Free will, freedom from what?

[Age]

So far, so good?

Well;

There had to be something prior to the universe, obviously...

I don't think you make it over the first hurdle. While it may seem obvious to you, we currently have no way of telling whether it is true. This:

...because the universe is a contigent and entropic entity, not a necessary and eternal one.

certainly doesn't qualify. Words like contingent and necessary simply aren't relevant in cosmology.

Actually, they very much are. The same conclusion I'm drawing has been made by much better minds than mine, based on a much fuller knowledge of things like the red shift effect (Borde, Guth and Vilenkin, for example).

LOL you, and others, do not have 'minds' "immanuel can"

The claim that the Universe, Itself, is expanding because of 'red shift', and therefore It must have also began are both absolutely False, Wrong, Inaccurate, and Incorrect claims, which were based upon nothing more than misinterpreted presumptions.

But, here they were, a whole generation, and more, of human beings presuming and believing some thing completely Untrue, and based upon nothing more but False and Wrong assumptions and misinterpretations.

In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that the Hubble discovery was the most recent absolute revolution in cosmology. The speculative attempts to evade the data recently, such as the multiverse hypothesis and string theory have come out of this very crisis, in fact; and the fact that they are purely speculative models is testimony to just how challenging even the critics found the data.

So I've got the data on my side.

LOL 'This one', actually, believes that 'data' and/or the 'red shift data' means that a male-gendered person or being created and caused the whole Universe,.Itself, all by Itself, at one particular moment.

This,.really, is how Truly Illogical and Irrational these human beings were, back then when this was being written.

On the other side, speculative models that collapse against the data. And there's certainly enough expert opinion on my side to bolster the case sufficiently for it to be taken seriously.

"my side", LOL

Our universe manifests that it is the product of cause and effect.

How? There are processes within the universe that demonstrate cause and effect, but it does not follow that the universe is the product of such a process.

Let's see if that's true. What aspect of the universe do you believe is not subject to a cause-effect relation? And if there is something outside of cause-effect, it must be eternal, obviously, for it must not be subject to entropy...I'll be interested to see what you can come up with.

LOL It is because of cause-effect why the Universe, Itself, is eternal.

Also, cause-effect has no correlation to entropy. And, if you had the courage, and the ability to, then you would discuss this openly, honestly, and peacefully. But, you do not have what it takes to do this. Obviously, your beliefs cannot and will not help you here.

What was the source and nature of that energy, is the relevant next question.

This is the point at which

...we can make up any story that pleases us about the things we cannot see.

And if something

eternal, uncaused, powerful, order-producing...and capable of generating this universe

is what pleases you, that is what you are likely to find.

Not so easy as you suggest.

The problem is the alternative. What non-intelligent but eternal, uncaused, powerful, order-producing...and capable of generating this universe entity can you propose?

LOL

The EXACT SAME One I ha been informing you people of, for a while now.

If you can locate none, then you're down to one hypothesis, are you not?

This is an example of just how Truly BLINDED, and CLOSED, some of these people really were, and could be, because of belief alone.

"immanuel can" and "will bouwman" week living proof of why human beings, from now on, would be much better off never ever having nor holding the type of beliefs that these two clearly have and are showing here. These two just cannot SEE and HEAR absolutely any thing that is contrary to their belief/s and what they 'currently' believe is true.

[Age]

Clocks do not create events, nor do they create the span between those events.

As Belinda points out creating events is exactly what clocks do.

Let me know if your egg timer ever creates an omelette.

If a clock and time were the same, you could make yourself young again by rewinding your watch.

So you've mistaken the human measurement device (the clock) for the reality it tries to measure (time itself).

What is "time itself"?

That's an excellent question. I remember somebody saying, "Time is the way we measure our proximity to death." That's a little cynical and one-sided, of course, but it's not entirely wrong. Time can, indeed, be a metric of entropy. But it has several definitions, as any look at the dictionaries will quickly reveal. It's a very complex question.

LOL It is not a complex question at all, let alone a very complex question.

you are just trying to stall and deflect here, once again.

