You could have figured out that the answer is not B.
If a formula exists the data that people would put in it would be data from the existing universe but we are not allowed to use such a formula because the formula is only allowed to get data from when time wasn’t there.
As I said, we don’t yet know what caused the universe to exist, there are many theories but none are decisive as yet.*
A teacher draws a horizontal line and says:
This is a timeline that goes up all the way to infinity to the right and all the way down to infinity to the left.*
And here’s your error, the timeline doesn’t go to infinity on the left (the past) it starts 13.7 billion years ago.*
Some of you might say that this timeline is not real but don’t worry, we’re only using it to check if there is something special about the first point in time.
If there is something special about the first point in time there is a special and unique point on this timeline.
So we imagine that we are in the situation when time wasn’t there and from there we have to see whether it is possible to draw a special point on the timeline and explain why.
Right, so we know that the “time” when time wasn’t there is nowhere on the timeline. I’ve said this several times, you keep agreeing with it then contradicting it. I’m not sure why?
As a student it does not take long to realise that there is no special point. Any point is fit to be a candidate in the lottery that picks a first point in time on this timeline that contains all the available candidates for being the first point in time.
Then there is the imaginary game where you go back in the past to find out that the lottery is always two steps ahead of you, two steps further in the past so that in this game you can go back in time forever without ever reaching a first point in time.
Yes, that would be the case if the timeline was infinite. As we’ve established though, that isn’t the case. Time started 13.7 billion years ago.*
Or how the lottery that picks the first point in time also reveals the infinite nature of the past besides the finite nature of the past.
Or how time can have counted to infinity.
Nope, still no infinite past. What you’ve done again here is assumed that there is an infinite timeline running before the start of time.*
It also explains how the four words when time wasn’t there make no sense combined but that is still also to difficult for you to understand.*
No problem for me old bean, as I’ve said, repeatedly, there was no time when time wasn’t there. You keep agreeing with this statement then contradicting it.*
It does make it rather hard to understand your position. Again, here are the four points to the logic here, they are nice and simple, tell me where you’re having difficulty and I’ll do my best to help out.*
- that time only exists in the universe. Time is the rate of change of things (the measure of flow of physical processes) in our universe, so by definition it doesn’t apply outside our universe.
- the universe started 13.7 billion years ago,*
- so the total amount of time which has ever elapsed is 13.7 billion years.
- This is a long time but definitely not infinite.*
Then the teacher has a bonus for people like you.
He draws a point on the timeline and says that it is the present. Then he draws another point to the right and says that it’s 1 billion years after the present.
Then he asks to make the timeline look a bit more real according to the information you believe in.
And then they draw a point 13,7 billion years to the left of the present and erase the timeline to the left of that point and then they put a question mark on the right side of the timeline.
Right, so this demonstrates the point quite nicely, well done. Time began 13.7 billion years ago. We don’t know what if anything exists beyond the temporal boundaries of our universe. So it’s correct that the timeline starts 13.7 billion years to the left of “now”*
Off to the right we have the future, we don’t know how much future there is. Some theories put the universe collapsing back in a big crunch, some predict it’s expansion until the point of heat death. No doubt we will one eat be able to predict that definitively, the evidence at the moment leans towards the heat death, but as I said, it’s not certain as yet.*
No because mathematics teaches that a number bigger than zero can always be divided by 2 which again results in a number bigger than 0.
The real next moment or point in time cannot be defined.
…
Logic says that the sum of timeless things only results in a timeless thing.
From your most recent post I’m only going to reply to this part for the sake of brevity (and because your error is presented nice and clearly here).
Your confusion is in mistaking “infinitesimal” (infinitely small) for “zero” (non-existent in the case you’re talking about).
An infinitely short period of time is 0.000’1 (where the ’ indicates “recurring” so there an infinite number of zeros followed by a 1) where as 0 is just 0.
Now for practical everyday purposes an infinitesimal is more or less the same as zero. But it’s not mathematically true. This is because an infinite number of zeros is still zero, while an infinite number of infinitesimals is a real, finite number.*
I can walk you through the maths behind this if you like, it’s pretty straightforwards. But maybe you’ll understand just from the description above? I don’t want to insult your intelligence by breaking it down more than you need me to.*