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This is one of the first posts I wrote (If I had to guess, about 4-6 months after “Our Purpose”, but back then it wasn’t “posts”, it was “pages”- ironic that my posts are longer than my “pages” were, it’s really supposed to be the other way around :P …I didn’t include it because- well frankly I shortly after deduced that it was inaccurate, and conflicted with later thought. While to some extent this is the case, I’ve come to accept that as normal. Human beings aren’t perfect anyway (although I tend to be a perfectionist), and it’s better just to think of it as different ways of looking at the same truth. Well, after digging through the old backup hard drive, I managed to scrounge it up, so here it is:
ps- the main reason I bothered was so that I could provide evidence that I independently deduced the same thing as Parmenides and Augustine (if you look closely, you’ll see my deductions to be split between the prospects of “God exists outside time”, and “time doesn’t exist”). well, after all this time, here it is:
Solving the Paradox of infinity:
You might ask, what is the “paradox of infinity”, and since my efforts in solving this question (and the efforts have been great) would have no merit if you do not know the nature of the question, I will tell you. This is a question of of life, death, and the origin of the two. To put this into perspective, let’s use “God” as an example. God, the creator of all things, the being that always was, and always will be. In other words, God infinite in all ways. But the greatest paradox of all time is infinity. Why?-
In order of God to be infinite, and to be the only entity that can have this quality, there had to have been a time when only he existed. Even if you believe there is more than one God, they had to be a point when nothing but those Gods existed. Now here lies the problem: Because God always existed, that would mean there is an infinite amount of time before he created us. Now the most obvious part of the problem is no matter when he started creating, he existed for an infinite amount of time before that, so “why didn’t he create us sooner?” this an inevitable paradox, because the question in inescapable regardless of when we were created. But this concept would apply not just to God, but evolution, animism, or any of belief-systems regarding the origin of life, or matter for that matter.
(P.S., for all you Christians out there, instead of working hard to disprove evolution, you can bypass that argument entirely by insisting there has to be a God for matter to exist, since something can’t come from nothing, and evolution is only regarding the origin of life. Ok maybe the big bang is related to evolution, but obviously the “Big Bang” didn’t come from, nothing either, did it?)
Now, I hope you can be open-minded enough to see that this paradox completely invalidates any view of God that we possibly comprehend, since the concept of infinity does not correlate with any of the laws of physics due to its nature. In this lies the question- how can we solve a question to which there is no end? Although my answer to this question may seem “too easy” or something of the like, at least it is answer- and that is: infinity does not exist. Or more specifically, time does not exist. Now, you’re probably what the hell am I talking about? To deny the existence of not only only infinity, but time itself seems implausible, doesn’t it? Well maybe you’ll understand if I tell you why- since our understanding of the universe hasn’t even scratched the surface, anything is theoretically possible. So on that basis, it would be completely rational to go on with what I’m about to say. My theory is that our ideas about infinity, time, and everything else were integrated in us by one or more supreme entities, “God”(s) if you will. Thus, In reality time does not exist, and if it did exist, we would be “frozen in time” for lack of a better visual. This it the point at which I (understandably, but sadly so) have no further ideas, since I have already gone beyond theory and speculated on things beyond out comprehension. But, on the bright side, These theories effectively prove the existence of God better than any other belief system out there (notice I said “prove”, not “convince”. Obviously Christianity is the most convincing belief system, otherwise it wouldn’t be the #1 religion.)
July 2, 2008 at 6:45 am
Good post, as a philosophy major I live for wading through ideas like this :P
I used to think that time didn’t exist, that it was just a human invention. After all, if I were to locate my self in space, then there would be no such thing 12:00, 4:00, etc., as it is based on the Earth’s rotation. But, as I got older I realized that this was extremely flawed, as it only adressed the concept of earthly tracking of time.
I think one of the most convincing arguments for the non-existance of time (that I”ve come up with/across at least) is this: there is no such thing as the past or the future. At any given moment there is only just a ‘now.’ What we consider the past is just a memory, and what we consider the future is the hopeful expectation of a continued stream of ‘nows.’
“Well then how can I say with confidence that I’ll have to work tomorrow then?”
You can’t! You’re only basing that off of what you have previously experienced. You’ve experienced a constant turning of earthly time which shows that when the sun rises tomorrow you’ll have to go to work, but that doesn’t prove that the sun -will- rise tomorrow. Does that make sense?
I’m not sure if I believe it, but there it is.
As for the question of infinity, maybe it could be argued that the conception of time as we know it didn’t come into being until God created the universe? Or maybe we could define time as a successive link of ‘nows?’ But to do this we’d have to ask ourselves when one ‘now’ ended and another began, and if something begins and ends, doesn’t that mean there must be time?
Big questions! Unfortuantely I’m at work right now and can’t devote the time to it, but I’d love to try and think my way through this tangle.
Thanks for giving me a few minutes of fun!
July 3, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Just to pick up where Zacharias left off.
If we have the idea that there is only the present moment, we have to include that the present moment is in a state of constant flux. Atomic theory (in the ancient greek sense, not in the modern sense) works well here, because the flux would be functioning by changing the position of each atom. The illusion of predictability comes in if we allow that, for flux to occur, each atom must move by the same amount as each other atom. Most of the time these movements will be random, so at a large scale it will look like nothing has changed.
But if there is a nonrandom inclination – say, an inclination in all the atoms in a rock to be moving in a similar direction – then at the large scale the ‘flux’ of all the atoms will cancel themselves out and the rock will appear to be moving predictably based on its previous trajectory. For this to occur, inclination would have to be maintained in spite of flux.
I’m no expert on pre-socratic philosophers, but I’m pretty sure I’m doing a relatively good job of paraphrasing Heraclitus here. It’s interesting how this interpretation predates Socrates but at the same time bears an interesting resemblance to explaining the distinction between ‘classical’ physics (the study of what I called ‘inclination’ above) and quantum mechanics – which would be the study of atoms in flux on scales small enough that ‘inclination’ becomes a negligible factor. It also seems to solve the paradox of infinite time that still hangs as a question-mark over physics in our modern understanding of the world today.
This doesn’t really lead us anywhere. I don’t even know if Heraclitus’ ideas are true or not. I’m just rambling.