RE: The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.
July 22, 2023 at 2:27 pm
GN, if you're saying what St. Peter did: "15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.",(1 Pet 3:15), then I agree with you. Let me share one anecdote with you, though. I recently spoke to a friend called Daniel. He was a fallen away Catholic. I shared all this with him many times, Eucharistic Miracles, Messianic Prophecies, Miracles of Our Lord like the Shroud of Turin, of Our Lady like those at Fatima, seen by 70,000 eyewitnesses, and Miracles at Medjugorje, which is still ongoing, and has been for 42+ years, and experienced by 40 MN + people (though others sadly ignore it), etc etc, and for a while, he too was resistant. He didn't want to believe, since he'd heard otherwise from Atheistic Professors. Yet, some weeks later, he called me, and told me he was coming back to Church. He confessed and started receiving Holy Communion again. Hallelujah!
Look, it's very simple. If Christians are right, then we're giving you a gift of Priceless Value in telling you about Christ and the Gospel, since the Reward is Eternal Happiness for those who get it right. Those who get it right earlier on even moreso. If, however, we're wrong, then we're just wrong, and it's all meaningless anyway. And if morality is subjective, since we subjectively intend to do good, then that should be good under Atheism also, lol.
Grandizer, ok, thanks for that; any comments on what I said to Polymath earlier on, that if you start writing 1,2,3, etc on pieces of paper, will you, or others after you, ever get to infinity? If not, and he seemed to agree this series formed by successive addition would always be finite, so if you do too, then why doesn't that apply in reverse? If we imagine points on the timeline to be -15 BN (give or take), when time began, then it is clear that, with the elapse of seconds, we can finally get to the present, t=0, at some point, which is today. But if it was actually infinite, how did it ever become a finite number in the first place? I asked the same in reverse when I said, if you did get to an Actual Infinite on one page, what number were you on 10 pages earlier? You see, the difference between the finite and the infinite cannot be transcended by successive addition; that's what we're saying. So would you agree with that, or would you dispute it? It seems to me that, if we agree that by writing numbers on pieces of paper, we, or others after us, could never reach an Actual Infinite, then the same applies in reverse. Granted that we got to 0, we did not start infinitely many years ago. We started, according to some, around 13.7 BN years ago, and according to others, around 15-20 BN years ago.
Look, it's very simple. If Christians are right, then we're giving you a gift of Priceless Value in telling you about Christ and the Gospel, since the Reward is Eternal Happiness for those who get it right. Those who get it right earlier on even moreso. If, however, we're wrong, then we're just wrong, and it's all meaningless anyway. And if morality is subjective, since we subjectively intend to do good, then that should be good under Atheism also, lol.
Grandizer, ok, thanks for that; any comments on what I said to Polymath earlier on, that if you start writing 1,2,3, etc on pieces of paper, will you, or others after you, ever get to infinity? If not, and he seemed to agree this series formed by successive addition would always be finite, so if you do too, then why doesn't that apply in reverse? If we imagine points on the timeline to be -15 BN (give or take), when time began, then it is clear that, with the elapse of seconds, we can finally get to the present, t=0, at some point, which is today. But if it was actually infinite, how did it ever become a finite number in the first place? I asked the same in reverse when I said, if you did get to an Actual Infinite on one page, what number were you on 10 pages earlier? You see, the difference between the finite and the infinite cannot be transcended by successive addition; that's what we're saying. So would you agree with that, or would you dispute it? It seems to me that, if we agree that by writing numbers on pieces of paper, we, or others after us, could never reach an Actual Infinite, then the same applies in reverse. Granted that we got to 0, we did not start infinitely many years ago. We started, according to some, around 13.7 BN years ago, and according to others, around 15-20 BN years ago.
