Existence

In this proposed topic I would like to discuss existence.From dictionary.com:

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—noun
1. the state or fact of existing; being.

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SourceFrom the free dicgtionary:

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1. The fact or state of existing; being.

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SourceFrom Wikipedia:

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Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations.

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SourceFor this thread Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth". is to be accepted as a declarative statement of completed action.Genesis 1:2, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." is to be accepted as a disjunctive as translated in the LXX and marked by the Masoretes.Thus it would begin with 'Now' or 'But' the earth...Now to a very controversial word. היה is translated 'was' in verse 2 means 1) to be, become, come to pass, exist, happen, fall out.I find only 4 times היה is translated 'was'. Genesis 1:2, 3:1, Exodus 5:13, and Judges 20:3.Since the word does not have 'was' in the definition I don't know why the translators chose 'was' unless it suited their bias.In Genesis 1:2 my bias would prefer become, or come to pass. But I believe a form of exist (existed) would be better.In Genesis Exodus 3:14 "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." אהיה אשר אהיה This statement was translated "I AM THAT I AM'.But should have been translated 'I EXIST THAT I EXIST'. 'I' comes from the prefix א.Thus God claims to be existence.In Genesis 1:1 Moses declared God caused the Heavens and the Earth to exist.In Isaiah 40:26 Isaiah declared God caused all things to exist.In Isaiah 42:5 God declared He caused the Heavens to begin to exist and streached them out.In Isaiah 45:12 God declared He caused the earth to begin to exist and man upon it.These are just a few scriptures that declare Existence caused everything to begin to exist.Observations:The Heavens (universe) exists.
The Earth exists.
Mankind as well as all living creatures exist.The question is:Is existence responsible for bringing into existence all that exists?If not, then what is responsible for bringing into existence all that exists.The Bible declares existence is responsible for bringing into existence all that exists.I agree.What say you?If existence is not responsible for bringing into existence all that exists, then what is?There is existence (all things exist) and the opposite of that is non-existence (no thing exists). There is no known mechanism whereby existence can begin to exist from non-existence.Can anyone present a case for existence without it being brought about by existence?God Bless,Your choice.Edited by ICANT, : Correct text reference to Exodus from Genesis

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Larni, Great question, I wish I had the answer.Being finite human beings everything we know of happening in our lifetime has a cause and effect. So the default position is that everything has a cause. Nothing is wrong with a universe existing where things can happen without a cause.But the one we live in has a cause and effect for everything.But there is a problem with a universe that has always existed. Science tells us it would be a dead universe had it always existed. Therefore the universe had to have a beginning. (Or it had to have many beginnings.)Then we get into the problem of existence.Either there is existence or there is non-existence. The two cannot co-exist.We know for a fact there is existence. We exist.Thus either existence has always existed, which is a scientific impossibility, according to present theory. There are those working on hypothesis of existence always existing. (Such as string theory.)Or existence began to exist out of non-existence, which is also a scientific impossibility.Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that is an attempt to explain existence. I have no problem with existence, existing. I happen to call that existence God.I am on record here at EvC as saying whatever caused the universe to exist would be considered God as it would have to be everything that has ever existed or will exist.If it was the so called God particle, Hawkings instanton or that pin point that existed at T=10^-43. They all would have to be everything that ever existed or will exist to produce what is observed today.We have the same amount of physical reproducable evidence for any of those, as we do for my God.The universe exists and we exist.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Theodoric, If you are refering to a universe existing where things can happen without a cause, I can not find anything that does not have a cause.But that does not mean that a universe could not exist where things happen without a cause.Now if you are refering to the later where everything in our universe has a cause and effect for everything. I will give you one example of cause and effect.
I hold an apple in my extended hand and turn loose of the apple, the apple falls to the solid surface below. When it reaches that solid surface it stops.The apple falls because gravity pulls the mass to the solid surface below. The apple stops when it comes in contact with the surface, it may bounce because the surface is solid. Because the solid surface is harder than the apple the apple will bruise.Now you give me one example of something that does not have a cause and effect in the universe in which we live. I will quote Stephen Hawking.

