The "something can't come from nothing" argument

[1robin]

The something from nothing argument is specious.
First you need to define Something.
And then define nothing.

both are incredibly hard to define. The best we arrive at is something and nothing that we know about. There is little reason to suppose that the universe was created from anything that makes it up now. The "stuff" that make up God and his environment, out side our universe is probably more than sufficient, to create a universe of universes.

They are actually vey easy to define.

1. Nothing: The lack of being.
2. Something: A entity which has the property of being.

You can't get out of the implications by semantic technicalities.

 

[McBell]

You can't get out of the implications by semantic technicalities.

To bad you refuse to apply this attitude to yourself...

 

[1robin]

Right. So what you're saying, when you say things like "It's the only thing that could explain it!" you're really saying that it's the only thing that could explain it that you know of, because of course you have only a passing familiarity with mechanics and theories that, while only now are being touched upon by experts, are fundamental to understanding the beginning of the universe.

That is precisely how science works. All of it. We can't measure everything everywhere so we make reasonable assumptions about the way things act everywhere or in all similar cases. Have we measured C everywhere? Gravity everywhere? Dark matter at all? Yet each of these is a well established fact of science based on reasonable assumption. To balk at what I claim is to denounce science and almost every form of knowledge ever known. However it gets worse, I can add philosophic, historical, or logical confirmation to add even more certainty to my claims. To equate not being an expert with the inability to have a reasonable level of certainty is not valid. Laws are based on the principle having no known exceptions. My claims have no known exceptions nor even a theoretically justifiable reason to think there ever will be any. That is about as good as knowledge gets.

So you don't know that it's the 'only game in town' at all. You're simply convinced it's the only game because you lack understanding of all of the other games in town.

Other games in town which have no known occurrence are not really debatable. No scientist (or I should say no one should) believe in X because it's negation is not absolute though there are no observations of X. We have no need of considering multiple universe until there is evidence of them not something coming from nothing until it is observed, or natural infinites until one is found. I do not have to disprove every other fantastic fiction to claim what is true of what is known.

You see yourself and the world around you as solid objects which can be touched and studied and quantified. But they're only solid from your perspective. If you travelled in a ship that was smaller than a Quark, you could fly right through the gaps in people's atoms. Indeed you wouldn't see them as people at all, but infinitely (from your perspective) spanning collections of spherical neuclei orbited by an electron (which would appear as a feint halo around the atom's neucleus). Indeed, quantitively, the physical matter that you're made of is proportionately much less (99.9% less) to the spaces between those atoms and molecules.

You, nor anyone who ever lived has the slightest idea if that could be true. I have read on the subject of minds primacy to matter and have found it interesting. It actually is an argument for God as the primal mind behind all matter but even so I never use it without labeling as highly theoretical at best. So it's an argument for God if true but not really trustworthy at this point.

So you have come to understand the world not only using limited tools, but entirely from the perspective of a five-foot something human being who can only see/hear/touch/ a very limited portion of the world.

Unlike science I am very well aware of my limitations. That does not mean that anything I have claimed is beyond my knowledge and height has little relevance.

Someone from 1706 might say 'glass is smooth'. I might say 'Do you believe that?' He might say 'Yes! It is smooth! That is the truth! How could it be anything else?' He runs his hand over it to demonstrate its smoothness. From his point of view glass is smooth. He has no other way of knowing it isn't. Until I show him glass under a microscope and he sees that it is in fact an entirely rough surface, but on such a small scale that it feels smooth to us.

Using his logic nothing can be taken as true until eternity is traversed and all answers known. Debates take place on the evidence at hand, not on the evidence that might be found even though there is no reason to believe the potentiality for that evidence even exists.

However. The idea of 'nothing' is rather outmoded now. We're sure that there was something before the universe, even if it was just a chaos of primordial gasses. Or a black hole. we don't know. Yet the idea that the universe came from absolute nothing is, frankly, a lie made up by christian scribes to magnify the supposed power of God.

How in the world do you out date the idea of non-being? By it's very nature it is outmoding proof. However as secular science advances the more is claimed to be known despite the fact that even truth is denied as existing. I think we have reached the point of educating ourselves into imbecility and nothing is just as relevant and important in a modern professional debate as it was in Alexandria.

