I'm gonna get you Norse!!! REPENT RIGHT NOW!!! BLASPHEMER! Me and all my touchy feely church friends are gonna tie you down a ram these scriptures right up your ANUS!!! Mythology is WITCHCRAFT!!! lol just kidding man, that ain't me, i'm not that guy. I'm pretty down to earth about the whole deal...lol
I don't believe in Hell because I don't believe in Fear as a Reality (Love being the only). Fear has to do with guilt and punishment. Good reads on the subject for me was "A Course in Miracles" (don't know the author) and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Lastly, If there is Heaven and Hell then somehow there's some kind of moral standard being enforced by someone or something...
I don't believe in an afterlife, we are undying in a sense of the word. We only go into the ground for a short while before we're consumed and recycled back to the surface in other forms. Our perception of life, death, time, and consciousness are empirically flawed I think, nothing ever dies in the sense that it never becomes impervious to reaction and the formation of other products. Action is a constant, and to me, life is movement/action, the ability to change and to move. "Death" or "expiration" as we know it is simply one small part of the empirical cycling. Everything changes and moves in relevant time, so tell me what is truly living and non living when everything is bound for change or action? Our consciousness can be broken down, changed, reformed, it is not absolute or impervious to change like we imagine a soul to be. Our mass and energy will cycle eternally, consciousness included. Through the big bangs and the big crunches, through forever. It's hard to imagine, your consciousness being broken down, imagining yourself being diverged down to basic principals to be reformed into entirely different beings. But this happens to people like you and I, walking, breathing, people, think of those whose consciousness is altered by things like circumstance or disease? People can be very much like broken machines after a severe illness or traumatic event that affected the mind. Their level of consciousness severely decreased to the point of seeking only basic needs like food, water, things that even insects can understand. A sort of permanent, shock like state. Many are broken far past the point of meeting basic needs for life, I sometimes imagine that permanently catatonic patients who are non-reactive are people whose consciousness were decreased so far that they are floating in an unconscious darkness where there is no perception of anything. A state of non-existential stillness so deep that only time will change it through the persons liberating "death." Sort of when you sleep without dreaming, zero perception of time or anything else. They could be dreaming though, experiencing the very definition of the word "serenity" best they can imagine, seems unlikely to me, but it is possible. They might go through states of both. I also like to think of theory of relativity with all of this, since we have existed once the theory goes it is very likely we have existed an infinite amount of times before and will exist a future infinite amount of times. Rejoice, absolution doesn't exist, we are kids in a sandbox eternal. Nothing really matters.
BTW I don't think Relativity has anything to do with infinity, there is nothing relative to infinity.
I think I'm thinking of general relativity or special relativity. Might even be Hawkins theory of everything. I remember an oxford physicist last named close had several supplemental theories that were very controversial. I'm speaking mostly on his theories, they were tied to a theory of relativity or hawkings theory of everything. My beliefs also tie into the infinite monkey theorem lol. I disagree though, I'm kind of from the opposite school, I like physics but I'm more of a mathematician than a physicist. Everything is relative to infinity, there is no such thing as absolution really. The concept of infinity is recurring in almost all fields of physics, chemistry, science, and math. Physicists these days are really having a conundrum working around it. Our mathematics are very convinced infinity exists. I mean it makes sense seeing as how we've never observed matter that was impossible to alter, everything can be broken down or built up more. Just makes everything more fun doesn't it? lol. I find it liberating! Absolution is such a dreadful thing.
Not a "Being" how one would think of but the Infinite or everything that exists is a more accurate term of creation/creator one and the same. Ultimately.
I enjoy both aspects but admittedly am an expert in neither. I understand math can and does transcend the physical, but I don't necessarily agree that it can deal with infinities. I am fine with metaphysical beliefs involving them (I have my own), but math involves operations and regardlelas of computational power, infinities by definition are incalculable in any finite amount of time. Yes certain sciences postulate infinites ans derive them, but in my opinion that is the error of the model and math they are using. I am somewhat familiar with the process of renormalization, but I just don't buy into it. Granted I have not done my due diligence in reading up on challengea to these notions, but I think Leibniz and Hegel were right in that actual infinities and finitude cannot 'coexist' so to speak. Leibniz in particular, which I also agree, conceived of potential infinities, which are different than actual infinities, but it makes more sense to me. In other words, there may be the potential for infinite time and infinite mass but not actually infinite time and mass. I'll leave you with this thought. Imagine a clock with infinite degrees, how long would it take for the minute hand to move one minute? Is an hour longer than a minute when both have infinite degrees within them?
Personally I would say the creator is not synonymous with only everything that exists, but everything that exists and everything that has the potential to exist. An infinity of infinities. Since we have finitude, it seems to me the creator had to limit itself in order for anything to come into existence. Like a white sheet of paper and asking where the white dot is, there no white dot until we break up the color of the surrounding paper so a white dot can emerge.
