Why Didn't the Universe Always Exist?

[gnostic]

I am aware of theories of relativity etc. .. but for me, that is a mere deflection
away from the issue of philosophical time.

Materialists will accuse philosophers and theists of being wrong, as the evidence shows.. da da da da.

Me? I don't know my exact source before my birth, nor my exact destination when I die.
Nobody does, as far as I'm aware .. we only have beliefs.

Materialism is a belief. I believe in it to an extent, but am not limited to it.
I believe in that which is greater than myself .. greater than mankind.
A trillion miles, or a few miles .. it's only a measurement
A billion years, or a few years .. it's only a measurement.

You are ignoring one thing, muhammad_isa: Materialism itself is a philosophy too.

To be more accurate, the philosophy that modern science are based on, is Naturalism than on Materialism.

Today, more specifically Methodological Naturalism.

Plus, Science wasn't called "science", before the 19th century. The word science has very different meaning before the 19th century, and it mean "knowledge", originally coined from Classical Latin word scientia. The closest word to knowledge in Ancient Greek is epistḗmē ἐπιστήμη, which is the root word for today philosophy of "knowledge" - Epistemology comes from. It was any knowledge, not necessarily scientific knowledge.

What we called "science" was historically and originally known in ancient Greek philosophy, as phusikḗ philosophía (φυσική φιλοσοφία), and in Classical Latin, it’s philosophia naturalis - translated into English as Natural Philosophy - the study of nature.

Natural Philosophy existed from Late Archaic Greece (7th century BCE) or Classical Greece (5th to 4th century BCE) to as late as the mid-19th century.

Anyway, I take Natural Sciences, Physical Sciences or Empirical Science to be more closer to Naturalism than to Materialism.

 

[muhammad_isa]

How can anything else shed any light on the subject? We have zero evidence that time is anything but a property of the universe.

A circular argument .. you define time as a property, and then conclude that it is a property
"from the evidence".

I have yet to see any hint of sound logic or evidence from you for your view that there is some sort of "philosophical time" that is somehow separate from the physical space-time..

You are merely playing the same game as "there is no evidence for gods" nonsense, hiding
behind physical, scientific materialism, as if nothing else is 'good enough for rational people'.
That is disingenuous and false.

We already know that 'measured time' is not what it appears to be at face value, and that it is dependent on other relative dimensions in space.

There IS such a thing as philosophical time .. it all depends on how we measure it.
In physics, time is defined as "what a clock reads" .. A person who is enjoying themselves
feels time is running fast, while a person who is suffering feels time is running slow.

Now you might suggest that it is an illusion .. but it feels very real to me!
I suggest that this universe is an illusion (albeit a persistent one ).
Take

E = mc²​

It's meaningless without base definitions. It describes the relationship between physical dimensions.
It does not and cannot explain the why or where they originate.

Speed of light .. infinity .. eternity. Mankind often think they know it all, but it's a mere drop in the ocean.
Human comprehension has its limits.

 

[muhammad_isa]

If something is not dependent on how you think, then can you know something about it based on that you think about it?

..too cryptic for me .. you'd need to be more specific.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

..too cryptic for me .. you'd need to be more specific.

No, that is the main problem of philosophical rationalism and how we have both valid and sound for logical deduction. Now answer how come there are both valid and sound and you have your understanding. And since you do philosophy, you can do that.

 

[muhammad_isa]

You are ignoring one thing, muhammad_isa: Materialism itself is a philosophy too.

To be more accurate, the philosophy that modern science are based on, is Naturalism than on Materialism.

Today, more specifically Methodological Naturalism.

Science, in itself, does not rule out that which cannot be physically observed.
..but yes, naturalism is an extreme viewpoint, that hides behind the 'scientific method', in as much
as it denies the existence of other than this universe.

That in itself, is not 'scientific' .. it's a philosophical position.

 

[firedragon]

Science has actually shown that it's very good at modelling space and time. There is plentiful evidence that it has an accurate model.

But science can never declare absolute truths. Science itself might change what you know today within 24 hours.

 

[firedragon]

You are ignoring one thing, muhammad_isa: Materialism itself is a philosophy too.

To be more accurate, the philosophy that modern science are based on, is Naturalism than on Materialism.

Today, more specifically Methodological Naturalism.

Plus, Science wasn't called "science", before the 19th century. The word science has very different meaning before the 19th century, and it mean "knowledge", originally coined from Classical Latin word scientia. The closest word to knowledge in Ancient Greek is epistḗmē ἐπιστήμη, which is the root word for today philosophy of "knowledge" - Epistemology comes from. It was any knowledge, not necessarily scientific knowledge.

What we called "science" was historically and originally known in ancient Greek philosophy, as phusikḗ philosophía (φυσική φιλοσοφία), and in Classical Latin, it’s philosophia naturalis - translated into English as Natural Philosophy - the study of nature.

Natural Philosophy existed from Late Archaic Greece (7th century BCE) or Classical Greece (5th to 4th century BCE) to as late as the mid-19th century.

Anyway, I take Natural Sciences, Physical Sciences or Empirical Science to be more closer to Naturalism than to Materialism.

Kudos

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Science, in itself, does not rule out that which cannot be physically observed.
..but yes, naturalism is an extreme viewpoint, that hides behind the 'scientific method', in as much
as it denies the existence of other than this universe.

That in itself, is not 'scientific' .. it's a philosophical position.

Do you understand what methodological naturalism is?

