Something about Apologetics.

[Abracadabra]

However,trying to argue with a trained Catholic apologist (and I have) is like trying to argue with Zeno of Elea;you KNOW the argument is wrong,but can't quite put your finger on it at once. Believers swallow it immediately,

It's funny you should use Zeno of Elea as an example.

I firmly stand behind the claims of Zeno of Elea. He was my childhood hero. I recognized the truth of his arguments even when I was still in my teens.

Most people simply misunderstand his arguments. Especially modern mathematicians who believe that calculus can be used to disprove Zeno's arguments.

To begin with Zeno was simply arguing that IF the world is a continuum, then motion would not be possible. Therefore he concluded that the world must be discrete or "quantized". Most people don't realize that this was the basis of his arguments.

We now know that Zeno was indeed correct. Our world is indeed quantized. Quantum Mechanics has shown that this is the case.

Mathematicians still erroneously believe that the calculus limits proves that Zeno was wrong. But that's totally false. The calculus limit does no such thing. In fact, the formal delta-epsilon definition of the Limit in no way disproves or violates Zeno's claims.

In fact, if you are educated in calculus you should know that limits can be said to 'exist' even when they don't. In other words, if a function has a missing point (an undefined point) but it is continuous on either side of that point up to that point, then that point can be proven to be a 'limit'. Yet clearly that does not mean that the point must 'exist'.

The calculus limit (and it's formal mathematical definition) only say things about trends. To prove that a 'limit exists' all you need to do is prove that certain trends and boundaries exist. You don't need to prove that the point in question needs to exist. In fact, it doesn't need to exist.

Zeno's claim is that you can't perform an infinite number of finite steps. And the calculus limit doesn't challenge that, nor does it show that Zeno was wrong.

On the contrary Zeno was indeed correct. He discovered the quantum nature of reality long before the quantum physicists discovered it.

So Zeno should be given the title 'Father of Quantum Physics'.

But of course he'll never be recognized for his great insight because everyone still erroneously believes that he was wrong, when in fact, he was right on.

He beat the quantum physicists to the punch by almost 2000 years!

He was a genius.