Bright flash of light as life begins.

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Prove you exist.

What evidence would you accept?

[Skybird]

Isness comes from the music of the Ainur.

[Fahnenbohn]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Prove you exist.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

My thoughts are division came when great minds nolonger saw church leaders as an authority and as the church leaders began to see their authority diminish.

That makes sense enough. I think we'd probably say that was around the late 1500s, early 1600s.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I can't. I can only fall back on Descartes' first principle, and even then I accept the concept that I may be wrong.

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks the horse if it's an alcoholic considering all the bars he frequents, to which the horse replies "I think not!" POOF! The horse disappears.
This is the point in time when all the philosophy students in the audience begin to giggle, as they are familiar with the philosophical proposition of Cogito ergo sum, or I think, therefore, I am.
But to explain the concept aforehand would be putting Descartes before the horse.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Predates universe.

Interesting. Present religious and scientific thinking is that at the time of creation/big bang time itself came into being along with the universe it governs. Time did not exist before, so predating the universe is impossible. This isn't science, it is implications of mathematics used to describe the big bang.

But isn't it interesting that factions of both camps regard time as a creation, co-founded with the universe?

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Interesting. Present religious and scientific thinking is that at the time of creation/big bang time itself came into being along with the universe it governs. Time did not exist before, so predating the universe is impossible. This isn't science, it is implications of mathematics used to describe the big bang.

But isn't it interesting that factions of both camps regard time as a creation, co-founded with the universe?

It is interesting.

However I am curious why you think something cannot predate the universe (time, space, matter) if said universe had a beginning?

pre·date1
[prēˈdāt]
VERB
exist or occur at a date earlier than (something):
"this letter predates her illness", "quantum fluctuation predates the big band", "Skybird predates the creation of the time, space and matter".

[vienna]

In an odd way, if time did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it (sound familiar?). Time is a construct that has been mutable since the beginning of, well, time. Think about our way of breaking down the measurement of time: why is it hours are basically a sort of base 12 system, why are the increments in between the 12 segments in base 5? In the matter of more extended human demarcation of time, there have been almost as many calendars as there have been religions. If we have a concept of time, it is because we humans have created such; in a system viewed as eternal, there is no beginning, no end; it is just there. If humans, over the ages, had not sought to quantify their existence and the passage of their lives, time would not have been necessary. The necessity for such a "framework" only came about from some human inclination to classify, organize, ritualize, and, ultimately, memorialize their existences. When the universe began, there was no "master clock" broken down into second, minutes, or hours nor was there any construct of days, weeks, months, years, and so on. Whatever the moment was, that was it. All humanity has done is take something essentially subjective and try to cast it in an objective frame. Even our age as individuals is fungible: it used to be common custom in some areas of the world to denote the birth of child as his/her first birthday; so when you would ask two people, born on the exact same day, but from areas with differing birth customs, their ages, one would say "21 years old" and the other would say "22 years old" even though, in terms of days, months, and years, they had both been alive exactly the same amount of "time". The construct of time is wholly a human one, as may be certain other constructs and concepts...


<O>

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Oberon

A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks the horse if it's an alcoholic considering all the bars he frequents, to which the horse replies "I think not!" POOF! The horse disappears.
This is the point in time when all the philosophy students in the audience begin to giggle, as they are familiar with the philosophical proposition of Cogito ergo sum, or I think, therefore, I am.
But to explain the concept aforehand would be putting Descartes before the horse.

Yes indeed, I posted that many moons ago in the Joke thread, though in the version I heard back then it was Descartes himself who disappears.

[Catfish]

All the perception we have of what surrounds us comes from our (very limited) senses. We cannot think out of the box (brain), because all we 'think' is made up by it, and our senses.
We think there are dimensions, but the whole concept of "dimensions" derives from our hard-wired perception, and way of thinking.

"...putting Descartes before the horse"
I see what you did there. So there are several ones? Poor horse

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Catfish

All the perception we have of what surrounds us comes from our (very limited) senses. We cannot think out of the box (brain), because all we 'think' is made up by it, and our senses.
We think there are dimensions, but the whole concept of "dimensions" derives from our hard-wired perception, and way of thinking.

Thinks you.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Thinks you.

Hah, exactly!

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

It is interesting.

However I am curious why you think something cannot predate the universe (time, space, matter) if said universe had a beginning?

pre·date1
[prēˈdāt]
VERB
exist or occur at a date earlier than (something):
"this letter predates her illness", "quantum fluctuation predates the big band", "Skybird predates the creation of the time, space and matter".

Thinking fails us there, since by "universe" we mean to address All And Everything existing, the mere essence of "existence". What exists before "existence" exists? That's the problem. Before the universe sprung into existence by a Big Bang, there only was "non-existence", obviously, and that already is a term that obviously refers to something "existing": Non-existence thus exists. And so is no non-existence. What is being aimed at, is the total and complete antithesis to "existence" and that can neither be described in terms and words, nor imagined.

I remind of the so-called four-fold Buddhist denial ("Its not Yes, and its not No, and its not Yes and No, and its not Yes or No"), or the Jewish word on that the name of God cannot be pronounced. And Lao Tse had it in the very first chapter of the Tao Te King already: "The essence that can be told is not the eternal essence. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth." And Nagarjuna, using the four-fold Buddhist denial, claims that there is neither birth nor death, neither lasting nor ending, no oneness and nor diversity, no coming into and no leaving from existence.

To be honest, I think this is the realm that can be best approached only in metaphors, and the diverse languages of arts and poetry.

[Catfish]

^ "universe", "before", "time".

If time does not play a role for an entity, the whole idea of "before" or "after" becomes obsolete.

+1 for the Tralfamadorians

[Rockstar]

indeed it is hard for me and I think anyone for that matter to concieve or comprehend of something outside the box of this universe you and I live in.

Especially when you start thinking about those tiny little particals that make up atoms and other seemingly solid material in this world. Protons, neutrons and electrons may actually be wavelets of information are not particals at all. Could be the world is made up of totally ehtereal information. We might be tuned to sense the physical world because thats what we are a part of, anything else doesnt register.

Inherent difficulties of the materialist theory of exisitence have appeared very clearly in the development of physics during the 20th century. This difficulty relates to the question whether the smallest units of matter such as atoms of which objects are composed are ordinary physicals objects, whether they exist in the same way as stones or flowers. Here quantum theory has created a complete change in the situation... The smallest units of matter are, in fact, not physical objects in the oridinary sense of the word; they are - in Plato's sense - Ideas.

Werner Heisenberg

Interesting too something similar was written 3000 years ago. "With wisdom God created the heavens and earth"

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Catfish

+1 for the Tralfamadorians

You're turning this thread into a slaughterhouse.