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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Infinite God
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
'God is infinite', I've heard.
What does this mean?
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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deano
princess
# 12063
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Posted
Well, He has always existed and will always exist, so infinite in "time" - of which He is outside anyway.
He is always at all points of space -- again of which He is outside -- and hence infinite in space.
He also has infinite power, patience, love, capacity for forgiveness and devotion.
That will do for starters.
Think of the biggest thing you can think of, and add 1 to it. God is bigger than that.
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"The moral high ground is slowly being bombed to oblivion. " - Supermatelot
Posts: 2118 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: Nov 2006
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
'God is infinite', I've heard. What does this mean?
It could mean different things depending on context. But as a general rule God is not "infinite" in the sense that say the universe is (likely) infinite. The universe is infinite in the sense that applying certain metrics to it in certain ways will yield a numeric result "infinite". Rather God is (typically) infinite in the sense that trying to apply that metric in the same manner is a mistake in the first place.
To give a mathematical analogy: The number of even whole numbers (2, 4, 6, 8, ...) is infinite. But it is infinite in a "measurable" way, as far as the whole numbers themselves are concerned. Because I can say that 2 is the 1st even whole number, 4 is the 2nd one, 6 the 3rd, etc. So in the end the infinity of even whole numbers can be measured by whole numbers (in fact, there are as many even whole numbers as there are whole numbers - infinities are weird...). In the same sense finite measures usefully apply to the universe even if the come back with the result "infinite".
However, if I now try to count real numbers (those including for example the square root of two, i.e., 1.414...) with whole numbers, I find that that is not possible. Even though I have infinitely many whole numbers, I cannot exhaust the infinity of real numbers with them even in a limit sense. Real numbers are a different class of entity, whole number measures do not usefully apply to them. That's the case in spite of the fact that I can say that the square root of two (a real number) is larger than 1 and smaller than two (whole numbers). I can compare whole numbers and real numbers, but I cannot enumerate real numbers by whole numbers.
In the same sense then, the infinity of God is not one that can be exhausted by finite measures, but rather is meant to be something breaking these measures even though still comparable in some sense. So if Bill Gates gives a billion dollars to charitable causes and we call him "good" because of that, and Warren Buffet gives two billion dollars and we call him "better" because of that, then saying that God is infinitely good does not mean that He is giving an infinite amount of dollars to charity. Rather it means that His goodness is beyond such finite measures altogether, yet still, as far as we can manage to talk about this sensibly, His goodness is "greater" than any heap of money.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Yorick
Infinite Jester
# 12169
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Posted
Wow, that was an extrembly satisfactory answer, IngoB. Many thanks.
[started to edit typo, realised it works rather well, and decided to leave it]
[ 28. January 2013, 12:00: Message edited by: Yorick ]
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این نیز بگذرد
Posts: 7574 | From: Natural Sources | Registered: Dec 2006
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angelfish
Shipmate
# 8884
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Posted
Added to that, on the matter of existence, infinity implies an illogical regress, so it is more satisfactory to say that God is eternal, rather than that He has existed for an infinite amount of time. Eternal, not infinite.
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"As God is my witness, I WILL kick Bishop Brennan up the arse!"
Posts: 1017 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2004
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The Silent Acolyte
Shipmate
# 1158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
'God is infinite', I've heard.
What does this mean?
The Orthodox services of Matins and Vespers calls him the Existing One. [Short OCA article here.]
Our existence, however, and that of the entire cosmos, is only contingent.
He is Yahweh, the Popeye God: I yam what I yam.
Posts: 7462 | From: The New World | Registered: Aug 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yes, good stuff by IngoB. Is it correct that an infinite set can be generated, for example, by recursion? So this is a kind of computable infinity, but God is not. You can see the same kind of distinction in the two meanings of eternal: either, a time that goes on and on, or something that cannot be measured temporally.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
[tangent, but related to the subject being discussed]
An interesting philosophical question arises: if (for the sake of argument!) God does not exist, then would there need to exist something else which is unbounded, eternal or infinite on which everything else depends for its existence?
In other words, is infinity (or eternity) ontologically necessary, or is this idea merely a human construct? If the latter, then is mathematics merely a construct, given that the idea of infinity seems to be necessary in mathematics?