Lets examine your theological history:
1. The idea of a universe from nothing is a Hebrew creation not a Christian one. It existed over 200 years before a single Christian ever existed.
2. Even if false it would only be a lie if the one who made was aware it was a lie and was motivated to claim a falsehood. Despite the fact modern science has only now caught up to them they would not have been aware of an error even if they had made one. They would have been mistaken not lying. You can't possibly know their motives, so your being dishonest in characterizing them as such. Leave atheism alone for a few minutes and it eats its self.
3. I did not get the idea of nothing before the universe but from brilliant cosmologists like Hubble and Vilenkin and the fact that any other scenario is pure speculation that defies logic, philosophy, and reason.

Vilenkin’s verdict: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

This man is no Christian.

 

[1robin]

I am not trying to refute the Bible with cosmology and 4-dimensional manifolds. That would be like deploying a thermonuclear device to kill a mosquito.

Bad metaphor. Mosquitos and cockroaches are among the few things believed to be able to survive nuclear weapons.

I am just trying to show how the premises of any cosmological argument to prove causality (from God, Allah, or other natural processes) are inherently flawed. If the Universe is "caused" by any of them, this is for other readons, independent from Kalam. or other sophisms invented during the middle age.

I do not believe I limited myself to or even mention the Kalam version of the cosmological argument. Not that anything you said was a threat to either.

So, if the 4-dimensional block universe is true, as relativity seems to confirm, it is equally true that any causation, begin of existence, birth, death, evolution, expansion of the Universe are physically meaningless concepts.

You still have the model and the reality it may represent confused. I can draw a circle to represent the sun but that would not make the sun eternal or perfectly round. I can make the same manifold and assign one of it's dimensions the price of eggs in China, the magnitude of error in leftist politics, or the acceleration of my car. It would not make china, eggs, leftists, or my car eternal or an accurate representation of the universe as a whole. In fact the way I draw my graphs are barely legible and do not even represent universal reality to well much less become it.

ciao

- viole

Your whole mode of thinking here is flawed and far too much so to be consistent with the intelligence and experience it takes to actually understand 4 dimensional manifolds. Either you copying or repeating something you do not understand or I have been out of school far too long.

ditën e mirë

 

[1robin]

Being existence.

Existence is not a thing but a property of a thing.

 

[Thief]

Existence is not a thing but a property of a thing.

Not a thing.....and yet a property.....

As a possession?....or a characteristic?

Existence could be lost?

 

[1robin]

*yawn*

Let's face it.

If or until we manage (as a species) to attain intergalactic travel, there will always be those that insist that"god" is the divine "cause" of everything.

After 100 billion stars are mapped, and 10 trillion worlds are discovered, over the course of eons...some will still insist that mankind is "god's" purposed work and result.

Otherwise...we must be insignificant and meaningless.

That looks bad in any vanity mirror.

This is based on the absolute false premise that as learning increases faith decreases. Christianity adds ads equivalent number to it's flock as the population of Nevada and Islam is growing like a virus. Your premise is invalid. Heck there are even more religions (themselves) today than 500 years ago and the more we learn the more it points to God and the more it reveals that we do not know. Some abstract hope in a person a thousand generation from now flying to another place is completely hollow. It is a mystery of atheism that they derive hope from what people they do not know may learn. I have never understood that concept. You will still be dead and not even aware of what they discovered. How is that hope?

 

[idav]

Existence is not a thing but a property of a thing.

Existence is inherent to any thing.

 

[viole]

Bad metaphor. Mosquitos and cockroaches are among the few things believed to be able to survive nuclear weapons.

We should try.

I do not believe I limited myself to or even mention the Kalam version of the cosmological argument. Not that anything you said was a threat to either.

Well you did it, aince you mentioned that things that begin to exist have a cause.

Kalam becomes moot in my view, since the second premise would become false. This is only one of the ways to defuse it using modern physics.

Nota bene: it defuses the conclusion that there is a necessary cause, including a natural one.

You still have the model and the reality it may represent confused. I can draw a circle to represent the sun but that would not make the sun eternal or perfectly round. I can make the same manifold and assign one of it's dimensions the price of eggs in China, the magnitude of error in leftist politics, or the acceleration of my car. It would not make china, eggs, leftists, or my car eternal or an accurate representation of the universe as a whole. In fact the way I draw my graphs are barely legible and do not even represent universal reality to well much less become it.

