The eternal, finite universe

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Just stumbled across this article:

newswise.com/articles/view/534609/

…which outlines a theory proposed by New Zealander Peter Lynds. The theory essentially states that the universe has been unceasingly cycling backwards and forwards between big bang and big crunch - thus obviating the need for a “beginning”, and supposedly overcoming the problem of violating the second law of thermodynamics.

I would be interested to see comments from those who are better versed in the laws of physics and the nature of time than I, but from a broader perspective, it increases the logical variables and presents another alternative to notions of a first cause.
 
I did not read the article but I total agree the “big bang” is the bang you are in. It is human arrogance which assumes anything which affects me, must affects all others. So every super nova is someone’s big bang but not necessarily our big bang. The difference is God plan is much bigger than we realize. In fact our dating system cannot measure God’s plan because of the recycling. So we measure when our last bang was but not when the universe was created.
 
Sair said:
Just stumbled across this article:

newswise.com/articles/view/534609/

I would be interested to see comments from those who are better versed in the laws of physics and the nature of time than I, but from a broader perspective, it increases the logical variables and presents another alternative to notions of a first cause.
Click to expand...
The idea of a cyclic universe has been around for a long time, and its no different then saying that there is an infinite past. Neither does the idea do away with explaining change. As soon as we attempt to explain change, we have no choice but to infer the existence of a first cause that exists outside of time.
 
The cyclic notion has to be called a conjecture, rather than a theory. While there is demonstrable evidence for a BB there is no evidence whatever for a BC. No doubt it is the atheist’s “dream scheme.”
 
Sair said:
Just stumbled across this article:

newswise.com/articles/view/534609/

…which outlines a theory proposed by New Zealander Peter Lynds. The theory essentially states that the universe has been unceasingly cycling backwards and forwards between big bang and big crunch - thus obviating the need for a “beginning”, and supposedly overcoming the problem of violating the second law of thermodynamics.

I would be interested to see comments from those who are better versed in the laws of physics and the nature of time than I, but from a broader perspective, it increases the logical variables and presents another alternative to notions of a first cause.
Click to expand...
I wish I understood what he is proposing as to what causes the reverse to happen in the first place, or why, if it has to repeat exactly the same each time, the search for why those parameters are set up is meaningless. I share your hope that some scientists on the forum can clarify.

But this to me is a very interesting part of the article:
Lynds says that the most profound implication of his theory is a purely philosophical one. “Although if properly taking into account what is happening in respect to time in the model, there are no past or future cycles of the universe, if the past and future are thought of in the regular way, with a meaningful differentiation being made between them, then the universe can be interpreted as repeating over, exactly, an infinite number of times. **As well as meaning that everything is determined and that our sense of having free will is an illusion, it also means that, when someone dies, many billions of years later, they will live their lives again. As a person would be dead and non-conscious during this period, however, for them anyway, such life after death might as well be immediate. **Furthermore, because the model means that all different times (those represented by a clock) share equal reality, as does the “block” view of time provided by general relativity, there is an equal sense in which a person is 1, 20, 60 or any other age they might reach. Lynds continues, “The prospect of having to repeat one’s life over may seem a disturbing prospect for some, but I do not think it should, as with no possible memory of any previous cycle, it might as well just be the once. Once, but with the additional consideration that, when one dies, it will not be final. I personally find genuine comfort in this idea.”
Click to expand...
 
Hmm… Fascinating. I recall reading the spiritual diary of someone many years ago. He was given to mystic experiences, and from some accounts they were accurate in terms of short term predictive ability. That is not to give credence to this particular vision, but it is of interest given the thread. Oh! I think it was Danion Brinkley, who has in fact come up with some very accurate predictions. I will check.

But for now, his experience regarding the Universe, as I recall it, was a journey out of human time into cosmic time. He was shown a vision of the Universe and the Entity showing him the picture said something like “This is the the time of Mankind: Here Mankind appears, and here Mankind disappears.” The picture of the Universe, he said, was pulsing. At each pulse the Entity said “Again this is the the time of Mankind: Here Mankind appears, and here Mankind disappears.” I don’t remember the rest of the dream, but that part stuck, for some reason.

But it makes me also think of the whole concept of “God’s Plan.” Given that any useful definition of eternity does not include duration, it would be likely, if this dream is true, that God is more another sort of Being than we might construe Him as Christians. Remember, Christianity is a very familial paradigm, and not inclusive, at least publicly, of certain factors of human experience. Understanding God as a Conscious Force of Love would simplify many dynamics that are in the Catholic religion requisit of very contorted explanations. All those explanations stem from a book and tradition that are themselves much more easily understood and consistent if taken within the larger historical context of the philosophy that has through the ages expessed itself in the other incarnation/salvation/resurrection myths.

