Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2019 1:04 am
Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2019 12:16 am
You've never studied Calculus!
That is all about 'limits' to zero, infinities or unit approaches.
Actually, it has
nothing whatsoever to do with that. We're talking about causal chains, not zero points or Zeno's paradox.
A causal chain is a chain of events in which an event (call it "event X") is "caused" by an earlier event (call it X-1). In a causal chain, by definition, X cannot happen until after X-1, or it's not a causal situation at all. X-1 is the
sine qua non of X...or, as we say, its "cause."
But if X-1 is also a "caused" event (which it is, in a causal chain), then it cannot happen until X-2 has already happened. But X-2 cannot happen until after X-3...and so on,
ad infinitum.
What this means is that if the causal chain is infinite, X never happens. In fact, neither does X-1 or X-2, or X-3, because NONE of them can happen until some other event happens first...and the backward chain is infinite, which means that THERE IS NO FIRST EVENT.
Get it now? And
actual infinity of regressed causes is mathematically and logically impossible. It
cannot have happened, by its own definition. Without a first-cause event, no causal chain can ever commence.
There's many more arguments to support this, but I refer you to the work of David Hilbert on this.
I'm well aware of the what you are thinking. But logic takes things AS without time (propositional & predicate, that is). But causation is still a function of it.
If you have a crime, usually this occurs after the fact. DNA, as one mere counter-sample, can suffice to 'prove' one guilty. Only the politics of people are what makes things like the O.J.Simpson trial go the way it occurred in contrast to extraneous considerations. But nature is still determinable. The Universe still "looks" like it is 14 Billion years old given the evidence and deduction.
Logic can be valid but false. But IF valid and true, then the argument is considered "sound". Most fallacies are informal constructs and almost always have exceptions. What matters is HOW the material connects in fact as well as in validity. David Hilbert wouldn't be a good example. He was one of the major contributor's to attempting to find some mathematical justification for everything.
Your own error was to assert something determinate to something you cannot know: that there is a certainty to know the universe began at a specific time. That's what you asserted. You can have inductive inference that creates an input premise, like
"If something appears to diverge, it MUST diverge."
And while this may only be a real illusion, the premise can still create a deductive argument. But I'm saying that if given the appearance of something diverging about time and space, we cannot speak of this (ineffable) in terms of scientific justification. What justifies the above statement for instance other than a pattern to which some things in physical nature fits with this pattern.
But my argument is about how you end up with too many contradictions OF other scientific standards. One for the simplest case is about infinitesimals that approach zero. Zeno's paradox is a trick ONLY because there still exists time and space beyond the wall or the race-post. If no space exists at some point while time does in sync, they never can become 0/0. This is called a 'limit' only.
See my other posts that I dedicate to these types of possibilities distinctly.