Well... I guess my whole point is : nothing can't be.

There isn't an alternative universe that isn't a universe

There are no hypothetical absences of universes. Universes are present by nature of being a universe.

I think it's just the way things are, cause and effect, reality had to be.

I mean, it goes with my intuition too that the universe is eternal, with no beginning and no end. The big crunch theory is no longer the main theory, the universe will keep expanding forever: is the current theory. And time began, the big bang began, and nothing was before time but there was never a time when nothing happened. It's by the very nature of time that there was no "Before time".

I guess that's it, existence is time. There was no time before time because "Before" itself is temporal. And is it not also true that time and space have been shown to be the same thing?

Existence is space-time, it seems to me.

If scientists define time a certain way and then they discover things outside of that definintion, they still haven't discovered a time before time. There is no time before time. It would rather be akin to when scientists discovered that the atom is not indivisible even though that's initially what an atom meant: something indivisible. Scientists do brilliant work but once they realize that something isn't what they thought it was they still continue to keep the label. Such it must also be with time if they ever discover a "time before time". Just like when Lawrence Krauss talks of a universe coming from "nothing" when he's talking about quantum empty space rather than nothing.

There's an idea goes that if you were to travel back in time all the way to the beginning, the mass in the universe would become increasingly dense as space contracted into itself. Consequently the passage of time would get slower and slower until it became infinitesimal. Theoretically you would eternally get closer and closer to the beginning of time without ever reaching it. This would mean is that in a sense the universe is both finite and eternal.

I have no idea if this actually holds water but it seemed to make sense, and it's an interesting thought anyway.

The universe is finite in size but it has always existed and there has always been space.

Finite and eternal indeed.

There was no time before time and no space before space.

Existence is just another word for nothing left to lose

When people say "God is love", do they just mean that he is an abstract concept to explain the warm and fuzzies? Or are they trying to say that God "is" the warm and fuzzies we feel? Not sure if it's worth killing for though?

If your questions are answered do they continue to exist?

(November 7, 2016 at 11:31 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: The universe is finite in size but it has always existed and there has always been space.

Finite and eternal indeed.

There was no time before time and no space before space.

How do you know that? Maybe you should inset "as we know and understand it".

(November 8, 2016 at 4:49 am)ignoramus Wrote: When people say "God is love", do they just mean that he is an abstract concept to explain the warm and fuzzies? Or are they trying to say that God "is" the warm and fuzzies we feel? Not sure if it's worth killing for though?

Hi ingo. Nice to see ya back.

(November 7, 2016 at 10:40 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote: Well... I guess my whole point is : nothing can't be.

Probably too strong of a claim.

Quote:There isn't an alternative universe that isn't a universe

Not an existential question.  That's a qualitative issue. 

Quote:There are no hypothetical absences of universes. Universes are present by nature of being a universe.

That would be a strange formulation of the linguistic problem of negative existentials.  

If we say, as we might, in reference to the first sentence That "hypothetical absences of universes do not exist" - we've contradicted ourselves...obviously hypothetical absences of universes -do- exist, they are exactly what we are objecting to, lol.  What we mean to say is that such hypotheticals are not accurate or are somehow flawed - a qualitative issue, not an existential one.  

Plenty of answers to the issue of negative existentials, but we don't know which, if any of them, are accurate...which is -one- of the reasons that the claim at the very top is too strong of a claim.  We don't know whether or not "nothing can/cannot be"...but we do know we have a hell of a difficult time even discussing it, let alone answering the question. OFC, other languages, and other systems of inference don't even have this problem - and that's amusing to note. It's not the only place that natural language is or may be a stumbling block, we run into a similar issue in considering the direction and nature of causality, at least in english, lol..in what's sometimes called the problem of the ship at sea.

No, existence doesn't always exist. For, existence is "fact of being" and not always equal to "act of being". But, a "fact of being" demonstrate that something exist or that it has existed. Whatever has existed is not always existing. Therefore, existence doesn't always exist.