The Search for God Page 2.1.2.1.4.2
Do you want something that will hurt your brain? Well probably not—still, consider eternity. Go on, what does it mean to be eternal? Eternal means always existing. This thing has never, not existed. Before the universe began, this stuff was present.
Before the Beginning
We might be born and exist forevermore—we don’t know, but we do know that as an individual, we had a beginning. But this stuff is eternal.
Where did the universe come from?
That question has been debated throughout all human history, but ultimately, something is eternal. Consider this, what if there was nothing.
When I say nothing, I mean nothing.
- No Quarks
- No Quantum Flux
- No Light
- No Mind
Would anything happen? An object at rest. There is a Latin term I like, Ex nihilo nihil fit, which means, “From nothing, nothing comes.” So something is eternal. Some being is eternal. If something is non-being, then it is nothing, no existence, nothingness.
Even a quark is something, a quark has being. What we have now came from something. The question is then, what is eternal? What is the stuff? We have two options: a living being or a non-living being.
Non-living being (Matter)
The stuff of eternity could have no life. The stuff of eternity could be quarks, nanoparticles, or energy, mashing and pounding together or separately. This is completely plausible if we just consider eternity alone in a vacuum.
My main point is that something is eternal and something existing eternally is rational and necessary. Volumes have been written on the subject. For anyone wishing to study more, please refer to the resources at my website: www.againstallheresy.org.
For me, just like atheism, this topic consumed very little time in my brain, because something existing eternally only makes sense, even if difficult to comprehend. An eternal living being, like God, is not against reason.
In this article, I am not making any arguments other than this: something has to have always existed. Is the idea of an eternal substance unreasonable or against reason? No. Is the thought of eternity nearly impossible to wrap our brains around? Yes.
We understand that things just don’t leap into existence without something being present, whether it’s energy or a particle. Humans, in general, like things they can understand, explore, and comprehend, but we cannot study the past outside our universe.
In our natural way of thinking, we ask;
- Where did that come from?
- What caused that ?
- An Eternal substance?
The thought of an eternal substance is staggering. Whether this is the first universe or the 100th, whether evolutionary science and materialistic beginning to the universe is correct or a being is correct, something has always been present. However, let me ask you, can life come from non-life, can being arise from non-being?
Living Being
The second option for the eternally existing substance is a being. One, two, a hundred beings, who knows, but something with life. We will consider what a being is next. For now, let’s just consider an eternal being as a possible eternal substance.
Which is favored? How do we know? When this attribute is considered alone, we are unable to make any rational argument for non-living matter or a living being as the eternal substance. Who knows, maybe both have been present for all eternity.
What Next?
- What is the crucial concept?
- Something is eternal. An eternal substance is rational.
- Why is that significant?
- The first attribute of my theory of God is rational.
- If you agree, the next steps.
- If you disagree, please consider reading.
References and Links
What is the eternal substance?
Eternal God: Christian Bible Study
- Thinking to believe – So something is eternal
- Space and motion – Eternal substance