Posted on 01/06/2015 5:13:00 AM PST by metmom
I don't recall making any assumptions, could you clarify or elaborate?
Why? Does it help you to support your self-righteous 'agnosticism'?
I have re-read my comments and don't see any thing that is "self righteous". Could you clarify or elaborate?
First, the very term 'infinity' has many different uses.
The dictionary gives 7, most of them concern a quantity without end.
Last, you again expose the agenda of your most recent little foray at FR by using the term 'infinities' in a temporal sense.
Absolutely not! I used it in the spacial sense. A temporal infinity is correctly called an eternity.
I have been told that all Christians agree that "god" is 1) Omnipotent- all powerful
2) Eternal his duration has no beginning or end.
3) Infinite his length, breadth, and thickness, has no limit.
On the other hand there have been three theories postulated about the universe. It is either expanding, contracting or static. No matter which one you believe the length, breadth, and thickness can be measured.
When I used the term separate I was referring to god's personhood. I did not want it to be confused with the Sabellius belief of modalism. I may not be certain of god's existence, but I am familiar with the way he has been described over the years by any number of groups.
Using your term:God manifests as three different individualities,.
that would present you with 3 different infinities.
All I have done is ask if the existence of god can be proven. I did not ask in a self righteous way or in an antagonistic way. If you think I did than perhaps it says more about you than me.
I have always viewed infinite and eternal as two spate terms. Infinite and finite are direct opposites. they are both mathematical terms. finite is capable of being counted a specific quantity. Infinite is a limitless quantity.
Eternal's opposite would be either transitory or mutable.
Thank you for sharing your insight.
This looks interesting. I will have to look into purchasing it.
ya know what, never mind. I have concluded that the game is what you are about, not a proof to satisfy your behavior mechanism, your soul. Perhaps you can get someone else to indulge you, I do not have sufficient respect for you at this juncture to spend any more time even reading your drek.
I do have two questions though:1) If Aristotle is correct and the universe is eternal, doesn't that obviate the need for a god?2) what is "ekpyrotic,"? I believe I have a pretty good vocabulary, but I am unfamiliar with that term.
Thank you for your interesting insight and the book suggestion.
If you read the book, please let us know what you think!
For more on the ekpyrotic physical cosmology, click here.
Concerning time v. eternity and related issues, I offer that space, time, autonomy and physical causation are part of the creation and not properties of - or limitations on - the Creator of them.
I leave it to my dearest sister in Christ, betty boop, to clarify the issue concerning Aristotle and the beginning or first cause.
This is fascinating, thank you. I will read it more completely and reply as time permits.
Indeed Thales Miletus, that is my general understanding as well.
Looking deeper into the problem, however, it seems that the discernment of "quantity" is here the proposed mode and purpose of human investigation. Also I note that you do not define "Eternity" in positive terms, but only in terms of that which it is not — that is, something which is either transitory or mutable.
Regarding the latter, the negative case logically entails the existence of something which is not transitory or mutable (i.e., subject to change in space and time). What sort of being could this possibly be, if not God himself? If that is the case, then why don't you just cut to the chase and name this being God?
I think you are right to say that "infinite" and "finite" are mathematical terms:
In a famous essay, [Eugene] Wigner (1967) argued that the enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something "bordering on the mysterious", and that there is no rational explanation for it.... [H]ere the utility of mathematics for describing the physical world is a natural consequence of the fact that the latter is a mathematical structure, and we are simply uncovering this bit by bit.Question: From whence cometh this "mathematical structure?" It seems very clear to me that it cannot possibly be a spontaneous natural development mindlessly bootstrapping itself by evolutionary processes arising within the world of space and time. Were that so, I daresay the world would be totally unintelligible to the human mind.
The "habit" of mathematics is to quantize things, so to bring seemingly disparate "quantities" into meaningful relation. But mathematics itself is not quantifiable. Nor is it dependent in any way on the direct observation of anything; rather it is prior to all observation.
Moreover, it seems very clear to me that there is much in historical human existential experience (personal and cultural) that does NOT reduce to the direct observational methods of the classical scientific method. And therefore is utterly beyond the reach or range of the "quantifiable."
I'll leave it there for now, dear Thales. Just some thoughts, FWTW. Thank you so much for writing!
Correctly? By whose definition?
It seems pretty clear to me by now that there is no such thing as a "temporal infinity." This is a mangling of terms that conflates two different orders of magnitude.
FWIW.
You delegated to me the clarification of the "issue concerning Aristotle and the beginning or first cause." I'll try to do my best in that regard.
