You are currently viewing RELIGION Part Four
"Happy New Year, Nostradamus!"

RELIGION Part Four

RELIGION Part Four

by Nick Wormley

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here.

Part 3 is here.

Infinity

I wonder what Atheism UK members think about INFINITY?

I am sure that religions don’t like it and probably scientists and mathematicians don’t either, because it seems to confront us with mind-blowing, insoluble paradoxes.

The first three words of the Bible are: “In the beginning…..”.

But the beginning of what? Infinity? That would be a contradiction in terms.

The God Paradox

Is God greater than infinity? Infinity doesn’t need a creator. That is a paradox that wouldn’t make sense. Or does God exist within infinity and just created a local patch? The Abrahamic mythologies seem to gloss over this, simply implying that before God created the universe that we see, there had always been an infinite void. But a totally empty infinity stretching backwards for ever seems to me to defy logic and rational thought.

Truthfully I think, the human mind cannot comprehend infinity. It’s beyond our brain power to understand and accept it’s implications. Ancient people thousands of years ago were as intelligent as us; they just lacked knowledge. But now, as much as then, people still naturally want to limit infinity to measurable terms and numbers (they’re willing to accept unimaginably vast distances and time, but the concept of really going on for ever does our heads in). The authors of Genesis wanted to rein-in infinity so that their all-powerful God could create everything. Philosophical infinity would seriously get in the way of that simple answer to “how and why are we here?).

The Void Paradox

The trouble with an infinite void is that is still trying to contain infinity. In my thinking, theoretically you could just keep travelling ‘for as long as it takes’ until eventually you would arrive at something. Beyond that there might be more somethings, or more nothing, but logically it has to keep continuing. If you put up a brick wall to stop  this never-ending journey, surely there will always be more void and matter of some kind beyond it.

I’m describing a sort of steady-state infinity, but again that is restricting it to our level of comprehension. If there are no numerical or distance limits at all, then it feels logical (but insane) to hypothesize that there must be an infinite “number” and variety of EVERYTHING. So, am I fantasizing, in a state of madness that, somewhere, there is an “infinite number” of different dimensions beyond the few that we recognize and understand, that an imaginary traveller could cross into? If that is the case, within them there must exist an “infinite number” of things that defy all of our science, religion, logic and understanding – suns circling around planets composed of dancing and singing hippos; and places where time runs backwards! Suggest anything you like; there are no limits at all…. The Big Bang was only the most recent of an “infinite number” of repeated Big Bangs.

The Hippo Paradox

[Ed: I only have one hippo.]

Before you put me away in a secure institution, can anybody rationalize this train of thought better, please? What I have just written sounds utterly crazy nonsense, and yet I still feel that it needs to be addressed, even if, realistically, it is impossible for us to properly explain infinity within the limitations of the human mind.

My guess is that Stephen Hawking’s’ cosmological theory of countless universes, each contained in their own “bubble”, within The Multiverse, sounds like a sensible approach to pondering on the implications of infinity. It could not have been brought into existence by God the Creator. They are incompatible concepts. The choice is an Iron Age view of the Universe or a more knowledgeable view in The Phone Age.

Leave a Reply