- #71
TENYEARS
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Yes continue in your pursuit of "truth" lol lol. When the wagon arives you will jump on also. It's ok your human and don't know it yet because you don't know what that means.
Kakorot said:{Hypothesis}
yes, you cannot prove anything. Once you "prove" something, it becomes a memory, and everything that exists could have been created an instant ago, and your "proof" is just a memory that could have been created. So it may not have existed at all.
{conclusion}
You can never know. Since you can never truly prove anything.
I suspect that he would assert that the 'empty centre' remains an empty centre, and always will. (Consistent with the assertion that 'emptiness is at the heart of everything' by Buddhists, Taoists etc.)Fredrick said:Do you know if he envisioned an empty center during the first moments of materialization?
Agree. The concept of nothing requires the concept of something. This is why I mentioned that 'something' and 'nothing' are usually put in inverted commas by Chuang-Tsu et al. What is being referred to cannot be properly be characterised as either.According to me, it cannot be called nothing. Nothing would exactly be the component that must be missing from the previous state. Nothing is nothing, it is not something, where as the previous state was something. Nothing is the absence of something.
Hmm. If 'before' the BB there was not nothing, as you argue, then why can't we know anything about it?Another example of nothing in relationship with the previous state would be the separation that exists in matter of our current materialized state of the universe from the previous unmaterialized state before the big bang. From our 'materialized' point of view nothing can be discovered about the previous state. We can theorize about the known facts to also include a previous state, and that is exactly what we are doing in this thread.
That's fine. I wasn't accusing you of plagiarism, I just wondered.It is not important if I was the first or the last to come up with an idea. I believe the idea has validity and that's why I express the idea.
That's sort of true but don't forget that it's impossible to prove a theory. It's only possible not to be able to falsify it. Certain knowledge cannot take the form of theories.Theory (the Greek word Theo means god) is a proposed structure that surrounds known facts. Multiple theories may exist about the same set of data. If a theory is proven to be correct, the information ceases to be a theory; it has then become fact.
I suppose that's true, but it would seem irrational to me to believe something that one does not know is true. One might have faith that it is true, but that's a slightly different thing.Believing is an instrument of freedom: one can say close to anything as long as the word belief is used and then nobody can touch you. The person who believes the sky is green may be an outcast, but from a structural/linguistic point of view this person may say just that. That's the beauty of believing: you do not have to back it up with facts, and you can say almost anything.
I wish that was true. Unfortunately what science means by 'true' is only 'does not contradict other theories or our habitual assumptions'. That works ok much of the time, for practical purposes, but not when thinking about what is really true.Science = fact based = limited to only that what is true.
Just my opinion, but I feel it's a mistake to distinguish between science and religion in this way. I don't see why a religious follower should be any less rational or intellectually rigorous than any scientific researcher, even though on the whole they are probably not. And a philosophical materialist or idealist is just as much a believer in a metaphysical conjecture as is a creationist, for all three views give rise to paradoxes on analysis.And this is where science and religion are basically cat and dog. Where one already has a completed finished delivery (in religion), the other is having a really hard time matching up all the facts in a single structure (the scientific theory).
Quite agree. Btw the Dalai Lama writes that anything that contradicts the facts or logic should be abandoned. Unfortunately scientific thinkers tend not to do this, but very often would rather hang on to their metaphysical assumptions come what may.In science there is no such freedom. Science is almost a prisoner of its own rules: the theory must fit the known facts: no more, no less. It cannot just look pretty, it has to be correct and it doesn't matter if you are a Buddhist, a Christian, a man, a woman, a loony, or a genius: the facts must fit.
Is the idea of unity 'readily available' in religion? I'm not so sure. Unity is inconsistent with most forms of theism. In most God-based religions it is considered blasphemous to claim that all is one, for it implies that we are all God. This is why Christian mystics have been given such a hard time by senior management. If we are all God then it would follow that we don't need an elaborate system of priests and clerics as intermediaries between us and the truth, nor some centrally authorised and second-hand dogma in place of genuine knowledge.In their heads, not all but quite a few scientists contain that idea of unity (which is so readily available in religion) and use it as the structure for a scientific theory of everything. You cannot count me among them.
I understand we are almost in agreement here, but while according to me the previous state can be called 'something,' it would not be possible to call it 'nothing.' Again, according to me, nothing or 'nothing' did not exist. While it was potentially available, the second it became available is the moment our universe came into being.Canute said:The concept of nothing requires the concept of something. Agree. This is why I mentioned that 'something' and 'nothing' are usually put in inverted commas by Chuang-Tsu et al. What is being referred to cannot be properly be characterised as either.
Canute said:Hmm. If 'before' the BB there was not nothing, as you argue, then why can't we know anything about it?
You are right.Canute said:Don't forget that it's impossible to prove a theory.
That is correct. We all prefer to be taken seriously, and therefore we try not to go out on a limb too far. Believing delivers freedom, but we tend to stay shy from making a fool of ourselves.Canute said:It would seem irrational to me to believe something that one does not know is true.
I guess we differ a tiny bit here. But it may also be just semantics. Science is very strict in its word use, and I am not truly versatile in staying within the allowed lines. Daily language and scientific language often vie in my mind for best spot and I personally prefer daily language over scientific language use.Canute said:I wish that was true. Unfortunately what science means by 'true' is only 'does not contradict other theories or our habitual assumptions'. That works ok much of the time, for practical purposes, but not when thinking about what is really true.
Just my opinion, but I feel it's a mistake to distinguish between science and religion in this way. I don't see why a religious follower should be any less rational or intellectually rigorous than any scientific researcher, even though on the whole they are probably not. And a philosophical materialist or idealist is just as much a believer in a metaphysical conjecture as is a creationist, for all three views give rise to paradoxes on analysis.
