Is our concept of cause and effect in error

[begbert2]

@Blaster_Master

@begbert2

Action requires time; without time everything is static and there is no activity at all. No action, no thought, no sentience. Period.

I cannot agree with this. That you put “period” at the end, implies that you’re not willing to consider an alternative, but I’m willing to give it a shot.

The very idea of “static” and “action” are nonsense words in a non-temporal existence in exactly the same way that “south of the south pole” or “colder than absolute zero” are nonsense. To be static implies that change is possible, and change requires at least two different ordered states, which implies time. Thus, those concepts don’t make any sense in that context.

What? No. “Static” does not imply that change is possible, not in the slightest. What on earth are you talking about?

Absent time, there can be no change. Absent change, the universe (or whatever you want to call the context in question) is static. There is no contradiction, and the concepts make sense - by definition, literally!

@Blaster_Master

Now one can, as you do, argue that it implies that it’s inherently contradictory of the very concept, but I think it’s simply that, as space-time beings, if it is possible, we would still likely be unable to conceptualize it, and so our inability to understand it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. This is akin to a flat world being trying to understand a three dimensional object. We obviously know that three dimensional objects exist, but they have no way of conceptualizing it except through some sort of projection into their world. Or, for a more pertinent example, we can mathematically describe a hypercube with relative ease, and we can project one into a form that we can observe, but it is extraordinarily difficult, if not utterly impossible, for our minds to perceive a fourth spatial dimension, let alone more.

Naah. There’s nothing incomprehensible about a context without time; it’s easy to understand. There would be no change. No actions would occur. It would be static. Simple. Not only are mysterious ways unnecessary, there is no space for them at all.

@Blaster_Master

I actually think your analogy of film illustrates my point well. The “beginning” of the film is something that is only meaningful from a perspective intrinsic to the film itself. Discussion of what “caused” the first frame is equivalent to asking what is in the frame before the first frame.

In fact, the “creation” of the film isn’t something that happened in a frame of the film at all, but rather something that happened in a way that cannot be examined, or explained in any meaningful way within the context of the film itself. To an observer inside the film, the ordering of the frames would seem to imply that the “creation” of the film occurs in the first frame, or “before” the first frame, but from an observer outside of the film, implying that the film was somehow created in the first frame or “before” the first frame is utter nonsense.

Right - creation of the timeline is not an event within the timeline. It must therefore be either an event caused by a change in some other timeline, or be completely uncaused with the timeline popping into existence spontaneously. We’re on the same page this far.

@Blaster_Master

And this is where you attempt to create a timeline outside of the universe falls apart. Sure, in this example of film, the viewer exists in some sort of timeline, but his timeline is utterly incomprehensible to any observer internal to the film. To anyone inside the film, the external observer appears to be everywhere and everywhen, because he IS everywhere and everywhen from that perspective. So, just as the observer internal to the film is utterly unable to comprehend or describe the time of the external observer, this is what it is for us to attempt to comprehend what “time” may be like for a being existing outside the universe. Yes, he may have something akin to “actions” and some sort of “ordering”, but it’s not something that we can possible explain within our own context.

I can describe the timeline of any external creator for our timeline just fine. It’s easy: he’s a creator, so he creates. The act of creation is an act. He acts, so he must have a timeline of his own which he acts in, that distinguishes between the point prior to the act of creating our timeline and the point after it. If he made any other changes later in his timeline, then that’s no problem either; our timeline would be changed and we would be unaware that the prior version ever existed at an earlier point in his timeline. Simple.

There is no room for mysterious ways here, really. At least not for me: I can’t plead ignorance because I’m not ignorant.

@Blaster_Master

Consider an extension to your analogy. Let’s say the view of the film, in his timeline, puts a mark on the 1000th frame, then the next day, puts a mark on the 500th frame. The external observer sees that the 1000th frame was marked before the 500th frame, and can distinguish that one day passed between them. For the internal observer, they will observe that the 500th frame is marked and the 1000th frame is marked.