In fact it is a very, very simple question, to wit the answer is, also, a very, very simple one, as well.

However, I have already suggested one definition: time is the interval between points.

But, the interval between points is, the interval between points. For example,.the interval between two points on a field is 'the interval', which can be measured by rulers or tape measurers, and which is measured by the intervals in relation to 'distance'. And, this has absolutely nothing at all to do with 'time', itself.

So, you will need to try again here "immanuel can'. Not that you will. Because you have nothing else here.

I have said these can be points in space, or points in a process. That's not a complete or only definition, but it certainly is a good definition.

In any case, one thing we know for sure: it isn't a clock. Whatever we say it is, time existed before chronology, and would exist after chronology went away, too, just as the oceans existed before there were the words "Atlantic" and "Pacific."

LOL 'This one' is continually 'trying to' deceive you readers here. It is absolutely not necessarily true at all that 'whatever 'we' say time is, 'time' existed before [what "immanuel can" said and claimed here.

The human attempt to measure is only a measurement device, not the thing itself.

[Will Bouwman]

The same conclusion I'm drawing has been made by much better minds than mine, based on a much fuller knowledge of things like the red shift effect (Borde, Guth and Vilenkin, for example).

You don't need a particularly acute mind to understand red shift. Nor is it any great shakes to understand the logical flaw in the BGV theorem. Simply put, you have to assume that the original state of the observable universe had some arbitrary size and configuration. This claim was parodied before it was even made by Bertrand Russell when he pointed out that there is no logical contradiction in claiming that the universe popped into existence five minutes ago, complete with the holes in his socks.

In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that the Hubble discovery was the most recent absolute revolution in cosmology. The speculative attempts to evade the data recently, such as the multiverse hypothesis and string theory have come out of this very crisis, in fact; and the fact that they are purely speculative models is testimony to just how challenging even the critics found the data.

What data are the multiverse hypothesis and string theory designed to evade?

So I've got the data on my side.

So do advocates for the multiverse and string theory. Nearly everyone accepts that galactic red shift implies the visible universe has been expanding for billions of years. There is speculation about how it started, of which string theory and God are examples. Again, the data that supports your hypothesis can support any number of alternatives.

[Will Bouwman]

"immanuel can" and "will bouwman" week living proof of why human beings, from now on, would be much better off never ever having nor holding the type of beliefs that these two clearly have and are showing here. These two just cannot SEE and HEAR absolutely any thing that is contrary to their belief/s and what they 'currently' believe is true.

My belief is that anything that is consistent with the data we can gather might be true. What belief do you believe I would be better off believing?

[Will Bouwman]

Clocks do not create events, nor do they create the span between those events.

As Belinda points out creating events is exactly what clocks do.

Let me know if your egg timer ever creates an omelette.

Depending on the type of egg timer the event it creates might be the passage of sand from one chamber to another. Alternatively, there might be a series of events, such as the swinging of a pendulum or the vibrations of quartz crystals.

[Will Bouwman]

I remember somebody saying, "Time is the way we measure our proximity to death." That's a little cynical and one-sided, of course, but it's not entirely wrong. Time can, indeed, be a metric of entropy. But it has several definitions, as any look at the dictionaries will quickly reveal.

You mean the same data can support different definitions? Whodda thunk?

[FlashDangerpants]

I remember somebody saying, "Time is the way we measure our proximity to death." That's a little cynical and one-sided, of course, but it's not entirely wrong. Time can, indeed, be a metric of entropy. But it has several definitions, as any look at the dictionaries will quickly reveal.

You mean the same data can support different definitions? Whodda thunk?

You don't wanna go down that road. He did a whole thing on me that "bow" is only one word and that a bow for a violin is the same word as a bow before the King.

[Age]

"immanuel can" and "will bouwman" week living proof of why human beings, from now on, would be much better off never ever having nor holding the type of beliefs that these two clearly have and are showing here. These two just cannot SEE and HEAR absolutely any thing that is contrary to their belief/s and what they 'currently' believe is true.

