A Universe from Nothing?

[godnotgod]

Keep in mind that not much has changed since the days of Jesus, the teachers of the Law, the Rabbis, the Imams, the Priests, etc., they know the scriptures wrt the oneness of God, but they stay in duality, and worse, they teach the followers to do the same thus preventing them from realizing union.

How, exactly, does the Quran intend the 'hereafter' to represent the 'non-dual eternal now'? 'after' what?

 

[Ben Dhyan]

How, exactly, does the Quran intend the 'hereafter' to represent the 'non-dual eternal now'? 'after' what?

Semantics again, all language is dualistic, one has no option but to convey understanding using it, concepts like "Heaven", "Hereafter", etc., imply a reality beyond that of the mortal human mind's perception, a timeless one.... See it as a finger pointing to the moon, the moon.

 

[godnotgod]

Semantics again, all language is dualistic, one has no option but to convey understanding using it, concepts like "Heaven", "Hereafter", etc., imply a reality beyond that of the mortal human mind's perception, a timeless one.... See it as a finger pointing to the moon, the moon.

Yes, of course, but the question is whether the intent is labout some literal future time and place, or in the here and now. I think most moderns think it means the former.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Yes, of course, but the question is whether the intent is labout some literal future time and place, or in the here and now. I think most moderns think it means the former.

Of course, that is what I meant, nothing has changed since the time of Jesus, he was critical of the religious teachers of that era for not acting on the true teaching they possessed which conveyed the "way" to realize the state of "Heaven", and worse, they led the lay masses astray by interpreting the scripture as a narrative in this world's space time. He called them Vipers and hypocrites! Matthew 23:13

 

[MonkeyFire]

Yes, of course. Then there is Absolute Nothingness, which has no relative opposite.

Its not absolute.

 

[MonkeyFire]

In the image below, the background, or field against which the figure of a dancer can be seen, it is absolutely essential to the image. So nothing is not only possible and true, it is capable if not essential.

Privacy brings black, ice, and subtraction not hatred.

 

[godnotgod]

Its not absolute.

Yes, it is, simply because there is no relative opposite called 'something'. 'Something' is just an illusion. Nothing is the fundamental reality out of which the illusion of 'something' emerges, and to which it returns.

In the image of figure/ground I posted above, the figure cannot exist without the ground, but the ground of no-thing can exist without the figure. Because our attention is captured by the activities of the material world, ie 'the foreground', we are not aware of its background, just as the fish, having been born into the sea, does not know he is in the sea, his attention having been captured by food and predator.

 

[godnotgod]

Privacy brings black, ice, and subtraction not hatred.

Come again?

 

[godnotgod]

Of course, that is what I meant, nothing has changed since the time of Jesus, he was critical of the religious teachers of that era for not acting on the true teaching they possessed which conveyed the "way" to realize the state of "Heaven", and worse, they led the lay masses astray by interpreting the scripture as a narrative in this world's space time. He called them Vipers and hypocrites! Matthew 23:13

There are claims that the genuine teachings of Yeshua were overwritten by Paul and Rome (Constantine) with a virgin birth, blood sacrifice, and bodily resurreciton, none of which were taught or practiced by Yeshua. These "new "teachings* had mass appeal since no hard inner spiritual work was necessary. All one need do was to accept 'Jesus' as one's personal lord and saviour and one was saved. You didn't actually have to KNOW anything, which meant a docile and subservient populace as both a religious and a political body.

*Their source reputed to have come from pagan Mithraism.

 

[MonkeyFire]

Yes, it is, simply because there is no relative opposite called 'something'.

Nothing is the lack of something or everything. The absolute.

 

[MonkeyFire]

Come again?

Black isn't evil, or hellish.

 

[godnotgod]

Nothing is the lack of something or everything. The absolute.

That implies that nothing is something, when it is nothing. Besides that, how do we know that this 'something' is real? Now, when we look into the atom, we find that it is something like 99.9999...% empty space. So it would seem that empty space being the major part of its construction, that this empty space is far more important to the existence of the atom than the remaining 'something'. And all of the mass of this remaining something is now understood to be virtual in nature, rendering all of material reality as a virtual reality.

 

[godnotgod]

Black isn't evil, or hellish.

No one is saying that it is.

 

[Upaava]

There are claims that the genuine teachings of Yeshua were overwritten by Paul and Rome (Constantine) ... All one need do was to accept 'Jesus' as one's personal lord and saviour and one was saved....

May peace be with you,

There are direct contradictions between what Jesus taught and what Paul said. Christian Theologians have had to resort to hermeneutics (interpretations) to try and reconcile these differences.

For Paul, heaven was a free gift; for Jesus, it had to be earned by living as he did, and as he taught.

 

[psychoslice]

Religion has no idea about anything, science has all the answered we need right now, of course they don't know everything, to believe that is childishness, and that is what religion to me is, a childishness,. for god sake wake up religion and stop being so stupid.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

May peace be with you,

There are direct contradictions between what Jesus taught and what Paul said. Christian Theologians have had to resort to hermeneutics (interpretations) to try and reconcile these differences.

For Paul, heaven was a free gift; for Jesus, it had to be earned by living as he did, and as he taught.

Taken literally, you are correct, but esoterically there is no contradiction imho, for the words are only used as an expedient to explain that the reality represented by the concept of Heaven is transcendent and thus beyond time-space duality. Whether one explains it as 'earned' or 'freely given', it does mean the end of the error of duality, and thus aspirants are better advised to realize THAT which is on the other side of words.

 

[godnotgod]

May peace be with you,

There are direct contradictions between what Jesus taught and what Paul said. Christian Theologians have had to resort to hermeneutics (interpretations) to try and reconcile these differences.

For Paul, heaven was a free gift; for Jesus, it had to be earned by living as he did, and as he taught.

Heaven is a free (unconditional) gift when the conditions are right for receiving it, and for those conditions to be right, one must live in such a way as to be conducive to its reception. Jesus, or rather Yeshua, was not a moralist. If anything, he was amoral, and said: 'lest ye turn and become ye as little children, ye shall not enter into Paradise'. That is to say, to turn inwards, where the Kingdom of God is, and away from the corrupted teachings of a sick 'moral' society. IOW, the gifts of the Incarnation are already given to man apriori. But human life hides these treasures from us. That heaven is already given universally to man is reflected in the Buddha's teachings, which says that all sentient beings possess Buddha nature.

The split you are referring to gelled with Luther, as I recall, who rejected merit in lieu of grace.

 

[stevevw]

I'm not sure if I can post a poll on here but who here believes that the universe originated from nothing? As some of the major scientific theories from the 20th century claimed or was there an originator of some sort? Doesn't have to be God necessarily in your opinion. Who believes the universe has no beginning? I'm just curious as to what you guys believe with regard to this topic and what the basis of your belief would be?

One of the major theories you refer to is the one mainly promoted by Lawrence Krausse which he says the universe can come from nothing, (something for which Richard Dawkins is a big fan of). But he has redefined what nothing is. Krausse talks about different types of nothing and refers to nothing as being "unstable nothing". Krausse's nothing exists in a quantum vacuum which is a type of something. A quantum vacuum which fluctuates and has energy, it is able to expand and did expand into the universe and follows the calculations of quantum field theory. This is far from "nothing" and is a whole lot of "something". Nothing is really the absence of anything, the absence of any being and something cannot come from that.
Q and A and dawkins on a universe from nothing - Bing video

The bible talks about men who claim to be wise but became foolish because they denied God and his creation.

Romans 1: 19 to 23
19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

This bible verse tells us that we can see God in His creation and that we know within us that this cannot be the result of a material self-creating existence. That it speaks to us of divine nature and we all have this within us intuitively. It is only where some try to deny this by coming up with man made explanations that try to replace the truth of Gods Creation which doesn't ring true.

In John 1: 1 to 4 it speaks about the beginning of all things. It speaks about the word and that word was God and that all things were made through the word. So this states that the material universe came from a non-material beginning. This would make more sense and fit the evidence better than trying to pretend that something is really nothing and that made everything. At least this acknowledges that something beyond the normal physical cause and effect must have started everything. Even if God had made the quantum vacuum with ist laws of physics that is better than trying to believe in some of the ideas put forth by some scientists who want to appeal to things beyond the scientifically verifiable anyway.
John 1:1 to 4
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

 

[MHz]

I'm not sure if I can post a poll on here but who here believes that the universe originated from nothing? As some of the major scientific theories from the 20th century claimed or was there an originator of some sort? Doesn't have to be God necessarily in your opinion. Who believes the universe has no beginning? I'm just curious as to what you guys believe with regard to this topic and what the basis of your belief would be?

