The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.

[arewethereyet]

Such silly ad hominem and dishonest style of argumentation. We Christians could say more to you Atheists, you are resisting the Gospel Truth, you are in mortal sin for rejecting known Truth, you are going to hell for this etc. We don't want to because we prefer polite and pleasant intellectual debate, like for e.g. Dr. Craig engages in. It's very clear some of you however are not up for that but prefer to throw a temper tantrum and stomp your feet instead.

Modern Science 100% confirms the Philosophical Truth established by learned Philosophers long ago. I will quote Alexander Vilenkin and then shake off the dust: "THE OBSTRUCTION may be found in the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem.8 Loosely speaking, our theorem states that if the universe is, on average, expanding, then its history cannot be indefinitely continued into the past ... No matter how small the probability of collapse, the universe could not have existed for an infinite amount of time before the onset of inflation." https://inference-review.com/article/the...e-universe

Can you really say more?  I would think you had about talked yourself out by now.

Goddamn you're are a wordy SOB.  Love to hear yourself talk, don't you.

[Foxaèr]

And he's devolving.

[Angrboda]

Such silly ad hominem and dishonest style of argumentation. We Christians could say more to you Atheists, you are resisting the Gospel Truth, you are in mortal sin for rejecting known Truth, you are going to hell for this etc. We don't want to because we prefer polite and pleasant intellectual debate, like for e.g. Dr. Craig engages in. It's very clear some of you however are not up for that but prefer to throw a temper tantrum and stomp your feet instead.

Modern Science 100% confirms the Philosophical Truth established by learned Philosophers long ago. I will quote Alexander Vilenkin and then shake off the dust: "THE OBSTRUCTION may be found in the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem.8 Loosely speaking, our theorem states that if the universe is, on average, expanding, then its history cannot be indefinitely continued into the past ... No matter how small the probability of collapse, the universe could not have existed for an infinite amount of time before the onset of inflation." https://inference-review.com/article/the...e-universe

Stamp your little feet and run away. It's the best you can do given your defeat.

[arewethereyet]

And he's devolving.

He should have about hit the limit...unless, of course, it's infinite.

How low can you go....how low can you go?

[The Architect Of Fate]

Such silly ad hominem and dishonest style of argumentation. We Christians could say more to you Atheists, you are resisting the Gospel Truth, you are in mortal sin for rejecting known Truth, you are going to hell for this etc. We don't want to because we prefer polite and pleasant intellectual debate, like for e.g. Dr. Craig engages in. It's very clear some of you however are not up for that but prefer to throw a temper tantrum and stomp your feet instead.

Buddy you have not engaged in" polite and pleasant intellectual debate" You have engaged in nothing but dishonest by-the-numbers apologetics and you get huffy and start crying "You meanies " when you predictably get pushback and mockery. What a delicate little snowflake you are while complaining about temper tantrums go get your bottle refilled, you little toddler. Oh, and Craig like you is a total hack.

Modern Science 100% confirms the Philosophical Truth established by learned Philosophers long ago. I will quote Alexander Vilenkin and then shake off the dust: "THE OBSTRUCTION may be found in the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem.8 Loosely speaking, our theorem states that if the universe is, on average, expanding, then its history cannot be indefinitely continued into the past ... No matter how small the probability of collapse, the universe could not have existed for an infinite amount of time before the onset of inflation." 

No, it has not no matter how much you insist it has

[Angrboda]

And he's devolving.

He should have about hit the limit...unless, of course, it's infinite.

How low can you go....how low can you go?

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

[The Architect Of Fate]

NX in a nutshell 


US 

[Deesse23]

 How many times do we have to repeat this before it penetrates your rock-hard skull?

Probably an...wait for it....endless amount of times.

[GrandizerII]

Grandizer said:

You can't reach -infinity from 0. No one is saying that you can.

Then that concedes the argument. We got to 0, therefore, we didn't start from - infinity.

Again, what do you mean by "start from -infinity"? Do you mean:

1) start from a specific past moment in time that is infinitely away from the present moment?

or

2) start with an infinite sequence of past moments?

If 1, no one is saying that's possible.

If 2, then you can get to the present moment eventually

Your argument therefore fails.

What some people are saying is that there is nothing logically wrong with counting backwards forever. If you have a moment t0, you can have a moment prior to that called t(-1), then t(-2), t(-3), and so on forever. And if you then reverse direction so you're moving back forwards, you can start from any moment prior to t0 and come back to t0 eventually.

Agree with this. You could have started with 10^10Trilion^100Trillion and come to 0, but not from an actual number called -infinite seconds ago. Even one of the persons in Angrboda's video conceded this: the distance between the finite and the infinite cannot be transcended by successive addition.

And all this is true without necessarily posing a threat to an infinite past, because with an infinite past you don't start with a finite set of moments anyway. So there need not be any distance between the finite and the infinite to worry about here.

But just as you can't reach a specific moment called -infinity counting backwards, you can't start from a specific moment called -infinity counting forwards. But you can go as far back as you want in time, then start counting from there all the way back to t0. And if there is no limit to how far back you can go, then that's what indicates a negative infinity.

That would be a potential infinity, not an actual infinity.

If you're referring to the infinite past, that's not a potential infinity by Craig's definition. Because a potential infinity is supposed to be a finite set that's ever expanding. An infinite sequence of past moments is not a finite set.

The part where I say "no limit" is meant to illustrate what is being meant by an infinity. Infinity is not an unimaginably extreme integer. Rather, it refers to the "limitlessness" of the count of integers here. Mathematically, in the context of this debate, it's the cardinality of the infinite set itself: aleph-null.

Potential infinity is ok, which just means the series keeps on expanding to a very large number like the trillion thing I mentioned above. Actual infinity you will never reach, like in the example of adding 1,2,3 etc on pages of paper I gave. And why? Because the distance between the finite and infinite cannot be traversed by the successive addition of one number to the other.

Potential infinity refers to a finite set that's ever-expanding, not to an actual infinite. Nor is it to be mistaken for an infinite set of potentialities.

Here is Wiki on Actual Infinity contrasted with Potential Infinity: "Actual infinity is to be contrasted with potential infinity, in which a non-terminating process (such as "add 1 to the previous number") produces a sequence with no last element, and where each individual result is finite and is achieved in a finite number of steps. As a result, potential infinity is often formalized using the concept of a limit."

Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_infinity

Bolded mine.

An infinite past (with no first moment) is the opposite of finite. So not applicable here.

[GrandizerII]

Modern Science 100% confirms the Philosophical Truth established by learned Philosophers long ago. I will quote Alexander Vilenkin and then shake off the dust: "THE OBSTRUCTION may be found in the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem.8 Loosely speaking, our theorem states that if the universe is, on average, expanding, then its history cannot be indefinitely continued into the past ... No matter how small the probability of collapse, the universe could not have existed for an infinite amount of time before the onset of inflation." https://inference-review.com/article/the...e-universe

Again, the BGV theorem doesn't say that any universe must have a beginning. There is a condition to keep in mind here for the BGV to apply. The universe must, on average, be expanding.

So even if this observable universe is expanding and thus has a beginning (per the theorem), there could be a "higher-level" universe out there that exists but is not expanding and which doesn't have a beginning.

And the article you share here is Vilenkin's view on what universes are possible/plausible, not just what the BGV theorem states. So he is going beyond what the theorem itself says. Vilenkin is not the sole authority on this matter though. Alan Guth, one of the two other founders of the theorem, disagrees with Vilenkin and thinks it is possible for there to be a universe that is eternal. The BGV theorem itself doesn't make a statement about who between them is correct.