Alex Bott

Changing the other country's politics is not what war is about. That is how we are conducting it now, i.e. Afghanistan, and Iraq. (Even if "changing politics" means merely going from a dictatorship to a "democracy".) Trying to change the politics of a nation is altruism extended into foreign policy. War is about destroying the enemy, period.

"Yes! Let's talk about that. haha. I agree that if we are referring to the universe as "the totality of all that exists" than there is nothing outside of it which could cause it. But WITHIN that category ("within the universe" or "within existence") there must exist a cause which is not also an effect..IF the Law of Cause and Effect is valid. Agree? Disagree???" This is at the heart of your attempt to clarify your thinking. This first cause idea, within the universe, is claiming the creation of energy. Cause and effect, relationships of motion, etc, are all concepts branching into a more broad idea such as energy. A pool ball hitting another ball causing it to move, is the description of energy transference. Just like the universe is eternal, energy must be eternal as well. To have a first cause would mean the creation of energy, out of what was previously no energy (even though you say matter has always existed). The one good thing that has come out of modern physics is probably the notion that energy and matter are inseparable, even going further to point out that matter can be turned into energy. Coupled with the agreement that existence has always existed, and modern physics' notion of the equality between energy and matter, I think of the universe as always existing, eternal in the sense that time cannot describe it.