The Fourteen Cosmological Arguments for the Existence of God

[MagsJ]

I wish I could interject here some thing without being out of order.

You’ll never be out of order to me, dear Meno.. don’t let them ever make you feel so..

[JohnJBannan]

No. I said that each frame is an indivisible unit of spacetime. 10^-33 = 1 frame

Ok then, I just don't understand what you mean by "There is no time from the perspective of a frame".

Anyway, you still haven't answered my question: what is happening to the universe during the 10^-33 seconds of each frame? We're ruling out standing still. So it must be moving (or changing). What other option is there?

The universe is the frame. Time is the sequence of frames. There is no time for each frame, because time is the sequence of frames - not a single frame. 10^-33 = 1 frame. Your idea of time does not apply to an indivisible unit of spacetime responsible for the creation of time. There is no underlying time for an indivisible unit of spacetime. There is simply the appearance and disappearance of the indivisible unit which we equate to 10 ^-33. Indivisible units of spacetime are weird things. The answer to your question is that the question itself is nonsensical, because time doesn’t apply to an indivisible unit of spacetime. So, “none of the above” is the answer.

For example, the photon is allegedly timeless. A photon can appear and disappear. A photon can be emitted and then absorbed. The photon does not supposedly experience time, but its appearance and disappearance is LIKE an indivisible unit of spacetime. (Note that I am only using the photon as an analogy).

[gib]

The universe is the frame. Time is the sequence of frames. There is no time for each frame, because time is the sequence of frames - not a single frame. 10^-33 = 1 frame. Your idea of time does not apply to an indivisible unit of spacetime responsible for the creation of time. There is no underlying time for an indivisible unit of spacetime. There is simply the appearance and disappearance of the indivisible unit which we equate to 10 ^-33. Indivisible units of spacetime are weird things. The answer to your question is that the question itself is nonsensical, because time doesn’t apply to an indivisible unit of spacetime. So, “none of the above” is the answer.

For example, the photon is allegedly timeless. A photon can appear and disappear. A photon can be emitted and then absorbed. The photon does not supposedly experience time, but its appearance and disappearance is LIKE an indivisible unit of spacetime. (Note that I am only using the photon as an analogy).

I don't know how to proceed with this. Time is required for a thing to appear and disappear. There's an order to it: it appears first, stays a while, then disappears. The whole point of coming up with the number 10^-33 is to say the fundamental unit if time is 10^-33 seconds. That's a non-zero amount of time that goes by. If time is meaningless at that scale, then what is it 10^-33 of?

[JohnJBannan]

I appreciate your confusion. First off, don’t confuse math and physical reality. 10^-33 is math leading you to assume there are smaller increments of time. Not so with an indivisible unit of spacetime. We are discussing the thing that creates time, so your fundamental temporal assumptions are inapplicable.

Time is not required for an indivisible unit of spacetime to appear and disappear. Consider the supposedly timeless photon analogy. The indivisible unit of spacetime appears and disappears, and that is what CREATES time through series. Indivisible units of spacetime are weird things.

[gib]

I appreciate your confusion. First off, don’t confuse math and physical reality. 10^-33 is math leading you to assume there are smaller increments of time. Not so with an indivisible unit of spacetime. We are discussing the thing that creates time, so your fundamental temporal assumptions are inapplicable.

Time is not required for an indivisible unit of spacetime to appear and disappear. Consider the supposedly timeless photon analogy. The indivisible unit of spacetime appears and disappears, and that is what CREATES time through series. Indivisible units of spacetime are weird things.

I can't really debate this. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't know how something can appear and disappear without time going by. I don't know what the 10^-33 means if not a quantity of time (that is what the originators of that number meant, yet you're twisting it to mean something else, all the while still using it to argue for a smallest unit of time). You're proposing this unintelligible construct and I don't know what to do with it. So I guess I'm out.

[Meno_]

Gib,


Another interpretation, perhaps.

Before time began, everything was still,,.before the sundile, there was many a moon, signaling the coming of darkness.