The short answer to Thales Miletus' question is: NO. Not at all.
The issue of God is not just about the inception of the universe; rather the real question directly goes straight to the persistent order of the Universe. Such that, even if the universe is acknowledged as "eternal," no account is given of how it transpires to eternally "hold together" as a (putatively) unified cosmic system. in the immanent world. Which is to suggest that God is necessary, not only with regard to the beginning of the universe, but also with regard to its subsequent organic, developmental organization as consistently revealed in time and space.
Were this not so, we couldn't even speak of universal first principles or of the existence of physical or natural laws. Science would be totally out of business under such conditions. Mathematics would be obviated, having no point of contact with reality, and thus nothing meaningful to do....
But to get back to Thales Miletus' characterization of Aristotle as a fan of the Eternal Universe Model, which purportedly gets rid of the "God problem."
For openers, no one in the Greek world of Aristotle's time was dealing with "the time problem" in the same terms as conceived by us "moderns." The genius of the great Greeks was the explication of universal (that is to say, timeless) principles as they impinge on the natural world, starting with Thales. "Time" as subject matter of inquiry in and for itself was simply not on the agenda of Greek thought at the time.... They were seeking the explanation of the persistence of phenomena which could only be classified in time as in some way inherently carrying the quality of timelessness, which alone carries their own persistence in time and space.
Which is to say that the great Greeks — with the possible exception of Zeno — did not engage the Time Problem at all.
Aristotle very likely believed, as did his master teacher Plato (and collaborator of some 27 years in one way shape or form), that the Cosmos is "eternal." That is to say, not limited in time. But I daresay neither of these men thus concluded that the requirement of a creator, of a first principle, was thereby obviated.
Whatever "dispute" there may have been between Plato and Aristotle (pace Ayn Rand), it wasn't a dispute about the divine origin of the Cosmos. Both regarded the cosmos (universe) as "eternal." But even an "eternal cosmos" demands some "divine rule" as it relates to explain the persistence and coherence in time of temporal creatures that arise within it.
Anyhoot, I think that any perceived difference between a Plato and an Aristotle can be explained as a "shift of attention" from one paradigm to another.
For Plato, the creator and sustainer of all that is arises in the Beyond of human observation and direct experience. The Platonic Idea spawns the Forms of being from outside the sphere in which these Forms are manifest in creaturely life. That is to say, the Form of all existents itself exists apart from the field of creaturely manifestation.
Aristotle's great insight was that the Form of creatures can be perceived in the (immanent) creatures themselves. This was a shift of attention away from Plato's understanding of "Form" as emanating from a transcendent Source. And with this shift of attention, Aristotle has well earned his reputation as the Father of the Natural Sciences.
But then maybe all Aristotle was saying is that, finally, immanence and transcendence are but two sides of the same coin. They are "complementarities" in the sense that you need understanding of both to explain the total situation that each endeavors to describe separately, each from its own "perspective."
Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ! And for your very kind words!
/BB/- Correctly? By whose definition?
It seems pretty clear to me by now that there is no such thing as a "temporal infinity." This is a mangling of terms that conflates two different orders of magnitude.
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AH!... I get it.. we're talkin' a temporal dyslexic... here....
Hmmmmm.. maybe intellectual dyslexic.. or spacial dyslexic..
I personally know of some Godly Dyslexics..
I'm a female dyslexic.. cannot figure them people out.... to save my life..
Nobodys perfect........ I love them anyway..
Bonus:- https://www.dropbox.com/s/0akcv923qx22flf/DOF.avi?dl=0
I for one do not understand how it is possible logically to speak of a biological function without reference to a final cause.
By final cause, Aristotle meant purpose, goal, or limit. Aristotle says that the final cause is the cause for the sake of which all the other causes exist — the formal, material, and efficient causes. The natural sciences seem to recognize only two of Aristotle's causes, the material and the efficient. Formal cause is basically reduced to initial conditions. There is NO final cause. So what you end up with is defining a biological system in terms of "matter in its motions." Which to me is a monstrous reduction....
Clearly, biological systems are more than matter in motion. If that were all they were, then how to explain their uncanny ability to maintain their distance from thermodynamic equilibrium for extended periods of time?
First cause is not about "initial conditions." It is about origins — not the same thing as "initial conditions." Aristotle calls the first cause the "uncaused cause" of the cosmos, the "unmoved mover" of all that exists. Because it is uncaused, it arises from "beyond" the world of natural objects (which are all subject to the laws of causation).
