Can you elaborate on what you mean here? Do you mean you have to wait until the time passes to get to this point, or what?
I mean, you have to wait a certain duration to get from one point in time to another point.
So then can you elaborate on how this connects back to the fact that you can’t have an eternal past? I am also going out to eat so I might not respond for a bit.
Because of two things, 1) You have to wait for time to pass, and 2) You can always add an arbitrary amount of time to the eternal past, and you still get the eternal past, so you cannot obtain the eternal past.
Not in ordinal terms. Read transfinite number. If \omega is the first infinite integer, then \omega+1 is larger, and \omega \cdot 2 larger still.
And this an appeal to popularity fallacy. Just because the community agrees with something that is false, that doesn’t make it true.
That doesn’t imply anything. You cannot reach the current moment from the “eternal” past. OK. Both can still exist.
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I don’t know what you mean by adding time; an eternal past just means that if you keep tracking backwards from the present, there will never be a point where time doesn’t exist. And as for the waiting for time to pass part, my idea of repeating finite events solves that.
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So what’s your point, MoK?
The circumference of a circle / cycle has no beginning or end points (i.e. boundaries) like e.g. every path over a Klein bottle …
I am not a mathematician, but after simple research, I found out that there is a distinction between transfinite ordinals, such as infinity plus infinity, and transfinite cardinals, such as infinity.
You cannot reach from now to the eternal past by definition, since the eternal past is related to the theories of time in which time has no beginning! The eternal past simply does not exist as a point since you can always go more toward the past in a beginningless universe. Therefore, it is meaningless to say whether we can reach from the eternal past to the present.
Ok, let’s stick to the eternal past. Does the eternal past exist as a point? Sure not. As you stated, there are always other points in the past, regardless of how far you go into the past, in theories that time does not have a definite beginning! Therefore, we cannot choose a point such as the eternal past to start from and reach the present.
I don’t understand what you are talking about.
Kind of. In normal numbers there’s no difference between “five” and “fifth”. The size of a set with five elements is the same as the position of the fifth element. With infinite numbers that correspondence changes.
That’s what I said.
Yes, that doesn’t imply anything other than that.
My point is that the eternal past does not exist as a point since it is related to the theories of time, in which time does not have a beginning. Therefore, we cannot choose a point, the so-called eternal past, and try to reach the present, since there is always a point before any chosen point! These types of theory are simply incoherent, so we have to discard them.
Thank you for the manuscript. I will read it when I have time.
We have to discard these types of theories since there is no point, so-called eternal past point, which we can consider as a point, and then discuss whether we can reach from this point to the present.
Why? Because you say so?
Infinity is not a “point”, that doesn’t mean it cannot exist.
You need to read the rest of what I said. There is always another point in the past, regardless of how far you go into the past, in the theories that time does not have a beginning. So, there is no determinate point, such as an eternal past point, at which we can define and then discuss whether we can reach from that point to the present. An infinite past cannot exist either, since we cannot obtain an infinite past by going back in time.
I repeat: Why? Because you said so?
No one agrees with that vacuous claim.
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In the case of an infinite past, you can always add infinity to infinity, so you cannot say that you obtain infinity, and the job is done.
Is this a general argument that change cannot occur if presentism is true, and that, because change is surely taking place, that therefore, presentism is false, and that therefore, God must exist to account for change in a non-presentist view of reality?
This is what I got from your argument, in case it isn’t a correct summary. And if it is, I don’t see that it is a sufficient argument. For one thing, I don’t think your conception of time and presentism is accurate; time merely is a record of events that take place, and so the past is events that have already taken place, the present are the events taking place, and the future are the events that will take place. All that presentism says is that only the present currently exists, and doesn’t deny that the events of the past, or X, have caused present events, or Y; it is just that X no longer exists, yet Y currently does exist. So if, by saying that presentism cannot be true, and so the existence of God must be true, then I don’t think your argument works.
One argument that I prefer to defend the existence of God are incoherencies associated with an infinitely existent universe, and so, a universe with an infinite past. If we define the past as all events that have already taken place, then by saying that the universe had an infinite past, then you would be saying that an infinite number of past events have already happened. And by infinite, we would be saying that infinite is an uncountable, or unelapsable, quantity, or amount, of something. Therefore, to say that the past is infinite is to say that the number of past events are unelapsable in number. But since the past are the events that have already happened, then they would also be the events that have elapsed. therefore, by saying that the past is infinite, you get a contradiction: the past is unelapsably large, but at the same time, has elapsed, which is a violation of the law of non-contradiction, or A or not A. Therefore, it is not just improbable that the past is infinite, but impossible that it is infinite. Therefore, the universe has to have been created.
Note that this argument doesn’t even get you to God yet; all it suggests currently is that something besides the universe made the universe. But to admit that something besides matter and energy exists, and that something beyond the universe, which is the full constitution of matter and energy that currently exists, brings one much closer to God than to Atheism, especially Naturalism.
This reply got far too long, so I shall stop writing here if you have questions.
I first argue that things cannot change under presentism, and that is one-third of the argument. In this way, I discard theories of time in which time has a definite beginning. I then attack the theories that time does not have a definite beginning and discard them as well. This leaves us with no natural explanation of reality. I then discuss that God must exist as a result.
Time is not a record of events. It is something that accommodates events in sequential order that we have to wait for them to occur.
That is an interesting way of putting things together, but that is one-third of the argument. You need to argue that the theories that time has a definite beginning are not acceptable either.
Ah, so this is a general argument that all natural theories of time-both for finite and infinite universes-are insufficient under presentism, and so because of that, God is the only sensible option?
If this is the argument, then this would still be problematic on an epistemic level. When you posit theories on the universe, and their current insufficiency at explaining its existence, it doesn’t therefore follow that there are no sufficient hypotheses that can be ever be conceived, unless you provide an undefeated logical defeater to any type of natural theory to the universe. And you’ve not demonstrated to me why-after my last response-presentism invalidates any natural theory on the universe’s existence. Therefore, I think your argument could still use some work.
At the same time, the argument I gave you in the last response works independently from your own argument here, and so I see no reason why I would need to prove that natural theories on a finite universe cannot work. Nature is whatever exists in the universe, so if my argument demonstrates that something created the universe, then that explanation for the universe cannot be natural, by definition.
I am arguing that there are only two valid types of theories of the beginning of time. These two types are not acceptable for separate reasons, so we are left with no extra option, since time either has a definite beginning or not!
Time either has a beginning or does not. That is a valid dichotomy. There is no third option!
No motion is possible under presentism, but presentism is not the only option. The other option is discussed in the OP.
I mentioned that you just discarded theories that time does not have any beginning, so you need to somehow discard theories that time also has a beginning as well. Once you do that, then we are left with no natural explanation of the existence of the universe, hence there must be a creator.