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In this lecture, I would like to discuss whether time itself has a beginning, and whether it will have an end. All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago. This is probably the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology. Yet it is now taken for granted.

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SourceThe standard theory says the universe has not always existed but had a beginning in the past. From the OP:

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From dictionary.com:

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—noun
1. the state or fact of existing; being.

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From the free dicgtionary:

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1. The fact or state of existing; being.

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Source

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From Wikipedia:

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Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality in general, as well as of the basic categories of being and their relations.

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Source

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It would have helped if you had read the OP.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Theodoric, I'm saying the universe has not always existed, but the universe does exist now.Existence does not = the universe. It seems that is evidence the universe has not existed forever. At the least Stephen Hawking at the time he made that statement believed the universe had a beginning. In Message 5 you said: I gave three definitions in the OP.How am I supposed to improve on those definitions? Why would existence have a metaphysical meaning to me?Existence is a state of being which is reality, which is the opposite of non-existence, non-reality. I will take all the blessings I can get.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Paul, I agree. What does the conclusion have to do with the first statement?I did and have for a long time thought about it.Existence = something existing.Non-Existence = nothing existing.Now if according to your statement above that nothing that exists could be responsible for bringing into existence all that exists, what caused existence to begin to exist.According to that statement the universe and us do not exist.Can you comprehend non-existence, which is an absence of anything?Think about it.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Bob,Welcome to EvC. Short answer, time.But isn't decay a mistatement as the decay is simply a process of producing a different element. So you are asserting that space-time existed and produced all that exists.You got any evidence? No there is no such thing as the dimension of time.Time is a function that man has developed to measure existence. But if there was no thing in existence to expand there would still no no existence.Why do you think there have been so many different hypothesis presenting a way the universe could begin to exist. I will mention a couple.Hartly Hawking instanton.
String Theory (so called but remains a hypothesis). You have not read enough of my posts to assert what I claim about the existence of the universe.I do claim the universe has always existed.But I do not claim it has always existed in the form we see it today. My statement is that the universe has always existed in some form.The reason for that is that matter and energy can not be created or destroyed.I know that Alan Guth presented the zero energy universe where all matter and energy could be created but that hypothesis did not get very much attention. True but just because relativity breaks down and cannot tell us what is at planck time does not remove what is at planck time.Existence had to be there because if there was not existence there neither the universe or us would exist. But they do claim that existence existed, as there was at least two branes to bang together and start the process.So my point is valid as I have never claimed the universe has always existed in its present form. But if there was ever non-existence there would still be non-existence.Therefore something had to exist that caused the universe and everything in it to begin to exist.This would mean that existence has to exist outside of the universe.Oh, and I do know about the so-called self-contained universe that existed at T=10^-43 which began to expand into the universe as we know it.But notice that smaller than a pea universe had to exist in order to begin to expand.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Theodoric, Are you saying that Hawking did not say, " All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning, about 15 billion years ago."?Why doesn't this support my argument that science says the universe has not always existed but had a beginning?That is what the quote was presented to support.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Rahvin, But what you have never explained is how the universe and everything in it could begin to exist out of an absence of anything. (non-existence).Would you like to explain how that could happen?God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Rahvin, You are the one talking in circles.I did not author the dictionaries.My statement in the OP: Do you have an explanation for how existence began to exist?I presented all the references to existence beginning to exist that I can find.I even googled 'what caused existence to begin to exist' and found no other answer even though I got a lot of hits. Which is the argument I have presented.Existence has to exist because the universe and all in it exists including us.If there was ever non-existence then there would still be non-existence. Causality does not require time as we know it only existence. Time is