Descartes' conclusion on God was right. His premises were...

Dimensions of what? Spacial dimensions? Temporal dimensions? Psychological dimensions? How long is 1 second in terms of inches? Dimensions don’t mean anything until you define them in terms of what already exists, so what you’re doing is describing a relationship between existent things. And since we can’t describe relationships between nonexistent things, existence itself precedes our descriptions of it.

Existence means relationship because we can have no other conception of what existence means. Dimensions exist as an artifact of the spacetime fabric of the universe. If the fabric gets bigger, then our dimensions get bigger, but we have no way of knowing that because there is nothing to compare it to other than itself.

Reason isn’t reason unless it is doubted. As soon as you postulate anything to be incontrovertibly true, look out!

My aphorism collection on the topic:

  • There is only one certain barrier to truth: the conviction that you already have it.

  • It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

  • What a wonderful security there is in being wrong, because when you’re wrong, you’re sure to be right.

  • The test of a good theory is that it’s unfalsifiable; not that it’s infalsifiable. (I think I have the grammar right… a good theory can be falsified, but isn’t; a bad theory cannot be falsified)

Anyway, reason that isn’t doubted, isn’t reason, but faith. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, but just that it’s not reasonable.

A paradox is a paradox because it can’t be understood using a frame of logic, so if the paradox is true, it merely means our logic was faulty. At least some great truths started as paradoxes: like if the earth is round, why do people not fall off? If you knew nothing, that would seem a sensible concern, wouldn’t it? Up and down are fixed dimensions, so when the earth rotated, people should fall off the bottom, but they don’t, so what explains this paradox? Eventually we discovered gravity and everything fell into place :slight_smile:

That seems sensible to me. So the reason QM events are causeless is because the universe cannot know what it will do before it does it, so it can never identify the cause.

How do you know reason is objective and infallible? How can the thing residing inside the construct make conclusions about what lies without the construct?

Yes of course, but Einstein said “God does not play dice with the universe” and insisted there were “unknowns” yet to be discovered while Borh said “Don’t presume to tell God what to do” and insisted the “unknowns” do not exist. Bell finally proved Borh right: there are no unknowns and what’s left is the absurd. It is my speculation that the absurd is explained by self-inspection, but that’s just speculation on my part; maybe things can come from nothing.

Here is an excellent presentation including a card game to illustrate the problem. FWD to 41:00

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISdBAf-ysI0[/youtube]

In my view, reason forces the conclusion of self-inspection to explain absurdities which defy reason. I’ve said before that there is one thing that cannot be known, but now I believe there are two things: the self and other because if we can’t know the self, then we can’t know the other, but all we can know is the relationship between the two, which can only give us clues about what each are, but never 100% certainties nor the explanation of absurdities. IOW, there is no you outside the universe with which to view the universe in order to make conclusions about it. You’re stuck on the inside trying to discover what you are (the internal) and what everything else is (the external) and that’s not a problem that can be solved according to reason.

Reason is merely another mode of perception. As Goethe said “Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.” What we perceive is “the other” that is not us, but is a part of us. We can’t perceive things that are truly disconnected because there is no mechanism by which to do so. If there were a mechanism, they wouldn’t be disconnected. So we only perceive connected things, which aren’t things, but continuations of us and a part of us. So when we perceive, what we are perceiving is ourself, but veiled by the illusion that it’s not, and the relationship between the two is what we call reality. So when we try to get to the heart of reality, then infinities, circularities, and absurdities result. Reality is the stubbornly persistent illusion resulting from the eternal ignorance of oneself.

Wait, what is paradoxical? I can’t reject reason because rejection of reason is paradoxical or because reason is paradoxical?

I still maintain that existence can’t be infinite or existence wouldn’t exist. That’s the opposite conclusion from yours and all I can suggest is to spend a couple years pondering infinity and you’ll probably land the same place I did: infinity isn’t something that can exist. First of all, things have borders/walls/edges and infinity does not. Infinity is a box with an inside but no outside. Infinity is a box containing all boxes, including itself. The infinite has no context or contrast and is ubiquitous, so it’s impossible to delineate/detect/observe and therefore, because it has no affect/no relation, it cannot be said to exist.

Now, existence can apply to ALL of the universe, but that’s finite with edges/contrast.

