erislover
Such questions are usually preceded by the theist claiming both that everything has a cause, and that God is uncaused. If theists are tired of being asked to defend ridiculous positions, then I would think that the rational thing to do would be to stop taking ridiculous positions.
TVAA, I don’t see what you’re disagreeing with. We seem in agreement here.
Mostly.
It’s just where you see a line drawn in the sand, I see the boundary that separates sand and not-sand.
So are we agreeing to disagree, or disagreeing to agree?
I don’t know what you mean by “valid”. Time and dimension are elements of the universe, so it is meaningless to refer to before the universe. As for outside the universe, it depends what you mean by “outside”. If you mean outside in the sense of spatial orientation, then it’s meaningless, since dimension is an element of the universe. It would make no more sense than saying “there’s another universe to the left of our universe”. But if you mean “outside” in the sense of not having any observable or measurable connection to the universe that we know, then it’s a meaningful concept, but it’s moot until we have some kind of evidence one way or the other that such a realm exists. For example, the alternate timelines theorized by some physicists could be described as “outside” our universe, I suppose. But AFAIK, it’s just speculation, and there’s no real evidence for it. However, any rational thinker worth his salt will adhere to the philosophy of “never say never”. Perhaps we will someday discover other realms and be able to make meaningful statements about them. But right now, we can’t.
Sorry, I don’t understand this sentence.
No, I absolutely would not say that. We’re still waiting for Sentient’s response, but I’ll take another stab at what he was saying, and he can correct me if I’m wrong:
I think he means “outside” in the sense of existing in the same time-space continuum, but seperated by a barrier. To say a thing is “inside” or "outside another thing requires a common space-time domain in which to compare them. So one cannot accurately refer to anything as being outside the universe. But you (if I understand you correctly), are using a much looser meaning of “outside”, i.e. anything that is not of this universe.
Well, the OP acknowledges that there could be other places in what he calls the capital U Universe besides just our universe, and that these places could have their own time, their own space, and their own fundamental constants. So I believe the assertion is not that our universe must be all that there is, but rather that IF there are other realms, they cannot be defined in terms of characteristics that are specific to our universe. In other words, they can’t be “before” our universe, nor “to the right” of our universe, nor “underneath” our universe, nor “South” or our universe, etc.
Many good points since I last posted. I think to address them all would bifurcate the thread somewhat, and so I’ll keep it as focussed as possible.
We are now full square in the scope of the third list. To summarise this list again:[ul][li]There might be other universes outside our own.[/li][li] The why? may be answered “all is”.[/li][li] Outside our universe is not within the scope of science.[/ul]eris and I are now using the word “outside” in a fundamentally different way than in the first list. I could have given two lists describing Newton’s Laws in terms of “time”, alluded to special relativity in a third list and entered a debate wherein the word “time” took on a fundamentally different meaning than in that Newtonian framework since our debate was anchored steadfastly in the third list’s principles.[/li]
Everything in the first two lists (except the very last point in the second - stay tuned!) is within the scope of science. The theory of General Relativity which proposed these fundamental characteristics of our universe had real, observable consequences and made real predictions which were dead accurate (eg. the perihelion of the planet Mercury).
The last point of the second list, however, relates to the exact nature of the timeless singularity. Now, we can propose models of the singularity which have consequences we can observe and which make predictions we can test. But it may well be the case that we cannot know all there is to know about the timeless singularity, through some ultimate Uncertainty Principle. We know our universe is “attached to” the timeless singularity, but that knowledge itself might preclude scientific investigation into the nature of the timeless singularity. We might propose a consistent mathematical treatment of all aspects of the timeless singularity. Ultimately, however, we would only be left with faith and maths: the timeless singularity would represent a black and yellow sign saying “METAPHYSICS ONLY PAST THIS POINT.”
You must note that my use here of universe and Universe is non-standard, merely my way of introducing newcomers to the “everyday” 3-D (space) 1-D (time) of the universe (lower case) and then going even further to discuss the timeless singularity where these dimensions lose their meaning (quite a day’s reading for a newbie!). In standard use, yes, the universe (lower case) does mean absolutely everything. These “other universes” I allude to in the third list may merely exist some distance along the axis of an unseen dimension from our own “3-D 1-D space” which I called “our universe” in the OP.
Perhaps it was a little ambitious to attempt a thread which tried to accommodate all-comers, from indignant fundamentalists demanding to know what caused the Big Bang to truly incisive probings from erudite posters such as erislover: This was my motivation for my non-standard use of the word “universe” to mean only the 3-D (space) 1-D (time) entity we happen to live in, but in hindsight it was perhaps inevitable that the “really hard questions” proved irrestistable for more than a few posts!
