In the beginning God or nothing?

In 'nothing' god cannot be. Because if he is in 'nothing', then it's not 'nothing' anymore.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I'm discussing 'nothing' if you want to tell me how you can have time
in nothing I say you have changed the subject to something.
Kelly

If you read my post, you will note that I explicitly said that I fully agree with you that you cannot have time in 'nothing' nor can it be placed on the timeline.

However, you made an error when you invoked nothing as a substantial entity. You said:
"We are left with choices here, can we have a beginning of time without
cause, can we really have an event without something taking place
before it, can we really get everything from nothing?"
Here you are using 'nothing' in a very different sense. Here it simply means 'no cause' whereas you attempt to ridicule it by supposing that it is the same 'nothing' that you previously defined - which is isn't.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I actually believe the cause of the universe is outside of it, or better
said not part of it including our time line.

I have no major problem with that, so long as you realize that your 'cause effect' is not based on the standard timeline ie it did not happen 'before' the big bang but rather along a totally different dimension in which there was a 'before' and now there is a 'present' in which the universe with its entire history now exists.

I see God as having no issues there, but any other reason or cause has the issue of getting
out of the starting block without a reason for being, let alone doing so.
Kelly
But of course this means that you are arguing for your concept based on a 'necessary cause' argument and you will run into problems. If you are arguing that all events in our universe and timeline must have causes where those causes are of our timeline dimension, then invoking a cause outside the timeline does not solve the 'first cause' problem.
All Chickens hatch from eggs, all eggs are layed by chickens. Claiming that God made the first chicken does not solve the problem as it violates the premises. Claiming that the universe was layed by an even bigger chicken does not solve the problem either as internally to the universe we still have an infinite chain of chickens and eggs.

Originally posted by twhitehead
If you read my post, you will note that I explicitly said that I fully agree with you that you cannot have time in 'nothing' nor can it be placed on the timeline.

However, you made an error when you invoked nothing as a substantial entity. You said:
[b]"We are left with choices here, can we have a beginning of time without
cause, can we really have supposing that it is the same 'nothing' that you previously defined - which is isn't.

[/b]You believe there is another 'nothing' you believe in a different
'nothing' you have some other way to describe it?
Kelly

Originally posted by twhitehead
I have no major problem with that, so long as you realize that your 'cause effect' is not based on the standard timeline ie it did not happen 'before' the big bang but rather along a totally different dimension in which there was a 'before' and now there is a 'present' in which the universe with its entire history now exists.

[b]I see God as having no as internally to the universe we still have an infinite chain of chickens and eggs.

[/b]You wish to say that in another dimension invaded ours when ours had
'nothing' in it and that was how we got everything?
Kelly

Originally posted by twhitehead
I have no major problem with that, so long as you realize that your 'cause effect' is not based on the standard timeline ie it did not happen 'before' the big bang but rather along a totally different dimension in which there was a 'before' and now there is a 'present' in which the universe with its entire history now exists.

[b]I see God as having no as internally to the universe we still have an infinite chain of chickens and eggs.

[/b]My argument is against 'nothing' flowing into 'everything', so the start
of everything requires something eternal to bring into being if there
was a beginning.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
You believe there is another 'nothing' you believe in a different
'nothing' you have some other way to describe it?
Kelly

You first defined nothing as:
Nothing goes way past that, no place holder, no place, the lack of any and all values of any kind, no cause, no reactions, no material, no force, no pressure, no singularity, no before, no during, no after, for me right now it seems its only real
description would be to define what is not there since speaking of it
gives it shape.

Later you say:
We are left with choices here, can we have a beginning of time without cause, can we really have an event without something taking place before it, can we really get everything from nothing?
Here it is not clear what your 'nothing' means. Either it is not used in the same sense. ie it is not an entity or non-entity, but rather merely saying 'without cause' as in the first part of the sentence, or you have subtly changed the question during the course of the sentence and instantiated a nothing which has a place holder, an 'after' and can 'cause'. But neither sense fits your original definition.

Later you use the word again:
Is it that you do not want to accept God and for no other good reason
you have nothing to hang your hat on so you accept an eternal
universe.
Here you are even able to hang your hat on 'nothing', or more likely you are using it in the sense that there is nowhere to hang your hat ie it is not the same sense as originally defined.

Are you starting to see the two uses of the word? The mistake you are making is to use it in one sense (ie 'The universe came from nothing' - meaning the universe had no cause), then use the other sense to try to disprove it or show it to be illogical.

