And Slaters Go Plop

While I’m waiting for the YouTube videos to be posted so I can get my facts straight with regard to the debate between William Lane Craig and Bill Cooke I thought I might address the issue of the concept of infinity.

Craig introduced the cosmological argument with the notion of infinity and the fact that atheists will argue that the universe is infinite. I’d just like to put my atheistic hand up at this point and say that I’d tend to go with the ‘finite universe’ personally at this stage. I know people (both theists and atheists) who fall on either side of this argument and so this assertion was a little disappointing. This was posited right before he moved on to the Big Bang so perhaps it was an attempt to portray atheists as non-scientific.

The fact of the matter is no one knows whether the universe is infinite or not. Get used to this phrase because I’m probably going to use it a few times over the next few entries. There is stuff we don’t know; the more we find out the more we realise just how little we really do know. Making up explanations may feel satisfying but it’s not going to get us any closer to the truth.

Back to the issue of infinity. Craig argues that the concept of infinity is an absurdity in terms of logic because, for example, if you minus four from infinity you are left with infinity. And I tend to agree in principle. But there is a problem with how he’s come to this conclusion because he’s used a finite number in relation to an infinite one.

Because whenever we talk about infinity we refer to it in finite units (like time or numbers or oranges) we think that because we can just add or subtract one more as we might do in the real world that it logically follows that we could continue to do so if we had unlimited time, numbers or oranges. Which might be a bit of a circular reasoning because we’re giving ourselves infinity to prove that infinity exists.

Another angle is that if infinity in relation to time is defined as “for the full extent of time” and time can in fact be created then it would also be reasonable to define infinity as from the creation of time to its destruction.

Einstein came up with some theories where mass is equivalent to energy (and vice-versa… I can cope with this one) and - head-hurtingly - where time is equivalent to space (and vice-versa… aaaarrgh! What?!). I don’t even know what to make of this so if anyone has a succinct way of explaining the concept of “spacetime” please feel free to enlighten me.

Hawking has a nice little analogy about the limits of a dimension which I’ll see if I can completely mungle:

If a two-dimensional critter were sliding around on the face of our planet and were asked what’s south of New Zealand it would list Stewart Island (technically incorrect but we’ll leave it be because it’s just a two-dimensional critter) and then Antarctica and, finally, the South Pole. We can almost sense its outrage and confusion when we tell them they can’t go any further south than the South Pole but the fact is, within these dimensions there really is no “South of the South Pole”. Now shift the question up a dimension or two. When I ask you what happened before World War 2 you will list a number of events that occur back in time along the time axis (i.e. just like the “south” axis) until you get to a point where time starts or comes into being. Yes, we are outraged and confused when we are told that there is no such thing as “before time” because everywhere we look we can see a before, a cause. But the truth is that you can’t continue to use the word “before” once we’ve hit this point.

I don’t know if analogies that include the concept of dimensions are any more valid than the keep-adding-an-orange ones. Perhaps our concept of “dimensions” are just another way our minds have to package information about the real world in an attempt to comprehend it.

I don’t know if time unfolded out of the beginning of the universe but as incomprehensible as it seems to me I can see from the example of my two-dimensional critter that my incomprehension doesn’t necessarily make the idea wrong.

For me, the concept of infinity is either:

• A trick of the mind that doesn’t ever map against reality. Perhaps our mind can conceive of infinity because our mind is self-referencing.
• A way of describing the extent of a dimension (like “south” or “before”) that can actually have a start and an end.
• That the universe is, in fact, infinite and that my mind is incapable of comprehending it beyond describing it in terms of finite units.
• Something else altogether… [insert your reasoning here].

For the sake of argument I’m more than happy to go with Craig on this one; the universe is finite. (Until I see further evidence - always a good disclaimer to add to questions of this nature).