And do you understand the difference between evidence and in effect other versions of truth?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Glad you got that far. You can say certain things like "there does not appear to be any need for a god," but how would you know? and what "evidence" would you like?

Why would an all loving God that is going to punish people immorally forever hide from them? That your god is a world champion of hide and seek tells us that he is not good if he exists. Your version of God is extremely self contradictory. That is how we know that your version of God can not exist.

And why are you trying to shift the burden of proof? It is the burden of proof of believers to show that their god exists. Even your own holy book tells you that.

 

[Pogo]

You are welcome to your opinion, God bless you.

We are up to about 8 billion individual truths that are internal such as yours that are not communicable to others and at the same time humans have also developed a set of truths that we can communicate via mutually understandable events and descriptions. This set is commonly called science today from an old latin word for knowledge this goes hand and hand with another old latin word logic or the art of reason.

The difference seems to be that some of those 8 billion take the ideas of their imagination and say, hmm, let us apply logic to this idea and see if we can find observations to fit with it and see if that leads to more imaginations and logic and observation.
Others short cut this and say my idea seems to make sense to me so I will call it a truth.

Humans all have about the same amount of imagination, it is what they do with it that varies.

 

[Pogo]

But science can never declare absolute truths. Science itself might change what you know today within 24 hours.

“The argument goes something like this: ‘I refuse to prove that I exist,’ says God, ‘for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.’ “ ‘But,’ says Man, ‘the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.’ “ ‘Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic. “ ‘Oh, that was easy,’ says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”​

Douglas Adams.

 

[ratiocinator]

A circular argument .. you define time as a property, and then conclude that it is a property
"from the evidence".

Nonsense. There is not one scrap of evidence nor any hint of sound logic that even suggests any other version of time. You appear to have just made it up and asserted its reality.

You are merely playing the same game as "there is no evidence for gods" nonsense, hiding
behind physical, scientific materialism, as if nothing else is 'good enough for rational people'.
That is disingenuous and false.

Show me another way of distinguishing the probably accurate as far as we can tell, from pure fantasy or fiction, then...

There IS such a thing as philosophical time .. it all depends on how we measure it.
In physics, time is defined as "what a clock reads" .. A person who is enjoying themselves
feels time is running fast, while a person who is suffering feels time is running slow.

Now you might suggest that it is an illusion .. but it feels very real to me!
I suggest that this universe is an illusion (albeit a persistent one ).
Take

E = mc²​

It's meaningless without base definitions. It describes the relationship between physical dimensions.
It does not and cannot explain the why or where they originate.

Speed of light .. infinity .. eternity. Mankind often think they know it all, but it's a mere drop in the ocean.
Human comprehension has its limits.

Did all this mean something in your head before you started typing it?

 

[ratiocinator]

But science can never declare absolute truths. Science itself might change what you know today within 24 hours.

The theory might change but there are way, way too many observations and experimental results to change the fact that the current theory is at least a good approximation. It's like it was with Newton's theories. They were wrong, but they were, and remain, very good approximations in most circumstances, to the extent that they are still good enough for most applications today.

 

[ratiocinator]

Science, in itself, does not rule out that which cannot be physically observed.
..but yes, naturalism is an extreme viewpoint, that hides behind the 'scientific method', in as much
as it denies the existence of other than this universe.

That in itself, is not 'scientific' .. it's a philosophical position.

Science does not deny existence beyond its reach. The problem is practical, rather than idealogical. How do we investigate and test claims about anything that has no physical effects? How do we tell what is likely to be reasonably accurate from what is pure fantasy?

People who claim to know about things beyond science are ten-a-penny, but try to get them to agree about them......

 

[firedragon]

The theory might change but there are way, way too many observations and experimental results to change the fact that the current theory is at least a good approximation. It's like it was with Newton's theories. They were wrong, but they were, and remain, very good approximations in most circumstances, to the extent that they are still good enough for most applications today.

Yep. That's called induction or the problem of induction.

Anyway, good approximation does not mean absolute truth. That's the point. So that's the problem with scientism.

 

[firedragon]

The theory might change but there are way, way too many observations and experimental results to change the fact that the current theory is at least a good approximation. It's like it was with Newton's theories. They were wrong, but they were, and remain, very good approximations in most circumstances, to the extent that they are still good enough for most applications today.

Yep. That's called induction or the problem of induction.

Anyway, good approximation does not mean absolute truth. That's the point. So that's the problem with scientism.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yep. That's called induction or the problem of induction.

Anyway, good approximation does not mean absolute truth. That's the point. So that's the problem with scientism.

LOL! The ones accusing others of "scientism" are almost always the ones using it. No one has declared that the BB is absolutely correct. It is the god believers here that are trying for an unattainable absolute. No one on the science side has used scientism.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Did all this mean something in your head before you started typing it?

You appear to have a mental block.

I'll quote your reply to me some time ago:-
"And people should care about your uninformed, unjustified opinion because.......?"

Bye bye

 

[Polymath257]

So is the "big Bang" theory tested? or can it be tested?

Absolutely. It has made many specific predictions, including the nature of the cosmic background radiation, the distribution of light elements, the red shifts of distant galaxies, and others. it has passed all of these tests, often with predictions made decades before the actual discovery.

 

[Polymath257]

..but people who say that 'time starts at the big-bang' cannot test their claims, any
more than somebody who hypothesizes that it doesn't.

Very few will positively claim that time starts at the BB. Instead, they point out that the best descriptions we currently have predict that and that it is thereby a strong possibility. But, as I have pointed out numerous times, quantum corrections might change that evaluation.