I refuse to believe that the Universe isn't cyclical, because I believe the Universe has existed forever, otherwise there is no answer to the origin of everything other than something from nothing or God.
Is `1 + -1` something or nothing? And what is `2 + -2`? Is it something, nothing, or also `1 + -1`? And I could continue like this proving every number you could possibly imagine can exist in some manifestation of nothing.
So perhaps we're just one of the infinite manifestations of nothing. From our subjective perspective we are something, but from the perspective of an objective observer nothing is really happening because all the subjective manifestations equate to nothing.
I have no idea what I'm talking about, but this always made more sense to me than trying to understand why there is something and how long that something existed for. Perhaps it's both.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time...
which I first heard about in an interview with Alan Moore.
As a default state of not knowing, one causes far more material harm in our current reality than the other.
i once disagree that monotheism, which values non-material things more than material ones, neccessarily leads to destruction of the material. orthodox Christianity for example values material and non-material, soul and body equally.
secondly i disagree that this argument is valid. since if you are in the viewpoint of "all that matters is the non-material" then wasting material does not harm the world. and simirarly, supposedly saving souls at the expense of the body is incomprehensible to the materialist. so the term "harm" understood in 2 disjunct ways per the 2 frameworks.
circling back to orthodoxy: it unites the "saving souls" and "saving forests" (understand well, it's not about trees, but the whole material creation clamped together in a catchphrase) attitudes in the mystery of Incarnation.
Even a before/after of "nothing" is still an extra complication that violates the principle. Not that Occam's razor is a law, but given something already as wieldy as everything, it's probably a prudent application.
There are no easy answers, and it's highly likely whatever answer is true is unknownable.
I.e., a perpetual universe must explain why in every direction we see a uniform background radiation which looks exactly like it's coming from a hot universe of the past. Occam's razor dictates that the big bang is the simpler (thus preferable) model, given evidences.
As another commenter posited, a space-time surface that is curved along itself, perpetually. It doesn't negate the big bang, or the great death, rather it relies on these two properties - but exclusively and reductively.
The original comment was regarding a cyclic universe - which I agreed with. Perhaps my use of the term "perpetual", while accurate - was confusing. I don't disagree with the big bang, we've observed it directly.
The nature of the universe is a mystery, replacing "universe" with "god" is just a tautology that doesn't get us anywhere.
I'd add that if "god" is/was/will be made entirely of photons (and/or other massless particles), then "god" moves at the speed of light, which means "god" doesn't experience the passage of time[0]; so no beginning, no end and no in-between, just existence outside of "time."
This is, of course, a ridiculous idea. However, it does support the fantasy of an eternal being.
Then again, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."[1]
Which isn't to say that such claptrap as I suggest is true and, based on what we know now, it seems (at least to me) a ridiculous concept.
That said, our understanding of the universe(s) is woefully incomplete.
[0] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/54162/how-does-a...
[1] http://www.shakespeare-online.com/quickquotes/quickquotehaml...
Edit: Used the correct conjunction.
Edit: looking through your other comments, I maybe misunderstood your statement here. first glance it very much sounded like the god-of-the-gaps argument to me.