Ignoring the complications of whether or not they can determine that those marks are actually from the external observer or not, they will necessarily see the mark on the 500th frame as being before the mark on the 1000th frame. In fact, they’ll see it as exactly 500 frames earlier, and have no way of determining that it actually happened a whole day after the one that appears later. How will they have any meaningful way of determining what “really” happened in the external world? How can they meaningfully describe the passage of time externally in a number of frames? I really can’t think of any way they that is at all possible.

I’m a writer; I know all about editing a work with internal chronology. If you change frame 500 then the sequence of events in the film is changed. (Of course if you don’t want to be chided for a plot hole, you should propogate your change throughout the following pages too.) The film as a whole is different after you make the change - but the characters within the film aren’t aware of the difference, because what memory they have is within the timeline, and was altered by the change. It’s an alternate history, just like in all the (somewhat consist) time-travel stories where they change the past. You know, like in Back to the Future, except that in this case there’s nobody inside the story aware of the change.

You can keep making edits all over the place in any order, and the film obligingly changes as you change it. This is not only possible, but I do it all the time. (And it’s a total pain - I usually end up rewriting half of everything whenever I make a change early in the work. Though on the other hand I gather that the whole job of a film editor is to make such changes without substantially effecting the story to external viewers or internal characters.)

@Blaster_Master

Thus, I think this analogy actually illustrates exactly how “time” can be, and I believe is, a nonsensical concept outside of the universe.

Replace “nonsensical” with “completely comprehensible”, and I totally agree. The analogy of the written book is a fine representation of how intervention by an external entity would effect a sub-timeline.

@Blaster_Master

As with the film example, the “beginning” of the universe doesn’t necessarily have any meaning external to it. As the nature of the singularity seems to indicate to me, I think the only reason it appears to be of any real signficance is precisely because of our perspective as temporal beings.

But moreso, I don’t see how there HAS to be a first point either. Sure, it’s implied by theory, but just how we can never actually reach absolute zero, we can never reach the very beginning moment.

Let’s consider a simple mathematical example like the famed 0.999~ = 1, or to make it relevant to this point, 1 - 0.999~ = 0 Any finite number of 9s after the decimal, no matter how long will never quite be enough to make that true. In fact, one of the proofs I’ve seen for this is exactly that the reason they’re the same is because you cannot choose a number that is between the two values, as any two distinct real values has an infinite number of points between them.

And this is sort of where we are. We can theoretically see that there’s a zero, but all we can do is make the number of 9s after the decimal arbitrarily large. No matter how refined our knowledge gets or how powerful our technology becomes, we can never produce an infinite resolution. Thus, the theory easily shows that there’s a beginning, and it makes a lot of sense that there is, but for any point we can observe, there’s always a point before it.

I’m fine with the endpoint being open, but I don’t buy the crap about it being an infinite regress. By that logic, Achilles never passes the tortise. No. If the endpoint is open, it would be literally indistinguishible from the universe from it being closed; as you note, .99999~ = 1. Either way, there is a second that’s the first second of the universe’s time, and prior to that there were no seconds before.

@Blaster_Master

Of course, as with the filmstrip, perhaps any given timeline might have been created with or spun off of some other timeline. But if you keep tracing that back, eventually you’re going to get to something that was the original source; that timeline’s initiation is your indisputable uncaused cause. (Unless you want to postulate circular causation, but I tend to reject that; bootstrapping seems logically incoherent too.)

But that’s the whole fault of your logic right there. To reiterate the point from above in less words, the observer in the film cannot describe the external timeline in any meaningful way; therefore, carrying his perspective of time outside of the film is utterly meaningless.

I can describe it fine, so there is no fault in my logic. I am not swayable by an argument from/for ignorance.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@begbert2

Either way, there is a second that’s the first second of the universe’s time, and prior to that there were no seconds before.

But (in the open interval analogy) there’s no moment that’s the first moment of the universe’s time, as to every moment there’s a prior moment. Sure, 0.1 may be the first number evenly divisible by 0.1 in the interval (0,1), but that doesn’t make it special, or a ‘first number’ in any other respect.

And as for change, time is really just one convenient parametrization, useful thanks to its (in everyday contexts) uniqueness, linearity and partition into past and future, i.e. states that were before and states that are yet to come; the latter’s mostly due to entropy increase, the former is only really true in a very limited context. Think of the parabola a thrown stone describes: sure, I can parametrize its change in height in time, as an equation of motion x(t); however, I can equally well parametrize it with respect to a horizontal coordinate x(y) – the physical description is just as complete.

Carlo Rovelli, who together with Julian Barbour is perhaps the prime advocate of the idea that at a fundamental level, physical descriptions of reality make no explicit mention of time at all, calls quantities like x, y, or t ‘partial observables’, as they can’t be measured independently and don’t give the total picture of the physical situation on their own, and quantities like x(y) or x(t) complete observables, as they describe the complete physical state of the system. The still to be found theory of quantum gravity, then, provides a prescription to calculate all such complete observables; but the Newtonian notion of an absolute, external t will likely be absent, being replaced instead by a partial observable on equal footing with any other. (Indeed, it’s known that there arise particular difficulties with the notion of time in quantum gravity regimes – the best known is perhaps the so-called clock ambiguity, in which different notions of how to settle on a time variable yield effectively different laws of physics.)

To Barbour, the fundamental physical description lives in what’s called the ‘configuration space’, i.e. the abstract space whose every point refers to a complete configuration of the physical system under consideration. For N particles, this is a 3N-dimensional space (as for each particle, it needs to give the coordinates in the three spatial dimensions), and any evolution of the system is a continuous path in this space – you can view this as a graph on a sheet of paper, which in fact is the configuration space for a system of two one-dimensional particles.

Now, on this configuration space, there exists a selection principle – the so-called principle of least action --, which picks out one such path (between two endpoints) uniquely among the infinitely many possible ones. Note that there has not been a reference to time so far – the whole thing is as static as a graph on a sheet – which comes into play only now: on this path, there exists a notion of ‘emergent’ time, in such a way that each point, each configuration of the universe, has a past and a future – if you were on this path, you’d remember your past, and not your future, and thus, each state of you had memory of each previous state, which accounts for the feeling of time passing. Barbour gives a good overview of his ideas in this paper (pdf link), which placed first in the FQXi (Foundational Questions Institute) contest on ‘the nature of time’.

[begbert2]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

@begbert2

Either way, there is a second that’s the first second of the universe’s time, and prior to that there were no seconds before.

But (in the open interval analogy) there’s no moment that’s the first moment of the universe’s time, as to every moment there’s a prior moment. Sure, 0.1 may be the first number evenly divisible by 0.1 in the interval (0,1), but that doesn’t make it special, or a ‘first number’ in any other respect.

Hello again!

I don’t really see how that’s a problem for my thinking. My position is just that the (0,1) and [0,1] intervals are not practically different in this situation, because it doesn’t really matter if the timeline starts at zero or ‘so close to zero that it’s only mathematically distinguishable’. Either way, if you have an entity that remembers its past, then yeah, it remembers an infinite number of ‘moments’ in every second (not just the first), but nontheless it still remembers a specific finite number of seconds, has an age that can be stated in finite terms, and had a first second prior to which it had no existence. The fact that it’s impossible to label the first ‘moment’ after any given specific point of time is not really a problem.

Like I said, Zeno’s paradox is interesting and all, but it doesn’t really mean that Achilles and the tortise never meet.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

And as for change, time is really just one convenient parametrization, useful thanks to its (in everyday contexts) uniqueness, linearity and partition into past and future, i.e. states that were before and states that are yet to come; the latter’s mostly due to entropy increase, the former is only really true in a very limited context. Think of the parabola a thrown stone describes: sure, I can parametrize its change in height in time, as an equation of motion x(t); however, I can equally well parametrize it with respect to a horizontal coordinate x(y) – the physical description is just as complete.

