I'm doing some reading on the precursor to Zoroastrianism right now (Mazdaism), and it explains how Zurvan (Time) begets the Gods of Good and Evil.

Does this idea fit with modern theologies? That Time "predates" God? I remember in The Great Divorce, Time is an illusion of men given to us by God, but I do not know where the major churches of today stand on this theological issue.

This post has been edited by libvertaruan: Dec 29 2005, 03:16 AM

Obviously, God preceded everything. That means even time came from him.

what would cause god to come about after the start of the universe? time predating god seems strange

lol, contemplating this question could cause early insanity.

Lib, Assuming there is a creator, how could he possibly create time? The creator himself would have needed time to create time, right?. Everything that exists, as we know it, is affected by time.

E

An infinite Cre3ator can create in a moment, which is not time per se. Islam simplifies this by saying that God IS time (and more).

Anything predating time seems even stranger to me.

Note, I meant Mazdeanism, NOT Mazdaism which is a seperate religion in the middle east. Mazdeanism predates Zoroastrianism, so I'm not sure if Zoroastrians believe this.

Liberitarian-it seems the ancient Iranians believed that the Gods of Good and Evil both came from time, not that God created Time as in the Christian theology.

No doubt it seems strange to us, as Christian theology seems pretty clear that God creates everything, including Time.

Time, of course. Cause god never "came", he allways was.

/fundy

Zoroastrians do NOT believe that; they believe that Ahura Mazda (God, IIRC) had two sons, who were Ormazd and Ahriman (respecively, the good and bad SPIRITS, aka Spenta Mainyu and Angra Mainyu, though I don't remember which is which right now). Ormazd and Ahriman are going to fight it out until the final day, in which Ormazd will triumph over his evil brother Ahriman and humans will be judged. Unlike in the Judeo-=Christian tradition, however, everyone goes to paradise, though at a cost. All humanity must wade through a river of lava to cross to paradise; were one to be considered sinless, it would be as comfortable as wading through a river of milk (unspoiled, I assume). However, the more sinful you lived, the more painful and destructive the river will be to you. In the end, however, all will cross over to paradise, and Ahura Mazda (not Ormazd) will restore us all to our original bodies at a comfortable age and we will praise him forever.

At least, this is what it has evolved into.

Why does time need to be created?

Time is not tangible, it is an idea. To say God predates time doesnt make sense because in the way we think of time, nothing can come before the beginning of time. God existed prior to the human realization of the idea of time, but time was always there.

Would they not both have co-existed through eternity(thus God and time have always existed. God did not exist w/o time and time did not exist w/o God).

I agree that anything existing before time is a pretty strange concept. The idea of even a being like God being able to create time is a little difficult to comprehend...

Um, Daky, unless the Big Bang theory has been disproven and I didn't hear about it, we have already proven that time has not existed for eternity.

Molimo, keep in mind that Big Bang is a theory and we haven't proved anything. :ph34r:

Yeah....

1) Big Bang is just a theory and not one I personally give much credibility to.

2) Why do we know time has not existed for eternity? Time is not tangible. It can exist even if nothing else does.

3) Nothing can exist "before" time because "before" doesnt exist w/o time. Be like saying the ocean existed before water did when you cannot have an ocean without water. You cannot have a before without time.

This post has been edited by Dakyron: Dec 27 2005, 11:56 PM

"just a theory?" lol.



Um, no. Time cannot exist without space. If you want to see the proof for that, look up an obscure theory called general relativity by some guy called Einstein.



Completely correct.

Yup, just a theory!

Big Bang is actually the best theory we can come up with, but at least most people don't bring imaginary numbers into the equation. Just Stephen Hawking.

Gravity is also just a theory :D

afaik, wrong.

The traditional response is that it is pointless to ask what was before the big bang. This in itself does not mean time did not exist before then.
In any case, i'm pretty sure that we've gone beyond the traditional response and started to theorise as to was was before the big bang (I'm pretty sure I read something along those lines in Scientific American)

Yes, but gravity is observable and doesn't basically require the negation of every other known theory/law of the universe.

This post has been edited by acow: Dec 28 2005, 05:31 AM

That's a good point. For most intents and purposes, it's certain that the time before the Big Bang was irrelevant, but you're right that that doesn't necessariy mean it didn't exist.

It depends on what model you're using. General relativity predicts that the Big Bang started with just a singularity, which means that the laws of physics break down and nobody (yet) knows what the hell went on. I've heard, though, that it's thought that space itself originated during the Big Bang, and thus time did too. That's about where my knowledge ends, though.

Really now, how is relevance determined? Too many people say that the answers to certain questions are irrelevant, but that never stops people from asking the questions, and frankly it is no satisfactory answer.

Time cannot exist w/o space, but space doesnt have to have anything in it. I think you have to assume space was always there, just with nothing in it. Thus, time was always there as well.

And it is just a theory, one that some people, admittedly many of them pretty smart guys, believe fits the facts. It is far from being proven infallible, however.

That's true. God could have created the world like this just to fool people into believing in general relativity. Mabye he did this as a test of our faith. You can't say that just because GR predicts something, it must be true.

In addition, how do we really know for sure that are minds are even capable of comprehending who created us and why?


P.S. - I love this stuff, I think it's good for the mind.

E

Relevance is determined, for certain questions, by how much information it can provide.

For example, a lot of people ask if there was something before the Big Bang. As far as we know, though, that question can't be answered- because there's no way to deduce what came "before" the Big Bang from what came after it (or at least, no way to deduce that from our current knowledge).

But I realize that for certain questions, like perhaps this one, the time before the big bang is relevant.



Uh, every version of the Big Bang theory that I have ever heard holds the exact opposite of that. "Space" began expanding at the Big Bang and still hasn't stopped (hence the continual expansion of our universe even today).



True. Do you have an alternative that fits the facts better, though? Because the Big Bang is the most complete theory to date.

if there is no space, then what is the universe expanding into? I always though space was infinite, and the universe expanded through space.

As for an alternative... no, Im def not knowledgable or interested enough to try to come up with a better alternative. The big bang is probably the best known theory and the one I am most familiar with. its the singularity that gets me more than anything else... Just thinking about the concept can cause headaches...

Space is infinite in the same way the earth is infinite. You can go east forever, but there is not an infinite amount of Earth.

Space is expanding. Whatever that means, and it means a lot. It means that it had a beginning (imaginary numbers, as I mentioned before, are just that--imaginary), and that all matter was squeezed into the most compact form possible, which was all that space would allow for it. I have had my attention wander elsewhere, so I'll stop writing now.

reading this thread gives +10 to groovy.

Yeah, the Big Bang is one of those theories that sounds confusing to pretty much everybody, and confuses the Ph.Ds even more.

Also, this thread's new title is great.