Originally posted by KellyJay
You wish to say that in another dimension invaded ours when ours had
'nothing' in it and that was how we got everything?
Kelly

Forget the science fiction for a moment. Dimensions do not 'invade'. A dimension is a measuring stick. If something external to the universe and external to our space time dimensions 'caused' the universe then there must exist a dimension external to the universe on which the universe is just a blip, or at least finite in extent - otherwise the 'cause' would not be 'external'.

And it is no me suggesting the scenario, it is you.

Originally posted by KellyJay
My argument is against 'nothing' flowing into 'everything', so the start
of everything requires something eternal to bring into being if there
was a beginning.
Kelly

Your error is to assume that 'flowing' must occur. There is a third alternative. It is possible that time is finite ie has a beginning, but did not 'flow' from some prior state of nothingness. In fact, if time had a beginning, there is no prior state by definition.
Further your conclusion that something 'eternal' must bring it into being is totally unfounded and not supported by any argument you have presented thus far. What do you mean by 'eternal' here anyway? It could not have existed before the beginning because there was no before, so in the time dimension it is necessarily as finite as the universe.

Originally posted by twhitehead
You first defined nothing as:
[b]Nothing goes way past that, no place holder, no place, the lack of any and all values of any kind, no cause, no reactions, no material, no force, no pressure, no singularity, no before, no during, no after, for me right now it seems its only real
description would be to define what is not there since speaking of it
gi o cause), then use the other sense to try to disprove it or show it to be illogical.

[/b]There is no cause within 'nothing' it lacks all in every meaning of the
word 'all'. So no cause or effect would be there, since having either
would mean we have a cause or effect, both of which means we have
more than nothing. To hold a place for anything means again there
is more going on than nothing, I thought I had made that clear when
speaking about a null value in programming.

I maintain you cannot aquire anything from nothing, there would be
no reason too, since nothing would ever change, because there is
nothing to change.
Kelly

Originally posted by twhitehead
Your error is to assume that 'flowing' must occur. There is a third alternative. It is possible that time is finite ie has a beginning, but did not 'flow' from some prior state of nothingness. In fact, if time had a beginning, there is no prior state by definition.
Further your conclusion that something 'eternal' must bring it into being is totally unfo ...[text shortened]... ere was no before, so in the time dimension it is necessarily as finite as the universe.

You are suggesting that counting backwards in time allows us to stop
at what zero? So we have no negative numbers for some reason?
Kelly

Before universe was created, there was nothing. And in this nothingness was god. Therefore it couldn't be nothing, because god was there. So nothing cannot exist.

Religious logic is crazy...

Originally posted by KellyJay
There is no cause within 'nothing' it lacks all in every meaning of the
word 'all'. So no cause or effect would be there, since having either
would mean we have a cause or effect, both of which means we have
more than nothing. To hold a place for anything means again there
is more going on than nothing, I thought I had made that clear when
speaking about a null value in programming.

And I am perfectly happy with that definition. However, don't then make the error of trying to invoke a different version of nothing and then use the above definition against it.

I maintain you cannot aquire anything from nothing, there would be
no reason too, since nothing would ever change, because there is
nothing to change.
Kelly
Do you realize that you have already subtly changed your use of 'nothing'? You are not not only placing it in a time frame but giving it duration.

As I pointed out earlier though, this talk of 'something from nothing' is really just a strawman, as nobody has made such a claim.

Originally posted by KellyJay
You are suggesting that counting backwards in time allows us to stop
at what zero? So we have no negative numbers for some reason?
Kelly

I am not simply suggesting it, I am saying that it is true by definition. If you have negative numbers then it is not the beginning of time. The lack of negative numbers on a dimension is not an impossible concept by the way, there is no such thing as negative width, negative weight, negative radius, negative lines of longitude etc.

Originally posted by twhitehead
And I am perfectly happy with that definition. However, don't then make the error of trying to invoke a different version of nothing and then use the above definition against it.

[b]I maintain you cannot aquire anything from nothing, there would be
no reason too, since nothing would ever change, because there is
nothing to change.
Kelly
Do you ...[text shortened]... alk of 'something from nothing' is really just a strawman, as nobody has made such a claim.[/b]

I'm saying if nothing were real, you could not or would not have any
time frame, you could not and would not have any change in the
nothing, nothing would happen as that was all there was. LOL 🙂
Kelly