Can anything exist for an infinite time or outside of time?

...if...if...if......if my auntie had bollocks she'd be my uncle...Please may I suggest you start a new topic if you want to discuss your visions of allah (whatever that is).

Alright, Oni, and anyone else concerned... I'll put the task to you then. Fill in the blank:"In the beginning __________________ ..."Now tell me what happened before that or caused it.

How could an actual beginning have a "before" or a "cause"? Either one simply relegates this "beginning" to a "start if a new phase."

Hi DPowell,I understand what you are trying to do, but you are in fact asking a compelx question (which is a fallacy).Forr example, the question: What caused the universe ? should really be divided into two question:Was the universe caused ?If so, what caused it ?

The point I want to establish is simply the difficulty in saying "In the beginning." The reason behind that is that everything we are familiar with is a product of causation. Try to name something in your world/life that is not directly/indirectly caused by something(s). You can have the Big Bang, if you like...I don't particularly care. The ultimate question comes down to what is the FIRST Cause.

That is, of course, not the only way to break down that *question* (though I did not actually pose a question, per se). Another way to do it would be this: Name an actual entity which is completely independent of outside causation. Off the top of my head, nothing would be possible except God.

Off the top of my head, nothing would be possible except the Universe.

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"Mom! Ban Ki-moon made a non-binding resolution at me." Mohmoud Ahmadinejad

If you mean The Universe, my answer is I don't know. But I'm not going to pretend I know either.Nor does "God did it" satisfy as an answer. People used to say god caused LOTS of things. Now it's just been reduced to ONLY the Big Bang. To me it seems like a rather dismissive answer, one that requires you to provide no proof. In that sense it is weak as an answer, and pointless to bring up.If you can't explain how god did it you've explained NOTHING at all.- Oni

If there must be a "first cause," cause that itself was not caused, why assert God? Why not remove the extraneous unproven entity, and simply say that the Universe itself is the "first cause?"After all, we at least have evidence the Universe exists. We do not have evidence for God.Besides, this line of reasoning is nothing more than special pleading from the outset. If everything requires a cause, then your God must also have been caused. If some things require causes and some things (Gods, in this instance) do not, then you cannot argue with logical consistency that God must exist because the Universe requires a cause. "Everything requires a cause, ergo my personal exception to the very rule I just claimed was universal" is not a logically consistent argument.If everything requires a cause, then your God must have been caused by something else.If you can arbitrarily state that there is one thing that does not adhere to causality, then there is no reason whatsoever to assign that immunity to God while insisting that the Universe itself still requires a cause.Causality only makes sense in the framework of the Universe anyway - time being a part of the Universe, and the definition of "cause" and "effect" being tied intimately to relative coordinates of time. Without the Universe to give us a framework for causality, the best can be said is that your question doesn't make sense, like asking what comes before the 0 mark on a ruler.

You made my point for me.
In the end, you are left to say that either God is "God" or that the Universe itself is "God."
Part of the nature of God-ness is freedom from causality, I would think.
In the end, I suppose it will mostly come down to personal preference/prejudice/pre-commitment as to which side one lands on. But in the end, you are left with one infinite...God or the Universe itself.For me, it is a reach to say "there is stuff" simply because...well...there is stuff. It makes much more sense for there to be a reason for the stuff being there...a cause if you will.There are a lot of reasons why I see it as a reach simply to leave it as "The Universe Is, And That is Enough." We being *personal* beings, made supposedly by an impersonal force of the all-encompassing entity, the Universe, seems odd. Our features, the way we act and interact, the very fact that we are ALIVE...
Even if I were to grant to you evolution (which I also see as a reach for reasons unrelated to this), you still would have to explain to me where *life* itself came from. It is much less of a reach to say that the Living God (who also, then, would have already made the Universe) breathed into Adam the breath (spirit) of life than it is to say that the impersonal, inanimate Universe spawned the appropriate conditions on a very well suited planet in a fortunate sector of the galaxy in a fortunate sector of the Universe for the creation of life by a process of...let's see...mixing a saline solution of water and maybe organic compounds and having it charged by a bolt of lighting...er, um...yeah. People who have such a problem with God on such *scientific* grounds as that He complicates the process unnecessarily have failed to provide even a starting sample of an explanation as to how life *happened*.What else ya got?

The part about trying to find God with a telescope made me chuckle a little.He is the immortal, *invisible* God. 1 Timothy 1:17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.He is not embodied. John 4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth."God is bigger, greater, and more ancient than the mere Universe *in which* you seem to be trying to find Him. Ephesians 4:9-10 (What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10 He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)Do not confuse "Heaven" with "the heavens." They are altogether different locations of different orders. Please, don't go fly a spaceship in search of it. John 8:21-23 Once more Jesus said to them, "I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come." 22 This made the Jews ask, "Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, 'Where I go, you cannot come'?" 23 But he continued, "You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

The explanation of "how" God "could" have done Creation really doesn't seem that difficult to me. What is difficult to do is to trace the steps of the invisible God into a time before the world in which we live, before people, before written history. And on the other hand, it is difficult to say from any materialist/naturalist standpoint anything more than how it "could" have happened...that is all that science is when it comes to looking back at the past, no?

Of course not. Explaining the made-up functionality of a made-up concept is not exactly going to tax anyone - ask my six year old about all his new Ben-10 characters.

Are you defining "God" as simply that that needs no cause? I'm not sure you will find many theologians, nevermind Christians, to agree with you... Maybe you would think, but that hardly leads to your above claim, does it? And how many physicists working in this area give this as an explanation?

Somebody obviously did manage to do that. Haven't you read Genesis? For all our modern science and technology, we would have done well to retain those old skills.