20 Jul 09
Originally posted by KellyJayOf course we cannot answer everything with our science and our philosophy, but these are the sole tools we have that enable us to cross-check our understanding at every level. Today we know more than yesterday. Our knowledge is a process, it 's a product of the Human under constant evolution and not a product of "apocalypse";
I agree science is blind to a great many things, if you cannot touch
it, measure it, test it, force it to behave the way we can predict it, watch
it behave in predictable manners there may not be a whole lot that
can be done within science. That does mean that not all of reality can
be understood through science, it has its limitations and this
discuss ...[text shortened]... s other than eyes all
you get are numbers or sounds not the experience of the color red.
Kelly
😵
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by black beetleHowever we get all of our revelations I don't know, is it always a
Of course we cannot answer everything with our science and our philosophy, but these are the sole tools we have that enable us to cross-check our understanding at every level. Today we know more than yesterday. Our knowledge is a process, it 's a product of the Human under constant evolution and not a product of "apocalypse";
😵
byproduct of human effort, personally I doubt it. I agree we do apply
ourselves with our science and our philosophy, but to just make a
blanket statement as you did that our efforts alone are involved I
think speaks more to your belief system than to reality itself.
Kelly
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by KellyJayIn my opinion we understand whatever we understand due to our efforts alone, but that's another story.
However we get all of our revelations I don't know, is it always a
byproduct of human effort, personally I doubt it. I agree we do apply
ourselves with our science and our philosophy, but to just make a
blanket statement as you did that our efforts alone are involved I
think speaks more to your belief system than to reality itself.
Kelly
Since you accept that we "apply ourselves with our science and philosophy", why in this case you dismiss every scientific and philosophic model and you prefer to offer a speculation that is dismissed by both science and philosophy?
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20 Jul 09
Originally posted by KellyJayAnd I am defining the singularity as a condition of the totality.
I don't think it is error at all, but the way it is! Totality isn't something
I believe you can have with the singularity for the reasons I have
already given, and the reason that people are twisting in the wind here
when it comes to answers, is that they cannot find the ones
they want! Instead what is looking at them in the face is this blank with
nothing to put in it.
Kelly[/b]
And scientists will keep poking at that singularity to find answers that are not now available. Maybe they will find them, maybe they won’t.
In the meantime, from a philosophical point of view, I am not willing to speculate beyond that singularity—or rather, I might speculate, but I would not pretend that my speculations had to have some truth value.
This really seems to get into the “god of the gaps” issue. Wherever science can’t (yet) answer a question, one can plug the gap with “god”. But what kind of “god” does that end up being? A god-concept that becomes dependent on whatever gaps science can’t plug?
If I were to ask you what was “before” God, I suspect that you would say there was no “before God”. If I were to ask you what there was other than God before God created anything else, I suspect that you would say there was nothing other than God. If I were to ask you what was “outside” God before God created the universe, what would you say?
All the words that we say cannot be applied to the totality, I suspect you would say cannot be applied to God either. Where we say “singularity”, you would say “God”—i.e., that “point” where one stops and says we cannot meaningfully go further (unless you want to say that there is another god who created God&hellip😉. If you want to define God as the totality, then I’ll shut up.
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by black beetleI have dismissed what model, the something from nothing model, the
In my opinion we understand whatever we understand due to our efforts alone, but that's another story.
Since you accept that we "apply ourselves with our science and philosophy", why in this case you dismiss every scientific and philosophic model and you prefer to offer a speculation that is dismissed by both science and philosophy?
😵
something from we don't know model, what model have I rejected?
Look at the title of this thread, "In the beginning..." what has been
offered so far hasn't touched the beginning of anything other than
the, this is where we want to start marking time model.
Kelly
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by KellyJayThe material thinning out and breaking is not relevant as it is not part of the analogy. Space is not material and thus cannot thin or break.
The surface of the balloon stretches, it thins out, and if and when you
take that beyond the points where the material can handle it, it breaks
and it still moves into areas of space around it didn't occupy before
too. You throw a one ton brick on that balloon so there isn't any space
to grow into it will not expand by you blowing into it, because there is
no space to blow up into.
Kelly
The balloons surface does move into new space in the third dimension, but within the dimensions of the surface it does not.
So it is quite possible that the universe is moving into new areas in the fourth dimension but within the three spacial dimensions it is not. But I realize that you do not understand dimensions very well and none of us find it easy to deal with four dimensional objects (as I recall you didn't like straight line circles). But whether or not you understand it or can visualize it, it remains a fact that a drawing on the balloons surface does not expand into new areas within its dimensional domain because it is the measuring points on the surface that are moving apart, not the drawing moving across measuring points.
In the case of the universe, one could look at it differently and claim that the universe is staying the same size but the laws of physics are changing such that our measurements are getting longer, thus everything is actually shrinking (and thus appearing bigger). The problem is that spacetime is non-material and so you cannot easily mark out a ruler on it, and worse you cannot hold an independent ruler to use for the confirmation measurements. However, light has certain properties as it travels and we can detect it getting stretched as it travels.
20 Jul 09
1 edit
Originally posted by vistesdOkay, you are defining the singularity as the totality, I'm assuming
And I am defining the singularity as a condition of the totality.
And scientists will keep poking at that singularity to find answers that are not now available. Maybe they will find them, maybe they won’t.
In the meantime, from a philosophical point of view, I am not willing to speculate beyond that singularity—or rather, I might speculate, but I ...[text shortened]... is another god who created God&hellip😉. If you want to define God as the totality, then I’ll shut up.
you think it self generated itself from....what? I have already said most
people refuse to think about that, because it leads them places they
do not want to go, you appear to be no different.
God isn't a God of the gaps, He is simply God, gaps are not required.
You assume God is just a filler, I don't, He is real as it gets, and does
not require man to 'get it, or not' any more than trees or rocks do.
Kelly
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by vistesdI too am unwilling to claim truth value for some speculations, however it is necessary to claim that certain speculations are untrue before you can make the dichotomy argument that KellyJay used at the beginning of the thread. ie he claimed:
In the meantime, from a philosophical point of view, I am not willing to speculate beyond that singularity—or rather, I might speculate, but I would not pretend that my speculations had to have some truth value.
Either 'something from nothing' or 'God did it'.
'something from nothing' is invalid.
Therefore God did it.
To dispute the above it is sufficient to show that there exists other speculations that have not been disproved.
20 Jul 09
KellyJay,
I don't think you have yet answered some very important question I have put to you. ie is time infinite and is space infinite?
The problem as I see it is that you argue that there can be no discontinuities in either time or space, but do not address the fact that this leads to the conclusion that both must be infinite and thus the universe must be eternal - which would contradict the creation claim.
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by twhiteheadThinning out is relevant because parts of the balloons surface that was
The material thinning out and breaking is not relevant as it is not part of the analogy. Space is not material and thus cannot thin or break.
The balloons surface does move into new space in the third dimension, but within the dimensions of the surface it does not.
So it is quite possible that the universe is moving into new areas in the fourth dimensio ...[text shortened]... ight has certain properties as it travels and we can detect it getting stretched as it travels.
not exposed before become so as it separates and expands, the same
would be true of a blanket or anything else that is forced to stretch
itself out, the balloon takes up more space as it stretches if you were
to measure the radius of a circular balloon it would increase as
it expands taking up more room around it. If there was nothing to
expand into, it would not expand.
Kelly
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by twhiteheadI believe time is for reasons I have already covered, and our space
KellyJay,
I don't think you have yet answered some very important question I have put to you. ie is time infinite and is space infinite?
The problem as I see it is that you argue that there can be no discontinuities in either time or space, but do not address the fact that this leads to the conclusion that both must be infinite and thus the universe must be eternal - which would contradict the creation claim.
I'm not sure about.
Kelly
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by twhiteheadI think you didn't look at what I said closely if that was what you got
I too am unwilling to claim truth value for some speculations, however it is necessary to claim that certain speculations are untrue before you can make the dichotomy argument that KellyJay used at the beginning of the thread. ie he claimed:
Either 'something from nothing' or 'God did it'.
'something from nothing' is invalid.
Therefore God did it.
...[text shortened]... t is sufficient to show that there exists other speculations that have not been disproved.
out of it.
Kelly
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by KellyJayActually, we’re the same. If I were to ask you what God “generated itself” from—you would likely say: “Nothing. God always was.”
Okay, you are defining the singularity as the totality, I'm assuming
you think it self generated itself from....what? I have already said most
people refuse to think about that, because it leads them places they
do not want to go, you appear to be no different.
I am saying the same thing with regard to the totality: the all-of-all-of-all-of-it. I am not saying that it has always been as it is. It is that “as-it-isness” that had a beginning (at the singularity). I do not think that there was once no-being-at-all and then—being. By “being”, I just mean the fact that something is. I do not know what it could mean to say that “nothing is”.
You know that old poem (is it Ogden Nash?)—
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn’t there.
He wasn’t there again today.
Oh how I wish he’d go away!
Science deals with being—with is-ness as it is. Science does not ask “what if there were no is-ness?” Some philosophers ask such questions, trying to leap from the word “being” to the idea that there must be some meaningful concept called “non-being”.
I do not know what it could possibly mean to say that “before being there was non-being”. I don’t think anyone else does either. But that goes back to my first post on this thread, when I quoted G.E. Moore’s saying about how people treat “ ‘nothing’ as if it were a queer kind of ‘something’ ”. And the fact that they can do that, makes it seem to make sense when it doesn’t.
But, the fact that there never was a nothing out of which something came (ex nihilo, nihil fit) does not mean that it makes sense to say that there must have been a something before the first something!
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by twhiteheadAgreed. It is that whole problem of “nothing”. The error, I think, is that people start to think that if the “first something” couldn’t come from “nothing” then it had to come from some other “something”, in which case it wasn’t really the “first something”—which leads to an infinite regress unless truncated by fiat.
I too am unwilling to claim truth value for some speculations, however it is necessary to claim that certain speculations are untrue before you can make the dichotomy argument that KellyJay used at the beginning of the thread. ie he claimed:
Either 'something from nothing' or 'God did it'.
'something from nothing' is invalid.
Therefore God did it.
...[text shortened]... t is sufficient to show that there exists other speculations that have not been disproved.
Now, I’m not sure that an infinite regress is necessarily illogical. But, if we’re going to truncate it by fiat, then it seems that you and I are just doing it one step before the theists.
20 Jul 09
Originally posted by KellyJayOf course the radius increases. That is part of the analogy is it not? The claim is that it does get bigger and thus has a greater radius. But they key factor is that a drawing on the balloon is able to get bigger without moving across the surface of the balloon. It is the surface itself that is stretching, not the objects contained on it. Within the dimension of the surface, the surface does not expand into new space. There is no new space for it to expand into because the surface is a closed surface - finite yet continuous. If you were a two dimensional creature living on the surface of the balloon, you would be denying the possibility that it is finite.
Thinning out is relevant because parts of the balloons surface that was
not exposed before become so as it separates and expands, the same
would be true of a blanket or anything else that is forced to stretch
itself out, the balloon takes up more space as it stretches if you were
to measure the radius of a circular balloon it would increase as
it expan ...[text shortened]... taking up more room around it. If there was nothing to
expand into, it would not expand.
Kelly