As I said, the theory makes perfect sense. And it is also perfectly irrelevant. Or can you describe to me how it actually effects anything?
And may I suggest rubbing one out before you reply? You seem very tense and irritable.
I love your self-awareness that you’re not engaging in ad hominems, by the way. Your question about the relevancy has two answers:
- It’s relevant because you called the idea “retarded” earlier and gave an incorrect summation of the idea that you called “brilliant.” Now’s a good time to sheepishly apologize for these goofs.
- The linked NYT article gives a few practical implications of the theory. What objections do you have to those?
No, its not my real name, but your close. 
I wasn’t saying that religion, or the existence of something “outside space and time” was stupid either. I was addressing another poster on something specific, yet unrelated to the thread topic.
Including my own religion. The one where my 18,712th level magic user(the one I just made up) is soooo powerful he exists in a state of power beyond anything any human being can possibly imagine. Thank you for being so stern about something that is so speculative.
I’m not trying to be arrogant. Saying something exists outside space and time is like saying “prove to me Richard Gere never had a gerbil up his anus, GO!”, when Richard Gere was never within 100 feet of a gerbil, hamster or capybura in his entire life. The best your gonna get is speculation. Let me go out on a limb and say I think the reason Czarcasm started the thread was to get some kind of well thought out response by people who say God exists beyond space and time. Maybe I’m wrong. But, I don’t know what you expect from me, further speculation that we’re all SIMS?
I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to think that he started the thread to discussthese questions.
I understand your point and I agree that an adamant religious person would not be persuaded. My point is if you’re trying to convince or motivate people who might accept religion to not do so I think your logic is flawed. If they *might *they may have a religious type personality even if they are not religious and I’d guess they were on the fence, otherwise there’s no point in trying to dissuade them from choosing the wrong side is there?
IMO that type of person is more likely to be offended by ridicule and sympathize with a religious side of the argument. OTOH a politely explained logical and factual argument might persuade them they can be a decent and kind person without religion. Just an opinion. I understand that it’s hard sometimes not to dump on some extreme beliefs. I’ve been known to wax sarcastic myself from time to time.
Re: Left Hand
No, your fine, I’m bailing out. I have nothing further to add. Bye, see ya in another thread.
I don’t think the simulation argument holds much water in this case – of course, there can be spaces embedded in some appropriate way within other spaces, which is basically what a simulated universe amounts to. This isn’t, conceptually, much different from for instance a sphere embedded in a 3d space; however, I wouldn’t call points not lying on the sphere’s surface ‘outside’ space in the way the term is used when talking about transcendental existence, even though it is ‘outside’ of the two dimensional surface of the sphere. Employing the simulation argument, one essentially stipulates that our space is embedded in some such way, which it of course might well be, but which, I’d argue, wouldn’t really constitute an appropriate hiding place for metaphysical concepts, since it would merely imply the extension of physical existence to this ‘higher’ space; besides, one would always be left with the question of what’s ‘outside’ that higher space, and before long, one would find oneself deep within one of those infinite regressions such arguments lead suspiciously often to.
No, the interesting question is, if our space is not merely embedded in another space, what does ‘outside space’ mean then? Does it even mean anything? Personally, I can’t conceive of any way that this might constitute a meaningful question; it seems to me that if there is some meaning to locating anything outside space, this must mean that the space being talked about is of an embedded variety.
Hey, that wasn’t ad hominem, I was just trying to be helpful. If you’re not tense or irritable, or if the idea of alleviating tension and irritability by auto-erotic means offends you I apologise.
I did not call the idea proposed in the article retarded. In fact I think it is very plausible, to me there are no flaws to the basic idea. I just don’t think it is relevant. And the so called “strategies” suggested are of course quite silly. Like jumping up and down and screaming “I’m here! I’m here!”.
The thing that I said was “borderline retarded” was to suggest, as religious people tend to do, that X exists outside time and space. Since the very defintition of time and space makes it impossible for something to exist outside it. If we were to assume that the theory is correct, we’d have turtles all the way down! Trying to explain something complicated (like the universe) with something even more complicated (like a computer simulating the universe) isn’t going to lead anywhere.
But most importantly, it makes no difference. And I feel that the article sort of misses the point of its own premise. It becomes rather evident when it states that “[the coffy mug] is real to you even if it’s created on a computer circuit rather than fashioned out of wood, plastic or clay.”. I’d refer you to Arthur Koestlers “Janus” for a better explanation of what I’m getting at here.
Now at the risk of shattering a beautifully soliptical mind, the fact that You think the thread is about the 2007 news article you found does not alter the fact that the original post says:
And once again, and I’m saying this for the last and very final, cross my heart and hope to die, never ever to happen again, time. Please stop trying to tell me what to do. While I might apologise (but not sheepishly) for starting the Boer war, groping mother Theresa and being born with a 14’ penis, I will not apologise for whatever misapprehensions you may or may not have regarding what I have called stupid, childish or retarded. And if you don’t stop I will sit down and try very hard to come up with a socially acceptable way to ask you to suck my pee-pee.
It is quite possible you are right. I suggest this. We both try to keep people from catching religion, you by polite, logical and factual arguments, and me by ridicule. Then we meet on top of the Empire State building on Midsummer Eve 2020 and compare notes. Deal? (You will recognise me because I will be wearing a wite rose in the button hole of my plaid waist long raincoat).
