Reciprocating Bill
Posts: 4265
Joined: Oct. 2006
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Skeptic:
| Quote | | There either is or there isn't something outside of the universe. There are no other alternatives to that question, unless you see something that I and many others do not. |
But there ARE alternatives. One is that neither pole of this dichotomy - there IS or ISN'T something "outside" of the universe (or "before time") - has any meaning.
This is rather like demanding to know whether there IS, or IS NOT something north of the north pole. As it happens, it is not that one answer is correct and the other mistaken; rather, neither has any meaning: "There is nothing north of the north pole" has no more meaning than "there is something north of the north pole."
So it is not that your answer to your question is correct (or incorrect). Rather, the conceptual tools that you are applying, which are so useful in ordinary contexts and that you conceptualize as sweeping out all of the possible alternatives, may be wholly inappropriate to the issue at hand.
That is the alternative that you and so many others are not seeing.
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Myth: Something that never was true, and always will be.
"The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you."
- David Foster Wallace
"Here’s a clue. Snarky banalities are not a substitute for saying something intelligent. Write that down."
- Barry Arrington
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