Do Atheists believe in Eternity?

How can anyone believe that there is an eternity without out a eternity being revealed? A eternal eternity can not ever be known because being eternal never reaches its end to be revealed. All of us depend upon what an other guy has said and that guy depends upon what another guy told him. The whole matter goes right back to whatever you wish to believe. A person writes a book and another person quotes the book as though he has the answer but no one really has the answer.

Now on the other hand there are some people that do not believe in an after life for everyone and yet are professed Christians. Oh they believe in eternity but conscious eternity is not for everyone. Some will enjoy a conscious eternity and yet some will be exterminated and cease to exist as a conscious entity. But this actually has no authority in eternity because you must have consciousness to have eternity. That is where religion comes to play.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Hi Itisnowagain.

The unexamined assumption is that time actually exists.

Unexamined? I just read a summary of Zeno's Arrow in Flight paradox. That was formulated a very long time ago. Lunar calendars date back to at least 3000 B.C. Measurements of the passage of time are quite ubiquitous all through the past. It would seem that the passage of time is observable and measurable.

Are you in time? Do you move through time?

All moving things move in time. All events occur within time.

I stepped outside for 1 minute and approximately 45 seconds. A bird was singing in a tree. The tree was twenty feet away from me. I did not hear timelessness. The speed of sound determined that what I heard in my present was a past event. Music is not timeless. One note follows another. An instantaneous melody would be no melody at all. If such a thing could be heard it would be hideous. But even a single hideous note would be impossible to hear without a vibration, which only occurs within time.

a reply to: Seede


"
How can anyone believe that there is an eternity without out a eternity being revealed?
"



We have a winner!

a reply to: 19Bones79

Oh for crying out loud! You beat me to it.

There I was, formulating cleaver things to write, with references, footnotes, cross references, full scholarly apparatus complete with etymologies and variant renderings, and then you just up and write it.

Well [ delete ]. Back to the writing board.

a reply to: Seede

Hello Seede, glad to see you.

That is where religion comes to play.

I will attempt to avoid bloviating*.

*To discourse at length in a pompous or boastful manner:

Upon looking the word up, I was surprised that it's been used much longer than I suspected. I thought that my older brother made it up as a variant of pontificate. Goes to show that we can still learn things every day if we bother to.

We should approach religion in a playful way. Much of childhood play is a rehearsal through roll play of what the child perceives of what it is like to be a grown up.

I will now shamelessly bring up some words that have sometimes been used in a pejorative manner. Religion and Ego.

ego noun

ˈē-(ˌ)gō also ˈe-
plural egos
Definition of ego
1: the self especially as contrasted with another self or the world
...
3: the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that serves as the organized conscious mediator between the person and reality especially by functioning both in the perception of and adaptation to reality
— compare ID, SUPEREGO
merriam-webster

The first definition is the I from the Latin.
The second definition incorporates what I call religion: "functioning both in the perception of and adaptation to reality". That reality is not only natural physics. Social cultures are also part of reality, in which the conscious self operates within.

When I (as conscious ego) die my religion dies with me. I am cool with that. There is no deity that I am aware of that requires anything other than that.

A quick reading of 1 Corinthians 15 is a reminder of what Christianity demands.

16For if the dead aren't raised, neither has Christ been raised. 17If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. 18Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.

Sorry Paul, but I totally disagree with you.

I myself have witnessed people who have identified themselves as Christian who did not believe in resurrections at all, and yet led exemplary lives. Why they identified as Christian is their own business. For some reason I couldn't see myself doing so.

Now I think that I can empathize with them. It's taken me quite some time. That's why I coined the phrase Ethnic Christian. They were just being true to their own personal religion: "functioning both in the perception of and adaptation to reality." When in Rome ...

---------------
Sorry to bloviate.

I can explain though. I had been planning to do a thread called Something, Something: A Post-Christian Retrospective. But now I can skip that. I think what I wrote here is all that I needed to say really.

a reply to: pthena

Judaism does have that tendency about class specifics, and does come off as a separate race, but like you said, tribalism. It is an old religion, with quite of bit of lore from other cultures an historical references, that mingled with them, an a long process to be one.

Islam does follow a similar suit, with it claims Ishmael being the chosen son of Abraham instead of Isaac, and them being distant semitic cousins.

Both don't eat pork ether, it not kosher.

I still have a hard time between Charmander, Squirtle, an Bulbasaur.

a reply to: Specimen88

Islam does follow a similar suit, with it claims Ishmael being the chosen son of Abraham instead of Isaac, and them being distant semitic cousins.

Here goes:

Genesis 22:1It happened after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" He said, "Here I am." 2He said, "Now take your son, your only son, whom you love, even Isaac, and go into the land of Moriah. Offer him there for a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you of."

Wait a minute? Isaac was not Abraham's only son. Someone is lying here.

Genesis 25:7 These are the days of the years of Abraham's life which he lived: one hundred seventy-five years. 8Abraham gave up the spirit, and died in a good old age, an old man, and full of years, and was gathered to his people. 9 Isaac and Ishmael, his sons, buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron, the son of Zohar the Hittite, which is before Mamre,

Abraham was from Mesopotamia. Who were his people that he was gathered to?

Notice that Ishmael was there to bury him, not just Isaac.

But yeah, tribal.

My ancestor was a Danish Viking who signed on with William the Conqueror as a mercenary. The Normans beat the Anglo-Saxons in England. My Danish ancestor married into the Anglo-Saxon people. Thus the conquerors and the conquered are my people. Plus there is some Celtic/Welsh in there too. But we don't mention that.

