(July 23, 2015 at 12:52 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: If we assume there is a before plank time, we are just extending the state of the universe before plank time, and extended time before that. This is quite irrelevant, and I personally believe infinite spirits were created and tested, before the physical creation of the universe...so I would not define it as the first point of time myself.My bold.
But this doesn't do anything to the argument I am showing. My argument goes somewhat like this. Assume universe is of infinite past states. All states of it began to exist (states, not what constitutes the essence of the universe) because every single state of is subject to change. Therefore it makes no sense to say the universe didn't begin to exist, from the view point of "all states" or "any single state of it" (none of it always existed, not a single state of it always existed). Therefore it's a paradox, and we know due to it being in motion and subject to change, it didn't always exist.
The Creator however is not subject to change. Doesn't constitute of moment to moment existence and flow.
Only true from the perspective of one for whom time passes. In a block universe, everything always exists and we only see time as passing because of our perspective.
Though I will grant that it seems as if the universe (using a modified classical definition of universe as being everything we can can perceive and investigate as existing) had an appearance event including the appearance of what we call time. This says nothing of the causally prior state of affairs that brought the universe into being.
1) Why do you feel you know what that prior state of affairs was? On what basis to you make claim of such knowledge?
2) Why do you feel that all other explanations of that prior state of affairs are misguided?
3) If all such explanations are indistinguishable from imaginary things clerics made up, what privileges yours?
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? 
