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TheTrueCentrist
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So if we assume there is a timeless actual reality, how can it cause anything. Causation requires a before and after.
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JDaniel
Guest
Actually, Kismet, that is a mis-statement, but because it is used so regularly to stand for another statement, no one corrects it. What should be said is, “Something comes to be where there was nothing before.” This says it a little better, but, an argumentative fool (and his money!
) can always revert to equivocation. 
God bless,
jd
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JDaniel
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Nate13
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Most of science relies upon this exact claim that your denying. If you figure out a way to create something from nothing let me know because I want in on the trillions of dollars your going to make. You should also be aware that matter can never be destroyed either it just changes form. Are you contending that point as well?
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Kismetji
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I should clarify by saying it is the Whole which causes its own self to become multi-form.So, you caused yourself? And, your dog caused him/her-self? And the bird nest outside your window caused itself? And the fry of some fish caused themselves? And, your car caused itself? And the statue in your living room caused itself? And, your house caused itself? Ad infinitum.
Glad to see you’re back!
God bless,
jd
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Kismetji
Guest
I don’t get it.Actually, Kismet, that is a mis-statement, but because it is used so regularly to stand for another statement, no one corrects it. What should be said is, “Something comes to be where there was nothing before.” This says it a little better, but, an argumentative fool (and his money!
God bless,
jd
But I can roll with MM2’s apparent assertion that the world comes from spiritual, as opposed to physical, substance.
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Kismetji
Guest
Nate,
The point is none of us were ever privileged enough to have a “meta” view of the cosmos. Nothing comes from nothing in terms of the universe’s constituents, but this is not grounds to assume the universe en toto cannot have come from nothing. That is, if nothing can be made into a thing. Right now I’m on the fence about it.
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Nate13
Guest
I’m not sure what your beliefs are, but assume you were of the stance that X amount of matter just always existed and exactly that much matter always would exist. Would your question of causation still stand then?
I think all this proof shows is that “something” has to have existed eternally. You then have to decide whether you believe that “something” was intelligent or not and work from there.
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Nate13
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The question is whether you believe the timeless actual reality is just the existence of X unintelligible matter or whether that timeless actual reality was intelligent in whatever form (matter or not). From there everything else follows. Another way of thinking about is do you believe the Universe was designed or not? If you do that would preclude you to believe there was something intelligent that created the Universe and you could only presuppose that was the real timeless actual reality.
It would be somewhat weird to think that intelligent life was begotten from an unintelligent timeless actual reality.
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JDaniel
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JDaniel
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JDaniel
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TTC:
Partly true: there are two types of succession: 1) an aggregating succession of non-contemporaneous distension (New Proofs for the Existence of God from Contemporary Physics and Philosophy) and 2) an aggregating succession of contemporaneous distension.
An example of 1) would be driving your car from your work to your home. An example of 2) would be flipping on a modern TV set.
Say it takes 10 minutes to drive from your work to your home, then, if we allow seconds to measure “aggregating succession,” 6,000 seconds will have aggregated within that event.
Now suppose there is no warm-up interval required by the LED, LCD, or picture tube in your TV set. Now then, the moment the switch is toggled, electricity flowing at about 160,000 miles per second, travels through all 500 solid state devices in your set, turns on the LED, LCD, or picture tube device and makes the sound system ready, practically before the sound of the click has departed your memory.
The above is not a perfect representation as even at 160,000 miles per second some Planck intervals are being traversed, but, it is close enough to simultaneity for our purposes of illustration. So, think of all of it as “simultaneous.” The illustration given by the philosophers is usually of a boy pushing a stone with a stick. His feet and legs, his torso, his shoulder, his upper and lower arm, his hand, his fingers, the stick, and the stone are moved simultaneously. I happen to like the TV explanation because it depicts 500 (more or less) components causing virtually simultaneously. What does this look like in the wild, well, it looks like coming-to-be, i.e., substantial change and everything else that changes…
Now, forget all of the above. What you are asking about is the Act of Creation. The Act of Creation is different because it assumes that there was nothing prior to it, including Time, except for God. Not one extant thing. Nothing. But, herein lies the dilemma: we have to utilize a dialectical induction to arrive at a something that does the creating. The dialectic is the experimentation a scientist might perform to try to duplicate “creation.” The dialectic will also include a search for an uncaused exigency. And, such a dialectic will include a realistic look at the possibility of “infinite past time.” All three being futile searches, we are left to conclude that whatever instantiated the universe must be outside of it. Also, we can be pretty sure that the lesser does not create the greater, because the lesser cannot impart what it does not have. Thus, we have pretty solid grounds for suspecting that an extra-powerful, extra-smart, extra-capable-of-existing-outside-of-an-anthropic-setting, being, exists that made it so.
