Presentism and Infinite Chain of Past Events

[Edwardo Piet]

But what I'm asking you is how did we reach the current present if there was no starting point to time from which we can metaphorically trace a line from it to the present moment?

Well because those times existed and were present before. They were present. And the whole point of an eternal universe is there doesn't need to be a starting point. I don't know why you think there does?

An analogous question: Is it possible to count from negative infinity to any integer (integer by integer, as in: -infinity, ..., -4, -3, -2, -1, ...), provided you have always existed eternally? It seems like by saying that it is possible, then we are treating it as a number as opposed to a concept.

I'll have to be honest . . . I don't know what integers even are. I'm not good with numbers. Can you use an analogy that involves words or concepts instead?

What I'm saying is that there was no beginning to the universe . . . or anything for that matter. No real beginning or end to anything. And we draw our arbitrary lines. We see the big bang begin and we label that and say "This is the beginning of what we call "the universe"". .. . but really all these things are just all part of one thing. . . the totality of existence. Everything is. That includes things before, during and after the universe. Although ultimately my point is that either there isn't any real 'before during and after' and time itself is an illusion . . . or time merely exists as a pulsing moment. All that exists is the present. What was happening, what is happening now, and what will be happening. The past doesn't exist now. The future does not exist now. The past merely refers to what used to be present and the future refers to what will be present. The present is all there is, the past is what was and the future what will be.

So I'm saying:

1. Existence itself is eternal . . . in that it has no beginning or end. And things-in-themselves, noumenas, are also eternal.

2. Ontological nonexistence is fundamentally impossible.

3. The totality of existence itself is necessary. There is something fundamental to existence. This ties in nicely with the previous point.

4. Nothing 'really' begins or ends . . . including the universe (in a sense, because really the universe is just one more part of the totality of existence . . . admittedly a very large part. Although not necessarily if there are a gargantuan number of universes, including perhaps much larger universes, elsewhere. And, besides, the universe wasn't always so gigantic.).

5.There is just one monad, one thing that is the totality existence . . . which has parts, and those parts change form. Change is an illusion, it's part of our phenomenological experience, perhaps something analogous to that exists in noumenological reality but it is by definition not something we will ever be able to experience or understand. All we can do about the noumena is eliminate the logically impossible. There are no square circles in the noumena, for example. It by definition can't be tested empirically and this includes doing maths or logic about it because we don't know what it even is. All we know is what it is not: A). something logically impossible. B). something experiencible or testable.

6. Either only the present exists, or only present things exist, and the past existed and the future will exist . . . or time itself is an illusion.

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How would you know if you're logical conclusions are logical without understanding the physics/math that are the foundation of all our information on the universe?  

Because they're not. It's the other way around. Maths and physics are founded upon logic. The logical absolutes verify themselves and they're the foundation that both maths and physics are built upon. The fact they are self-verifying (or perhaps rather, they're so fundamental they don't even need verification because they'd still be true even if we didn't exist to conceptualize them) is why they're called the logical absolutes.