(May 8, 2015 at 10:38 am)Tonus Wrote: Perhaps the concept of a beginning is a limitation of our own? Either way you approach it, there must have been something, somewhere, that started everything. Did a singularity exist forever back in time and suddenly became our universe? Is it part of a constant and recurring process, where a universe is birthed and dies and is then reborn? Is it part of a different type of constant process, where universes are churned out of some eternal universe-making factory? Is it the creation of a sentient being who herself has always just existed? Either everything must come from something, in which case reality itself seems impossible, or something was somehow borne of nothing, or something was always there and spends eternity spitting out additional somethings.
I think the concept of a beginning is definitely a limitation we've received from being naturally selected as organisms that exist in our physical frame of reference. We evolved to cling to the classical concept of cause and effect, because that's what allowed us to survive. But little did we know, the whole time the underlying mechanisms of the universe were acting on entirely contradictory principles. I think to ask "how did reality begin" is to ask "where does the circle begin and where does it end?" or trying to comprehend a 2D plane with only one side. I don't think we're equipped to understand the answers.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell