Freethought & Rationalism Archive

luvluv · 01-20-2003, 07:23 PM

wiploc:

Rerun this statement through your head.

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then infinity would have passed since then

How exactly would infinity "have passed" if it was infinity?

beyelzu · 01-20-2003, 07:40 PM

there was no time before the universe began. because the universe beginning is the first point to measure time. as time is the distance between two events. so the first event starts time. so for all intents and purposes there is no meaningful time before the existence of the universe.

Wiploc · 01-20-2003, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv
wiploc:
How exactly would infinity "have passed" if it was infinity?

Well, it would take an infinite amount of time, but if that much time had passed, then infinity would have passed.

I don't know whether that answers your question; but if not, then I didn't understand your question.

You have some problems with the concept of infinity, like your idea that there aren't an infinite number of positive numbers. No mathematition is going to take your side on that. I suspect you think infinity is a "place" rather than an "area." To say that differently, I suspect you think all infinities are the same size. I don't this bears on your question.

In any case, if it was long enough since the creation (say long enough that the seconds since creation could be mapped against the irrational numbers between zero and one) then infinity would definitely have passed.
crc

Garbles18 · 01-20-2003, 09:36 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv
I'm referring to the succession of cause-effect occurances which are assumed in an infinite regress, which have progressed, from infinity past, to form the future. Each effect must have a preceding cause, and so on. These events started in the infinite past, so the string of causally related events should have never reached the present, IMHO.

I'm curious. Are you arguing that there are not infinite points in time between two points in time?

tronvillain · 01-20-2003, 11:25 PM

luvluv:

Quote:

I'm referring to the succession of cause-effect occurances which are assumed in an infinite regress, which have progressed, from infinity past, to form the future. Each effect must have a preceding cause, and so on. These events started in the infinite past, so the string of causally related events should have never reached the present, IMHO.

Again, the problem is with the idea of starting at the beginning and moving forward. You envision cause and effect as a row of dominos falling, where each domino is a moment in time and the "present" is the falling domino. If this is your view of time and causality, then obviously you must reject an infinite regress, but I am afraid that such a view simply does not stand up to scrutiny.

Garbles18:

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I'm curious. Are you arguing that there are not infinite points in time between two points in time?

No, that does not appear to be what luvluv is arguing. It is possible that there are not infinite points in time between two points in time, but what the reality is remains to be seen. Time and space may or may not be continuous.

tronvillain · 01-20-2003, 11:28 PM

And wiploc? I think you may be having some problems with the concept of infinity.

HRG · 01-21-2003, 02:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by tronvillain
luvluv:

If you are going to treat time like distance, you cannot talk of "traversing" it without assuming a higher level of time. Without such an assumption, any talk of "traversing the infinite terrain of time" is either gibberish or completely trivial, and in either case proves nothing. Of course, such an assumption leads to a completely unproductive infinite regress, so it is far simpler to abandon the idea of "traversing" time altogether. Once this is done the possibility of time extending infinitely into the past is obvious.

Now, I always argue for the possibility of time extending infinitely into the infinitely into the past, but I do not actually think it does. Again, I take what appears to be the far simplier route, and take the position that time begins at the point of the Big Bang.

Which still leaves open the question if the meaningful time values form an open or a closed interval. An open interval does not contain its endpoint; thus in this case, there would be no earliest point in time, no more than there is a smallest positive real number.

Regards,
HRG.

Wiploc · 01-21-2003, 08:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by tronvillain
And wiploc? I think you may be having some problems with the concept of infinity.

You have my full attention.
crc

Wiploc · 01-21-2003, 09:40 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by luvluv
wiploc, I'll ask you to recall that I specifically said that I did not think that the cosmological argument was sound.

Okay. We'll call this position "Step One." When you take this position, my response is that we are in perfect agreement.

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The cosmological argument establishes only a first cause,

We'll call this position "step two." When you take this position, my position shall be that the cosmological argument proves nothing unless you make a rational distinction between things that need precursors and things that don't.

You should pick one position or the other, and stick with it.

