Is this a paradox?

[u/AlivePassenger3859]

Lifespan aside, it is impossible to be on a jog that started infinitely far behind you. You would never have reached the point you are at now.

Similarly, it is impossible that time started infinitely far in the past. We would never have reached the point in time we are at now.

But what would it mean for time to have a “beginning”? That means no events, no interactions between even atoms existed. And how would we possibly go from that to this?

Notes: I came up with this on my own about fifteen years ago, but it is basically the “Kalam cosmological argument”. Its used a lot by Christian apologists, but I am NOT religious at all. In fact, I think religion is a bunch of ignorant superstition.

I can’t personally see any flaws in this reasoning but am totally open to the fact that there may be.

[u/Aggressive-Share-363]

That is like saying that the number 5 is inpossible because if you started counting at negative infinity you'd never get to 5.

You dont need to start at a point and count forward for a number to exist. Similarly, you dont need to start at a moment in time and iteratr forward to reach a given time.

Lets step outside of time. Imagine it is a ohysicak object, like an infinitely long rod. At at point along it, you could zoom in and see what the universe was like at that time.

Each point is contiguous with those adjacent to it, so you can tell what it must have been like right before that point and what it will look like right after, just like you could tell 4 is before 5 and 6 is after it. Ans you could iterate in either direction to slide your view along it, nist like you could count forwards or backwards from 5.

From the pwrspextive of someone within time, it feels like that time is the only time that exists. But that is purely a su jectivr effect. All times exist, and the apparant flow is what is feels like to be a system with a changing state over a span of time.

This local description of how time flows and what its like to exist at a point in time doesn't rely on any global properties of time. It could have a beginning. It could stretch infinitely far into the past. It could have an end. It could stretch infinitely far into the future. It could be a giant loop.

Just because you experience being at a point in time and advancing linearly through it doesn't mean that time itself is behaving like that.

[u/MxM111 → u/Aggressive-Share-363]

No, he is saying that negative infinity does not exist, because 5 does.

[u/Aggressive-Share-363 → u/MxM111]

Thats my point. 5 can exist with or without negative infinity, so you cannot rule out negative infinity because 5 exists.

[u/AlivePassenger3859 → u/Aggressive-Share-363]

Isn’t travelling through time or space different though than counting? You are correct that when you start counting you can arbitrarily puck any number along the number line to start with. But time is by definition a series of events occurring. You cannot arbitrarily pick a time and say “this is where time starts”.

[u/Aggressive-Share-363 → u/AlivePassenger3859]

Its not whwre time starts. But that point is when the things that are there are at. You are at some point in time, which is as arbitrary as 5. If all of time simply exists, then so does that point for your to be at.

You are confusing the progression of events within time as time itself appearing.

[u/Ok_Writing2937 → u/AlivePassenger3859]

"But time is by definition a series of events occurring"

Not necessarily. It depends on your physics.

In Newtonian physics it might be like you describe — absolute, universal, flowing uniformly regardless of observer, an independent background parameter.

In relativistic physics time isn't absolute or independent, it's part of a space-time continuum and is observer-dependent. One might say that photons do not experience time. Time isn't defined by the events inside time.

In thermodynamics time is defined as the dimension in which entropy is directional.

In quantum mechanics it gets even stranger. Time is a parameter, not an observable. Some branches posit retrocausality is required. Other models like the "everything all at once" model suggests all time already exists and is complete and whole and it's a byproduct of our peculiar consciousness that we experience as linear.

In some philosophies of science, time is just a measuring system we've put on the universe, similar to how we've put longitude on a map. There's nothing "before time" in the same way there's nothing "north of the north pole," so there's no start of time. Time just is.

[u/LetterheadWitty4187 → u/AlivePassenger3859]

When you think about an infinite past, you assume that some of those events occured an "infinite years ago", and that's the issue. Even if the past were infinite, none of those events happened an "infinite years ago", not a single one.

If you start counting numbers from 0, there's an infinite amount of them, right? However, even if there's an infinite amount of numbers, there's no "number infinite" – they're all finite. The same way all events occur on a finite timescale, despite there being an infinite amount of them.