People hid in caves, in fear of natural elements, The could not count the days, they were wildly unaware , they either stood their ground and fight. or, they took to flight, away from their sight of danger.

That is, until they started to codify repeatably, over the course of many centuries worth of millennia.

The sense of stillness, appeared as perpetually motionless, they lived in an eternal frame of shameless space.

Nowedays it is almost impossible to slow6 an ever increasing loss of interplay between slices of still, life.

We can not even visualize a time when aesthetics ruled reality as a still-life.

And that stillness changed to modern art, and movement was born


Deuchamp"s 'Lady fed ending the Stairs' lead to cubism's literal representation of Picasso's grotesque abhorrent reality of twisted portraits of almost unimaginable lack of stollness, where most movement had to be filled in , in the spaces that could no longer be sensed.

Motivations with objective realities could no longer represent a willfully considered plan of action.

The mystical continuum
lost its being-reson' d'etre.

[JohnJBannan]

I appreciate your confusion. First off, don’t confuse math and physical reality. 10^-33 is math leading you to assume there are smaller increments of time. Not so with an indivisible unit of spacetime. We are discussing the thing that creates time, so your fundamental temporal assumptions are inapplicable.

Time is not required for an indivisible unit of spacetime to appear and disappear. Consider the supposedly timeless photon analogy. The indivisible unit of spacetime appears and disappears, and that is what CREATES time through series. Indivisible units of spacetime are weird things.

I can't really debate this. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't know how something can appear and disappear without time going by. I don't know what the 10^-33 means if not a quantity of time (that is what the originators of that number meant, yet you're twisting it to mean something else, all the while still using it to argue for a smallest unit of time). You're proposing this unintelligible construct and I don't know what to do with it. So I guess I'm out.

This might help you:

What does it mean to be an indivisible unit of spacetime?

FYI. This is a quite legitimate physics question.

[Ecmandu]

I appreciate your confusion. First off, don’t confuse math and physical reality. 10^-33 is math leading you to assume there are smaller increments of time. Not so with an indivisible unit of spacetime. We are discussing the thing that creates time, so your fundamental temporal assumptions are inapplicable.

Time is not required for an indivisible unit of spacetime to appear and disappear. Consider the supposedly timeless photon analogy. The indivisible unit of spacetime appears and disappears, and that is what CREATES time through series. Indivisible units of spacetime are weird things.

I can't really debate this. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't know how something can appear and disappear without time going by. I don't know what the 10^-33 means if not a quantity of time (that is what the originators of that number meant, yet you're twisting it to mean something else, all the while still using it to argue for a smallest unit of time). You're proposing this unintelligible construct and I don't know what to do with it. So I guess I'm out.

This might help you:

What does it mean to be an indivisible unit of spacetime?

FYI. This is a quite legitimate physics question.

It just means ether. Ether has always been posited by physics, this is a quite legitimate physics answer.

[JohnJBannan]

Ether is an old version of the quantum field. But, that does not explain what it means to be an indivisible unit of spacetime. The vast array of these units is the quantum field, but what does it mean - this indivisible unit of spacetime?

“The exciting thing about their result is that the energy lost through this mechanism corresponds to the dark energy observed in the Universe today for this free constant of order unity! “


http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2 ... s.html?m=1

[Ecmandu]

Ether is an old version of the quantum field. But, that does not explain what it means to be an indivisible unit of spacetime. The vast array of these units is the quantum field, but what does it mean - this indivisible unit of spacetime?

“The exciting thing about their result is that the energy lost through this mechanism corresponds to the dark energy observed in the Universe today for this free constant of order unity! “


http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2 ... s.html?m=1

I know ether is an old idea. I came from Ancient Greece if not before. It’s being revisited by modern physics because it explains the gaps.

[JohnJBannan]

Don’t you find it intriguing that indivisible units of spacetime can account for dark energy?

http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2 ... s.html?m=1

[Ecmandu]

Don’t you find it intriguing that indivisible units of spacetime can account for dark energy?

http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2 ... s.html?m=1

John, you really don’t get it man. Discrete implies nothingness between whatever minuscule somethingness you put forth. That’s exactly what’s bothering Karpel tunnel.

