On 29-Jul-08 23:26, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> why? For many people God is part of this universe, yet not part of the 
>> observable universe. (I know you did not mean that).
> 
> Because "universe" means "everything there is". Define "is" in a way 
> that includes things that do not and never will have any chance of 
> affecting any sort of causality in your observations.

There may be things that you know existed or must have existed once but 
now are outside of your observation forever.

>>> (2) "moment in time" is a meaningless term, even for things fairly 
>>> close together, let alone separated in a spacelike way.
>>
>> yes. I am aware of that. Here informally meant to mean every point in 
>> space time that has the same value for the time component. So rather 
>> undefined indeed.
> 
> It's the informality that kills you, tho. 

I think I acknowledged that already.

> There's no such thing as "the 
> same time component". The same point in spacetime has many values for 
> the time component. You can have two things that happen "at the same 
> time", and I experience A happening before B, and you experience B 
> happening before A, and Andrew experiences them both happening at the 
> same time. There isn't any universal clock you can use to determine the 
> "time component" for a place in space, any more than there's any 
> universal clock you can use to determine the Y component of a parabola.
> 
>>> In other words, define "universe" first. This gets you into Clinton 
>>> areas, of trying to define what "is" is.
>>
>> Hmm, I did not know he once tried to define the universe. I know that 
>> his definition of sex was peculiar, so I assume you refer to that.
> 
> No, I was referring to his arguing over what "is" is. 

Ok, never heard that one before.

> Does something 
> completely outside your causality exist? Is there an actual definition 
> you could come up with that would make "the universe" bigger than "the 
> observable universe"?

As said, I think you can.

Post a reply to this message