Carlo Rovelli, who together with Julian Barbour is perhaps the prime advocate of the idea that at a fundamental level, physical descriptions of reality make no explicit mention of time at all, calls quantities like x, y, or t ‘partial observables’, as they can’t be measured independently and don’t give the total picture of the physical situation on their own, and quantities like x(y) or x(t) complete observables, as they describe the complete physical state of the system. The still to be found theory of quantum gravity, then, provides a prescription to calculate all such complete observables; but the Newtonian notion of an absolute, external t will likely be absent, being replaced instead by a partial observable on equal footing with any other. (Indeed, it’s known that there arise particular difficulties with the notion of time in quantum gravity regimes – the best known is perhaps the so-called clock ambiguity, in which different notions of how to settle on a time variable yield effectively different laws of physics.)

To Barbour, the fundamental physical description lives in what’s called the ‘configuration space’, i.e. the abstract space whose every point refers to a complete configuration of the physical system under consideration. For N particles, this is a 3N-dimensional space (as for each particle, it needs to give the coordinates in the three spatial dimensions), and any evolution of the system is a continuous path in this space – you can view this as a graph on a sheet of paper, which in fact is the configuration space for a system of two one-dimensional particles.

Now, on this configuration space, there exists a selection principle – the so-called principle of least action --, which picks out one such path (between two endpoints) uniquely among the infinitely many possible ones. Note that there has not been a reference to time so far – the whole thing is as static as a graph on a sheet – which comes into play only now: on this path, there exists a notion of ‘emergent’ time, in such a way that each point, each configuration of the universe, has a past and a future – if you were on this path, you’d remember your past, and not your future, and thus, each state of you had memory of each previous state, which accounts for the feeling of time passing. Barbour gives a good overview of his ideas in this paper (pdf link), which placed first in the FQXi (Foundational Questions Institute) contest on ‘the nature of time’.

That’s all very…complicated and all, but I’m not sure how it refutes my position. I’m perfectly happy mapping time in unusual ways; I speak of the static frames of a static roll of film as being a timeline with perfect seriousness. My main point is that once you have a timeline, with minutes and moments of time lined up in a neat and orderly row, it’s going to end up having a start and end, because even if the moments can’t be enumerated, the minutes can - and the same goes for any entities that are within the timeline too.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

I’m not really sure that I want to get into another debate with you – I merely wanted to point out that the classical dichotomy between ‘there is an infinite past’ and ‘there is a first moment’ really isn’t one, as there is at least one model with a finite past that lacks a first moment. (And as for Zeno’s paradox, that is resolved by in a sense just accepting the infinity in it – the sum of the infinitely many ever-smaller parts of the way converges to a finite value of time Achilles needs to cross them.)

Similarly, it’s not at all settled that ‘all action requires time’; there are formulations of physics, of mechanics – actions and reactions – in which there is no mention made of time at all, and indeed, time can be viewed to emerge from the action instead. It’s not merely an ‘unusual mapping’ of time. In general, the Newtonian concept of an invisible flowing river of time is naive, and not in line with current physics. Your ‘roll of film’ example really is just such a Newtonian picture – think of a film on my computer instead. I could view it as being static, saved on my harddrive, or I could play it and watch it, thus having it be an entity with its own time – I could speed it up or slow it down, so movie people time apparently differs from my time. Nevertheless, it is my time frame that is the fundamental one; my time is the Newtonian ‘absolute time’, and to convolute an analogy with another one, movie time is like me, afloat on the river of time, playing with a toy model boat – letting it race ahead or fall back, or having it stationary with respect to me; but there’s just one and the same river for everybody.

And as for an infinite entity having to remember infinitely many past days, well, remembering already assumes the passage of time – it might be the case that it just experiences all of them in a unified now, even though we can’t imagine how that’d work (as we can’t imagine a tesseract, as Blaster Master noted). And besides, it’s not the case that an infinite entity would have to remember infinitely many days, as it’s not necessarily the case that infinitely many days have passed since any point in the past; if you view the whole number line as model, between any two points on it, there are only finitely many numbers. As there is no ‘first point’ at ‘minus infinity’, there is no infinite number of days the universe (or whatever) has existed for, even though its past is infinite.

[Acid_Lamp]

I have a poor grasp pf physics but I think it’s important to make a few points.

we may not be asking the right question. It could be, and probably is, that our monkey brains are not really wired to understand these issues without some serious training.