I did mention it though when there was this dark red haired Welsh woman who seemed interested in me. But that was decades ago. I never think about that, not one bit.
---
I'm too lazy to look up which Pokemon are kosher.

a reply to: pthena

I think it saying Ishmael a bastard, whose mother was the house maid, an Isaac was a lucky sob?!

a reply to: Specimen88

It is the first born of the mother(first to open the womb) who must be sacrificed. Isaac was first born of Sarah. Sarah was the one who cast Ismael and his mother out to die in the desert as soon as she knew that she was not barren.

Compare with Bathsheba and David. David had sons already before he raped Bathsheba. Bathsheba's first born was sacrificed through exposure, no milk. Bathsheba then was compensated by being the one to choose her second born to be heir to the throne.

(Warning! My interpretation includes speculation based upon patterns. But then again, the book itself has wild stories such as Solomon's empire which is pure fiction.)

a reply to: pthena
Can you step outside of now?
You may be able to think of the past or future..........but thinking can only occur now.

The symbol of the cross (+) shows linear time as the horizontal line.......and eternity as the vertical line.

"Time and Eternity Intersect in the Now"

a reply to: pthena

An infinite universe for me makes more sense than a finite one, if only because my way of thinking is like this.

If you travelled to the 'end' of the universe and reached a 'wall', what is on the other side of that wall?
If it is more 'wall' or even just nothing, then it is still something. Any wall you run into, will always have something on the other side of it, even if it is just more wall.

Doesn't matter if it is the wall of a house or a wall around the universe.

So yes I can visualise an infinite universe, or infinite anything for that matter. Heck I can visualise infinite universes aka parallel universes.
I can also visualise the finite, but it's harder for my mind to wrap around that for the reasons above. It's always comes back to 'but what's on the other side'.

And no I don't think infinity can be added to, because well it is already infinite. If you mean like 'an infinity + an infinity = double infinity" then no it's just infinity, the end. But if you mean could you add in a new piece to infinity, like taking a sliced loaf of bread, pulling it into two halves and inserting a few extra slices to fill up the gap, then yes.

Sorry, this is the problem with how I am, it all makes sense in my head, but being able to verbalise a lot of the concepts I have in ways others can understand is often difficult if not impossible. Some things that pop into my head are just too 'alien' to express to others.

Again something I should do a thread about one day. Been trying for years now but it gets pretty messy as I tend to over explain things and I wish to share my perception of reality in a way most people will be able to process. The few times I have really tried with people to show my mind, especially mental health professionals, it kind of freaks them out because the stuff I do manage to get out makes sense. (Much better at face to face conversation that trying to write it.)
If you ever need or want an existential crisis, I'm the guy to talk to. lol

But yes, at end of the day, if you can think it up, I can very much imagine it. Doesn't matter how insane or ridiculous it is. It's like every possibility in this universe/s exists inside my head.

originally posted by: pthena

If something is infinite in size, how does it expand?

Sorry forgot to answer this part of that question.

Not sure something infinite can expand, I mean being infinite means it's always at its max, which well is forever. However anything within that infinite area can expand inside of it. So maybe this gives people the illusion something infinite is expanding, is the best I can word it right now.

Say like an empty space is 'black' and has no mass, if that space is empty, has no light etc, how do you see if it is moving or not, expanding or contracting. You can't.

Throw in some galaxies and you now have something that gives the impression the space it occupies is expanding, when the space itself may be just standing still.

Some scientists might say something like looking at the movement of galaxies means the universe is expanding, but for me it just shows that, well, galaxies are expanding and moving and not that the universe they're in itself is doing anything. I light a firework, the sparks expand out from the explosion, the explosion is what makes the sparks expand outwards, it's not the Earth's atmosphere expanding that is making those sparks move. If that makes sense.
*shrugs*

a reply to: AtomicKangaroo
Seeing and hearing what is actually here and now (appearing in plain sight) will bring the imagination to a stop.

It is thoughts which drive people crazy.........they don't know what to believe because they are bombarded with so many possibilities.
The question is: which of the imaginations are to be believed?
What is happening requires no belief.

"This is unbelievable ❤️"
Just stop and look at the view.......hear the birds, traffic noise, smell the coffee, smell the roses.
Thought stops when seeing and hearing occurs.......it brings one back to life.

a reply to: AtomicKangaroo

Thank you very much indeed!

I think that I may now be able to formulate a tentative hypothesis.

In the mean time:

Say like an empty space is 'black' and has no mass, if that space is empty, has no light etc, how do you see if it is moving or not, expanding or contracting. You can't.

Throw in some galaxies and you now have something that gives the impression the space it occupies is expanding, when the space itself may be just standing still.

There's an old joke, which I first heard from my late mother-in-law back in the mid 70s:

In the beginning

there was nothing.

And God said:
"Let there be light!"

There was still nothing

but you could see it.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

The wise post graduate student asked:
"Does nothing exist?"

The wise master replied:
"Nothing is."

After several seconds of thought and formulation, the wise post graduate student commented:
"Oh, I get it. That's kind of like saying 'nothing exists', but 'nothing exists' is a total oxymoron."

He looked expectantly at the wise master for some acknowledgement. He waited and looked. Waited some more.

Finally, he asked, "Have you nothing to say?"

The wise master replied: "I just did."

a reply to: pthena
Exactly......nothing is appearing.

Tentative Hypothesis

If I had worded the question differently, then the responses would have been different.

The phrasing believe in is different from the phrase believe that.

So a better question would be "Do Atheists believe that eternity is possible?"

a reply to: pthena
I just looked up 'is eternity possible?' online and this was in the search results:

(2) Question 'Can you explain eternity or is it not possible?'
www.quora.com...#:~:text=It%20is%20literally%20impossible%20for,a%20circular%20answer%20that%20rel ates

First answer is.....

Eternity in ten words…

Now
Now
Now
Now
Now
Now
Now
Now
Now
Now.

The Eternal Now by Alan Watts.

Double post.