Why Didn't the Universe Always Exist?

[ratiocinator]

What, that man's imagination and thought has no role to play, other than confirming what
is already scientifically established, and ignoring any other possibility?

Not what I said or think, and still no answer...

 

[muhammad_isa]

I have literally no idea why you are going on about time units and standards. The discussion is about the basic nature of time itself.

You merely wish to "believe" that there is only one "real" definition of time.
We define it, so as to construct a model, "AND THAT'S WHAT IT MUST BE"

 

[ratiocinator]

You merely wish to "believe" that there is only one "real" definition of time.

I'm accepting the (very good) evidence we have about it at present.

You seem to want to think there is some other way to understand it, but can't actually tell us what it is (subjective time aside), why we should accept it, or what use it would be.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Not what I said or think, and still no answer...

Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
- Wikipedia -

Physical scientific observation does not replace philosophy, it complements it.

I'm accepting the (very good) evidence we have about it at present..

So do I .. but I don't get carried away and take everything at face-value .. I
continue to think and explore.

 

[ratiocinator]

Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
- Wikipedia -

Physical scientific observation does not replace philosophy, it complements it.

Still no answer to my question.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Did I imply it was, please point out my exact words where I connected it with God of Jews, or Muslims, or Bahai, etc.?

This was because people generally equate the 'essence of the universe', 'ultimate cause', with their God. Hindus too do it, though I am an atheist Hindu.
It was a clarification of the point as I understand it.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Still no answer to my question.

..which was "So what, exactly, do you think it can tell us about time that science can't?"

Philosophy, obviously, cannot give us "a scientific definition" of time.
Philosophy EXPLORES various factors about time that science has no answers to.

You want to make it all about science v philosophy, and claim that philosophy is redundant
when it comes to the debate about time. That's what suits you. That is your philosophy of choice.

It is impossible to know whether any alternative existed before our present universe .. if
indeed the BB is a correct model. You know that, and just witter on about science.

 

[ratiocinator]

Philosophy EXPLORES various factors about time that science has no answers to.

Such as?

You want to make it all about science v philosophy, and claim that philosophy is redundant

I don't think philosophy is redundant, I just don't see what help it's going to be on the question of the nature of time, now that we have the technology to explore it scientifically.

One of my favourite authors was Daniel Dennett (a philosopher) who had lots of interesting ideas on the nature of consciousness, something for which science has no direct answers to. One of his strengths was that he kept himself informed about the relevant science, to the extent there is any.

Karl Popper had much to say about the philosophy of science. The Logic of Scientific Discovery was fascinating.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

What I find odd it that you seem to want to believe something despite the evidence. That just seems bizarre to me.

Isn't that commonplace in these threads? It invariably comes from a faith-based thinker who has accepted a belief that causes him to gravitate toward, promote, and defend ideas that he thinks support his minority viewpoint.

Interestingly, not all believers do this. We have a population of what I call theistic humanists whose opinions and values seem indistinguishable from the atheist humanist's except that the former says he believes in a god, a belief which doesn't seem to modify his belief set or values. The ones I'm familiar with here on RF are all educated with advanced degrees and are in the STEM professions.

But once you encounter the types of theists whose thoughts are modified by their god beliefs, their thinking becomes motivated or tendentious. They're seeking answers to justify those beliefs in the absence of sufficient supporting evidence or as you suggest here, in the face of contradictory evidence.

This was evident in the ID program of a few decades back. Their "science" was propelled by a religious belief that changed how they viewed reality. They saw irreducible complexity wherever they saw complexity that they hoped couldn't arise naturalistically.

This kind of observer bias is present in all of us, but one can learn to overcome it. One can learn to evaluate an evidenced argument dispassionately and distinguish the sound from those with errors of factor logical fallacy. But it's an acquired skill. The atheistic and theistic humanists I described have generally mastered it, but without it, we see what we see so frequently here on RF - people arguing for ideas they assume are correct but can be shown to be incorrect.

932 words of meaningless waffle.

Your comment caused me to search for a word counter. I assumed that you didn't count them yourself. Now, I have this bookmarked. Thanks. I'd never thought to do that.

What would you expect to see?

That was in response to, "We have exactly zero evidence of any other conscious beings."

You should be able to answer that yourself. When you encounter a dog and a stone, how do you decide which if either is conscious?

Then you asked if he was a mind reader. Why do you think that one would one need to be a mind reader to say that there is no evidence of other conscious beings?

I see plenty of reason to believe in non-physical phenomena.

You're a faith-based thinker. Your criteria (reasons) for belief are not those of the critically thinking empiricist, whose beliefs about reality are tethered to the observation of reality, all of which is physical - energy, matter, and force dancing through space and time. That's all there is for us. If more exists than that, it's relevance is limited to the degree to which it can impact what can be experienced, so once again, we're justified in relying on nothing but the evidence of our senses to decide what is meaningful and what is unfalsifiable or false belief and reject the latter.

And here is a little reminder for all those who are academics, scientists, students, etc.. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary/exam depends upon his not understanding it."-Upton Sinclair.

Funny you should mention that. Do you think that you are immune to that? This is paraphrasing what I just wrote. Just change salary to hoped-for salvation.

Doesn't that describe the problem the critical thinker sees when he notes that the believer isn't fazed by contradictory evidence?

Something cannot come from nothing, and in any event, nothing does not exist, therefore existence exists everywhere eternally.

You are very insistent about things you cannot know and frankly neither need to be answered nor can be answered now and possibly never.

It seems that you have too much of a stake in how reality is and is described - much more than those disagreeing with you, who are much more willing to remain agnostic about undecidable matters. I'm not sure how much your religious views power this - but you seem to have a preference as to how reality actually is to the point that you have assumed it is what you prefer. I've seen that in others who aren't overtly religious or promoting an obvious religious agenda, but they're faith-based thinkers nevertheless, albeit not necessarily regarding gods.