Wonderfully said, Canute. Again, I need to spruce up my language use because it is so easy to deliver words that can be considered something else.Canute said:Is the idea of unity 'readily available' in religion? I'm not so sure. Unity is inconsistent with most forms of theism. In most God-based religions it is considered blasphemous to claim that all is one, for it implies that we are all God. This is why Christian mystics have been given such a hard time by senior management. If we are all God then it would follow that we don't need an elaborate system of priests and clerics as intermediaries between us and the truth, nor some centrally authorised and second-hand dogma in place of genuine knowledge.
Canute said:GSB says that the universe (the world of appearances) comes into existence by a process of distinction-making (or symmetry-breaking?). By creating (the concept of) something, we inevitably create (the concept of) nothing. He suggests that in the end, at the level of what is ultimate, reality is non-dual and that 'something/nothing' is a false distinction. Similarly when Lao-Tsu writes "The Tao begot the one" he means also that the Tao begot the 0, for the two concepts are dependent on each other, and the Tao itself is neither 0 or 1, even though by the nature of our everyday reasoning it must be conceived as being one or the other. Is this in line with what you're suggesting?
Canute said:... and that the 'thing' from which these two things arose must remain undefined, whether in discussion or conceptually. We can call this the Tao, emptiness, Buddha-nature, ultimate reality, the Absolute or whatever, there are dozens of names, but these are just place-holders standing in for something that cannot be represented in words or even properly conceptualised.
CrankFan said:"Proof" is a general phrase and means different things in different disciplines. If one accepts the set of hypotheses of a Mathematical proof then he will accept the conclusion of that proof and has, at least, proven to his own satisfaction a consequence of the set of assumptions.
Fredrick said:It [proof] is still used in mathematics, but other disciplines use evidence more and more. Pi, for instance, is one of those situations in which the word proof cannot really be used to explain why it is what it is. Do you agree?
Fredrick said:The Greeks already figured out how to get to pi; the picture is very clear but 'proof' escapes unfortunately.When drawing a diagonal line through the middle of a square, one can use the middle point on that line as the starting point to make an outward step the size of one-third of the base line, and use that point to move back towards the middle of one-fifth of the baseline, go out again one-seventh, in one-ninth etc, and one will get closer and closer to the circle with r as the base line. From the diagonal line it is +1/3, -1/5, +1/7, -1/9, + 1/11, -1/13 etc. The pattern is absolutely clear, but is it proof?
CrankFan said:http://www.simeonmagic.com/triangle/triangle1.htm
Canute said:Zero
Yes but if 99% of a proof will do the job then why not 98%?
I agree that usually we have to make do. But surely usefulness is nothing to do with proof, or even with what is true.
I'm not sure quite what you're asking here.Fredrick said:Thank you for explaining your views; they appear much in sink with the people you have been quoting and with your interwoven own words.
How do you envision the transition from previous state to current state?
What are your thoughts on the transition from before the Big Bang to after the Big Bang. Do you think there was a previous state to our universe? If so, what are your thoughts on what had to be involved to make creation possible? Do you consider the option possible that there wasn't anything before the BB? Are your thoughts on the creation of our universe mainly involved with the actual materialization and its implications, or have you sought for reasons how it could ever be possible to have a transition coming forth out of the invisible?Fredrick said:Canute. How do you envision the transition from previous state to current state?
I'd rather not think of it in terms of before and after. Time is a slippery concept and the closer you examine it the more it seems some sort of illusion, just like space. If you have a look at the 'Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory' it calls into question the whole notion of past, future and present, just as so many sages have been suggesting for so long.Fredrick said:What are your thoughts on the transition from before the Big Bang to after the Big Bang. Do you think there was a previous state to our universe? If so, what are your thoughts on what had to be involved to make creation possible? Do you consider the option possible that there wasn't anything before the BB? Are your thoughts on the creation of our universe mainly involved with the actual materialization and its implications, or have you sought for reasons how it could ever be possible to have a transition coming forth out of the invisible?
Yes, it leaves the question of origins begging, just moving it back a stage. That seems to be a weakness to me. I'd say that a good theory or explanation of cosmogenesis should deal with the origin of everything, answering the question of why anything exists instead of nothing at all.The question Where did the origin come from? cannot be answered, but we can apply theory to the question Where do we come from?
Canute said:Fredrick
Interesting idea, but I have some problems with it. If it's a literal explanation rather than a metaphorical one then it raises some questions. What does 'moving' and 'inwards' mean before space and time existed? What was it that was moving inwards? Where did consciousness and energy come from?
Yes, it leaves the question of origins begging, just moving it back a stage. That seems to be a weakness to me. I'd say that a good theory or explanation of cosmogenesis should deal with the origin of everything, answering the question of why anything exists instead of nothing at all.
No, that's a misunderstanding. I believe quite the opposite.Fredrick said:If I have understood you correctly, you do not believe it is possible to know anything with certainty about the previous state, and I fully concur.
I see what you're saying. But I'd want to argue that it is impossible to understand everything that belongs to our universe without understanding the state that underlies it. I could make a 'mystical' argument, argue from Goedel, or point to our inability to decide metaphysical questions. One way or the other I don't think we can say we understand the universe unless we understand its origins.Again, as you can see, all that I am saying concerns something about our universe. I say nothing, nada, niente, about the previous state. I am not interested in that state, I am interested in understanding everything - that is, everything that belongs to our universe.
Canute said:One way or the other I don't think we can say we understand the universe unless we understand its origins.