The religion of "no beginning".

[Kharakov]

I agree. Anywhere is a bit too vague- a single point in the continuum does not contain any infinities. They only exist in finite volumes of the continuum.

No infinity has or could exist anywhere. You cannot even imagine an infinity.

I cannot imagine a finity for morons. I'm a bit hostile though.

All the fractions between zero and one are not existing somewhere for you to discover them.

They're waiting... down at Fraggle Rock. WTF unter. Seriously you old dogbot. All sections of spacetime between 0 and one meter away are unique, and there are an infinite amount of them.

You never actually have infinity. You always use a trick, an approximation, to work with it.

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. Infinities are commonplace, everyday things, like sammiches. They are all around you. Field strength curves, smooth shapes. Nature is far more infinite than it is finite. In fact, indiscreet as it is to say, nature is hardly discrete.

 

[Juma]

I cannot imagine a finity for morons. I'm a bit hostile though.

All the fractions between zero and one are not existing somewhere for you to discover them.

They're waiting... down at Fraggle Rock. WTF unter. Seriously you old dogbot. All sections of spacetime between 0 and one meter away are unique, and there are an infinite amount of them.

You never actually have infinity. You always use a trick, an approximation, to work with it.

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. Infinities are commonplace, everyday things, like sammiches. They are all around you. Field strength curves, smooth shapes. Nature is far more infinite than it is finite. In fact, indiscreet as it is to say, nature is hardly discrete.

Nah and neh... mathematics is a property of how humans perceive/model the real world.
In thar way inifintness is a propety of our model of the reality rather than something real.
But: that has NOtHING to do with the question wehher time had a beginning or not.

 

[DBT]

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.

Your thought experiment is not valid. You impose your own conditions, that is not possible to transverse infinity in order to equate what is probably not possible, transversing infinity with something that may indeed be possible, infinity itself (that needs nothing transversing it), in an attempt to disprove the possibility of latter. As an argument, It doesn't work. Sorry.

 

[Speakpigeon]

mathematics is a property of how humans perceive/model the real world.
In thar way inifintness is a propety of our model of the reality rather than something real.
But: that has NOtHING to do with the question wehher time had a beginning or not.

It does in the following way:

If you're so sure infinity is nothing but a property of the way we represent or think of the world out there, why wouldn't you want to say exactly the same thing of time? And of beginnings? That's all in our heads, is it not? And then, are our heads themselves also somehow only in our heads? So, are we even capable of saying anything at all real about the real world? /anguish+++/
EB

 

[untermensche]

]You're making a mountain out of a molehill. Infinities are commonplace, everyday things, like sammiches. They are all around you. Field strength curves, smooth shapes. Nature is far more infinite than it is finite. In fact, indiscreet as it is to say, nature is hardly discrete.

Those are imaginary infinities.

You can't possibly show me a real one and demonstrate it is an actual infinity and not just your delusion.

 

[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.

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.

Your thought experiment is not valid. You impose your own conditions, that is not possible to transverse infinity in order to equate what is probably not possible, transversing infinity with something that may indeed be possible, infinity itself (that needs nothing transversing it), in an attempt to disprove the possibility of latter. As an argument, It doesn't work. Sorry.

I ask people to imagine something. That is a thought experiment.

So how exactly would you traverse a line of infinite length. How would you get to it's end? Please be specific.

Infinity is not something that can exist. It is not a real world concept.

It is an imaginary pretend concept.

To think it could possibly apply to anything real is about as lost as a mind could be.

 

[Kharakov]

You're making a mountain out of a molehill. Infinities are commonplace, everyday things, like sammiches. They are all around you. Field strength curves, smooth shapes. Nature is far more infinite than it is finite. In fact, indiscreet as it is to say, nature is hardly discrete.

Nah and neh... mathematics is a property of how humans perceive/model the real world.

Mathematics is a language to describe the real world. It so happens the concepts of smoothness and infinity are very closely related- any smooth curve that arises in nature has an infinite amount of turning points on itself (such as where gravitational field strength gradient diverges between astronomical bodies).

In thar way inifintness is a propety of our model of the reality rather than something real.

It's real somewhere. Smooth curves exist- even in the case they only exist in our minds, there is the implication that reality supports smooth curves (in our minds) so infinities exist.

But: that has NOtHING to do with the question wehher time had a beginning or not.

How often, in the length of time you've known unter, have their arguments been sequitur?

Time has no beginning simply because reality has no beginning- now maybe someone will say "well, you can't measure the amount of time reality existed, because there wasn't always a way to measure where/when you are in reality!!!" and I'll say... so what. It's still an infinite amount of time, unless you define time as "measurable relative rates of change".

I tend to define "time reality has been around" by its length of existence (forever), which isn't a measurable amount anyway (well, other than saying it's not finite, there isn't a specific amount other than "forever and ever").


unter's "argument" revolves around nothing, not even something that can cause itself or something else to exist, causing reality to exist. Now, the pun is sort of funny, because technically reality was not caused to exist by anything, it just always existed (there is no sudden onset of reality in reality)...

- - - Updated - - -

]You're making a mountain out of a molehill. Infinities are commonplace, everyday things, like sammiches. They are all around you. Field strength curves, smooth shapes. Nature is far more infinite than it is finite. In fact, indiscreet as it is to say, nature is hardly discrete.

Those are imaginary infinities.

You can't possibly show me a real one and demonstrate it is an actual infinity and not just your delusion.

Boy, you always sing the blind man's blues.

 

[Elixir]

Boy, you always sing the blind man's blues.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein

 

[untermensche]

Einstein also had problems with Quantum Mechanics.

His claim that infinity somehow exists is unsupported nonsense.

Infinity is an imaginary concept that cannot possibly exist for real.

 

[untermensche]

Mathematics is a language to describe the real world.

Mathematics is a human devised system that is used in models, abstractions, of the real world.

Numbers do not exist in the real world.

Infinity cannot possibly exist in any way in the real world. It is not a real concept. It is a totally imaginary concept.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Time has no beginning simply because reality has no beginning

Ah, that's just lovely.

technically reality was not caused to exist by anything, it just always existed (there is no sudden onset of reality in reality)...

Ah well, and why not exactly? Could you try to make your assumptions explicit here to see how it's not a non-sequitur? Or is it just blind faith on your part?

There is no sudden onset of reality in reality... I really like that, but I still can't see how we could be certain of that. I already suggested a short time ago the exact opposite might well be true. Nobody quipped at the time but I'm sure most people would agree with you, if without even thinking about proper justification.

So, just to make sure, I'm saying that I can conceive of reality as having started without anything to cause it to start. A one-off freak event, if you like.

If so, then one beginning and perhaps no infinite past. And not even a First Cause! No big deal.

Why ever not?

Proper arguments, please. Don't do your unter on me.

I had it up to here with that, thank you.

Boy, you always sing the blind man's blues.

Yeah, me too, and I want to apologise for that! We don't know and can't infer that reality has existed for an infinity of time. Could be, but we just don't know.

Sorry for that.
EB

 

[Kharakov]

So, just to make sure, I'm saying that I can conceive of reality as having started without anything to cause it to start. A one-off freak event, if you like.

So you're saying that nothing causes you to be intelligent? I believe you.

 

[Kharakov]

Numbers do not exist in the real world.

Cocaine is one.

 

[Speakpigeon]

So, just to make sure, I'm saying that I can conceive of reality as having started without anything to cause it to start. A one-off freak event, if you like.

So you're saying that nothing causes you to be intelligent?

Absolutely nothing. I had to do it all by myself!

I believe you.

That's all hypothetical, obviously.

The beauty of that is that once you accept that, you stop thinking in terms of an infinite regress of causes without having to fall back on the idea of any mysterious First Cause.

And then you can enjoy your breakfast, your mind really at ease.
EB

 

[untermensche]

Numbers do not exist in the real world.

Cocaine is one.

What is two?

 

[Kharakov]

Numbers do not exist in the real world.

Cocaine is one.

What is two?

Poop.

 

[Kharakov]

So, just to make sure, I'm saying that I can conceive of reality as having started without anything to cause it to start. A one-off freak event, if you like.

If so, then one beginning and perhaps no infinite past. And not even a First Cause! No big deal.

So argument from ignorance, combined with argument from not considering the evidence base on argument from ignorance, trumps logical inference. Sure EB...

I can envision various ways in which reality accumulated various properties from a potential source, but there always is a source. You're basically playing a shell game with nothing again, like the last time you argued this.


Your claim comes down to something static (nothing) changing into something not static....

1) no potentials existed
2) no change existed (nothing was changing), reality was static void
3) all of the sudden potentials and change existed or accumulated over time

 

[untermensche]

It doesn't matter one bit that we can't understand how time began.

That is not necessary to know it had to have begun.

What we know for certain is the time in the past had to be finite. No infinity is possible. Not in this existence.

 

[Lion IRC]

It seems true to me that an entity could be in the process of 'traversing' - wandering along along a road called infinity - but that they would never make it to the end because, of course the road never ends.

And only an eternal (present tense) entity could perpetually 'traverse' infinity.

But to hink of having traversED infinity would be self-contradictory double-think.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

It seems true to me that an entity could be in the process of 'traversing' - wandering along along a road called infinity - but that they would never make it to the end because, of course the road never ends.

And only an eternal (present tense) entity could 'traverse' infinity.

But to hink of having traversED infinity would be self-contradictory double-think.

What if the Flash did it? He can run really fast and that would cut down how long it would take him to do it and he'd be able to traverse eternity in a mere infinite amount of time.