... Eternal life? What if it is an eternal life with T!
I love discussions like this!
Religion and science explain many of the same existential questions we think about. Where did all THIS LIFE and EXISTENCE come from?
I remember, as a kid, thinking the world was flat, with oceans falling off the edge (complete with dragons on the other side of a flat earth). Then I learned about Columbus, and how the world was round. About 6th grade, I wondered if the edge of the Universe had walls!
I love thinking about this stuff.
Here's something that I believe: There is no such thing as time. Time is an illusion that living things experience. There is no issue of "Eternity" because there is no time. Our bodies are like movie projectors, giving us the illusion that we are moving through time. But once we die....no time.
We ask questions like, "What happened before the Universe was created?". This is one of those big questions, a logic puzzle that assumes there is "a before". But what was before "Before'?".....and before that? No solution to that one. Perhaps the fault is in our assumption there is time. Time could be only an experience of living things.
Here's another one I think about: We are all told how big the Universe is. But what if space is also an illusion? What if the Universe is actually caused by only one particle? The physicist Richard Feynman actually therorized the entire universe may be the result of the path of only one particle! (Read "Physics of the Impossible", p. 244:
"...Feynman then speculated that perhaps the entire universe consisted of just one electron, zigzagging back and forth...Imagine that out of the chaos of the original big bang only a single electron was created...")
What if there is only "one thing"? Hey, it almost makes sense to me.
Interestingly, tinnitus forces a person to question what is reality,
really? When we hear things, it is via neuron voltages to our brains. Unfortunately, sometime things get mixed up and some stray current cause us to hear tinnitus, which is just as real.
I think that our bodies create meanings about time, space, sound....through our senses. That's what "meaning" means.
I think, in the grand scheme of things, we are limited by our own senses. Primitive man was a child, and was very narcissitic. We tend to personify nature, putting things into human terms,....sometimes believing that all of life must revolve around only us. Some of us draw lines in the sand, dividing us into groups, saying "we all love one another - just as long as you're on my side of the line!".