I don't believe in God. I'm just asking a question, how does infinity fit with the Atheism. You might think the two are perfect together, or that they are not.
Its just, a question.
2006-09-20 16:16:16 · 20 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
I have no problems at all with infinity as an intellectual concept.
As for whether it has any practical meaning in my everyday life, that's another question. I feel that for all practical purposes, there's no difference between "infinite" and "very large finite".
Oh yeah, I'm an atheist. And a math geek!
2006-09-20 16:22:09 · answer #1 · answered by Bramblyspam 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Infinity and God are not necessarily related, and I don't see any reason why an Atheist would have a reason to doubt the concept. If I were an Atheist, I would probably just think of infinity as a purely mathematical concept.
As an agnostic, I will say that even if there is no God, there still are things that have no beginning and no end. Someone answered one of my posts last week by pointing out that even if space is not infinite, then what lies "outside" of space? Or if time "began" at some point, then what was there "before" that? This sort of question has no easy answer. I mean yes, some people will give "nothing" as a stupid cop-out answer, but I mean there is no easy REAL answer.
2006-09-20 16:25:40 · answer #2 · answered by I Know Nuttin 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Infinity isn't correlated with reality. It is simply the end of a trend. If the universe we see is expanding from something, then the mathematical trend is toward expanding in perpetuity. It isn't really a belief. Atheism isn't either. A-theism, the lack of theism is like not believing you are going to win the lottery this week. You didn't buy a ticket, so you have no reason to believe you will win, and you don't (believe or win).
2006-09-20 16:24:38 · answer #3 · answered by auntiegrav 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You are asking a question that truly cannot be answered at the level of understanding available today. Since the scientists believe that space is curved, they feel that there are limits to the universe and thereby infinity. Are they right? Live long enough and you will probably find they rewrite the theories -- and that is all they are.
2006-09-20 16:20:11 · answer #4 · answered by waytooeasy67 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I don't think an atheist would accept the concept of infinity. To an atheist, the world has a beginning, an middle & an end. Atheists accept science, & science says this universe will end in billions of yrs from now, barring we don't get hit be a enormous meteorite or we ourselves don't destroy the planet first.
2006-09-20 16:21:28 · answer #5 · answered by Bronweyn 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Universe.
2015-05-25 23:33:36 · answer #6 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think Cantor's set theory is pretty cool. One property of infinity is that a subset of an infinite set can also be infinite. For example, the set of even numbers is infinite, and you make make a 1:1 mapping between the set of natural numbers and even numbers:
i <-> 2i
But the set of all real numbers is bigger than the set of all natural numbers. It is possible to prove that the "size" of the infinite number of real numbers is "bigger" than the "size" of the infinite number of natural numbers.
Cantor showed that there are inifinities even bigger than the infinitiy for real numbers, and in fact there are an infinite number of infinities.
I also think it is cool that 3d space can be unbounded but finite. The word "unbounded" seems to imply "infinite" but in fact doesn't. Consider the surface of a sphere (such as the surface of the Earth). You can travel in one direction forever and never hit a boundary. It's easy for us to visualize this for the 2d surface of a 3d object, but its not possible for us to visualize this for a 3d "surface" (in math this is called a manifold, or an m-brane) of a 4d object. Our universe might be like this.
So, anyway, infinity is cool.
2006-09-20 16:27:34 · answer #7 · answered by Jim L 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I'm not sure about that issue. Something close to infinity probably exists, if not exactly. I like the expanding and contracting universe theory. But how it would relate to time is unknown to me.
2006-09-21 02:06:33 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
infinity is a purely mathematical concept. now, mathematics has been one of the lucky few topics that has not been shaped by religion that much. It fits in with any world view that accepts modern mathematics.
2006-09-20 16:28:07 · answer #9 · answered by Sparkiplasma 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
The universe is infinite in both directions.
And, the universe is eternal.
What we normally call the universe is more correctly called the "visible universe" or "observable universe."
Within everything around us, including the air we breathe, the food we eat, and our own bodies, are an infinite number of smaller "universes" (more correct term would be energy systems, but that would not be understood properly).
Our visible universe relative to the entire infinite universe can be compared to a pixel on your computer screen relative to all available pixels. Our visible universe is tiny & huge (depending on observation platform) and is totally irrelevant to the overall universe.
2006-09-20 16:25:23 · answer #10 · answered by Left the building 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