Does time have a beginning?

[Callin]

This has been stuck in my head for the past week, and I want some (name removed by moderator)ut on it. It’s mainly 6-8 that I’m not so sure about.

1. Assume time has no beginning.
2. Therefore, an infinite amount of time has passed before the present day.
3. However, it is impossible for an infinite amount of time to be completed. An infinite amount of time would literally take forever to finish.
4. Therefore, it would take forever for the events of the present day to occur.
5. Therefore, the present will never occur.
6. Since this is not the case, time must have a beginning.
7. Since time must have a beginning, it must have a cause.
8. Since time cannot exist before it begins, whatever caused time must exist outside of time - in other words, is eternal.

 

[HyeDetroit]

This has been stuck in my head for the past week, and I want some (name removed by moderator)ut on it. It’s mainly 6-8 that I’m not so sure about.

1. Assume time has no beginning.
2. Therefore, an infinite amount of time has passed before the present day.
3. However, it is impossible for an infinite amount of time to be completed. An infinite amount of time would literally take forever to finish.
4. Therefore, it would take forever for the events of the present day to occur.
5. Therefore, the present will never occur.
6. Since this is not the case, time must have a beginning.
7. Since time must have a beginning, it must have a cause.
8. Since time cannot exist before it begins, whatever caused time must exist outside of time - in other words, is eternal.

you have to define time
#1.
Keeping Time is something created by man to keep a chronological record of events or to figure out the motion of an object.
age, events in history, velocity=distance/time, etc

There has to be a beginning to time, otherwise how would we place the sequence of events in an spaced order that makes sense.

#2. I think a finite amount of time has passed since the beginning of time, if a clock were started at that point we could (hypothetically) measure it today

 

[hatsoff]

This has been stuck in my head for the past week, and I want some (name removed by moderator)ut on it. It’s mainly 6-8 that I’m not so sure about.

1. Assume time has no beginning.

I will take this to mean that time is past-infinite.

1. Therefore, an infinite amount of time has passed before the present day.

Okay.

1. However, it is impossible for an infinite amount of time to be completed. An infinite amount of time would literally take forever to finish.

“Completed” how? For any moment in the past, under assumption (1), an infinite amount of time, so to speak, has already passed. Given that, what task is there which needs to be completed?

1. Therefore, it would take forever for the events of the present day to occur.

“Take forever” how? Is this merely a restatement of (3)?

1. Therefore, the present will never occur.

The present already is. In what sense will it “never occur”?

And so the following is moot:

1. Since this is not the case, time must have a beginning.

1. Since time must have a beginning, it must have a cause.

1. Since time cannot exist before it begins, whatever caused time must exist outside of time - in other words, is eternal.

 

[RobNY]

This has been stuck in my head for the past week, and I want some (name removed by moderator)ut on it. It’s mainly 6-8 that I’m not so sure about.

William Lane Craig has a good book on the “Kalaam Cosmological Argument” which you should read. He offers some philosophical arguments as to why the impossibility of an actual infinite implies that an actually infinite series could not be transversed. It’s pretty fascinating, and he takes it into some mathematical territory I need to read up on: namely, questions dealing with the cardinal numbers of infinite sets.

The present already is. In what sense will it “never occur”?

It is a reductio ad absurdum. If time is infinite, then it would be impossible that the present moment should be. But we are at the present moment, and hence this is absurd. Therefore, time is not infinite.

That’s the structure of the argument. It’s makes plenty of sense, it’s the earlier premises that need examining.

 

[Callin]

“Completed” how? For any moment in the past, under assumption (1), an infinite amount of time, so to speak, has already passed. Given that, what task is there which needs to be completed?

Okay, I see what you mean. That needs to be reworked.

 

[Callin]

William Lane Craig has a good book on the “Kalaam Cosmological Argument” which you should read. He offers some philosophical arguments as to why the impossibility of an actual infinite implies that an actually infinite series could not be transversed. It’s pretty fascinating, and he takes it into some mathematical territory I need to read up on: namely, questions dealing with the cardinal numbers of infinite sets.

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

 

[reggieM]

“Completed” how? For any moment in the past, under assumption (1), an infinite amount of time, so to speak, has already passed. Given that, what task is there which needs to be completed?

Here are some other ways to look at it.

If time had no beginning, then “the next event after the beginning” would never occur.

Time has to have a beginning in order to actually have a sequence of events.

Otherwise, a “present event” could never be reached from the past since an infinite amount of time has to transpire in order to arrive at any present moment.

“Take forever” how? Is this merely a restatement of (3)?

If things have to traverse an infinite amount of time in order to reach a certain goal (the present, for example) then it “takes forever” to get there – and they never arrive.

An infinite amount of time cannot be traversed. So the number of events that were required in a sequence to arrive at this present day could not have been accomplished yet – since that is an infinite string of events.

