Illuvatar

[Brimvalir]

If it was Eru in the beginning (also called Illuvatar) where did he come from ??

[Finrod Felagund]

It's basically the same idea as the Christian God, he was just always there. There's really no other explanation for it.

[Ñólendil]

I suppose you could say Time was not created yet and the question "where did Eru come from" is invalid. Eru was before Time, there was no Time. Before The Beginning. Under this line of thinking I can dimly see why Eru could be conceived of as having been there "just because".

[Wayfarer]

You're going to give yourself headaches.

[markedel]

Actually it's not just because-in monothesistic religions God Exists, and we can't know why, because unlike God we are finite.

[Arathorn]

yeah...kinda like a glass trying to fill itself with an ocean

[Andúril]

Ñólendil:

You shouldn't say that Eru was before time, because before is a measure of time, thus you will be describing him within the constraints of time.

Rather perhaps say that Eru exists outside of time. He created Arda, which has a property of change, which is interepreted by us mortals as time.

Although this is how it is in the books, it is much more complicated than this, as well as being fundamentally flawed from the beginning.

[bropous]

Good points both, Nolendil and Anduril. And I agree that one can only give oneself a headache going too far down this theological, existential path....

Sorta like "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

[Khadrane]

In response to the chicken and the egg question, the chicken came first. God created the chicken (along w/ the rest of the animals) and told it to reproduce after it's own kind.

[Radagast The Brown]

but if God created the egg first and the chicken came out of the egg?
I think bropous is right.

[Wayfarer]

A better way of saying it would be that Iluvatar is outside time.

Or that time/change is a property of arda, and eru is outside arda.

[bropous]

Actually I can quote a different mythology which stated that "Big Juju" commanded that the egg break open and revealed her original plan inside: A chicken.

Geez. can't a person recognize a rhetorical question when they sees one?

[Andúril]

The egg/chicken debate is quite interesting, I must admit. I haven't really given much thought to it, but here's my take:

The answer lies in the inherent preconceptions. In other words, this question will lead to one of two possible answers, each logically sound, but subjectively different.

Take the egg. If one assumes that the theory of evolution is correct, then we can make another two assumptions, that is, that the chicken had evolved from something else, and that the mode of birth was the egg. Thus, if our premises are correct, the egg came first, because the animal from which evolved the chicken would not be accurately defined as a chicken, and seeing as chicken has now been taken out of the equation, we are left with the egg.

Or, perhaps you are a christian, for example, and believe that God created all animals. Here it would be obvious that the chicken came first, unless you are of the position that the bible is not sufficiently informative about the actual creation of animals, in that possibly creatures born through the mode of eggs were created as eggs - then of course you would find yourself back at the drawing board. However, the possibility of this occuring is so small, that it would be justifiable to assume God as having created the animal in adult or slightly younger age (here again there is not adequate info).

My opinion?

The egg.

PS. There is a hole in my thinking: If we are to take egg as just that and not specifically a chicken egg, then we are fine. But narrowing down the type of egg would actually bring us back to the original question.

Thus mine head now hurts.

[bropous]

See, I told you that you'd give yourself a headache if you went too far down this theological existentialist path. I hate to say I told you so, but......

Anyways, great follow-up post, Anduril.

[Brimvalir]

Illuvatar invented time - talk about a high IQ :P

[Ñólendil]

Good points Anduril. You're absolutely correct.

[Andúril]

Thanks.

[Dwarven Sen]

I've always thought that the chicken came last and that illuvatar was everything. I don't understand I simply know. Time does not exist because it is only relative to yourself

[Andúril]

Time does not exist because it is only relative to yourself

Actually, Dwarven Sen, that is similar to the arguments I have heard, which go : Nothing exists if there is no-one to observe anything.And which analogy best describes this theory? The tree-in-forest one, of course!!

I don't want to delve too deep into this, in fact I don't even want to start - lets just say that that it is probably impossible to determine, or prove, unless you use the term observe in one definite way, that is, to physically be there, to be in viewable and/or audible distance of the occurence, at the time of the occurence. Otherwise we could use a video camera and view the occurence later, and that would not be observation in the same sense - then we could prove the tree-in-forest thingy. Or maybe not...

But I digress.

What is time? In my opinion time is change, i.e. if nothing ever changed at all, there would be no such concept as time, everything would be in a natural frozen state.

So how do we know that time exists? We have observed the state of an object at one point, and then find the object different when observing it at a later stage. Obviously later is a measure of time, so observation of anything is not even necessary, as observation itself is only possible inside a changing environment.

But to say that time does not exist because it is only relative to yourself, I don't think that is true. The fact that time does not differ from one persons perspective to another, shows that it is objective, once we have come to terms with knowing that the actual measure of time that we use (minutes/seconds etc) is a concept created and agreed upon by human minds. Also, you can replace time in your statement with change, so that change does not exist because it is only relative to yourself. The fact that you have made a positive assertion, by saying it is, shows that in at least one sense time/change does in fact exist. After that, the similarity between one persons perception of this change and anothers shows the objective nature of it, hence an objective and not relative existence, although both co-exist.

Perhaps I am not understanding your statement correctly, Dwarven Sen. Care to expound?

PS why do you think the chicken came last?

[Dwarven Sen]

Well I thought the egg came first because as the DNA particles of the first organisms replicated before they formed a being there had to be a method of protecting the unformed organism from the volcanic gases and pollution that was around. hey it was even worse than todays.