It probably doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever happened, it did so an almost unimaginably long time ago; it is extremely unlikely that anything even remotely resembling current humanity will be around to watch the end of it. While learning about it will no doubt provide all sorts of interesting an useful technologies, the actual answers to these questions will have very little bearing on anyone’s day to day existence.

until we advance significantly in interstellar travel we won’t know much more. Seriously. Until we actually get out there and start really checking things out, we are very limited in what we can reasonably deduce. It is more accurate to say that science has provided and will continue to provide, and revise, the best answers that we are going to get to these questions. However, until we have the capability to physically explore the broader universe in a timely manner, (which may or may not be possible but it doesn’t look good so far)We are making due with a very, very, limited understanding of what is going on.

It is the last point that is perhaps the most important. It is tempting to put god into the gaps to appease our monkey-brains. The problem is that by doing so, we give ourselves no motivation for actually doing anything.

[DrCube]

@begbert2

Naah. There’s nothing incomprehensible about a context without time; it’s easy to understand. There would be no change. No actions would occur. It would be static. Simple. Not only are mysterious ways unnecessary, there is no space for them at all.

Right - creation of the timeline is not an event within the timeline. It must therefore be either an event caused by a change in some other timeline, or be completely uncaused with the timeline popping into existence spontaneously. We’re on the same page this far.

You got it right in the first quoted paragraph and blew it in the second (in my opinion). First, not only is no creator necessary, it needlessly complicates things, requiring extra dimensions, time lines, et cetera. The point of my first post is that our 4D universe (including our time line) may be static from the point of view of higher dimensions, even if such dimensions do not exist. That means that our time line doesn’t change, that there are no external creatures or time lines from which to change ours.

With this perspective, it makes no sense to talk of things being “caused” by external time lines, or for them to “pop” into existence. The universe is. It makes no sense to talk about causes or creation or popping into existence because all those things require external time lines which do not exist. Looked at from our hypothetical-but-unnecessary 5th dimension, our time line may be infinite, or it may be finite, but I see no reason it must be one way or the other.

[begbert2]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I’m not really sure that I want to get into another debate with you – I merely wanted to point out that the classical dichotomy between ‘there is an infinite past’ and ‘there is a first moment’ really isn’t one, as there is at least one model with a finite past that lacks a first moment. (And as for Zeno’s paradox, that is resolved by in a sense just accepting the infinity in it – the sum of the infinitely many ever-smaller parts of the way converges to a finite value of time Achilles needs to cross them.)

My answer to this is, as stated, “There may not be a first moment, but there must be a first minute, and that’s close enough for government work.”

The infinity in question here -and the infinity in Zeno’s paradox- is not of the kind that results in the sort of ‘endless timeline’ desired by those who wish to argue that god has ‘always existed’. It’s the kind of infinity that sums to a finite number, which is no help to them at all.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

Similarly, it’s not at all settled that ‘all action requires time’; there are formulations of physics, of mechanics – actions and reactions – in which there is no mention made of time at all, and indeed, time can be viewed to emerge from the action instead. It’s not merely an ‘unusual mapping’ of time. In general, the Newtonian concept of an invisible flowing river of time is naive, and not in line with current physics. Your ‘roll of film’ example really is just such a Newtonian picture – think of a film on my computer instead. I could view it as being static, saved on my harddrive, or I could play it and watch it, thus having it be an entity with its own time – I could speed it up or slow it down, so movie people time apparently differs from my time. Nevertheless, it is my time frame that is the fundamental one; my time is the Newtonian ‘absolute time’, and to convolute an analogy with another one, movie time is like me, afloat on the river of time, playing with a toy model boat – letting it race ahead or fall back, or having it stationary with respect to me; but there’s just one and the same river for everybody.

Action requires time. Even if you use an odd model where the word ‘time’ is not mentioned, if there is a change in state, there must be an axis along which the change can be tracked. And that axis starts getting called ‘time’ at pretty much precisely the same moment you start claiming that the two different states are actually a change from one state to the other.

