Is Our Universe Infinite?

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petra22 said:
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DetectiveNiko:
The money in my wallet can keep growing forever
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Then your money is not infinite if it can keep growing forever… it has to have room to grow and the room would be empty until you try to fill it up… so it has an end… until you add more and then it has a new end…
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Great analogy.

And it reflects how time and space are related and changing. So there is no point in time that there is an infinite amount of money or space. Infinite in a universe that has a beginning means perpetually changing.

It also reflects how we understand things as being centred around an observer who exists at a moment in time and a particular place but who can move along either or both dimensions. We always need an awareness in discussing such things. Usually we imagine something like ourselves. Even if there were no beginning to the universe, we would still be picturing a consciousness travelling through space and time.

Infinity seems to be purely an idea, representing nothing that exists in creation. It’s like zero. Now, God is eternal, zero in terms of His being outside time. He is also infinite, being in everything that could ever be, as it’s eternal Source. The guy putting money in his wallet is not money and he can do so as long as he chooses.
 
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Hope1960 said:
Since God is infinite, how can the universe be infinite?

I think the Bible says or implies that the universe is finite.

Does this mean our Bible or Catholicism is wrong?
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Two different meanings of the term ‘infinite’.

Not to mention that the notion of ‘infinity’ in the created universe and its implications, strictly speaking, is widely misunderstood.

And no. It doesn’t mean that the Bible and Catholicism are wrong. It means that when we say “God is infinite” and “this thing in the universe is infinite”, we are talking about two distinct and different things.
 
Can astronomers see or have been able to see the end of the universe?
 
Hope1960 said:
Can astronomers see or have been able to see the end of the universe?
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No, for two reasons:
  1. The horizon, the limit of what we can see, is almost certainly not the extent of the universe. In other words, the Observable Universe is only a part of the Universe, the other parts being too distant for us to image.
  2. Properly speaking, there is no end to the universe. There’s no border. In essence the universe is what mathematicians would call a closed manifold, or technically a compact manifold without a border. This is hard for the human brain to imagine, but essentially you could have a finite space that doesn’t actually have a border.
 
So do you mean on statement #2, the universe could be finite in size but we can’t see the end?
 
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Hope1960 said:
So do you mean on statement #2, the universe could be finite in size but we can’t see the end?
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Basically yes. It is hard to imagine, to be sure, but the reason for this is that the expansion of the Universe is an expansion of space itself.

The 2D analogy that’s often used is that of a balloon (which is a reasonable facsimile of a 2 dimensional manifold). Take a deflated balloon, draw some dots on it with a felt pen, and then blow the balloon up. The dots will grow apart as the balloon inflates, but the dots aren’t so much moving as the space between the dots is expanding in size. As well, a balloon (ignoring the stem of course) being a sphere, or roughly spherical, is finite in size, and yet in the two dimensional planes of its surface, has no boundary, much as a one dimensional circle on a piece of paper, in the one dimensional plane, has no boundary either.
 
Hope1960 said:
I was reading the Heaven and Hell topic which made me wonder just how big the universe is. I Googled it and found a topic written in the summer of 2017 and it says the universe is probably infinite in size.

Since God is infinite, how can the universe be infinite?

I think the Bible says or implies that the universe is finite.

Does this mean our Bible or Catholicism is wrong?
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The universe is infinite. It could be multiverse too. It is simple to argue it. Lets say that the universe is finite. Then there exist a border in which defines inside from outside. That means that the universe is embedded inside something else which again it could be finite or infinite. If the outside is again finite then following the reason it is embedded inside something else and this follows to infinity. Therefore there is an infinite universe or infinite set of finite universe, multiverse.
 
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I’m no cosmologist, but read again the explanation given by niceatheist, using a sphere or balloon as an analogy. The two dimensional surface of any sphere has no boundaries. A 2D being could travel in any direction forever without coming to a boundary, yet the surface itself is finite. (I suppose if it had a diameter of infinity it could also be infinite.) In either case, I don’t think the universe, whether finite or infinite, needs to be embedded in any other medium. The expansion of the universe is an expansion of the space itself. That doesn’t imply that there must be a different space outside the universe in which it must be embedded.
 
Do you or anyone here know the username of CAFs Fr. David? I think there’s some numbers behind his name. I wanted to either pm him or invite him to this thread.
 
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Hope1960 said:
Since God is infinite, how can the universe be infinite?
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Because God created the infinite universe, doesn’t mean God is in that infinite universe, nor that His hemishere, which existed before the created infinite universe, in any way collides or hinders our universe in any way.

I say OUR UNIVERSE, ’cos there is no-one else but we humans in it. (And probably Heaven) God however is everywhere - inside and outside this infinite universe. Infinity of the universe doesn’t mean there can’t be a divine “outside” of it. He who thinks so, limits God down to earthly naturalism; - a secular philosophy, which is as wrong as anything that contradicts the Gospel!

And as to aliens out there - other human beings:
There are none! For then Jesus Christ would have had to do His terrible salvation of us twice or even repeatedly - which truly is unthinkable!

In another forum I wrote:
perhaps our earth and complete sun-system, which seems to waver in a complete empty room, might even be amidst heaven - watched by them like we look into an aquarium 😉
All amidst the infinite universe, which’s end or infinity God only knows, because He created it.

Yours
Bruno
 
BrunoMaria said:
In another forum I wrote:

perhaps our earth and complete sun-system, which seems to waver in a complete empty room, might even be amidst heaven - watched by them like we look into an aquarium 😉

All amidst the infinite universe, which’s end or infinity God only knows, because He created it.
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This is actually the gist of the “theory” in that article I posted on the “where are heaven and hell” thread, that you said was a silly secular theory that showed a lack of faith in God. That theory is like what you have said here, just using scientific evidence to back it up as an idea…you should give it a read, it is very interesting.
 
Hope1960 said:
So you think Heaven is somewhere in our Universe?
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I think it is definitely a possibility, but we can’t know for sure. We do know that we can’t see something like 95% of the matter in our universe but it is affecting gravity, it is actually holding everything together… our galaxy, solar systems etc. Something is there but we are unable to detect it. It could be a higher plane/dimension of our universe.
 
Couldn’t it also be a higher plane or dimension out of our universe or even in another universe?
 
Hope1960 said:
Couldn’t it also be a higher plane or dimension out of our universe or even in another universe?
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Yes, of course it could be. Anything is possible and I don’t think we will ever know for sure until we die.
 
The universe CAN’T be infinite, otherwise it wouldn’t expand.:man_shrugging:t3: These are things I learned in an astronomy class at a public (American) university.
 
adamhovey1988 said:
Maybe this may help
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/asta...finity-the-confusion-of-atheists-is-boundless
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I’m not clear. Who is brushing off infinity? I fully concede the Universe could be infinite, and considering one postulate as to its structure, that it is finite but without boundary, it would be like a circle, you could travel in any one direction forever. It could be the Observable Universe is part of a much larger structure, and thus while what we can observe is finite, that may just be one region of an infinitely larger reality.

There are different types of infinity.
 
Materialists contend the universe is infinite because they would otherwise have to explain the big bang as a creation event with all its inexplicable questions such as what came before and still lies beyond the universe, the answer to which can only be God.

The universe emerged in the big bang from an infinitesimal object called the singularity, then expanded to the size it is presently, then at some moment near the beginning, the universe was the size of a pumpkin. It was finite when it was the size of a pumpkin, then it still must be finite because nothing can expand to the infinite, because the infinite can never be reached.

Yppop
 
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