So, you want to have existed since forever...

.13. said:
Infinity is not a number. ∞-∞ = indeterminate. It's not 0.
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Well, my point was exactly that you can't use infinity as an ordinary number. But I see your point, it was a mistake to write ∞-∞ = 0. As I mentioned I'm no mathematician, so I missed it. Sorry.

Upchurch said:
Do you think I've made this sort of mistake? To my thinking, I was pointing out the general populaces' casual usage of "forever" or "eternity" (i.e. infinite) in describing a real things like time.
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Well, unless I missed something, you divided infinity by two and concluded that the result was infinity. I don't really see why 'infinite' could not be used to describe a real thing like time, just because it doesn't fit into our use of time in mathematics. And how can time have a beginning? A beginning is a expression that is based on time, so all beginnings take place when time exists. It's like saying time created itself. Well, not impossible, I guess, but certainly wierd.
 
One problem with your theory Upchurch, is that you'd have to prove that there is a unique time that constitutes the beginning of time. Otherwise, one could take your current proof and by induction show that for any time you can come up with that could be the start of time, one can come up with an earlier time that would also work.
 
And in any case, a potential for a quantum explosion that creates space and time is also not nothingness.
 
Upchurch said:
Well, I did define what were valid values of X. A god who doesn't travel in time is not a valid value.
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A God which is ever-changing, and yet remains the same (consistent within His nature that is), doesn't require time or, space. It's like He exists upon the fabric of what appears to be nothing.
 
SpaceFluffer said:
One problem with your theory Upchurch, is that you'd have to prove that there is a unique time that constitutes the beginning of time. Otherwise, one could take your current proof and by induction show that for any time you can come up with that could be the start of time, one can come up with an earlier time that would also work.
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Yes, so we are merely speaking of a reference point in time, not time itself.
 
Iacchus said:
A God which is ever-changing, and yet remains the same (consistent within His nature that is), doesn't require time or, space. It's like He exists upon the fabric of what appears to be nothing.
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changing & the same--check.
no time or space, yet exists--check
appears to be nothing--check

Yep, this is an Iacchian post.
 
God is an energy state, which is ever-changing, and yet remains consistent to its nature ... "as energy."
 
David Swidler said:
Oh, 15 billion or so years ago. Give or take. What's tricky about that?
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You didn't answer the question. Not 'how long since God created the universe'. When, in God's Infinite Time, did God create the universe? Was it right at the 'beginning' (chortle)? In the middle (laugh)? Near the 'end' (lol)?

This just moves the question of infinite time to the next level. It's clocks all the way down!
 
zaayrdragon said:
Ah... so what you're saying is... that you've created this nice Man-o-Straw, and are proceeding to burn it accordingly, to 'falsify' the idea of 'eternal past'?
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It isn't a strawman if it is what someone has argued. Iacchus has argued that just such a time line must exist, even if we choose not to recognize it. As has, really, anyone who has argued via the question "but what was there before the Big Bang?"

Unless I missed where such people have said they believed that time did have a beginning, just not at the Big Bang? Iacchus?

eta: I was looking for a specific reference to just such an Iacchus argument, but the Search seems to be SNAFUing at the moment.
zaayrdragon said:
Nonetheless, the 'internal consistancy' you seem to be showing is nothing more than Darren's 'infinite distance between fixed points' problem. As such, it's not a very valid point.
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It's "internal inconsistancy" of the concept and lifegazer's argument was that there was no distance between two real fixed points.

In the opening argument, there is only one fixed real point: November 22, 2005. The other is at the limit of infinity which, as I am laboring to point out, cannot be a real quantity in a real world. Such an open-ended point and the definition of "infinite" leads to the impossibility of the existance of that point.
 
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Upchurch said:
It isn't a strawman if it is what someone has argued. Iacchus has argued that just such a time line must exist, even if we choose not to recognize it. As has, really, anyone who has argued via the question "but what was there before the Big Bang?"

Unless I missed where such people have said they believed that time did have a beginning, just not at the Big Bang? Iacchus?

eta: I was looking for a specific reference to just such an Iacchus argument, but the Search seems to be SNAFUing at the moment.
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Maybe you are referring to this one ... A "Before" the Big Bang?
 
Upchurch said:
It isn't a strawman if it is what someone has argued. Iacchus has argued that just such a time line must exist, even if we choose not to recognize it.
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I try now to say what I think is the weakness of your argument.

So, if the time line is infinite in two directions, it looks like this:
Code: 
________________________________________
...  -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0  1  2  3  4  5 ...
This line now contains all possible time steps.

Suppose that the spot 5 is now your specific point in time (Nov 22 or whatever, let's call it 'N'). Let's denote the spot that is "forever many years before 5" with 'T' and try to put it somewhere.

Let's first try to put it on some arbitrary position in the line:
Code: 
_______________________________________
...  -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0  1  2  3  4  5 ...
         T                         N
Well, this positioning doesn't satisfy the condition that there's "forever many years" between the spots since there are 9 time units between 'T' and 'N', however long they are. The same thing happens whereever we put 'T'. The only place where there are infinite number of time units in between is if we put it in before the start of time line:
Code: 
      _______________________________________
      ...  -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0  1  2  3  4  5 ...
T                                        N

Do you see the problem? We defined that the time line contains all time steps and now 'T' is outside time. So, the expression "forever many years before" is not well-defined within two-way infinite time line. There are infinitely many predecessors for every time point, but if you choose any two arbitrary time points, you have a finite period between them.
 
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LW said:
Do you see the problem? We defined that the time line contains all time steps and now 'T' is outside time. So, the expression "forever many years before" is not well-defined within two-way infinite time line. There are infinitely many predecessors for every time point, but if you choose any two arbitrary time points, you have a finite period between them.
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Yes, this is what I was attempting to do with the cardboard box within an infinite amount of space.
 
LW said:
So, the expression "forever many years before" is not well-defined within two-way infinite time line. There are infinitely many predecessors for every time point, but if you choose any two arbitrary time points, you have a finite period between them.
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But if you only choose finite points, you'll never have something that existed forever because there is always another point beyond it. This misunderstanding of infinity is precisely the problem and why, logically, I'm saying nothing can have lasted forever, including time.
 
Upchurch said:
But it is your concept of time that we are talking about here.
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From Iacchian Definition #5

Well, if there was nothing before the Big Bang, which is to say there was nothing to give rise to it, then yes, we need not take into account "a time" that occurred before. However, we are still very much stuck with the notion of how something can from nothing. Obviously something must have existed before, otherwise we would not be speaking of that which came after, correct? In which case what we need to ask, is it possible for something to exist without any external reference points? In fact it is. All we need do is look into the same realm as the imagination which, is the very same realm that we are apt to find God.

Oh, and welcome to the immaterial realm of the spirit!
 
Iacchus said:
From Iacchian Definition #5

Well, if there was nothing before the Big Bang, which is to say there was nothing to give rise to it, then yes, we need not take into account "a time" that occurred before. However, we are still very much stuck with the notion of how something can from nothing. Obviously something must have existed before, otherwise we would not be speaking of that which came after, correct? In which case what we need to ask, is it possible for something to exist without any external reference points? In fact it is. All we need do is look into the same realm as the imagination which, is the very same realm that we are apt to find God.

Oh, and welcome to the immaterial realm of the spirit!
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riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recircolation back to Howth Castle and Environs.


-Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
 
kmortis said:
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recircolation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

-Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce
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Bad example. Joyce is a very intelligent man who is extremely difficult to understand, but he does actually make sense. Iacchus is the opposite in all three respects.
 
Tricky said:
Bad example. Joyce is a very intelligent man who is extremely difficult to understand, but he does actually make sense. Iacchus is the opposite in all three respects.
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Methinks you mean in two respects (guess which one still fits!). :D
 
Tricky said:
Bad example. Joyce is a very intelligent man who is extremely difficult to understand, but he does actually make sense. Iacchus is the opposite in all three respects.
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I don't know. I agree that Joyce was an intelligent man, but as he wrote, I think he got more and more unintelligable. Portrait of an Artist as a Young man is fairly straight forward. Ulysesses was long, pondrous and (ahem) tricky until you got into the rhythym of it. Finnegan's Wake is just incomprehensable. Granted, it's very lyrical gibberish, but it's still gibberish. I love to read it outloud as it sounds great, but I'm at a loss to tell you just what happens in it.

Oh, and I'm not using it as a comparison to Iacchus, but rather as a refutation to his "arguments". I do not have the natural-born talent to spew forth non-sensical gibberish (unless I'm live and in person and am able to work myself into a wonderful Subgenius Rant fury...but this is radio, not TV), so, I'll use a Gibberish Grand Master.

I guess I could use Lewis Carroll, but at over 600 pages, Finnegan's Wake gives me a lot of material.
 
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