Well, it’s saying that the thing called “nonexistence” does not exist. If the universe is expanding into nonexistence, then nonexistence is a thing to be expanded into, but if nonexistence doesn’t exist, then it’s not possible for the universe to be expanding into it. So is nonexistence a blank slate with nothing on it or is it the absence of a slate? If my drawing is too big, I can glue on more paper, but if I have no more paper, I can’t continue drawing.

Why can’t I call a box infinity? Infinity is supposed to contain things and containers are boxes which have sides. If your pc had infinite memory, it would have no memory because there would be no reference point to allocate anything and if it did write something to memory, it could never find it again.

A timeline is a container of things that are happening now, but if the container has no edges, then how does it contain anything? In acoustic we have the idea of an infinite baffle which divides the two sides of a speaker without confining it and influencing the speaker by the addition of a box, but really it’s an infinite box containing the pressure wave to prevent cancellation and a totally absurd construct where the wave is contained while effects of containment are deleted.

I don’t know why I’m always on the “proving” end of this argument since I’m not the one postulating new concepts. It should be up to the one asserting infinity to show it’s true. Do you have any evidence that infinity exists?

Oh I see… you’re asserting that the concept of nothingness is absurd. And to avoid conceding nothingness exists, you’re suggesting that existence is infinite. I understand now. Ok, well, why can’t existence be finite and what’s beyond the finite doesn’t exist? Why can’t the nothingness be infinite and the somethingness be finite?

Omnipresence doesn’t necessitate infinite. Existence could exist everywhere within the finite universe, but not anywhere else in infinity.

It does seem that something would have to exist in relation to nothingness, but then nothingness would be a thing that exists.

What encompasses existence? Haven’t you just moved the goal posts?

That’s why it’s the million dollar question lol

How does omnipresence make up for the fact that one could not be big and small at the same time in order to posses the advantages of each simultaneously? Every advantage has a disadvantage and I don’t see how being everywhere at once refutes that.

That process of negation is called apophatic knowledge (to speak away from, nonconceptual knowledge). That knowledge is a little different from the cataphatic knowledge (conceptual), so even if one were to strip away concepts like a sculptor chiseling away stone, the result will not be the same as the painter applying paint. I can imagine what it’s like to be blind, but I can’t know what it’s like.

How can nonexistence separate things if it doesn’t exist?

In order to have a thing, we need something that it is not. If there is nothing that is not the thing, then the thing doesn’t exist. Shape is not color, but shape cannot exist without color.

“All your clothes” is different from “all the clothes”. All existing things have the quality of existing only because there are things that do not exist, so it’s not all the things, but only some of the things.

There are subsets of existence that you may want to ponder as well, such as being and nonbeing. A light can be on, off, or nonexistent. When the light is on, it’s being. When the light is off, it’s nonbeing. When the electrician removes the light, it’s nonexistent. Just because the light is off doesn’t mean the light doesn’t exist because the potential to exist still exists. So we can have existence as a state of potential rather than actuality (being and nonbeing).

I don’t understand why a perfect being can only create imperfect beings.

Christians describe it as God creating perfect beings who then choose of their own free will to deviate from perfection, but that seems to beg the question of if they were really perfect to start with because if a perfect being can choose evil, then what’s stopping God?

I don’t know why that would be. If the speed of light is constant, as they say, then energy is constant because E=hv. Constant = constant x constant. Where is the problem?

The problem is that infinity is a religion to too many people. I feel like the only one who doesn’t “believe” lol [-o<

They want it to be infinite because infinity explains everything that we cannot explain. In infinite time and an infinite number of universes that are each infinite in size, then everything is certain. If you don’t understand, then the answer will be because your mind is finite. It’s a religion.

That reminds me of Zeno’s flying arrow paradox. If an arrow is in motion, then it doesn’t exist because there is no place in which it is still in order to exist.

It could be rolled up into itself like a mobius strip. It could be finite without an outside.

The finite universe with no outside is the same as the infinite which also has no outside, but the infinite universe would have infinite energy, so forget the conservation laws. Also if the universe were infinite, it couldn’t be getting bigger since it’s already infinite.

It may be bounded by something, but we can never know what because there is no way to relate to what is outside our existence.

