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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 5/28/2007 9:40 PM (GMT -6) |   | There are things that are of faith, and not science.
 God As Creator
Mystery of Creation
And there are things science can say.
Don't get bated. Know what's of faith and of science.
(o)Post Edited (PotOnWheel) : 5/29/2007 6:16:57 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Kale
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 3
| Posted 5/29/2007 11:14 AM (GMT -6) | | hello Many,
Without the time factor, is it possible that matter could have existed previously before the Big Bang. Elsewhere, he argues that there does not need to be an infinite regress of events to cause an event, but the entities themselves to cause events. He asserts that it was an entity, the unvierse at t=0, that cause itself to change because that is in it's nature?
Does that make any sense or is it logically impossible for this self-changing entity (matter i suppose or something more ecompassing) to exist infintly because the question then becomes, how could it self-cause at a certain time?
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He also argues elsewhere that time is only a measure of change among entities. Is this a correct view of time? | | Back to Top | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 5/29/2007 11:26 AM (GMT -6) | | | Kale: He also argues elsewhere that time is only a measure of change among entities. Is this a correct view of time?
Corey: It works for me, although I don't know about the word 'measure'. If time is anything, it entails change.
Kale: He asserts that it was an entity, the unvierse at t=0, that cause itself to change because that is in it's nature?
Corey: I don't see what could be in its nature to enable the transition from changeless to changing. I don't think he'd say it's a volitional entity.
Kale: Without the time factor, is it possible that matter could have existed previously before the Big Bang
Corey: Short answer: yes. I think the Kalaam argument deals best with sequence (time); the precise nature of the "stuff" that pre-existed time seems out of scope for the arguement. Post Edited (Corey) : 5/29/2007 11:38:17 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 5/29/2007 1:44 PM (GMT -6) | | Kale: Elsewhere, he argues that there does not need to be an infinite regress of events to cause an event, but the entities themselves to cause events. He asserts that it was an entity, the unvierse at t=0, that caused itself to change because that is in it's nature?
Tom: In my opinion he holds to an impossible view. As I said, he holds that matter/energy exists necessarily. So it's uncreated. But he holds that time is created BY this matter/energy entity. So matter/energy, apart from time's existence, is what? It's atemporal or timeless. It is an imersonal, non-volitional, non-rational state of affairs. And yet he holds that it is @in the nature" of this state of affairs to cause itself to change?
Come on. A pretty incoherent view if you ask me. If it is atemporal-matter's "nature" to cause itself to change (to bring time and our universe into existence), would this "cause" follow deterministically or indeterministically from its atemporal nature? If the former, then time and the universe as we know it cannot be contingent events (since they would follow necessarily from atemporal necessary states, his sans creation matter/energy). If the latter, then pray tell us how atemporal, non-volitional, matter/energy freely/indeterministically causes itself to expand into temporal becoming.
Tom
Post Edited (MANY) : 5/29/2007 1:50:02 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Kale
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2007
Total Posts : 3
| Posted 5/29/2007 3:54 PM (GMT -6) | | thanksfor your responses!
I really don't know what he was talking about before or how it made sense, but he finally just put it out there in an actual theory:
His basic argument is that "the universe" has existed eternally. Not necessarily matter and energy, though. His view is that space-time has always existed, but having the potential to create matter and energy. He cites a possible theory of a fold in space-time itself like "quantum loop gravity". He says that the start of the "change" (from spacetime to matter/energy, i assume) and it is this change that forms the context "when". He asserts that the universe did not have a beggining, but change did. It seems he is trying to escape the idea that the universe "poofed" (As he says) into existence.
I have some speculation but my question is, where does this argument fail? Thoughts? | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/29/2007 7:17 PM (GMT -6) | | Kale, I would say the argument fails in that it is not an argument. It is simply an assertion. No one even knows if the hypothesized physics of the Big Bang hypothesis is even valid. It's just speculation to POSSIBLY explain a couple of things like red shifts and cosmic background radiation without a resort to intelligent design. Other cosmologists, like plasma cosmologists, explain things differently. Each have their own problems. Each have things that can not be tested.
There is no scientific cosmology that explains anywhere near all the data. In that sense, they're all just hypotheses with people working on the problems. Cosmologists like to explain as much as possible without God. But explaining something by purely hypothetical physics that is only mathematical thus far (since it can't be tested) is really not explaining. It's just speculation.
No harm there as long as it is actually recognized as 1) speculation and 2) an attempt to explain as much as possible without God. Because 2) is what sanctions for them a whole lot of 1). Those of us unmotivated by 2) are way less motivated to do lots of 1). 
For a list of professionals (and an interesting statement) who are fully cognizant of the speculative nature of cosmology, see http://cosmologystatement.org/.
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 5/30/2007 3:47 PM (GMT -6) | | Kkind of like the anti-god evolutionists saying that evolution does away with the need for a god. Well, just imagine being a fly on the wall of whatever the hek primordial soup you're starting with--where it came from being another problem. You, the fly, look around for something, someone, ANYTHING that is guiding this event. There's nothing around. There's no one around. There's zilch for intelligence. There's no intelligence "built into the system, because there's no one to have put it there. There's nothing in or outside the system not, period, that has any intelligence at all.
Well, you watch this soup begin to take shape (just use your fast-foward button to do the Time Machine thing and move through this mess as quickly as possible). And, would you look at that! Amazing how all the things just fell into place to create ears, eyes, noses, mouths, this, that and the other (in other words, everything that ends up clearly for a purpose). Oh, and by the way, you looked around for something in what is supposed to be the system called the survival of the fittest--this Natural Selection thing, but there's no intelligence there either. It's all just chance when all is said and done. You note that there sure aren't too many examples of chance in your world today doing what this soup has done!
So, here you are, billions of years later, with all these "purposes" having just fallen into place all by themselves. No intelligence needed. No guidance needed. No nothing. Just chance and Natural Selection (regardless of the fact that nothing makes this happen, and nothing tells the process that this is the way things should go).
An then there's your friend's theories. He has made an assertion, as jefscott has said, just like the anti-creationist evolutionists make: out of Campbell's soup comes...the uninverse! Out of something that has no brain, no intelligence, no ability to distinguish, no ability to know that that the strongest should even live, comes life and time and meaning and...well, hogwash!
Starkman
Post Edited (Starkman) : 5/30/2007 3:52:17 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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