What is the falsification methodology of the God argument?

[We Never Know]

Whoosh!!

Yes whoosh! South is a direction not a place.

But you cannot go further south from the south pole.

Technically with the earth being titled you can.

The top red X is further north

But you cannot go further south from the south pole.

I have never claimed otherwise. The pole is a place. Its named the "south" pole because of its "direction". "South" is a direction, not a place.

 

[Polymath257]

South is a direction, not a place.
For example, you leave Washington and all you tell your family is you are going south?. What exact place would they find you at?

And the same is true for time: it is a direction, not a place. At the initial singularity, it is only possible to go 'after' and not 'before', just like it is only possible to go 'north' from the South pole.

 

[We Never Know]

This is an incorrect description of the Big Bang theory.

The universe was NOT a small ball. It never had infinite density. And the singularity is not a thing.

A better description for the standard BB model:

The universe has existed for 13.8 billion years. Time and the universe are co-existent. The very early universe was very hot and dense, to the point that nuclear reactions happened everywhere. As you go back in time, the temperature increases and the density increases. It is impossible to go back further than a certain time because the density and temperature become unbounded.

Not my description. You need to take your arguement to science about that.

Yes natural laws, as we know them break down.

 

[Quiddity]

This is interesting, certainly, but what, then is the argument?

It requires more in-depth unpacking, the basic structure of the argument is fairly simple but the background metaphysics to understand what is meant by terms and how it meshes together takes quite a bit of work; At least for me, it does. But in its simplest form, the cosmological argument is that what comes into existence has a cause, or that what is contingent has a cause. Which is different than everything has a cause.

Dr. Feser continues:

Lots of people – probably most people who have an opinion on the matter – think that the cosmological argument goes like this: Everything has a cause; so the universe has a cause; so God exists. They then have no trouble at all poking holes in it. If everything has a cause, then what caused God? Why assume in the first place that everything has to have a cause? Why assume the cause is God? Etc.

Here’s the funny thing, though. People who attack this argument never tell you where they got it from. They never quote anyone defending it. There’s a reason for that. The reason is that none of the best-known proponents of the cosmological argument in the history of philosophy and theology ever gave this stupid argument. Not Plato, not Aristotle, not al-Ghazali, not Maimonides, not Aquinas, not Duns Scotus, not Leibniz, not Samuel Clarke, not Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, not Mortimer Adler, not William Lane Craig, not Richard Swinburne. And not anyone else either, as far as I know. (Your Pastor Bob doesn’t count. I mean no one among prominent philosophers.) And yet it is constantly presented, not only by popular writers but even by some professional philosophers, as if it were “the” “basic” version of the cosmological argument, and as if every other version were essentially just a variation on it.

 

[firedragon]

Time isn't something that 'stands still' or not. Causality is always directed into the forward light cone from any event.

Even in quantum mechanics, events outside of each other's light cones are not correlated.

So do you think length contraction and time dilation will never point towards a "time stands still" with some manipulation to relativistic mass in some planned environments?

 

[Polymath257]

Yes whoosh! South is a direction not a place.


Technically with the earth being titled you can.

The top red X is further north

?? No, you still can't.

I have never claimed otherwise. The pole is a place. Its named the "south" pole because of its "direction". "South" is a direction, not a place.

Yes, so? Forward in time is a direction, not a place. There is a place on Earth where you cannot go south. That is a 'singularity'. Analogously, from the initial singularity for the universe, you can only go forward in time,. There is no 'prior'.

 

[firedragon]

Why do you assume I need one?

I never said you need one. I wonder why some people in this thread are obsessed with "I dont need one" and "need".

 

[We Never Know]

And the same is true for time: it is a direction, not a place. At the initial singularity, it is only possible to go 'after' and not 'before', just like it is only possible to go 'north' from the South pole.

We simply don't know why, how, what, etc of how the universe came to be. Its that simple. We can assume singularites, we can say God, we can say pink unicorns, or whatever but we don't know.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes whoosh! South is a direction not a place.


Technically with the earth being titled you can.

The top red X is further north

I have never claimed otherwise. The pole is a place. Its named the "south" pole because of its "direction". "South" is a direction, not a place.

That was the sound of the point of the argument going over your head. South is a direction, but there are limits to it. Time in a sense is a direction too.

 

[We Never Know]

?? No, you still can't.



