[cliff630]

Heavy stuff! What you assembled is an effort
of love. I really enjoy reading it, even though
some of is way past me. But it is good exercise
for these brain neurons.

Two questions:
Q1: At death do we revert to that state
we were in prior to conception?

Q2: If we exist in a universe without
beginning or end, then have we
enjoyed infinite existences without
recollections?

A note about infinity. Infinities have
different orders. e.g. The cardinality
of the real numbers is higher than that
of the integers. The set of integers is
said to be a "countable" set. But the RN
are not, since they can't be put in a one
to one correspondence with the integers.

Since time is continuous like the real
numbers, it has the same cardinality as
the RN. The point here is that "infinity"
and "nothing" are concepts that we just
can't comprhend, but we are here and
that is a "miracle", isn't it?

[The Grammarian]

29 posted on 11/30/2004 10:17:03 PM PST by cliff630 (cliff630 (Didn't Christ ask Pilate, "What is the Truth." Even while looking in the face of TRUTH))
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Uh, you may want to correct your tagline. Pilate asked Christ, not the other way around.

[betty boop]

A note about infinity. Infinities have different orders. e.g. The cardinality of the real numbers is higher than that of the integers. The set of integers is said to be a "countable" set. But the RN are not, since they can't be put in a one to one correspondence with the integers.

I'm so glad you liked it, cliff! Plus you ask great questions!

Regarding your first question, I really have no idea. Plus I don't know of any way I could possibly find out for sure, sitting here on my own little perch in 3+1D spacetime. Not only have I no recollection of any personal preexistence; but I can't even recollect the birth experience itself. Possibly if there was a preexistence it's buried deep in the unconscious mind. But I wouldn't take that statement to the bank!

As for the second question, it seems clear that the universe had a beginning in time (or at the very least that time began "in the beginning," along with space and matter), which implies it may have an end in time....

But your own observation about infinities having different orders is so interesting, and may actually shed some light on this problem. (I may be in over my head here; if I am, please do let me know.) Both the integers and the real numbers are said to represent infinite sets, yet the latter set is ever so much "richer" than the former, containing an infinitely greater number of elements such that there is no direct correspondence, or cardinality between the two sets. The set of real numbers contains all the elements of the set of integers as elements of itself, plus all the rational and irrational numbers (but not numbers having any imaginary parts). We do seem to have qualitatively different types of infinities here. The integers, or countable numbers, seem analogous to the natural human understanding of the idea of infinity, however imperfect, where the real numbers seem analogous to the nature of infinity as it is in itself. (So to speak.) In other words, the set of integers may be said to be analogous to immanent experience (i.e., its members are "countable'), where the set of real numbers transcends all experience and quite possibly the universe altogether.

Perhaps we then may say that the integers are analogous to time, and the real numbers analogous to eternity. I'll need to think on that some more. I've been working on a little essay on time and the "eternal now." Maybe if I can get it cleaned up, I can post it here. I'll ping it to you if I do, cliff.

Thank you so very much for your thought provoking post!

[cornelis]

A note about infinity. Infinities have different orders.

Worth repeating.