Re-writing Relativity

Originally posted by scottishinnz
"Beliefs" have got nothing to do with reality. I trust experiments and not my own "gut feeling" for that. I trust that guys like Einstein, Hubble, and Newton knew what they were talking about, and I chose to believe them, based upon the fact that their work describes the way the universe operates so well.

I don't need another to "think for me" (alt little or no critical thinking of your own, and certainly no relationship with reality.

Reality is what it is, you can have beliefs that agree with reality or beliefs that do not, simply because we use the words faith or belief when discussing anything is not an admission we not talking about reality. You can trust your experiments get results and draw wrong conclusions, unless you want to tell me your error free in all you do? Your gut feelings, your experiments, your beliefs are all wrapped up in what you think is true about the universe! You telling me that time cannot be real pre BB is FAITH, it isn't a matter of experiment result since you cannot duplicate it, and it isn't a matter of anything you can point to outside of drawing conclusions again on things you have only limited data points on. So your crying that time isn’t real before the BB is simply an opinion, it is a matter of faith, you telling me that time is only wrapped up in the universe not outside of it is only a matter of faith, it is a matter of opinion since you have never been outside of the universe to check that fact! You are confused at best on how much faith and beliefs you do have invested in your views on reality.

I've been giving you my opinions, my questions about this discussion I have not drawn upon someone else's work or view points, you are the one telling me to go read someone else to get your understanding on this topic! So yes for you, you do have another thinkiing for you, you are not doing it just on your own here! We both have built our views on what we think is true based upon everything we have been exposed to in our past, just don't be blind to that too like you are faith and beliefs. Do a little critical thinking your self.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
“Was there a time before time?”

You know without a shadow of doubt that time had a beginning, that there was a “before time”? I know Scott believes that is the case, he hasn't given me any reason to believe it, just spouts off that I need to come up with a new theory of relativity.

“Where was everything before there was ‘where’ (i.e., spatial dimensi ...[text shortened]... l God, but to think you'd write off before the BB as uninteresting is odd to me.
Kelly

Vistesd: Like Scotty, and others, I use the word “universe” to mean—by definition—the totality. However, I am happy to use just “totality” or “the whole” or “All.”

KellyJay: Which again I disagree with Scott, if there is something not apart of our universe but outside of it, it is apart of everything yet again has nothing to do with our universe.

And that may be where our impasse lies. (Same for our discussion on the same issue in the other thread.) In any case, I think the whole “grammar of our consciousness” is limited by the dimensional parameters of our universe, even if the ultimate totality is a plurality which includes our universe. We cannot even speculate except in the terms and syntax of that grammar, which includes dimensional terms and syntax.

None of that makes me “non-religious,” as I think both you and Scott know. I am, however, a monist rather than a theist—which is why I talk so much in terms of the totality. Yes, that entails a couple of metaphysical assumptions—principally non-dualism, which I happen to think is the most reasonable one. I think that religious expression (including myth, poetry, music, liturgy, art) is properly an aesthetic response to the immensity of the whole of which we are—the known, the unknown, and perhaps the unknowable (though I do not assume that what is now unknown is necessarily forever unknowable)—and to its very coherence, harmony and beauty. Again, I think religion is more akin to Beethoven than to biology. But I do not think that aesthetics is trivial: our consciousness includes the aesthetic dimension as much as the rational one, and that dimension is at least as important for living a life of richness and joy, whether one is a theist, an atheist or whatever.

In a sense, it is the limits of our intellectual/conceptual grammar that I am arguing here, not our aesthetic grammar—which I think serves an elicitive function (to use a word bbarr gave me), rather than a descriptive or propositional one.

Originally posted by KellyJay
“Before existence began to exist,
there was nothing there, I must insist.”

“But where was ‘there,’” I then might ask,
“wherein this ‘nothing’ might comfortably bask.”

“But there must have been a ‘where,’ you see,
or else there was no-place for nothing to be...”


Did you write that? I really liked it!
Kelly

yes. Thank you. I am the middle speaker... 🙂