If nothingness is ‘between’, then it’s not even there to be in between! Very, very basic logic.

[JohnJBannan]

Don’t you find it intriguing that indivisible units of spacetime can account for dark energy?

http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2 ... s.html?m=1

John, you really don’t get it man. Discrete implies nothingness between whatever minuscule somethingness you put forth. That’s exactly what’s bothering Karpel tunnel.

If nothingness is ‘between’, then it’s not even there to be in between! Very, very basic logic.

Ah, but I do get your argument. And I am explaining the way out of it!

You do not understand what it means to be an indivisible unit of spacetime. It means that the indivisible unit is not itself subject to time because it CREATES time. The appearance of such an indivisible unit like the photon does not take up time - but IS time and space itself. THE THING THAT CREATES TIME CANNOT ITSELF BE SUBJECT TO TIME! Continuous time would NOT have indivisible units of spacetime. Think about the difference and you’ll come to understand what I am talking about.

Karpel tunnel is unnecessarily concerned. The key difference is between the continuous and the discrete. The continuous cannot be divided into indivisible units. You and Karpel are failing to comprehend the difference. The fact that there is nothing in between indivisible units does NOT thereby make it continuous. You are implicitly overlaying a temporal framework on a subject that does not have said framework, i.e. the creation of time. This is your big mistake.

What you and many philosophers fail to comprehend is what the idea of an indivisible unit of spacetime means in terms of the CREATION of time and how that undermines the atheist argument of God’s act of continuous creation subjecting God to time. I’m pointing out the flaw in this atheistic argument! It’s not my fault you guys never considered it.

[gib]

What does it mean to be an indivisible unit of spacetime?

Indivisible means cannot be divided. I'm not sure how one "divides" spacetime to begin with. I've never been able to take a stretch of space, cut it in half, and disconnect each half from each other. Same with time. If it means something more along the lines of: there aren't any smaller quantities of space or time than the amount of the unit, then I don't know how space or time can be indivisible unless their size was 0.

[JohnJBannan]

What does it mean to be an indivisible unit of spacetime?

Indivisible means cannot be divided. I'm not sure how one "divides" spacetime to begin with. I've never been able to take a stretch of space, cut it in half, and disconnect each half from each other. Same with time. If it means something more along the lines of: there aren't any smaller quantities of space or time than the amount of the unit, then I don't know how space or time can be indivisible unless their size was 0.

Spacetime is a creation of the expanded singularity in Big Bang cosmology. It can change size as it expands. It can stretch and warp. Spacetime is a thing albeit an extremely low density thing. The indivisible units of spacetime are near the Planck scale, so currently there is nothing that small to even notice them. But rest assured, many physicists take them very seriously especially in quantum gravity and current attempts to devise a Grand Theory of Everything.


Here’s a YouTube explanation of the discrete vs. continuous debate. https://youtu.be/WjuuO1HnOR4


Here’s some scientific paper on discrete space. https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 018-9562-2

[gib]

Gib,


Another interpretation, perhaps.

Before time began, everything was still,,.before the sundile, there was many a moon, signaling the coming of darkness.

People hid in caves, in fear of natural elements, The could not count the days, they were wildly unaware , they either stood their ground and fight. or, they took to flight, away from their sight of danger.

That is, until they started to codify repeatably, over the course of many centuries worth of millennia.

The sense of stillness, appeared as perpetually motionless, they lived in an eternal frame of shameless space.

Nowedays it is almost impossible to slow6 an ever increasing loss of interplay between slices of still, life.

We can not even visualize a time when aesthetics ruled reality as a still-life.

And that stillness changed to modern art, and movement was born


Deuchamp"s 'Lady fed ending the Stairs' lead to cubism's literal representation of Picasso's grotesque abhorrent reality of twisted portraits of almost unimaginable lack of stollness, where most movement had to be filled in , in the spaces that could no longer be sensed.

Motivations with objective realities could no longer represent a willfully considered plan of action.

The mystical continuum
lost its being-reson' d'etre.