Obfuscated and convoluted examples don’t change this fact, as it follows directly from the definitions of the words “time” and perhaps more importantly, “change”.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

And as for an infinite entity having to remember infinitely many past days, well, remembering already assumes the passage of time – it might be the case that it just experiences all of them in a unified now, even though we can’t imagine how that’d work (as we can’t imagine a tesseract, as Blaster Master noted). And besides, it’s not the case that an infinite entity would have to remember infinitely many days, as it’s not necessarily the case that infinitely many days have passed since any point in the past; if you view the whole number line as model, between any two points on it, there are only finitely many numbers. As there is no ‘first point’ at ‘minus infinity’, there is no infinite number of days the universe (or whatever) has existed for, even though its past is infinite.

I don’t get what you’re saying - that an entity could have existed for the entire numberline but only remember a finite part of it? As I already pointed out, forgetfulness is no defense. The point is that the question “how many days have you lived through” must have a numerical answer, whether it’s remembered or not - and contrary to popular belief “infinity” is not a number.

@DrCube

@begbert2

Naah. There’s nothing incomprehensible about a context without time; it’s easy to understand. There would be no change. No actions would occur. It would be static. Simple. Not only are mysterious ways unnecessary, there is no space for them at all.

Right - creation of the timeline is not an event within the timeline. It must therefore be either an event caused by a change in some other timeline, or be completely uncaused with the timeline popping into existence spontaneously. We’re on the same page this far.

You got it right in the first quoted paragraph and blew it in the second (in my opinion). First, not only is no creator necessary, it needlessly complicates things, requiring extra dimensions, time lines, et cetera. The point of my first post is that our 4D universe (including our time line) may be static from the point of view of higher dimensions, even if such dimensions do not exist. That means that our time line doesn’t change, that there are no external creatures or time lines from which to change ours.

With this perspective, it makes no sense to talk of things being “caused” by external time lines, or for them to “pop” into existence. The universe is. It makes no sense to talk about causes or creation or popping into existence because all those things require external time lines which do not exist. Looked at from our hypothetical-but-unnecessary 5th dimension, our time line may be infinite, or it may be finite, but I see no reason it must be one way or the other.

There’s two ways it could be: we could be the ‘base’ universe, or we could be a ‘sub’ universe. Both are possibilities and neither is disprovable, so I allow for both in my terminology. All we can know is that if we’re not the ‘base’ universe, then something is.

You’re right that if we are the base universe, then there’s no external context in which the popping would have taken place; the base universe just is, with no context in which there is a period ‘before’ it existed to be delineated by a ‘pop’. But that’s only the case for base universes; sub-universes that were spawned at some point in time in a parent universe are indeed created or ‘pop’ into existence. Heck, I’ve created a few myself. (They didn’t ‘pop’ out, though.)

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@begbert2

Action requires time. Even if you use an odd model where the word ‘time’ is not mentioned, if there is a change in state, there must be an axis along which the change can be tracked. And that axis starts getting called ‘time’ at pretty much precisely the same moment you start claiming that the two different states are actually a change from one state to the other.

Well, that’s the intuitive, Newtonian view of things; however, there is good evidence that once you get to fundamental physics, that view simply doesn’t work. That it is in fact the other way around: only action introduces the notion of time, or more precisely, only states differing very slightly from each other give rise to the idea of duration.

Obfuscated and convoluted examples don’t change this fact, as it follows directly from the definitions of the words “time” and perhaps more importantly, “change”.

It is counterintuitive, and it may not fit with the notions of ‘time’ and ‘change’ we are used to in everyday life, but that’s physics for you – reasonable ideas that work at one level turn out to be essentially unwarranted assumptions at another (as an analogy, you might point out that an electron can’t be both a wave and a particle, as in a classical context, the definitions of both of these words are contradictory; however, that doesn’t prohibit the electron from showing both kinds of behaviour – in a sense, our definitions are only good in the domain they apply to).

I don’t get what you’re saying - that an entity could have existed for the entire numberline but only remember a finite part of it? As I already pointed out, forgetfulness is no defense. The point is that the question “how many days have you lived through” must have a numerical answer, whether it’s remembered or not - and contrary to popular belief “infinity” is not a number.