our way of measuring existence. Why don't you take off your clowns suit and explain how what exists today could begin to exist from an absence of anything.While you are at it please explain how time as we know it could exist until the earth began to exist some 4.5 billion years ago.If there was no earth revolving around with the sun marking time, what marked time as we know it?Are you sure it wasn't just existence?God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Paul, I really don't think there are any possibilities that I have not thought about.Even the one that If there was an existence that caused everything we see today to begin to exist, that existence could not be a part of the universe as we know it. That existence would have to be outside of the universe we reside in.It would make no difference if that existence was God as I believe it is or whether it is Hawking's instanton, the God particle, or string theory so called that caused everything to begin to exist.They all would have to exist outside of the universe.ORWe would have a self contained self creating universe as some assert we do. I think you even assert the universe is a self contained entity that expanded into what we see today.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Rahvin, The only reason I am incapable of comprehending that you cannot have a "before" without an earlier point on a timeline", is there is no such a thing as a timeline even though you have drawn one many times.The problem is that line you draw has no beginning or end therefore it is not a timeline at all it is only existence.You then mark of the beginning of time on that timeline commencing with the beginning of the expansion of the universe that existed at T=10^-43, that no one knows if it existed at T=0 or not.Because the only answer I get to what existed at T=0 is "We don't know".The problem is you can not understand the difference in existence and non-existence.Existence = reality a state of being.Non-Existence = an absence of anything. No time, no space, no gravity, no energy, no matter, no mass, no atoms, no quarks only an absence of anything.Now if you can ever get your head around 'an absence of anything' you might begin to understand what I am talking about.Do you understand what an absence of anything is?Either the universe began to exist out of an absence of anything or there was existence in which the universe began to exist.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Theodoric, I can make the quote no simpler than Hawking says the universe has not always existed which has nothing to do with existence.I had made the statement science said the universe had not always existed.I presented the quote from Hawking in support that science says the universe has not always existed.I at no point put forth that Hawking was equating the two nor that he was talking about existence.So quit trying to state my arguments for me. You don't like the dictionary definition of 'a state of being'?Do you exist or do you not exist?If you exist that is a state of being which equals reality.So if I got to give my definition to satisfy your not understanding existence I will offer the following.Existence = a state of being which is reality.If you got a different definition please present it.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Son, In the thread you referenced in Message 26 I asked lyx2no to explain how the lightning was formed which he did a very good job of doing. Much better than anything I could find on the internet.But what does how lightning is created have to do with how we generate electricity?Whether I can grasp there not being a before or not does not have anything to do with whether I can grasp what non-existence is.Non-existence literally means there is absolutuly no thing existing of any kind or sort. No space, no time, no gravity, no universe, no matter, no energy and not even a place for that non-existence to exist in.Now if you believe that all that exists today could be produced from such non-existence please explain how that is possible.Or continue your personal attack.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi Rahvin, What you wrote is circular reasoning.My claim is for us to exist existence has to have existed eternally.If there had been non-existence there would still be non-existence.Something can not come from nothing.If you believe it can present your argument. But there can be no beginning without somewhere for that beginning to exist.ORYou have a beginning of something from nothing. Yes. I disagree but that does not matter.Please explain to me what time is and how time is determined. Yes you keep telling me that at a point in existence time as we know it began to exist and there is no before that time.You don't mind if I don't take your word for it do you?Since there is such little consensus on what time is could you explain how time as we know it is determined.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Hi cavediver, But I do understand that you say time did not exist until the universe began to expand and since time did not exist there was no before.I do know that Stephen Hawking said the universe had a beginning. I also know that he created immaginary time which is vertical time in which the universe began to exist.I also know he came up with the instanton which creates an unbounded universe which you go directly to when talking about the BBT even though you do not tell your readers that fact. You made that statement to Son Goku in an earlier thread.So would you like to inform me of how something can begin to exist in or from non-existence?Would you also like to inform me of what time is and how and what determines time as we know it?This is an opportunity to educate the lurkers even if you can't convince me but you will never know unless you try will you?God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."