Additionally, with William Lane Craig’s argument – we cannot add anything to an actual infinite set. Because the total number of events in an infinite string is the same if you add some or subtract some.

If you removed all of the odd numbers from an infinite string of successive integers, you would remain with an infinite string since it has no beginning. It would not be a smaller string even if you removed half the numbers and had only even numbers.

The same is true if you added numbers. But you could never add a number because you would have to wait an infinite amount of time to “reach” the end of the string of numbers in order to add one more.

If you have one event and add another, you can build a string. If you start with the number 1 and successively add 1 each day, you will eventually arrive at the number 100, in 100 days. So, if today the number is 500, you know that 500 days have gone by since you started counting. You will know that tomorrow will be 501.

Now, however you start with the number “infinite from the past”. But you can’t add one more number to infinity. That number is never “finished enough” to be able to add one more. If you could add one more, then it wouldn’t be an infinite number from the past.

We see a present day today which is at the end of a string of days. We see tomorrow added to that string.

So, we could not have had an infinite number of days before today since we see a present day and we have a day tomorrow.

 

[hatsoff]

Here are some other ways to look at it.

If time had no beginning, then “the next event after the beginning” would never occur.

I’m with you so far. But then you say this…

Time has to have a beginning in order to actually have a sequence of events.

Otherwise, a “present event” could never be reached from the past since an infinite amount of time has to transpire in order to arrive at any present moment.

What do you mean, “reached from the past”?

Remember, the past in assumption (1) has no beginning. Therefore it’s senseless to speak of time getting going. Meanwhile, for any given moment in the past, there is a finite temporal distance between it and the present. Indeed, for any such point in the past, time is still past-infinite!

EDIT: Regarding your numeric argument, just invert the ordering and your problem is solved. In particular, consider the set of negative integers { … -4, -3, -2, -1 }. The order type of such a set is going to be ω*, which is the same order type if you add 0 to the set, and then 1, and 2, and so on, producing the set { … -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, …, n } (for some integer n).

 

[sidbrown]

There has to be a beginning to time, otherwise how would we place the sequence of events in an spaced order that makes sense.

Consider:

…< -3< -2 < -1 < 0< 1< 2< 3<…

 

[James_S_Saint]

This has been stuck in my head for the past week, and I want some (name removed by moderator)ut on it. It’s mainly 6-8 that I’m not so sure about.

1. Assume time has no beginning.
2. Therefore, an infinite amount of time has passed before the present day.
3. However, it is impossible for an infinite amount of time to be completed. An infinite amount of time would literally take forever to finish.
4. Therefore, it would take forever for the events of the present day to occur.
5. Therefore, the present will never occur.
6. Since this is not the case, time must have a beginning.
7. Since time must have a beginning, it must have a cause.
8. Since time cannot exist before it begins, whatever caused time must exist outside of time - in other words, is eternal.

I wondered if anyone was ever going to ask that question.

The issue involves calculus actually, but perhaps can be understood this way;

If, for example, time started at 10 times infinity years ago (and perhaps has 8 times infinity years to go), but 3 times infinity years have past by, then you can arrive here and now even though the past is infinite.

I am surprised the Greeks didn’t think of or record this issue since they were into calculus. Or perhaps they were just too busy trying to convince people that infinite distance was acceptable. Time is no different than distance when it comes to length.

You could have asked, “if I started at an infinite distance to the right and came this way, then how could I ever reach where I am?” The same answer would apply;

If you spent a slightly less than infinite amount of time to get to this position from that infinite distance away, then they cancel each other and you end up here.

Inf[A] - inf[A-x] = inf

Time had no beginning. It all works.

 

[sidbrown]

I wondered if anyone was ever going to ask that question.

The issue involves calculus actually, but perhaps can be understood this way;

If, for example, time started at 10 times infinity years ago, but 3 times infinity years have past by, then you can arrive here and now even though the past is infinite.

I am surprised the Greeks didn’t think of or record this issue since they were into calculus. Or perhaps they were just too busy trying to convince people that infinite distance was acceptable. Time is no different than distance when it comes to length.

You could have asked, “if I started at an infinite distance to the right and came this way, then how could I ever reach where I am?” The same answer would apply;

If you spent a slight less than infinite amount of time to get to this position from that infinite distance away, then they cancel each other and you end up here.

Inf[A] - inf[A-x] = inf

Time had no beginning. It all works.

When you say you started at an infinite distance to the right, you are assuming that at the time t=0, the distance to the right was infinite. There could be an infinite distance to the right and to the left, but you are only able to start out at a finite distance and never actually reach the infinite distance out as a starting point. Unless of course, you compactify two dimensional space to a sphere and use the stereographic projection to set up a 1-1 correspondence.

