In the beginning God or nothing?

Originally posted by KellyJay
No, I'm not misrepresnting them, they say it starts here with the whole
process in place and functioning. The only difference between then and
now is the shape of the universe according to that train of thought,
and it does not address the how or why it occured. That this the
beginning, not a ready made process with all its pieces intact already
moving towards an end.
Kelly

But it does address the 'how' and 'why'. It declares existence a brute fact and declares that there is no 'how' or 'why' for the singularity. When you don't like that or don't understand it and then conclude that they have not talked about the beginning, you are misrepresenting them - I concede that it is perhaps not deliberate.

Originally posted by twhitehead
But it does address the 'how' and 'why'. It declares existence a brute fact and declares that there is no 'how' or 'why' for the singularity. When you don't like that or don't understand it and then conclude that they have not talked about the beginning, you are misrepresenting them - I concede that it is perhaps not deliberate.

It is a matter of disagreement, how this all started, where did it all
come from is not at all answered with just the singularity all that
speaks to again is just the same matter in a different form. Where
it came from and how are never addressed. Saying there is "no"
answer to that only shows man has nothing to put there, it does not
mean there isn't anything there, or for that matter that all mattter or
energy was ever a part of the singularity either.
Kelly

Originally posted by black beetle
If you know that there were not another status "before" the point singularity, then the case is closed because at last you appear to agree that it all started with the point singularity. Mind you, the point singularity is not "nothing" as you atempt to pose it.
And, since the spacetime evolved from the point singularity, your speculation about the exis ...[text shortened]... urse your very first question "In the beginning God or nothing" is a pseudodilemma😵

I don't believe God created the singularity, I think it wasn't needed or
required any more than I think "t-0" was needed or required.
Kelly

Originally posted by twhitehead
My point was that the words don't fit. If you spend two years building a house, would you say that as we look back over the last two years we see the house 'breaking down' and 'shrinking'? I am not really objecting at all, I was just pointing out that the word usage confused me the first time round.

All the bonds that hold together everything as they are now would no
longer apply now would they? If they were all zapped into a single
space all the complexity in everything current system would be lost, do
to it all being pushed into a single point.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
I don't believe God created the singularity, I think it wasn't needed or
required any more than I think "t-0" was needed or required.
Kelly

The point singularity is needed due to the fact that from that status started the collapsing of the wavefunction; t=0 exists not for the reasons AH and thwitehead amongst else have already explained at this and at another threads😵

Originally posted by KellyJay
I don't believe it was ever "came", any more than I think there was
ever a "t-0", and I am a little suprised you had to ask. I'm trying to
find out what the believers in those two things believe, after all it is
your beliefs.
Kelly

…I don't believe it was ever "came", ….

So don’t I -it just was.

…any more than I think there was ever a "t=0",
...

It is not certain but judging by the current evidence there probably was a t=0.
Is your belief that there was no t=0 a based on faith?

Originally posted by KellyJay
It is a matter of disagreement, how this all started, where did it all
come from is not at all answered with just the singularity all that
speaks to again is just the same matter in a different form. Where
it came from and how are never addressed. Saying there is "no"
answer to that only shows man has nothing to put there, it does not
mean there isn't ...[text shortened]... for that matter that all mattter or
energy was ever a part of the singularity either.
Kelly

And once again you refuse to accept the answer and then misrepresent the posters by saying that they did not give and answer. If I say that there is no reason for something, I am not as you put it saying that man has nothing to put there, I am saying that there strictly is no reason for it. Like it or not, it is an answer.
Now you must:
a) show that that answer is not rational, or
b) has evidence that contradicts it, or
c) accept that it remains a possibility that it is true, or
d) explain to me why you are not required to pick a, b or c.

Originally posted by KellyJay
All the bonds that hold together everything as they are now would no
longer apply now would they? If they were all zapped into a single
space all the complexity in everything current system would be lost, do
to it all being pushed into a single point.
Kelly

I agree that there would probably be no physical structures and that the physics involved would be quite different from anything we know. But thats a given in any singularity - which is why it is called a singularity.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Your error is to assume that 'flowing' must occur. There is a third alternative. It is possible that time is finite ie has a beginning, but did not 'flow' from some prior state of nothingness. In fact, if time had a beginning, there is no prior state by definition.
Further your conclusion that something 'eternal' must bring it into being is totally unfo ...[text shortened]... ere was no before, so in the time dimension it is necessarily as finite as the universe.

"In fact, if time had a beginning, there is no prior state by definition."
----------------whitey----------------------

This statement is only logically be true if one pre-assumes that there can be no state of existence independent of time. If one allows for such a possibility then the statement cannot be catagorically true.

In essence it is a circular argument based on a supposition. It's like saying "there can be nothing existing beyond or independent of time - because there can't"

The only sticking point is the word "prior" which can be interpreted in many ways. I imagine that because we live in a time trapped universe we have very few if any relevant adjectives to describe a timeless existence. However, there is no logical reason to assume that such a state cannot exist just because our language is limited.

Originally posted by knightmeister
"In fact, if time had a beginning, there is no prior state by definition."
----------------whitey----------------------

This statement is only logically be true if one pre-assumes that there can be no state of existence independent of time. If one allows for such a possibility then the statement cannot be catagorically true.

In essence it is a ...[text shortened]... al reason to assume that such a state cannot exist just because our language is limited.