That’s where I am with it too.

The universe is all there is. If there are multiverses, then they are part of the universe. If there is a god, then he is part of the universe. The universe is everything. If the universe is everything, there is nothing left to be outside. It’s like a computer monitor and asking what it’s like to type right off the screen. Typing off the screen doesn’t make sense. There is no “off the screen” regarding typing because there is no construct to support it.

The real question is what does spacetime exist in? Nothingness? So nothing is a thing to exist in? Then what does that exist in? Moving the goal posts forever.

A good healthy obsession wouldn’t hurt either :smiley:

What does it mean to value something?

[i]verb (used with object), val·ued, val·u·ing.

  1. to calculate or reckon the monetary value of; give a specified material or financial value to; assess; appraise: to value their assets.
  2. to consider with respect to worth, excellence, usefulness, or importance.
  3. to regard or esteem highly: He values her friendship.[/i]

Interpreting:

  1. Appraise/assess/determine value of (What is the value?)
  2. Attach importance to/attach value to (This shall be the value)
  3. Recognize the attachment of value (This is the value)

So value has 3 senses: determining, authorizing, recognizing.

And to value something could mean to determine/assess/appraise the value of something, but if I don’t understand it, then how can I know what it’s worth? That also precludes option #3 since I can’t recognize value if I don’t understand it. Authorization of value is left, which is essentially “caring”: if I care about something, I’ll persist until I understand it. Value has too many senses and the dictionary has 15 different entries under the noun-usage, so it’s a confusing word to value imo. “Caring” is much more specific because at least we know that someone who cares about his house is not necessarily conducting an appraisal.

Yes, infinite in all spatial dimensions as well the dimension of time. You can take measurements on these dimensions when you focus on a beginning and an end within these dimensions. There are finite things within these dimensions that are separated.

Yes Existence does precede our description of them. They are all aspects of Existence. Width is an aspect of Existence as is time. But they are all in Existence. We’re defining dimensions in terms of Existence which exists.

But we clearly do. It’s not something we’ve empirically observed, but it’s clearly something that reason dictates. Everything we do (including the organisation of scientific observations) is with what reason dictates us to do.

Existence is omnipresent. Reason dictates that we have a clear and sufficient conception/understanding of this concept because when we take this adjective away from Existence, our understanding of Existence, amounts to a paradox.

You can postulate that Existence being omnipresent is incontrovertibly true in the same way that you can postulate that reason being infallible is true; purely because the alternatives are without a doubt, paradoxical. This isn’t an unknown. It’s clear knowledge.

No one has ever successfully doubted reason for such a thing is meaningless. And no one has doubted Existence as being anything other than omnipresent without being bombarded with paradoxes. Yet, when we say Existence is omnipresent, we have no paradox.

Fair enough. First you have to apply doubt, then that clearly establishes that reason is infallible.

We’re in Existence. We’re making conclusions about Existence with what Existence gave us (reason). We know it’s objective and infallible because when we attempt to doubt its objectivity and infallibility we reach a paradox.

Lack of knowledge never altered how things amount to paradoxes. For example with the earth we’ve always known that people would always fall off a surface that’s upside down. We’ve also always known that they wouldn’t fall if some sufficient forces was gluing them to the surface. This never changed and will never change.

They may be unknown to us, but they are not unknowable if that’s what you mean. Things can never come from nothing. This isn’t a matter of unknown where some additional premise makes this possible. You can have things come into our reality from a different reality, but never can you have something come from nothing. Look back at the round earth example. Has there ever been a case in our history where we’ve had a paradox actually happen? Would that even be meaningful?

There are things that are unknown to us but are not unknowable. With regards to what is truly unknowable, well that is anything that is paradoxical. It’s not something that can be known. A square-circle is not knowable. Everything that isn’t paradoxical, is knowable. I may not know myself fully, but I certainly know myself sufficiently. To not know something is for meaningfulness to be non-existent. This is always the case when it comes to paradoxes. Everything else, is knowable.

If reason was paradoxical, we wouldn’t be able to use it. The rejection of reason is a paradoxical. Reason itself is not paradoxical.

