BS: How Long Is Eternity

Subject: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Beer
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:27 PM

A very, very,very long time ago, about 50 years past. I was on the Alter when our Priest gave a talk about Eternity. Now as a youngster we are all marker with certain thing that we just don't forget. Well here is what he said.

"A butterfly flies around the world ever tenth year and lightly brushes the rock of Gibraltar. When the rock has finally worn down. Eternity would have just begun". Then he got into hell and all the suffering and all that. Any provocative thoughts?
Beer (adrien)

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:33 PM

Dang. There was a song I heard about 45 years ago that dealt with that theme. It was about a mountain and how a bird (?) came every now and then, rubbed its beak on it and wore the mountain away and that was but a trice in the grand scheme of what eternity was. I can hear the melody in my head but cannot get enough words of the song to Google and locatye it. HELP!

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:35 PM

The guitarist/singer did it in D, and it went from D to C, back to D. HELP!!! I'm gonna be awake in five hours thinking about this. I am an old man. I need rest.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Beer
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:36 PM

Wonder if my Guru stole it from the song.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:36 PM

It was done by a duet in the ZigZag basket house in NYC back in 1964/5. Girl and guy. The guy played guitar.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Beer
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:38 PM

go go go go man , you'll get it.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:39 PM

Song Title: Land of Oden
Song:
In the land of Oden,
there lies a mountain,
Ten thousand miles, in the air
From edge to edge
This mountain measures,
Ten thousand miles square

A little bird comes a winging
Once every thousand years or so
Sharpens its beak on teh mountain
And then he swiftly flies away

And when this mountain
has worn away
that in eternity will be
But one single day.

In the land of Oden,
There lies a mountain
Ten thousand miles in the air
In the air
In the air.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:39 PM

That isn't exactly the lyrics they sung, but it's close. Dang.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:43 PM

In the land of Odin there stands a mountain

One thousand miles in the air

From edge to edge this mountain measures

One thousand miles square

A little bird comes awinging once every million years or so

To shapen it's beak on this mountain

Then it quickly disappears

For another million years

Thus when this mountain is all worn away

This of eternity will be one single day

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:46 PM

That isn't it exactly, either, but it's close. OK. Now I can go sleep. I hope.

It's possible they did an arrangement to make things scan a bit better. Seems it's an Australian song, but I ain't too sure about that, either. Ad, thanks for reminding me about this. It was a great song, and they ssang it so well they always got good baskets. The guy was named Gene (I think) but I don't recall the gal's name. Old age ain't all that great, but it is better than the alternative.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Beer
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 11:56 PM

You sleep well but i will be wondering in my thoughts if my Priest was.....Oh1, what the hell, it doesn't matter anymore. it was a great speech then and I never will forget it. Even if he borrower it.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST,jack the Sailor
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 12:00 AM

>>"A butterfly flies around the world ever tenth year and lightly brushes the rock of Gibraltar. When the rock has finally worn down. Eternity would have just begun". Then he got into hell and all the suffering and all that. Any provocative thoughts?<<

My thought was, "that is one durable butterfly."

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 12:02 AM

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: katlaughing
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 12:30 AM

Found these, pretty much the same, posted HERE, apparently a camp memories type site. Also found the same lyrics at another songbook site, along with some other songs which I remember my sister singing in Girl Scouts. Here ya go fwiw:

Odin

In the land of Odin,
there is a mountain,
one thousand miles in the air.
From edge to edge,
this mountain measures,
one thousand miles square.

A little bird comes a winging
once every million years or so.
Sharpens his beak on the mountain,
and then he quickly disappears.

And when this mountain,
has worn away
this to eternity shall seem,
but one single day.

In the Land of Odin,
there stands a mountain,
one thousand miles in the air, in the air.

Because a friend tells her baby girl the legend of Odin and sings this song to help her fall asleep. -Larken

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Janie
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 12:33 AM

Eternity is about 2 minutes long when you are 6 months pregnant, gotta pee, and there is no bush or bathroom in sight.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:34 AM

"Lord, how long is etrnity to you, in Your Greatness?"

"But a second."


"Lord, what does a billion dollars in human wealth seem like to You?"

"Like a penny."

"Lord, would you give me a penny??"


"Sure -- in a second..."

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: open mike
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:45 AM

it is almost as long as infinity is large--
0nly always one more second..or inch or....

infinity is to space as eternity is to time...

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Slag
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:50 AM

Eternity isn't looooong. No. Eternity is.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:57 AM

"How Long Is Eternity"

About siz inches...

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 05:10 AM

The priest was of course wrong. Eternity would not even have begun, in fact it can never begin, or at least if it can begin, you're always at the beginning. You can't have a hundredth of infinity.

Most of these paradoxes are simply the result of lazy thinking, substituting "ages and ages" for eternity, and "lots and lots" for infinity.

What happens when an irresponsible force meets an immoral object?

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Megan L
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 05:15 AM

drat and here wis me thought it wis the day after the twelth o never

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 05:55 AM

It sounds like the sort of priest, who was trying to bully and scare people into compliance with his own patriarchal heirarchy. He sounds like the sort of prat, who makes atheism look so profoundly appealing.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Slag
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 06:28 AM

"When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time will be no more..."

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: bobad
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 07:16 AM

"Judas pointed down the road
And said, "Eternity!"
"Eternity?" said Frankie Lee,
With a voice as cold as ice.
"That's right," said Judas Priest, "Eternity,
Though you might call it 'Paradise.'"

BD

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 07:40 AM

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

Auguries of Innocence
William Blake

Always reminds me of the film Endless Night (from the book by Agatha Christie) with Hywel Bennett, Hayley Mills, Britt Ekland.

Every night and every morn,
Some to misery are born,
Every morn and every night,
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.

Auguries of Innocence
William Blake

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: jacqui.c
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 08:08 AM

Those are the sort of questions that kept me from sleep as a child. I stopped myself trying to work that one out after a while. Too scary!

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: John O'L
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 08:09 AM

When I was very little, back in the 1950s, my dad had a book which I think was called The History of the World or something equally ambitious, and I can't remember who wrote it, if I ever knew. Anyway I loved the foreword, and committed it to memory:

High in the north in the land called Svithjod there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every hundred years a bird comes to the rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have gone by.

That's it, word perfect, after all this time.
Not eternity, granted, but the rock must be getting noticably smaller by now.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 09:33 AM

Bruce: Thread on Land of Oden, with some talk of its past.

Eternity doesn't baffle me as much as where the universe ends does. Maybe it's because I don't really understand time anyway, but I think I've got a pretty good concept of space.

We think the stars are forever, because our own lives are so short in comparison. If a butterfly thought, it might just look at us as eternal beings. They don't think about things like that though. I'm pretty sure they just flit around all day looking for nectar or a butterfly with reciprocal parts to make more little butterflies. Except they probably don't know it makes more butterflies, it's just something that feels right at the time, sorta like what happens with humans after a few beers. Butterflies just come by it naturally.

They also try to not get eaten by birds. They probably don't think about things like reincarnation or afterlives or anything else that complicated. I'll bet they don't much like the idea of being eaten by a bird though. I don't think they worry at all though. They just flee. They flit, they flee, and they mate.

Humans are both blessed and cursed with the ability to think big thoughts. The world is a place of infinite mystery and beauty when we can imagine what butterflies think. It's can be a scary place when we imagine tomorrow and being eaten by birds and knowing forever will keep going on without us Butterflies have it easy.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST, Sminky
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 09:50 AM

On a variation of "If a tree falls in the forest....."

If we all got vapourized by a rogue comet - is that the end of eternity?

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Amos
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 09:52 AM

I think the reason it is a baffling thought to some is because it violates common sense, but more importantly they have been pointed in the wrong direction to consider eternity -- as though it could be conceived by piling all you can see "out there" on top of itself over and over to endlessness.

The right direction for the discovery of eternity is within. Relatively speaking.



A

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:01 AM

Kat, your find is closer by a long shot than any of mine. Thank you.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bobert
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:04 AM

Waitin' for doctors to call back...

...or the "12th of Never", whichever comes last...

B

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:13 AM

Jeri: Thanks for that link. I was unaware that it had been recorded at all.

Peter and Gordon? Whoa.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: john f weldon
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:27 AM

Geez, you folks can come up with a dreary topic, especially for those of us who are not that young, and would have to start doing a heck of a lot of Good in the few remaining years to make up for the sins of the past.

