The problem with prayer.

[Neo-Scholastic]

If a cause, supernatural or otherwise, has any effect on the natural world at all, that effect has to be detectable by definition. That puts it squarely in the purview of science. Otherwise what justification can you possibly have for suspecting it's even there?

Fair enough. At the same time, 'Science' is not a monolith. Each domain of inquiry (science), from linguistics and economics to mathematics, biology and physics has its own methodology. What tends to happen is people try to apply the tools and methods of one science, like physics, to other fields of knowledge, like semiotics.

Your reply seems to imply that all causes are reducible to small-scale primitives. That may or may not be the case. It's an epistemological assumption. It could very well be that the best explanations for some effects are irreducible large-scale causes. These would be invisible to methods designed to find small-scale primitives. In semiotics, meaning is not reducible to linguistic primitives, phonemes. Sentences, for example, get their meaning from a transcending context. That is just one example of an event, a person's interpretation of a sentence, that cannot be explained by reducing it to small-scale causal primitives like physicists do.

[Cyberman]

And once the sciences have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable - must be the truth. So far the track record stands at

Natural: 996876544321432
Supernatural: 0

It may very well turn out that supernatural causes are the correct explanation for certain things currently unexplained. Unlikely, but possible. However, if you don't put in the work to separate the fact from the fiction, we will never know.

[robvalue]

I can affirm that I do not know to a certainty either.  I should have posed the question as given the information we have, what is your personal best guess for the beginning of the universe and the concept of time as we perceive it.

You're again assuming that there was a beginning to our reality and/or the time associated with it. We don't know either of those things to be true, before we even move onto speculating as to what they might be. Our reality may well have changed form at some point and/or had the rules associated with it changed. Maybe, maybe not.

Calling it the universe can lead to equivocating, because if you're trying to imply there is something not in the universe yet responsible for it, then whatever that is did not create "everything". This is why I prefer to use the term reality. It allows for any number of other things to possibly also exist, in some other way. Maybe this additional set of things is empty, maybe not.

If I had to guess, these feel like the two likeliest scenarios to me, because they involve the least number of assumptions:

(1) Our reality has always existed, in some sense, in some form

(2) Our reality is a manifestation of a process in another reality; maybe intentional, maybe not

[Spirian]

As far as I can tell, we have no way of knowing who, what, when, where, why, or how we are here, or even where "here" is. 

[robvalue]

Agreed. Not now, maybe not ever.

Our ability to ask questions far outstrips our ability to answer them; or even to recognise whether they are coherent questions. There may simply be no answer because the question is malformed.

There seems to be an associated discomfort in a lot of people with this discrepancy, which religion is quick to cash in on with its quick-fix answers. "I don't know" is perfectly acceptable to me, and causes no problems.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why did I pick chocolate over vanilla?
-magic-

It's always magic......

[brewer]

I prayed for mail to come today and it did. IN YOUR FACE SCIENCE!

[Godscreated]

I can affirm that I do not know to a certainty either.  I should have posed the question as given the information we have, what is your personal best guess for the beginning of the universe and the concept of time as we perceive it.

You're again assuming that there was a beginning to our reality and/or the time associated with it. We don't know either of those things to be true, before we even move onto speculating as to what they might be. Our reality may well have changed form at some point and/or had the rules associated with it changed. Maybe, maybe not.

Calling it the universe can lead to equivocating, because if you're trying to imply there is something not in the universe yet responsible for it, then whatever that is did not create "everything". This is why I prefer to use the term reality. It allows for any number of other things to possibly also exist, in some other way. Maybe this additional set of things is empty, maybe not.

If I had to guess, these feel like the two likeliest scenarios to me, because they involve the least number of assumptions:

(1) Our reality has always existed, in some sense, in some form

(2) Our reality is a manifestation of a process in another reality; maybe intentional, maybe not

I have a simple answer for you listen closely. God is omnipresent this means He exists in the past, now and in the future and is always in the present, so yes our reality existed before time began because we existed in God's reality, He eventually made the reality physical so that we could experience it. Case closed.

GC

[Edwardo Piet]

The Bible says something about "if you pray sincerely your prayer will be answered" or some such. 

The bible says a lot of stuff!

The problem with prayer is it doesn't work.

[Cyberman]

I have a simple answer for you listen closely. God is omnipresent this means He exists in the past, now and in the future and is always in the present, so yes our reality existed before time began because we existed in God's reality, He eventually made the reality physical so that we could experience it. Case closed.

GC

How do you know all this?