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The Argument In Favor of a Supernatural God Based On Alleged Issues With Concept of Infinity

  • Cassius
  • November 26, 2017 at 7:30 PM

SUNDAY WEEKLY ZOOM - 12:30 PM EDT - Ancient Text Study: De Rerum Natura by Lucretius -- Meeting is open to Level 03 members and above - Read the agenda for our December 14, 2025 meeting -- or find out how to attend.

 

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    • November 26, 2017 at 7:30 PM
    • #1

    If you've ever asked yourself why Epicurus recommends at the end of the letter to Pythocles that we should give ourselves to a "study of the beginnings, and of infinity and of things that are akin to them," take a look at video at the link I will post in the first comment below and see if you have a ready response to the seductive infinity-based argument for the existence of a supernatural god made by "VenomFangX." This kind of glib argument for the existence of god is difficult to refute unless you have considered these principles before. I am not sure myself I could type it up quickly and easily, but the exercise gives me a greater appreciation of why Epicurus rejected the doctrine of infinite divisibilty (see letter to Herodotus around line 56 for one direct reference).

    A seductive argument for the existence of god based on "infinity":



    Here is my quick transcription of his argument:

    1) He accepts that it is correct to hold that nothing comes from nothing (the Epicurean position).

    2) 1:30 He says that the universe cannot always have existed because we cannot apply properties of infinity to the universe.

    3)1:49 Matter time and space cannot be eternal/infinite

    4) Time is the measure of changes in matter, and therefore nothing could ever happen if an infinite time happened before any event. Can't have an infinite amount of finite things.

    5) 3:00 Could there be an infinite amount of changes between two events? No.

    6) Therefore time must be finite.

    7) 3:32. You cannot have an infinite amount of finite things because infinite divisibility can never be reached. That proves there is only a finite amount of matter.

    8)Therefore matter and time are finite and that means that they were created and that means that space cannot be infinite because space is only the measure of the distance between matter and if matter ceased to exist there would be a vacuum so there would be no space.

    9) 4:30 Therefore since matter is finite then space is finite before there is only a finite distance between the two furthest pieces of matter in all reality.

    10) Therefore matter and time and space are not infinite and therefore they are not eternal, That means they had a beginning.

    11) 4:50 Whatever created them therefore existed without matter, time and space. Something without time is therefore an eternal NOW and unchanging, and that is why the Bible says that God never changes. To god the past present and future are all one.

    12)5:30 If you exist without matter then you are immaterial and without space so you are omnipresent.

    13)5:55 Something that is eternal, omnipresent, and immaterial are the attributes of God.

  • Cassius December 7, 2020 at 7:54 PM

    Moved the thread from forum Epicurean Divinity And Related Issues to forum Epicurean Divinity.
  • Cassius January 23, 2024 at 11:26 AM

    Moved the thread from forum Epicurean Divinity, Piety, And the Question of "Religion" to forum Nature Has No Gods Over Her.

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