The trouble with eternity, is that even Heaven would seem like Hell if it goes on long enough. If Heaven is perfect, then it can't change, and if it stays the same, no matter how jolly, it will become mighty dreary after a few aeons.

So I'm planning to come back as an otter. They seem to have fun.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bill D
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:32 AM

∞^∞

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bert
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:42 AM

Eternity isn't long it's WIDE.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Becca72
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:45 AM

John O'L....wouldn't be H.G. Wells, would it? I believe I have a copy somewhere

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bee
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 10:48 AM

Me, I'm just shocked to find out those weird rumours the other kids told me about Catholics may have been right! Beer: you were on the altar while the priest sermonized!?! %o

Damn, maybe those kids were right about where babies came from, too.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Beer
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 11:00 AM

Yes I was there. For to long maybe. But even though he scare the heck out of us, he was a good person if you get the drift. But lets not go there as this thread is not about the wrongs of the church and some of their their teachings but about eternity.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Jeri
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 11:11 AM

Hey - cool! Bill made butterflies!

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bert
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 11:17 AM

Nice one Jeri.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bee
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 11:21 AM

Beer, I was teasing, about the visual implied by your 'on the altar' phrase, as opposed to 'attending' or assisting', and had no intention of bringing up rights or wrongs. Sorry it didn't come across.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Beer
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 12:21 PM

I guess my response didn't come across well either. I didn't take it as any personal dig. I also found your post funny.
All the best on the last day of winter.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:09 PM

"butterflies" hmppff!

^►☺^◄

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST,Bill D
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:11 PM

Ooops...wrong browser.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:26 PM

"What happens when an irresponsible force meets an immoral object?"

You get the President and Vice President of the USA.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:29 PM

Forever and a Day

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 01:37 PM

Immeasurable.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Joe Offer
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 02:08 PM

It would be interesting to collect all the stories that attempt to tell the length of eternity (which, as Little Hawk says, is immeasurable). The "Land of Oden" description is particularly good, and I think that's more-or-less the one I heard in catechism class - to define how long heaven would last. Our Wisconsin Dominican nuns didn't dwell on hell very much. They assumed we were all going to heaven.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 02:11 PM

size doesn't matter

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: john f weldon
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 02:56 PM

Well, Beer....
You are on a bus heading to scout camp. The scoutmaster suggests you all sing about the the number of bottles of beer on the wall.

Infinity bottles of beer on the wall
Infinity bottles of beer
If one of these bottles should happen to fall, there's
Infinity bottles of beer on the wall.

etc till the beer is gone.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST,a
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 03:14 PM

butterfly = psyche = soul

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Beer
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 03:30 PM

john,
Sounds like a bus I'd like to be on. Not going to scout camp though.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 03:44 PM

12th of never Megan? That's a long long time!

G

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 05:22 PM

From the www.

The shepherd boy

The brothers Grimm


There was once on a time a shepherd boy whose fame spread far and wide because of the wise answers which he gave to every question. The King of the country heard of it likewise, but did not believe it, and sent for the boy. Then he said to him, "If thou canst give me an answer to three questions which I will ask thee, I will look on thee as my own child, and thou shalt dwell with me in my royal palace." The boy said, "What are the three questions?" The King said, "The first is, how many drops of water are there in the ocean?" The shepherd boy answered, "Lord King, if you will have all the rivers on earth dammed up so that not a single drop runs from them into the sea until I have counted it, I will tell you how many drops there are in the sea." The King said, "The next question is, how many stars are there in the sky?" The shepherd boy said, "Give me a great sheet of white paper," and then he made so many fine points on it with a pen that they could scarcely be seen, and it was all but impossible to count them; any one who looked at them would have lost his sight. Then he said, "There are as many stars in the sky as there are points on the paper; just count them." But no one was able to do it. The King said, "The third question is, how many seconds of time are there in eternity." Then said the shepherd boy, "In Lower Pomerania is the Diamond Mountain, which is two miles and a half high, two miles and a half wide, and two miles and a half in depth; every hundred years a little bird comes and sharpens its beak on it, and when the whole mountain is worn away by this, then the first second of eternity will be over."
The King said, "Thou hast answered the three questions like a wise man, and shalt henceforth dwell with me in my royal palace, and I will regard thee as my own child."


