How did everything really begin?
 

After some amazing (yet personal) events have occurred the question of how did everything begin really is important to me. The last time I was desperate to know the answer was 10 years ago when I was 8 years old. I was surrounded by Jehovah's wittiness's explaining how god created the earth and then asked the question "What was god doing before he created the earth? Where did god's life begin?". And the answer I got just annoyed the **** out of me: "God is eternal, He's always been there". Then I said "but that's impossible, everything needs to have a beginning!"

I was the one who would always say "Where was god a year before he created earth, the year before that and the year before that. If you keep going backwards there has got to be a point of change, a point when god was discovering things, a point where he began". That's pretty deep for an 8 year old but that behavior got me in trouble and I forgot that logic once I was told over and over that god has always been there.

In highschool the theory of the big bang and things slowly evolving to what they are today made a lot more sense to me but the same massive logic loophole was still there. My 8 year old self would have been able to ask the same questions he did about the god theory and still find the breaking point. The questions are: "Why did the big bang occur? What caused all those elements to be a point and then suddenly explode to slowly evolve and create the universe? Where was that "dense point of existence" an hour before that explosion of existence? What happened a year before the explosion? How was that dense point of existence first created? What existed before it was created? If time is infinite... Keep telling me about the past, what happened before each event and there should be no beginning but rather a never ending sequence of events. If there is no beginning then why are we searching for one?

Well the theory that "time repeats itself" and goes in a loop popped into my head. Basically civilization feels that everything is doomed and needs to start over. With their advanced technology they condense the universe into a single point and hope it explodes into a more successful one. Or maybe the big crunch occurs and sucks the universe back to a single point so it can explode again and again as all life repeats itself exactly. This theory even makes "backwards" time travel possible because you would actually be moving forwards through a loop until you arrive at the point "in the past" you wish to experience. But then that question I asked as an 8 year old breaks the theory once again... "When did the first cycle occur? What set the cycle of events into motion? What happened an hour before the first cycle? What happened the year before that?

Lastly what if the world was all a computer program? As an ex-programmer myself I know that all code has a beginning and an end. A program running off that same code can also have a beginning yet an end can be avoided if a loop function is implemented. A program simulating the evolution of life such as Simearth (1990) can go on forever looping and looping with never ending random events that shape the earth and the life on it without ever having an end. But the program still had a beginning even though no life was there to witness it. Time within the computer program literally did not exist until the program was first executed. Yet before it was started it was coded and before that it existed only in the mind of a person who would soon create it. The existence of living and non-living things within the program didn't exist before it was first run but something existing in an "outer dimension" following a different system of time and existence created it.

If it's true that we are a part of a computer program and I have just become the "singularity" that has gained consciousness realizing that it is simply a "program" working aside a system of others then I have just a few questions for the creator of this program: What created you? What happened an hour before you were created? What about a year or two before that? Where did it all really begin?

The trillion dollar question! Everyones got their theory but thats all we have. Billions of opinions and theories and no concrete proof. Some claim claim the other is incorrect and argue about it much to my amusement.


I dont know either but choose the Bible creation story as my favorite.

I had Zeus tell me in a dream that not everything need to have a beginning.

Beginnings and endings are illusions. There is only change and transformation. If it seems to be a beginning or ending, that says more about your perception of reality as a finite human being than about reality itself.

Wise words but is beginnings and endings not simply part of change and transformation. So saying they do not exist is that not as limited as saying that because one thing has a beginning everything has to have one. I do not have a shell just because the turtle has one :tongue:

A clarification: there is no such thing as an absolute beginning or an absolute ending. Whenever something is "created" something else is necessarily "destroyed" and vice versa. Creation-destruction are the same process. Existence itself is a continuity of constant change and transformation. Whether some human labels something as "creation/beginning" or "destruction/ending" is arbitrary and depends on point of reference. To say something has a beginning or ending is a construct, in other words, and doesn't reflect the continuity of the territory.

That's how I see it, at any rate.

Some of it makes sense to me while other parts does not. To say this: Whenever something is "created" something else is necessarily "destroyed" and vice versa, implies IMO that everything is a constant and I am yet to discover this. Cause and effect to me is described great in the journey of the wings of a butterfly creating a hurricane someplece else. Some days the cosmos seem to expand, other days it seem to do the opposite. But yes I do not see an absolute beginning. I might not completely comprehend it, but it seems right to me on some level that not everything need to have a begiing. But it is hard to argue that this physical life of mine has not had a beginning and hopefully it also have an end :wink: but neither of them means it is the start of my existence or the end of it. Hope this made sense :D

Are you familiar with the concept of the dynamic equilibrium? You can think of the exchanges of energy like that. Alternatively, if you're familiar with the scientific understanding of reality, all changes are transformations of energy and that energy is never created/destroyed.

The butterfly effect, huh? All is indeed interconnected. Cause and effect should probably be causes and effects, yes?

Yes causes and effects is a much better fraise, but it is not the same as an eye for an eye as I hear some say. I am not familiar with it. But as far as I understand the cosmos it is all energy, so that is also why I say that the only difference between the physical world and the spiritual is the density in energy.