Rejecting Existence as infinite is paradoxical. There’s literally no way around it. Things within it have borders whilst it does not. Infinity is not a box as a box needs a start point whilst that which is infinite is necessarily without a start point. If it has meaning, then it’s meaningful. Infinity is clearly meaningful, as is Existence. Saying that Existence is not infinite amounts to meaninglessness (the paradox of something coming from nothing, or the paradox of Existence and non-existence bordering each other)

If we say nonexistence is a thing, then we’d be saying something paradoxical. If it’s a thing, then it’s something. It is not nothing.

Non-existence is not a thing. It is the absence of meaning. It is meaninglessness and it is impossible to understand, describe or meaningfully talk about meaninglessness. We cannot meaningfully say that the universe is expanding without having it expand within something else. What that thing is, is unknown as we’ve not empirically observed it as far as I’m aware.

You can say a semi-infinite box (something that has a start point but no end) but you cannot say an infinite box because by definition, a box has a start point. This contradicts the meaning of infinity. My PC may have a semi-infinite amount of memory. As in it may have an endless amount of memory, but that memory has a start point.

Because that amounts to Existence bordering non-existence. Earth is finite. Can you meaningfully imagine it being surrounded by non-existent. Can you meaningfully imagine existence as being surrounded by non-existence? Can you meaningfully imagine Existence being infinite?

Nothingness is essentially meaninglessness. That which is meaningless (like a square-circle) does not exist. But meaninglessness itself is a phenomenon that occurs when we reason wrong or use words or letters wrong. Things can amount to paradoxes/meaninglessness. As in the negation of meaning occurs when we use words wrong or simple don’t ascribe any meaning to them. You can’t make sense of "ebfuisdfnjksd’ because it’s meaningless. What is existing here is a set of letters. You may be able to sound them out but still, it is meaningless."ebfuisdfnjksd’ and non-existence are the both meaningless. The image looks different (as in different letters are used) but they are both meaningless.

Being big or small is either advantageous or disadvantageous depending on the circumstance. For example, it may be advantageous to be small enough to access something that you’d otherwise not be able to access had you been bigger and so in this context, it’s advantageous. But when it comes to omnipresence, you have reach and access to everything. So you’re always at an advantage and never at a disadvantage. Give me one example that you consider as amounting to that which is omnipresent as being at a disadvantage.

Something’s non-existence does not give rise to nor does it sustain the existence of another thing. Existence has to have a quality that is present in everything that exists. Existence has to be all-existing and it has to be sustaining all existing things.

When the light is on, electricity is reaching it, so it’s one. When the light is off, the electricity is no longer there, it’s not gone into non-existence. It’s either changed to something else or it’s gone somewhere else in Existence. In all the examples that you’e give, have you ever had something go into non-existence? Or rather, has it always been either that something has changed to something else, or that it has gone/move somewhere else?

Spatial dimensions being infinite is something that doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m going to start a thread in the Math section about infinity.

Aspects of existence are things that exist and cannot be used to define existence. Relationship is not an aspect of existence, but existence is an aspect of relationship, so relationship precedes existence since nothing could be said to exist if it had nothing to relate to.

Are you talking about the redshift of distant galaxies? Well, some have blueshifts and the shifts seem quantized which draws into question whether we’ve deduced properly that the universe is expanding or if there is some other explanation. Suffice it to say, it’s not “clear”.

You do not need to be everywhere in order for me to tell that you exist. I still do not see why omnipresence is necessary.

Have you defined what existence is? How can you tell if paradoxes exist if you’re not sure what existence is? Existence is not dimensions because dimensions would have to exist before existence.

Reason is predicated on logic which is just an artifact of a dualistic universe. How can we use dualism to make claims about the underpinning of dualism?

This is like the monkey thinking the fish will drown if he doesn’t pull it from the water and put it safely up a tree. How can air-breathing creatures know what it’s like outside of time and space when we have no concept of being outside of time and space?

Lack of knowledge always explains paradoxes because once the paradox is explained, it no longer exists. “Up” is not a constant direction in space, but is always away from the center of mass. That’s not intuitive and is a new way of thinking that resolves paradoxes.

Yes, wave/particle duality is a paradox. How can something be a wave and a particle? It can’t, but the fact is the most substantiated fact in all of human history.

In fact the knowable can’t exist without the unknowable, so what’s unknowable is essential to the knowable.

