Eternity and the Concept of Infinity

Our minds have evolved to grasp concepts that are commonplace in the natural (biological) world. Things like contemplating moving at the speed of light, the size and the age of the Universe, the size of atoms... have all, of course, not been relevant until very recently.

I also find this interesting. But I think it's a more reasonable attitude. My guess is that infinity in time sounds like a good idea when you compare it to 30-40 years because the brain automatically translates this to "much longer than 30-40 years", i.e., a time frame it can still just about grasp. When you try and struggle to go further, the concept becomes more haunting.

This looks to me like a lot of words without any substance.

Nothing but wishful thinking on your part.

Who knows? There is no reason to think that it does and all evidence so far points to consciousness arising from brain activity. Does your brain remain "forever"?

Don't understand what you mean by this. The sum of the kinetic and potential energy of our constituent atoms? Sure. So?

As I said, there is every reason to believe that consciousness arises as part of brain activity. What you're saying sounds somewhat like the "water has memory" bull**** parroted by the charlatans known as homeopaths. Do you remember when different parts of you, as Invisible Fan points out, where parts of different stars? A million what if's can be thrown around, yes, but it is not a form of inquiry, if they remain unexplored.

This sounds profound (want to discourage scrutiny? Say it's beyond comprehension) but it's either a baseless claim about the existence of some sort of all-encompassing global consciousness or all it's really saying that we are part of the Universe.

Maybe you can elaborate? Sounds like Deepak Chopra-level insight (in which case -- don't). But maybe I'm too dumb to understand.

There is no "we" to associate with in this context.

If there was a different sperm, there would be a different individual who could also marvel about the tiny odds of that particular sperm reaching that particular egg. "You" wouldn't care.

Might as well contemplate Googolplex.

 

There is no such thing as eternity. And there is no such thing as infinity as in reality, there are limits. They are both mathematical abstractions.

 

That fits with the premise. Asimov's short fiction "The Last Question" is about what happens when the last bit of mass and entropy dissolves away into entropy. It's a good ten - fifteen minute read.

Just as you have a defined set of conditioning of what life is, the universe has one as well, just at a much higher scale.

As you begin to ponder and think about that sheer amount of scale of our galaxy, the galaxies of galaxies it belongs to, the cluster those belong to, and the cluster of clusters those belong to, and so on, you begin to feel really small. Religious concepts like a heaven or hell fit into a backdoor that evades or placates that dilemma between scale and meaning.

To which I think some people should consider looking it at that feeling a different way or direction.

 

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You will live for all eternity!



(Well, at least it will look that way to you. When you stop perceiving it will cease to be.... to you)

 

I'd rather think we all live the same life infinity Times. Each time with slightly different outcomes. This has to be it because I randomly feel deja fu every now and then. it could be because I've done that exact same thing in billions of other lifetimes. It's like when you see someone for the first time and you feel like you you already know them..........

 

Time is not infinite. It had a beginning. And from what we can tell...it should have an end.

So eternity goes out the window. Infinity suffers from the same issues. Space itself is an entity. It doesn't extend out forever. The universe isn't likely to be infinitely big in other words.

 

Time and Space appear to have a beginning, from the human perspective with the tools and knowledge we have right now. But we know we are limited in our perception. We think subatomic particles (or their string constituents) are the smallest building blocks of reality but that's but that's just as small as our tools let us see. We know there are stars in the universe that we have never seen because their light hasn't reached us yet. So why would anyone say definitively that there is an existence beyond either of these? I always imagine that if you could pull back enough into the nothingness, you would see as many of our universes as we see stars in our own; of course you wouldn't actually see them because the light won't ever reach you.

Man is always ethnocentric, thinking we are the center of everything until we reach the next layer of knowledge and learn we are not.

 

I'm not sure. In my faith, as I interpret it, eternity doesn't freak you out because you'll lose the concept of time. If your current existence is of one several million cycles of life and death, does that terrorize you? It shouldn't if you don't remember your past lives.

With eternity in paradise, you won't have 'heaven-weariness' after 2 billion years. Allegedly, the afterlife is a magnificent garden (of Eden) with rivers. I'm uncertain if that literally means a garden and river or if it's a metaphor for something else. If literal, Switzerland would look like heaven to a desert-born religion. Through my window, I see my hedge maze, flora and fauna everywhere, and the bayou lazily flowing in the background. I might be in a partial-heaven already. With each passing life cycle, maybe Earth or another planet will become verdant and lush, and eventually it'll become Eden.

Or, maybe 'gardens/rivers' was a metaphor so that's endless speculation. Anyway, eternity shouldn't be bad if you forget what time is.

 

Ignorance is bliss
Oblivion is heaven

 

You just babble. Endlessly. Infinitely.

 

We still know so little about our world that, any absolute statement of infinity (or time, or space, or universe, or mind, or awareness, ...) is premature.

 

Buddhism?

 

I don't think all of Buddhism is claiming a way out. Some sects do diverge into the supernatural. The Chinese Mahayana variety has a whole pantheon of gods which has been incorporated into the culture over several hundreds of years.

Theravada Buddhism, the variety most practiced in South Asia, can be considered more philosophical, with underpinnings of accepting your own fate and condition, and how to get beyond your material chains.

It's not really a way out of the cycle as that sect is less about a supernatural afterlife, but rather a series of training to accept and embrace the cycle and paradox of life. Everything that has happened will happen again and again. Everyone is a part of it. Everyone has suffered because of it. Everyone is still connected.


A lot of that is accomplished by switching into a different mode of mind. The Western frame of thought is preoccupied with critical thinking, figuring out the root causes and forming a plan or source of action to solve a problem. It's a "doing mode". But we have a second state of mind called the "being mode" that stimulates awareness and mindfulness of your surroundings. This being mode is usually strengthened with meditation, which has shown many empirical benefits for mental and physical health.

It's not that the "being mode" is better than the "doing mode", they're just different ways of knowing something, much like there are different ways of knowing and understanding the universe without one way being more true than the other.

The West is slowly catching up to understanding how both modes can affect how we perceive our lives and the meaningfulness our actions give us.

 

This is what I think too. Eternity freaks me out as well and I one time started breathing hard and shaking my head at my Catholic junior high when we were discussing it. I had just lost somebody and the thought of going on forever was the scariest thing ever.

I think we all repeat our lives in some ways. I have deja vu where I just shook my head, stopped what I was doing and started thinking about where this had happened before. The older I get, the more I believe in some form of reincarnation.

 

If eternal return (rebirth) is the case, then is it the case that you will live every possible instances of life given no limit on time. You have been or will be king, queen, aborted fetuses, Hitler, actress with hacked account, tormented soul, a buddha, a prophet.... but you won't remember any of it. Or that's not how the law of the universe work (every possible outcome happens) and you do carry something forward each time and your way of life is not just by chance...