I agree, infinity and absolution cannot both exist together. I like the discussion of theoretical infinities vs actual infinities, and while it's impossible to conceive an infinite amount of anything at a given point of time, it is also impossible to interpret absolution, even at a given point of time. We can't be observe absolution on anything, as we have not found an actual absolution either. It is literally yin and yang haha. Infinity is an impossible to conceive sort of thing. It's impossible for us to confine what it is, it's like a 4th dimensional being trying to look at the tenth dimension. The container is just not cable of holding such knowledge. Infinity is all relative to time, which we don't even have proper conceptions of I think. Our interpretation of time is shaky at best so good luck imagining something that is entirely relevant to given points of time. We're talking about trying to find the smallest point in a line, which ultimately has an infinite amount of points as you can always be more precise or specific in a range between two given points. The thing about a clock though, is it has an incomprehensible beginning and end if we're using 12 o clock, like a line. Essentially we are dealing with a line that has definite start and end points, and while that line may have an infinite amount of points in between, the amount of distance or time in between the start and finish point is finite. If you were to change a flat two dimensional shape, with 360 degrees to something with an infinite amount of degrees, you are transcending dimensions and shapes, ultimately an infinite amount. I don't think designating minutes or hours really changes anything, as you have an infinite amount of infinity in both minutes and hours.
The good ol' infinity mind fuck lol. Yes I agree, it is the glass prison so to speak, our little consciousness clawing at the walls, knowing there is an outside but not being able to investigate. You are assuming the clock has a beginning or end, I am saying in order for it to be quantifiable, it must have quantums, or discontinuities, i.e. time cannot be infinite. I have come to believe that nothing and absolute infinity are the same concept ultimately. I won't drone on about it but this time of stuff does float my boat, thanks for humoring me!
I think time can be infinite, but again in a conceptual way as we can't observe an infinite amount of time. But we also can't observe an absolute moment in time. I'm trying to imagine the clock as having stop points, Where one period of 12 hours ends, and another begins, for this to exist, a clock can't be a full 360 circle. It's a semi-circular line that encroaches upon itself infinitely but never forming whole. The distance between stop and start is infinitely small, an incomprehensible range. I have often thought of the same, everything is nothing, nothing is everything. 0 is 1. The greatest illusion is that everything can be moving, while also being still. Sort of the more everything changes, the more it maintains, that sort of illusion lol. I like to imagine a fundamental singular unit, a string of sorts, a line, that undulates beneath it all, driving everything. This string is the embodiment of why versus why not, it is inaction versus action, everything, vs nothing. It is the state an electron is in, when it exists in two places at once. It is moving, while it is non moving. A string that drives this entire grand opera for the sole sake of having something and/or nothing with which to exist and entertain ourselves with. I like J.R.R tolkien, I love his idea that this is all just a song to pass an eternity of nothing, with something just for the sake of it. This grand string or line, is eru iluvatar empirically impersonalized from his works. Thank you as well, discussions like this are gold, it's always nice to have an intelligent and proper conversation on our existential crisis lol.
I lean towards Buddhism. More so Theravada, the original style attributed to the Buddha (who was a man, not a god). There is a belief in other deities/gods but they are not perfect and can also benefit from the teachings of the Four Noble Truths which can bring them and us even closer to Enlightenment. There are traditions like Mahayana Buddhism that also believe in Bodhisattvas - beings who are compassionate and help those who are struggling with their spirituality. Theravada (and my opinion) is that we do not have a soul as a Christian describes it but rather a continuing 'essence', that lives multiple times, sometimes better off and other times worse, due to karmic past life reactions and eventually we, through perseverance, reach the goal of enlightenment, aware that everybody and everything is not separate from one another and entering into a state of pure happiness (Nirvana). Nammo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhassa. (Homage to the Blessed One, the Exhalted One, the Fully Enlightened One.)
I see infinite as distinctly different from time, I cannot see any way to reconcile the idea of infinite time. We can say it is endless, but not beginingless, exactly like a fractal. If you zoom out you can see the whole, but you can endlessly zoom in and never find an end, which seems to agree with your second paragraph about the clock idea. I don't know that I would say 0 is 1 either, in fact I cannot even imagine a fundamental 1 or 2. What nonsense am I talking about? Imagine infinity, absolute nothingness, pure potential, now make a wave in infinity. It is no longer infinite, it has separated into the realm of the finite. Now you have a wavet, where is it, when is it? It is the beginning of space and time out of nothing. Now you have the wave, the vast sea of potential around it, and the boarder between them (where the wave ends and potential begins). You now have 3 distinctions, bypassing 1 and 2. I suspect this is the wisdom encoded in religions/beliefs around the world, a trinity of gods. Because fundamentally we can see that one or two things cannot exist, only 3 or more. I could very well be wrong, I am no expert but it sure is fun to think and talk about lol.
I had my mind blown less than a week ago when I was listening to Neil de Grass Tyson explaining how there are more than one infinity and some are bigger than others!! As a well known physicist, he is remarkable how he can put things into layman's terms. If you're interested, Youtube 'Joe Rogan Experience' and have a look. He's on a couple of episodes.