You can’t know the you that causes you. You can’t watch yourself.

It is. Ain’t it?

Oh I see… Using reason to reject reason is paradoxical. I can’t argue with that lol. I’m just saying that reason is an artifact of this dual universe and therefore is only applicable to this universe and not outside the universe to what underpins the universe itself. What does the universe exist in relation to? That is where reason fails because there is nothing that is not the universe and therefore there is nothing for the universe to exist in relation to and therefore the existence of the universe is paradoxical when using a dualistic, logic-based reasoning.

I don’t have a problem with meaninglessness. I don’t have a problem with existence bordering nonexistence if nonexistence is a thing to be bordered. Maybe there is no such thing as the nonexistence of nonexistence? Maybe nonexistence exists in some way and is itself a thing to be antipodal to existence. Maybe nonexistence contains potential to exist and existence contains potential to not exist.

Right. I’m thinking the complete absence of things is a thing that contains all potentialities/possibilities. A thing that is devoid of every thing and has no potential to be a thing. So nothing is not nothing, but the antipodal of something just like 1 is not antipodal to 0, but -1. The opposite of having 1 is lacking 1; not having/lacking 0. There is no such thing as zero and no such thing as nothing. So the universe isn’t expanding into nothing, but it’s expanding into not-universe, which is something.

This reminds me of reading the youtube comment that said “What does near-infinite mean?” I like to use the term sometimes to mean a “really big amount”, but there is no such thing a near-infinite or semi-infinite. You can’t divide infinity in half and say “this half goes that way to infinity”. Infinity can’t have a finite edge or any boundary. Either pc memory is infinite (has no boundary) or it isn’t (has at least 1 boundary).

Right. But wait, nonexistence isn’t something that can be bordered because it isn’t there. If the universe is the only thing there is, and if the universe bordered anything, it could only be the universe again because there is nothing else in existence. So either the universe is infinite (without border) or it borders itself… and what I mean by that is the universe (self) borders the not-universe (other), but self and other are the same because they’re codependent. But it looks like I just moved the goal posts because if All = universe + not-universe then what does All exist in relation to? Does it have a border? Is it not-All? Or is it nothing? What is All + not-All? Will this continue on infinitely? So either the universe is infinite or it’s contained in an infinite shell game like Russian Dolls… and neither solution makes any sense to me because infinity is not anything that can exist; there must be a border.

The only solution that I can imagine is to proclaim the whole thing (universe, not-universe, All, not-All, and anything else) as One Thing and one thing cannot look at itself to discern what it is; that information is forever unknown. And probably if that weren’t so, then nothing else would be possible because we need an unknown to have a known.

No, I can’t imagine any of those.

What causes meaning? Why is a pattern recognized as a pattern? How does order know its ordered?

Omnipresence is nonexistence, so that seems like a disadvantage to me.

How can you have something if it’s not possible to not-have it?

You’re moving goal posts. The light has potential to be on, potential to be off, or no potential. That’s 3 states of existence.

You seem pretty cool. You stick to your guns, but you’ve conceded a few points and that’s something to brag about, so hopefully you stick around, interact in some other threads and liven this place up a bit.

For efficiency’s sake, I will try and address your main points. Anything that you’re not happy with or think that I’ve missed out, let me know and I will address it in my next post.

Non-existence is the negation of everything. You could say that non-existence is the negation of omnipresence. But you can’t say omnipresence and non-existence are the same thing.

What separates things in Existence? You might say time and space. Do you consider time and space as omnipresent?

Regarding infinity. Could time and space have come from nothing? If they did not come from nothing, then that leaves only one option. They have always been and will always be. This is the same as saying that the dimension of time is infinite. If space isn’t infinite, then this is like saying space has a beginning or a border. But what does it border? It cannot be non-existence as that would be paradoxical. So space, or that which contains space, is necessarily infinite.

If some omnipresent entity isn’t infinite in terms of time and space, then this amounts to something coming from nothing. Does it not?

Reason isn’t just in relation to our universe though. It’s in relation to everything that exists. Reason clearly tells us that there is more to Existence than just our universe. Time and space don’t end or start with our universe. That would be paradoxical.

They are still existent states are they not? That is my point. Nothing goes into non-existence. It either changes, or goes somewhere else. Just as you cannot have something come from nothing, you cannot have something go into nothing.