END

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Slag
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 05:48 PM

Elder abuse! (re the previous.

A traveling ad man who makes those endless infomercials was on the road and needed a room to spend the night. All the hotels and motels in town were full up but one night clerk told him him just might get a room at the Infinite Inn out along the edge of town. Ok, says the fellow and he pulls up to the rather spacious parking lot and goes inside. "Sorry" says the clerk! "Though we have an infinite number of rooms, everyone of them is occupied!" The adman thinks a little bit and being familiar with endlessness he proposes "If you will but ask the guest in the first room to move just one door down and have that guest do the same and so on, everything will work out just fine and we'll all have a room." Which he did.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST,Appaloosa Lady
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 06:29 PM

A voice from eternity, from Youtube (somewhat muffled, but then eternity is a long way away)

In The Land of Oden

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 08:29 PM

Eternity is at least five times longer than your whanger will ever get even if you take all the Viagra and other crap like that which I am being emailed about daily in my bulk email folder!

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: meself
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 08:38 PM

Not quite eternity, but ... When I was in grade 7 or 8, our geography teacher one afternoon drew a line with a piece of chalk, starting at one end of a black board, going the full length of that black board, which was the length of one wall, then continued on to the blackboard on the next wall, and went almost the full length of that black board, stopping just a few inches from the end. "If that line represents the age of the universe", he said, "then the length of time man has existed is this little bit of chalk at the very end of that line."

That made quite an impression on me.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 08:56 PM

I always hated geography - how much rice is there china, where do you find millstone grit, what is an escarpment, draw a stevenson screen, where are the Urals, what do they grow in Artois and Picardy, how is an artesian well formed.........

you can see how a geography teacher might be quite comfortable with the idea of infinity. every thirty five minute lesson seemed to bear some relation to infinity.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 09:06 PM

I loved geography. I used to draw maps of foreign countries (copying from the Atlas) when I was a kid just for my own satisfaction, and I would colour in all the various geographical features and topography. This just proves, once again, Weelittledrummer, what a truly disastrous course you are on in life. ;-) I bet you don't even like chimps either.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Rapparee
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 09:16 PM

Eternity is the period between when you start the colonoscopy prep and when you actually get the damned thing over with.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 19 Mar 08 - 09:18 PM

I thought that was marriage....

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Slag
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 02:04 AM

How much is infinity? OK, in what direction? There are, after all, an infinite number of directions. But let's just take the standard number line in one direction only, zero to infinity, whole integers. There you have a prime (no, no! Not the infinite list of prime numbers; just prime as in "excellent") example of infinity. Let's take half of the numbers away: take all the odd numbers away. Now how many do you have? Ah, an infinite number! In fact now you have two infinite lists of numbers!!!? Did we just double infinity? Take every third number from both list. Two more infinite lists of numbers. This is getting to be like the Wizard's assistant and all those marching broomsticks! Take every forth number from each of those lists. In fact you can do this forever and have an infinite number of infinite lists. Oh what fun.

When you do applied mathematics it gets a little different. When you go toward the very smallest division in physics you reach the Planck number. Things are so iffy here that they can exist and not exist at the same time or if they exist they exist as a probability only and can be located at any point in the Universe. String theory can possibly take us tinier still but, well, they're working on it.

In the other direction IS the Universe. Again, we don't know. This month's Astronomy Magazine has an artist's conception of what the theoretical Universe may be shaped like but again, it's just theory. Our sense amplifiers, you know, telescopes and such, are able to perceive about 13 billion light years in any one direction so that gives us a ball about 26 billion lys in diameter. The only trouble is, is that the things we see out there and their behavior leads scientists to believe there is more, much more, beyond our current ability to sense.

It is these infinities that give scientists and especially theoretical physicists fits! Too many infinities. They are all looking for the lost chord which will resolve everything and make a neat package of the whole deal. Good luck!

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 03:24 AM

My wife is a devotee of the Monkey World tv show. We even went there on a day trip.

At least chimps are unacquainted with any of the Childe Ballads, which makes them a higher form of life in my book. You don't see them playing any of those bloody jigs and reels either. Never met one chimp that voted tory either - what's not to like?

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: PoppaGator
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 03:39 AM

Eternity is NOW, by the way, lest anyone forget.

