(outline of eternity) Hi Meta...your 'catch up questions'...

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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GarrettQ
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Re: Hi Meta to answer your 'catch up questions'...

Post by GarrettQ » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:43 pm

I happen to agree: proof of possibility is not the same as proof of existence. My point is that if Metacrock is claiming that space or even all reality is literally just a thought in some mind -even God's or god's mind, then it would be more accurate simply for him to say that "space does not exist (the spatial world we experience is a divine simulation we're all a part of)" instead of saying that (real, existing space) is really an idea in the mind of God".

As for premise 1, by imagine a contradiction/something, I mean entirely mentally represent what is meant by it, as apposed to uttering a string of symbols alleged to mean something.

I can imagine the sentences: "This sentence is false" (which btw has an indeterminate truth value), "It is raining and it is not the case that it is raining", but cannot imagine what they mean as there they have no meaning there to imagine. And if the language were altered so that they meant something, then they would no longer be contradictions.

You have probably ran into people who believe that "If something can't be imagined, the it is a contradiction". That of course is a fallacy. We can only draw a picture of 4-d beings onto our 2-d mental visual canvases as we as a 2-d person can draw a picture of a cube onto her 1-d mental canvas. We cannot imagine the universe as described by various competing physics theories but these are not contradictions.

Any way, You can imagine the existence of contradictory sentences (there existence is not a contradiction) but you cannot imagine what they mean as they are meaningless. Thus it premise 1 that "If something is a contradiction, then it is not imaginable" follows, and from that A>B -> ~B>~A; "If something is imaginable, then it is not a contradiction" follows. Notice that that is not the same as the fallacy A>B -> B>A "If something can't be imagined, then it is a contradiction". My argument does not prove (and was never intended to prove) that space exist, only that there is no contradiction in it existing; The universe could have existed even had there been no God or other life to observe it (and may very well have done just that before the first inhabitants evolved even if there are other universes).

QuantumTroll wrote:Tell us more about your 4 irreducible substances. That sounds very interesting.
I'll get around to that, but don't hold your breath, I must sleep now for my 4 Grave Yard shift over the weekend, and I'm behind in class, That a pretty big part of why I'm not here too often.

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Metacrock
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Re: Hi Meta to answer your 'catch up questions'...

Post by Metacrock » Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:00 pm

but Garrett you still don't have anything to; compare spatial extension too. I mean you don't have an understanding fo true space outside Gods' mind, if there even is such a thing.

you are assuming god's mind would like a computer or some cybre device that you know what actual space is. we don't know that.
Have Theology, Will argue: wire Metacrock
Buy My book: The Trace of God: Warrant for belief

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Re: Hi Meta to answer your 'catch up questions'...

Post by Metacrock » Thu Mar 13, 2008 8:03 pm

Personally, of course, I hold that both your argument and Metacrock's response are most likely complete nonsense. The universe is essentially a 4-dimensional blob of space, in which a number of fields vibrate. These vibrations are called particles, and each person is an intricate process sustained by the flow of these particles. This intricate process does some cognitive tasks, one of which is imagination. Trying to figure out the properties of the big blob of 4D space by examining our faculty of imagination is clearly difficult and fraught with error. At least, this is the cognitive processes housed in the bit of universe called "my brain" interpret things, but this is really a topic for another thread

you have the same problem Gar does. you don't have anything to compare what we think is "space" to. So for all you know a four dimension blob of space can be a thought in a mind that exists on a level so far above ours that our whole reality is a thought in it.

I am not saying this reduces reality to illusion. It just means its a framework in higher mind.

this idea solves a lot of problems theologically and even proves the existence of God. but I'll go into that latter.
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GarrettQ
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Nothing else to compare to...

Post by GarrettQ » Wed Apr 16, 2008 4:35 pm

No this gets back to reality being comprised of more than one kind of fundamental substance. Each of these unique modes of existence typically can only be each explained in terms of itself just as Spinoza said. You can know regardless of this business of mental constructs that space is its own essence standing in its own equal right apart from anyone's thoughts or ideas of it because ideas are not spatially extended objects; size and location of and shape do not apply to your thoughts nor your experience of smelly odors nor pain. There is also this following controversial reason which finalizes for me the knowledge that space if it exists is not an idea and gods or anybody else's mind though we may of course have ideas about space. And since I know from past experience that it is so utterly controversial I do not usually use it for any proof or illustration of their being multiple fundamental modes of existence, since debates are useless unless all sides can first find a set of premises that they can all agree on. This reason I referred to is that the essence of consciousness for any mind complex simple or divine is fundamentally singular, but a spatially extended object is composed of many parts.

I told quantum troll that I would share more about this idea of multiple fundamentals substances. As there might or might not be varieties that I simply have not simply cannot conceive of, I am not so concerned with there being four nor the exact number. Nor for reasons explained am I going to bother trying to prove the controversial stuff. It should be sufficient merely that a show how the universe as we know it has multiple irreducibly different equally real kinds of stuff making it up. The least controversial way for me to show this is to borrow from David Hume to reveal that spatial form and causality are not made one from the other.

But alas I have to stop there for today, but at least I am now a step closer to explaining it as in the meantime readers might see better now where I'm headed with this.

PS- I am a little bit surprised that my outline of eternity did not get more of a response, who knows maybe I just got lucky, may be that was for the best.

Garrett

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