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To: Radix
I am better for it

More (if you really WANT to make yourself crazy...best when read in context of above, however):

"The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started - it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwood and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundaries or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

So...from zero...God creating a perpetual motion machine that has no creator.

My head hurts....

162 posted on 02/22/2007 8:23:58 PM PST by paulat (I'd rather vote for somebody WHO CAN ACTUALLY BE ELECTED...than somebody NOT....)
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To: paulat
...it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

As the old joke goes... God created time merely to keep everything from happening at once. :-)

But this business of timelessness is a problem for us, and I suspect it has much to do with our own limitations as time-dependent beings. If we stretch our imaginations we often entertain the idea of existence without end. That's not so hard, since we imagine the same self in perpetuity.

But it really fouls our senses to consider the concept of existence without a beginning. Mostly, I suppose, because we're so aware of our own beginning. Everything has to start someplace, or rather somewhen. Existence ~apart~ from time is a tough nut for us to crack. It's entirely possible that it is not something we are capable of describing.

194 posted on 02/22/2007 9:05:41 PM PST by Ramius ([sip])
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