Unfortunately that exegesis is taken as incindiary by many of those who think that The Catholic way of thinking about Jesus and God as distinct from direct knowledge, is the only “way.” Note I said “thinking” and “about.” Please know that I as well as you understand that there is God and that Jesus is His one and only begotten Son. But what that means to me is necessarily and radically different than the standard Catholic understanding. A different understanding of course would adjust the meaning of “soul” to something more akin to the Christian Science explanation, or to some Eastern and Western philosophers who might be loosly associated with the Perennial Philosophy. I think it might be good for Catholics to at least get over the notion that the christianist anthropomorphic god is the only way the the Deity is percieved, appreciated, loved, and adored. But that is another thread.

Such a pulsing Universe as some think exists, would also do away with the limited and semantically problematic need for a “Cause.” If God IS, then it would make sense that Universe IS as God’s mind and body. It would not have to have a “beginning” or an “end” but only an ongoing activity appearing as time. This fits with what are now indeed some theories that postulate at least three varietieds of parallel or concurrent Universes as part of an “Omniverse.” That “Omniverse” or “Megaverse” they say is obscured from our sight due to the nature and qualities of the Big Bang and current cosomolgical epoch of our own Universe as we see it from our "speck"ulative per"speck"tive.

Even our, I would guess very primitive, understanding of phyiscs tells us that time is an experiential illusion and that all time exists simultaneously. Our physics also cannot include the dynamic of the theoretical end of the Universe as we see it today, that time when even electrons are torn appart by the expansion of space as that would not, in our curreetn form, be observable. But who knows?
 
The idea of a “first cause” does not rule out an eternal universe, and vice versa. Even if the universe has no beginning, its existence still requires a cause.
 
Here’s a thought about “cause.” We speak a language that is gramatically structured sequentially as subject-verb-object. Even sci-fi writers know that this is a convention of description that is inaccurate. The Universe is in fact not fundamentally sequential in the way our limited senses and ideations percieve it. EG, RA Heinlein says, correctly, that “In English only the first person singular, present tense, of the verb ‘to be’ is true to fact.” Physics and and philosophies tend to support this.

We also know that in human languages, there are many that are not s-v-o and more dependent on the verb function thatn on the illusory acceptance of nouns as things. In some, Navajo, eg, there is not properly a part of speech identifialble as a "noun,’ because their speech includes the way a thing comes from and is dependent on other things and reverts to something else. We, as English speakers, are looking a at very very little bit of time and space through a very selective lens. Test it out for yourself.

Things do not of themselves have a discreet existance. It is all or nothing in all eleven (12, really I’m guessing, due to a suspected proceedural ommision) dimensions, of which we can only percieve and move in four or five, as far as most of us are concerned. The noted physicist David Bohm actually proposed a modification of English called “Rheomode” which would allow a closer approximation of speech and thinking in English to the wolrd of actuality. That means in simple words that English is not designed to reflect the nature of Reality with any other than an immediate and parochial perception of what things *appear *to be for a moment. This means that our thinking from the start, due to the nature of the lens of our language and grammar, is limited and inaccurate. How much moreso might it be inaccurate in matters pertaining to our experience of God? I know at least one other interpretation of the identity statements in the Bible that is comensurate with experience and a larger philosophical inclusivity than Catholicism. You don’t have to change he words one iota and the can have an entirely different experiential referent than is commonly understood. Heck, even on the verbal level there are over three hundred denominationally different interpretations as real to the proponents of those as the proponents of Catholicism, whatever the claims of originality the Church might put forth. That is not a slam, it is just something that needs to be accounted for in the scheme of thing by other than self referential tradition and teaching.

We can consider the implications of this and modify our perceptions and understanding to account for this and other defects in our perceptual tools, or we can ignore them. We can be like the farmer a century ago who denied that there was a steam engin in front of him because it was “Impossible!” Or a better example, we can be like the woman who wouldn’t learn another language in a time of need because “God writ the Bible in English, and that’s good enough for me!”
 
Detales said:
Such a pulsing Universe as some think exists, would also do away with the limited and semantically problematic need for a “Cause.”
Click to expand...
Detales; what do you think of this?..

Ultimate Existence, the eternal esse, the ground of all being, is by its very nature, an “expression” of being; for to be, is to express being. Therefore time is eternally present in being and is expressed from all eternity. Thus time is naturally and eternally present so long as there is such a thing as being. In other words, Gods mere being creates time and all logically possible things. Which means, so far as God is expression in itself, God causes time to exist simply by existing as being. And since Being is eternal, time must be infinite.

I’m not saying that i endorse this idea, since i don’t think infinite time, in-so-far as regression in to the past, is a reasonable concept. Its just an idea I’m playing around with.
 
