(September 14, 2012 at 1:22 pm)automaton Wrote: First off, hi
Secondly, I'm not close-minded enough to think that I'm definitely right with this, and the fact that it's not a popularly believed argument among rational people leads me to believe there is obviously a reason for that being the case. Nevertheless, I shall present an argument that I thought of a while ago and can't seem to think of any counter to it.
P = premise
C = conclusion
P1) If time was not infinite, there could be no point in "time" for which time could start.
C1) Therefore time is infinite.
P2) If time is infinite, everything that can possibly come to pass will come to pass an infinite amount of times.
C2) Therefore the function of our matter (our consciousness) will come to pass an infinite amount of times.
C3) Therefore our personal consciousness' will be "reincarnated".
The main problem I can see with my argument is that someone may disagree with time being infinite, but I don't see how it can be finite due to P1, and also the thought of "no time" just doesn't feel right to me.
Your premise 2 is incorrect. For "everything that can possibly come to pass" to come to pass more than once, it must itself be finite. If time is infinite and "everything that can possibly come to pass" is also infinite, then there is no need to repetition.
To simplify, you are assuming that while time itself is infinite, the total number of events that can take place are finite and therefore, at some point, they must be repeated. Well, first of all, there is no basis for assuming that the number of events is finite. And secondly, even if the number of events were finite, it's still not necessary that all of them must be repeated. Perhaps some of them are repeated infinitely while others occur just once. Therefore, your conclusions C2 and C3 are wrong and there is no reason to assume reincarnation.
