Sign up Sign in. English US. Portuguese Brazil. Spanish Spain. Question about English US. What is the difference between forever and eternal?
Whatever is eternal cannot be measured by time, but it can be measured by distance and space. Whatever is infinite is also eternal and also has no limits in space or distance. Eternity is without Time and Space.
Eternity is independent of temporal things, not temporal. Infinity depends on that there is an Eternity, otherwise, the concept vanishes. Your email address will not be published. Comments Eternal erases the concept of time. Since time is a measurement of one "thing" in relation to another "thing" i. The anticipation of this transformation does give us a sense of time, but, by definition, eternity is past, present, and future happening now the "now" associated with being outside of time.
In other words, eternity is a magic blend of past, present, and future, but we experience it all in the moment of "now". Being in the now is about being present in oneself. When you are centered, grounded, altogether, the concept of time vanishes actually. Indeed, one time I came out of a deeply gratifying meditation, looked at the seconds passing, but noticed that the second lasted much longer than usual.
Bending reality with the mind or bending reality by being? While forever in circular or linear time implies an order of progression between now and then, eternity does not imply a progression. In eternity, what was is now, and what will be is now. So how does one "achieve" eternal life? You don't "achieve" it; you just have to believe it in other words, convince your conscious, subconscious, and superconscious to coherently merge beliefs. For Christians, what was done on the cross was already done before it was completed in the physical, time-bogging world.
Believers prior to Jesus subconsciously knew it was to come, which in the meaning of eternity, meant it already existed. Talk about faith in an eternal sense.
The progression of time doesn't matter in instances like this because it was already imprinted in the blueprint of eternity.
The illusion of time grants us a specific, though not really well-known, purpose. Though I am not sure of the purpose in conceiving time, especially with the trouble of conceiving infinite time, it is apparent that we are given the dimension of time in this limited, finite life and we lose this illusion when we leave the body, when our conscious becomes meshed with the eternal form of consciousness, which we call the superconscious. Eternal space-time welcomes our subconscious self into the "now" which, mysterious to the conscious mind, exhibits everything, all at once.
Eternity is here and now, though our physical bodies transpire. In the scientific age in which we live people have come to believe that science provides us with all truth, so whatever science says is true must be true.
While it is true that science does provide us with truth, science cannot provide us with all truth, and neither is science infallible. All one needs to do to see that this is true is look at the history of the scientific discipline. The history of science is a history of replacing one scientific claim with another scientific claim as humanity continues to grow in knowledge of its world.
To claim that evolution is "science" is misleading at best, and deceptive at worst. Evolution is based on theory, not evidence; faith, not fact. Because the foundational evidence is so lacking for evolution, evolutionists have no choice but to commit to evolution blindly, against all reason and evidence. Evolution is not science, it is faith, and a very poor faith at that because the very basis of evolutionary theory lacks the support of the two disciplines that provide us with knowledge: science, philosophy.
Christians have every reason to reject the theory of evolution. Our rejection is not based on religious grounds, but on philosophical and scientific grounds.
We should not be bullied into believing that the notion of a divine creator is intellectually absurd, and that it must be accepted by blind faith. The evidence is stacked in favor of a theistic origin of the universe. It is the faith of the evolutionists that is blind, willing to accept notions that are logically absurd and lacking scientific support.
If one must believe in a causeless effect, ordered chaos, life from non-life, space from spacelessness, and something coming from nothing to be considered intellectual, I will gladly accept the stigma of being an "ignorant Christian.
The universe cannot be eternal because today would mark the end of the eternal past, and yet eternity has no end to be reached. If we pause in our count to acknowledge that we live in the present, then an eternity could not have preceded today.
If the past is eternal it would be impossible to arrive at the present domino analogy because an infinite number of events or moments could never be completed.
The cause of the universe must be the First Cause, lest we push the problem of causation one step back infinitely which is impossible.
The First Cause must be eternal, immaterial, and non-spatial to bring time, space, and matter into existence. The First Cause must be personal and intelligent because creation has elements of personality and intelligence, and the cause must be greater than the effect. The First Cause is a self-existing cause of all things, eternal, immaterial, non-spatial, unchanging, independent, personal, intelligent, and transcendent to the universe.
This is the God of Christianity. P1 Everything that begins to exist has a cause P2 The universe began to exist. P2 is supported by the following two arguments: P1 A collection formed by successive addition cannot be actually infinite. P2 A temporal series of events is a collection formed by successive addition. P1 An event-cause requires a preceding cause ad infinitum P2 There cannot be an infinite regress of causation.
There must be a singular point in time past before which nothing existed. The cause for the emergence of the created realm must be eternal, non-spatial, and personal. This is a description of the Christian God. Some may argue that it is inconsistent to claim that the existence of personality and intelligence in our universe demands that the First Cause possesses personality and intelligence as well, when it is also being argued that only an eternal, non-spatial, and immaterial cause can account for the rise of time, space, and matter.
If the First Cause must be eternal, non-spatial, and immaterial to bring time, space, and matter into existence, does it follow that the First Cause must be non-personal and unintelligent to account for the personality and intelligence we find in our universe? Such an argument presupposes that the logic behind the former assertion is that in order to cause something, the cause has to be the opposite of the effect.