Yes, so? Forward in time is a direction, not a place. There is a place on Earth where you cannot go south. That is a 'singularity'. Analogously, from the initial singularity for the universe, you can only go forward in time,. There is no 'prior'.

Technically with earth's axis titled at 23.5 degrees, there is land lower than the south pole. We simply use the poles as the directional points because they are the poles.

 

[Polymath257]

So do you think length contraction and time dilation will never point towards a "time stands still" with some manipulation to relativistic mass in some planned environments?

Length contraction and time dilation are only seen in comparing two different reference frames. They are analogous to how the x and y coordinates change upon rotation.

No, time does NOT 'stand still'. There are two aspects of time in relativity: coordinate time and proper time. Coordinate time is associated with some reference frame and all measurements are made in that frame. Proper time is the time experienced *by something*.

In an analogy between geometry and relativity, time and length are like x and y coordinates, different frames correspond to different possible coordinates systems (rotated, translated) and proper time corresponds to the length of a path.

The length is independent of any particular coordinate system: all coordinate systems agree on the length, even if they disagree on the x and y coordinates of any point.

Similarly, time contraction and length contraction are aspects of the Lorentz transformations, which are analogous to rotations. Proper time is like the length of a path through spacetime.

 

[We Never Know]

And the same is true for time: it is a direction, not a place. At the initial singularity, it is only possible to go 'after' and not 'before', just like it is only possible to go 'north' from the South pole.

Yes. So there could be no singuilarity before time yet science has told us for years it existed before then un8verse, which would make it existing before time.
Same as it was very hot,,,,, sorry no time, no heat.

 

[We Never Know]

?? No, you still can't.



Yes, so? Forward in time is a direction, not a place. There is a place on Earth where you cannot go south. That is a 'singularity'. Analogously, from the initial singularity for the universe, you can only go forward in time,. There is no 'prior'.

Up is technically a direction. We go up through the atmosphere but not up to the moon. We go out too or simply go to the moon.

 

[Polymath257]

It requires more in-depth unpacking, the basic structure of the argument is fairly simple but the background metaphysics to understand what is meant by terms and how it meshes together takes quite a bit of work; At least for me, it does. But in its simplest form, the cosmological argument is that what comes into existence has a cause, or that what is contingent has a cause. Which is different than everything has a cause.

And that is correct. A more refined version of the argument limits itself to things that 'come into existence' or are 'contingent'.

The problem is, of course, that the first assumes that time already exists, so the universe does as well (time is part of the universe). The second begs the question of whether non-contingent things exist in the universe (not to mention technical difficulties with the idea of necessary and contingent existence).

 

[Polymath257]

Yes. So there could be no singuilarity before time yet science has told us for years it existed before then un8verse, which would make it existing before time.
Same as it was very hot,,,,, sorry no time, no heat.

No, science has NOT said that. Many *popular* articles have said it, but that was journalists saying it, NOT the scientists. Don't rely on the popular articles to get across technical information best described by the actual mathematics.

 

[Polymath257]

Up is technically a direction. We go up through the atmosphere but not up to the moon. We go out too or simply go to the moon.

Up is the direction out of a gravity well. We go up from earth and then down to the moon.

 

[Polymath257]

I never said you need one. I wonder why some people in this thread are obsessed with "I dont need one" and "need".

So what is your point of asking? Why do you assume I have an excuse?

 

[We Never Know]

No, science has NOT said that. Many *popular* articles have said it, but that was journalists saying it, NOT the scientists. Don't rely on the popular articles to get across technical information best described by the actual mathematics.

if you ask anyone, from a layperson to a cosmologist, to finish the following sentence, “In the beginning, there was…” you’ll get a slew of different answers. One of the most common ones is “a singularity,” which refers to an instant where all the matter and energy in the Universe was concentrated into a single point. The temperatures, densities, and energies of the Universe would be arbitrarily, infinitely large, and could even coincide with the birth of time and space itself.


If you didagree, what actually does science say? Thanks in advance.

 

[We Never Know]

Up is the direction out of a gravity well. We go up from earth and then down to the moon.

And in between we are simply "just going to or out to the moon"

 

[Nakosis]

You can, but it is philosophy and thus a Cluster **** of what assumptions you accept for valid and sound reasoning.

Ok, but causality would seem an argument for the existence of a universe/reality independent of the human mind.

I don't really know your view on the existence of a independent universe.