I think that it should be evident by now that your analogies do not apply, even if they made sense.

I don't think I am confusing the model with reality. I am just showing an aspect of reality which is perfectly comform to special relativity. It is actually the simplest, if not the only, way to make sense of it.

You are implicitely assuming that the tensed theory is the only true one, because of experience and intuition I presume, ignoring that the tenseless is equally plausible. If not more, because of its agreement with the evidential nature of time.

I hope you will not counter that relativity is only a theory...

Your whole mode of thinking here is flawed and far too much so to be consistent with the intelligence and experience it takes to actually understand 4 dimensional manifolds. Either you copying or repeating something you do not understand or I have been out of school far too long.

ditën e mirë

It might be flawed, of course. Yet, you fail to show where. For that you need to know a bit more about physics after the 18th century, I am afraid. However, if you knew something about relativity, you would probably agree with me.

Using arguments from philosophy, personal experience, intuition is akin to going to a gun fight with a knife.

By the way, I posted a couple of links that express this view more precisely and in surely better English. Which part did I not understand, in your opinion?

Ciao

- viole

 

[1robin]

The rate of change of a system is not time, it is the derivative of the state respect to time. And to say that time is duration is like saying that space is distance, which lead immediately to a circularity.

Well someone needs to revise physics. Every rate of change I can remember has time in it. Miles PER HOUR, meters PER SECOND, Twinkies PER DAY, etc.... It gets even worse with the rate of change of change. Like meters PER SECOND - PER SECOND.

Timespace can be bent like a rubber sheet. It has curvature. It can be affected by matter and energy in its surroundings or far away. It is an object.

Have you ever seen this fabric outside a drawing? It is not an actual plane it is a representative relationship. If I draw a graph of the efficiency of a reciprocating engine it does not indicate that there really was a bell shaped component to the engines reality but only in the tool I used to represent it. However lets pretend there really is a physical plane that is compose of time and space, in what way is either eternal?

Do you think that non-objects can have a non zero Gaussian curvature?

Sure do, since a Gaussian curvature is a graph used as a convenient tool to evaluate reality, it is not reality (not in the context we are discussing anyway) its self. I can plot pure vacuums on graphs. My boss' specialty was Boolean differential calculus and geometry used to evaluate state changes in information. There are a myriad of tools used to record relationships with the abstract within them, but they do not exist as natural entities but as perceptive creations dependent on mind. Exponential curves, etc.... would cease to exist in nature if human minds dis. Just as our perceptions are not eternal neither are the tools we invent.

According to the B-theory of time, dinasaurs exist as we speak. They are located in timespace at a certain distance from us. And the B-theory (tenseless) fits nicely with relativity (the A-theory does not).

I do not grant B-theory with reliability, nor multiverse, M-theory, abiogenesis, etc.... Have you ever noticed that the only parts of science that are used to contend with the bible are the most speculative and theoretical? Why does not gravity, mass, or a ruler disprove God. It is always some think tank theory that does the trick. Convenient I guess but not very persuasive.

This distance is given by d^2 = t^2 - x^2, where t is the time distance from us (about 65 millions years, converted in meters) and x is the space distance from us (where the earth was at that time in the galaxy).

I can invent any graphical representation I want that does the same thing. I can link the economic stability of Tibet with distance if I want and call it theoretically valid. Does not make anything eternal or my model into a natural concrete entity.

They belong to our past, but they might belong to the present (or even future) of another equally valid observer in the Universe. To say that they ceased existing is parochial. We cannot have a chat with them, but this is only a geometrical constraint given by the Psudo-Riemannian metric of space time. I cannot causally interfere with most things: that does not entail that they do not exist.

This is an argument that has as it's criteria the known impossibility of a negation. You have just rendered all science (including your criteria) invalid. Science is based on the assumed rationality of the universe. That even though we cannot measure gravity everywhere we assume it behaves predictably everywhere. Debates do not take place about what could someday somewhere be true, but instead about what hypothesis best explain reliable facts. Your in the deepest end of speculation of which I have become increasing skeptical. Why don't we get back to earth and reliable data and see if anything known contradicts God. Models and speculative theories are not persuasive.

And it is core relativity, since it is an immediate consequence of the special theory of relativity (not to speak of the general one).