Final cause, again, is about purpose, or goal to be reached. In the above case, the goal is maintaining distance from equilibrium. Biological functions are targeted to the fulfillment of specific organismic goals; e.g., metabolism, cellular repair, and so forth. Clearly, these are final causes within Aristotle's meaning of the term.
Robert Rosen believed that biology cannot but fail to "hit the wall" if it continues to refuse to engage all four causes in its explanations of biological organisms; that the Newtonian reduction of causation to just material and efficient causes applied to biological systems, is truly a poison pill — if what we are looking for is comprehensive understanding of biological nature.
Thank you so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ, and for your kind words of support!
It is not just an ability, it is a will ... living things have a will that inanimate things do not possess. This will is somehow connected to but not solely attached to the spacetime coordinate system of daily living in which thermodynamic events occur. The denial of this reality is what hallamrks God deniers, as they seek to establish a hard and fast rule that there is no thing beyond this realm in which they can measure thermodynamic events.
Upon death of an organism, the individual 'ism' appears to leave the spacetime coordinates of its physical manifest. But the cells or organs of that 'organ ism' have yet to fall fully under imperious thermodynamic equilibrium. The coordinate system of thermo equi is a spacetime phenomenon in which the Physics and Chemistry of physical life occurs (euphemistically known as three dimensions of space and one of time).
The leaving that the organism does is not solely a spacetime phenomenon as we describe spacetime. It occurs via a coordinate system which is connected to/interacting with but not the same as that of the Physics and Chemistry of thermodynamic equilibrium.
The indirect evidence of this reality may be found in near death experiences, which are real. The data which is acquired during such an event, when shared upon return to this coordinate system, evidences a reality which is much greater than our perceptions coordinates.
As a Christian, I am absolutely convinced that the miracles Christ performed/performs are accomplished via interaction between another coordinate system and that of our physical bodies. That a man has a will can be easily illustrated with one scene: a man chooses to starve himself to death even with abundant food offered and available to him. Making that choice is evidence of his will. Were he merely a physio-chemical thing, consumption (staving off theromodynamic equilibrium) could not be thwarted by his choice.
How do you quantify it?... measure it?... even remark on it's quality..
When you die the will goes somewhere.. where?..
I suspect “the Will” is not so simple.... but a complex “mechanism” <-metaphorically..
Not a machine, but a mechanism... <— whatever THAT is..
Sorry to take so long to reply. Our dog had surgery on Friday and he whimpered all night. So of course I stayed up with him until he could get some rest. And that pushed every Friday chore/errand to Saturday and so on.
Any hoot, you mentioned Wigner's essay, so I thought to provide a link for those who might be interested in reading it: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.
Cumrun Vafa, Harvard Physicist, and others have experienced the same phenomenon which is described here: Unreasonable Effectiveness.
Indeed one of my favorite examples is that Einstein was able to pull Riemannian Geometry off-the-shelf to describe General Relativity. Surely Bernhard Reimann had no concept of the warped space/time structure of the universe when he fleshed out that math.
To me, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is like God's copyright notice on the cosmos. Pi exists and the mathematician comes along and discovers it.
When people speak of "eternity" I suspect they mean beyond space/time - i.e. counting is irrelevant.
But when we speak of God the Creator of space, time, energy, causality, autonomy etc. - the term "timeless" is more appropriate since such created things are not properties of - or restrictions on - the Creator of them.
Aristotle's great insight was that the Form of creatures can be perceived in the (immanent) creatures themselves. This was a shift of attention away from Plato's understanding of "Form" as emanating from a transcendent Source. And with this shift of attention, Aristotle has well earned his reputation as the Father of the Natural Sciences.
But then maybe all Aristotle was saying is that, finally, immanence and transcendence are but two sides of the same coin. They are "complementarities" in the sense that you need understanding of both to explain the total situation that each endeavors to describe separately, each from its own "perspective."
When they created polio virus in a laboratory back in 2002, starting with the information content off the internet and mail order materials, it should have raised a red flag.
It also seems apparent to me in the biological systems functioning (with maintenance and repair) to the survival of the higher organism. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
As Rosen pointed out in Life Itself the information model is circular in biological systems.
Thank you so very much for all of your wonderful essays, dearest sister in Christ!
I've shared this link before, but some here might be interested in a view by P.S. Wesson (one of my favorite geometric physicists) - namely that death may simply be a phase change:
I often ponder about what time really is. I tend to believe that things from smallest atomic/whatever particles to the most expansive universe, observed and not observed, are created order from/by a force which because of my puny part of the totality of universal existence . “Time’ for me is merely a brains ordering of experiences or pulses of existence.
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