Folks often get confused and think about eternity as being in the future. But it's neither past nor future, it's always now.

The tricky part is maintaining any awareness that such is the case.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 05:03 AM

So that's the answer to Beer's original post. Eternity hasn't got a length, just as infinity hasn't got a size. Only time and other finite things can be measured. It also means that people who think they "contemplate the infinite" are just fooling themselves.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Beer
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 07:26 AM

Well said PMB.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 12:49 PM

You show more insight into the merits of chimps than I had expected, Weelittledrummer. Good on you, mate. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 01:00 PM

"Now the bricks lay on Grand Street
Where the neon madmen climb.
They all fall there so perfectly,
It all seems so well timed.
An' here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice.
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
To be stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again."

Gospel of Bob

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Peace
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 01:12 PM

BTW, if you want to know how long eternity really is, spend a day in a government office and try to get a question answered.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: MMario
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 01:18 PM

Eternity is slightly shorter then the length of time a relative can embaress you.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 02:11 PM

From a physical standpoint:

Physicists and cosmologists tell us that time and matter came into being simultaneously at the moment of the Big Bang. Therefore, time in our universe is not infinite in both directions. One can go in the direction of the future for an infinite length, but in the direction of the past one can only go to the point of the Big Bang. Nothing existed before then, time included.

Of course, that presupposes an open and infinitely expanding universe, not a closed universe which will eventually contract back upon itself. If the universe is a closed system which expands and contracts in cycles, then our Big Bang could be one of an infinite number of Big Bangs. In that case, it could be said that time is essentially a closed loop. It's created at the Big Bang, ceases to exist when the universe once again collapses into a singularity at the Big Crunch, and is created anew with the next Big Bang.

From a metaphysical standpoint:

I really hate it when eternity is spoken of in a religious or spiritual context. Eternity is a measure of an infinite amount of linear time. Linear time is a feature of our physical universe. To speak of any state of being outside our physical universe as "eternal" is to say that said state of being is defined or constrained by linear time. There's a logical inconsistency there. Any state of being that exists independently of the physical universe must also exist independently of linear time. It would not merely exist within time unto eternity, it would exist outside of time altogether. There's a big difference, and when I hear some preacher at a funeral going on about "eternal life" I always wonder whether he's thought about the matter as deeply as he pretends to have.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 02:15 PM

The preacher is probably just saying what he hopes will make the relatives and friends of the deceased feel a little better, Bee-Dub. He's thereby fullfilling one of the requirements of his vocation.

Then again, he may genuinely believe that there is a living soul which survives death endures beyond our measure of time. And who is to say that there is not?

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 02:53 PM

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"

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 03:40 PM

...he may genuinely believe that there is a living soul which survives death endures beyond our measure of time. And who is to say that there is not?

I'm totally open to the idea of some aspect of our "selves" enduring beyond our deaths. I just think it would exist in a state where there is no "time". Saying that it exists "eternally" is a bit of a cop out. It's more than eternal, it's timeless.

I will grant, though, that explaining the concept of one's "soul" going to "live" in "eternity" is much easier for most people to grasp than the more mystical idea that some aspect of our consciousness returns to a place where there is no time, never has been, and never will be. I'm sure my grandmother would never have understood it.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 03:46 PM

Both "eternity" and "infinity" are essentially concepts without referents. The concepts can be useful in mathematical terms, or I suppose philosophical terms, but the moment one tries to visualize them, or compare them with anything in real existence, the result is nonsensical. They are meaningless except in mathematical or theoretical philosophical terms.

Put another way, "eternity" is not a time or a length of time, and "infinity" is neither a place, a direction, nor a measurement.

All of which means that we are wasting our time, which is sort of real, discussing some "things" which are not things. No thing. Nothing.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 03:53 PM

"I just think it would ....exist in a state where....."

*grin*... and poor me cannot imagine what "existing" in a "state" might even mean with no spatio-temporal referents.

(And if I read correctly, Uncle Dave agrees with me. That oughta settle it!))

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 04:05 PM

Ir remember Big Bang's Banjo Band - so long since I heard them, it seems like an eternity....

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 04:11 PM

Are we "wasting our time" discussing such things, Dave?

So what? And in whose opinion?

We might just as well be wasting our time worrying about who is going to win the next baseball game or what the neighbour said about whatever...