It seems to me that the multiverse hypothesis (especially the infinite universes version) suggests the need for an infinite reality.
[/ tangent]
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
Posts: 3625 | From: South Coast of England | Registered: Sep 2009
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by angelfish:
infinity implies an illogical regress
![[Confused]](confused.gif)
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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Zach82
Shipmate
# 3208
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Posted
I think the word really says it all. "In" meaning "without," and "finite" meaning "limits." Without limits.
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Don't give up yet, no, don't ever quit/ There's always a chance of a critical hit. Ghost Mice
Posts: 9148 | From: Boston, MA | Registered: Aug 2002
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
"Infinite God" = our finite perceptions and imaginations cannot contain all the mystery.
Disagreement about God? I suspect it has to do often with the emphasis on different parts of perception, imagination and ultimately the personality and experience of those with different ideas than actual base disagreement about God's nature.
Hence the spurious ideas that God and science cannot be (or must be) reconciled. Our level of knowledge about two truths may make them seem contradictory, even when they cannot contradict in actuality. It has been puzzling to me that we more easily reconcile this than we do the differences between Christian denominations, say RC, Lutheran, Orthodox, Anglican, Baptist.
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
\_(ツ)_/
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
quote:
Originally posted by angelfish:
infinity implies an illogical regress
--Tom Clune
Quite.
To claim that regression to infinity is illogical implies a faux-certainty that time is a retraceable linear vector.
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by tclune:
From yesterday to today (same time on the clock) 86,400 (=60*60*24) seconds have passed. If I want, I can put these seconds in an ordered list (1, 2, 3, 4, ..., 85398, 85399, 86400). This provides what kankucho calls a "retraceable linear vector." It's a vector, i.e., a list of numbers. It is is linear, which in this context presumably is supposed to mean "in ascending order and with a regular step". And it is re-traceable, since I can trace it back: if I conclude my count now (at 0), then going one second back in time (-1) undoes the 86,400th step, going two second back in time (-2) undoes the 85,399th step, ... going 86,400 steps back in time (-86,400) undoes the first step of that counting. I have then gone back in time the entire day (at least mentally).
angelfish claimed that it makes no sense to talk of God existing forever in the sense that God's beginning cannot be found for any regression back in time (God would then be [an] infinite [number of] time [steps] old, which we try to trace back), because that sort of thinking in terms of infinite regression is "illogical" according to him. angelfish did not provide any reasons for his claim. kankucho said that this is not illogical, because time in its essence does not have to be as "countable" as my example (a finite chunk of time) turned out to be, and hence worrying about counting infinitely many such steps may be mistaken in principle. kankucho did not provide any reasons for his claim.
Essentially we have here two unsupported assertions contradicting each other over ill-defined terms. Business as usual then... Does all that make more sense now?
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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tclune
Shipmate
# 7959
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Essentially we have here two unsupported assertions contradicting each other over ill-defined terms. Business as usual then... Does all that make more sense now?
A tad. Thanks for the effort -- "pearls before swine" popped into my head for some reason...
--Tom Clune
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Posts: 8013 | From: Western MA | Registered: Jul 2004
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kankucho
Shipmate
# 14318
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Posted
quote:
kankucho did not provide any reasons for his claim.
Let's see what I can do do redress that...
quote:
...I have then gone back in time the entire day (at least mentally).
In truth, we ought to delete the words 'at least' from that statement. You haven't retraced the past day in any way other than mentally. Nor could you. It isn't physically there to be retraced.
...Which was the crux of my point.
We are conditioned to imagine time following the same rules as space, full of definable boundaries, starts and ends, births and deaths, rises and declines. Inevitably, we squeeze our convictions about what is (cosmo-) logical into this very blinkered outlook. And, having come to some ill-informed conclusions about the boundaries of a dimension we can only imagine from the standpoint of an eternal present moment, we are apt to stare into the void beyond comprehension — where we imagine an eternal god to exist — who, alone, doesn't go ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif) at the unfathomability of it all.
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"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself" – Dr. Carl Sagan
Kankucho Bird Blues
Posts: 1262 | From: Kuon-ganjo, E17 | Registered: Nov 2008
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