No, I agree with you blowero, I think the latter is the stronger statement as well.
i disagree.
i think erl and Lib are saying that the OP is stating a triviality (i think i finally found out what this was about).
the OP says “this is what is” in cosmology, in the realm of science. since science was used to determine those facts (“what is”), they are trivially true.
when someone uses cosmology to prove the existence of a creator, for exmample, they cannot do so with the cosmology defined here. they can’t do it with pure science. nor should they claim to be able to. but they can do whatever they want outside the realm of science, even using things (such as cosmology) that belong to science. it may be their own metaphysic, they can mix and match as they please.
once they leave the realm of science, whatever they say can’t be dealt with using science. even if it uses part of science. and within the realm of science, all there is room to do is to quibble over what the observations mean and what they’ll predict.
I suppose you can, but to do so is completely irrational.
Yes, that’s precisely the point.
Huh?
Blowero
Are the examples that I cited of entities undefinable by cosmology irrationaly conceived — say, circles with circumferences that are ratios of pi, or triangles whose angles total 180 degrees — what with space being curved and all?
rationality is itself part of a metaphysic. also, there are, as Lib pointed out, examples of rational notions that mix and match metaphysics (creating one’s own) and remain within the bounds of rationality.
but it cuts both ways. to use science to criticize someone who uses cosmology to prove god’s existence is a worthless endeavor; you are not using the same epistemology as the person you are arguing with.
once you accept science as your epistemology, there is little room for argument.
Sorry guys, but that just sounds like utter nonsense.
As I have said, you are free to choose any epistemology regarding the nature of the universe (the one called “utter nonsense” itself being no less valid, mind you). But my OP chose the one called “science”, thank you very much, and I must insist that if you don’t want to play nice then I’m taking the ball home and you can go to someone else’s house.
I wish, I wish, I had used the words “next to” in place of the word “outside” in the first list now. “There is no such thing as next to the 3-D universe” is so much more obviously squarely within the scope of science*, and I always meant my OP to be so.
However, I have now said this literally 6 different times in this thread and I’m afraid I must take any further reference to the phrase “outside the universe” either as an attempt at wilful bifurcation or as evidence of cloth ears.
Any more snowballs hit my window and I’ll get off at the next station!
What about semantics?
The word “universe” is used to refer to everything that exists. Therefore, there can be no such thing as “outside”, “next to”, or “beyond” the universe. Those locations are non-existent.
This is such a trivially obvious claim that I don’t understand how this thread has gone on for so long.
Of course, Aide, but in my OP the word “universe” merely meant the 3-spatially 1-temporally region of everything-which-exists we happen to inhabit. The thread has gone on this long partly because I didn’t make my terms clear enough in the first place. (I tried!)
the 3-spatially 1-temporally dimensionalregion of everything-which-exists we happen to inhabit, beg pardon.
Ah.
Well, in that case, it might not be necessarily true that our “plane” has always existed. It’s not inconceivable that it was created out of something else, in the same general sense that our planet hasn’t always existed but has been created out of something else.
We could then also consider “extraplanar” forces and influences.
Our plane exists over all time, and is attached to the timeless singularity-type-object (STO - thanks Ring!). Other lines connected to the timeless STO might have characteristics like our line, but I would venture that to speak of “before” our line, or that our plane “was” something else, or has not “always” existed, is to misunderstand the OP.
But it’s entirely possible that our “timeline” is merely a structure in a higher-dimensional space that changes along a higher “timeline”.
If that were the case, then the entire history of our plane would change in this metatime. Any given history would exist only for the “moment” that its pattern existed in the higher-dimensional plane.
This may be so, but one is now only talking about the time-like properties of these other configurations because they are the closest metaphors or most helpful analogies that we can conceive of.
The words “before” and “always” are very definitely reserved for our own line. Broadening their scope to allow these other attachments to the timeless STO to be “before” our own is certainly not what my OP intended, which is why I said I was loathe to get too deeply into the third list. Similarly, I would be loathe to enter a discussion of whether dangling you above a pool table is really placing you “outside” or “next to” the pool table.
But you are succumbing to the same temptation as detractors of the scientific method. Just because something is “possible” is not a good reason to assume that it is true. The only time continuum we currently have evidence for is our own, and further evidence shows that there would be a disconnect between our timeline and any others, were such others to exist.
The phrase “has always existed” refers to the time that we know, which is a property of our universe. Were other timelines to exist, it would still be accurate to say our universe has always existed. Perhaps our universe was spawned from another realm, and perhaps someday we will discover evidence for such, but we can not reason our way there by appealing to an “absolute” time for which there is no evidence. And it’s most certainly illogical to substitute our time, which is constrained withing our universe, for this supposed “absolute” time. In fact, if other timelines were to exist, I don’t see as how that would be inconsistent with current cosmological models.
It’s possible that our universe sits on the back of a giant turtle, but there’s no good reason to change our view of it in light of this possibility in the absence of any evidence.
When did I assume it was true?
Without data, we can only speculate, and the lack of data places few restrictions on our speculations.
You’re right, you never assumed this “ultimate time”. What I was getting at is this: What is the point of such wholly unsupported ruminations? The evidence shows that time is relative, and is a property of the universe. So how is your “higher-dimensional space that changes along a higher ‘timeline’”, any more interesting than my turtle that carries the universe on its back?
Actually, we don’t even know that time is a function of a merely four-dimensional universe. It gets pretty complicated.
Okay, skip the complexity. Then I agree with you: “time” is a property of the universe. There’s no such thing as before or after the universe, only during.
this sounds a bit like defending scientific method scientifically.
i think the reason this has gone so long is because it’s taken us forever to say that once you accept science as your epistemology, your conclusions are so obvious as to be almost trivial, and that when someone uses cosmology to imply the existence of something supernatural, they are not using science. that doesn’t make them invalid.
actually, isn’t it assumed that time is part of the universe? isn’t that part of the definition of one of the two terms?