Does infinity even exist?
A very good question. I think, this is nothing we can answer. We have a mental concept of infinity but nothing else. I even think it is not relevant to know if it exists. Can you think of a relevant theme?
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
No, yes, perhaps it could be relevant in some subjects, due to the fact that the assumption of infinity has repercussions in other areas, such as the nature of the universe in which we live. There are things that don't seem practical at all, but then end up changing the way we see the world, and thus, changing us.
There are things that don't seem relevant, but then help us a lot in indirect ways.
That depends on what you consider relevant. Maybe you can help me here and think of one.
Cheers!
"The nature of the universe", what do you mean by that?
If you mean that we as earthlings assume that our part of the universe does not exist infinitely, then we have made a prediction about its finiteness. How would that help you personally, for example? How would that differ from your knowledge that your own life is finite, regardless of the nature of the universe?
I have no idea about that, hence my question. There's actually nothing I can think of.
Well, you presuppose that our own life is finite. If we ask ourselves: What was I before this life? We can think, for example, that all the matter that forms our body existed before we were what we call "us" today. All that matter was previously part of food and other things that later, at the moment of our birth, formed us. So, materially speaking, everything we are made up of probably preexisted what we call ourselves. In the same way, if we believe in souls and spirits, perhaps we can apply a similar logic, and it is possible that the substratum of all that we are may, in one way or another, have existed before. I am not saying it is so, but it is a possibility.
In the same way, and applying the same logic, we may continue to exist, in every sense, after our death. What would that existence be like? That would be another question, but one way or another it would be existence. Whether or not we identify ourselves with that other previous or future existence, is another matter, but in reality it could be said that we are that too.
Probably everything we are, including our mind, has always existed and will continues to do so.
The way I see it, believing that there is only the present and that it is somehow eternal. Things don't "existed" neither "will exist". Things simply exist. Now. And it cannot be otherwise. Things will not be, nor were, but are.
Thinking about this may cause us to see everything differently, and even not to see, neither birth as the beginning, nor death as the end. Everything that has a beginning, I think, has an end. But that which is uninitiated, properly eternal, has no end.
It's fine.
My dad died. My mom died. A friend of mine died. My grandparents died. And so on and so forth. Objective reality, in the same way I age and am a woman.
Now, if my parents are leading some other form of existence or they were being born again, I cannot say with certainty. I need not. It shall satisfy me to have faith.
It is language or synonyms for "life after death" ( a contradiction, actually:). I once asked myself all these questions and I have left them behind me; sort of ;)
Agreed.
It's a matter of cultural expression, though. We have the need to find a common one. Christianity is not he worst, if those are the roots of your parents and grandparents, for example. I tried Buddhism for quite a while and recognized that it does not work for me.
If you get too mixed up in various religions, you might lose more than you win.
Do you think that people simply cease to exist? As if they had disappeared or been disintegrated?
But I think you are right and we have no certainty about this.
Sure, I know that they disappear and are disintegrated. Their bodies sure do and I see them never again.
How they once were is gone, in fact, and they will never again be together alive in this exact body with the exact same people.
I, when I die, will not take my body with me, so there is no similarity in sight which carries what might be left of "me", into another form of existence. I don't have any specific thoughts or imaginations about what there might be after my death. I don't think I need to know. If I happen to live long, I guess I will part from life willingly, since becoming old is not much fun and one day you are happy to receive the end of it.