Yeah. That was the part I didn’t understand and found condescending. I don’t see how the definition of time and space makes it impossible so obviously I don’t see it as borderline retarded.
{why you arrogant …oh wait, this is GD.} I respectfully disagree.
Sorry, hate to miss the outfit but I have an assignation that night.
Not only that, I’m interested in the truth and don’t necessarily feel religion is completely alien to it, although admittedly a lot of it is. I’d try to encourage people to think for themselves rather than embrace tradition.
Yup.
Rather devious of me, wasn’t it?
Wrong.
The statement “God is all-powerful and all-knowing” trips most of my Do-Not-Believe triggers, but adding to the equation “…but you cannot find any evidence for his existence because he lives outside time and space!” not only trips all the remaining triggers, but brakes them off at the base. If you want me to get back to merely highly doubting God’s existence, it might help if evidence of the existence of “outside time and space” was provided.
But couldn’t that entire assertion (that much of it; let’s bracket off lots of unspoken stuff to which we’ve both been exposed) be re-expressed as "consciousness and intent, rather than being the consciousness or intent of individually conscious and volitional people, exist outside time and space; they manifest locally; but they are not ‘of’ those individuals nor even ‘of’ the universe, they simply ‘are’ "…?
We get into that kind of philosophical unravelling of the “subject” in debates about general determinism (rife on this board) and the psychology and philosophy of the self versus social determinism (less common on this board) and whether volition and consciousness can exist in a deterministic world.
Interesting. For me it has almost the opposite affect except that I no longer hold any concept of God as a separate all powerful being or entity. Imagining something that can contain all of the known universe with complete knowledge and understanding makes it no real stretch for me to imagine this greater whatever to be beyond the bounds of time and space and more like the eternal round I mentioned.
{as stretching the imagination goes}
Wait, so you find the idea of a God who is located within time and space to be somehow more credible than one who is not so limited?
To me, it doesn’t make sense for God not to be outside time and space. Just one example: How could the Creator of the universe be limited to existing somewhere within it?
Because we know that things actually CAN exist in time and space; we can’t say that of anything outside. And because claiming that God is beyond time and space smacks of what it really is; an attempt to put something that does not exist in a “location” where no one can go and look for it, and prove that it doesn’t. Putting gods at the tops of mountains doesn’t work for that anymore.
A God limited to time and space seems awfully small. There was a “time” when he did not exist and he will not exist again.
I can respect Czarcasm’s requirement for evidence of the existence of “outside time and space” before he entertains any notion that a God might be there. But at the same time, don’t ridicule those with a little imagination or those who may have an understanding different from yours.
If these questions belong in another thread, just ignore them. But I think they are relevant.
Questions:
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The universe is expanding. What is it expanding into?
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According to Einstein and relevant experiments since, the universe is on a curve. What does it curve around?
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Time is flexible because it is relative. Would you have believed this if it had come from a very religious fundamentalist scientist instead of Einstein (who had a very liberal religious viewpoint)?
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Do you believe in gravity? If so, what is it and what causes it?
Being limited to time and space is “small” ?
Nothing.
It curves relative to itself.
If it had the same theoretical consistency, and all the evidence backing it up, I’d believe it if it came from a talking wombat. Relativity is accepted in physics because the evidence backs it, not because Einstein said so.
A major difference between how science and religion work.
It’s the curvature of space, and of course I believe in it. There’s plenty of evidence for it, to put it mildly.
If you blow up a balloon, its 2d-surface is expanding. What is it expanding into? There’s not ‘more’ 2d surface for the balloon to grow into, same way as there’s not ‘more’ space outside space for the universe to grow into. In fact, you could have a similar expanding 2d surface that’s not embedded in any other kind of space, yet still would expand – the distance of two points on this surface would grow continuously.
This conflates two distinct kinds of curvature, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic curvature is what you get if an embedded space is ‘bent’ in a larger (dimensional) space; intrinsic curvature is a property of space itself, regardless of any embedding. Take, for instance, a sheet of paper, and draw a triangle on it. As you can easily check, the sum of its angles will be 180°, meaning the geometry is, unsurprisingly, flat. Now, curve this paper through space – bend it into an U-shape, roll it up into a cylinder, go wild and do all sorts of crazy things without tearing up the sheet. Repeat measurements will easily convince you that the sum of the angles of your triangle remain 180° at all times – intrinsically, your paper remains flat, no matter how wildly you curve it in the third dimension. Now, take the surface of a sphere – just as much of a 2d surface as the paper was. Draw a triangle on that. To your not all that great surprise, you will note upon measurement that the sum of the angles now is greater than 180°. That’s intrinsic curvature, and just as no amount of extrinsic bending of your flat sheet can emulate this curvature, no embedding is needed for a space to have this kind of curvature – it is a property of the space itself, not of its being embedded in and curved through some higher space.
As has already been noted, given convincing evidence, of course I would have believed that. If, on the other hand, the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being that has created all of time and space, yet is itself outside of it, and all the rest of whatever might come with your particular flavour of faith (should you indeed have one) had come from Bozo the Clown, would you have believed that?
I do not merely believe in gravity; I know it to exist. It is caused by mass, and our to date best theory describes it as (intrinsic!) curvature of spacetime. Is that what gravity ‘is’? I don’t know, to be honest, and I don’t think anybody really does at this point.