Your not talking about the reality that relativity represents your talking about what is true of the abstract tools used to represent it. You are simply representing tens less time as truth. Of the two dominant theories tensed time has by far the best and most evidence. Memory, the apprehension of the past, thermodynamics, etc..... I had relativity in school and while certainly no expert I was never ever told it justified the belief that reality all exists at the same time and only varies by distance. I have only recently read of that theory and it's argumentation just makes me tired. I swear in many ways science has died. Where are the Newton's, the Galileo's, the Faradays that produce useful testable ideas. Science has lost sight of the shore and is drowning in speculative oblivion with no objective way to know it.

You might find it strange that time can be measured in meters. But why? After all we measure distances using (light) years. Since the factor of conversion is a constant, using meters for measuring time, instead of seconds, should be as weird as using kilometers instead of miles for measuring distances.

A light year is a measurement of distance not time. It includes time (always measured purely in units of time) but is not equal to time. It is equal to a length. We do not say 20 light years ago but light years away. Those models have really twisted your thinking. It helps if you get out of the lab or off the net and produce things that must work.

Your ontological difference between time and space is physically meaningless.

It is physically irrelevant because time is not physical.

The cosmological constant introduced by Einstein so that the Universe is not past finite has nothing to do with the block Universe or the Minskonvskian view that space time is a 4-dimensional block in which time and space, taken separately, have no objective meaning.

I did not mention either of your two motives. I said Einstein was PHYILISOPHICALLY or theologically committed to an eternal universe and so made up science that allowed for it. Huge mistake. As in your case when theory or the model become more meaningful than reality you have lost your scientific relevance.

This particular quote has been written decades after he recognized his "blunder" concerning the cosmological constant, which should provide enogh evidence that the two concepts are not related (unless he was schizophrenic.

I gave no quote.

Continued below;

 

[1robin]

Oh, the good old adagio of a conspiracy from secular scientists. And what has morality and accountability to do with that?

Adagio? (I saw that movie, about a horse I think). They were simply examples of where theories have been preferred to thousand year old certainties since the secular dominance of science. You will have to excuse the appearance of what is to me a exhaustive and well grounded certainty that secularism is always accompanied by moral decline and the negation of truth. The examples are irrelevant as secularism increases traditional truths recede (and without sufficient justification or any justification at all). You can call it a conspiracy (I wouldn't) or the natural result of separation for the source of truth or whatever you will but the result is undeniable.

This is pretty lame. I could symmetrically say that all crap comes from the time when science was not secular and there was a ridicolous theistic agenda in all discoveries of the past.

You could but you would be wrong. Christians more than any other similar group has contributed more to science. Not only the enlightenment but science it's self relies upon the proposition of a rational universe that is only expected if God exists. However I think we are getting off topic.

But this is nonsense. Newton is good for most applications but it fails miserably when you go beyond those cases. That does not in any way diminish Newton's genius. He could not have done any better with what he knew. But now we know that his view of an absolute time ontologically different from space was simply wrong.

That is like saying a ruler is good for measuring feet but not seconds. A deficiency is only a deficiency if there is a failure where success was expected. Newton knew little of the world of electrons he did not know there was a place where his physics was not applicable. That is not failure. There is precious little of what Newton did that has been supplanted by modern science. Modern science has accounted (partially) for other areas that Newton was ignorant of. His theory of time is however still far more justified than any other and is by far the most dominant model. BTW I am only referring to the tenseness of time not some vagary associated with his view I am ignorant of.

It is not a question of secular science; it is a question of evidence that contradicts Newton. Alas, for the creationist's mind, facts can be a nuisance created by pesky atheists

Did you invent a conspiracy to counter the conspiracy I never mentioned. Conspiracy's require intent. I think modern scientists are involuntarily wrong not plotting.

1. Science has become a huge industry. Money and our love of it have corrupted it accordingly.
2. It has become a intolerant world where little patience is extended to anything inconsistent with it.
3. Tenure, getting published, and peer review will always produce as much or more corruption than they prevent. It is human weakness and it cannot be systematized away.
4. In modern culture scientists are the rock stars and headlines and TV spots have cost integrity.

Anyway no conspiracy just the same human frailty present in any system given time. I also believe that theological preference get sin the way and can supply quotes that prove it but that is not what I have been trying to discuss.

