From: gmark@cbnewse.cb.att.com (gilbert.m.stewart)
Subject: Re: IQ vs. Faith
Organization: AT&T
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 17:57:00 GMT

In article <FkS-xjB@engin.umich.edu>, willism@engin.umich.edu (Mark Benjamin Willis) writes:
> In article <920719213401.208004e9@VAX1.UTULSA.EDU> SSR48327@VAX1.UTULSA.EDU (Syed Shibli) writes:
> >
> >mingmar@cs.mcgill.ca (Ming MAR) writes:
> >
> >> I've got a question for theologians:  If God created the universe, who
> >> created God?
> >
> >  God is All-Powerful. He created Himself. 
> > 
> 
> This is logically invalid.  God did not create Himself because to do so would
> mean he existed before he was created.  In fact, this very point is used in the
> cosmological argument for the existence of God which includes the assertion
> "each thing that exists is either uncaused or caused by another".  The third
> option, self causation, of which God creating Himself is a perfect example,
> is provably false.

Oh.  Never thought of that.  Seriously, tho', I'm about to go "cosmic"
here, so those of you that are annoyed by Extreme What-If can hit 'n' now.

Consider the following.  The universe (according to Bohr, I seem to
remember, as a matter of fact, in contradiction of Einstein) is,
at the very lowest level, abstraction.  That is, (just hypothesis) there
is not objective reality below quarks and such.  Now, if that is the
case, what does "relative size" mean?  I mean, how would one thing be
able to "contain" another?  Suppose that the very largest and the very
smallest were the same?  That perception of size is just a human perception.
Like color, temperature, shape.  At the very large and very small, the
orientation, if you will, is the same.  Sort of like each level of
magnitude is the same as any other.  I think of those photographs of
mountain ranges and coastal maps and how they mirror the patterns of
magnified dust particles, etc..  And how a coastline looks very similar
at all levels of magnification.  Now, what if this concept were applied
to time itself?  What if the beginning of time were linked to the "end"
of time?  And if that were true, then what effect would this have on
the notion of "causality"?  Wouldn't causality be dependent on relative
time of occurrence?  And if this relative time, being essentially
cyclical, could not be specified at the macroscopic level as being
"before" or "after", but only at the microscopic level, at which we
perceive this "time" thing (which, after all, is not really "time",
but rather our human perception of things being different than what
our minds remember as being their "previous" state), then "causality"
becomes only a human concept that is meaningless in the Big (really
Big) Picture.  Now, if that were the case, we would have a universe
that has always been, and always will, and causality and size and
"relative time" are only human concepts that deal with the 
microscopic.  Further, this seems to fit in with the "cyclical
universe" idea.  I don't mean the "closed" univers w/r/t time
and total universal mass and all that, but rather, the idea that
travelling through space far enough would bring you to the same
point.  And I would just apply this analogy to "travelling" through
"time".  So.  Wierd enough?  Fairly useless to subscribers to
Occam's Razor, but fun.  Comments (I don't expect any.  After all,
I think this was fairly clear...)

GMS
Newsgroups: rec.org.mensa