I’ve found a good analogy is to think of time as a sort of size-dimension. Things that happen later are “bigger” and things that happen earlier are “smaller”. Thus, an object that is 10cm happened 5 cm “later” than an object that is 5cm. However, it is absurd to talk about something that happened 10cm BEFORE a 5cm object. There is a natural 0 point below which it becomes meaningless.
Thinking about it, eris, it may be useful to you if I stopped using this universe/Universe nomenclature and, at least with you, reverted to the standard use: The universe is everything (the “Universe” of the OP). We live on a line of time with 3 spatial dimensions (“our universe” in the OP). The “timeless singularity” is fairly standard use.
It might be that there exists in the universe things, regions or entities which have no observable consequences or effects on the 3 dimensional line of time in which we live. The scope of Science is limited to "that which can be observed, tested or in some way falsified.
If they cannot affect or make themselves known to us in any way, then yes: their only difference to the purely metaphysical is in the consistency of their mathematical treatments, and one can choose to think such a criterion irrelevant. But this is only analogous to the prisoner considering the world outside his cell “purely metaphysical” if he has no means of testing his hypotheses concerning it.
A valid sentence would be syntactically correct. Without a universe there is no “before”, so there is no “before the universe”. Such a construction would be invalid.
Then we will need to restructure science and the relationship between its concepts. Then.
We cannot know what we cannot say; science sets limits on what we can [validly] say; science sets limits on knowledge.
Sentient I’ll get to you later today. Work now! 
I don’t think that’s a valid refutation. We might as well eliminate the question “Why” for the same reason, because after every answer, “Why?” may be asked again.
Teleology would bottom out when a purpose is The Purpose. Just because we can ask the question again doesn’t mean there’s some gap in logic.
A=A
why?
because A=A
Why?
because A=A
etc.
This is not a problem with the law of identity.
But “purpose” is a slightly different concept. It necessarily references something else.
The final layer of reality can’t be “purpose” for that reason. As such, teleology is fundamentally limited.
In a more pragmatic sense, teleology is even more limited, as the universe does not seem to be the product of anything that we would recognize as an intelligence. In that sense, we can reasonably say that the universe has no purpose.
Oooh, one more thing: science doesn’t set limits on knowledge. Science recognizes the inherent limits of knowledge.
I disagree. The syntax is valid; it’s just factually invalid. Like my earlier example, “The blue car is red”, the syntax is proper, but logically it makes no sense.
Yes, that’s done all the time. But it’s not necessaryto restructure the fundamental tenets of science. The beauty of the scientific method is that it’s already geared toward allowing for change. If a theory turns out not to be supported by the evidence, it gets discarded. That’s already how it works; no need to change it.
No, it only sets limits on what can be considered valid. Simply “saying” something does not make it true. Unsupported speculation and fantasy are not knowledge. Limiting ourselves to believing only that for which there is evidence increases our knowledge; it does not diminish it. Science quite obviously does not rule out the unknown, since new things (that were previously unknown) are discovered all the time and incorporated into our body of knowledge.
Those who insist that there must be a “before” the Big Bang are not increasing their knowledge. They are in fact taking a step backwards in knowledge, because they are still mired in a temporal way of thinking, believing that time is immutable. (It’s similar to those who continued to insist that the Earth was the center of the universe long after the evidence clearly showed that it was not.) We now have convincing evidence that time is not immutable. Rather than limiting our knowledge, this has in fact expanded our knowledge, giving us a new perspective that transcends our terrestrial experience.
bit of a nitpick here: the statement is syntactically correct. syntax takes no meaning into account. the statement is semantically incomplete. but we get your “invalid sentence”, i think.
i think it was said earlier, but these limits aren’t placed by science. they’re placed by semantics, by our rules of language and parsing it. so it isn’t science that limits knowledge. though if science is our epistemology, i suppose it does place limits on what knowledge we can gain. we can’t know “truth”, for example.
off the topic, do you believe that all knowledge must be linguistically representable?
If we have defined time based on the universe, it would not be possible to construct a valid sentence about time without using or implying a universe.
This would be a valid sentence: “In the universe, my cat has green fur.” The requirements for the sentence to be true are dependent on whatever method you use to evaluate truth, a whole other ball of wax. I’m not talking about the English language in general which syntactically allows statements like “Before the universe was Yaweh” or whatever, I’m talking about the structure offered up by the definitions given (or interpreted) in the first list of the OP.
I’m looking at it like using the logical OR relationship in a sentence before the logical OR has been defined: syntax error. Another one would be using the logical OR incorrectly like
a b || – syntax error, should be a || b.
