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Bob_Crowley
Guest
The “zero” in the numerals for ten (“10”) simply means there are zero additional units other than the single 10.
“0” is a symbol. It’s not zero or nothingness. It’s merely a representation.
My brain is about to explode! How can something always have existed?
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“0” is a symbol. It’s not zero or nothingness. It’s merely a representation.
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Tomdstone
Guest
So 0 is not zero?
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Aloysium
Guest
You may be joking, or you did not give the above quote sufficient thought.
Let’s put it another way. Zero cannot exist unless one exists. If there were nothing there would be no numbers.
If the set of numbers, in this case 1 & 0, represents creation, God is the mind who thinks them. He thinks them, and any number He also chooses to entertain, but never changes because He is not a number, but a mind transcendent to them.
As a living number, you can imagine that you and all the other numbers merely exist and give the matter no further thought, or you can wonder about your Source.
Since God is Love and calls us to be with Him, the matter becomes serious; more than simply an intellectual exercise.
The stakes are very high. We need to choose and act wisely.
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Monte_RCMS
Guest
What if … there are “nuances” that human logic is incapable of grasping.
One day someone asked me what is infinity … so I did this whole explanation … and he said what happens when you get there … and I said you keep going … we did not come to blows but he was upset … he also was an accountant … nuance was not his speciality … [short version].
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GEddie
Guest
Logic and nuance don’t go together.
If enough nuance is admitted, nothing can be known at all.
As Peter Kreeft said: “Some things are black and white. Here are two of them: black and white.”
ICXC NIKA
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aclausen
Guest
That seems to be confusing zero as a number and zero as a place-holder. In base 10 and higher number notation systems, 0 isn’t just the number “0” but also a placeholder for each full iteration of a the base. For instance, in binary (base 2) numbers you have 0=0,1=1,1=10, in a hexadecimal (base 16) system, the number 10 actually represents the decimal number 16.
There have been numerous number systems before the invention of zero that could represent numbers with 0.
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Tomdstone
Guest
Roman numerals do not have a zero.
Secondly, the claim of a poster was that zero is nothing. But if zero is a place-holder, then it is not nothing.
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aclausen
Guest
The problem is that “nothing” is a pretty vague notion. “Nothing” can be represented by zero in some contexts, but 0 doesn’t always mean nothing. In temperature, 0 degrees centigrade is not nothing, it’s the freezing point of water. Even 0 degrees Kelvin isn’t nothing, but does represent the coldest possible temperature, and in classical physics the point at which molecular vibration ceases; although concepts like Brownian motion and QM mean that even at temperatures approaching absolute zero, things don’t stop completely.
To my mind, if you’re talking about “non-existence”, the concept of a singularity, a point where equations fail, might be more appropriate, though that doesn’t necessarily infer “nothing” either, but rather a point at which a mathematical algorithm or model breaks down and ceases to give sensible answers.
Maybe “nothing” doesn’t actually exist (if that’s even a sentence that makes any sense at all). Questions like “What caused the universe” or “what was before the universe” may not even be questions that make sense. “Nothing” may very well be nothing more than a human invention that has absolutely nothing to do with the physical universe.
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Tomdstone
Guest
Exactly.
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tonyrey
Guest
Or the premise that God could not exist is wrong.
“could” or “could not” is not a rational basis for an adequate interpretation of reality. It leads precisely nowhere!
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inocente
Guest
Why do you think it’s illogical? What do you think is doing the waiting? What is this thing that waits which logic demands?
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Bahman
Guest
From point of view of a person who is in time, it takes infinite waiting time to reach from eternal past to now. One however cannot perform this task because infinite cannot be reached with successive finite waiting, no matter how much you wait you cannot reach infinity. This is a serious obstacle.
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Tomdstone
Guest
What is eternal past?
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Bahman
Guest
It is minus infinity on time axis.
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Tomdstone
Guest
There is no point minus infinity on the real line, or the time axis.
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Bahman
Guest
There is if you assume that God or universe has always existed.
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inocente
Guest
Who do you think has to perform this waiting task? And if no one has to do any waiting task, then how can it possibly be a problem?
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Bahman
Guest
It could be an imaginary observer. It doesn’t need to be real observer. It could be God who is bounded in time.
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Tomdstone
Guest
No. the real line does not have a point called minus infinity.
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Tomdstone
Guest
According to Roman Catholic teaching, God is outside of time, so He would not be bounded in time.
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