That tensed time is far more accepted is true. My physician and my hair dresser also prefer tensed time. But I do not know many phycists who do. And the majority does not make things any truer, anyway. Relativity was accepted by a couple of people only 100 years ago: did this fact make it false?

There would have been little basis on which to establish relativity 100 years ago and no need to believe it even if proven to be true later. Skepticism of even true things can be justified given a lack of data. Because one theory might be true does not suggest that all theories have equal merit. By far most physicists in history have held a tensed time view. I would think many if not most do today but have no idea how to get that data.

What has geodesical incompleteness (aka past-finite universe) to do with a block 4-dimensional eternal Universe?

You said manifolds did not begin to exist and I said they did. I do not know how to make it any simpler. Even if you (for some unknown reasons equate seconds with feet) somewhere or "sometime" manifolds first came into being.

The earth is north-finite. All geodesics pointing north stop at the north pole. Is the north pole a special point on the two dimensional manifold (sphere) of the earth that requires explanation?

The north pole is and has been physically explained by a thousand factors. It most certainly requires an explanation of it's existence as a reality but less so as concept.

Why should the closure of all time geodesics be a special point on the manifold describing the geometry of space time, then?

Manifolds are irrelevant. I am talking about nature not pictures used to represent it.

And again, according to tensed theory, that point is "still" there.

In any realistic theory the point requires an explanation.

Ciao

- viole

Selah,

 

[Willamena]

Existence is not a thing but a property of a thing.

Existence is not a property if properties exist.

 

[Ouroboros]

Being existence.

Agree.

God is the framework, the canvas, the memory heap in RAM, the scaffolding, eternal and infinite motion and emotion, chaos and order, all of it so existence is made possible.

 

[Ouroboros]

Existence is not a property if properties exist.

Very true.

It's like instances in object oriented programming. These objects exist because of the memory they're stored in, not the member attributes (properties) they have. An object can be empty and have no properties and still be an instance (existence).

 

[viole]

Well someone needs to revise physics. Every rate of change I can remember has time in it. Miles PER HOUR, meters PER SECOND, Twinkies PER DAY, etc.... It gets even worse with the rate of change of change. Like meters PER SECOND - PER SECOND.

True, but that does nor define time, does it? It defines things that use it.

For instance, what is a SECOND, in your opinion?

Have you ever seen this fabric outside a drawing? It is not an actual plane it is a representative relationship. If I draw a graph of the efficiency of a reciprocating engine it does not indicate that there really was a bell shaped component to the engines reality but only in the tool I used to represent it. However lets pretend there really is a physical plane that is compose of time and space, in what way is either eternal?

Well, the 4 dimensional continuum is not a drawing. If it is, then the three dimensional one is too.

You perceive space and time, I presume, and you would consider crazy whoever told you that they are not real because they are often used in drawings.

So, the next cognitive step is to realize that space and time are inseparable and intertwined.

Sure do, since a Gaussian curvature is a graph used as a convenient tool to evaluate reality, it is not reality (not in the context we are discussing anyway) its self. I can plot pure vacuums on graphs. My boss' specialty was Boolean differential calculus and geometry used to evaluate state changes in information. There are a myriad of tools used to record relationships with the abstract within them, but they do not exist as natural entities but as perceptive creations dependent on mind. Exponential curves, etc.... would cease to exist in nature if human minds dis. Just as our perceptions are not eternal neither are the tools we invent.

Gaussian curvature measures deviations from being flat. Is being curved or flat a pure concept with no link to reality? it is as much of a tool as a speedometer to memeasure speeds.

So, how can a conceptualization be curved?

I do not grant B-theory with reliability, nor multiverse, M-theory, abiogenesis, etc.... Have you ever noticed that the only parts of science that are used to contend with the bible are the most speculative and theoretical? Why does not gravity, mass, or a ruler disprove God. It is always some think tank theory that does the trick. Convenient I guess but not very persuasive.

Yeah, but the B theory is not speculative at all. Or, at least, the non speculative alternative does not work.

And how does that disprove God? It disproves the necessity of a cause of the Universe based on some arguments and that's it.

