ICANT'S position in the creation debate

Causality is a property of time. If there's no time, causality breaks down.

Isn't Keppler just staring at a particular patch of sky to measure the dimming of a star when a planet passes in front of it to try and find exo planets in the range of Earth mass and Earth's distance from the sun? I don't see how that would help with string theory or black holes much at all.

Which telescope are you talking about and where do you get this 500 billion light years away figure? Even if there were stars 500 billion light years away, we would not be able to see them since the sheer amount of space between us and them expanding makes it seem as if they are moving away faster than light, so their light can't reach us.

That's what I assumed too, but I wanted to double check with him before assuming anything. You never know, he might have been tlaking about the Area 51 telescope we're building with technology reverse-engineered from the space ships we have stored there...but I've already said too much. They call it this, but since it coveres IR, whereas Hubble was largely visible light, I find the claim dubious.

Not necessarily. There are things farther than 13.7 billion light years away. We can't see them (AFAIK) but that doesn't mean the universe is older than that because every bit of space expanding will make the objects seem to be moving faster than light, which will push them beyond the distance light can travel.Remember, 13.7 billion light years is a measure of the distance light can travel in a year multiplied by 13.7 billion. 13.7 billion years old, for the age of the universe, would be the same even if light travelled at a different speed.Edited by Perdition, : I'm sure we all agree the universe is older than 13.7 years...

Technically wrong. The "dark ages" was a span of time after the big bang where light was still not able to move freely. The oldest light would be from the end of these dark ages.

The beachball is a representative of time. So, the singularity is the pole of the ball, as it were. Each infinitely small strip around that pole is a snapshot of the universe at a particular moment in time. We are currently in a thin slice around that pole, closer to the equator where the universe (that strip of ball) is larger than it was in previous moment of time. The singularity is on the ball because it is the "starting point" of the universe, and as such, must be represented on a timeline of the universe, no?

Time is a dimension. It is that which stops everything from happening all at once. Essentially, time is a measurement of change. One could argue that if nothing changed, there would be no time. But, for the instance of this example, the everyday concept of time is good enough.If you look at a graph and on the X axis is time, and on the y axis is something you want to measure over time, do you stop and say, I don't know what time is so this graph makes no sense to me? If so, I'm sorry for almost anyone you have interactions with.So, imagine this graph you're looking at has at the intersection of the x and y axes "The Big Bang." That equals the "pole" of the beach ball. Now, on this graph, you draw a line representing the total volume of the universe. I starts at (0,0) "The Big Bang" and gets big very quickly (according to inflation), then levels off a bit, but still gets bigger. This line equals the fact that as you move along the surface of the beach ball, away from the pole and toward the equator, the circumference of the ball gets bigger.If that's too hard for you to understand, then I'm sorry, but any model of the universe is going to be too hard for you to understand, so you may want to stay out of any discussion that involves a model of the universe.

As Lyx2no said, a dimension is a measurement of a physical thing, it is not a physical thing itself. Is length a physical thing? Is Width a physical thing? Is height a physical thing? No, they're properties of physical things, much like "red" is an objective thing, but isn't necessarily a physical thing, it's a description/a property/a measurement of a physical thing.

Correct. It is a property of a physical thing. Change. Duration. No. It is a property of things in the universe. Just like length is not a concept of man, or redness is a concept of man. It is a property of the universe and all things in it, just as the other 3 dimensions we are familiar with are. To you, who wants to talk about a "before" the universe. If time is a property of the universe, there was no time before the universe. It's only important because you don't seem to understand or accept that. Most physicists or cosmologists simply say, "Time started at the Big Bang along with the Uiverse," and go about their day.

I don't know what you mean here. No, it is not the concept of man. Time, length, width, height, they would all exist whether we were here to measure them or not. Time is a measure of change or duration. If we weren't here, things would still endure, they would still change. If something was in one state at one moment, and in a different state at another, then time is measure of it's changing from one state to another over a span, rather than simultaneously being in both states. If something exists, it exists from one moment to another, time is the measure of it's duration from the beginning of its existence to the end. Exactly. Not quite. Time began to exist exactly when the universe began to exist. They went hand in hand. This doesn't even make sense. Eternity is a span of time, now is an instant, there is no span. SO what you're saying is a timeless span of time, which makes no sense. You're just doing word mash.

All of that equals current existence. It doesn't say anything about past or future. That's a tautology, but you have to show that an eternal existence exists first for it to be relevant to anything in the rela world.

Are you asking about the units we have created to determine the interval of time? In that case, seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years are all units human minds have created to keep track of the passage of time. It's the same as inches, feet, kilometers, yards, etc are units we have created to keep track of distance. But, don't for a minute think that if we had never conceived of the words "Kilometer" or "inch" that everything would exist at one point because distance is just a concept of the human mind. Distance (length, width, height) exists whether we are there to cut it up into chunks and measure it or not. Similarly, whether we make up the words "seconds" or "days" or not, thngs will happen sequentially and not all at once because time exists independently of the units we have created to count it. I'm not saying that universe can't exist without time, I'm merely saying that the universe that actually exists (or at least the one we are inhabitants of), exists with time as one of its dimensions, and since dimensions are what define a universe, the dimensions come into existence at the same time the universe does.For example. I could build a box out of wood that is 2'x3'x4'. Now, when does the length of the box come into existence? It comes into existence at the time I actually have a box. Before that, there was no box to have a length, but as soon as it became a ox, poff, the was the length of the box in existence. It's not some sleight of hand philosophizing, it's tautologies and definitions. If you have a box, it will have a length by definition for as long as it is a box. If you have a universe like ours, it will have time by definition, for as long as it's a universe like ours.

You're making assumptions and stating them as necessary when they're anything but. Not necessarily. No matter how you define reason, this is not a necessity. Something can exist for no reason at all, especially if it is the first something. Because there is no earlier. If time is a property of the universe, then there is no "before" and there is no "earlier" because both terms are dependent on time to have any meaning. You're saying this as if the two options are mutually exclusive. Why couldn't something that is infinite in all directions begin to exist? Why couldn't it {poof} into existence as being infinite?But, if you mean what do I think, then I think the Universe is finite but unbounded and it began to exist at the beginning of time (which is about 13.7 billion years ago). Yes. An eternal existence will never cease to exist. This is a tautology. It's like saying a red ball will never cease to reflect red light when light is shined on it. Well, considering the definition of eternal is never ending, saying something that's eternal will never end is pretty redundant, don't you think? Eternal implies infinite into the future and the past. Science is positing the possibility that the universe will continue forever in some state, but that it had a starting point. It's very much like the mathematical concept of a ray. It has a point at one end and extends into infinity in one direction.

That's right. Physical things have length. Why is that? Because length is a property of being physical.Another property is time. Physical things have time (called duration). It's a property of being physical, it's part of the definition of physical.