(December 10, 2017 at 2:49 am)Grandizer Wrote: Most of you have heard the argument from the theist side that an infinite series of past events cannot be possible because to be infinite in the negative direction would be to not have a beginning at all, no starting point from which you can then trace a line from that point to the present. Yet, here we are experiencing the present. So, according to the theist, there seems to be some logical contradiction going on here.
Eternalism (typically associated with the B-theory of time) has an answer to this, which is that time is not how we intuit it to be. Given eternalism, there is no series of past events occurring in a "time-flowing" manner. Rather, all "past events" still presently exist along with present (and with "future") events. So, it seems to me, that no purportedly impossible tracing of the line from "no beginning" to the present has to occur.
But I was wondering how a presentist atheist would answer to this problem. Assuming time actually does flow, with future eventually becoming present, and present flowing into the past, how do you logically trace a line (as a hypothetical eternal being) from "no beginning" to the present point?
By line, I mean in the loose casual sense of the word, not the strictly mathematical definition of it.
There is a fundamental flaw in your question. You think that eternalism avoids the problem of past infinite series of events. It does not. Tell me, on your version of eternalism philosophy of time, do you think causality is a feature of reality? Is entropy a thing? Is the universe expanding? Are you the same person on December 11 as the person on December 10?
