The First Cause? Prime Mover Argument

[Pyrrho]

What happened to my reasonable counterpart? Did he philosophise and run?

He is a part of my imagination, too, and I just have not been thinking about him lately.

[Cyberman]

Am I part of your imagination too? If so, you have a sick, sick mind and I suggest getting yourself sectioned immediately.

[Hatshepsut]

Faith? What do you mean by that?

It's like when you aim that bank shot in pool and you just know it's going to go in...

Move the goalposts farther back?

Well, faith is a moving target. Kind of like Zeno's paradoxes where you never get there. Science has done pretty good getting to within 400K years of the apparent origin by observation, in a universe thought to be 30K-fold older than that. And the theory, albeit with less certainty, can penetrate to a possible "inflationary era" only some 10^-34 seconds after it all hit the fan. I don't see why anyone wants to keep the old pedestrian creation stories where the cosmos is hardly older than writing and the critters are all cattle, fish, and birds...an Anomalocaris made of condensates from supernova dust is much more exciting!

What happened to my reasonable counterpart? Did he philosophise and run?

Is that like a hit & run? Do we have any witnesses? So the cops can catch 'em?

[Neo-Scholastic]

There is nothing illogical about an infinite series.  For example, consider the set of whole numbers (....,-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ...).  There is no first whole number and there is no last whole number.  In the sequence, one finds the next whole number by adding one to the previous one (or one can derive it that way).  Or one can derive the previous number in the sequence by subtracting 1 from the succeeding number.  There is nothing contradictory or illogical about this.

You flunk logic with premise 2.

It is only seems logical to you because you have not differentiated between a potential infinity and an actual infinity. 

[Longhorn]

Faith? What do you mean by that?

It's like when you aim that bank shot in pool and you just know it's going to go in...

So, in other words: assuming something is true even when it's unlikely and without any evidence to base it on, for personal reasons. Got it!

[The Grand Nudger]

Yeah, you should figure out a way to do that...chop chop....Chad.....and get back to me when you work out how to differentiate between potential and actual infinities.....then we can harangue somebody for having failed to do so themselves, eh?

[Tonus]

Potential infinity: "I have to go to the DMV tomorrow."
Actual infinity: "I'm on line at the DMV."

[Pyrrho]

Yeah, you should figure out a way to do that...chop chop....Chad.....and get back to me when you work out how to differentiate between potential and actual infinities.....then we can harangue somebody for having failed to do so themselves, eh?

It is an irrelevant distinction for this discussion.  If an actual infinity were impossible, then there would be no potential infinities.  "Potential" means 

"Having or showing the capacity to develop into something in the future"

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/defini...ctCode=all

There would be no capacity to develop into an infinity if an infinity were impossible.


Additionally, it is worth mentioning that the type of possibility under discussion is logical possibility, not some other type.  For those who need this reminder, look carefully at the wording of the quoted portions of the opening post:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-33243-po...#pid939798


Also, anyone who supposes that the set of whole numbers (....,-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, ...) is illogical has a lot to learn about logic or numbers or both.  What would be illogical would be to suppose that there must be a first whole number or a last whole number.  In other words, it would be in the denial of the infinity of the set of whole numbers that would result in contradiction, not in affirming the infinity of the set of whole numbers.

[Neo-Scholastic]

It is an irrelevant distinction for this discussion.  If an actual infinity were impossible, then there would be no potential infinities...There would be no capacity to develop into an infinity if an infinity were impossible.

No matter how many +1's you add it will always count to an actual finite number despite their being potentially infinitely more. You have it completely backwards.

[Hatshepsut]

Divergence to plus infinity in the sequence {1, 2, 3, ... } does not require any "potential" or "actual" infinity to be produced. It requires only that for any natural number m, there exists a natural number greater than m. Mathematics doesn't have to worry about the distinction between potential and actual infinities, a topic you won't see in any math textbooks. The set of natural numbers, N, is defined by stating (1) that every natural number has a unique successor distinct from itself, (2) that there exists a natural number called 1 which is not the successor of any number, and (3) that if a set S contains 1 along with the successors of every number in S, then S is the set N. An arbitrary set is infinite if it contains a subset whose elements can be placed in one-to-one correspondence with the elements of N.

There's a cardinality thing where N represents a "countable infinity." Sets of higher cardinality exist, such as the set of all functions from N into N, which we can show is equivalent to the set of real numbers. Yet nothing is said about whether there are, or can be, any collections of real-world objects that can be placed in one-to-one correspondence with N. So, the mathematical set N remains small enough to fit conveniently in a brain regardless.