To Infinity and Beyond
June 19, 2013 by creatorworship
No, I’m not Buzz Lightyear but I do have a story. I have trouble remembering my age when the following event occurred, eight or nine years old, but I can narrow it down because of the left over beginning writer’s paper I used. One day, probably a Saturday, my father was trimming the English Ivy that lined either side of our driveway and cascaded over the stone wall extending halfway across our front yard. My brother and I were cleaning it up as he cut the ivy, hauling it to the leaf pile in rear. I asked my father, “What is the biggest number that exists?” He replied, “It looks like an eight laid on its side.” That got him off the hook and me in a pickle. I now imagine him grinning to himself about what I would do with that. Afterall, I had expected a name: thousand, million, billion, and so on. It took me several years to realize he had described the symbol for infinity. So I decided to write to the biggest number I could on my leftover beginner’s writing paper from 1st grade, that tan colored paper with dashed lines for forming letters properly. I would write to each 100 on one side of a piece of paper. I vaguely remember knowing questions from my older brother or mother to the effect, “How long are you going to do that?” I remember that I made it to several hundred past ten thousand. I’ve always wanted to understand infinity.
Recently on a hike with my two youngest sons I asked the 19 year-old who is conversant in Calculus and particularly related to my question, limits, “Is it possible to have +∞ (there’s that silly sideways eight: read “infinity”)?”After some exchange back and forth, we agreed that it is mathematically possible. My son then added the insight that it is possible because “we created zero.” Immediately I saw that zero is the center of the mathematical universe. But the question persists: Is it possible to have +∞? Afterall, how is something infinite if it leaves out half of all that exists, namely -∞?
And this contrast is the difference between God’s eternality and our eternal life in Him. He is self-existent always (-∞ to +∞), period. We are finite, existing in Him, having a beginning, and if we be saved in Christ continuing forever to +∞, well past a few hundred over ten thousand.
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Posted in General, God Thoughts, Random thoughts, Remembering | Tagged God Thoughts, Random thoughts, Remembering, ultimate issues | 8 Comments
CreatorWorship 
So a little more “fun” on infinity. You asked, “afterall, how is something infinite if it leaves out half of all that exists, namely -inf?” Actually, infinity can leave out an infinite amount more than it includes.
How many real numbers exist between 0 and 1? Answer: infinity
Actually there are an infinite number of rational numbers between 0 and 1 and there is also an infinite number of irrational numbers between 0 and 1. And if your brain doesn’t hurt yet, there are an infinite number of rational numbers between any two irrational numbers. And all of this without looking at 1 to 2, 2 to 3, or …..
But all of this is in Math Space. What about Physics Space? Does infinity really exist in physics? My gut feeling tells me no.
Wow! Thanks, Matthew. Do you mean infinitely large or infinitely small space? I think that would make a difference in how and what is discussed.
Either way. The majority of modern Big Bang Theorists believe the universe to be finite yet unbounded (like the surface of a balloon). Dr. Humphreys, who has a pretty impressive and convincing Young Earth cosmological model, believes the universe to be finite yet bounded with our Milky Way near the center.
And could it be that Planck’s length 1.6e-35 m according to the uncertainty principle be the smallest measurable length? If so, we now have a lower limit.
So no infinity.
OK, I’m with you on the extent of the universe at least conceptually. But a “smallest measurable length” is a brand new thought for me. Can you demarcate that a little more, I’m stretched a little thin here.
It is actually slightly out of my grasp as well (being an engineer rather than a physicist). But this is an interesting video about it:
http://www.sixtysymbols.com/videos/plancklength.htm
So if space cannot be resolved smaller than the Planck length and nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, time also has a minimum resolution (Planck time). And if we hold that God created time with the statement “in the beginning” and knowing we are currently living in the present with no potential to travel to the future faster than the “flow of time”, time currently has a finite measurement.
My head hurts.
If length, and therefore, space is indeed limited, and time is limited, and the process of halving is only theoretically unlimited since any material thing halved is finite, then our conclusion is that only God is infinite.
That would be my current conclusion until I learn otherwise.