Request: Math expert to prove God doesn't exist.

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

One of the problems with believing that atheism is true is that we have no remotely plausible account of our universe.

One possibile way that avoids metaphysical problems involves the use of infinites.

If actual, discrete infinites can exist in our world, then our universe can exist eternally, and does not need God to create it.

That's the gist of the argument. But to develop this further, I need someone who is familiar enough in transfinite arithmetic and set theory to help me with a few issues first. If you're one of them, hit me up.

Obviously, you have been influenced by William Craig Lane's Kalam argument
that infinite regress is impossible thus creating a need for God to explain things.
For math involving infinity look up George Cantor.

Lane is wrong

Consider this, God creates heaven an hell, where souls for eternity suffer or live in eternal bliss. An experience of bliss or torment is a real thing. There can be an eternal series of real things, which Lanes claims is impossible.

God is supposedly eternal and omniscient and created the Universe. Being omniscient God would know before creation that he would create a Universe
at a given time. "In one year I will create". "In a thousand years I will create."
"In a billion years I will create." So we have an infinite chain of real things, God's knowledge of future creation of the Universe.

Contra Lane, infinite series of real things can and do exist, if his religion is to be taken seriously.

Lane claims an infinite series cannot exist because we cannot by addition get to infinity. But we are not adding or counting. We are not "traversing infinity" as Lane puts it. In an infinite series of events in time, any two events are in fact a finite distance in time apart from each other. So its not a problem.

These sort of Kalam inspired problems are pseudo problems.

Cheerful Charlie

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All I've said is "The best, most effective non-theistic explanation of the universe would involve a metaphysical argument about infinity."

But since infinity is a mathematical concept, I want to run my intuitions by someone familiar with set theory and/or transfinite arithmetic.

If so, start here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Canto...org_Cantor

You will have to put forth effort to understand the math and it won't be something you can do on a lazy weekend day. Note here Cantor himself thought about how infinities impinged on religion and philosophy.

And google for how some have argued Cantor's "diagonal method" disproves the possibility of an omniscient God.

None of this is really that new, but you won't get the full facts on a forum like this.
Forums really aren't good mediums for these sort of complex subjects.

I'm familiar with Craig's Kalam argument, but the idea that an infinite regress is impossible goes back thousands of years to Aristotle, almost 400 years before Christianity. To think it's Craig's idea is just nonsense.

But even if there is a hypothetical state (Heaven, Hell, a coffee-date with apophenia) that lasts eternally long, this is not an infinite and Cantor's set theory helps explain why. In set-theory the smallest infinite set is aleph-zero and contains infinite members. Ie, an actual infinite.

Meanwhile, what you are describing with an eternal state is not an actually infinite collection of events. It is better represented with a lemniscate. But in such a scenario, at any particular moment, only a finite number of events pass, and this is because we start counting from zero, and any particular point is a finite distance from zero.

So I'm not sure any of these objections go through from a mathematical perspective. But I'm sure there can be others.

Thanks for bringing up some meaningful discussion on this subject, though. Let me know if my responses make sense.