RE: Jesus as Lord - why is this appealing to so many?
February 12, 2018 at 12:15 pm
(This post was last modified: February 12, 2018 at 1:01 pm by SteveII.)
(February 11, 2018 at 12:33 am)Grandizer Wrote:(February 10, 2018 at 10:00 pm)SteveII Wrote: I love these great big metaphysical assertions that contradict just about everything without any backup whatsoever.
Most people feel you need a baby horse to get an adult horse. Please explain why that is not the case. Please explain these "connections". Perhaps some quotes from leading scientist? Stuff I can look up?
Why scientist, first of all? Why not philosopher or something? Should I ask you to back your shit up with quotes from actual scientists then, given that you adhere to a theory of time not supported by modern science?
You already know what to look up, if you've already looked up theories of time and such.
Think about the implications of eternalism. If there is no flow of time, then how can there be a change? How can there be cause and effect?
If two countries are connected to each other, does one cause the other? No, look at reality in the Laplacian sense, rather than in this intuitive sense that you conceive of things from a temporal perspective. Causality is meaningful only from such perspective, not when we're discussing the fundamentals of reality itself.
Eternalism, contrary to it's name, does not propose an infinite past. Only that past, present, and future are equally real. It is a description of our space-time. It does not imply that space-time had no beginning. Proof of that is that it is compatible with the standard big bang models--which have as its main feature--a beginning of space-time.
Eternalism also does not deny causality. Within the block of time, there are causal cones that clearly show prior-to and after-than relationships. There is a direction of time.
If you think I am wrong in either of these statements, I would like a link or a quote to show me. No offence, but I need someone else to explain it.
(February 11, 2018 at 1:23 am)Grandizer Wrote: About the horse thingy, Steve. According to eternalism, the time moments containing the baby horse are separate from the time moments containing the adult horse, but logically connected based on a logical structure. The structure itself is eternal, and all connection possibilities are eternal. It's not like there was a time when the connections were not yet there, and they were still under construction or something. They've always been according to this doctrine of time.
"Logically connected" is the same as causality. There is no difference. You are trying to do away with causality by calling it something else.
Again, the theory does not posit an eternal block of time.
(February 12, 2018 at 9:29 am)Grandizer Wrote:(February 12, 2018 at 9:18 am)polymath257 Wrote: You are right. It doesn't 'start' counting from negative infinity. Instead, it is just always counting. At any point you step down, the counting is going on and has been going on for an infinite amount of time. No beginning, no end.
What you say fits in quite well with the logic of a different way of looking at time (e.g., B-theory of time) because counting, like any act, is not really happening in the intuitive flowing way. There is one instance of you counting the number -4, and the next instance of you counting the number -3, and infinite previous instances of you counting each number previous to -4, and infinite successive instances of you counting each number after -3, provided you are God or something like that and you exist in all these time instances where you can afford to count forever and from eternity.
Again, this is more a problem if we assume the A-theory of time.
Your theory of time has no bearing on logic. It simply is not possible to count down one at a time from an infinite time ago because you will never get to 0. In the same way, you will cannot have an infinite series of causes/effects (logical connections?) in a row to arrive at now--there will always be an infinite more causes/effects that still have to happen. If you need a concrete example, there could not have been an infinite series of mother and baby horses. The horse you see today would never have arrived because there would still need to have been an infinite number of horses to be born and have their own horse baby--no matter how long you waited.
(February 12, 2018 at 10:44 am)polymath257 Wrote:(February 12, 2018 at 9:29 am)Grandizer Wrote: What you say fits in quite well with the logic of a different way of looking at time (e.g., B-theory of time) because counting, like any act, is not really happening in the intuitive flowing way. There is one instance of you counting the number -4, and the next instance of you counting the number -3, and infinite previous instances of you counting each number previous to -4, and infinite successive instances of you counting each number after -3, provided you are God or something like that and you exist in all these time instances where you can afford to count forever and from eternity.
Again, this is more a problem if we assume the A-theory of time.
The clear question is to what extent the past and the future 'exist'. We are accustomed to consider the future as undetermined and the past as determined, but this seems mostly because we remember the past and not the future. There is also the nature of causality: we allow for influence from the past light cone and not from the future light cone in computing probabilities.
Yeah...its almost as if time passes in one direction.
