It sure is pertinent. Why should God have moved?
Even discounting the presence of God: Prior to the universe being created there must have been ‘X’. Since the university is still growing, it didn’t instantaneously fill or displace ‘X’. Therefore ‘X’ must still be around outside the current universe, right?
If the universe is everything, then before the universe existed, there must have been “nothing”. Sure enough, there is still nothing outside of the universe.
Personally, I could get behind a god who exists nowhere for no amount of time. Oh, I forgot, I’m an atheist, I already worship the all powerful “nothing”. Atreyu help us.
Well, what’s prior to ‘X’? What’s outside of ‘X’? If things can exist to which there is no prior existence, the universe can exist without anything existing prior to it; if things can exist to which there is no outside existence, the universe can exist without anything existing outside of it. If things can’t exist in this manner, you’re left with an infinite stack of matryoshka shells, and haven’t gained anything by shifting your questions towards ‘X’.
Well, sure, but all evidence suggests that the universe did *not *always exist and that it is expanding. So we know there is at least 1 matryoshka shell around. What the details of that matryoshka shell is, we don’t know. Maybe it had a beginning, maybe it didn’t.
If a something can exist without a prior something or when, it doesn’t necessarily follow that ‘this’ one is the first. Why not 2 or more shells down?
Time, as far as we know, came only into existence with the Big Bang, so the notion of ‘always’ and ‘prior’ is problematic at best, and most likely simply inapplicable; similarly, expansion does not imply expanding into some space-that-is-not-our-space (see the balloon example in my previous post). So I think that the assertion that we know that something outside our universe must necessarily exist is somewhat premature at best. Besides, even if there was some surrounding matryoshka shell, what exactly would make this something external to our universe, rather than merely an expansion of our conception thereof? So the whole expanding thingy we know and observe is just a part of the whole universe; big deal.
I think people should stop trying to blend the spiritual with the scientific. They are two separate tools used to perform two separate jobs. Science can only tell you how the universe works. Religeon and philosophy exist to help us ask why it works and decide how we want to behave in it.
Why wouldn’t she be in the same “place?” If God existed prior to the Universe, then there is some sort of existence possible beyond the universe which would be beyond space and time, as these are properties of the universe. If there isn’t any God, then the question becomes moot, like wondering how Superman can possibly fly. Grist for fanwanking, but with no connection to reality.
At least we should try and clarify where the lines are drawn. The Bahai see science and religion as two paths to the truth and ultimately cannot be in conflict with each other. Science helps us sift the facts from traditional beliefs as we examine archaeological evidence as well as other data. That’s helpful, but essentially I agree that the philosophical portion of religion and science should not be mixed.
We didn’t make up space and time, any more than we made up matter and energy. If you’re saying space and time are abritrary human constructs, then why not go all in and say all of reality is an arbitrary human construct?
I’m aware that relativity shows that people will measure spatial and temporal intervals differently, according to their reference frame. But they’ll still measure in a 4-D grid, with three space dimensions and one time dimension, and the space-time differentials they measure will agree; which is why spacetime, rather than space and time is said to be real. (Note, that’s my layperson’s understanding. If a passing physicist would like to correct anything I’d appreciate it.)
Well, yes. It is. After all, I’m the only thing that *really *exists and everything else is a figment of my vibrant imagination. Except the platypus, he’s real too. And he’s pissed.
Which is not to say dimensions that we can’t perceive do not exist. Mathematicians deal with N dimensional spaces all the time. Here’s a 2D representations of a 5D construct : 5-cube - Wikipedia. Careful, it might make your brain hurt. It certainly does mine.
To me, “outside of space and time” means the same thing Lovecraft’s “non-Euclydian architecture” does : something you can’t describe adequately within the confines of human experience, and that can’t be experienced without popping a truckload of LSD and writing “I’m a fish fillet with shame and a guilty conscience” forty thousand times.