By the way, it's fine with me if that's what's happening here. I don't object to you thinking that way - just me. I don't want to do that.

And I will have more confidence in others that feel the same way and who have adopted the same agenda, values, and methods. I'm glad that they exist and in sizeable enough numbers and in assorted fields of expertise that we can encounter many of them here and frequently. I can't tell you if their cosmological arguments are sound. I have to rely on the expertise of others. But it's not difficult to identify those who deserve that kind respect and those whose thinking is not to be trusted. The latter aren't hard to identify or reject. I can do that directly.

Unless science can create or show how something can come from nothing, BB can't be taken seriously.

Another of your pronouncements. The Big Bis can and is taken seriously. Nor is it necessary that something come from nothing for the Big Bang to be correct in the main going back to the end of the Planck epoch.

Why insist on this? You should eventually come to understand that your intuitions aren't reliable when discussing scales outside of experience. All of our experience is from withing a universe, and generally at the scale of naked sense perception, which is what evolution gave us brains to perceive and analyze. We already know that common sense is unreliable at quantum and cosmological scales, and at great speed or in the presence of great collections of matter and gravity.

a multiverse may be a reality.

Yes, and it is consistent with the Big Bang theory. It is also consistent with the idea that there was never nothing.

My proof rests on the evidence that the universe actually exists and that there is no evidence to demonstrate that it can be made it to cease existing.

That's a classic appeal to ignorance fallacy: if you can't "prove" that the universe can be made to stop existing, that "proves" that it can't.

You otoh have to prove the universe is not eternal, that there was a BB, and you can't.

Same argument. Nobody has to prove a logically possible idea. YOU have to demonstrate that it is logically impossible for the critical thinker to conclude that.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Such as?

Well, what do you think? Philosophizing about whether time has an abrupt beginning .. bla bla
Scientific observation can tell you NOTHING about that .. because it only concerns itself
with observations IN THIS UNIVERSE!!
How many more 'time's???

 

[firedragon]

I don't think philosophy is redundant, I just don't see what help it's going to be on the question of the nature of time, now that we have the technology to explore it scientifically.

The scientific method is a philosophical outcome. It was not a scientifically tested assumption or theory.

 

[ChristineM]

Well, what do you think? Philosophizing about whether time has an abrupt beginning .. bla bla
Scientific observation can tell you NOTHING about that .. because it only concerns itself
with observations IN THIS UNIVERSE!!
How many more 'time's???

It is thought by many cosmologists that the bb created time, i.e. an abrupt beginning.

I know a particle physicists and university professor who teaches that time is a mechanism that moves only in one direction to ensure that one thing happens after another.

 

[ratiocinator]

Well, what do you think? Philosophizing about whether time has an abrupt beginning .. bla bla

That's a scientific question.

Scientific observation can tell you NOTHING about that .. because it only concerns itself
with observations IN THIS UNIVERSE!!

And whether timelike directions in space-time of this universe terminate in the past is about "THIS UNIVERSE". Science is working on the problem, and there are many scientific hypotheses and conjectures about it, based on what we know about space-time.

How is philosophy going to help? You still haven't given me a single example of how philosophy can contribute to this question.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

This was because people generally equate the 'essence of the universe', 'ultimate cause', with their God. Hindus too do it, though I am an atheist Hindu.
It was a clarification of the point as I understand it.

Ok, you have clarification, that was not said in the religious context.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Why do you think that one would one need to be a mind reader to say that there is no evidence of other conscious beings?

I don't know about you, but I do not categorically know what is conscious and what is not. I
do not have a 'sixth sense' that can detect other minds.

You assume that only brains "generate" minds, yet that is only an assumption. You might
claim to be smart, and only believe in 'physical observation' .. but I don't think that is smart.
I think that is narrow-minded.

You're a faith-based thinker..

That is merely a projection .. I have been given an intelligence, and I'll use it
how I see fit.

 

[muhammad_isa]

It is thought by many cosmologists that the bb created time, i.e. an abrupt beginning.

That's fine .. they are philosophizing, as they don't know for sure .. not from science.
i.e. it cannot be observed

 

[The Papist]

The universe cannot have always existed. That would be an infinite regress, meaning we would never arrive at the present moment. Let's say I have to complete a certain number of math problems before I can play video games. Maybe it's five problems; fine, then I can play in five minutes. Maybe it's a hundred problems. Less convenient, but I'll get there. Infinite problems? I'd never get to play video games! Similarly, if there were an infinite number of points in time before this one, this point in time could never exist. Ergo, the universe must have a beginning.

What do you think? Am I missing something? Peace

 

[Ben Dhyan]

^ You may want to remember that conceptualization is not reality, it may be meant to represent reality/truth, but reality/truth is what it is, and never the symbolic representation.

Abstract: existing as an idea, feeling, or quality, not as a material object: Abstract

Mathematics, like the sciences, proceeds by a process of abstraction, so that mathematical claims like scientific claims are neither true nor false, but only true or false in an application of the theory to which they belong. A proof in mathematics is meant to show that a claim follows from the assumptions of a particular mathematical theory. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-653

​

 

[muhammad_isa]

..mathematical claims like scientific claims are neither true nor false, but only true or false in an application of the theory to which they belong..

Yes, "to which they belong"
..and science deals with observations in this universe, and has no authority outside of that.

 

[ratiocinator]

That's fine .. they are philosophizing, as they don't know for sure .. not from science.

Not really because they are basing their view on particular models that are extrapolated from the science we do know, for example the Hawking no boundary proposal. This is exactly how science works. You have to come up with new ideas to make any progress at all. Every tested theory we have today started life as a speculation.