I'm sorry - what do you find not to your liking about this particular thread - or any other thread I have created? We seem to assume always that there "must be something before" - and this gets us to the problem of "first cause." Even if you were to say "God" as your answer, then the question becomes, "how did God come to be?" If you say God is eternal, then you never had "nothing" (unless you wish to say God is nothing, which would imply non-existence). If there was never a point in which there was nothing, the whole idea of creating something from nothing falls apart. I will say something more direct to your "point," however. You have free will - for example, the free will to neither read my threads if they do not interest you nor to post nonsensical complaints on them. As far as I've seen, you have contributed very little to nothing in the way of intellectual discussion, and I'd appreciate if you would stop lowering the quality of my threads due to your inability to comprehend certain concepts. in the big picture? the cosmic scale you mean? we dont mean anything. we are bacteria riding a sand grain in a tornado headed across a wasteland. nothing feel good about it. so make the most of the time you have, because you arent getting it back and as far as im aware, you dont get a second shot. and self satisfaction is all you get before the reaper does its thing. what gives you that one-shot self satisfaction is up to you.You have a hard time differentiating between a self and an ego, hence the challenging nature of your communications. You primary origination then is defense and aggression, attempting to create a gain for the ego construct. If that is not the case, carry on, if that is the case, carry on. overlapping, non overlapping, super ego, id, god, demon, the primary cause is beyond the avenues of dualistic discusursiveness. No cause of cause are equal opposed layers.My opinion is that it shouldn't influence any of that. If you need to believe in an all powerful god to find hope in life, and treat others with kindness, then that is your problem. Many folks think that if this were proven that it would mean life is completely meaningless and it wouldn't matter if we just went around killing and stealing. I don't agree. The thing is, we are here, now. We can either work together and make a better world for our future grandchildren or we can continue to fight over which myth is true (if any). Our origin is irrelevant and it's in the distant past. We can't change it. Instead of arguing about what we don't know, let's try to figure it out or at the very least talk about what we have in common. The interesting part of this discussion is that we are asking the question. The Universe is literally trying to discover it's origin through us.... as we are a part of the Universe. Kind of boggles the mind a bit. I like to think that the fundamental question that needs answering is this: Did the Universe give rise to consciousness? Or did consciousness give rise to the Universe? I dont know whow to do quote things so I'll just answer - My 0 + 0 = 1 When I use that I'm using it in the contexts of before the universe. Scientists still say that there was at one point no universe so this was my example of saying that you cant get everything from nothing, it is impossible. No matter how small there will always be something there and so to think that a void of nothing can multiply itself to create the universe just doesn't work for me. Time - When I use the term beginning I dont think of time I just use the word because there isn't another word in my head that I can use to describe the start of something. I understand and do believe that Time depends on where you are and how you measure things (Space time isn't the same as earth based time). So I wasn't meaning beginning as in a time frame just a point of reference (if that's the right word).