[cookcounty]

"The problem comes with the concept of 'is'.  'Is' a characteristic of the universe-- IOW, before the beginning, 'is' wasn't.  "

Listen, I'm just a dumb truck driver, but this is silly. Since in your scheme, "is" requires "concept" and therefore " God in the beginning" couldn't "be", it would also be true that since no conceptualizer made concepts at the time, there "was" no evolution before the appearance of humans, or at least conceptualizing chimpanzees.

[Fiat volvntas tva]

But then there are those who believe that none of this really exists, but is all a dream some poor sap is having.

I guess a wink is as good as a nod....to a blind horse.[grin]

[expat_panama]

It's been too many years since my Philosophy 1A class so I've forgotten the terms, so I didn't mean to bring up the old tree falls in the forest shtick.  I want to take this way beyond just having someone 'perceiving' something for it to exist.  

I want to go to the  phrase "In the beginning, God..." or "In the beginning was the Word..".   In this area we got to humble ourselves to the fact that on Creation Day when the 'beginning' showed up (late as usual), the Boss was already hard at work.   

Hey, that can't be-- the beginning is supposed to be the beginning, with nothing before it, right?   Like, how could anything exist before anything was?  What I wanted to say in my post was that nothing came before the beginning-- as far as we're concerned.  Apparently the Boss has been able to do just fine without the solar system, or time, or even existence itself. 

Unless I'm wrong.