Something is eternal.

a reply to: midicon
Where is time now?
Look at a clock now.... and see the hands moving now.

Time is a thought... a concept. No concept can appear outside now.

There is no time.... but thought speaks of time.... words like before and after happen presently.

The present never began.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

I wrote it the other day and posted yesterday I believe, but part three partially comes from what I found in a book called Christ the Eternal Tao.

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: midicon
Where is time now?
Look at a clock now.... and see the hands moving now.

Time is a thought... a concept. No concept can appear outside now.

I can see the second hand moving as I watch. Time is more than a concept it is part of the fabric of reality. I don't have to think as I watch the second hand move.

You say 'where is time now?' as if it can be pointed at. The clock isn't 'time' it is a measuring device. You also say 'time is a thought' which means absolutely nothing.

You might of course lose yourself in meditation or some such but time isn't really stopping. Your body is still aging and all your biological processes are still moving in time.

a reply to: Krahzeef_Ukhar

Right, and that's why you think the answer I've given can be incorrect. What I've offered here is a reductio ad absurdum. Meaning I've indirectly provided irrefutable logical evidence for the claim that something is eternal by showing that it's denial leads you to an absurd result. The way I provided that was by giving you valid deductive arguments using logical inference rules, which are the principles that define what it is to have a valid structure within logic. The OP uses modus ponens says that if a conditional statement (“if p then q ”) is accepted, and the antecedent ( p ) holds, then the consequent ( q ) may be inferred. P and Q are propositions, and in the OP, P is nothing is eternal and Q is something comes from nothing. Nothing is eternal is the assertion of one who wishes to deny that something is eternal, and I've shown through modus ponens this leads to irrationality, so it logically follows that something is eternal is justified and known to be true.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

The statements, 'Nothing is eternal' and 'Something is eternal' are both logical fallacies.

Neither statement can be falsified so there is no inference to be made.

a reply to: midicon

Who has ever made the claim that nothing is eternal? It's a nonsense statement.

Yes it is, but not for the reasons you've laid out, but for the ones I laid out in the OP.

We have no example of 'nothing' to examine and the same goes for 'eternal'.

Um, I believe your confused in the same way another person was earlier. Nothing is not a thing to be examined. Nothing is just a way of saying no thing. To request to examine nothing is as absurd as requesting to see and invisible girl with your naked eye. Both request display a fundamental misunderstanding of the concepts involved. You also have plenty of examples of eternal and unchanging things they're called universals, which refer to general principles that define what it is to be a particular thing and not something else.

There is no way to falsify that claim

Falsification is a criterion of science, not philosophical argumentation. There are many statements that cannot be falsified, because they are necessarily true. For example, the claim "there is absolute truth," cannot be falsified, because it would require their to be an absolute standard by which to recognize or measure when something has been falsified, meaning there would need to be an absolute truth. Another example is the claim that "something is eternal."

And no one claims that something can come from nothing, that is just a creationist flawed argument against the big bang theory because no one knows the precursor.

I believe your desire to win an argument is making you miss the point within the OP. I am not saying you or any other world-view is claiming that nothing is eternal. I am saying nothing is eternal is the negation of the claim something is eternal. I display this at the start with a basic disjunctive syllogism. Either something is eternal or nothing is eternal. After this I go on to use modus ponens to demonstrate to you that the proposition "nothing is eternal" leads us to the irrational conclusion that something comes from nothing. I didn't display this in the OP, because I felt it wasn't necessary but perhaps I was wrong.

Once we see that nothing is eternal is a false statement because of the conclusion it implies, we can then return to the disjunctive syllogism I gave you to work out the left half:

Either something is eternal or nothing is eternal
It is not the case that nothing is eternal
Therefore something is eternal.

The logic here is valid and sound. The conclusion is thus only deniable if you wish to remove reason and rationality from our discussion.

a reply to: midicon

No sir. As you will see me explain in my last post to you, falsification is a criterion of science, not philosophy.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

Nothing or Nothingness is a philosophical term for the general state of nonexistence.

