The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #109595   Message #2293829
Posted By: Bill D
20-Mar-08 - 02:53 PM
Thread Name: BS: How Long Is Eternity
Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
Bee-dubya has made an important point. He notes that we toss out terms like "eternal life" when they don't really reflect what we know about physics & the universe.
One of the confusions in many 'beliefs' is that terminology is used which has no direct referent. We have an idea...like 'living a very long time', then combine it with a word like 'creator' (yes, that sorta means "god"). We end up with the idea of 'living forever with god.....but we have never seen or known how any of those things can exist or are done. We construct words--then assume that the 'thing' or situation we mean by the word really exists.
As Bee-dub indicates, 'time' is something that measures events happening to 'things'....no things, no time. So eternity in a realm without 'things' can't really be considered. (You might disagree...and several of you have...but you are just creating linguistic constructions and cannot really describe the object of your creation.)

I halfway expect someone to tell me that "just because I can't point to 'eternity' doesn't mean that my 'soul' can't go there to be 'with' my 'creator'"............well, I can't stop anyone from arranging words in any manner they choose, whether they have any idea what they mean or not.

so, my ∞ is at the same time meaningless and mathematically precise. Infinity to the infinityth is no bigger than plain infinity, but sure looks clever.
As the Pataphysicans say "God is the tangential point between zero and infinity"