The religion of "no beginning".

[untermensche]

I'm asking you to give an account of your position. You reject infinity or eternity....so what is your alternative?

If not Infinity/Eternity.......what?

That is not a rational question.

The past must be finite.

You cannot traverse an infinite line.

Infinity is not an option.

Who told you it was?

It's not a question of ''who told me'' The issue being my question to you. You say the 'past must be finite' using a flawed example, yet cannot offer an explanation for how time began.....a first cause? Spontaneous generation out of nothing? Magic?.....what? Apart from asserting that the past must be finite, what is the alternative?

This is about what can be known for certain.

We know for certain you cannot traverse an infinite line.

We know for certain the past could not have been infinite.

These things we know for certain.

How it happened is something we don't know. Something we cannot know.

 

[Elixir]

It's not a question of ''who told me'' The issue being my question to you. You say the 'past must be finite' using a flawed example, yet cannot offer an explanation for how time began.....a first cause? Spontaneous generation out of nothing? Magic?.....what? Apart from asserting that the past must be finite, what is the alternative?

This is about what can be known for certain.

We know for certain you cannot traverse an infinite line.

We know for certain the past could not have been infinite.

These things we know for certain.

"We" do? You and the frog in your pocket?
No need for evidence to convince the frog I suppose...

 

[untermensche]

It's not a question of ''who told me'' The issue being my question to you. You say the 'past must be finite' using a flawed example, yet cannot offer an explanation for how time began.....a first cause? Spontaneous generation out of nothing? Magic?.....what? Apart from asserting that the past must be finite, what is the alternative?

This is about what can be known for certain.

We know for certain you cannot traverse an infinite line.

We know for certain the past could not have been infinite.

These things we know for certain.

"We" do? You and the frog in your pocket?

You have not addressed any idea in the post.

Language has limitations.

Pointing them out is not the purpose of this thread.

 

[Kharakov]

By your definition, sure. However, reality never ensued, it always was. It's a timeless classic.

Not my definition.

It is a definition. To move across.

And I am talking about completely moving across the length of an infinite line.

Something that cannot be done.

As a child, did you find hopscotch difficult?

 

[untermensche]

By your definition, sure. However, reality never ensued, it always was. It's a timeless classic.

Not my definition.

It is a definition. To move across.

And I am talking about completely moving across the length of an infinite line.

Something that cannot be done.

As a child, did you find hopscotch difficult?

As a child I could easily imagine things. I still can.

I can imagine sitting in an imaginary spaceship and moving along an infinite line.

I can understand that I will never get to the end of the line because it is infinite.

I cannot traverse an infinite line in my imaginary spaceship because no infinity can be traversed.

The time in the past could not have been infinite.

It has all been traversed. It has all passed.

No infinity can ever be expressed. None can ever be completed.

 

[DBT]

It's not a question of ''who told me'' The issue being my question to you. You say the 'past must be finite' using a flawed example, yet cannot offer an explanation for how time began.....a first cause? Spontaneous generation out of nothing? Magic?.....what? Apart from asserting that the past must be finite, what is the alternative?

This is about what can be known for certain.

We know for certain you cannot traverse an infinite line.

We know for certain the past could not have been infinite.

These things we know for certain.

How it happened is something we don't know. Something we cannot know.

Your 'transverse an infinite line' objection is plain and simple crock. If eternity is a reality, there are no particular objects that 'transverse eternity' - objects and events within [perhaps] an infinite quantum field come and go forever, universes appearing and disappearing like virtual particles albeit with lifespans of trillions of years.

 

[untermensche]

It's not a question of ''who told me'' The issue being my question to you. You say the 'past must be finite' using a flawed example, yet cannot offer an explanation for how time began.....a first cause? Spontaneous generation out of nothing? Magic?.....what? Apart from asserting that the past must be finite, what is the alternative?

This is about what can be known for certain.

We know for certain you cannot traverse an infinite line.

We know for certain the past could not have been infinite.

These things we know for certain.