In reality, Nihilism has no substance, there is no such thing as nothingness.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

I have no desire to win an argument, I wasn't even aware I was having one. I am merely expressing my opinion. Both your statements are absurd. You cannot claim that something is eternal as we have no examples of anything that is eternal. You mention 'universals' as if they somehow must be eternal and unchanging, I don't know if that's true.

After this I go on to use modus ponens to demonstrate to you that the proposition "nothing is eternal" leads us to the irrational conclusion that something comes from nothing. I didn't display this in the OP, because I felt it wasn't necessary but perhaps I was wrong.

No one I know of has ever claimed that 'nothing is eternal' and I don't accept that proposition has any validity. In the same way I don't accept the proposition claiming that something can't come from nothing. The only people I see making that claim are creationists. I don't see anyone making the claim that something can come from nothing either.

Both your statements are irrational. It all comes down to, because there is something here there must always have been something here, which can't be proven, tested or logically inferred.

a reply to: andy06shake

Absolutely correct. Nothingness has no properties, qualities, relations. It's total and utter non-being, which lacks the ability to produce effects that would be to make it something. This is exactly why I am saying it's absurd to claim that something can come from nothing.

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
a reply to: andy06shake

Absolutely correct. Nothingness has no properties, qualities, relations. It's total and utter non-being, which lacks the ability to produce effects that would be to make it something. This is exactly why I am saying it's absurd to claim that something can come from nothing.

Who has made the claim that something can come from nothing? It's an honest question. The only people I have seen bringing this up are creationists and no scientist I know of makes that claim. If it's a response to the Big Bang theory then it's silly because there are many theories as to what might have given rise to this universe but no one claims it has come from nothing. I don't know is the honest answer but that doesn't mean that God did it.

originally posted by: midicon

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: midicon
Where is time now?
Look at a clock now.... and see the hands moving now.

Time is a thought... a concept. No concept can appear outside now.

I can see the second hand moving as I watch. Time is more than a concept it is part of the fabric of reality. I don't have to think as I watch the second hand move.

When can a clock be seen?

The clock only appears presently.

The clock does not appear in time... past and future only appear in stories and all stories appear presently.

The present (ie. what is happening) is all there is.

Eternal Presence caremycue.com...

a reply to: midicon

You cannot claim that something is eternal as we have no examples of anything that is eternal. You mention 'universals' as if they somehow must be eternal and unchanging, I don't know if that's true.

Universals are repeatable abstract principles that define what it is to be a type of thing. We can speak of things in the general and we can speak of things in the particular. Take for example your use of the word "true" here. You said "I don't know if that's true" referring to a particular proposition. So you're speaking about some particular truth, but there are many things that can be true, and so you are also hinting at some general idea or principle that defines what it is to be truth and not falsehood. If this is principle is not eternal, absolute, and unchanging, then you've lost your ability to make sense of what it means for something to be true and not false as it's become an arbitrary standard. I don't need to give you an example of something eternal to know that something is eternal though, because it's denial leads to absurdity. It's not absurd to recognize that existence is based in something that is without beginning or end. If everything has a beginning and end, then nothing is eternal. If no thing is eternal, then the option left is that everything that is came from no thing.

No one I know of has ever claimed that 'nothing is eternal' and I don't accept that proposition has any validity.

You're really struggling with the idea that someone can assume that a proposition is asserted to show that it leads to an absurd result. This is a common form of argumentation in logic known as a reductio ad absurdum. I am not asserting to you that people say nothing is eternal. I am saying if we assume that this statement is a true statement about reality it will lead us to a conclusion that is logically incoherent or absurd, and that indirectly proves that something is eternal. It's a very strong proof.

In the same way I don't accept the proposition claiming that something can't come from nothing.

You're making the mistake of thinking that nothing is something that has qualities or relations or quantities. It's total and utter non-existence. it is not rational to think that non-existence has the property of being able to produce effects. That's to make it something, and it's incoherent.

Both your statements are irrational. It all comes down to, because there is something here there must always have been something here, which can't be proven, tested or logically inferred.