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and I already conceded that the first cause could be something other than God, but that something could not be "the universe" (by which I mean, as I said previously, space/matter/energy/time). You asked why, in the argument, God was excepted from things which need a cause, and I told you.

This is getting fuzzy. I was assuming god was whatever the first cause proved. You seem to be assuming god is the god of the bible. Let's distinguish them as Fred and Jehovah. They may be the same, and they may not. If the cosmological argument proves anything, it proves Fred; Jehovah doesn't come into it.

Now we can set aside all reference the bible, and focus on what the cosmological argument proves.

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There isn't any reason that God is assumed not to have begun to exist except that Christians (and probably Muslims and Jews) believe that God has told us this about Himself.
In philosophy, the habit was developed of discussing God in terms of the attributes that have historically been attributed to Him. This is true whether the philosopher is atheist or theist.

True, you can assume the truth of premises in order to prove their falsity. But one doesn't assume the Easter Bunny is true in order to disprove Santa Clause, and one doesn't assume Jehovah is true in order to disprove Fred.

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I do not ask you, for instance, why I should believe that God is omnipotent when you attempt to use omnipotence in the argument from evil.

Of course not. The argument from evil is a *response* to the claim that god is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. It doesn't claim that god has those atributes; rather, it proves he doesn't.

It only works against an omnipotent god. If you don't believe in an omnipotent god, that's all you have to say; that moots the entire argument.

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There is no way I can demonstrate to you that God is eternal

This is step one again.

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BUT my point was there is a way to point to the universe and say that IT is not eternal. So as I have said before I do not think that the only possible solution to the cosmological argument is God

And step two again. You have to decide whether you are proving something or not. Pick a position and stick with it.

Possibly the problem is that you don't want to be taken as having claimed proof beyond a reasonable doubt? Not to worry. If you prove anything greater than nothing, you win! I think the cosmological argument has zero weight. If it has greater than zero weight, if it tilts the scales at all, I want to know how.

If it is your position that the argument is worth anything, then you should stick with step two, and quit contradicting it by saying it doesn't prove anything or doesn't have soundness.

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Nowhere did I say or suggest that everything but God has a begining.

Sorry. I must have lumped you in with some other Christians.
(I'm assuming you're a Christian, yes?)

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That is nowhere in my argument or in the argument I linked for you. I said in one of my initial posts that the first cause could be some eternal law of physics which had no begining.

If time began, then nothing can be eternal. By definition.

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Again, to clarify, I do not take the cosmological argument, presented solely, to be sound, but I do think it is reasonable to infer the existence of God from both the teleological and cosmological arguments.

Doesn't prove anything, but it does. We may not infer from it, but we may. Step one and step two. Pick either.

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I do not think that, taken together, they amount to proofs, but (this is for you Shadow Man) together they make a strong argument for the existence of God.

Step two.

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No seasoned apologist with a sliver of philosophical training would try to use the Cosmological Argument to try to establish the existence of Yahweh. The Cosmological Argument is used to establish the necessity of a First Cause which is not dependant on and is separate to the universe (space/matter/energy/time).

The apologist would then proceed to make a case for why this first cause must be the God of theism. I don't believe I've ever seen an apologist ever try to use the cosmological argument to try to establish that this God is the Christian God, the Jewish God, or Allah. It's only meant to establish the existence of the traditional omnimax God of theism. Nothing more.

Well said. I agree completely. In the cosmological argument, every reference to Jehovah is a tangent, a distraction, an impediment.

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I really don't think you're talking past me or that I'm talking past you. I think you've somehow concluded that I am arguing things that I am not arguing. You are questioning me as if I thought the cosmological argument was sound, and I said from the start that I did not.

Step one.

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I said that God is assumed to not have had a begining in terms of the cosmological argument, and that is why He does not need a cause. I gave this because you asked "Why in the cosmological argument does God not need a cause". Because I gave you the answer I thought you were asking for, you have come to the conclusion that I am trying to defend the cosmological argument. That was never my intention, as I hope you realize now.

I have some doubt. If you really don't think the cosmological argument proves anything, why do you keep saying we can infer Fred's existence from it?

