Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 1:28 am
But that backward sequence cannot be infinite. And why not? Because if I make you locate the number prior to every other number, you will recede back into an infinite regress...and you will never, ever find the starting point for the sequence.
IC, you are saying an infinite series cannot be the case because of human limitations.
No: I'm saying that an infinite causal regress is an utter impossibility. Human beings are just one late posited "effect" in the long chain of causes. Thus, their state has no impact at all on that fact.
In other words, in any causal chain...of which we have billions, of course...if we guess that there was not original starting point, then the sequence itself never got going. It never began. Nothing happened. And nothing ever could. Because the absolute prerequisite is never reached.
In our minds.
No. Ever. Under any circumstances. It can't be done.
Again, since I cannot carry out some infinite operation, the universe could not have always existed.
No, it would be true no matter what "operation" you and I do. It's a mathematical certainty. If you lived to be a billion years old, and had a billion supercomputers at your disposal, you would still have a 0% chance of doing it.
Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 12:48 am
I have no way of knowing if the causal chains around me have a start.
Yes, you do. Mathematics. Logic. You cannot, yourself, reproduce any causal chain that has an infinite set of prerequisite conditions. If you can't start your sequence at "-1,236,754," or whatever other point you choose, you cannot produce any numerical sequence at all. Ever.
There's your proof.
...there are limits to human understanding.
But it doesn't depend on anything at all in the human world. It's mathematical.
If the universe had a beginning, then what was there before that beginning?
God.
Or if the universe is expanding, then what is it expanding into?
That's a good question. But at least it's not impossible that we might figure it out, one day. By contrast, it's literally impossible to have an infinite regress of causal prerequisites. It never starts. And we can know that for sure.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 1:28 am
Yes, you do. Mathematics. Logic. You cannot, yourself, reproduce any causal chain that has an infinite set of prerequisite conditions. If you can't start your sequence at "-1,236,754," or whatever other point you choose, you cannot produce any numerical sequence at all. Ever.
There's your proof.
...there are limits to human understanding.
But it doesn't depend on anything at all in the human world. It's mathematical.
If the universe had a beginning, then what was there before that beginning?
God.
Or if the universe is expanding, then what is it expanding into?
That's a good question. But at least it's not impossible that we might figure it out, one day. By contrast, it's literally impossible to have an infinite regress of causal prerequisites. It never starts. And we can know that for sure.
How long do you suppose god had been hibernating before the beginning? Or did the beginning only happen when the civil war in heaven concluded with Satan being cast into the nethermost regions of a yet uncreated universe? Once victory was complete, god needed something else to do, thus creating a universe while deciding who his "Chosen People" would be. But that must have been a later decision since Adam was not reported having been circumcised and thus couldn't have been Jewish. Thus, there were no Jews in the Beginning!
My brilliance surprises even me! Don't you wish I were on YOUR side!!
With Dark Energy and its inflationary processes, the Big Crunch scenario, though not absolutely debunked, has become far less credible. Like an alternative version to Humpty Dumpty, what gets pulled apart is not likely to come together again, and thus the currently accepted Deep Freeze scenario as the End of all Endings.
God will have flown the coop long before that. It appears, however, he may already have done so at the very beginning once the universe successfully inflated which simply progressed on its own from there not unlike baby turtles once they reached the ocean and given a fighting chance for survival.
What is true micro-logically may also be true macro-logically.
Last edited by Dubious on Tue Dec 05, 2023 4:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 1:54 am
...there are limits to human understanding.
But it doesn't depend on anything at all in the human world. It's mathematical.
If the universe had a beginning, then what was there before that beginning?
God.
Or if the universe is expanding, then what is it expanding into?
That's a good question. But at least it's not impossible that we might figure it out, one day. By contrast, it's literally impossible to have an infinite regress of causal prerequisites. It never starts. And we can know that for sure.
IF you say so, professor.
Let me make it simple.
Think of the causal chain as a line...supposing that it's an infinitely long one.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 1:28 am
It's never coming back.
Yes it is. Just give it time.
No, it isn't.
And you can be sure of that, even now. There is literally no physical force in the universe that is capable of "Crunching" it back. So what would you suggest could do it?
How long do you suppose god had been hibernating before the beginning?
We do not know what's before the beginning. We don't even know, in fact, if "before" is even the right way to think about it. But we do know that God is transcendent of time, being its Creator, as well as everything else's. So time is surely not an issue for Him.
Adam was not reported having been circumcised and thus couldn't have been Jewish.
Wow. So you really don't know even basic things about the Biblical narrative? You've never even heard of the Abrahamic covenant? But somehow you've heard of circumcision?
If the universe had a beginning, then what was there before that beginning?
How long do you suppose god had been hibernating before the beginning?
We do not know what's before the beginning. We don't even know, in fact, if "before" is even the right way to think about it. But we do know that God is transcendent of time, being its Creator, as well as everything else's. So time is surely not an issue for Him.
Adam was not reported having been circumcised and thus couldn't have been Jewish.
Wow. So you really don't know even basic things about the Biblical narrative? You've never even heard of the Abrahamic covenant? But somehow you've heard of circumcision?
Where to start...
A simple explanation would do! Since the covenant was a promise god made with Abraham, how did the Abrahamic covenant apply to Adam? Feel free to correct me, I don't mind! According to the bible, In The Beginning, there was the garden of Eden, Adam & Eve and god's command not to eat of the apple. There was no Abraham or Israel or Covenant. How then could Adam have been Jewish if Adam was not yet circumcised based on a covenant which later demanded it
If I'm wrong, where in the Bible would it indicate that Adam was anything more than the first man, foreskin intact?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 3:46 am
And you can be sure of that, even now. There is literally no physical force in the universe that is capable of "Crunching" it back. So what would you suggest could do it?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 3:50 am But we do know that God is transcendent of time, being its Creator, as well as everything else's. So time is surely not an issue for Him.
WE don't know any such thing, literally. By comparison, if something were transcendent of time, it would likely be more in the nature of a quantum computer that doesn't choose who its Chosen People will be. GOD, being only OUR conception, has never explained anything except human psychology, that is, as nothing more than a surviving remnant of ancient thinking. Conscious awareness of the universe has grown immeasurably in the intervening years causing any comprehension of god to be so minuscule by comparison as to render it a nonentity...one that never died because it never existed...once useful but now useless!
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 2:06 am
But it doesn't depend on anything at all in the human world. It's mathematical.
God.
That's a good question. But at least it's not impossible that we might figure it out, one day. By contrast, it's literally impossible to have an infinite regress of causal prerequisites. It never starts. And we can know that for sure.
IF you say so, professor.
Let me make it simple.
Think of the causal chain as a line...supposing that it's an infinitely long one.
Where is the starting point?
Who knows? Who knows how time ultimately works? It's like trying to imagine the universe being finite in size. If there is such a thing as a finite space, then what is outside that space? Is it God? Do we say, "I don't know what would be outside that finite space, let's, therefore, call it "God". And better yet, let's say it's the God of Abraham who made a snake that spoke Hebrew and talked to the first two humans (or whatever language Adam and Eve apparently spoke). This is stupid. It's like talking to a kid who is convinced there's a Santa Claus because NORAD reported sighting Santa's sleigh on radar Christmas Eve. I don't want to join your speculative idiocy.
Unfortunately we humans can fill volumes with what we don't know or don't understand. Then along come the religious grifters who just make shit up so that they can string along the rest of the ignorant humans.
Dubious wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 4:16 am
A simple explanation would do!
Since the covenant was a promise god made with Abraham, how did the Abrahamic covenant apply to Adam?
It didn't.
There was not just one covenant, but several described throughout the Tanakh and the New Testament. Most theologians regard there as being seven: the Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Palestinian, Davidic, and New covenants.
Abraham was the first Hebrew, and the grandfather of Jacob, whose name was changed by God to "Israel." See Genesis 32:28. As for circumcision, it was part of the Abrahamic covenant: see Genesis 17:9-14.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 3:50 am But we do know that God is transcendent of time, being its Creator, as well as everything else's. So time is surely not an issue for Him.
WE don't know any such thing, literally.
What I mean is that we know that if there is a God, He must, by definition be transcendent of time. The creator always has to be greater than the thing He creates, or He is not the creator of it...and God, by definition, refers to the Creator of all things.
GOD, being only OUR conception, has never explained anything except human psychology,...
And old saw.
That's merely an assumption, not some kind of compelling argument or self-evident truth. I understand that's what skeptics would like to think; but that doesn't imply they're right, merely that that is what they like to think.