Yeah I highly doubt you know how logical inference actually works. If you did you would have already recognized that I am using logical inference rules, which means the conclusion can be inferred.....

a reply to: Itisnowagain

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know. - St Augustine

I don't have much of an opinion built around the nature of time at the moment. Your description here seems to indicate that you are what might be called a presentist. That is the idea that only the present exists at any given moment. If I am not mistaken this is close to what might be called A theory of time, but there is an entirely other theory of time, in which there is a direction of time, that is the direction of entropy within a system, and that past, present, and future are real metaphysical realities, but they all occur simultaneously much in the way a river flows.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

The clock only appears presently.
The clock does not appear in time... past and future only appear in stories and all stories appear presently.

The present (ie. what is happening) is all there is.

Don't you find it a bit silly having to say that? Of course we live in the present, where else could we be. The stories we tell ourselves about the past and future enable us to live this reality as best we can. We learn from the past and plan for the future, we wouldn't be here otherwise (maybe).

I also don't know if 'The present (ie. what is happening) is all there is.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

Not at the quantum level all the same where particles pop in and out of existence all the time.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

You're making the mistake of thinking that nothing is something that has qualities or relations or quantities. It's total and utter non-existence. it is not rational to think that non-existence has the property of being able to produce effects. That's to make it something, and it's incoherent.

I'm not mistaking anything about nothing, I get your whole argument. The point is that we have no examples of nothing to test or examine. In fact there might be no such thing at all. We do not know how this universe came into existence and no one claims it has come from nothing. You in your initial statement say 'If nothing is eternal', right of the bat you have given it a property, which makes it something. You can't have it both ways. There is nothing that can be said about nothing.

a reply to: andy06shake

Yeah this is a common misunderstanding concerning what is actually going on. As David Albert explains in response to some like Lawrence Krauss, "Krauss seems to be thinking that these vacuum states amount to the relativistic-­quantum-field-theoretical version of there not being any physical stuff at all. . . . But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states . . . are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff.. . . The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings . . . amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing."

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

Well, you seem to know more about it than i do.

My understanding is particles are constantly popping into existence and popping back out again with an electron-positron pair here and a top quark-antiquark pair there.

The idea being that space is a bubbling brew of ephemeral particles, and its all to do with the quantum foam, similar to how bubbles in foam, form, and then pop.

Most of it beyond me all the same, but it's nice to try and get your head around it, until it starts hurting.

a reply to: midicon

I'm not mistaking anything about nothing, I get your whole argument. The point is that we have no examples of nothing to test or examine. In fact there might be no such thing at all.

Yeah, I've already explained to you that this rebuttal is nonsensical. If someone tells you that they have an invisible girlfriend, you don't then request to see her, because invisible means you cannot see her...You do not request to examine nothing if you're not mistaken about what the word intends to communicate. Nothing is not a thing it is no thing. it is non-existence. Non-existence is not a thing that exists that you examine...so you tell us you're not mistaken about the word "nothing", and go on to say something as silly as we have no examples of nothing as though it is something that exist that can be repeated for you to observe. You literally say "there might be no such thing at all" in reference to nothing which is not a thing.....You're clearly are confused when it comes to the notion of nothingness.

We do not know how this universe came into existence and no one claims it has come from nothing. You in your initial statement say 'If nothing is eternal', right of the bat you have given it a property, which makes it something. You can't have it both ways. There is nothing that can be said about nothing.

Yeah again you're not understanding the statement properly because you're treating nothing as something that I am predicating of rather than what it really means which is no thing. No thing is eternal means there is no thing within existence that is without beginning or end. It is referring to the absence of something not predicating of something. Let me phrase it more formally for you to see if it helps you understand how you are misunderstanding that statement. I begin the post with a disjunctive syllogism and if I were to phrase it very formally it would appear like this:

1) Either it is the case that something is eternal or it is not the case that something is eternal(i.e. nothing is eternal).
2) If it is not the case that something is eternal, then something came from no thing.
3) It is not the case that something is eternal.
4) Therefore, something came from no thing(Modus ponens 2,3)
5)The statement it is not the case that something is eternal leads us to a logically absurd conclusion about reality.(2-4)
6) It is not the case that it is not the case that something is eternal(can be inferred from 2-5 via reductio)
7) Therefore, it is the case that something is eternal. (double negation of 6).

This is not 100% how a formal proof is done, but it should make it very clear to you what is being said. If you think the conclusion is wrong, you need to explain where I've made a mistake above.