By saying omnipresence is non existence, omnipresence means one is all present in the all, which makes everything exactly the same, which is non-existence.

I admire what you’re trying to do, but you are so far from a proof

We should probably keep this all in this thread, my bad …

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194377&p=2710867#p2710867

I appreciate the admiration, but all I’m doing is stating the obvious.

Non-existence = No existence. Omnipresence = being all-existing.

Being all-existing does not amount to the negation of being all-existing.

Everything is varying grades of potency of one thing. Consciousness is perhaps a good candidate where God is Existence and it is the most potent level of consciousness. This most potent level of consciousness has always existed and will always exist (the necessity of infinity dictates this). It sustains and gives rise to everything else including less potent levels of consciousness such as us.

I don’t know what that omnipresent thing is. I don’t know if its material or immaterial (it cannot be both as that would amount to Existence being two different things at a foundational level and that is absurd), but Existence being one thing which sustains everything else because it is infinitely potent such that it can give rise to finite and semi-infinite potent things, does not amount to absurdity. However, saying that not everything is made up of or sustained by the same thing, is absurd.

You want this to be true so desperately that you refuse to admit to obvious contradiction:

Everybody except god knows what it’s like to not be god.

That means, god is not omnipresent, because God is not all knowing, because knowledge is a form of presence.

Your insistence on this rudimentary argument refuses to see that we can all demonstrate that this isn’t true.

You just say, “well, my argument doesn’t contradict itself so yours cannot be true”

My argument is OBVIOUSLY true!

Which means that your argument is not reality.

I want to add to this:

The only way god can know what it’s like to not be god, is to actually not be god.

You say this is a contradiction.

Yes, it is.

It proves that everyone besides god knows by definition, something god cannot and does not know.

I’ve always maintained that to be God and not God at the same time is contradictory. It’s the same with anything. You can’t be two different things at the same time. A married-bahcleor, a square-circle and so on. We’re not in disagreement on this blatantly obvious fact. However, you’re clearly wrong in saying that you have to be something in order to know what it’s like to be that thing. This only holds true of God. As in you have to be God to know what it’s like to be God. This is why comments such as omnibenevoalnce (doing perfectly) being paradoxical are rationally absurd as only God can determine what doing perfectly constitutes.

Knowing what it’s like to be a thing can be reduced to pure information. With the right tools, this information can be fully and accurately deciphered. This amounts to fully knowing what it’s like to be something.

But the information is only available in the full AND in the correct context to the being itself.

Information only talks in context…

Information needs an appropriate and adequate source for it to amount to knowledge. A piece of paper has information. Knowledge is when a sufficiently sentient being accesses the paper with the appropriate tools (like knowledge of the language that is on the paper) and understands it.

Everything about us can be broken down to information. Right? We can label every aspect of us and we use language to communicate these things. It is always the case that knowable things ultimately amount to some kind of information. Do we agree on this crucial point? All types of information can be understood and deciphered fully if the appropriate and adequate senses/tools/recievers/receptable’s are in place. Agreed?

We amount to pile of information X, that goes through experiences (pile of information Y) and what that amounts to (Output pile of information Q) is either fully knowable, partially knowable or not at all knowable. If it’s not fully knowable, then it does not constitute and item of knowledge and so it is not required of that which is omniscient. If it’s something that is knowable (and it clearly is because we know what it’s like to be us) then the item of knowledge is known by that which is all-knowing.

Long story short, God can do all the things that we can do, but we can’t do all the things that it can’t do. Also, God knows all the things that we know, but we don’t know all the things that it knows.

Essentially, what I’m saying is this:
What X is like
What it’s like to be X like
What it’s like to be X

These are varying grades of intimately knowing the likeness of something. That which has the most tools/senses and the most experiences/informational content, is the one that can fully know all these varying grades of likeness.

You’re not addressing the point:

Everyone except god (per your formulation of what god is), knows what it’s like to not be god. God can know that other people aren’t god, but unless god isn’t god, god can’t know precisely what it’s like to not be god. Everyone else can precisely know what it’s like to not be god. This means that there is more true knowledge in existence than one being can know.

This makes omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence insoluable concepts, by direct proof.