Define nothing

(February 2, 2017 at 12:27 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: The fact is that some ontological positions are logically incoherent, like materialism, and others are not.

In what way is materialism incoherent, ontologically?

Only deities, apparently.

I'd like to ask if it's reasonable to believe that time existed for eternity.
Other things like matter creation are inconsequential to time existing.
Sounds OK to me.

If that's the case, then half of space/time was always there.

I see no reason why not, logically at least. Matter could have joined in at whatever point, somehow. Maybe it got shifted in from a parallel reality or something.

As we already discussed, our reality might have been "started" at any point on our timeline, and the history just invented to be consistent.

Personally, I get the feeling that we're just not "looking" at things in the right way, because of the highly subjective viewpoint we're trapped in. I can imagine things suddenly making more sense when viewed from the outside. However, we may never be able to escape enough to achieve that. Just a hunch

I once had this hypothesis that our reality is having an n-sphere pass through it. The "singularity" represents when the tip of the sphere first touches our 3D space. It then "expands" as the sphere passes through.

(By the way, I'm a mathematician and the idea that I don't understand the Aquaman arguments due to a lack of set theory is silly. The ordering and such is not the problem. It's the base logic being used in the argument. It's broken as fuck. And that's without even worrying about the fact that it's all just an abstract system trying to model reality without using any evidence at all to demonstrate its accuracy. It fails even at an abstract level.  Even if the arguments "worked", it's still just prescribing reality as if it's an abstract system. You don't get to do that.)

Materialism cannot be an incoherent position ontologically speaking because there is precisely zero evidence that the universe is anything but physical. And until evidence can be found to
suggest otherwise it remains the default position. Theists some times object to this by claiming there are different types of evidence. But this is totally false and a complete bastardisation
of the word. Evidence has one meaning only namely something which has property and dimension and can be observed or examined to determine its capabilities. It does not mean some
thing you believe in so much that you think it has to be true. This is an argument from emotion. Neither does it mean something that must be true because so many believe it to be. This
is an argument from popularity. And so less what you think of as evidence can actually be subject to the rigour of the scientific method it is not evidence at all but something else entirely

When something comes from nothing, it is called a product of imagination.

I don't even understand what the problem is meant to be. Physical = material = literally existent (as opposed to existing as an abstract idea, etc). As far as I know, these are all pseudonyms. If any scientist can correct me on that if I'm wrong, please do.

What does it mean to say something exists but isn't physical/material? I mean, there are already other aspects to reality such as "time", and apparent underlying rules and such, which I presume we don't term as being material.

So what's going on? The objection, such as it is, seems to boil down to "You guys don't believe in magic". I really have no other idea what these people are driving at. There may be many material things that exist which we currently can't detect in any way at all. Material doesn't mean, "Currently detectable and understandable by science". It appears to be an equivocation fallacy, just hiding these magic things from science so the argument from ignorance can continue. "You can't prove there isn't magic stuff going on." I can't believe adults are really saying this. Of course, they're not saying it in so many words, but since they won't elaborate, it's all I can deduce. What does it mean to say somethings exists but isn't material? It's like material is a dirty word to them or something. Not all material has to behave in the same way. It doesn't all have to be visible, detectable, or be affected by gravity or whatever. It's just a word. I think people project onto it everything they hate about science.

Despite Neo's continual efforts to strawman me, I'm a methodological naturalist. Basically, you can have whatever magic "supernatural" made-up bullshit you want. You can have it all. I don't care. I am just ignoring it, for pragmatic reasons. I'm not claiming there isn't more going on than we can detect; in fact I believe there almost certainly is. All I care about is what we can test. What can we learn, through scientific methods? Can we learn anything about these amazing non-material existent things? If the answer is no, then I'll just ignore them until such time that we can. The problem is when people claim to know stuff about this untestable shit, but provide no evidence. Of course they have no evidence; if they did, it would be detectable and they wouldn't have to hide it from science. They claim to be detecting the undetectable, even by their own definition. Such people just don't seem to understand about the importance of evidence, and no matter how many times I go through it, we never make any progress. Arguments are not evidence.

(February 3, 2017 at 2:49 am)robvalue Wrote: The problem is when people claim to know stuff about this untestable shit, but provide no evidence. Of course they have no evidence; if they did, it would be detectable and they wouldn't have to hide it from science. They claim to be detecting the undetectable, even by their own definition. Such people just don't seem to understand about the importance of evidence, and no matter how many times I go through it, we never make any progress.

Precisely.

If god was real, he would be capable of providing evidence for his existence. The fact that he doesn't provide stated evidence is due to an apologetic argument that is not based in reality. After all, faith is not evidence, and all any theist has is fallible faith.

Exactly. To quote a guy from a great video I watched recently, "Faith is not a reliable method". People of all religions "know" things "through faith" which all constradict each other. The only things they really have in common are a certain three letter word which means fuck all, and a detachment from the scientific method.

Faith is continuing to hold a belief which has been implanted in your head somehow, despite there being no logical reason to hold that belief anymore.