(NB: I open to engaging you (or any member) in a formal debate defending my oft-stated theism is not true position.) — 180 Proof
Alright, let me see if I understand your position (correct me if I’m wrong) : there are many (an infinite number of) universes, each containing all that exists at one moment in time. So Dead Grandma exists in the universes in which she was alive, just not in the current universe, where she is dead. Universes are stacked up like pancakes.
I can kind of get on board with this, it’s a version of the multi-verse idea. A few questions, though : — Real Gone Cat
How do we access the past? I mean, you claim I have a relationship with Dead Grandma. How? Through memory? Not only is memory faulty, but the memory of a thing is not the thing being remembered. Is it? — Real Gone Cat
And where is God in all this? Even if I can access past universes through memory, that would not seem to be possible with God. — Real Gone Cat
A somewhat unrelated question : How do you know that an effect is due to an outside cause? That’s a unique skill. — Real Gone Cat
Provide one! — Agent Smith
(NB: I'm open to engaging you (or any member) in a formal debate defending my oft-stated theism is not true position. We can arrange this with the Mods on the dedicated subforum – just say when.) — 180 Proof
The trouble with metaphysics is basic terms are never clearly defined. — Astrophel
So first, things begin with house cleaning. God has to be divested of its trivial assailable properties. Omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence are mere anthropomorphic extensions. Greatest possible being (Anselm) the same. Rejected here is the Augustinian Platonism, Aquinas arguments and notions of first cause and teleological arguments. In short, we reject bad metaphysics. And really to the point, God is not a metaphysical concept, indeed, metaphysical concepts are really not metaphysical at all, fashioned out the very accessible conditions of their conception. Their "is" no metaphysics, just errant imaginative notions. We can say (remember Thomas Kuhn, the Kantian) science is problematic in the same way, can we not? Hundreds of years hence, will we still be entertaining the same paradigms? Not likely. How about a thousand years? Note how long the Christian ideas have been playing out. Metaphysics is just bad theory, not known to be bad at the time. Before Einstein, light was considered to travel through an ether and space was Euclidean. Bad theories, but not metaphysical because they were grounded in observations and theories about those observations. Is religious metaphysics any different? — Astrophel
Religion is, essentially, a metaethical enterprise — Astrophel
Ok, I get that, but when people say "God" they usually mean a being, like you and me, only greater, much, much greater! — Agent Smith
Because "God", the word, hasn't been defined in a consistent and objective way. Many people use the scribble, "God", to point to many different things. When the way one comprehends "God" is dependent primarily upon how and where you were raised, then asking others that were raised differently to comprehend "God" the way you do would be a futile endeavor. You might as well just keep it to yourself or join a group (religion) that comprehends "God" the way you do (preach to the choir).How do I know that I can't comprehend God? — Zebeden
The first thing to come to grips with, is that there is no such thing as "the universe", "our universe", or "my universe". As you'll see from the description, each living being, living at the present, does not occupy a line of division between a past universe and a future universe. A person has one foot in the past and one foot in the future (so to speak), and therefore exists as a bridge between a multitude of universes. This is important, the present, which we know as our lived experience, is not itself a single universe, but it is a conglomeration of universes.
...at the same time, anticipation and prediction represent a part of us which is in a future universe (or universes), like memories represent a part of us in a past universe (or universes).
I must admit I find it needlessly complicated. — Real Gone Cat
And God as temporal organizer seems like an explanation that has gone looking for a problem. Why do you assume that God, and only God, provides an objective relationship between moments in time? Does something suggest to you that a world absent of God would suddenly go haywire? Water flowing uphill? Cats living with dogs? I think you need to show that God is necessary for temporal order. — Real Gone Cat
And finally, when I asked how do you know that certain effects have an outside cause, I meant, what is it about them that reveals this? (Of course, other than your speculation that God is needed to provide temporal order.) What can you point to about them that will convince skeptics? — Real Gone Cat
God is often understood as something human mind can't comprehend. — Zebeden
Someone may notice, that we can't even say that "God is incomprehensible" because we couldn't say anything about God himself ("can't say anything about things-in-themselves"). But aren't we then admiting that "God is something we can't say anything about". That's still something said if not about God himself then about our conception of God, isn't it? But by saying "X is incomprehensible", "X is something we can't say anything about" etc., I'm already using and/or creating a conception of X and if that's the case, then how I was able to use/create a conception of something I can't understand?
How do I know that I can't comprehend God? — Zebeden
... things do not just get up and go to the right place on their own. So we might conclude that there is a cause of temporal order, no?
The cause is temporally prior to the effect. So wouldn't you agree that a cause is "outside" its effect, as distinct from it?
I might add this though. Of course the universe appears ordered to us. Because we are in this universe, we believe it to have order. Humans see order because our evolution occurred in this universe. We evolved to survive and understand this universe. If we came from somewhere else, then this universe might not appear ordered. — Real Gone Cat
The suggestion that God must be outside because God is the creator implies that God is outside all universes - the universe of the cause and the universe of the effect. That's the nut you must crack. — Real Gone Cat
If you really believe that an order could come into existence without being created, I'd like to hear your explanation. You'd have to start with a description of what a pure, absolute, lack of order would be like, then explain how an order could spontaneously occur.
To me the universe is everything that has ever existed, from the Big Bang to the Big Fade-Out. — Real Gone Cat
It all comes down to our conception of time - you see time linking the multiple universes in a particular order, I see time as a component of the one universe. — Real Gone Cat
If cause-and-effect is true of the universe then it provides a mechanism for instances to follow one after another. There is no need to insert God. — Real Gone Cat
In fact, requiring God to provide temporal order seems to me to endanger free will. If God is directing the action, then what is my role? — Real Gone Cat
You should have said this right away, when I said things in the past are not in the universe. — Metaphysician Undercover
How do you differentiate between future and past then? Surely you'll agree with me that the past is radically different from the future. What has already happened cannot be undone... — Metaphysician Undercover
Given your view, how do you avoid Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow? Even if instances butt up against each other, they are still disjoint. — Real Gone Cat
And, also by your view, what holds an instance together? If smacking a pool ball creates a new universe what happens to the dart that has been thrown on the opposite end of the bar? — Real Gone Cat
We don't experience instances as separate universes, so (trying not to offend) it seems like speculation. — Real Gone Cat
We've gotten far from my original question though. Let me try it this way : Presumably there are effects that are generated by mundane causes (the hot pan burns my hand). But the premise was that there are effects that are caused by God. How can we tell the difference? Is there something about the effect that gives it away? — Real Gone Cat
Would you say claiming that past and future do not exists is related to the parts of an object not existing on their own? I say that parts and past and future exist as one — Gregory
Yeah, like one's present-self IS a future-self of one's past-self (re: temporal mereology) ...I say that parts and past and future exist as one. — Gregory
I say that parts and past and future exist as one.
— Gregory
Yeah, like one's present-self IS a future-self of one's past-self (re: temporal mereology) ... ↪180 Proof — 180 Proof
God does not play dice. — A. Einstein
I visualize the y axis as time and the x as space. Motion is a bit of both and they all cover the same territory. The singularity is space, time, and motion as something discrete while it seems to me reality is continuous after the Big Bang — Gregory
As far as I know, no one has demonstrated an acceptable resolution to the arrow paradox. — Metaphysician Undercover
The Standard Solution to the Arrow Paradox requires the reasoning to use our contemporary theory of speed from calculus. This theory defines instantaneous motion, that is, motion at an instant, without defining motion during an instant. This new treatment of motion originated with Newton and Leibniz in the sixteenth century, and it employs what is called the “at-at” theory of motion, which says motion is being at different places at different times. Motion isn’t some feature that reveals itself only within a moment. The modern difference between rest and motion, as opposed to the difference in antiquity, has to do with what is happening at nearby moments and—contra Zeno—has nothing to do with what is happening during a moment.
How do I know that I can't comprehend God? — Zebeden
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