We’re in over my head now. I’d be glad to be educated. I’m only saying we had a need to measure things based on our perspective and in order for society and language to function, so we created the methods we use for measuring time and space {distances} That’s why they vary. It doesn’t matter what we call them or how they vary relatively speaking as long as they fulfill their function. So, in that sense it seems we created them.
Certainly things like kilometers, seconds, and years are arbitrary. But the things they measure aren’t.
The Planiverse was interesting when I read way back when, too.
There was no way for a 2D creature to describe a 3D one, other than “it exists elsewhere”, because it knows and understands only a 2D coordinate system.
I think Frylock (who everyone is ignoring) pretty much has it. There is no real problem with the universe getting created by something outside our space and time, but within its space and time - though there is likely that there is no way for these universes to interact. That eliminates the need for any godly powers for universe creators - it could be a grad student for all we know.
The big problem with the outside space and time hypothesis is that it is not useful. And entity existing solely outside of space and time can have no interactions with us, and so worshiping it is kind of pointless, since we’d have no clue about what it wants. This god is functionally nonexistent. So that isn’t what our theist friends worship. A god we can’t understand is similar, in that it is absurd to claim a god we don’t understand wants us to do X and not Y. So, we can only worship the understandable portion of a god who interacts with us in our time and space. This god can be examined logically, but as far as we can tell no should interaction has been demonstrated, or no evidence of such an interaction that makes the existence of a god more likely than people making stuff up has been shown.
And, Zoe, I can imagine all sorts of stuff, but it is useful to distinguish between what we imagine and what we have evidence for. In my research life I’ve imagined all sorts of incorrect things, but I’ve usually done experiments to screen them out before I try to publish them.
There is no evidence for anything outside our space-time. That means we cannot make any scientific statements about anything outside our space-time. Including whether or not anything outside our space-time does or does not exist.
Someone could argue (and some fellow named Levi-Strauss apparently did) that you and I were born into a deterministic world in which we previously had not existed, to live a life in which everything that we think or do is no more than a mechanical consequence of prior circumstances, after which we will disappear, after which the planet will disappear, the stars will burn out, and everything that we do or think or attempt or care about will be as if they had never happened, leaving absolutely zero — zero! — record of our having been there.
There is no evidence that this “existence” of which you speak can be meaningfully distinguished from nonexistence. Oh, you may be able to demonstrate that a measurement can be obtained which will match measurements that are held, for reasons of prior causation the validity of which cannot be ascertained, by passive beings who are part of the same system whose existence you are trying to establish, as being in some way indicative of “evidence” that you or I are real, but why should we grant that any particular credibility?
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The point is, such things as “evidence” and “reason to believe” are all contextual, all the more so as you get deeper into abstractions. If someone were asserting, oh I dunno, the existence of 7 feet tall fuzzy grey aliens with almond shaped eyes traveling somewhere through the particular chunk of spacetime that our own planet occupies, with occasional set-downs in underpopulated areas, then I think by the very nature of the assertions one could reasonably say “show me some actual aliens, alive or dead, or other verifiable support for their existence”. But to ask for empirical evidence of God is akin to asking for empirical evidence that solipsism is not the correct interpretation of experience, or that yes you do exist in a way meaningfully distinguishable from your nonexistence. Philosophical abstractions and concepts of the divine are not (or at least not necessarily) the same thing as assertions about matter energy and/or life forms, and it’s silly of anyone on this board, at least, to pretend otherwise.
There is quite abundant evidence for things existing outside of space and time. For example, all mathematical objects exist outside of space and time. That is to say, any mathematical theorem that is true, is true at any location and at any time. Hence anyone who believes in the correctness of mathematics understands how something can exist in space and time.
I don’t see why it would be necessarily true that an entity that exists above and beyond space and time could have no interactions with us.
After reading this I just want to note… God doesn’t exist outside space and time… God transcends space and time, and is fully capable to work within space and time.