At best, it advises you not to look for external evidence of God outside your own faith and personal relationships with Him, if any. Why some Christians need more evidence than that is mind boggling...actually, it isn't

I can invent any graphical representation I want that does the same thing. I can link the economic stability of Tibet with distance if I want and call it theoretically valid. Does not make anything eternal or my model into a natural concrete entity.

I think I already addressed that. The ontology of spacetime goes beyond its graphical representation.

This is an argument that has as it's criteria the known impossibility of a negation. You have just rendered all science (including your criteria) invalid. Science is based on the assumed rationality of the universe. That even though we cannot measure gravity everywhere we assume it behaves predictably everywhere. Debates do not take place about what could someday somewhere be true, but instead about what hypothesis best explain reliable facts. Your in the deepest end of speculation of which I have become increasing skeptical. Why don't we get back to earth and reliable data and see if anything known contradicts God. Models and speculative theories are not persuasive.

What could be more rational than a four dimensional flexible continuum that explains in the most simple terms what we observe about space and time? You confuse rationality with your intuition.

If you look for "irrationality", you should rather address quantum mechanics, that postulates inherently random mechanisms underlying nature. Relativity is a pretty realistic theory, in that respect.

Your not talking about the reality that relativity represents your talking about what is true of the abstract tools used to represent it. You are simply representing tens less time as truth. Of the two dominant theories tensed time has by far the best and most evidence. Memory, the apprehension of the past, thermodynamics, etc..... I had relativity in school and while certainly no expert I was never ever told it justified the belief that reality all exists at the same time and only varies by distance. I have only recently read of that theory and it's argumentation just makes me tired. I swear in many ways science has died. Where are the Newton's, the Galileo's, the Faradays that produce useful testable ideas. Science has lost sight of the shore and is drowning in speculative oblivion with no objective way to know it.

This is your mistake. No relativists will tell you that this view of spacetime is abstract. Itsn't. It is much less abstract than alternative theory, including the classical newtonian one.

And the testability of newtonian theory had the advantage of showing its falsehood, like all good theories even when they fail after a long time of test. Relativity has the same testability and it has been tested like there is no tomorrow. It still holds.

So, using lack of evidence to doubt it is not your best strategy. And its speculative nature is only in your mind, I am afraid.

And this why being wrong is a positive attribute of a theory. Not falsifiable theories, like the God theory, are not even that.

A light year is a measurement of distance not time. It includes time (always measured purely in units of time) but is not equal to time. It is equal to a length. We do not say 20 light years ago but light years away. Those models have really twisted your thinking. It helps if you get out of the lab or off the net and produce things that must work.

Time and space have the same ontology. To use seconds to measure one and meters to use the other is silly. It would be like measuring north-south distances in miles and east-west ones in kilometers.

This is why physicists use the constant factor of conversion to use the same unit. One meter of time is the time needed by light to cover one meter of space. One second of space is the space covered by light in one second of time. You can decide which one to use. I prefer meters.

And it works quote nicely. Even outside the lab.

It is physically irrelevant because time is not physical.

You have been definetely away from school too many meters, or even kilometers, lol.

I did not mention either of your two motives. I said Einstein was PHYILISOPHICALLY or theologically committed to an eternal universe and so made up science that allowed for it. Huge mistake. As in your case when theory or the model become more meaningful than reality you have lost your scientific relevance.

Then Einstein lost the physical relevance, too. For he, like all other relativists think like me, not like you.

Again, you confuse reality with your intuitions. Or with the books of of some philophycal inclined theologian without the first clue about physics.

What about actually reading something about the subject? Spacetime physics by Wheeler and co. Is a cool introduction. If you look for authotity in the field, that is where I would start.

Ciao

- viole

 

[1robin]

Maybe. I am not an expert in hebrew.

Few are but it is not required to examine the bible's original language, it is available countless places. If I was to attempt to deny the only eternal hope for myself I would make very sure about the veracity of the reasons for that denial.

However, if I remember my sunday classes, this formless earth was created before the stars. Which is absurd, if the cosmology you use for your arguments is correct.

Well this is another argument all together. I will have to list some factors that are involved here.

1. Sunday school teachers are not usually reliable interpreters or cosmologists.
2. My Hebrew definition of the word translated as earth does not apply to just the physical planet but to al the matter the eventually comprised the earth.
3. The bible is not a science book and was not intended to give blow by blow cosmological chronology. It compacts billions of years into a few lines. It is wrong to view it otherwise.
4. Long before anyone ever thought about a stars life cycle or planetary accretion the Talmud, Cabalists, Naimodes, Maimonides, etc.... interpreted the term Earth as meaning primarily matter.

