My brain is about to explode! How can something always have existed?

[Tomdstone]

Tom,
Every now and then I find someone in this forum with a profound observation. Here is something I submitted in a thread entitled “A paradox about timeless God who sustains creation” dated 10/17/15 that applies to your observation

*One of the reasons we have trouble imagining time is that we believe it to be a smooth, continuous, flow. It ain’t! It is incremental, meaning it jumps along in little bits and our minds create the continuity. When the mind grasps the incremental nature of time the relationship of time to change becomes easier to understand. What it means is that the nature of motion as we think of it is wrong, there is no motion only incrementation, just as there is no flowing motion of your cursor on your computer screen. What is happening is a sequential activation of pixels in the direction that you move your cursor.We see it as smooth motion, but it isn’t!!

Zeno proved that: “if space is continuous there can be no motion and if there is motion space is not continuous”. And here is where we run into the nature of infinity and I am going to bed.*

I believe that if the time between incrementations is about 10^(-43) sec. and if space is also granular (discrete) and average distance between “spatial granulations” is about 10^(-35) meters ( the Planck length) then we see why the speed of light is constant.

A granular, incrementing universe explains a lot more about what we observe.

Yppop

Unfortunately, discrete spacetime theories may lead to the breakdown of Lorentz covariance, which is a serious problem since according to relativity, all non-gravitational laws should make the same predictions for identical experiments taking place at the same spacetime event in two different inertial frames of reference.

 

[Viki63]

Either the Universe or some physical reality or someTHING has always existed, or God has always existed.

THAT’s mind-boggling.
How are we to understand this reality?

I picture it this way: God fills all of eternity. He is the Unmoved Mover. He is moving so fast he is motionless. (like the Jester in Charles Willams’ book The Greater Trumps).
He can look from eternity into Time, which is a line moving from beginning to end. And for Him, a thousand years is as a day; he can take his time observing and working in each minute.

.

 

[inocente]

This is so troubling for me! It’s not shaking my faith or anything like that. It’s a simple fact that anyone can reach: some aspect of existence, whether God or something else, must have always existed. How can we even think of that? You can never reach a beginning if this aspect is infinite past or enteral. It just IS and always has been.

But always has been means there is literally no beginning whatsoever. You keep reaching back. Say you add on another “year” into the past. No beginning. Add another year into the past - no beginning yet. Keep going backwards, and you never reach a beginning. How??

So whether you are atheist or theist, Christian or not… How does this even make sense?!? It must be true… But it’s so… Illogical!

Would it be any more logical if, for a long time there was no God, and then suddenly God popped into existence from nowhere?

Eternity may be counter-intuitive, but that’s just your intuition, and intuition is often wrong.

An exploding brain is excellent, it means you’re open to new thoughts. Brain explosions rock!

 

[tonyrey]

It is presumptuous to think we can explain everything because we have limited insight into the nature of reality. Yet there is no evidence that everything has come from nothing. The concept of “He Who Is” is the outstanding contribution of the Jews to humanity because it is not impersonal like the “Necessary Being” and satisfies the principle of adequacy as well as economy.

 

[Bahman]

Either the Universe or some physical reality or someTHING has always existed, or God has always existed.

Whether you are atheist or theist, at the end of the day, something (or some being, like God) must have always existed. Infinite in the past.

WHAT?!

THAT’s mind-boggling.
How are we to understand this reality?

I understand that theists say that God is outside of time (he is “eternal” in the technical sense). Yet, God cannot have failed to exist. So whatever one means by eternal, God has always existed.

This is so troubling for me! It’s not shaking my faith or anything like that. It’s a simple fact that anyone can reach: some aspect of existence, whether God or something else, must have always existed. How can we even think of that? You can never reach a beginning if this aspect is infinite past or enteral. It just IS and always has been.

But always has been means there is literally no beginning whatsoever. You keep reaching back. Say you add on another “year” into the past. No beginning. Add another year into the past - no beginning yet. Keep going backwards, and you never reach a beginning. How??

So whether you are atheist or theist, Christian or not… How does this even make sense?!? It must be true… But it’s so… Illogical!