I tend to support the old earth creation theory. In very basic temps it supports the earth is 4 billion years old and there were 6 stages that it went through to the day Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden in 4,000BC (4,005 actually) that would have been the end of the 7th day/beginning of the 8th day) The 1,000 years is equal to 1 day with God factors into how you count time during a creation week. You add one zero to the 1,000 row for each day you go back in time. 6 zeros added to 4,000BC ends yo being 4,000,000,000BC which would have been the end of day 1 in Genesis:1 and that is when light from the sun gave earth it's first sunrise/sunset. At that time it was a ball of molten rock and it was spinning at a different rate than it does today, the tides would have been by a moon that is much closer that it is today and that is how the rock that appears in layers was made to look like that without any watery seas being present.
This is a brief rundown of how that works.

4,000,000,000BC-400,000,000BC Day 2
The earth went from having no water to having water in vapor form in the clouds to water being found on the coldest parts of the planet which would be the mountain tops.

400,000,000BC-40,000,000BC Day 3
The earth went from rain watering the ground to when forests could be found which would also start at the tops of the mountains as the lowest parts of the earth was still too hot for liquid water.

40,000,000BC-4,000,000BC Day 4
Time as we mark it would have been established and the times we observe are not the same as it was at the end of any of the previous days. The seas would also have started to from the start of that day because they are fully formed by the end of the next day. Sun. moon, stars were given names on that day rather than just being created.

4,000,000BC-400,000BC Day 5
The seas as we know them were fully formed, birds co-evolved with the forests from Day 3. Whales would have been birds that adapted to living in water over millions of years.

400,000BC-40,000BC Day 6
Land animals as we know the would have been what God and Adam were naming as that is when God let the first rains into the Garden area of Ge:2. Eve would have been created on the last day of that period of time.

40,000BC-4,000BC Day 7
God's day of rest and the sin from Ge:3 would have been on the last day of that period of time.

That theory promotes 3 species, birds, fish. and animals and no cross-over species will ever be found. Adaptation id more than allowed as no two of any flesh is exactly the same as all of the others.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

I tend to support the old earth creation theory. In very basic temps it supports the earth is 4 billion years old and there were 6 stages that it went through to the day Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden in 4,000BC (4,005 actually) that would have been the end of the 7th day/beginning of the 8th day) The 1,000 years is equal to 1 day with God factors into how you count time during a creation week. You add one zero to the 1,000 row for each day you go back in time. 6 zeros added to 4,000BC ends yo being 4,000,000,000BC which would have been the end of day 1 in Genesis:1 and that is when light from the sun gave earth it's first sunrise/sunset. At that time it was a ball of molten rock and it was spinning at a different rate than it does today, the tides would have been by a moon that is much closer that it is today and that is how the rock that appears in layers was made to look like that without any watery seas being present.
This is a brief rundown of how that works.

4,000,000,000BC-400,000,000BC Day 2
The earth went from having no water to having water in vapor form in the clouds to water being found on the coldest parts of the planet which would be the mountain tops.

400,000,000BC-40,000,000BC Day 3
The earth went from rain watering the ground to when forests could be found which would also start at the tops of the mountains as the lowest parts of the earth was still too hot for liquid water.

40,000,000BC-4,000,000BC Day 4
Time as we mark it would have been established and the times we observe are not the same as it was at the end of any of the previous days. The seas would also have started to from the start of that day because they are fully formed by the end of the next day. Sun. moon, stars were given names on that day rather than just being created.

4,000,000BC-400,000BC Day 5
The seas as we know them were fully formed, birds co-evolved with the forests from Day 3. Whales would have been birds that adapted to living in water over millions of years.

400,000BC-40,000BC Day 6
Land animals as we know the would have been what God and Adam were naming as that is when God let the first rains into the Garden area of Ge:2. Eve would have been created on the last day of that period of time.

40,000BC-4,000BC Day 7
God's day of rest and the sin from Ge:3 would have been on the last day of that period of time.

That theory promotes 3 species, birds, fish. and animals and no cross-over species will ever be found. Adaptation id more than allowed as no two of any flesh is exactly the same as all of the others.

I agree that the Genesis creation story is one starting with creation of Earth in the early solar system, but have not considered the length of times for a day, and generally considered the seventh day started with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. An eighth day, hmmm, will wonder about it...