Let me guess: metaphor, symbolism, out of context, spiritual language, or all of them.

It would be impossible to give billions of years of history in a few sentences without it. That is not much of a reason for denial. The bible is well known to be full of cryptic symbolism. Accusing of cryptic symbolism is no threat.

I made the assumption that the word of God is true at any time.

The official position of Protestantism on biblical inerrancy is the Chicago statement of faith. It only affirms the intent of the original revelation was perfect. Not a tradition, not an interpretation, not a dogma.

So, it was perfectly accurate for someone living in the bronze age knew. Isn't that more likely that they made it up?

Among the many reasons to not think so are:

1. The bibles unparalleled historical and textual reliability. No book of any kind in ancient history even comes close. Why would they all of a sudden become liars about cosmology?
2. Their view was not shared by any of the traditional theologies. Paganism or just about any other faith made human assumptions about God turning something into something else. The bible is among the few or only system that claims the non-intuitive but much later proven reliable view that the universe began to exist. They did not follow man made models consistent with myth.
3. They had no idea what to fake in order to consistent with 3500 year later cosmology and philosophy. The chances of guessing right are ridiculous.

I also think that they would have understood that the seasons are caused by the tilt of the earth orbit. They did not know it, that is why it is not in. Not because they would not have understood it. Even a child would understand that.

Well they built buildings yet I do not see natural log e or the Pythagorean's theorem either. The bible is not intended as a scientific textbook and so is not at fault if it does not claim what you arbitrarily demand.
It's only burden is to be reliable when being scientific. From germ theory to oceanic currents it is. Did you know that a Christian set out to prove oceanic currents exists from reading the bible alone? Did you know modern science would have saved millions more had they just practiced the sanitation the Hebrews did 3000 years ago?

Yes, and collecting in European churches to pray against the plague, probably eased the transmission. God forgot to add that plagues are transmitted by bacteria/rats and not by Jews or witches.

I have no idea to what your referring. God mandated strict sanitary condition that would have saved a lot of people from the plague if the bible been followed instead of man's wisdom. I do not get the prayer connection unless any negative occurrence is proof prayer does not work.

Or the believers did not pay attention. After all, even my doctor writes prescriptions that are not clearer than ancient Hebrew.

Don't get it.

It is amazing you ask. Almost a miracle.

I saw this formula in an ancient book that I found in a cave in North Sweden a few years ago. I could not make sense of it.

But then I had a vision of Thor dressed like an angel (He had wings and was carryng a big hammer). He told me that book was not supposed to convey scientific or mathematical truths, but only spiritual ones.

The 2s identify the two binities of good and evil. Two half-gods for good and two half-gods for evil. And when they are together, they represent the distance in meters from their original location in a sacred temple long gone.

He also added that humanity is not ready yet for these truths, so it took that book back to Valhalla. Bummer.

Don't get this either. You not too comfortable outside the scientific and theoretical are you? I do not see any argument here.

The first two primates with a soul did not have parents? Does God like to create primates from scratch? What is so special about primates?

What? God breathed into primates that had parents a soul. What you said does not challenge my faith. The claim that Adam is composed of dust does not imply he had no biological parent.

Which could naturally motivate people to believe in God, independently from His actual existence. Belief in God could be an ancient adaptation to find reasons to pass genes, who knows?

It might produce a heaven but it would not explain hell so your wishful thinking hypothesis is untenable. Not that that had anything to do with my statements.

But this belongs to our infancy. We can live without God without any social inconvenience whatsoever today. I advise to take a holyday to Scandinavia when you have time and see it for yourself.

Name a single person who has the potential to live forever without God. If your claiming that we can exist for a brief cosmological instant to only die without any eternal hope nor objective basis for morality then I agree.

This is a bold statement. That we do not know how consciousness emerges, does not entail it does not emerges naturally.

You do not understand the burden of faith. I argue a much a higher burden than faith actually has. I argue best conclusions but its only burden is the lack of a defeater. In this case no idea is not a defeater but there is not even a reasonable potential to think we will have an idea in the future so again science is no threat.