Everyone has a perfect right to waste their own time in whatever way suits them, seems to me. If it doesn't seem like a "waste" to them, who cares what someone else thinks about it?

I don't necessarily think of it as "living forever with God", Bill. I don't know much about that, and wouldn't claim to. What I think of it as is simply continuing to have a conscious existence, but not in my present body, that's all. Maybe not in a body at all. If so, it would be a great way to lose some unwanted pounds, wouldn't it? ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: frogprince
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 05:45 PM

In the land of Odon, there is a mountain a thousand miles high. Once every millenium, a fly lands on the plain beneath the mountain, and poops. When the pile of fly poop has buried the mountain, all of the people that Christians failed to evangelize will have no less time to suffer in eternal hellfire...

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 06:14 PM

I suppose in a realm like that 'weight' would be as strange a concept as "having a conscious existance, but not in a body" is to me now...*grin* I can say the words, but I simply cannot figger out how it might work.

Maybe in my...ummmm...'next incarnation'..., I'll have those 6th & 7th senses installed!

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: John O'L
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 09:13 PM

I don't see the problem. We are committed to eternity and infinity. There is really no alternative. Even if there is nothing but cold black void outside the material universe, it must necessarily go on endlessly, and must have done so since forever and will continue to do so for always.

How long is eternity? How big is infinity? There can be no such question, or at least no satisfactory answer. In eternity and infinity time and size are meaningless.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 09:25 PM

I disagree.

I think its probably quite nice beyond infinity - a bit like Skegness on a nice day.

I'll have a strawberry ice cream and get a ticket for Bob Dylan playing a small folk club. Having spent the day looking out to sea, eating fish and chips, and drinking cups of Yorkshire tea.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 09:35 PM

You can't go beyond infinity.   But I'll agree with you 100% on that Dylan concert in a small folk place...back in '64/65/66. Yup, that would do it for me. Just perfect.

I'd also go for a similar show by Buffy Sainte-Marie same general time period or Al Stewart just a few years later.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Slag
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 11:33 PM

Infinity to a mathematician is like a Black Hole, a drain for ratios which don't quite factor out, endlessly. A Black Hole is, perhaps, an endless gravity well which devours everything within it's reach. Many problems are raised here about the creation and destruction of matter and the ultimate fate of the known universe. One of the problems is that any matter accelerated towards its center reaches relativistic speeds and to the outside observer it should never reach the center. The matter/observer would see everything as "normal" since space itself and all it contains is being accelerated at the same speed.

Time may not be linear and may not "be" at all. Time, in the most simple concept is a measure of motion, a comparative interval between events. As such it is really a measurement of kinetic energy, a condition of being, since the word "being" implies a time interval. The moment passed is inaccessible to us and the future can be anticipated in varying degrees but, it too, is inaccessible and yet when two conscious minds approach each other the inaccessible past events of each are future events of the other.

Perhaps we ride the crest of a very thin wave of being. "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. (Rev. 21:4, 5)

Ex nihilo, there's a good term used by certain religions and in the sacred halls of physics alike. "In the Beginning God ( who is no thing) created..." and In the beginning there was nothing and then something! Like the number line I mentioned above, it had a starting point. Seems the universe also had a starting point, ZERO! Or is that anthropomorphizing just a bit? I mean, after all WE have starting points as individuals. Life itself had a starting point. We can anticipate an ending point but so far we are still going. Interesting. Are we part and parcel of the material universe? If so then the universe, in it's own way did make watches. Lot's of them and spit them out right here on good old Earth. Seems the universe HAS a mind! OUR'S! ITS!

How long is eternity? Well, right now it seems to be about, maybe, 30 billion Earth passages around the Sun, given our present day speed in said orbit. Were there other "creations"? Why not! If it happened once it could have happened before. Maybe a trillion, trillion, trillion to the ten trillionth power times before. What was the interval between creations? Unknown and unknowable. Will it happen again? Possible yes! Possibly the same number of time and more. If "probability" is not just a product of this particular creation but of all creation, this Universe could be recreated over and over again in exact reproduction as well as every possible variation and position from the atomic scale of things to the cosmic scale of things, given probability. You all may have a hard time wrapping your mind around the concept of God. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around such probability. Which is harder to believe. Take your choice, that is, if such a choice isn't a predetermined consequence of the order of the universe.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 10:44 AM

Slag commented:

Were there other "creations"? Why not! If it happened once it could have happened before.