That is not the logic being employed. The cause of something does not have to be the opposite of the effect for the effect to exist. The reason the First Cause must be eternal, non-spatial, and immaterial to account for the beginning of a material world time, space, and matter is due to the fact that we know these three elements must have a beginning , and that beginning must be found in a First Cause. The First Cause cannot be that which brought the time-space-matter continuum into existence if it is itself part of time, space, and matter.
The same cannot be said of personality and intellect, however. There is no evidence to suggest that personality and intellect have their origin with the material universe. Actually, the philosophic evidence suggests that personality and the mind belong to the spiritual realm 31 which need not have a beginning , not the physical realm which must have a beginning.
That which is immaterial does not have a beginning, but is eternal. It must come from that which is both spiritual and eternal, because the physical and temporal can only produce physical and temporal things, of which the soul does not belong.
This would require a source that is transcendent to the material universe. The only thing that transcends the material universe is the First Cause of the universe. Can the First Cause account for such elements? Eternality and immateriality are essential to the nature of the First Cause, and that which is immaterial is spiritual by definition.
The spiritual nature of man, then, must transcend the created realm, finding its existence within the First Cause itself. The personality and intellect of man did not begin to exist with man; it preexisted within the First Cause as part of its essential nature.
The personality and intellect found in man is not a creation of some new thing that never existed before, but is a reflection of the First Cause's essential nature.
Personality and intellect belong properly to the First Cause, but man partakes of this spiritual aspect by impartation from the transcendent First Cause.
The First Cause is Spirit; man merely has spirit. We derive our immaterial aspects of personality, mind, and intelligence from the First Cause. To illustrate the point, consider the transmission of knowledge. When a teacher transmits knowledge to his students, he does not cause that knowledge to exist, nor does he cause the existence of more knowledge. The teacher merely causes more people to possess knowledge. In like manner, the First Cause's impartation of personality and intellect to man does not cause personality and intellect to begin to exist; it only causes more people to possess it.
We would have to confess that hile the immaterial aspect of man is eternal, it came into being at a particular point in time. Is this a contradiction? The eternality of man's immaterial being and its temporal beginning in us individually are not in contradiction.
While we begin to possess personality and intellect at a particular point in time, personality and intellect themselves do not begin with us in particular, nor with humanity in general. Personality and intellect are eternal, immaterial attributes of the First Cause, of which mankind partakes. While personality and intellect are reflected in the material realm, personality and intellect transcend the material realm in the First Cause.
The First Cause is the transcendent source of all immaterial being. While not everything that possesses spiritual existence has existed eternally such as angels and the immaterial aspect of humanity , the category of existence defined as "spiritual" must be eternal because spirituality immateriality is an essential attribute of the First Cause, and the First Cause is eternal.
While the spiritual aspect of humanity has a beginning in that it came to exist at a particular point in time, the spiritual substance of which we partake is eternal in nature. The substance itself is eternal, but we do not eternally possess the substance.
We begin to possess the substance in time as the transcendent First Cause extends it to us. The only thing temporal about our spiritual nature is the point in time at which we begin to individually partake of the eternal spiritual substance of the First Cause. At this point some may think I am advocating some form of pantheism wherein all is God. This is not the case. The fact that our immaterial nature is derived from the transcendent, eternal First Cause does not mean that we share in the divine, beings gods ourselves.
While we derive our spiritual nature from the First Cause, we are personally distinct from the same. We have a particular, individual existence that is peculiarly ours, in contradistinction to other human persons, and in contradistinction to the First Cause. Just as all material things share in the common substance of matter, and yet one material thing remains distinct from another material thing a tree is distinct from a rock; a rock is distinct from a bird, etc.
In summary, there are two basic categories of existence: the material, the immaterial spiritual. Only that which is material requires a beginning. That which is immaterial cannot have its origin in the material world because the material world can only produce material things. The immaterial must be eternal, because immateriality is an essential aspect of the First Cause, and the First Cause is eternal.
Anything in our physical universe that partakes of spiritual substance such as the soul, intellect, mind, spirit, etc. The only thing that transcends the material world is the First Cause.
The spiritual aspect of man must find its origin in the First Cause, reflecting the intelligence and personality inherent to its nature, while remaining personally distinct from the same. Specific references to this article will noted throughout.
Not only does the number have a terminus, but it also has a beginning: the number at which we began counting.
An infinite number, however, has no beginning, further demonstrating that it is impossible to count to infinity. Koukl, "You Won't Live an Eternity. Geisler and House, The Battle for God , The rise of matter necessitates that there be space in which the matter can exist, and time in which the matter can move. Scientists call this interdependent triunity the time-space-matter continuum.
Scientists are well aware that this continuum necessitates that the universe be temporal. Furthermore, the Big Bang explosion would have to consist of matter, space, and time in order to result in a material, spatial, and temporal universe, and yet it would be impossible for the Big Bang to consist of such elements if it is the cause of the very existence of such elements.
Some may argue that it is possible to bring something into existence that already exists because human beings can bring new human beings into existence. Such an argument misses the point under consideration. What is being discussed is the beginning of the existence of time.
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