Yes, and a great retort it is indeed!
Not “despite of” but “because of”. You can’t have determinism if you require a beginning.
No. I know that determinism works and thus time never began.
Determinism REQUIRES that you NEVER have a beginning, else the beginning could not be determined by a prior state = anti-determinism.
All that does for you is make you one of the sheep, which is fine, but not on a philosophy forum.
Not so. What was a timeless being doing before time began?
No matter what it was, it was through time. Time is the measure of any changing whatsoever of anything whatsoever. If God was doing anything at all, time existed.
You can deny logic all you want, but it won’t make your arguments any more true.
If not for the “laws of logic”, there would be no chaos, no order, and no universe.
And 1 divided infinitely is 1 infinitesimal.
Infinity divided by infinity is meaningless unless you standardize the infinity that you are talking about; “which infinity?”
It is similar to saying;
1 divided by very-long = very short.
Very-long divided by very-long = anything, who knows. It depends on what you meant by “very-long” each time.
1 divided by infinity could be .0…33 infinitesimal or it could be all the counting numbers. The point is it’s an infinity. And infinity divided by itself equals itself. What happens when you divide an infinite amount an infinite amount of times? The same thing that happens when you divide 1 by infinity, you are left with infinity. Infinity divided by anything equals infinity.
I’ll ponder your stance on chaos more.
It could be any infinitesimal. It could certainly not be any counting number, such as 1, 2, or 3. And although an infinitesimal is associated with “the infinities”, it is not appropriate to call it an “infinity”.
John’s point is that even as an infinitesimal, it is not a specific infinitesimal until you standardize your infinity, which I don’t think he completely understands, but he is right about that.
If you say that you are going to divide 1 meter an infinite number of times (and call that “1 infA” - for example), then you can say that 1/infA = 1 infinitesimal (of a meter). But if you don’t proclaim what you have divided infinitely, then it could be 2, 1000, or anything and thus you have no idea of what dividing it infinitely yields in comparison to anything else.
This is Rubbish.
What eternal laws??
Look at the ease with which god-believers parade as rational scientists…
Such daylight fraud!
The inability to progress beyond infinity.
The inability to divide down to zero.
The inability to obtain pure homogeneity.
The inability to have affect without being affected.
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.
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Nothing is possible until something is impossible.
You impose Your limitations as limitations per se.
Saying the only thing that is permanent is change and stooping to such word-games is just that - “games”.
Words are themselves abstractions.
See it for the error and dishonesty it is.
later.
Sure, determinism seems to require a prior state. But, you are not taking the inherent nature of the universe to create into account, nor are you taking the possibility of higher dimensional forms into account. I could imagine two higher dimensional forms colliding. The collision and intermixing of their respective higher dimensional but separate forms of space could account for the sudden appearance of the beginning of a causal chain in a lower dimension, such as ours. Thus, determinism is preserved, but that higher dimensional determinism is imperceptible to you. Thus, there would be a beginning of time and the preservation of determinism.
In either case, you must accept that the nature of the universe has an uncaused aspect to it. The best candidate for that uncaused aspect is the identity principle. The identity principle brings with it movement, determinism, form and time. Thus, the universe must either be capable of creating space with an identity or the universe contains an infinite amount of identifiable and separate spaces. The problem with the universe containing an infinite amount of identifiable and separate spaces is that there must be an order to such spaces. What defines this order? Why one order and not another? You may end up claiming an infinity of higher dimensions in order to preserve determinism. And then, we are back to the problem of infinity being a concept and not a number and being incapable of defining any space. Hence, the best solution is that the universe has the inherent ability to create identifiable space. This mechanism of choice is God.
A very simply way to understand this is that defined space is real, and in this sense, numbers are real. Infinity as a concept cannot created defined space or defined numbers. Hence, infinity is not the answer. Accordingly, defined space and defined numbers is the inherent nature of reality. The only question is, “Can the universe create defined space and defined numbers?” It would seem to me that the creation of defined space and defined numbers would not interrupt the universe, because there can always be another space or number, and indeed, the universe could not be said to contain all possibilities, if it did not include the possibility of having more or less a certain number of defined spaces or numbers. So, it seems to me that the inherent nature of the universe must include the creation of defined spaces or defined numbers. This is why I conceive the nature of the universe to be one of true everythingness, along with the dichotomy with true nothingness. Hence, the universe must have something that creates defined space and defined numbers. This is God.
Determinism does not require a prior state, if defined space and defined numbers can be created by God.
In simple terms, infinity cannot define order. Only creation can define order. Hence, because there is order in the universe, something must create. This is why we call God, the Creator.
I forgot to explain counting number part… my bad, I wasted your time here. Two things happen when you divide physical objects… the initial object loses mass in it’s separate form, but the number of objects multiplies, this is how you derive the counting numbers from division.
Lys, in any possible species that has desirable orgasms, sexual stratification causes suicide in the sexually stratified population. That is an eternal law. There are certainly others.
Just to clarify this law… it actually causes increased stress, depression, apathy and agitation. In populations that abstract suicide, it will cause suicide. That’s why a million men a year commit suicide while only 20,000 women a year commit suicide… this law is so predictive you can actually modulate the number of suicides my modulating the degree of sexual stratification. Even gravity isn’t always a law, like when you have dreams of flying… you’re visiting other realms where this law is suspended. The law of sexual stratification holds for all possible realms, it’s a stronger law than gravity.
It doesn’t “seem to require”. It requires it by definition.
The infinite causes the finite. Specifically, affect occurring at an infinite speed but having to traverse an infinite number of points yields a finite propagation speed known as “the speed of light”. Without that fixed speed, there would be no universe. And all distances are derived from that fixed speed. Using general relativity ontology, distances change only because the speed of light changes in a mass field and changes with respect to the other guy (from special relativity).
“Let there be light” has a far more physical meaning than is commonly known. The universe literally, physically is made of propagating affectance, “light”.
I can imagine something popping into existence and beginning a causal chain. So, determinism can have a beginning at least in my imagination. Now, the Big Bang sure looks like a real example of something popping into existence. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say there are higher dimensional causes at play, like a Brane. I can then imagine as a concept an infinite number of higher dimensions doing the same thing and causing things to appear and disappear in the lower dimensions. However, one is still stuck with an infinite number of dimensions, although string theorists claim there are only 11 (but that is due solely to the fact that the 12th is incomprehensible to them). Nevertheless, the problem of infinity cannot be avoided, and the problem that infinity is a concept and not a number cannot be avoided - and numbers are required for material reality.
There are no “higher dimensions” in physical reality.
You can imagine millions of things that are impossible to ever exist.
To the ignorant, anything is possible, even the impossible.
And infinity being a concept is not an issue any more than the fact that energy and dimensions are merely concepts is an issue.
Dimension is more than just a concept. I know there are 3 real spatial dimensions. I’ve never seen infinity before, however.
A “dimension” is merely a measuring concept and extends infinitely in opposing directions. Anything can be measured using a dimension, such as color, intelligence, love, or whatever. There is no such physical thing as a dimension. We use 3 dimensions in order to better track and think about space. But there are no actual dimensions anywhere. A dimension is merely a concept of direction, much like saying “Right and Left”. There is no physical “right” direction.
@James S Saint
The space between my fingers is real, no? And I know that space can be traveled in 3 different directions. So, dimensions are real because space is real. Now, if you want to describe dimension as simply space itself, then I have no problem with that. But, if one wants to imagine a space with more than 3 directions, one could imagine a concept of space with 4 dimensions based on the reality of our space with 3 dimensions.
Imagining it doesn’t make it real.
I can imagine a unicorn or a genie in a bottle.
Ignorance allows for anything to seem possible, even the impossible.
The German astronomer Carl Wilhelm Wirtz was the first who proved the expansion of the universe. But Wirtz’s observational evidence that the Universe is expanding is not often mentioned.
Wikipedia wrote:
„Wirtz in 1918 observed a systematic redshift of nebulae, which was difficult to interpret in terms of a cosmological model in which the Universe is filled more or less uniformly with stars and nebulae. Wirtz additionally used the equivalent in German of K correction. The term continues to be used in present-day observational cosmology, but Wirtz’s observational evidence that the Universe is expanding is not often mentioned. He wrote:
»It is remarkable, that our system of fixed stars shall have such a very strong displacement of 820 km/s, and equally strange is the interpretation of the systematic constant k = + 656 km. If we ascribe a verbatim interpretation to this value, then this means that the system of spiral nebulae is drifting apart by a velocity of 656 km with respect to the momentary location of the solar system as the center.«
In 1922, he wrote a paper where he argued that the observational results suggest, that the redshifts of distant galaxies are becoming higher than more closer ones, which he interpreted as an increase of their radial velocities with distance, and that larger masses have smaller redshifts than smaller ones. In another note of the same year, he argued that counter-clockwise spiraling galaxies have smaller redshifts than clockwise spiraling ones. In 1924 he obtained more precise results, and interpreted them both as a confirmation of an increase of radial velocities with distance, but also as confirmation of a de Sitter universe, in which the increase of redshift is seen as caused by an increased time dilation in distant parts of the universe.
In 1936, Wirtz wrote a short paper alluding to the priority for his 1922-conclusion that the radial velocities of galaxies are increasing with their distance."
The Belgian Catholic priest Georges Lemaître brought Wirtz’ observational evidence that the Universe is expanding into a theory, namely a more Christian theory.