At best God made stuff for us to count. The counting is our own doing.

Maths is predictive, though. It enables not only counting, but discovery of things otherwise unknowable. Much of modern science is an illustation of just that, as pointed out by Eugene Wigner in his influential essay Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.

Anyway, the point I was making was in response to the rhetorical question 'what could be "outside" of the Universe, as the Universe is by definition everything'. The OP falls into the trap of believing that whatever is real must be spatially located. So I was making the rhetorical counterpoint that such things as conceptual or abstract objects such as number are not located anywhere, they're not 'in' the Universe, either.

We come up with a way of describing the world and Eugene Wigner complains that describing the world seems unreasonable... It just seems a bit churlish.

perhaps he understands something we don't. He did after all win the Nobel Prize for atomic physics.

Meh. Bob Dylan got one fo them Nobel things, for writing "How many times?"

And Obama got one for being elected.

Now I don't hold with that Platonic Forms stuff, but it's a good topic. Care to start a thread on the article? Have you a link?

Your rejection of the assumption in the OP looks quite right. Although I'm not sure numbers are real - except for real numbers.

Now I don't hold with that Platonic Forms stuff, but it's a good topic. Care to start a thread on the article? Have you a link? — Banno

I do, as a matter of fact. I’ve even started the draft. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

No promises.

Although I'm not sure numbers are real - except for real numbers. — Banno

:smirk:

One argument I have heard from Franz Liszt is that God exists outside of time, however for that to be the case, a God would have to be outside of the whole universe, which seems scientifically impossible given that nothing is outside of the universe by definition. — scientia de summis

In order to understand what is being said, consider the notion that is science that does not exist (in any real way). When you brush this abstraction aside, then all things become possible.

My intuition suggests intuition is useless, because time as I experience it, is not what time actually is. Time is very strange. We can observe time dilation for fast-moving objects, and gravitational time dilation for objects caught in extreme gravitational fields. We then ask about the age of the universe! Even cross referencing stellar evolution, the cosmic microwave background and expansion - only gives us a relative measure of the age of the universe; relative to how time passes for us! But does time pass at the same rate for other objects in the universe? It seems unlikely to me, that the universe is of a uniform age! Consequently, I imagine, that if you could build a time machine, and travel back in time toward the big bang, you'd never get there. It would be like approaching the speed of light - only you'd get slower and slower, like a clock falling into a black hole!

Where is the number 7 located? — Wayfarer

It's usually placed between 6 and 8. :razz:

on the numberline, yes. Where is the numberline located?

Where is the numberline located? — emancipate

I seem to have one on top of my keyboard. :-)

The answer to the question of origin of the universe is "Mystery created it" or "Mystery caused it" or "Mystery did it", which only begs the question and does not answer it.

Either (i) religious theists don't know that they don't know or (ii) they know they don't know and just bullshit themselves and us with "Mystery did it", etc. — 180 Proof

How is that different than other existential mysteries of the universe, including your own conscious existence?

I had no idea that conscious experience is a "mystery" like g/G.

Consider yourself enlightened then. LOL There remains mystery (?).

Have you given any thought to relativity (speed of light) and the existence of a theoretical eternity/outside of time itself?

The Big Bang is the best theory we have of our universe's origin and the equations we use to study it are only good to about some billionths of a second after the actual Big Bang, beyond that, I'm told, the equations break down. When that happens, all bets are off, and the only thing we can do is to continue gathering data and hope that somewhere in there will be found the critical piece of evidence that can help solve this mystery.

“ The Big Bang is the best theory we have of our universe's origin and the equations we use to study it are only good to about some billionths of a second after the actual Big Bang, beyond that, I'm told, the equations break down”. Eh? The equations don’t “break down”. Big Bang created everything in our known universe.

From scientific American — “In the first few seconds after the big bang, the universe was very hot and dense ense, making it fully ionised — all of the protons, neutrons and electrons moved about freely and did not come together to make atoms. Only three minutes later, when the universe had cooled from 1032 to 109 °C, could light element formation begin.
At this point, electrons were still roaming free and only atomic nuclei could form. Protons were technically the first nuclei (when combined with an electron they make a hydrogen atom) and deuterons were the second. Deuterons are the nuclei of deuterium and are made when protons and neutrons fuse and emit photons.
Deuterons and neutrons can fuse to create a tritium nucleus with one proton and two neutrons. When the tritium nucleus comes across a proton the two can combine into a helium nucleus with two protons and two neutrons, known as He-4. Another path that leads to helium is the combination of a deuteron and a proton into a helium nucleus with two protons but only one neutron, He-3. When He-3 comes across a neutron, they can fuse to form a full helium nucleus, He-4. Each step in these reactions also emits a photon.
Photon emission can be a slow process, and there is a set of reactions that take deuterons and create helium nuclei faster because they bypass the emission of photons. They start by fusing two deuterons and the end result is a He-4 nucleus and either a proton or a neutron, depending on the specific path.”

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/basic-space/httpblogsscientificamericancombasic-space20110802on-the-origin-of-chemical-elements/

We are however trapped by time.