Nothing can have always existed because it takes infinite amount of waiting to reach now from eternal past. This is simply logically impossible.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

If I have an IQ of 100,

and if Bill Gates has an IQ of 200,

and if Einstein had an IQ of 300,

then, what is God’s IQ?

400?

God’s IQ is Infinity.

How can I with an IQ of 100 accept someone or understand someone “out there” with an IQ of Infinity?

AND, that person also has infinite creativity, and infinite understanding, and infinite compassion, and infinite everything.

This “gap” between our human limitations and God’s infinity is difficult to grasp.

Even the most esoteric scientists working in astrophysics miss stuff all the time.

You can splice together all of our knowledge and there are ginorrnous gaps and missing pieces.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

Nothing can have always existed because it takes infinite amount of waiting to reach now from eternal past. This is simply logically impossible.

Logic is bigger than you think.

Think of an approximation - nearly infinite.
Then think of another approximation - a bit more than infinite.

What are termed “imaginary numbers” produce real mathematical results, as Tony Crilly explains.

 

[Vic_Taltrees_UK]

Unfortunately, discrete spacetime theories may lead to the breakdown of Lorentz covariance, which is a serious problem since according to relativity, all non-gravitational laws should make the same predictions for identical experiments taking place at the same spacetime event in two different inertial frames of reference.

But Tomdstone, if gravity is in waves as Einstein is reputed to have perdicted and as some others are announced to have gained confirmation of recently, what part of the wave spectrum is gravity at? Sound waves are in a certain part, light or radio waves, other parts. Complex numbers that have been observed only occur with a mere three different sets of dimensions. And if a supertanker isn’t affected by waves, how is it that a surfer is? Is either the supertanker or the surfer sinking? What are they doing differently? What do they have the potential to do?

Meantime reputedly it has recently been provisionally concluded that a universe outside the present one has four dimensions of space alone, not counting time.

Was it Godel who thought that physical laws have a spectrum in which they tend to apply, outside of whch they will tend to apply far less so (which doesn’t imply others aren’t there to be discovered, which are harmonious with the ones we knew before).

All these factors have to be borne in mind, both when we treat talk around God in terms of say a room we sit in, or the duration of a ticking clock, and also when we talk about logic in those terms also.

Hence, “Is God material?” He is more than material. “Is He dead or living?” He is more than living.

I like yppop’s piece as well!

 

[yppop]

Unfortunately, discrete spacetime theories may lead to the breakdown of Lorentz covariance, which is a serious problem since according to relativity, all non-gravitational laws should make the same predictions for identical experiments taking place at the same spacetime event in two different inertial frames of reference.

Are you referring to lattice gauge theory’s discretization of spacetime that is thought to suffer from a drawback in that Lorentz covariance is lost because the axes of the lattice create preferred directions in spacetime? Are you aware that there is a technique for accomplishing lattice gauge theory simulations while maintaining exact Lorentz covariance by replacing the lattice with a lattice graph such that the metric is defined as a discrete, Lorentz covariant matrix potential over the graph rather than a metric over an underlying manifold. This technique eliminates the symmetry violation of standard lattice gauge theory and suggests that, even in a digital universe, Lorentz covariance can still hold.

Isn’t Wikepedia wonderful’?

I prefer simpler arguments based on thoughts of people more experienced than me. such as this from Gregory Chaitin, noted mathematician who solved the Halting Problem:
.
* “Nevertheless, there are some intriquing hints that this particular universe may in fact be a discrete digital universe, not a continuous analog universe the way most people would expect. In fact these ideas actually go back to Democritus, who argues that matter must be discrete, and to Zeno, who even had the audacity to suggest that continuous space and time were self-contradictory impossibilities.
Through the years I’ve noticed many times, as an armchair physicist, places where physical calculations diverge to infinity at extremely small distances. Physicists are adept at not asking the wrong question, one that gives an infinite answer. But, I’m a mathematician, and each time I wonder if Nature wasn’t really trying to tell us something, that the real numbers and continuity are a sham, and that infinitesimal small distances do not exist!”* – Meta Math, The Quest For Omega – pg. 91-2

Yppop

 

[Bahman]

Logic is bigger than you think.

Think of an approximation - nearly infinite.
Then think of another approximation - a bit more than infinite.

