Kalam Cosmological argument

The immediate problem here is you are using a very old fashioned idea of time.To begin to exist, there must be some temporal aspect with respect to which something can "begin". Time, as we know it, is an internal aspect of our universe. Therefore, the universe cannot "begin to exist" as there is no a priori concept of time in which to "begin".This "Newtonian" cosmological argument is all very well in pre-relativistic days, but we are 100 years beyond that now... Edited by cavediver, : commas

True enough for this discussion. I know exactly what you mean, but there-in lies the problem: for time to "begin" it requires some metric (i.e. a measurable scale) against which we can define where it was that time didn't exist, and where it was that time did exist. And the boundary is your point of "begin". BUT such a temporal metric does not appear to exist. The only one of which we are aware is our "time" which only has existence whithin the universe. A hard concept to get across, I admit. I would describe it as the universe having no "beginning". It may well have only a finite regress into the past, such as predicted by the Big Bang theory, but the point or region described by T=0 is not a beginning, but merely one end of the universe, from a certain point of view. Just as the North Pole is one end of the Earth, from a certain point of view.To explain that analogy, imagine the surface of the Earth as all moments of the universe - the North Pole is the Big Bang, the South Pole the Big Crunch. Time, as we understand it, is merely how far South you are. The universe is a the whole Earth - the North Pole is not the beginning of this universe, nor is the South Pole the end. The Universe simply exists, and time exists within it. In the analogy above, yes. Time is an internal coordinate of the universe, telling you how far South you are. It is meaningless to try to assign that time to the Universe as a whole. It is like asking, at what longitude and latitude is the Earth?

Yes, these are the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. Good mathematics, poor choice of words in our present context. The theorems state that if you follow back in time far enough, you always reach a singularity.In terms of my analogy, this simply means that as you go North, you will inevitably hit a North Pole, rather than just keep heading North. The "beginning" is just one end of the time dimension. The North Pole is the "beginning" of lines of longitude, but is still not a beginning of the Earth.Hawking then went on with Hartle some years later to develop the Hartle-Hawking No Boundary Proposal, which is a nifty bit of quantum gravity that enables you to remove the unpleasant singularity of the Big Bang, and replace it with a nice smooth "cap", thus moving even closer to my globe/Earth analogy.It should be said that the singularity theorems only hold under some reasonable assumptions surrounding General Relativity, space-time and matter. If these assumptions are relaxed (such as can be done in String Theory) then the singularity theorems can be avoided.

This is rather vague and waffly. We use General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory to express ideas about the Universe coherently. No, not at all. The Universe does not have to be created, whether finite or infinite. And an infinite universe is quite possible. Big Bang is classical. Once quantum gravity effects have been accounted for (something yet to be done though I played my small part) we have no idea whether the universe will be shown to be temporally infinite or finite.There is no problem with infinite time. There is no one global time variable that ticks away, as you (or Craig) imagine it. There is just the entirety of time, and different beings experience different parts of it. You misunderstand. Probably becasue of my bad choice of the word "end" though I did hope at the time you wouldn't confuse the issue. The Big Bang describes one part of universe. It is not a "beginning" nor is it an "end". It is just one (rather special) part of the universe.Given our knowledge of General Relativity and theoretical physics, this cosmological argument is useless. Doesn't mean I don't believe in God, but this is no proof of His existence.

Precisely. I was getting round to making exactly the same point.This situation also describes in a perfect way the difference between physical and metaphysical.

n_j is correct in that they are still caused. They are simply elements of the complexities of interacting quantum fields, including those excitations of the fields that make up the observer(s).Think of a single 1cm high wavelet on the Atlantic. No one in their right mind would attempt to determine a causal chain of events that led to that wavelet at that place at that time with those characteristics... but that does not mean that the causal chain does not exist.

Please see message 40 for a reply. Thanks!

Yeah, I know. It was more for the viewers' benefit and I was just being lazy replying to your post rather than digging for Ramoss's

Why do they? Why cannot I (as creator) invent any kind of rule system I like, which has no (obvious) relation to the rule system I obey?And the more important point is the isolation created by the virtual world. The world can be tinkered with by the programmer, but not vice-versa.

Yes it can The universe is quite possibly infinite in extent spatially, even if it has only a finite extent back to the Big Bang. No they don't and I know quite a few... Because it is not as cut and dry as you think. However, you are dealing with some of the deepest concepts within relativity and cosmology, most of which never reach the surface of layman and popular science presentations of the subject.

That's fine. The only separation I require is that the contents of the virtual world have no contact outside of that world. This is simply a case of restricting the allowable operations within that world.I don't know if you know any maths, but think of the virtual world as a subgroup g of some larger group G. The group operation on elements of g only ever return elements of g, whereas if you combine with elements of G, you can return either elements of g or G.

I'm happy with that. The physical nature of the software, no. But the actual algorithm has nothing to do with electrons and photons... it is a mathematical entity built upon whatever axiomatic formulation of mathematics you prefer. Yes No. Or at least... which rules? If you mean mathematics in the most general sense, then Yes. But if you mean our physical rules, then No. The virtual world is described by mathematics, not physics.Remember my God and Mathematics thread from last year? My initial question was 'did God have any choice in the mathematics of our world?'. The virtual world is an example of this. To entities within the virtual world, that is their reality.

Yes, though probably not the versa... the prgrammer can still tinker with the model. He could reset all the parameters (Flood?), artificially change some of the parameters (water into wine?)... you get the idea Well, for a human programmer, yes there would obviously have to be a period of design, prototyping/piloting, and then full implementation. I would love to be able to rummage through God's waste paper bin to play with the failed/test creations... then again, I have this horrible feeling that we are living in one of those already in the bin

Given effective unlimited processing power, infinite storage, and infinite patience I'm not sure what limitations we would have...I think it is more down to the nature of God...

Not much. Both God and the programmer interact, not through the rules of the creation/virtual-world, but through the program structure itself. Think of the Matrix (don't groan) where Neo and co get back to their den after seeing the Oracle. Neo see the cat twice, and Trinity says "something's changed". That house was now different... walls where there once were doors, etc. The code had been tampered with. There was no breakdown of conservation of energy, it was as if the change had always been there. It was a change to the entire reality with just a little tweak of code. This is how I see miracles working. I just see him tinkering with the code as above. Or am I missing your meaning, as I am a little confused by what you said?