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    The world cannot have existed eternally in the past. — Carmelics
    Home/Divine Attributes
    HistoryEditSee Inverse

    The world cannot have existed eternally in the past.

    Divine AttributesNatural Theology
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
    ?
    • 1.An actually infinite past would require completed infinite causal chains, but causation requires a determinate origin to transmit causal power forward.
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    • 2.Without a first cause, each event's causal efficacy is borrowed from a prior event, generating an explanatory regress that leaves all causation ungrounded.
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    • 3.An ungrounded causal chain explains nothing, so a world with no first moment would render the existence of any present event inexplicable.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.If the past were infinite, then for any past event E, infinitely many events preceded E, meaning E is preceded by a completed actual infinite.
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    • 2.As Cantor acknowledged and Craig developed, a completed actual infinite in the physical world generates contradictions, such as Hilbert's Hotel paradoxes applied to real subtraction.
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    • 3.Since physical reality, unlike abstract mathematics, admits of successive removal and addition, an actually infinite past entails real contradictions in the causal order.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.To reach the present moment, an actually infinite number of moments must already have elapsed if the world is eternal.
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    • 2.An actual infinite cannot be traversed.
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    Topics

    Divine AttributesNatural Theology

    Connections

    1 topic

    Modality & Possibility2 linked

    Related

    An actual infinite cannot be traversed.An actually infinite past would require completed infinite causal chains, but ca...An ungrounded causal chain explains nothing, so a world with no first moment wou...As Cantor acknowledged and Craig developed, a completed actual infinite in the p...
    +4 moreShow less
    If the past were infinite, then for any past event E, infinitely many events pre...Since physical reality, unlike abstract mathematics, admits of successive remova...To reach the present moment, an actually infinite number of moments must already...Without a first cause, each event's causal efficacy is borrowed from a prior eve...

    Similar

    Arguments that an eternal world is impossible under the present dispen...86%The world is not eternal.85%The present world could not have been created from eternity under God'...85%God could not have thought about the world using the world itself as a...82%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: al-kindi
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    He does, though his response comes only at the end of his treatment of the world’s eternity. The response, found also in Philoponus, is that even to reach the present moment, an actually infinite number of moments must already have elapsed. In other words, there is currently an actually infinite number of moments (or years, or whatever) that have elapsed “since the world began.” And, as Aristotle himself says, the infinite cannot be traversed. Whether this argument is successful is unclear. It s
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit