RE: Four proofs of the nonexistence of God
July 19, 2017 at 10:10 am
(This post was last modified: July 19, 2017 at 10:47 am by Mister Agenda.)
SteveII Wrote:Mister Agenda Wrote:Can you provide a mathematical proof for that? If not, all you know is that it violates your intuitions and you can't wrap your head around it. Actual reality is not obliged to be intuitive. No apparent paradox has ever prevented reality from working the way it actually does, no matter how illogical it may seem (see Zeno). If there actually is an infinite past sequence of events, then it only seems paradoxical. I've got no investment in an infinite past, I'm just not aware of a proof that it can't be the case.Have you ever read about Hilbert's Hotel?
My personal opinion is that the most likely case is that there is a first cause (and many first causes for other cosmos), and it happened the instant that time began. But I'm comfortable with the possibility that I could be wrong.
Imagine a hotel with a finite number of rooms. All the rooms are full and a new guest walks in and wants a room. The desk clerk says no rooms are available. The person is turned away.
Now imagine a hotel that has an infinite number of rooms. All the rooms are filled up so an infinite number of guests. A new guest walks up and wants a room. All the clerk has to to do is to move the guest in room #1 to room #2 and the guest from #2 to #3 and so on so your new guest can have a room #1. You can do this infinite number of times to a hotel that was already full.
Now imagine instead the clerk moves the guest from #1 to #2 and from #2 to #4 and from #3 to #6 (each being moved to a room number twice the original). All the odd number rooms become vacant. You can add an infinite number of new guests to a hotel that was full and end up with it half empty.
How many people would be in the hotel if the guest in #1 checked out?
If everyone in odd number rooms checks out, how many checked out? How many are left?
Now what if all the guest above room number 3 check out. How many checked out? How many are left?
So from the above we get:
infinity + infinity = infinity
infinity + infinity = infinity/2
infinity - 1 = infinity
infinity / 2 = infinity
infinity - infinity = 3
Conclusion: the idea of an actual infinite is logically absurd.
Yes, I have. 'Logically absurd' is not a synonym for 'intuitively absurd'. Hilbert's Hotel is a thought experiment. Thought experiments are not logical proofs. They aren't even close. But they can rise to the level of being part of an argument, as you're doing here. The argument basically amounts to:
If an actual infinite number of things existed, it would be absurd.
Since it would be absurd, it's impossible.
There are some corollaries necessary. For example, Platonism must be false because in Platonism numbers are 'things' and there is an actual infinite number of them (I imagine you don't have a problem with actual infinites of abstractions). It must be incorrect that the universe contains an actual infinite number of dimensionless points (or one-dimensional lines, or two-dimensional planes), or that there could be an actual infinite set of possible worlds, but those are also abstractions. Hilbert is talking about infinite series of physical objects, and I agree (intuitively) that infinity and objects leads to absurdities.
But are past events 'physical objects'? There are no objects in the past or future, only in the present. Objects once existed in the past, but they no longer exist in the past, now they exist in the present. If you conduct a similar thought experiment based on events, the intuitive absurdity is greatly reduced. Of course you can always stuff more things into an infinite future. Of course you can always discover more about an infinite past. Time travel stories are a form of thought experiment, and it isn't absurd for time travelers to have done an infinite number of things in the past that we don't know about, as long as we wound up with the present that we have, and that's even with a finite past.
Another thought experiment would be of a finite object that experiences an infinite number of changes, because the changes aren't objects, they're events, and our intuition works quite differently regarding events than objects. What Hilbert doesn't address is that temporal events are like physical objects, which wasn't what he was trying to do in the first place; although that's the wagon WLC tries to get him to pull.
But the main flaw with Hilbert's Hotel is just that it's an appeal to our intuitions rather than a sound logical argument. And a sound logical argument is what I asked for.
Lek Wrote:mordant Wrote:Your own religion teaches that you are mindless robots in heaven, devoid of free will, never sinning and always worshiping. Do you want to be a without volition for eternity?
Where do you get these ideas from? It doesn't say any such thing. According to scripture we're going to be living on a new earth in physical bodies. Everything we do will be an act of worship of God. If you want to make statements about what the bible says, why don't you read it first.
I've read the whole thing cover-to-cover twice, many parts more times that I can put a number to. Why will humans with free will never sin in heaven? A third of the angels rebelled, if angels can't be 100% on board the God train in heaven with free will, how are humans supposed to manage it?
An eternity in heaven seems to be guaranteed if and only if you never use your free will to sin once you're there. Clearly it's possible to use your free will to sin once you get there. And it seems pretty clear that if you do, you'll be kicked out. The Bible is not nearly as clear on this matter as you make it out to be.
Lek Wrote:If there is a spiritual "us" that is supernatural, then it can preserve the memories. If I can accept a soul, then I can easily accept that it would contain the memories of my life as well. What it really comes down to is whether or not there is a supernatural existence that doesn't follow natural laws. If you're not open to a supernatural existence and only can think according to natural laws, then you really can't come to an understanding of something that is beyond nature.
Which leaves the Alzheimer's question unanswered. If there is a part of us that remembers things after we're dead, why can't it remember things when we're alive?
vorlon13 Wrote:well, we can carve out an exception for infinite torment in an infinite Hell that torments the damned for an infinite amount of time.
no problems with that
I guess the question is contingent on the difference between the past and the future. There can be an infinite set of things that will happen in the future (and there probably is), but that set will never be actualized, you'll never 'reach' infinity. The past on the other hand, if finite, is still definitely always growing. In that sense, there's always room in the past for more 'stuff'.
Of course, one of the entertaining things about an actual infinite being impossible is that it makes a God with an infinite past impossible as well, which should make a lot of theists uncomfortable. Without an actual past infinite being possible, God must have had a beginning.
Lek Wrote:The soul is "us". The memory of the soul is the same memory that is stored in our brain. The soul is not the mechanism which we use to gather and store memories.
So if I can't remember it, my soul won't remember it either, because my soul is me. And apparently the soul won't be able to learn anything after we're dead, because it won't be able to gather and store memories without a brain.
I consider that a less-than-optimal situation.
SteveII Wrote:I was explaining a math problem on using a infinite number of something that would be analogous to the original post discussing an infinite number of causes and effects. God, as a timeless and changeless being, does not run into the logical absurdity that the math illustrates.
Well, timeless beings are changeless by definition. Change is something that happens in time. A timeless being can't take an action or have a thought, because those are events, and events require time. Although it also seems clear that 'timeless beings' can't actually be 'beings' in the sense of 'something that exists'.
That is, a 'timeless being' is an absurdity. How long can a timeless being exist? No time at all.
SteveII Wrote:No offense and in spite of the Kudos you got, this post is a mess. None of your conclusion follow from the premises (and most of your premises are either wrong or incomplete). If you are here to discuss your opinions and learn something, then you should take smaller bites and ask more questions. If you are here to make grand statements and persuade us that there is no God with your vast subject knowledge, you have missed the mark.
My kudo was for the effort he put in as a newcomer. I try to be nice to newcomers. You'll notice no one actually agreed that he had succeeded in proving that God does not exist. I give you kudos when you seem to be putting in a sincere effort or make a good point. It doesn't mean that I agree with your position.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.