Without His act, there would be no result. This said as He created the Natural Law, how then could we say He is bound by it? If one is extra-natural, how then can one be Natural?

That makes sense

But what I'm not understanding is why this argument is any more convincing than the argument that there is no plane outside of the natural world and there is just an infinite series of causes

From a Thomistic perspective, infinity in the Natural world is implausible.

And not to go down the road of science, but I'd say that is also decently held to be the same in that field.

Can you enlighten me on why infinity is not possible from that perspective?

Wasn't aquinas willing to concede that it is possible that the linear cause of the universe could be infinite just for the sake of argument?

Well let us go back to Aristotle, he posited correctly with regards to his rivals the Pythagoreans, that "objects of sense" (i.e. Nature) cannot be infinite. How can there be an infinite amount of causes in a natural world? How could something naturally exist forever? If this isn't the case, how then could something come from nothing without an extra-natural act by something unnatural?

The Angelic Doctor conceded plenty, however he felt with regard to this that the only way that could be is if God had always and infinitely was with the universe, but he certainly didn't accept that notion, and I don't find it well grounded in Thomism.

True

which is why i said he just did it for the sake of his argument

But my answer to your first message

I hold him in extreme esteem, but in some matters he was repudiated by the magisterium. Example being, the Immaculate Conception.

would be that as far as I know mass/energy can't be created or destroyed

Not naturally.

right

So if it can naturally exist forever

isn't it plausible that it has always existed forever?

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And I apologize that I'm not very well educated in this field

But I promise I'm arguing out of good faith here

Again infinity has largely been discredited as, for lack of a better word, paradoxical and illogical. Even physicists have deemed it so. Example being Georges Lemaitre, university of Louvain in Belgium.

No need to apologize.

I'm still learning about what Aristotle meant by the difference of potential and actual infinity.

Mathematic theory isn't my strong suit, but I love how he related the two, it shows his general brilliance if anything.

So is this infinity in concern to the passing of time or is it everything?

Infinity, being never ending, not expanding either. So this particular infinity deals with all of creation which is guided and defined by time.

No infinity has not at all been discredited by physicists

I never said all of them.

I simply gave examples where it has been.

Where?

George Lemaitre, one of the theorists behind the theory of the big bang, seen here.

You realize even the most basic calculus relies on infinities

Almost every branch of physics that we even study in undergrad has infinities within the theory

Infinity in theory or infinity in practice? That is, infinity for hypothesis, or infinity with regards to metaphysics?

That question doesn’t really make sense

And I'm not colluding the two, I'm simply saying is infinity being used for theoretical purposes or for actual explanations of the natural world?

Help me understand as you do.

Actual explanations

GR is the best example

It requires no discrete lengths in space or time basically so that you can for any given curvature in space create a locally “flat” thing called a spacetime metric

To do that the world has to be continuous in time and space, so infinitely divisible

It’s really analogous with epsilon delta I think it’s callled from calculus one. Which is why infinities are also required there

I understand the necessity of it, but I fail to see how this correlates with infinity with regards to creation? While I certainly hold no credentials, and that should be apparent, how does this figure into the Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi model?

I mean how can accelerated expansion be believed in an infinite understanding?

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the model.

Let me look that up tbh I haven’t heard of it. Are you saying howncould they theorize that the universe expansion is accelerating indefinitely?

The expansion of the universe, and the theory of it, seem to contradict the idea of an infinite universe. I mean, how could infinity expand infinitely? That makes no sense.

Oh the ltb metric is inhomogenous which our universe isn’t

Again that's why I brought up Lemaitre and Edwin Hubble, that was their bread and butter

Yeah they are describing an inhomogenous universe which ours isn’t. But as for how infinity can expland that depends on a few things. We can pm about it if you want because my background is actually in GR and I feel like people here won’t really care

So the idea is that the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate flies in the face of the theory that the big bang is just an infinitely recurring event in the history of the universe, right?

Yes it does

An infinite universe can expand though

So is in inhomogeneous and also not isotropic?

Expansion means that the space between the points has become greater. Not that more “points” have been created. That’s one of the big confusing points in GR

Our universe is homogenous and isotropic

Oh I misread what you said my bad.

Meaning the average energy density is the same roughly everywhere, and the universe looks the same from wherever you are in it

So it would just keep expanding and never retract to the point where there is another big bang

I mean, I was taught, albeit in high school, that galaxies could be moving away from the Earth.

And that would just kind of never end?

Yes but it’s worth noting that most people don’t believe in the cyclical universe. And yes there are galaxies that move away from us due to expansion, and then there are some closer ones that move towards us regardless of expansion

The further away something is, the more the expansion has an effect. That’s why we have an “observable universe”. Beyond that point the space between us and objects there expands faster than light so we could never interact

I'm still not understanding how expansion of the universe can be at all possible when its infinite.

So what does that say about the state of the universe before the big bang?

Sure so for one we don’t know if it’s infinite. But if it were, the way it would expand is by the space between points expanding.

What could have caused the big bang if it's not possible that things retracted to that state

contracted*

We don’t really deal with that in physics. A philosophers opinion on what happened “before” the Big Bang is just as valid as a physicists

To me it doesn't sound very plausible that time existed infinitely before that

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Yeah the argument goes “how could infinite time have passed for us to be here” but we pass through infinities every day if we assume space is continuous

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You mean like how matter or time is infinitely divisible?

^^^^poster above is gay

Not matter but space and time

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The boomer is mad continue on

Because if it is you walked from point a to b and covered an infinite amount of points in space. So that same argument can be applied to the time thing.

I'm not understanding that

@IAmHiding

So matter isn't infinitely divisible like time and space is?

u mad bro ???

No matter isnt

No, are you?

So what's the smallest unit in matter?

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Subatomic particles

Wouldnt it be whatever makes up quarks

Depends on the thing you’re talking about. Idk particle physics really at all but it’s quarks and I think electrons are fundamental particles too. Idk that field at all though

Yeah and then other theories have other ideas about what it could be like the string people

but all you know is there is a fundamental unit there that cannot itself be divided

Ur dink

what is going on here

Time can be divided to no end and matter cannot, there is a point where you cant split it, like there cant be half of a quark

what is this arguemney

Is what im asuming he is saying

Right

Yeah they think. But things like GR say nothing about matter, it says something about space