The Fourteen Cosmological Arguments for the Existence of God

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. youtu.be/WjuuO1HnOR4

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.“. forbes.com/sites/startswith … -universe/

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.

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.

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

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.

You already know my arguments as to why time must begin. However, I would point out to you that the photon is supposedly timeless under General Relativity. So, time is apparently not necessary for the existence of light - so endless time is not necessary.

I know everyone’s arguments for why god must exist. You’re contradicting the Hindus for why they think your god is inferior to theirs.

You know why god doesn’t exist?

I’ve already stated it: nobody gives a shit about omnipotence, omnipresence or omniscience.

The ONLY thing people care about in god is omnibenevolence.

That’s it. That’s all people care about.

All you have to do is ask, “is my consent being violated in some way shape or form? Is some child dying of starvation right now? (Like they do every day!). That’s disproof of omnibenevolence.

The only god that matters to every being in existence hasn’t been born yet.

I don’t agree that omnibenevolence is all that everyone cares about. I think the #1 issue is whether God exists. If God doesn’t exist, who cares about the rest of this stuff?

A photon wouldn’t experience time passing regardless of whether it is traveling millions of light years through space or appearing and disappearing like a virtual particle. Photons always travel at the speed of light, even in the case of appearing and disappearing in an instant. ← So that alone is enough to explain why they don’t experience time. This is true of all virtual particles, BTW.

The article confirms exactly what I said.

And the idea that no time passes for the photon is only true from the photon’s POV, not from ours.

Besides, it doesn’t make one bit of difference whether the appearance and disappearance of the photon occurs in a timeless context. If somehow this is the case–an established scientific fact, let’s say–it still doesn’t make any sense. If I told you that 2 + 2 = 5, would you say it makes sense? I would think not. Then if I showed you how, scientifically, adding two things together with two other things somehow magically created five things, would it all of a sudden make sense to you? I would think not. And given that I don’t think you understand the science behind the relation between photons and time, I still call bull shit on your quanta-of-time-yet-timeless units theory.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one to insist that the world has to make sense in order to be real. There’s plenty of counterintuitive stuff to bring up as examples of nonsensical yet scientifically proven facts about our world–a particle spinning both up and down at the same time, for example–I just dispute any claim that proving that it’s real all of a sudden makes it intelligible. If a proposition is completely unintelligible and doesn’t make sense, and then you prove it, it just means the world is unintelligible and doesn’t make sense… which is a real possibility–but I don’t thereby pretend to understand it.

Gib,

A photon is timeless. That is precedent for a timeless particle. An indivisible unit of spacetime is a serious physics idea that comes to play in quantum gravity. It is not bs. You just don’t like hearing about it and the implications it has concerning the existence of a God who can interact with our universe.

Really?!?! What if god was omnimelevolent?

Which seems to be the case here. I’d rather have a chance to work towards omnibenevolence than have an eternal all powerful omnimelevolent being necessarily running the show forever!

John, you honestly don’t even think basic things through sometimes.

God’s existence is an independent truth. Whether you think God is bad is irrelevant.

Oooh, why didn’t you say so?!

I didn’t say that was BS. I said your construal of it as being a non-zero amount yet no time going by for it is BS. ← That’s the part that sounds contradictory to me. When they say the fundamental unit of time is 10^-33 seconds, I’m pretty sure they mean seconds. What’s happening to the universe during that brief amount of time is still up in the air for me, but there is at least one scenario that makes sense in my mind: still-frames.

It has absolutely no relevance to the existence of God and his ability to interact with the universe. Seriously. You’re telling me that if I put forward two pictures of the universe to a sample of random people–one where time was continuous and one where time came in discrete indivisible units–and asked which one was created by a God, they would think it’s obvious that the discrete units picture was the one?

Gib,

What don’t you get about the photon being timeless? That means NO TIME! It doesn’t mean standing still time only.

You’re failing to appreciate the distinction between time and the indivisible unit of spacetime that creates time. Focus your attention on the word “CREATES”.

You would need to give these people more explanation between discrete and continuous time before they could address the difference between frames. In discrete time, there is a finite number of frames. In continuous time, there is an infinite number of frames. So, you’d have to show them the number of frames as well for them to see the difference.