjective qualities to the subjective concepts explaining the subjective concept we started with.

Yet no one has ever experienced eternity...so what's the big deal?

[Ch'i]

Isn't the very definition of subjective subjective? Subjecting a subjective thought to this subject has subjugated my beliefs, however subjective they might be. We can be so subjunctive in our subtlety sometimes.

Subjoin: Meant not as an insult.

[Mantus]

Whoa! Someone who is posting at my hour. Nice. High five!

About what you wrote. I guess my answer is that I experience a subjective thought. So I feel fine with that. My beef is with association between subjective concepts to form complex systems that dont actually exist and then treating them as if they are something improtant.

I suppose the distinction between scientific thought and philosophical thought is that scientific thought has a type of gold standard. For each scientific concept and metaphor there is an experienced phenomenon. In philosophy we can just keep stacking subjective concepts to infinity. The reason philosphy is of intrest to me is because sometimes we actually manage to reach the solid ground of experience by way of our metaphisical travels.

Did that make sense?

[Dissociated]

I believe things are eternal, but its a dimension we are unable to comprehend. Say for example there was a creature who could only understand 2d. It walks around the entire earth and ends up where it started. It would have a hard time understanding how that works. Similar to our understanding of time which some people think of as the fourth dimesion.

[little_tippler]

I'm not sure - like most of us I guess. I think that a lot of the time, we try to explain and catalogue too much. Everything has to fit in a place and have a name. In our minds, because of all the laws and rules we are taught, there is no sense in not making any sense. It makes no sense to us that before or after, or time, as another poster said, could ever not exist. Because that would be a void. And what is void? Non-existence? Well non-existence would mean not thinking. And if we can't think it, then it can't exist, so we try and find other ways of making sense out of it. Eternity is one way. Parallel universes, endless cycles of repetition are others. Or even a universe within a universe within a universe...

I'd like it if eternity existed. It makes me shudder to think about nothingness, non-existence. And yet I have always felt in myself that I am more an atheist than anything else.

[Ch'i]

Energy and matter are eternal, as far as we know.

[Kensei]

Originally Posted by raeanna74

I believe the definition of Entropy is technically "a quantitative measure of the amount of thermal energy not available to do work"
For a reminder the first and second law of thermodynamics is
1. The total energy of a system and its surroundings is conserved. In other words it energy cannot be created or destroyed.
2. The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value. Or in other words The energy in a certain system becomes more "unusable" and dispersed over time.

This does not prove or disprove the existence of God and I believe it is truely impossible to do either. There are only two options in my mind -
1. God eternal. God created the universe or created the elements needed to start the evolutionary process.
2. Energy is eternal. Energy as we know it has always existed and was there to begin the evolutionary process.

I have a hard time believing that every 'law of physics' that our galaxy seems to be based on were null and void before our universe and will be so once again when our universe dies. Something had to start the process. If you want to go back to a big bang. Then where in the cosmos did the big bang begin. I have even heard that there once was another universe that imploded and our universe evolved from the energy left from that one. So where did that one come from? Either God or Energy are eternal - which is it? Or what is it that is eternal?

Hmm, I would have to say that you won't ever now the answers to these questions until you die, and perhaps not even then. Best not to worry about it.

I think that looking for the definitive answer is a mistake anyhow, you learn so much more by asking the question, and then another, and another.