Meno,

I have no doubt we have a wildly different sense of time today than we did before civilization began. But strictly speaking, time has always existed. Time existed before there were even humans to sense time going by, before life itself began. If you believe the scientists, then time began with the big bang, and before that... well, there was no before.

[gib]

What does it mean to be an indivisible unit of spacetime?

Indivisible means cannot be divided. I'm not sure how one "divides" spacetime to begin with. I've never been able to take a stretch of space, cut it in half, and disconnect each half from each other. Same with time. If it means something more along the lines of: there aren't any smaller quantities of space or time than the amount of the unit, then I don't know how space or time can be indivisible unless their size was 0.

Spacetime is a creation of the expanded singularity in Big Bang cosmology. It can change size as it expands. It can stretch and warp. Spacetime is a thing albeit an extremely low density thing. The indivisible units of spacetime are near the Planck scale, so currently there is nothing that small to even notice them. But rest assured, many physicists take them very seriously especially in quantum gravity and current attempts to devise a Grand Theory of Everything.


Here’s a YouTube explanation of the discrete vs. continuous debate. https://youtu.be/WjuuO1HnOR4


Here’s some scientific paper on discrete space. https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 018-9562-2

I get the idea that quantum mechanics wants to quantize everything, including space and time... I'm just not sure what that means, and I don't think you do either.

I hazarded a guess with my still-frames picture of the universe for every "frame" of time, but you rejected that picture, and I couldn't make heads or tails of what you proposed in its place.

Anything below the plank scale is too small to measure because the smallest objects we have for measuring are well above the plank scale so they are too low resolution to be effected in any unique way by something smaller than the plank scale. What this means is that any unit of spacetime below this level is undetectable and therefore only theoretical. They theory might work mathematically to render certain models in physics coherent but what it means for time and space to be quantized is unclear to me.

[JohnJBannan]

The intuitive notion is that because particles are quantized, then so is spacetime. For sure, an indivisible unit of spacetime is a weird thing. But, I bring you back to the supposedly timeless photon analogy. A photon can appear and disappear, and yet the photon does not experience time. But, the point is that an indivisible unit of spacetime is not itself subject to time, because it CREATES time. An indivisible unit of spacetime not being made in time can be made by God outside of time, thus not subjecting God to the claim that God is subject to time by virtue of continuous acts of sustaining the universe at each moment of time.

[gib]

A photon can appear and disappear, and yet the photon does not experience time.

I think you misunderstand this part. The reason they say a photon doesn't experience time isn't because it's lifespan is so brief but because it travels at the speed of light. Time dilation is such that the faster you travel, the more length contracts outside your frame of reference. At the speed of light, the entire universe is maximally contracted such that your starting position and destination position coincide, and therefore there is no distance to travel, and therefore your journey is instant. The photon experiences no time because it's journey, however far across the universe, is instant. We on the other hand experience immense gulfs of time for the photon's travels.

It isn't just that it's weird, it's that it doesn't make sense. Even in the case of virtual particles, which do appear and disappear very briefly, appearing and disappearing implies the passage of time. If the appearing happens first, then it happens first--i.e. before, at the beginning, step #1--and the disappearing happens second--i.e. after, at the end, step #last. <-- There is definitely an order there. So right there, when you talk about particles appearing and disappearing, yet without time going by, it already doesn't make any sense.

I get the feeling you think really, really, really short periods of time mean no time.

[JohnJBannan]

While what you say about the photon is true and that was already my understanding of it, the photon does appear and disappear without the passage of time (supposedly). That makes the photon a timeless particle and NO TIME passes between its appearance and disappearance. That is in fact the understanding of the photon under General Relativity. So, by analogy to the photon, there is precedent in physics for a particle that can appear and disappear outside of time itself. An indivisible unit of spacetime is clearly not a logical impossibility, because we know photons are real and we know photons are timeless (supposedly).