Slag, you're "begging the question"--that is, reasoning in a circle.

"Happened before" is a time concept, which is part of this "creation" (if one wants to use that word) or "universe". "Before" this universe is a contradiction in terms.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 11:01 AM

As John pointed out, the question that named this thread is illogical and self-contradictory. Where is the end of unendingness? I dunno...doh! What is the last date in forever? C'mon... this is just mental maundering. One of favorite skippers used to callit "Mopery and dopery on the high seas." He would levy it as a charge against people who committed stupid mistakes on board, like dropping blocks overboard or mixing diesel fuel into the pancake batter.


A

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 11:41 AM

Yes, it's comparable to the foolishness of a man trying, with might and with main, to pick up a small table that he is standing on. ;-)

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: meself
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 11:50 AM

"when two conscious minds approach each other the inaccessible past events of each are future events of the other."

Hunh? Does that mean if I meet you, I'll start going backwards through your life and end up the baby you? Or do I suddenly become the baby you, then go forward through your life up to our meeting? Sounds, as we used to say, 'pretty trippy'.

How Long is a Chinaman, by the way. I mean, an east Asian.

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 12:00 PM

Whereas How Tall is a Native American?

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 12:13 PM

And Howe Green and Howe Bigg are ordinary WASP Midwesterners (one liberal and one conservative)?

Subject: RE: BS: How Long Is Eternity
From: Slag
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 08:07 PM

Yes Unka Dave! It is begging the question! And semantics and a certain problem with common speech. But We aren't going to get into the real nitty on this because we don't have the time, do we? Maybe we could just list bibliographies as arguments and rebuttals! If nothing exists "before" the universe, "before" doesn't exist either! Indeed, we cannot reasonably discuss "before existence" and so you could reasonably state that the universe has "always" existed.

And if LH would quit holding DOWN the table, I think I could get it off the ground! It's a great image but it doesn't apply to the field of philosophy. Or sophistry!

Meself, I would refer you to Arthur S. Eddington's "Time" in "The Nature of the Physical World" London, Cambridge University Press 1930, pp 36-62. complete with diagrams. In part, You, represented by a little circle at the center of a piece of paper, a vertical and a horizontal line passing through you to the edges of the paper. The upper vertical line is your future, the lower, your past. The horizontal line is your "now line" all the events you can perceive as you are "here now". Because objects and true events beyond your immediate sense receptors are subject to the universal speed limit (186,282 miles per second) need to draw a "seen now" line which angles back ever so slightly from your "now" line. The farther away the object is, the longer the delay in sensing it. This is to say, you sense it some time after the event as it's light reflection or source event takes that interval to reach you. This is very pronounced in the field of astronomy. We are just now receiving light from events tens of thousands and even billions of years ago!

So, imagine another person approaching your diagram from a different angle. At the moment you meet you are essentially at the same zero point so you share the center position but this other person's "now line" extends beyond your now line on one side and hasn't reached your "now line" on the other! He has the potential of having already experienced events that have not yet happened to you yet. That is his untouchable past is part of your flux future! And vice verse! That is a real brief outline of Eddington's argument. It is interesting reading and I highly recommend it to you.

It kind of reminds me of a short Sci-Fi story I read once (sorry, I can't recall the author) about a fellow sitting back in his lawn chair when a big flash of light strikes him and a man appears out of nowhere (or perhaps "Elsewhere" which is what the left and right side of your diagram represents!). The visitor staggers over and introduces himself and proclaims that he is a time-traveler from the past. In fact he is THE time traveler from the past for he is the first and probably the only one to ever succeed in the endeavor. He says "Of course there was a plus or minus factor about being able to achieve such a goal. The risks were great. There was a possibility that what I did could have destroyed the entire world of my time."

"Well, do you think it was worth the risk?" asks the Lawnchair guy. "Oh, I think it was. At least I have vindicated my theory." replies the Time traveler.

"Uh, from how far in the past did you come?" asks Lawnchair guy.

The Time traveler looks at his watch and say "Oh, from about fifteen minutes ago."

"It wasn't worth it." replies the Lawnchair guy. "Here, have a beer."