My belief is that anything that is consistent with the data we can gather might be true.

But, you, still, it appears, have not comprehended and understood that what appears and/or is claimed 'is consistent' 'with the data' might actually be absolutely and completely False. For example, the sun revolves around the earth 'is consistent with the data'.

you just do Avery common thing among you human beings, which is to jump to a conclusion, based off a presumption or interpretation, and then, worse still, start believing, and 'trying to justify'your Wrongly, and Falsely, concluded assumptions/misinterpretations, by saying and claiming that they fit with and/or are consistent with 'the data'.

people like you continue to claim that 'our story/conclusion' 'is consistent with data'. Which puts you in the EXACT SAME position as people like "Immanuel can" who continually claim that cour story/conclusion' 'is consistent with the data'.

Absolutely all of you were the EXACT SAME, and as 'bad' as each other, like this.

What belief do you believe I would be better off believing?

Once again, not a mature response is made.

There is no, actual, data that is consistent with the Universe, Itself, expanding nor beginning. Just like there was no actual data that the sun revolves around the earth. Although, and obviously, some people would claim there is, while also claiming that 'that' 'is consistent with the data'. They would also claim that you just have to 'look at' 'the data', (that is; the observation of the sum revolving the earth), to 'see' that 'that story/interpretation 'is consistent with the data'.

And, I have already expressed my views about you people 'believing' things, and what this does to your ability to learn more or anew.

The 'red shift data', by the way, helps more in showing how the Universe is eternal than it does showing that the Universe began, or is expanding.

[Belinda]

That was well quoted by you, Immanuel Cant. And here is the same idea by the best wordsmith :

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.



Remembering that human lifespan is also a measure of time.

[Immanuel Can]

The same conclusion I'm drawing has been made by much better minds than mine, based on a much fuller knowledge of things like the red shift effect (Borde, Guth and Vilenkin, for example).

You don't need a particularly acute mind to understand red shift.

Right. One does not. But the implications...now, they take some deeper thought.

Nor is it any great shakes to understand the logical flaw in the BGV theorem. Simply put, you have to assume that the original state of the observable universe had some arbitrary size and configuration. This claim was parodied before it was even made by Bertrand Russell when he pointed out that there is no logical contradiction in claiming that the universe popped into existence five minutes ago, complete with the holes in his socks.

Then Russell undermined the very basis of science itself. For if things can just "pop into existence" (presumably also without cause, since Russell was a devout Atheist) then science cannot predict them, reproduce them, theorize about their causes or nature. Instead, all of science would simply boil down to "Stuff happens," or "Stuff pops," with no further investigation or finding possible. So I think we can dismiss that.

In fact, it's no exaggeration to say that the Hubble discovery was the most recent absolute revolution in cosmology. The speculative attempts to evade the data recently, such as the multiverse hypothesis and string theory have come out of this very crisis, in fact; and the fact that they are purely speculative models is testimony to just how challenging even the critics found the data.

What data are the multiverse hypothesis and string theory designed to evade?

That's the point: they have none at all. That's their problem. They're speculative models. But speculative models need data for confirmation, or they remain mere speculations.

How do you get data, though, for the idea of something like "alternate universes" or "the multiverse"? By definition, any data to which we can have access is part of THIS universe, in some better-understood form, rather than of another universe. But evidence of another universe, indeed, an infinite multitude of them, is what the MH would require. So it's really a catch-22 problem for that speculative theory.

There are other such problems, too. And if we want to make fun of things, as Russell did, we could ask if there is an "alternate universe" in which Superman is real, and is also a cow. And if there is not a universe where literally everything has one iteration, then the existence of our own universe becomes surprising and in need of explication again, because there would always be an infinte number of "other ways" for a potential universe to be. Hence, we still have to ask, "Why does this one exist?"

But if an alternate universe system, or "multiverse" contains all possible alternatives, then we have to ask how that's possible. In an infinite set, the contrary possibilities remain permanently infinite, by definition. But in this MH telling, the set is limited: all possible alternatives are realized...the possible set is exhausted: all alternatives are actualized somewhere. So then we would have to ask, "What is the limiting power of the multiverse?" And we're back to an need for some unassailable principle by which the number of alternatives are being limited.