“A photon cannot see or experience anything, as it turns out. It’s true that time doesn’t pass for a photon: in relativity, it represents what we call a null geodesic.“. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswith ... -universe/

[promethean75]

Consequently, God cannot be a body (that is, He cannot be composed of matter),[48] He cannot have any accidents,[49] and He must be simple (that is, not separated into parts; the Trinity is one substance in three persons).[50] Further, He is goodness itself,[37] perfect,[51] infinite,[52] omnipotent,[53] omniscient,[54] happiness itself,[55] knowledge itself,[56] love itself,[40] omnipresent,[57] immutable,[58] and eternal.[59] Summing up these properties, Aquinas offers the term actus purus (Latin: "pure actuality").

Everything's good until he starts anthropomorphizing there at the end. The aristotolean metaphysics aquinas is in to is cool but the line is drawn by spinoza. You end up back at a deistic concept of god, that indifferent watch maker who stepped back from what he made.

The thomists in fact had an agenda (this is probably news) and were, unwittingly or not, designing a theo-political system of thought that was subconsciously modelled off the ruling hierarchical government existing at the time. God had to be personalized and involved before philosophers could argue that the rule of law and civil order was a representation of divine rule, the will of god, the king as ambassador, etc.

Thomist ontology stripped of such anthropomorphisms can't be useful as a foundation for morality. So the point is, if a god exists, the concept isn't derived from the ontology alone, because that would leave only Aristotle's prime mover... not the intimately involved god of Augustine and descartes.

[JohnJBannan]

Consequently, God cannot be a body (that is, He cannot be composed of matter),[48] He cannot have any accidents,[49] and He must be simple (that is, not separated into parts; the Trinity is one substance in three persons).[50] Further, He is goodness itself,[37] perfect,[51] infinite,[52] omnipotent,[53] omniscient,[54] happiness itself,[55] knowledge itself,[56] love itself,[40] omnipresent,[57] immutable,[58] and eternal.[59] Summing up these properties, Aquinas offers the term actus purus (Latin: "pure actuality").

Everything's good until he starts anthropomorphizing there at the end. The aristotolean metaphysics aquinas is in to is cool but the line is drawn by spinoza. You end up back at a deistic concept of god, that indifferent watch maker who stepped back from what he made.

The thomists in fact had an agenda (this is probably news) and were, unwittingly or not, designing a theo-political system of thought that was subconsciously modelled off the ruling hierarchical government existing at the time. God had to be personalized and involved before philosophers could argue that the rule of law and civil order was a representation of divine rule, the will of god, the king as ambassador, etc.

Thomist ontology stripped of such anthropomorphisms can't be useful as a foundation for morality. So the point is, if a god exists, the concept isn't derived from the ontology alone, because that would leave only Aristotle's prime mover... not the intimately involved god of Augustine and descartes.

God does NOT step back from the universe. Are you not following my discussion of timeless indivisible units of spacetime and photons? God can act in a timeless fashion in sustaining the universe without stepping back. Indeed, the assertion that God steps back from the universe is utterly atheistic, because then the universe could independently sustain itself and what need would there be of God? Poof! God would be gone in an Occam flash.

[promethean75]

As a member of the dasein I'm more interested in examining the gaps between how a conception of a moral god would be different from a conception of a pantheistic god deprived of the qualities of intelligence, intention, concern, purpose, and so forth.

[promethean75]

Oh and how dasein might grapple existentially with these problems in 'the most rational way', as it were.

[Ecmandu]

Why does time need to be created? You know, when you read texts of Hinduism, they state very clearly that time never began. That’s how amazing god is.

There’s a story that krishna once opened his mouth to show his mother something.... and it was the entire cosmos with no beginning or end. She started to go insane ... so he erased her memories of the event.

I know you think the Bible is religion John. But it’s not not factually true that the Bible is religion. It’s just a sliver of all religion on earth. You think you have the true one in your head, that existence begins and ends.

Actually, you have the most absurd one in your head.

Again, time is patterned motion. Without patterned motion, no consciousness is possible. Even gods consciousness. What was before time? Non patterned motion? That’s absurd.

From the human perspective here, you are born and then you die. Like above so below right? You’re anthrpomorphizing existence from your teeny human experience of it. “If I begin and die, then so does existence itself”

Your argument is narcissistic.