It doesn’t actually matter what the symbol “||” means or does, but we can tell by structure alone that this is improper.
For another example,
2+2 = 22 is syntatically correct (the symbols are in the right place) just false (given the meaning of the symbols).
Similarly, we have required by definition that TIME be, well, a part of UNIVERSE. No valid statement can be made using TIME independently or [structurally] before it.
“Before the universe, there was Yaweh.” – syntax error, by definition there must be a UNIVERSE before there can be a TIME. We don’t care what “TIME” means. It doesn’t even have to mean anything.
We are necessarily working within a scientific theory; of course we will discuss such a theory in English but the theory is much more refined and structured than English, and will have more terse logical relationships.
I consider the statement “Time is a [component/ integral part/ factor/ whatever] of the universe” to be a definition used to set up valid relationships between itself and other definitions and relational concepts (operations). It discusses the qualities particular to a thing. Axiomatically the universe exists (this cannot be an observation because we require a universe in order to observe; if it were an observation we’d have a tautology): a metaphysical statement. For comparison, consider, “God is timeless and the basis for all things. God exists.” If we are disregarding the term “God” as simply a definition, it is just as valid as substituting “universe”: indeed it is the same sentence. We might as well use “Jabberwock” or “wabe”. It makes no difference, without a basis for determining the truth of the statement (again, another matter) the relationship is strictly definitional and axiomatic.
The tricky part is that science is concerned with investigation of empirical truth, and I say “empirical” because we’re not talking timeless truth or capital ‘t’ Truth necessarily, just “true by whatever means science says it is true.” Again, “true” is an English word but science will restrict its use; Popper chose “corroborated” but the choice is mostly arbitrary given appropriate caveats. I think most of us can handle “true” without needing to qualify it with “but that could change at any time”. Truth for our purposes is transitory, but I think it is a mistake to replace the word because it has many features in common with the much belov’d capital-‘t’ Truth. 
My preference.
We’ve come to this theory (definition + axioms and theorems) through a process of refinement we call the scientific method, which is meant to discern true (verified, corroborated, whatever) statements from false (falsified, whatever) ones. Most commonly stated, “As far as we know, this is how things are… [espouses definitions and such from the OP].” Needless to say, this is a metaphysical theory. We don’t get to escape it by qualifying what we mean by “true” or noting that the theory is liable to change at any instant (as we would expect any empirical theory to, really).
I took the OP to be stating that the understanding of current cosmology dictates the form of reality to be thus: [text of op], and that this doesn’t indicate the presence of the supernatural. My presence here has only been to comment that the structure is not dissimilar to any number of other metaphysical theories, up to and including those that describe supernatural beings. The scientific method is an epistemological process that operates on ontological theories; the theories most often in favor are those that the epistemological process has permitted to exist (“those which admit existing data”, or, “are true” [again, qualify truth as you like, that’s the job of an epistemology!). We have here almost a cosmogony. A metaphysical theory.
Now, our original poster feels I have actually been addressing the third list but I’m really trying only to stick to the first which is simply the underlying logic of a theory and what it implies and allows and doesn’t allow, and how this compares to statements like, “Some people believe that this implies the existence of the supernatural!” It doesn’t, of course, I agree with that, but I think it bears mentioning that the construction of the theory has more than a few parallels with supernatural theories of existence, or more elaborated views like idealism or materialism. I don’t think that’s a mistake or accident. Science can’t escape metaphysics.
I make this point only because I notice people (posters here and people I deal with IRL) talk like science either skirts metaphysics or has nothing to do with it, and I think that is completely false and impossible, and makes for a good discussion (hey, it is GD, right?)
ramanujan, long time no see (for me, anyway), I hope the above exposition clarifies my use of “syntactically valid” and fits within the more standard use of the term. As for the off-topic question, yes, all knowledge must be representable in a language, where “language” is anything that can represent and express relationships between concepts. Perhaps that is another thread, but I think it is pretty clear. Belief does not require representation in language, that’s a distinction I would make.
erislover:
O.K., I think I see the problem now. Time is not defined as being part of the universe, it is in fact observed to be part of the universe. There is a great deal of evidence to support this view. You are treating it as if it is an arbitrary rule imposed by scientists, when it is actually a deduction.
And here’s the important part: You may disagree with the standard cosmological model of the universe, but IF YOU DO DISAGREE, then it is invalid to take ONE PART of the model, i.e. the Big Bang, DISCARD THE REST OF THE MODEL, and use that one part to support your own conclusions. And that is what the OP objects to, if I’m not mistaken.
