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Comment by stareatgoats | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I suspect (without further proof ATM) that this is the main reason for this quest for timelessness which Sean Carrol (cited in another comment) finds so perplexing [0]. Eternity has traditionally and in various ways been associated with (especially) monotheism. Same with infinity (of which eternity is a sort of subset).

A much simpler but perhaps more tedious way out of this apparent rational loophole for religions would be accept it. Religion may keep this final straw of rationality: we don't and can't know everything given a (probably) infinite universe. Religion is not best understood as a theory of physics anyway, but rather as a study of history, society and mind.

[0] http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2009/06/17/timeless...

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The universe IS completely unknown, and forever will be. It is like a sandbox.

As Alan Watts put it with his mischievous sense of humor:

"Science is the art of prediction"

Talking about religion, Christianity used to refer to this, then it lost its way. See eg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cloud_of_Unknowing

> Talking about religion, Christianity used to refer to this, then it lost its way.

This is still true, to an extent, in the Christian Orthodox world, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is still reguarded as one of the main “intellectual stars” (so to speak) of the Christian Orthodox thought. As for the “lost way” that you mention, I think that that change started in the West once the Reformartion took off and people wanted to “be sure” that they’ll get to live the eternal life. Here in Eastern Europe people do not think in absolute terms about life after death, as in nobody actually believes you can “earn” your way into Heaven, it all resides in God’s Will which is not possible for us to know. There’s also that New Testament parable of a guy asking Jesus at some point with whom of his wives will he be married in Heaven (the guy had been previously married to a different woman) and Jesus basically answered that that is a stupid question as nobody knows anything about Heaven.

Just a nitpick, but the example the man gives is of a hypothetical woman who over time had seven husbands --- just one at a time of course, but one husband would die and then she would get married again. The question was, which one will be her eternal husband?

> Jesus basically answered that that is a stupid question as nobody knows anything about Heaven.

Jesus said it was an ignorant question, yes, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God." But he didn't say nobody knows. He said that she won't be married: "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven" (Matthew 22:29).

Thanks for the correction, I had last read that almost 20 years ago :)

Actually, he was addressing the unbelief in a resurrection by the sect of the Sadducees, as well as the simplistic idea underlying their question that life after death will be a direct translation of life before. The Sadducees were basically trying to make a clever intellectual trap.

That, too, but I think that the point that there’s futile for us to want to know the “details” of the after-life is also a valid one in reguards of this parable.

What loophole are you talking about? As much as I try, I cannot see any connection whatsoever between religion and concepts of infinity and eternity in physics.

Is the idea that anything that science currently cannot explain must be connected to religion? That would be a fallacy.

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