What are termed “imaginary numbers” produce real mathematical results, as Tony Crilly explains.

What you are talking about?

 

[Monte_RCMS]

How many dimensions are there?

What if there are ten or eleven?

 

[Tomdstone]

Are you referring to lattice gauge theory’s discretization of spacetime that is thought to suffer from a drawback in that Lorentz covariance is lost because the axes of the lattice create preferred directions in spacetime? Are you aware that there is a technique for accomplishing lattice gauge theory simulations while maintaining exact Lorentz covariance by replacing the lattice with a lattice graph such that the metric is defined as a discrete, Lorentz covariant matrix potential over the graph rather than a metric over an underlying manifold. This technique eliminates the symmetry violation of standard lattice gauge theory and suggests that, even in a digital universe, Lorentz covariance can still hold.

Isn’t Wikepedia wonderful’?

One problem I see with lattice theories is that they are left right symmetric. I don’t see how you would use a left-right synmmetric theory to account for the asymmetry of the weak nuclear force?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_interaction#Violation_of_symmetry

 

[Tomdstone]

But Tomdstone, if gravity is in waves as Einstein is reputed to have perdicted and as some others are announced to have gained confirmation of recently, what part of the wave spectrum is gravity at? !

Gravity wavelengths are generally over a mile long:
tapir.caltech.edu/~teviet/Waves/gwave_spectrum.html

 

[tonyrey]

Nothing can have always existed because it takes infinite amount of waiting to reach now from eternal past. This is simply logically impossible.

Human logic has its limitations…

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Either the Universe or some physical reality or someTHING has always existed, or God has always existed.

Whether you are atheist or theist, at the end of the day, something (or some being, like God) must have always existed. Infinite in the past.

WHAT?!

THAT’s mind-boggling.
How are we to understand this reality?

I understand that theists say that God is outside of time (he is “eternal” in the technical sense). Yet, God cannot have failed to exist. So whatever one means by eternal, God has always existed.

This is so troubling for me! It’s not shaking my faith or anything like that. It’s a simple fact that anyone can reach: some aspect of existence, whether God or something else, must have always existed. How can we even think of that? You can never reach a beginning if this aspect is infinite past or enteral. It just IS and always has been.

But always has been means there is literally no beginning whatsoever. You keep reaching back. Say you add on another “year” into the past. No beginning. Add another year into the past - no beginning yet. Keep going backwards, and you never reach a beginning. How??

So whether you are atheist or theist, Christian or not… How does this even make sense?!? It must be true… But it’s so… Illogical!

The alternative is zero, or nothing exists, ever has existed, or will exist.

That’s equally problematic in the philosophical sense. From zero, you can only get zero, or nothing.

But since we exist, then there’s never been a time when there’s been nothing.

So God has always existed.

We also make the claim “God is love”. I think “love” and “God’s being” are bound up together. Perfect love has its own existence. Otherwise “love” becomes part of God’s choice, the sort of thing we might decide to do on a Sunday, and then change our mind about on Monday.

So I think they’re bound up together.

Somehow.

But don’t ask me how. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over a few decades, it’s that I’m not God.

 

[Tomdstone]

From zero, you can only get zero, or nothing…

Not sure, because the set containing zero has one element: So 1 can be represented by {0}. But then 2 can be represented by {{0}. 0}, etc.

 

[GEddie]

Not sure, because the set containing zero has one element: So 1 can be represented by {0}. But then 2 can be represented by {{0}. 0}, etc.

So mathematically, you can get something from nothing.

Making it really happen is something else entirely.

ICXC NIKA

 

[Bob_Crowley]

Not sure, because the set containing zero has one element: So 1 can be represented by {0}. But then 2 can be represented by {{0}. 0}, etc.

There’s a difference between representing something eg. zero, and the real thing. Zero is zero - nothing.

You can only represent it because you exist.

 

[Bahman]

Human logic has its limitations…

Yes. Or the premises that God could have always existed is wrong.

 

[Tomdstone]

There’s a difference between representing something eg. zero, and the real thing. Zero is zero - nothing.

Zero is not nothing. If it were nothing, there would be no difference between 1 and 10.