(August 15, 2018 at 9:42 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:(August 14, 2018 at 1:28 pm)SteveII Wrote: Yes, it is proven to be impossible. By logic. If there are infinite series of events in the past, we could never have gone through them one after another to get to the current event. At any step in the series, there would always be an infinite more events that needed to be traversed.
Zeno proved nothing. His examples were dividing. We are talking about addition: one event added at a time in a series.
Saying a past infinite may still be possible is a high intellectual price to pay in an argument. That's why most back away and claim the universe is a brute fact. Not that we don't know the explanation, but there is no explanation.
Then present the proof, in formal logic. I am prepared to be amazed and for you to make history. As I predicted, so far you've only assumed your conclusion, essentially 'a past infinite is impossible, therefore a past infinite is impossible'. That's what accepting it as a brute fact means. You've started and stopped at your premise and proven nothing.
I'm not sure where you think there is an objection that you can defend.
1. An event is a change in a real object
2. From any point in the past, there is a finite amount of events to the present and can be counted down en...e3...e2...e1...e0(now).
3. If there are an infinite amount of events in the past, we could never count down from infinity to e3...e2...e1...e0 because there would always be an infinite amount of events that would still have happened on the leading edge of the series.
4. With an infinite series of past events we could never arrive to the present.
5. Therefore an actual infinite series of past events is impossible.