Illogic

If we as humankind cannot grasp the numerical relevance of infinity, then how can we grasp the concept of infinity per se?  How can we smugly assign a descriptor to something we do not come close to comprehending?  How indeed??  It is one thing to say that something goes on forever, but “forever” is an undefinable concept that we as men and women can never come close to comprehending.  What exactly is “forever” anyway?  How can we possibly conceive of something that abstract?  How can we know there is not a termination point at some undetermined juncture on the number line or at some point in the future?  Humans are adept at describing entities with distinct boundaries, but less so—wholly incapable, in fact—at describing entities that do not fit within bounded sets and subsets.  Infinity obviously falls within this grouping.

Case in point:  We do not even possess names to designate numbers beyond a certain threshold on the number line.  If one cannot fathom or ascribe a definitive word to represent a certain quantity, how can we then say such a quantity even exists?!  Numbers hold relevance only if they can be suitably pigeonholed and described.  You cannot say an impossibly large number exists if you have no way of accurately identifying same.  At that point we are little different than toddlers or Tourette sufferers, i.e. people who routinely invent silly words on the fly with no thought to meaning.  Short of this absurd juncture, and we are left staring into some amorphous abyss where everything is indescribable and nothing therein has any shape, mass, or texture.

And this thing works equally well in reverse too.  Going backwards in time now, is there such a thing as a “beginning”?  Every physicist—every learned person in the world, for that matter—believes in the concept of the meticulously researched Big Bang that created our universe…..but what antedated the Big Bang?  If there was in fact nothing at that point in time (“time” used in this context strictly as a literary vehicle), then how did the original constituents of our universe magically spring from that nothingness?  And what is nothingness anyway?  If a place, person, or object can be generally described with a word, then logic dictates something must be there physically—A vacuum bereft of matter even?!–taking up space.   Accordingly, there was obviously SOMETHING present at the time foreshadowing the creation of our universe, or you wouldn’t be here right now reading this excerpt.  Said is a subject so ironclad that it isn’t even open to discussion.  But where did that something come from??  And who—or what—was responsible for its creation??

Of course, no one will ever know the true answers to these metaphysical questions—And trust me, they ARE metaphysical questions; despite its most hubristic protestations, investigative science is not equipped to answer them and never will be!–but that fact shouldn’t stop us from speculating.  And to continue debunking those religious “experts” who keep insisting they possess unique knowledge and have all the germane answers.