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Where did you get this idea? Again, by universe I mean only space/matter/energy/time. I conceded that natural laws could exist independantly from the universe and that natural laws of some sort could be the first cause.

Natural laws. Gods. Anything else?

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I do not determine that the universe began by applying a rule. That is precisely backwards. Big Bang cosmolgy establishes that the universe began, and proponents of the cosmolgical argument merely use that fact within the argument. The second premise of the cosmological argument is generally "The universe began to exist" and is generally supported by cosmological evidence. No one uses the cosmological argument or the premise "Everything which begins to exist needs a cause" to establish that the universe began to exist.

It is Big Bang cosmology which causes theists to reject the notion that the universe can be eternal and uncaused. We do not reject it's potential for being eternal on some arbitrary rule of apologetics. We do so because this is where science points us. (And again, though I am speaking in the first person here, I do not consider the argument sound.)

Creationists believed in creation before the big bang was discovered. If the big bang is disproved, they'll still believe in creation. Their belief in the Beginning is in no way based on the big bang.

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I'm pretty sure it is a first principle. It is called, I believe, the principle of causation. Further, I think it is actually the FIRST first principle.

I guess, for a particular argument, you can take anything you want as a given.

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What did you think of Craig's refutations of the appeal to quantum mechanics in the link I gave you?

It looks like a slog. Before I undertook it, I'd want to know what I was looking for. I'd hate to spend a day refuting it only to learn that I hadn't focused on the part you liked.
crc

Clutch · 01-21-2003, 10:06 AM

As has been explained elsewhere: The hypothesis that the past is infinite is coherent.

If we consider the two most importantly distinct notions of infinity for a series of past events, we see the following. First suppose that, whether or not time is discrete, we individuate *events* in such a fashion as to make them discrete, linear, fully-ordered... in the way of the natural numbers. So we consider the prospect that the past is a series of events of the cardinality Aleph-nought. Then the past contains no event more than finitely removed from the present, and any inference that such a past would require the completion of an actual infinity of events is a simple (but, tiresomely, ineradicable) error.

Now, consider instead that the past is a series of events or instants of the cardinality Aleph-one, that is, of the real numbers. Here we are no worse off than in the case of Zeno's Arrow, and the problem is no worse with respect to the remotest past than with respect to "traversing" the duration between the last minute and the current one, since there are uncountably many instants in either case. Here we need only observe that infinite series may have finite sums to see that a past series of this sort is silent on the question of necessary first events.

The first-cause argument fails.

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01-20-2003, 07:40 PM	#112
beyelzu Veteran Member Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: the peach state ga I am a metaphysical naturalist Posts: 2,869	there was no time before the universe began. because the universe beginning is the first point to measure time. as time is the distance between two events. so the first event starts time. so for all intents and purposes there is no meaningful time before the existence of the universe.

01-20-2003, 11:28 PM	#116
tronvillain Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Alberta, Canada Posts: 5,658	And wiploc? I think you may be having some problems with the concept of infinity.

01-21-2003, 10:06 AM	#120
Clutch Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Canada Posts: 3,751	As has been explained elsewhere: The hypothesis that the past is infinite is coherent. If we consider the two most importantly distinct notions of infinity for a series of past events, we see the following. First suppose that, whether or not time is discrete, we individuate events in such a fashion as to make them discrete, linear, fully-ordered... in the way of the natural numbers. So we consider the prospect that the past is a series of events of the cardinality Aleph-nought. Then the past contains no event more than finitely removed from the present, and any inference that such a past would require the completion of an actual infinity of events is a simple (but, tiresomely, ineradicable) error. Now, consider instead that the past is a series of events or instants of the cardinality Aleph-one, that is, of the real numbers. Here we are no worse off than in the case of Zeno's Arrow, and the problem is no worse with respect to the remotest past than with respect to "traversing" the duration between the last minute and the current one, since there are uncountably many instants in either case. Here we need only observe that infinite series may have finite sums to see that a past series of this sort is silent on the question of necessary first events. The first-cause argument fails.

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