It’s simply a disingenuous argument. If I take the part of the theory that says photons travel very fast, and discard the part of the theory that says they are very tiny, I could argue that turning on my computer monitor would knock me out of my chair. If anyone objects to my conclusion, I could claim that they are limiting our knowledge by “arbitrarily” defining photons as being very small. I’m just not seeing any merit in this line of reasoning.
Hmm. I can see that the scientific method involves finding unexplained data which loosely implies a hypothesis used to predict new phenomena which are then tested, so there is some inherent ambiguity as to which came first, the theory or the data. Let me defer illustration to someone else here.
I would also take some exception to the notion that we deduce that time is a part of the universe; I am not aware of deductive reasoning that goes from specific cases to general onesthat’s induction. And the so-called Problem of Induction is not something I feel like elaborating on (nor do I probably need to). Popper (again with Popper) resolved the problem of induction by resolving the chicken and egg problem and simply stated: theory, then data, and see what theory is left standing; we posit a theory and deduce results (predict phenomena). While I am sure there has been work on the philosophy of science since Popper, his approach is at least highly influencial and seems to remain in the forefront of natural investigations.
While that wasn’t my reading, in any case that is definitely a point worth noting. If that is the point, I am surely out of place here. 
Well if you want to condemn the scientific method in general, that’s a huge sidetrack that I’m too weary to get into. Suffice it to say that I disagree with your criticism of the scientific method, and I’ll defer to anyone who has the energy to take on that one.
Well, I don’t know all the philosophical jargon you do, and in fact I don’t think this is a matter of philosophy. The point is that time being a property of the universe was a conclusion that was arrived at, not arbitrarily defined as such. You suggested that time was a property of the universe by definition only. That is not the case. Quibbling over whether it was inductive or deductive reasoning is just a sidetrack. If it was arrived at by inductive reasoning, I’ll take your word for it, but I don’t think we can dismiss the scientific method in it’s entirety by some vague references to problems with Popperian philosophy. If you want to take the discussion to that level, then I will stay out. That stuff just sounds like so much mental masturbation to me.
You are free to question the theories of relativity, expanding universe, and the Big Bang, but if you are the one making the claim that the phenomena of time and cause/effect transcend our universe, I would think it would be contingent on you to demonstrate that to be the case.
Well, this sentence appears at the beginning of the OP:
I’m reading that as an objection to theists using cosmological theory incorrectly to advance religious arguments. At any rate, I come across theists all the time in these types of threads who insist that the singularity had to have been “put there” by some force, or suggest that something had to come “before” the singularity. That’s inconsistent with the theory; that’s the point I’m trying to make.
eris, much as I value your input, you appear to be desperately trying to drag the debate onto “your turf”. This is a thread about basic cosmology, and it is rapidly becoming an exceedingly general one about the Scientific Method and the relationship between science and metaphysics.
Careful with that last part. I meant only that cosmology cannot be used to prove the existence of the supernatural, not that it in any way provides support for its nonexistence.
Apologies for this, friend, I assure you that I have endeavoured to answer your queries with candour and direction.
The crucial difference being that these theories have observable consequences which have subsequently been observed and make predictions which have come true, to astonishing accuracy.
You could, surely, simply have asked “what is the evidence for the first two lists?”, could you not? blow and I could have (and still can, if you wish!) led you on a grand tour of redshifted galaxies, microwave background radiation, black hole temperatures, binary pulsars, the perihelion of Mercury, all kinds of phenomena which had not been observed when Einstein proposed General Relativity and which provide evidence for the model of the universe described in the first two lists.
Is making astonishingly accurate predictions “escaping metaphysics”? I can’t see how else one can, but this is to travel further on the Scientific Method tangent. I’m afraid I must insist that this thread remains one about cosmology. Please, PLEASE tell me which specific aspect of cosmology you would like me to explain and I shall labour my utmost to do so.
That’s easy. The data comes first. Without data, there’s no need for a theory: we wouldn’t have anything to explain in the first place.
blowero, why on earth do you think I want to, how did you say it, “condemn the scientific method in general”? The scientific method is grand.
TVAA without a theory we don’t know which data to look for.
SentientMeat
I guess I’ve been wasting my time. My point was that you can’t seperate this issue like you want to, but if I haven’t made it yet I won’t improve my chances by continuing to irritate you two.
And what would I get but data which is only understood by appealing to the very theory you are trying to use it to prove? We’re not talking about proving two objects fall at the same rate regardless of their respective masses, we’re talking about cosmology and cosmogony.
Data is collected far before Theory is established. I think you confuse Hypothesis with Theory and tend to use the barroom/philosophy style term of Theory. Typical of those that attack science.