How it happened is something we don't know. Something we cannot know.

Your 'transverse an infinite line' objection is plain and simple crock.

It is a thought experiment. It is meant to get somebody to imagine traveling through an infinite series.

It can't be done. No infinity can be traversed. Even the imaginary infinity between zero and one cannot be traversed if you have to pass through every possible point.

The past could not have been infinite.

It has been traversed. It has been completely traversed.

You have no valid objection.

You simply refuse, like some religious adherent, to even look at the situation.

Can an infinite line be traversed? Can an infinity be traversed? Of course nothing traversed an infinity if it cannot be traversed.

You make comment after comment yet have not addressed the OP once.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Past
n. The time before the present

I couldn't find anything about the need for the past to allow something to "traverse" it, whatever that means.

______________________________

Still, it remains fairly obvious that if there has been an infinite past that something did traverse it.

And what this something is seems also fairly obvious to me.

______________________________

Okay, how many people think the answer is as obvious as I say it is? Please send me a private message with the answer. I'll give the answer and the count of correct answers in a few days.

I'm not setting up a game. I just want to verify that the answer is really obvious.

Even people who find me a bit harsh on them can take part! I love you all anyway!
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

As a child, did you find hopscotch difficult?

I seem to remember you had to hop from one square to the next. Nothing like really traversing it.

Still, I guess you can sort of "traverse" a simple scotch. Nothing for the children and the fainthearted though.

Me, it would take me an infinity of time.

But all in the future.

I can always start. I have the time.
Cheers,
EB

 

[Kharakov]

As a child, did you find hopscotch difficult?

I seem to remember you had to hop from one square to the next. Nothing like really traversing it.

Still, I guess you can sort of "traverse" a simple scotch. Nothing for the children and the fainthearted though.

Me, it would take me an infinity of time.

But all in the future.

I can always start. I have the time.
Cheers,
EB

It's a game about crossing lines, that is a mixture of hops and scotch, which help me cross lines.

 

[Kharakov]

Your 'transverse an infinite line' objection is plain and simple crock.

It is a thought experiment. It is meant to get somebody to imagine traveling through an infinite series.

How long does it take to travel 1 meter in 1 meter per second, if you travel 1/2 a meter in the first 1/2 second, 1/4 of a meter in the next 1/4 second, 1/8th a meter in the next 1/8th a second........

At some point you just say "fuck it, I traveled an infinite amount of segments which got really boring to count, and I arrived at the destination I wanted to reach". Or you reach the meter point, and you don't count the infinite amount of segments of spacetime you traversed, because they're meaningless at our scale. Doesn't mean they don't exist.. it just means if something is that small, and moving that fast??? Nothing you can do about it.


You cannot traverse a finite distance without traversing an infinite amount of segments of spacetime, it's not possible.

 

[Speakpigeon]

It's a game about crossing lines, that is a mixture of hops and scotch, which help me cross lines.

Oh, gosh, yes, it's all coming back now! You do have to hop over the line. You don't cross them. In some version of the game, you have to kick the marker to make it cross lines. But not you. You, you have to hop over the lines.

But I would agree that scotch helps cross lines.

In French, it's called "marelle", where "marelle" originally meant "marker".

I'd like to know whether there are countries where children don't know this game!

Wiki says it's played in Russia, Cuba, South Korea, India, Malaysia, and on and on.

So, just maybe, not in North Korea.

There are still lines you don't cross, buddy.
EB

 

[untermensche]

Your 'transverse an infinite line' objection is plain and simple crock.

It is a thought experiment. It is meant to get somebody to imagine traveling through an infinite series.

How long does it take to travel 1 meter in 1 meter per second, if you travel 1/2 a meter in the first 1/2 second, 1/4 of a meter in the next 1/4 second, 1/8th a meter in the next 1/8th a second........

You will quickly get to a point where you can make no more divisions. You will not be able to make any meaningful division.

Try it. Try to move just a trillionth of an inch.

Your claim that you can make divisions forever is part of the religion.

 

[untermensche]

Past
n. The time before the present

I couldn't find anything about the need for the past to allow something to "traverse" it, whatever that means.

Are you saying there can be time and there can also be no ability of anything to traverse that time?

Is that really time as it is understood?

Or some other definition of time?

If there is time that means there can be living beings.

Of course more than time is necessary. That is why it is a thought experiment. I am saying all the other conditions exist. Just as they exist now. That is a given.

You do not have a valid criticism.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Past
n. The time before the present

I couldn't find anything about the need for the past to allow something to "traverse" it, whatever that means.

Are you saying there can be time and there can also be no ability of anything to traverse that time?

Is that really time as it is understood?

Or some other definition of time?

If there is time that means there can be living beings.

Of course more than time is necessary. That is why it is a thought experiment. I am saying all the other conditions exist. Just as they exist now. That is a given.

You do not have a valid criticism.

Sorry, I really can't understand what you mean, if anything. It's all garbled or something.

Can you rewrite this in proper French?

If you know what you mean yourself.
EB

 

[untermensche]

What specifically can you not comprehend?

This is a very simple thought experiment. Nothing harder than imagining you are moving along an infinite line.

Will you ever get to the end of that line if it is infinite in length?

Do you understand that much?

 

[bilby]

What specifically can you not comprehend?

This is a very simple thought experiment. Nothing harder than imagining you are moving along an infinite line.

Will you ever get to the end of that line if it is infinite in length?

Do you understand that much?

You STILL haven't explained WHAT needs to move through the infinite past in order for the infinite past to exist.

Every single object, collection, or category with a finite duration, starts at a point an infinite distance from the beginning of eternal time. Nothing can, does, or needs to traverse all of the past, in order to exist.

You are imposing a needless 'god's eye view' on the matter, and then using your imaginary experiential entity as an excuse to reject the whole concept - but there's no experiential entity, no god that has to view the entire past in order for that past to have existed; Nothing has existed eternally except time itself, and time doesn't move through time, it is just there at any point you care to examine - as it always has been.

Do you understand that much? (of course you don't. You started composing your rejection of it, before you even finished reading it, much less taken any time to actually consider what it said, didn't you?)

 

[Kharakov]

There are still lines you don't cross, buddy.
EB

I can't afford plane tickets, passports, and I doubt they'd let me into as cool of a country as NK. I'm sort of undisciplined, in the sense that I think thoughts.

 

[Kharakov]

How long does it take to travel 1 meter in 1 meter per second, if you travel 1/2 a meter in the first 1/2 second, 1/4 of a meter in the next 1/4 second, 1/8th a meter in the next 1/8th a second........

You will quickly get to a point where you can make no more divisions.

More divisions of your nonsense about finite measurements in continuous reality? You can't move a non-infinitely divisible amount. Any movement is over an infinite amount of smaller divisions of movement, most of which have no meaning at our scale.

You will not be able to make any meaningful division.

To who? Do you claim to personally know what goes on at sub-quantum scales? Color me impressed. I thought things would evolve so fast there, that whole universes have been born and created new ones an infinite amount of times before they even started to work on building us.... slowly. We're sort of boring to them, because we evolve at rates that are 10^10^10^10 times as slow as them, but they still will intercede if you learn ways to communicate with them... which you can't, because you can't.... because good is dumb.

Try it. Try to move just a trillionth of an inch.

I absolutely refuse to move exactly 1 trillionth of an inch. It's in the notgonnahappen file.

Your claim that you can make divisions forever is part of the religion.

Divisions of what?

 

[untermensche]

What specifically can you not comprehend?

This is a very simple thought experiment. Nothing harder than imagining you are moving along an infinite line.

Will you ever get to the end of that line if it is infinite in length?

Do you understand that much?

You STILL haven't explained WHAT needs to move through the infinite past in order for the infinite past to exist.

You are supposed to imagine YOU are moving along an infinite line.

Will you ever get to the end?

That question can be answered without actually doing it.