09 Jul '09 06:37>1 edit
Originally posted by sh76When was the beginning of time? What was before that?
Yes, there are many things the human mind is simply incapable of comprehending, including:
1) When was the origin of matter? If there was no begining, what does that mean? If there was a begining, what was before that? Where did the original matter come from? Energy? Fine. Where did the energy come from?
2) When was the begining of time? What was before t atheism. If we can't explain or understand these things, how can we be sure there's no God?
To ask what was “before” time is a nonsensical question. As such, there is no sensible answer. (I realize that such questions may stretch the capacity of our language, but—as Wittgenstein pointed out—it is “bewitchment” by our own language that gives rise to a lot of philosophical pseudo-problems.)
What is beyond the outer limits of space? If there are no such limits, what does that mean?
If it makes sense to speak of a “totality” at all (and I think it does), then—by definition—the totality has no edge or boundary.
If space/time (dimensionality in general) are aspects of that totality, then there is nothing “beyond” or “before”. And that “nothing” means absolute nihil, not a “queer kind of something” (G.E. Moore) that we can speculate about—e.g., empty space.
I think that people have difficulty thinking about “the totality that has no edge”, and therefore want to press beyond that. But that “pressing beyond” is really a collapse back into comfortable categories that have ready analogies within the totality.
If your headache is not too bad, you might try wrapping your head around that notion of totality. 🙂