God bless,
jd
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tonyrey
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TheTrueCentrist
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But this is exactly the problem. You can’t tell if nothingness comes “before” existence without some shared timeline. That timeline cannot exist in nothingness unless you claim that God is time itself. It would be like saying that whiteness comes before the blackness in this picture
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Nate13
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Are you saying time is reliant on matter in order to exist? I think you could argue that time is only relevant if something exists, but I don’t see why our idea of time can’t nominally exist in nothing. If nothing exists there is obviously no way to measure how much time is passing, but that is not the same as saying time doesn’t pass at all.
It does.
Most monitors refresh from top left to bottom right.
So whatever color is in the first position is there first.
And now back to the regularly scheduled argument…
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TheTrueCentrist
Guest
No, say that there is always a (very) small chance of something coming into existence without a cause. If there was a state of nothingness it would not be permanent because at some point something would come into existence without a cause. Those existences could be small particles, energy, or things that look wildly different from what we experience. However, once every huge number of uncased events, something will spring into existence that looks like our conception of a universe.
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TheTrueCentrist
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Does time exist? Yes
Would a state in which nothing exists be satisfied if time existed in it? No. If time existed, then something besides God would exist, namely time.
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JDaniel
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TTC:
In some way we can. We probably have infinite Nothingness with us as we speak. Do electrons have “place?” I suspect so, even if we can’t precisely pin point their whereabouts in what is termed its “shell.” I recently learned that that space/place within which electrons perdure as waves, is about 50,000 times greater than an atom’s nucleus. Now, molecules are formed by the sharing of one or more electrons, so that a simple molecule may have a space that’s potentially twice that size. How is it then that there are solids as hard as diamonds? How is it that water, in its native form, has no hardness? What happens to that space/place? It doesn’t go away. There are other reasons for what we perceive as hardness, which we don’t need to get into. And, shortly, I may find that my accepted theories are perhaps incorrect.
Anyhow, besides consisting of electrons, that space/place may be simply nothingness. If it is a medium of some sort, what kind of medium is it? It certainly cannot be a medium that hinders the wave motions of the electrons. Now, obviously the mechanism is an electro-magnetic one. But, that still does not explain the medium, or lack of one. I have two friends, I think?, in these fora, that have some very interesting and brilliant ideas. I am discussing some of those ideas in the thread called: Space, each day. The other guy is trying to get his book published by this coming month, so I’ll have to wait to see his theories. His handle is “Greylorn.” If you see him responding to a thread, don’t talk to him unless you don’t mind getting your face bitten off! But, he’s just a lovable mean ol’ bear.
“Place” can be pretty well defined as, “the innermost surface of a surrounding body.” If an electron exists in an ill-defined shell, just outside of the nucleus, and that space is nothingness, then not only is the electron’s surrounding body nothingness, but, to a great extent the nucleus may well be surrounded by mostly nothingness. That said, we may get closer to answers that comport with real physics than anyone could ever hope real soon.
“Time” is still pretty much the measure of motion. Its iterations can be measured because of “relativity.” So, Time, it seems, is motion-dependent. But, God is not a mobile being. Why, because he is infinite (in every perfection, which includes magnitude). Where would he move to? So, if Time is motion-dependent then it had to have a beginning, which is said to be simultaneous with the beginning of the universe, or multiverse, whichever you prefer.
So, yes, Time does not have to share a “timeline” with the instant instantiation of a singularity, but it does have to share one from the first Planck moment of expansion. But, as to what came “before” that, I think that that is irrelevant since there would have been no motion. But, if it is God that comes sequentially prior to the first Planck moment, then His spiritual being may be akin to infinite nothingness, at our level of consumption.
God bless,
jd
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MindOverMatter2
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First of all its irrelevant what i think God does on theological grounds. Thats not what is being discussed. Secondly, you don’t know what i believe and should have consulted my understanding of scripture before building this straw-man. Regardless of what my theology is, insofar as philosophy is concerned, My argument is for the existence of an ultimate reality based on the premise that out of nothing comes nothing, and the fact that reality is the ground of all potentiality. I have not said anything about God.
Since you didn’t get this part correct, i don’t have much confidence in anything you say.
How about addressing the argument directly instead creating straw-men and red herrings.
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