The Principle of Contingent Causation: The Impossibility of Infinite Regress.

[polymath257]

Nishant said: "For every Being Bn, if it is temporal, it depends on a prior being in the timeline, Bn-1."

Polymath said: "Prove  this."

Every being Bn that is temporal begins to exist at some point in the timeline. Therefore, it depends on a prior being Bn-1 that already existed at a prior point in the timeline.

You are assuming your conclusion. Why must something that begins be dependent on something previous?

And this being Bn-1, if itself temporal, depends on a prior being, Bn-2. And so on and so forth, until the beginning of time. Since there is no B0, the Final Being, the First Being, B1, is non-Temporal, i.e. Eternal.

Sorry, but you didn't prove your claim. You merely restated it.

Btw, while I respect St. Thomas, and Dr. Craig, the Argument from Contingency, to the best of my knowledge, has never been formulated mathematically before. It's an absolutely solid argument, and many have become Theists because of it. I think even more will as the mathematical formulation of the argument gets out. That some Atheists may not believe is true, yet the conclusion is certain: An Eternal First Being exists, non-Temporal, responsible for subsequent Beings B2 to Bn beginning to exist in the Universe.

Nope. it is mathematically full of holes. You assume that things are indexed by the  positive natural numbers, which is well ordered and thereby is equivalent to your conclusion. In other words, you are again assuming your conclusion. There is NOTHING mathematically problematic about an infinite regress. In fact, such are a standard aspect of the mathematics of  the infinite.

As for other issues, yes, Dr. Craig, a Professional Philosopher, has written extensively on some of the absurdities the idea that a successive addition forming an actual infinite would lead to, and I agree with him. It appears even you do on that particular point.

Craig is a mathematical dolt. He likes to talk a bout Hilbert Hotel but clearly does NOT understand it, even at the level of an upper level undergraduate.

If so, consider this syllogism:

1. An actual infinite cannot be formed by successive addition (which you said you agree with above)
2. The temporal series of past events is a series formed by successive addition.
3. Therefore, the temporal series of past events cannot be actually infinite.

Your assumption 1 is incomplete. An infinite cannot be formed from successive addition *from a finite start*. But that is NOT what happens in an infinite temporal regress. So, that means that 2 is wrongly stated: the temporal sequence is formed from successive addition *to an already infinite temporal sequence*.

You are trying to deny the conclusion, while saying you admit the premise.

Nope. I deny your formulation of both 1 and 2.

Your words: "NOBODY assumes that an infinite can be obtained by 'successive addition' from a finite amount." 

Now, as to your claim "time was always infinite in the past": what you are really saying is 3 above. Yet, you agree with 1.

[size=undefined]

No, I do not. 1 assumes a finite starting point, which is precisely what I deny for the temporal sequence.[/size]

Do you then disagree with 2? If so, you need to establish it. The premise is at least more evident than its denial.

[size=undefined]

Successive addition *from what*? The temporal sequence is 'formed' by successive addition to the  previous temporal sequence. At ALL times, that sequence is infinite. There is no start, which is what 1 assumes.
[/size]

If the universe is roughly 15 Billion years old, give or take, that is an independent confirmation it is not actually infinite.

[size=undefined]

And, when quantum gravity is taken into account, that event 13.7 billion years ago is more of a phase transition that a creation event.[/size]

Again, all you have to do to realize the Universe cannot be actually infinite in the past, given that we got here, is count backward into the past. 

[size=undefined]

And it has not been shown that the universe is finite into the past. The current expansion phase is finite into the  past, but that is not the same thing.[/size]

You claim it is a false analogy to say that if we started from 1,2,3, we will never get to infinity, but allegedly, starting from infinity, we can get to 0.

[size=undefined]
Yes, absolutely. Once you jump to a specific point, the rest is finite.[/size]

All you have to do is count backward in time. If we started from -infinity, we would never get to 0. We got to 0, therefore we didn't start from -infinity.

[size=undefined]

Once again, you are assuming there was a *start*. That is precisely what an infinite regress denies. You need to make an argument that there was a start while NOT assuming an infinite regress is impossible.[/size]