Well, first of all, there are lots of numerical systems in which infinity is indeed a number. But that’s beside the point. The point here is that the question ‘how many days have you lived through’ simply isn’t well-posed in this context, as there is no point at which the entity began its life. If you’re wanting to talk about durations, you have to talk about intervals, and there is no interval on the whole numbers that ‘starts at -infinity’. All intervals, and hence, all durations, are finite.

You’d have to switch to a number system that allows infinity to be a number to be able to meaningfully ask that question, such as the projectively extended reals, in which case the answer then would be ‘infinity’.

[begbert2]

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

@begbert2

Action requires time. Even if you use an odd model where the word ‘time’ is not mentioned, if there is a change in state, there must be an axis along which the change can be tracked. And that axis starts getting called ‘time’ at pretty much precisely the same moment you start claiming that the two different states are actually a change from one state to the other.

Well, that’s the intuitive, Newtonian view of things; however, there is good evidence that once you get to fundamental physics, that view simply doesn’t work. That it is in fact the other way around: only action introduces the notion of time, or more precisely, only states differing very slightly from each other give rise to the idea of duration.

It is counterintuitive, and it may not fit with the notions of ‘time’ and ‘change’ we are used to in everyday life, but that’s physics for you – reasonable ideas that work at one level turn out to be essentially unwarranted assumptions at another (as an analogy, you might point out that an electron can’t be both a wave and a particle, as in a classical context, the definitions of both of these words are contradictory; however, that doesn’t prohibit the electron from showing both kinds of behaviour – in a sense, our definitions are only good in the domain they apply to).

Whether action introduces the idea of time, or time introduces the idea of action, it’s all the same to me either way: when the dust settles you still end up with time whenever you have change. As with the “does 0.99999~ equal 1.0 or not” issue, I take the stance that the detials don’t really matter when the result is the same. And as best I can tell you’re agreeing here that if you’ve got change, then you’ve got a difference in time. Which is pretty much all I need to know to say that if you’ve got a thinking, acting god out there somewhere, it comes equipped with a timeframe in which it acts.

@Half_Man_Half_Wit

I don’t get what you’re saying - that an entity could have existed for the entire numberline but only remember a finite part of it? As I already pointed out, forgetfulness is no defense. The point is that the question “how many days have you lived through” must have a numerical answer, whether it’s remembered or not - and contrary to popular belief “infinity” is not a number.

Well, first of all, there are lots of numerical systems in which infinity is indeed a number. But that’s beside the point. The point here is that the question ‘how many days have you lived through’ simply isn’t well-posed in this context, as there is no point at which the entity began its life. If you’re wanting to talk about durations, you have to talk about intervals, and there is no interval on the whole numbers that ‘starts at -infinity’. All intervals, and hence, all durations, are finite.

You’d have to switch to a number system that allows infinity to be a number to be able to meaningfully ask that question, such as the projectively extended reals, in which case the answer then would be ‘infinity’.

We’re trying to model time. I thought that the good old fashioned number line was a 100% effective model for modeling and describing time, points of time, and spans of time. Ain’t it?

I guess it’s fair to say that I just don’t accept that “how many days have you lived through” isn’t well-posed in this context. The context actually seems pretty simple: a number line, with three possible configurations (ignoring the behavior of the ‘high’ end of the line):

1. Starts at 0 and counts up.
2. Starts at 0.000~001 and counts up.
3. Starts, er, nowhere, and counts both up and down, with no end in the negative direction.

Given that, my basic position is that 1 and 2 are pretty much functionally equavalent from the standpoint of durations; the timespan (0…1) is not infinite in size despite its lack of an enumerable start point. And I maintain that case 3 in practical terms would just mean that the timeline is constantly getting longer in the negative duration, with fubars various things like causality, requires yet another layer of time for this timeline to be growing in, and still leaves the entity with always having a finite (though constantly changing in the outer timeline) age. Which pretty much ain’t what the theists are looking for either.

I’m of the opinion that however the details are running under the hood, the above generalizations still apply, making things pretty tough for those arguing for a god existing in a negatively unbounded timeline.