What if the natural world didn't always exist?

[SGOS]

For the sake of discussion, lets assume that we live for eternity.  For some odd reason, we only view our own eternity as going forward into the future, but why shouldn't our little vision of eternity extend backwards to the beginning of time?  If that's the case, I have existed for more than 13 billion years.  As long as that is, I have no recollection of the billions of years of my existence I should have experienced before I was born.  Good Grief!  Think how boring that would be, just sitting there waiting around for my turn to experience existence.

From my perspective, time did not exist at all until I became conscious.  Those billions of years never existed.  It's like they passed in an instant, until <poof> here I am.  And coming back to reality, when I die, anything that happens afterwards, even if it goes on forever, will be an undetectable flash, just like the billions of years that came before.

[Gestas]

Under your set of conditions, there is no "prior to the natural world".  Use of the word "prior" necessitates the existence of time.  You contradict the conditions from your own thought experiment.  Put another way, your conditions require a conclusion that the natural world (as you define it) has always existed.

You may want to look up "logically prior" because it doesn't necessitate time.

[Gestas]

Yes, you are guessing.

Oh, so you do believe in magic?

I think the most logical conclusion for an atheist is that the natural world is past-eternal.

[Mike Cl]

Let us assume that time is interwoven in the natural world (i.e. space-time). So if there's no natural world then there is no time.

If my original hypothetical is supplemented by the above, then would this mean the natural world was produced by a timeless state of affairs that held no potentiality? So that logically prior to the natural world there existed a timeless state of affairs with zero potentiality which transformed (what would transform?) into or produced (what could produce?) a temporal natural world. But how does zero potentiality produce anything, especially in a timeless state? Even if zero potentiality were given an infinite amount of time it would be unable to transform into or produce anything. So how does zero potentiality, in a timeless state, produce time, matter, and energy?

This does sound like something from The Elder Scrolls.

I'm guessing you guys don't believe in magic, and so you must believe that the natural world is past-eternal in order to avoid the logical inconsistencies up above.

It would be nice if you'd intro yourself.

As I see it, black holes gather energy from a universe.  At a critical point, the energy becomes such that it forms a bubble of sorts, explodes and detaches itself from the mother universe and creates a new one at the same time.  From that moment, the new universe is natural.

[Baruch]

Ha!  I've actually considered this on my own, although I never thought about it in terms of relativity.  Well, I did, but I didn't say the word "relativity" in my thought process.  Nor did I think about Einstein.  But the theory of relativity, does help to reinforce the non existence of time as a unit that is relatively worthless in the bigger picture.

Time is more like a concept, and concepts don't need to exist.  They are more like thoughts.  Time as a concept helps us organized events in a way that appears to us as helpful.  But it's easy to see that time as a concept, doesn't exist outside of the concept.  It's like we just intuitively invent a way to organize events, and we call it time.

I'm getting off on thinking about this right now.

Yes, and since time and distance are connected, this means the question of distance is also fuzzy.  How far is something from me?  It depends.  Not nearly as objective as Newton thought about it, or about time.

[Baruch]

You may want to look up "logically prior" because it doesn't necessitate time.

Yes, in logic, it determines the relationship between statements ... are two statements mutually dependent or independent?  One statement might follow logically from another, and that is a cause/effect ... but cause/effect doesn't necessarily involve physical reality.  Even in physical reality, some events are necessarily coincident ... this is how quantum entanglement works.  Meaning that whatever happens, it doesn't involve time at all, it is outside of time.  Of course then someone might hypothesize a wave going from point A to point B thru a separate dimension ... but there is no evidence for extra dimensions.

In a manner of speaking, if you have a tautology made up of multiple parts ... it ceases to be a tautology, once you remove one of the premises, it becomes contingent.  And if you add an additional premise to a tautology, and that addition can't be deduced from the existing premises ... it is either an independent axiom (parallels for example) or it will create a contradiction.

[OldFaithful]

Natural is all there is. God is natural.

[Blackleaf]

Natural is all there is. God is natural.

If God is natural, and everything is natural, does that mean that God is burning himself in Hell?

[PopeyesPappy]

Yes, and since time and distance are connected, this means the question of distance is also fuzzy.  How far is something from me?  It depends.  Not nearly as objective as Newton thought about it, or about time.

Time and distance are related? Time and velocity are related. Time and mass are related. But time and distance?

[OldFaithful]

If God is natural, and everything is natural, does that mean that God is burning himself in Hell?

If he so chooses in his will.

[Blackleaf]

If he so chooses in his will.

Does he choose, really? Is he not omniscient? Does he not know what he is going to do before he does it? Are his actions not set in stone then, if he must act as he has foreseen himself to do? Free will makes no sense for humans, and it makes just as little sense when applied to God.

[OldFaithful]

Does he choose, really? Is he not omniscient? Does he not know what he is going to do before he does it? Are his actions not set in stone then, if he must act as he has foreseen himself to do? Free will makes no sense for humans, and it makes just as little sense when applied to God.

What point to good God would there be if all is prescribed for everything?
He knows not all what comes.. Otherwise no need for a God to be.

[Blackleaf]

What point to good God would there be if all is prescribed for everything?

Reality does not give a damn about convenience. It will not adjust itself to fit the mold of what is the ideal situation in your mind.

He knows not all what comes.. Otherwise no need for a God to be.

So you're saying that your God is not omniscient? You sure about that? Taking away God's omniscience may fix this one contradiction, but it also leads to a number of other problems. Prophecy is impossible in a world of millions of humans if he cannot predict what they are going to do. And you can throw God's plans out the window too, because they are worthless without omniscience.

[OldFaithful]

Reality does not give a damn about convenience. It will not adjust itself to fit the mold of what is the ideal situation in your mind.

So you're saying that your God is not omniscient? You sure about that? Taking away God's omniscience may fix this one contradiction, but it also leads to a number of other problems. Prophecy is impossible in a world of millions of humans if he cannot predict what they are going to do. And you can throw God's plans out the window too, because they are worthless without omniscience.

God knows all in present. Not future. Future is word for something not real.

[Baruch]

If God is natural, and everything is natural, does that mean that God is burning himself in Hell?

If there is a Hell, then yes, G-d does burn.  Sad, isn't it?