Ever Wondered?

[Shade]

...if nothing had ever been created. or if there had never been anything or anyone to create it?

it's very difficult to think beyond the constraints of time as experienced by my own feeble brain, yet this is something that has bugged me since i was a little kid.

i usually visualise things before i can comprehend them. and it doesn't matter what i am trying to figure out. a recipe, an algebra equation, the cmyk and rgb breakdowns of a colour or a combination of atoms in a molecular compound. i usually need to be able to see it in my mind before i can understand it properly. i role play stuff in my mind's eye, i guess.

so since i was little, i have wondered what it must have been like to be present at the time of the creation. in later years, Douglas Adams sparked my imagination with a story about a restaurant that was positioned at the exact location where the end of the universe was to take place and (through a nifty time-and-space-warping technique or something) diners at the restaurant would be able to enjoy watching this spectacular event over and over as they feasted on a succulent intergalactic buffet.

ok, so my mind has been trying to picture the opposite event. going right back to the beginning, when all the bits and pieces were being put together. but this isn't really where my mind is busy looking. i need to look a little earlier than this. back to a time when the matter and elements which my own world comprises were still scattered elsewhere or perhaps simply were all still in other forms. and there's this God-dude who is gathering alla this cosmic stuff towards Himself. then back some time before that, to a time when some "other" celestial being was performing the same kinda operation. and back a little further and a little further and a little further yet, to a time when some REALLY ancient celestial mariner was trawling the depths and creating and collecting and this is kinda where my brain begins to totally short-circuit. because i cannot conceive of a universe in which, however infinite, there was not some point at which it had to all have started for the FIRST time. i'm trying to visualise this FIRST dude and how or where he got his "stuff". and what there was before this very first stuff came into existence and lastly, what existed before this dude existed, which would (technically) be --- NOTHING.

ok, so my limited psyche, cannot fathom the infinite. and this makes me (confounded) begin to imagine a void. but not the sort we commonly find beyond our own atmosphere. i'm talking about a SERIOUS void, here. a void that is so utterly and completely void of anything that it has no size. either that or it is infinitely large and yet totally and completely empty, and i dunno which is harder to imagine for me. everything kinda keeps expanding in my mind's eye and contacting again and goes horribly blurry and outta focus, cos it's magnitude keeps shifting so dramatically.

ok, so i don't think i can possibly make sense for you out of what i am trying to visualise. it makes little or no sense to me either. but i'm trying to imagine a universe that is not a universe at all. i am trying to imagine something which, devoid of anything whatsoever is so incredibly infinitely tiny, that "as x approaches 0" it becomes so tiny that its size becomes negligible and it simply vanishes altogether. it is THAT kinda void i am trying to imagine. nothingness.

if "nothing" existed, not even the word "nothing", what would i call this "nothing", with no-one or nothing to name it? and i wonder how "i" would feel... if "i" never existed.

anyway, thanks for reading, if you did. can anyone understand what i am trying to visualise? this non-universe is always just such a creepy non-place for me to imagine.

[JcDean78]

I imagin emptyness. Just total lack of anything, just a huge void. No light, no sound, no physical mater... nothing.

[Vanilla]

I had to laugh when I read this. When I was in high school and taking seminary was my parent's choice, not mine, I would take it out on my poor seminary teacher by asking, "Where did Heavenly Father come from and who were his parents?". I would do this because I knew that when I asked the question, my fellow students would want the answer as well and that it was a question that my teacher would never be able to answer, so it would cause total chaos in the class, much to my amusement. (And much to my shame now!)

When I read your post I was reminded of the question. I am like you, I like to have a picture reference in my mind about how things are. So in answer to your question, yes, I understand what you are trying to visualize! You can bet that ever given the opportunity, this will be the first thing that I ask Heavenly Father.

[Canuck Mormon]

I can honestly say I've never thought about it . That's one of those questions that can never be answered, so why ask it?

Remember:

We are "Mostly Harmless"

The answer to "Life the Universe & Everything" is 42

& "So long and thanks for all the fish"

[jimradictis]

I've thought about this and the only conclusion I can come up with is that "nothing" does not exist :) Even in a void time and space exists, but if both of these qualities were gone then there would be no void.

The problem faced with trying to go back before the big bang is, there was no "back". Time did not exist as far as I have read.

[BenRaines]

Ah but does time exist in eternity. We humans measure time to try to understand but does time exist in forever?

Ben Raines

[rosie321]

Shade

Its funny you brought this up. Believe it or not there is someone out here in cyberspace who used to wonder about the same things and can understand what you are saying . At least I know I'm not alone now. We must have had some strange childhoods :)

I drove people crazy with those types of thoughts when I was younger (and probably do now too :) ) I could not fathom everything coming from nothing either. Even for God. I guess I never really questioned God's existance or creation of the earth. But if God was alone and created the earth he must have been pretty lonely out there with only darkness and void. What was he doing out there floating in space with no one and nothing to do?

But I got really confused when I heard about Lucifer and the fallen angels. This bothered me more. Where did they come if there was nothing? Why don't we know more about them if the Bible is all complete? In Genesis we hear that God created the heavens and the earth from virtually nothing. So who was Satan and how did he get in the picture? God created Adam and Eve in Genesis. But there's nothing mentioned about Him creating Satan and His fall.

My favorite questions to ask people when younger.

Where did God come from?

Where did he get the materials to make the earth?

Answers.

He's God (therefore He can do anything)

Where did He get the materials to make everything? He made them of course. Or He's God so He can do anything.

Where did He get the materials to make the materials? Everything was black and void?

He made the materials to make the materials....

Where did he find them if there was nothing?

We never got past those questions onto my other ones.

I wasn't trying to drive people crazy at the time I just couldn't understand either

[jimradictis]

Ah but does time exist in eternity. We humans measure time to try to understand but does time exist in forever?

Ben Raines

hmmm I would think that Eternity is timeless it lies beyond our physical boundries.. Then again, I think that God is timeless.. It gets confusing though because I haven't an idea, I have read from LDS that God was once a mortal so then it does make me wonder what came before God. I once read an interesting story. It was regarding God basically blowing himself up, this is basically how the Big Bang occurred. It was a pretty good story called God's Debris http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God's_Debris

There should be a link to the story on that article.

[rosie321]

Since becoming LDS I must say I don't worry about it as much about those questions. The above thoughts concerned me more when I was younger and involved in non-LDS christian denominations. They believed that all answers can be found within the pages of the Bible. So I wanted answers and was disappointed not to be able to find them.

Its funny now that I'm LDS I still don't have all the answers. But LDS scriptures and doctrine not known to me before have helped to squelch the concerns and paint a little different picture then the one I had seen before.

There's comfort in knowing that God still speaks and reveals things through His prophets. That there are still hidden works that might come forth with some of the answers. God will reveal in His time what we need to know. Knowledge of the preexistance and how Lucifer got cast out of Heaven is interesting too.

Things just make more sense to me when taken in the context of LDS gospel principals and church doctrines.

[jimradictis]

Its funny now that I'm LDS I still don't have all the answers. But LDS scriptures and doctrine not known to me before have helped to squelch the concerns and paint a little different picture then the one I had seen before.

I feel the same way :) Since I have been in the Church a lot of the teachings have made so much sense that I often find myself awed in the elegance of it.

[CrimsonKairos]

...if nothing had ever been created. or if there had never been anything or anyone to create it?

You'd have the Soviet Union. B)

[Shade]

<div class='quotemain'>

...if nothing had ever been created. or if there had never been anything or anyone to create it?

You'd have the Soviet Union. B)

hehehehe.

well, look i was just kinda posting an old thought that often did and still does pop into my head.

and having been raised as an LDS kid, believing that God "came from somewhere" ie: another God, this was probably what set about this backward-in-time chain of thinking. the god-dudes to whom i was referring were these previous creators and their creators before them, ad infinitum. just the "ad infinitum" bit that always caused the congestion in my brain.

as for time vs eternity, i believe simply that if God is eternal and all time is His, then time is eternal, just part of the big picture and not broken down into the bite-sized and easily digestible chunks which He has given us to deal with. if-ya- know-what-i-mean...

[think]

If God were eternal than obviously that would mean there is no beginning or end. If there were no beginning then there would be no need for any creation of God. If you believe in an eternal God than you have to say there was no beginning hence no creation of God. Either God has always existed or has a beginning and an end.

[Shade]

If God were eternal than obviously that would mean there is no beginning or end. If there were no beginning then there would be no need for any creation of God. If you believe in an eternal God than you have to say there was no beginning hence no creation of God. Either God has always existed or has a beginning and an end.

ummm... God has called Himself the Alpha and the Omega. or in other words, He IS the beginning and the end. He is also endless. He is also, as you have pointed out, eternal. eternal means soooooo very much more than simply without a beginning and an end.

even the big bang theory relies entirely on the eternal nature of our universe: that everything that has ever existed has ALWAYS existed, that energy has never and can never be created nor destroyed but merely transformed.

eternity is not about a begining or the lack of a beginning nor is eternity dependent upon the non-existence of an end. it includes all beginnings and all ends. it is everything. if we are to truly attribute such a description to a being, then our own limited undestanding of what constitutes a "beginning" or an "end" must first be thoroughly examined and reassessed.

[think]

So I understand where you come from saying he is eternal and also beginning and end thing. I'm guessing you mean he has always been around forever i.e. eternal, but also creates beginnings and ends i.e. the beginning of the rapid expansion theory. My question would be then has God always existed or was he created by another God?

[sixpacktr]

Joseph Smith taught that our life is like a ring: there is no beginning or end, because if you have a beginning, you must have an end, therefore we have always existed.

That is hard for me to fathom, but I figure someday HF will show me how it was done, and my feeble mind will be able to grasp that concept.

[Shade]

So I understand where you come from saying he is eternal and also beginning and end thing. I'm guessing you mean he has always been around forever i.e. eternal, but also creates beginnings and ends i.e. the beginning of the rapid expansion theory. My question would be then has God always existed or was he created by another God?

yes

i do not however believe that He created that theory. i DO believe that He was and is responsible for the expansion itself, negating the need for any kinda theory. it's only theory to US. to Him it is quite real...