But I agree that it is pre-mature to talk about that, at least scientifically.

My only point was that consciousness is not in any way inconsistent with faith. I did not argue it scientifically because none exists.

Trend in phylosophy? You mean Dennett and co.?

I can't stand Dennett. The article is called "Things we know to be false" (the material primacy of mind). It used Penrose, Planck, Kripke, etc.... and appeared in Philosophy Now. The issue had Nietzsche on it's cover.

I don't see how that impact determinism. You seem to be sure that intentionality entails non-determinism when we do not even know if there is a concept of intentionality that trascends the current state of our neurons.

If determinism is naturally derived then there is zero reason to think it is rational. However the universe and our minds of full of rationality. Determinism might produce the delusion of intentionality but not rational solutions to intentions.

Do you think that if I (or God) had perfect knowledge of the state of your brain, you could surprise us with some unexpected decision?

Knowing the future doe snot entail determinism. I can know how my dog will react but that does not mean he was determined to react that way.

How would that be self-defeating?

Have you never heard anyone say you can believe a person because they were forced to claim X? If there existed only a single deterministic chain that led to my believing determinism was true. I would have no choice but to accept something that was false.

Ciao

- viole

Shalom,

 

[1robin]

Not a thing.....and yet a property.....

As a possession?....or a characteristic?

Existence could be lost?

As an abstract essence used for classification. You cannot draw a picture of existence. It is an abstract label for an eternity of being.

 

[1robin]

Existence is inherent to any thing.

However it is not a permanent quality. I can lack existence. However my claim was about what it isn't not exactly what it is. It is not an entity but a quality.

 

[1robin]

We should try.

Unless Christ return we will not only try but utterly fail.

Well you did it, aince you mentioned that things that begin to exist have a cause.

Cause and effect were around a long time before Islam. Are you merely talking about the words I used in their order or something? Causation goes back to before the Greeks.

Kalam becomes moot in my view, since the second premise would become false. This is only one of the ways to defuse it using modern physics.

You did not use physics. You simply used declaration. You did not even hint under what conditions the second premise was false.

Nota bene: it defuses the conclusion that there is a necessary cause, including a natural one.

Necessary as in modal being or required?

I think that it should be evident by now that your analogies do not apply, even if they made sense.

My analogies were agreed to (in fact originated individually) by four others with degrees in relevant fields in my lab. I can certainly be mistaken but have yet to see any evidence I am.

I don't think I am confusing the model with reality. I am just showing an aspect of reality which is perfectly comform to special relativity. It is actually the simplest, if not the only, way to make sense of it.

You said manifolds are eternal. Manifolds are models and are finite in existence.

You are implicitely assuming that the tensed theory is the only true one, because of experience and intuition I presume, ignoring that the tenseless is equally plausible. If not more, because of its agreement with the evidential nature of time.

I think almost everyone assumes it is true but that was not the basis for my arguing it is. I am not qualified to say that the tens less view is impossible but have no justification for thinking it is equally plausible.

I hope you will not counter that relativity is only a theory...

I have never heard of the relativity fact. I assume it contains much that is fact but it is very young and theories always change.

It might be flawed, of course. Yet, you fail to show where. For that you need to know a bit more about physics after the 18th century, I am afraid. However, if you knew something about relativity, you would probably agree with me.

Stating your confusing lesson of a model with natural entities was so devastating I did not see any need to expand. I could grant your premises (thought I would almost choke) and still couldn't get to your conclusions. That was the unanimous unsolicited opinion of everyone I showed your post to and one specialized in the field and the rest had relevant degrees.
Does not make you wrong but does make my position more than justified.

Using arguments from philosophy, personal experience, intuition is akin to going to a gun fight with a knife.

Not very original. I have come to regard much of philosophy as far more reliable than much of theoretical science and to contain far more integrity. You can disagree but that is not very persuasive.

By the way, I posted a couple of links that express this view more precisely and in surely better English. Which part did I not understand, in your opinion?

Specifically what view did the links validate? The links I saw were a little general.

Ciao

- viole

Mooi loop

 

[1robin]

Existence is not a property if properties exist.

It is no more of a concrete object than length or duration. It is a tool used to qualify the essence of a thing. BTW I have no idea what the point of the discussion is. No matter how you define it nature requires a cause.