rongreen5 wrote:Monotheistic religions do not consider that the universe was created from God, but that an existing God created the universe from nothing. It had to be from nothing, since if it were from something, then one would have to ask where that something came from. Creation from nothing is essential, as far as monotheistic religions are concerned.

Robert Tulip wrote:So, God was something before anything and turned nothing into everything. Kazaam! I'd like to see that.

LMAO!!!

Robert Tulip wrote:Everyone wanted someone to do something that no one was doing but anyone could do. However anyone would need help from someone, and everyone left it to no one. Everyone blamed someone because anyone could do better than no one.

Love this!

Tat, however much you would have liked to see God create the world from nothing, you would not have been able to, since you were not part of nothing. If you had been around, there would not have been nothing from which God supposedly created the universe.

As for your interpretation of God creating the world from nothing, I'm afraid it doesn't work, since you would still have to account for God being around in the first place. If you wish to surmise an eternal God, that is fine. Belief is belief, and I don't argue with belief.

I think you missed the point about not being able to imagine a world without you. If you are not around, you can't see the world. You cannot, therefore, imagine a world where you aren't in existence, because in order to do that you need to be in existence. When you state that you can imagine the world without you, it is YOU that is doing the imagining. If you take yourself away, i.e. do not exist, you simply aren't around. In other words, you cannot know what it is like to be dead, just as you can't tell me what you remember a year before you were born.

As for grasping a world in which there is only space, that is not Nothing. It is not Nothing, since you are around to grasp it. When you disappear, there will be Nothing - but you won't be around to grasp it. That is the difference between Nothing and Nothingness, as I explained previously.

You cannot, therefore, imagine a world where you aren't in existence, because in order to do that you need to be in existence.

Your existence does not need to be within the world you imagine.

In other words, you cannot know what it is like to be dead, just as you can't tell me what you remember a year before you were born.

You can know what it's like to be dead. It depends on the connotation of "know" you're working with. Experiential knowledge is impossible, as you point out.

"You can know what it's like to be dead. It depends on the connotation of "know" you're working with. Experiential knowledge is impossible, as you point out."

Interbane, if you think you know what it's like to be dead, then you are using "know" in a way that makes sense only to you. If you change language to make it mean what you want it to mean (as Alice says), then we cannot have a discussion about anything. The sentence "Green ideas sleep furiously" will mean something to you, but not to speakers of Eglish.

Ronald Green
"Nothing Matters - a book about nothing" (iff-Books

Ron, of course it is possible to imagine a universe without human life - posthistoric trees. I think what you are saying is that imagination is a product of existence, so while we can imagine a future without humans, we cannot imagine that humans never existed. But I'm not sure what the point is here. It is a bit Cartesian - a thinking thing cannot imagine it is not real.

As George Harrison put it, perhaps in relation to the genesis of the song, It felt as if the elevator was on fire and we were going to hell. All this talk about nothing is rather trippy anyway. Apparently Peter Fonda knew what it is like to be dead.

I remain mystified by your distinction between nothing and nothingness. It looks like pure semantics.

Robert, I did not say that it is impossibkle to imagine a universe without human life. When you do that, it is YOU who is doing the imagining. What you can't do, though, is not be present to do the imagining. When you "see/imagine" that universe without humans, it's as if you are watching a scene; and I repeat, it is YOU who is watching that scene. Simply put, you cannot imagine anything when you don't exist.

Of course imagination is a product of existence. How does a non-existent person imagine anything? "A thinking thing" exists, right?

You state that you "remain mystified by your distinction between nothing and nothingness. It looks like pure semantics."

If you wish to understand what I mean, and why it is important, to distinnguish between Nothing and nothingness (as I have termed them), you will need to invest a few dollars in (or borrow) my book. I've explained the distinction a couple of times in this forum, but the space is obviously not sufficient to encapsulate a thesis that is developed in 248 pages (without index, etc) and is a result of 5 years research. I'm not saying that you will necessarily agree with it, but it would be good if you were aware of what you are disagreeing with.

Nothing Matters - that was Freddy Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody - nothing really matters to me.

Ron, you said "We cannot imagine a universe in which we are not present", and then you followed that up by saying "You cannot, therefore, imagine a world where you aren't in existence", and now the seemingly contrary statement "I did not say that it is impossibkle to imagine a universe without human life".

You seem, as far as I can tell, to be applying a novel concept of time here, whereby all moments exist in an eternal present. It reminds me of Castaneda's theory of the nagual, that we are surrounded by eternity. By some interpretations of that view, the past and future are present in the world. Heidegger explained the presence of the past as facticity, and the projection upon the nothingness of the future as existentiality.

The past no longer exists, and the future does not yet exist. In the past, humans were not present in the universe, and if we go extinct, humans will not be present in the future. Ergo, it most certainly is possible to imagine a world where humans do not exist and a universe in which we are not present, unless we redefine words to say the past and future are present.

Bob Dylan put it even better than Freddy Mercury, "for the present now will later be past". But then, I suppose nothing is eternal.

Difficult as it may be to imagine non-existence, it is also hard to imagine reading about nothing for 248 pages. I suppose there is worse - in the seventh circle of hell David Letterman talks about nothing for ever.

Robert, please read again what I said.

I repeat: "I did not say that it is impossible to imagine a universe without human life"." I then went on to explain that for you to imagine that, YOU have to present doing the imagining. What you cannot imagine is you not being in existence.

As for talking about nothing for ever, that would be no worse than talking about something for ever. But of course, talking about nothing is not the same as experiencing Nothing (the absence of everything), since that would be impossible.

I'm not at all sure how you impugn upon me that a belief in some eternal present. I certainly do not. But since you brought up the issue of time, I can say that the past does exist, but as a memory. The fact that the past is therefore unreliable is another matter. As for the future, I disagree with your view, as common as it is. The future is the only thing that IS real. Having a future means that we are alive. The future is what is always there for us to get to. AND PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT referring to knowing details about what will happen. I am speaking about the existence of a future.

Ron, to repeat my quote of your statement again, you said "We cannot imagine a universe in which we are not present." That is silly. We can. We can imagine a universe of ten billion years ago before our solar system existed. That is a universe in which we are not present. We can imagine a universe of twenty billion years in the future when the sun has cooked the earth. Not present then either. Your idea that the future is real is fatalistic. The future is determined by free human choice. It is not real until the choices determining it are made. Unless you are convinced we are hurtling on an inevitable path to nothingness as a result of global warming?