Detales said:
Here’s a thought about “cause.” We speak a language that is gramatically structured sequentially as subject-verb-object. Even sci-fi writers know that this is a convention of description that is inaccurate. The Universe is in fact not fundamentally sequential in the way our limited senses and ideations percieve it. EG, RA Heinlein says, correctly, that “In English only the first person singular, present tense, of the verb ‘to be’ is true to fact.” Physics and and philosophies tend to support this.

We also know that in human languages, there are many that are not s-v-o and more dependent on the verb function thatn on the illusory acceptance of nouns as things. In some, Navajo, eg, there is not properly a part of speech identifialble as a "noun,’ because their speech includes the way a thing comes from and is dependent on other things and reverts to something else. We, as English speakers, are looking a at very very little bit of time and space through a very selective lens. Test it out for yourself.

Things do not of themselves have a discreet existance. It is all or nothing in all eleven (12, really I’m guessing, due to a suspected proceedural ommision) dimensions, of which we can only percieve and move in four or five, as far as most of us are concerned. The noted physicist David Bohm actually proposed a modification of English called “Rheomode” which would allow a closer approximation of speech and thinking in English to the wolrd of actuality. That means in simple words that English is not designed to reflect the nature of Reality with any other than an immediate and parochial perception of what things *appear *to be for a moment. This means that our thinking from the start, due to the nature of the lens of our language and grammar, is limited and inaccurate. How much moreso might it be inaccurate in matters pertaining to our experience of God? I know at least one other interpretation of the identity statements in the Bible that is comensurate with experience and a larger philosophical inclusivity than Catholicism. You don’t have to change he words one iota and the can have an entirely different experiential referent than is commonly understood. Heck, even on the verbal level there are over three hundred denominationally different interpretations as real to the proponents of those as the proponents of Catholicism, whatever the claims of originality the Church might put forth. That is not a slam, it is just something that needs to be accounted for in the scheme of thing by other than self referential tradition and teaching.

We can consider the implications of this and modify our perceptions and understanding to account for this and other defects in our perceptual tools, or we can ignore them. We can be like the farmer a century ago who denied that there was a steam engin in front of him because it was “Impossible!” Or a better example, we can be like the woman who wouldn’t learn another language in a time of need because “God writ the Bible in English, and that’s good enough for me!”
Click to expand...
The idea of a “first cause” does not rule out an eternal universe, and vice versa. Even if the universe has no beginning, its existence still requires a cause.
 
Does Eternality require a cause? Does God require a cause? If not, and the Universe is One with God, " ‘I’ and the Father are One," then why does the universe require a cause?

IOW, Cpayne, your last statement is exactly an example of what i was describing about English as an inadequatre modality for consideratioons about Reality.
 
Detales said:
Does Eternality require a cause? Does God require a cause? If not, and the Universe is One with God,
Click to expand...
Who said the universe is one with God?
Detales said:
" ‘I’ and the Father are One," then why does the universe require a cause?
Click to expand...
Anything which changes needs an explanation for that change. Something that is timeless, perfect and is one with the nature that is existence, has the explanation for its self, in its self.
 
Iamnotafraid said:
How do you know that this is true? Can your premise be tested, is it falsifiable?
Click to expand...
And thus you prove my point, thanks but I did not need the confirmation. Just a few hints to help you :
  1. The best proven knowledge of man is: Man lacks knowledge
  2. Proof is ultimately faith. Sorry as I know you do not want to believe that yet, but it is true. An apple falls from the tree why? Is it strong electromagnitic force? or weak electromagnetic force? maybe neither, what did Newton say? Oh man has known things fall yet he lacks knowledge of why. So he has a real ***faith things will fall ***but clearly lacks knowledge of why, and yet he has had all human history to figure out why things fall. So knowing some things as apples fall but other things as stars, and the moon do not fall does not equal much knowledge at all.
Hope that helps
 
Texas_Roofer said:
And thus you prove my point, thanks but I did not need the confirmation. Just a few hints to help you :
  1. The best proven knowledge of man is: Man lacks knowledge
  2. Proof is ultimately faith. Sorry as I know you do not want to believe that yet, but it is true. An apple falls from the tree why? Is it strong electromagnitic force? or weak electromagnetic force? maybe neither, what did Newton say? Oh man has known things fall yet he lacks knowledge of why. So he has a real ***faith things will fall ***but clearly lacks knowledge of why, and yet he has had all human history to figure out why things fall. So knowing some things as apples fall but other things as stars, and the moon do not fall does not equal much knowledge at all.
Hope that helps
Click to expand...
It doesn’t, I don’t know what your talking about and quite frankly, I suspect that you also don’t know what it is that your talking about.
 
Iamnotafraid said:
Why then do you insist that the universe requires a cause, yet your God does not?
Click to expand...
wouldn’t that be because the universe is with in nature (thus the laws of physics apply) while God is outside nature and thus not bound to natural laws?

Btw a body at rest will remain at rest until acted upon, a body in motion will remain in motion until acted upon
 
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