Much more could be said, of course. But I think you can see the point. Speculative theorizing is fun...but it needs data.

[Immanuel Can]

That was well quoted by you, Immanuel Cant. And here is the same idea by the best wordsmith :

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.



Remembering that human lifespan is also a measure of time.

I did say that one definition is that "time is the measure of our proximity to death," I believe. But it's a cynical and rather narrow definition...certainly not complete in itself.

It's not bad, though, to remind ourselves of the context of this soliloquy.

This is the utterance Shakespeare wrote for a corrupt and murderous tyrant, who, at the end of his failed reign, has come to realize that everything he was pursuing was empty. Bereft of friends, his wife dead, his subjects trying to murder him,and having made a recent trip to depend on witches for wisdom, he's arrived a point where he's prepared to "try to the last" his decisions. As he said earlier, "I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er" (III. 4.136–8) He's had it with life, with ambition, with everything.

He's not acutally a spokesman for all humanity, or for all experience. He is, really, a representation of the self-willed despot, the man who thinks he can control his own destiny, and that no moral bounds can be allowed. He's been a pre-Nietzschean, really: and he has no sense of duty to man and no relationship to God. Like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, he banished morality, took his own life in his hands, and then has found that it all went through his fingers.

It's a great lesson. But to understand it, we need to keep his words in the context for which Shakespeare designed them, do we not?

[Immanuel Can]

I remember somebody saying, "Time is the way we measure our proximity to death." That's a little cynical and one-sided, of course, but it's not entirely wrong. Time can, indeed, be a metric of entropy. But it has several definitions, as any look at the dictionaries will quickly reveal.

You mean the same data can support different definitions? Whodda thunk?

No, just that one phenomenon is so great and complex, so fundamental, really, that it admits of being approached from different angles. I submit for your consideration that it's not wrong to speak of time as relevant to our mortality...but it's not complete-in-itself, either. It's one aspect of a diamond. All the facets still converge on one reality, that of time itself.

[Atla]

Okay so the observable universe is expanding, that means there could be a distant part of the universe that's shri- GOD! GOD!!!

[Belinda]

That was well quoted by you, Immanuel Cant. And here is the same idea by the best wordsmith :

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.



Remembering that human lifespan is also a measure of time.

I did say that one definition is that "time is the measure of our proximity to death," I believe. But it's a cynical and rather narrow definition...certainly not complete in itself.

It's not bad, though, to remind ourselves of the context of this soliloquy.

This is the utterance Shakespeare wrote for a corrupt and murderous tyrant, who, at the end of his failed reign, has come to realize that everything he was pursuing was empty. Bereft of friends, his wife dead, his subjects trying to murder him,and having made a recent trip to depend on witches for wisdom, he's arrived a point where he's prepared to "try to the last" his decisions. As he said earlier, "I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er" (III. 4.136–8) He's had it with life, with ambition, with everything.

He's not acutally a spokesman for all humanity, or for all experience. He is, really, a representation of the self-willed despot, the man who thinks he can control his own destiny, and that no moral bounds can be allowed. He's been a pre-Nietzschean, really: and he has no sense of duty to man and no relationship to God. Like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, he banished morality, took his own life in his hands, and then has found that it all went through his fingers.

It's a great lesson. But to understand it, we need to keep his words in the context for which Shakespeare designed them, do we not?

By all means remember the context of the soliloque as quoted, but you have judged him ad hominem . Macbeth, like most every on else, made a tragically bad choice but was nonetheless capable of having a wise idea.

[Belinda]

Moreover, Immanuel, and I quote you, [I did say that one definition is that "time is the measure of our proximity to death," I believe. But it's a cynical and rather narrow definition...certainly not complete in itself.]

That is not cynical at all but is a matter of fact. Finality is an inevitable fact of life and when there is no finality what you have is eternity.