RE: The Extremis of Rationality
November 8, 2015 at 4:52 pm
(This post was last modified: November 8, 2015 at 4:55 pm by Mudhammam.)
(November 8, 2015 at 3:21 pm)Quantum Wrote: You lost me hereMy contention is that time cannot be conceived as non-existent; its becoming - as in any concept of creation - precludes change, which is all I understand time to be. And consequently, the notion of eternal becoming - some intermediate state between non-existence and existence - is no less nonsensical, though admittedly that's more or less what the "present" is: an instant that ceases to exist (as it immediately dissolves into past time) at the very instant it arrives (from an actually non-existent but potentially existent future).
(November 8, 2015 at 2:58 pm)Nestor Wrote: Furthermore, if time did not - at one time - exist,
- you assume the nonexistence of time, yet you seem to simply keep using the concept as if a timeline were still there in the background.
There are also some other things I don't exactly agree with - you might have a false dichotomy here, with time being eternal or not; You assume that time is this continuous line which either runs on or ends. The nature of time could change completely around the edges in the past, for example.
(November 8, 2015 at 3:34 pm)Chad32 Wrote: Time begins when things happen with which to measure time. You can't have a day or a year without planets spinning around suns. If there are no events taking place, time has no meaning. So to say time has a beginning doesn't sound absurd to me. You just have to think what do we measure time by. If those things aren't there, time is meaningless.The beginning of time would be such an event, one that would itself be measurable... by time: before and after t=0; Just as one could measure each successive change from t=0 by t=1, t=2, etc., one could still measure the amount of hypothetical time or change prior to t=0 by t=-1, t=-2, etc. There might be, say, one thousand revolutions of the earth around the sun between t=0 and t=1000; nothing makes it impossible to imagine that two thousand revolutions might have occurred beginning at t=-1000.
(November 8, 2015 at 3:35 pm)jenny1972 Wrote:It is either raining where you presently are or it is not. It cannot be both. There is no possible world where 2+3=6. These truths are known by reason and are not subject to change on the basis of who is contemplating the veracity of these statements. It is upon this logical necessity that I am seeking to establish the absurd conclusion of either alternatives enumerated above...(November 8, 2015 at 3:14 pm)Nestor Wrote: Sure, but that sounds to me like those who say God's thoughts are nothing like human thoughts. What then is it that allows us to identify that supra-rationality to be rational at all?
"rational" is as subjective as any other descriptive word . what is beyond the human ability to understand we label with the word " irrational " and for humans who incorrectly believe that if it is irrational it cannot exist , if it is beyond our understanding it cannot exist , this is a result of the belief that human intelligence is supreme and if it doesnt make sense to us and is irrational then it cannot possibly exist . If you believe in the existence of intelligence that is more supreme than human intelligence its logical to think that rationality could be subjective dependent on intellectual ability to understand a concept and rationality can exist beyond our human ability to understand.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza