I don't need to; You have the burden of proof. You have to show that it is not possible. So far, you have failed to do so.
So let me get this straight.
You rebut my argument with a claim but you don't have to support it at all with any kind of argument?
Your claims to rebut my arguments are true because all burden is on me?
That is quite insane.
If you make a claim to rebut my argument the burden is entirely on you to support it. If you don't, the rebuttal is tossed aside as completely worthless.
I'm sorry but your claims about what is and isn't possible don't amount to arguments.
Nor do yours; and yet you are the one who positively asserts that an infinite past is 'illogical'.
Is it only an assertion to say that things defined as never ending can't end?
No. But it is an assertion to say that therefore they don't start.
Is it only an assertion to say infinite time is time that never ends?
No, it is just an error; or at least, it is an error the first time you do it. When you repeat it despite being told that infinite time can also be time that does not start; or time that neither starts nor ends; without once responding to the correction in any way, then it becomes wilful ignorance.
How does time that never ends end at the present moment?
It doesn't. Time that never starts ends at the present moment.
To say it doesn't begin is not an answer.
Yes, it is. It is the correct answer; unless you can show that it is incorrect - which so far you have notably failed to do without resorting to the equivocation fallacy.
No matter how many times you try to hide behind the smoke screen of "it never ends" it is never an answer. It is always a dodge.
No dodge; just consistent use of the same definition for each word throughout.
The amount of time described by saying time doesn't begin is an amount of time that never ends.
Only if 'begin' means 'end'. You may benefit from the use of a dictionary.
Not starting means you go on and on.
No, it means you WENT on and on. It says nothing about whether you finish.
So time in the past went on and on.
Yup. all the way back; never reaching a beginning. that's what 'infinite past' means.
If this is true how did it end at today?
By ending today. No problem there; what it didn't do was begin.
If it ended today it went on and finished.
Yes. It always has gone on. At every point in the past, the past stretches back infinitely.
I didn't create the truism that a moment in time is first experienced as a present moment and second it is thought of as a moment in the past. It isn't my claim that time works this way. It can be observed to work this way.
So your contention is that all of the past was observed? By whom?
My contention is that the way we see it working today is the way it works. And if we close our eyes it still works the same way. So we don't have to continually observe it to know how it works.
It seems to me that you are claiming time worked differently in the past. Maybe it did, but if it did we wouldn't call that time. It would be something else. Time works the way we observe it working. Things that are not time work differently.
I don't know how it 'works' and nor do you. It is irrelevant to the question at hand, which is "did time start in the past?" (or if we consider it from the other side, if it started today, "does it finish in the past?").
No. But it is possible for an 'amount of moments' that never starts to finish
Tell me how this is possible.
What makes it impossible? 'Start' and 'end' are independent things; The future needs not have an end in order to have a start; why should the past require a start in order to end?
How does something that never starts end?
The same way something that does start ends, presumably.
Please don't tell me to look at an abstraction of the situation drawn in lines. That doesn't demonstrate anything.
Then why did you present it? That's not very rational, presenting a diagram that doesn't demonstrate anything.
Tell me in words, since this is your rebuttal to my argument, how does something that never starts end?
The same way something that does start ends, presumably.
Forget about telling me how something exists without a cause. Forget about telling me how something progresses yet doesn't begin that progression.
OK.
Just tell me how something that never starts ends. How does that work?
Exactly the same way something that does start ends, presumably. I have no reason to imagine that the two things need be related in any way; they are separated by infinite time (or by at the very least a huge but finite amount of time). Why would they be related to each other?
Presumably, time is infinite and unbounded at both ends. We are here (observation); we arbitrarily define an end to the past, and a start to the future, at this point. There is no reason to assume a bound at the extreme past, or the extreme future.
It seems to me that all you are saying is that the past can't be infinite, because time without a beginning doesn't provide enough time for infinite time to have elapsed before the present. But if it is infinite, it is always enough. By definition.
You say 'we couldn't have reached the present', but that's silly - wherever we are, where ever we start from, IS by definition, the present at that time. And if the past is infinite, then there is an infinite amount of time before ANY point in time.
I suspect you are thinking that we had to 'get onto' the timeline, and that to do so, we have to have a 'start' where we 'get on'; but that would be nonsense. Assuming a finite past, with a well defined start in the past, from where are we coming to 'get on' the timeline? That problem exists for both hypotheses; either an infinite or a finite past doesn't have a 'before' from which we can come to get started. Either way, we can only start with what we observe - we are now on the timeline.
Given that observation, and given that it is incoherent to consider what happened 'before' time, we can then ask 'How does what we observe fit with each hypothesis?'. And the answer is, sadly, 'not very well'. Neither possibility - finite time, nor infinite time - includes a mechanism, or even a coherent way to talk about a mechanism, to get the ball rolling; We cannot 'get on to' a timeline, because we cannot do anything in the absence of time - in order for anything to happen, we must already be on the timeline.
So 'being on the timeline' is a given. It must be true - because we observe that time exists; And the fact is that it cannot be used to support either hypothesis - infinite or finite past - because there is nothing about either hypothesis that helps to explain this observation, or that predicts something we do not observe.
If time is finite, then the start of time 'just is'; we have to accept it without the possibility of an explanation.
Equally, if time is infinite, then the present moment 'just is' for any chosen 'present moment'; we have to accept it without the possibility of an explanation.
Unless we can show that one of these things can be explained, there is no way to choose between them; both are possible. You might like one more than the other; Your 'gut feeling' might be that one is preferable; but that isn't enough to declare the other 'illogical', 'impossible' or 'contradictory'. To do that, you need to use sound logic, with premises that rely on unambiguous observations.
