Alfred Maddenstein writes:
I propose in this thread that I am the one and only non-creationist in this forum. That is simple. I cannot conceive a single atom to be created out of nothing or being turned into nothing. An atom that exists could only be relatively absent in a relative location or it may change its form, split or fuse with other atoms if it is present there. Creation is absolutely impossible in any way, shape or form. Nothing is new but all is only newly reconfigured in ways that are rather old is the only rational position possible in my view.
The others on this site I divide into two groups. The majority of cryptic creationists who are firmly in denial. And the minority of open creationists ridiculed and bullied by the majority of those firmly in denial about their creationism.
I didn't see a point worth contending from the Opening Post.
I don't mind being called a creationist or a non-creationist or whatever else anyone would like to describe me as. To me, it's the idea that matters, and to claim knowledge of something we just don't know about yet ("Creation is absolutely impossible in any way, shape or form") is a hint that he isn't looking to have an honest discussion.
As for ICANT and the resulting time discussion... I think Catholic Scientist has summed ICANT up fairly accurately (
Message 494).
I like to hope that maybe there's some sort of idea in ICANT's head and he's just not able to get it past the language barrier he's created over years of misusing technical terms. And then... maybe that idea does have some level of honest question to it.
I attempted to get into the simple and basic errors of ICANT's ideas. But when it became too obvious that his ideas had large basic flaws that he could not explain... he chose to continue using the basic flaws as a way to confuse higher level ideas instead of dealing with the basic flaws so that others might be able to understand his thoughts.
The simple challenge remains for anyone not convinced that time is a dimension of our universe: the way to show that time is not a dimension is to describe a physical object that does not depend on time. (See
Message 382 for details).
Time being a dimension of our universe, means that time might not be a dimension of anything "outside" our universe (if anything like that exists). Or that anything resembling time outside our universe might be very different from how we know time within our universe.
This means that all temporal terms such as "before, from, after, eternity, eternal, existence, infinite..." may or may not have any meaning when applied to "the beginning of our universe."
Then, it is simple to recognize that ICANT's dichotomy:
quote:
Either the universe has existed for an infinite eternity in some form.
OR
The universe had a beginning to exist in and from non-existence.
Cannot be valid because the terms are too dependent on things within our universe in order to apply to anything outside our universe (like it's "beginning," if it can have one).
Therefore, there are many more options available as the rest of the participants have explained.
Without this central basis of ICANT's ideas, his conclusions no longer apply and we're left in the same position we were in at the beginning of the discussion... We cannot know if anyone is correctly labelled as a "creationist" or "non-creationist" because we don't know enough about the start of the universe in order to talk about it with any sort of authority.
It's fun to discuss and imagine and theorize... but we don't currently have the necessary data in order to come to any conclusions. The necessary data may very well be impossible for us to obtain... but we don't know that yet either, as we are making progress in the research. If this thread has shown me anything, it has shown me that all the logic, reasoning and philosophy put forward by Alfred Maddenstein and ICANT is completely useless unless it is based off of actual, realistic, objective data. Without that data to link it with reality, all the ideas about reality are simply imagination. Just as it was in the time of Aristotle.
Edited by Stile, : Strange how switching "may" to "might" makes things a lot clearer on what I was trying to say.
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