I bet you can't give a definition of 'existence' that is independent of time though. You can use the word and smash it up next to some others in a grammatically legal sentence, but I bet you haven't a clue what it means.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I must point out that Kelly does not truncate it by fiat. His argument requires infinite regress and thus concludes that God is eternal.

Ah yes. I hadn’t thought of that. If I understand you rightly, that is because—if God is eternal, and “eternal” means an infinite duration of time—then time itself provides the infinite regress.

Which means that God could not have created time. Time is either an aspect of God, or at least (infinitely) coextensive with God. Neither of which fits well with dualistic theism.

Have I got you right?

_________________________________________

You and blackbeetle are arguing this far better than I can. One thing that struck me though—in the context of the commitment to metaphysical (e.g., theistic) dualism—is that a dualist has to think in terms of god existing “outside” time and space, or else they have to give up dualism. And I wondered if the dualist’s response to the claim that the laws of causality are an aspect of the universe as we know it would be: “There must be an external cause of causality”? To have a “cause of causality” does not seem any more (or less!) far-fetched than “before time” or “outside space”…

Originally posted by black beetle
The point singularity is needed due to the fact that from that status started the collapsing of the wavefunction; t=0 exists not for the reasons AH and thwitehead amongst else have already explained at this and at another threads😵

The point of the singularity is it fits a belief system, it isn't needed
just as "t=0" isn't really needed. I guess we can call that belief
"The rabbit out of the hat" belief system. The rabbit comes out of the
hat, it is now here and no questions about where the rabbit was before
it came out of the hat are thought of as reasonable so they are just
blown off as such.
Kelly

Originally posted by Andrew Hamilton
[b]…I don't believe it was ever "came", ….

So don’t I -it just was.

…any more than I think there was ever a "t=0",
...

It is not certain but judging by the current evidence there probably was a t=0.
Is your belief that there was no t=0 a based on faith?[/b]

LOL, you are telling me what you believe by saying that singularity was
real, as well as "t=0" you think that isn't a matter of belief?
Kelly

Originally posted by Lord Shark
I bet you can't give a definition of 'existence' that is independent of time though. You can use the word and smash it up next to some others in a grammatically legal sentence, but I bet you haven't a clue what it means.

Yes. I can make a grammatical sentence—

The clever cucumbers were cavorting in the cataclysmic clavichord.

—but that doesn’t mean it makes any real sense. (Not bad alliteration, though!)

The sound-power of poetry should not convince anyone of propositional truths. But that is no reason to “dis” poetry (which actually may express some truths).

But that is how people become “bewitched” by language: and they think that existence outside of time (or dimensionality generally) makes any sense. Or that (as I speculate above) causality needs a cause. What exactly is an “entity” that cannot be “id-entified” by reference to others (or boundaries) that are not it?

Originally posted by KellyJay
The point of the singularity is it fits a belief system, it isn't needed
just as "t=0" isn't really needed. I guess we can call that belief
"The rabbit out of the hat" belief system. The rabbit comes out of the
hat, it is now here and no questions about where the rabbit was before
it came out of the hat are thought of as reasonable so they are just
blown off as such.
Kelly

Nope;

It seems to me that you keep up thinking at the best the newtonian way regarding matters that today they are approached either by relativity or by quantum mechanics. Relativity sees the universe as a series of events which they follow a specific process within time, and the subject is considered a secondary agent because it is supposed to be the result of a long cause-effect chain;

Quantum mechanics sees the universe as a series of subjects (waves and/ or particles) that they behave the way they behave according to a specific status; this process is considered a secondary agent due to the fact that it is recognized as a mapping of subjects by mean of their miscellaneous status of being/ becoming (conditions).

In general, the products of our modern sience are considered the following:
1. Consciousnes seems to change our kosmos
2. We limit ourselfs within our kosmos so much that we have not an objective perspective of the world; our interpretation for the "world out there" is merely an analysis of "an idea of ours about the world out there"
3. The perspective that there is a linear past, present and future works not at the subatomic level, and many scientists have the conclusion too that there are zones in which time does not exist
4. The cause-effect status is out of order; the cause-effect process within linear past-present-future status it appears to exist solely because we believe that it exists (since I joined RHP I see poor TH and twhitehead amongst else keeping up trying to explain in vain to you, to knightmeister and to other friends of ours that the miscellaneous causal relations that we notice and monitor are manifested on the basis of a statistic potentiallity)
5. If consiousness is an agent that does change our kosmos, the result is that there is not a "sole reality"
6. The "reality" is closer to "nothing" than to "something"
7. Consiousness can be understood the way gravity can be understood (two or more fields are related and they produce a continuum), therefore matter and consciousness are considered as two waves on the surface of the same ocean

And of course none of these hypotheses is brand new -there are several philosophic systems that they offered this approach many many centuries ago. Once more, our "reality" is related solely to our knowledge.

To cut a long story short: the "point" of the point singularity is that our universe as we know it, it started from there -and this is a fact based on given elements of reality; there is simply no "why" and no "because", and questions such as "In the beginning God or nothing" or such as the ones posed by knightmeister here and at other threads are merely dismissed by science and philosophy as any other common pseudodilemma.

Finally, in our case there is no such thing as "the rabbit out of the hat". The rabbits and the hats are the tools of the selected ones who got a telephone from heaven and (their) "god" was on the line😵