 

[James_S_Saint]

When you say you started at an infinite distance to the right, you are assuming that at the time t=0, the distance to the right was infinite. There could be an infinite distance to the right and to the left, but you are only able to start out at a finite distance and never actually reach the infinite distance out as a starting point. Unless of course, you compactify two dimensional space to a sphere and use the stereographic projection to set up a 1-1 correspondence.

The same could be said about the past. You can’t actually start at a beginning and progress forward.

The same question could be asked concerning size.

If God started with a true absolute void of nothingness, then how could the first infinitely small thing ever get to be the size of the known universe? It would have to go through an infinite amount of growth just to get to any reasonable size.

Of course, you can answer any of those questions with the universal, “God did it”, but that is hardly explicative.

 

[AlbertBall]

This has been stuck in my head for the past week, and I want some (name removed by moderator)ut on it. It’s mainly 6-8 that I’m not so sure about.

1. Assume time has no beginning.

Time did have a beginning. By time, you actually mean space-time. Time and space are one and time as we know it started at the birth of the universe. To ask what was time before that, is to ask what is south of the south pole.

Oh and infinity is not a number its concept, you can traverse and infinite set, but that has nothing to do with space time.

 

[James_S_Saint]

Time did have a beginning. By time, you actually mean space-time. Time and space are one and time as we know it started at the birth of the universe. To ask what was time before that, is to ask what is south of the south pole.

Oh and infinity is not a number its concept, you can traverse and infinite set, but that has nothing to do with space time.

On the other hand, “space-time” is not finite. Time = degree of change. Space = conceptual infinite volume (even if no physical objects existed).

How long did it take for God to decide to create time? If the answer is zero, then the very instant God became, so did time. If time is not infinite, then neither could God be. God doesn’t change (experience time).

 

[AlbertBall]

On the other hand, “space-time” is not finite. Time = degree of change. Space = conceptual infinite volume (even if no physical objects existed).

How long did it take for God to decide to create time? If the answer is zero, then the very instant God became, so did time. If time is not infinite, then neither could God be. God doesn’t change (experience time).

God is utterly irrelevant, as at this point he is an unproven, unsupported hypothesis. Space and time are not independent, they are in fact one thing, space-time.

 

[James_S_Saint]

God is utterly irrelevant, as at this point he is an unproven, unsupported hypothesis. Space and time are not independent, they are in fact one thing, space-time.

No they aren’t. Space is referring to volume. Time is referring to change.

They are both caused by the same “thing” (if you want to call it a thing). But they are different concepts entirely… sorry.

 

[AlbertBall]

No they aren’t. Space is referring to volume. Time is referring to change.

They are both caused by the same “thing” (if you want to call it a thing). But they are different concepts entirely… sorry.

Wow, physics 101 anyone? No wonder you are embarrased… Here start with wiki…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

In physics, spacetime (or space–time; or space/time) is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum.

 

[James_S_Saint]

Wow, physics 101 anyone? No wonder you are embarrased… Here start with wiki…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

In physics, spacetime (or space–time; or space/time) is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single continuum.

“Embarrassed”??

You can combine anything you want into a modal of a single continuum. You can throw color into it if you like. The effort was merely to come up with a matrix for mathematics. The term “space-time” came about as physics used both volume and change as a foundation for describing events. Describing both the location of things as well as their rate of change is essential to physics.

If the 2 concepts were the same, why would you need to combine them to form anything at all?

Space refers to an infinite volume within which are relative locations. Time refers to the rate of change of state relative to another known rate of change.

And yes, Physics 101. I would recommend it from someone who actually knows it, which often does not include Wiki or American school teachers.

 

[AlbertBall]

“Embarrassed”??

You can combine anything you want into a modal of a single continuum. You can throw color into it if you like. The effort was merely to come up with a matrix for mathematics. The term “space-time” came about as physics used both volume and change as a foundation for describing events. Describing both the location of things as well as their rate of change is essential to physics.

If the 2 concepts were the same, why would you need to combine them to form anything at all?

Space refers to an infinite volume within which are relative locations. Time refers to the rate of change of state relative to another known rate of change.

And yes, Physics 101. I would recommend it from someone who actually knows it, which often does not include Wiki or American school teachers.

Ok lets cut to the chase do you accept general relativity?

You see the poster was not talking about time as a constant which we use to measure rates of change etc. He was asking about** the origin of time**, time as we know it is a property of the universe in the form of SPACETIME.

“If the 2 concepts were the same, why would you need to combine them to form anything at all?”

Because Albert Einstein furthered our understanding of space and time.

 

[sidbrown]

Space and time are not independent, they are in fact one thing, space-time.

If space and time are one thing, then how come you can move backwards in space, but you cannot move backwards in time?