theophilus

I think I speak for just about everyone when I say "huh?"

theophilus

Thanks.
My reason for asking was to show the inherent defect in the original question, i.e., "what was God doing all that 'time.'"
This, it seems to me, is a fatal blind spot for non-theistic argumentation, i.e., they don't "know" what they're talking about.

Science, at best, gives us operational descriptions about realitiy as we receive it and tells us nothing about the the truth of "how things are." The theory of Relativity may have been successful at predicting certain physical events, but this can only be considered as highly coincidental. That, by the way, is what Einstein thought - he denied that the theory was "true" in any sense.

As far as introducng motion (a beam of light) into the time equation, isn't that circular, i.e., motion is defined as alteration in spatial relationships "over time."

Kenny

It is unclear to me whether you are saying this from within the context non-theistic worldview or from within your own theistic one. From within naturalistic assumptions about the nature of reality, I agree that this view is ultimately where those assumptions lead (I have no desire to argue for that point at the moment, however). From within a Christian worldview, though, this seems an overly pessimistic assessment of scientific knowledge, in my opinion. As Christians be believe that the world was created by God to reflect and reveal His glory and that we have been created in God’s image with the capacity to understand how nature does this. To me, this suggests that as Christians we should not disparage the possibility of obtaining knowledge of the world through empirical investigation and that, as a community, we should take an active interest in the progress of science, though always being mindful of its limitations.

Not necessarily. Space, time, and motion may be what philosophers call a “closed circle” of concepts (i.e. it is impossible to define one without referencing the others). This doesn’t mean the concepts involved are meaningless anymore than the fact that it is impossible to define all the words in the dictionary independently of the other words in the dictionary makes all the words in the dictionary meaningless. In terms of relativity theory, it seems to make the most sense to privilege the speed of light in a vacuum in terms of one’s definition and regard it as a fundamental concept, since the speed of light in a vacuum turns out to be invariant across reference frames. Now, it may turn out that there are other ways to define these concepts without referencing the others, but that will ultimately just widen the circle of terms in which they are defined. Eventually, one’s definitions will have to appeal to a concept or set of concepts which are regarded as fundamental and left undefined. At any rate, this is all starting to stray into issues of epistemology and philosophy of language which are somewhat removed from the thread topic.

God Bless,
Kenny

theophilus

I apologize for the lack of clarity in my earlier post. I am a Christian and my comment was about non-Christian knowledge claims. I believe that knowledge is possible BECAUSE of (an only because of) what God has revealed about himself and his creation.
The unbeliever, it seems to me, is hung on the horns of an epistemologic dilema of his own making, i.e., he can only "know" what "he" can know, which is nothing - I believe that's called solopsism.
Getting back to the original post, it raises a question, meant to disparage theism based on a concept which cannot (has not) been meaningfully explained, i.e., time.
As you mentioned in an earlier post, time is a relative term as relates to our experience (or other possible experiences). A day, defined as the period of a planets rotation would obviously be different depending on the planet, but which is the correct "day?"
You described the original question as meaningless. I would less charitably call it silly.

Apikorus

While the relationships defined by a dictionary or another such "closed circle" may be nontrivial, the interpretation of the structure may depend on context which lies outside the circle. We learn what words like "no" and "apple" mean as children, and not from any dictionary. Nor would a dictionary be meaningful to a stoat. In the case of space and time, our understanding is rooted in our experiences of the physical world. Thought - even abstract thought - is always preceded by observation. Physicists (the theorists, at least) then conceive of mathematical structures which help us make sense of our observations. Every great physicist I know would vigorously agree with the maxim that physics is an experimental science.

Kenny

I agree with most of the above. I have trouble with the following: “Thought - even abstract thought - is always preceded by observation” as this seems to suggest the Lockean view that the mind enters the world as a blank slate which I do not believe to be the case. In order for any sort of inferences to be drawn from sensory experience and any sort of knowledge of the physical world to get off the ground, it seems to me that there would already have to be certain means of interpreting experience and categories of abstraction already present in the mind. However, this is a lengthy and involved debate which has plagued philosophy for centuries, so I doubt we’ll get to the bottom of it here.

I agree with you, though, that physics is an experimental science. I also agree that closed-circle concepts acquire meaning through the fact that the circle touches on experience and, I would add, certain basic intuitions and means of understanding already present in the mind. If the circle nowhere connected with any of our basic intuitions or observations, it would be meaningless (at least to us).

God Bless,
Kenny

Kenny

Yes, I realized that you are a Christian, and I thought that this is what you meant. I was not sure, however, if your comments on science were an expression of your own view or an expression of where the views of non-believers led. Thanks for the clarification.

God Bless,
Kenny

Apikorus

I'm certainly not saying that each brain enters the world as a blank slate. There's the whole DNA thang, after all - we all come with software.

cloud

im sure someone said this already but.......

before God created everything, there was no "time" yes it is impossible for us to think of something that doesnt have time but there were certainly no years seconds or any form of time before that <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />