Transcix
07-02-2008, 01:44 AM
Most people try to wrap their minds around the concept of eternity in the wrong way. They try to imagine infinite temporal regression, that time has always existed, and it ends up thought to be somewhat ineffable like infinity is. But things operate in terms of causality, and an action impacts the future something like the ripples of a stone thrown into a pond. So there is necessarily a flow, in the sense that there is a direction or vector. Nothing really more complicated than the fact that everything exists as opposed to not in the first place, and that the very system of existence itself is a living one where change is the only constant. This change has a particular nature--there is never anti-change, or when there is anti-change it is within the limits that comprise the system of change, it is part of the whole process. So the point is that the nature of reality is not static but rather constantly in motion (we may consider a “slice” of it to a relatively accurate extent), and thus flowing in some sort of ordered as opposed to chaotic fashion in the sense that reality does not risk suddenly running out of energy tomorrow and stopping. We may thus deduce that eternity must necessarily have a beginning point, because infinite temporal regression would amount to time flowing not only forwards into the future but also simultaneously backwards into the past, pulling every ripple of causality in two opposite directions, which is clearly absurd. Think about it.