(July 18, 2017 at 12:11 pm)SteveII Wrote:(July 18, 2017 at 11:17 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Can you provide a mathematical proof for that? If not, all you know is that it violates your intuitions and you can't wrap your head around it. Actual reality is obliged to be intuitive. No apparent paradox has ever prevented reality from working the way it actually does, no matter how illogical it may seem (see Zeno). If there actually is an infinite past sequence of events, then it only seems paradoxical. I've got no investment in an infinite past, I'm just not aware of a proof that it can't be the case.Have you ever read about Hilbert's Hotel?
My personal opinion is that the most likely case is that there is a first cause (and many first causes for other cosmos), and it happened the instant that time began. But I'm comfortable with the possibility that I could be wrong.
Imagine a hotel with a finite number of rooms. All the rooms are full and a new guest walks in and wants a room. The desk clerk says no rooms are available. The person is turned away.
Now imagine a hotel that has an infinite number of rooms. All the rooms are filled up so an infinite number of guests. A new guest walks up and wants a room. All the clerk has to to do is to move the guest in room #1 to room #2 and the guest from #2 to #3 and so on so your new guest can have a room #1. You can do this infinite number of times to a hotel that was already full.
Now imagine instead the clerk moves the guest from #1 to #2 and from #2 to #4 and from #3 to #6 (each being moved to a room number twice the original). All the odd number rooms become vacant. You can add an infinite number of new guests to a hotel that was full and end up with it half empty.
How many people would be in the hotel if the guest in #1 checked out?
If everyone in odd number rooms checks out, how many checked out? How many are left?
Now what if all the guest above room number 3 check out. How many checked out? How many are left?
So from the above we get:
infinity + infinity = infinity
infinity + infinity = infinity/2
infinity - 1 = infinity
infinity / 2 = infinity
infinity - infinity = 3
Conclusion: the idea of an actual infinite is logically absurd.
well, we can carve out an exception for infinite torment in an infinite Hell that torments the damned for an infinite amount of time.
no problems with that
The granting of a pardon is an imputation of guilt, and the acceptance a confession of it.