The Infinity Paradox and God
Created | Updated May 19, 2002
There are many religions in the world, and most of them all seem to point at a creator of some sort. Whether it be an entire host of Gods or as with the more mainstream religions, a single, super entity, that is responsible for the creation of all things.
The paradox is this. God created everything, the earth, the sun, the stars, the galaxies, the universe... you name it, God created it. Simple enough to start with, but then the question invariably comes to mind. Who created God? This is, of course, a paradox that most philosophers and theologians tend to leave unexamined, as it can be mind numbingly frustrating to contemplate.
The world is full of paradoxes that seem to show us that everything we believe, even scientifically proven facts, can be found to be wrong. Paradoxes can be used to argue and disprove just about everything we have placed any stock in whatsoever. We have a sphere of experience and that has dictated to us what we believe to be the rules of physics, science and for those who believe in it, religion. The rules tend to work fairly well right up to the point that a paradox is discovered and then things tend to get a bit more interesting. Most paradoxes are really just argumentative devices concocted by clever people to shake the faith of those with strong belief systems, but there are some that deserve true consideration. The "Where Are We?" paradox is one of these.
Our realm of experience shows us that everything is contained by something. Generally things tend to be round or at least pictured that way. Molecules and atoms and particles all tend to represent the way the universe is actually constructed. Spherical objects busily whizzing around each other in orbital dances. On a larger scale we, people, are contained by the sphere of the Earth, and the Earth in turn busily whizzes around the Sun in much the same way as things do on the molecular scale. Then we have the galaxy, which is contained within the Universe and also seems to be zipping along at quite a rate of speed too. But, and this is the tricky bit, where is the Universe? What is it contained in and where is it buzzing off to?
Let's imagine that there is something bigger that contains the Universe... well, fine, that's great... but where is it? Everything in our experience tells us that things have to be somewhere... so where is everything? It helps at this point to picture a bunch of concentric circles, expanding outwards infinitely. Each circle representing a containment layer for things that appear to be expanding and moving about. The real problem is that an infinite number of containment rings is simply not possible by the fact that everything must be contained by something, and if everything is contained by something then where, and it helps to have a serious drink at this point, is everything being contained.
So we turn back to the religion argument. God created everything, but where did God come from. Did some even greater God create the God that created everything, and if so, who created the Greater God that created God, that created everything.
These are infinity paradoxes, and of course, there are an infinite number of them. Some are downright silly but these two deserve to get some attention. Obviously, we will never be able to solve these paradoxes, but at least they are more worthy of consideration than some of the less weighty puzzles out there.
It's no use to present arguments that ask the ridiculous. For instance-- If God is all powerful, could he create a God more powerful than he himself is? If God chose to create something to be the most beautiful thing ever, could he then create something even more beautiful?
Or returning back to the infinity paradoxes, if you are travelling from point A to point B and every step you take is half the size of the previous step, will you ever reach point B? If you have a cup of tea, and drink half of the remainder in the cup with every sip you take, will you ever get to the end of your cup of tea?
Of course those arguments, as puzzling as they seem to be at first just don't hold up to the concept of a true paradox. They are limited by either their absurdity or in the case of the last set of examples (which are in the spirit of Zeno's Paradoxes), or they are simply limited by physical constraints. One can only halve one's walking stride with every step up to a physical limitation. One can only sip tea with just so much precision before the limits of one's tea sipping abilities are reached. Physical Paradoxes are dismissed fairly easily.
Mathematical Paradoxes are a different breed altogether, because Mathematics isn't real. Numbers don't really exist, they are just a convention we use to describe things with. However, you could theoretically halve a number infinitely, creating an ever shrinking descriptional fraction i.e. 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, 1/256, 1/512 etc... ad infinitum. This is sort of like a mathematical black hole however, and even black holes apparently cease their infinite reduction of matter. According to the clever scientists in charge of researching this sort of thing, they claim that at the heart of a Black Hole is a singularity filled with Quantum Foam, whatever that is. So, perhaps, mathematically speaking there is a limit to infinity as well, and if we calculate enough we'll find some nasty frothy stuff oozing out of our calculators.
The paradox is this. God created everything, the earth, the sun, the stars, the galaxies, the universe... you name it, God created it. Simple enough to start with, but then the question invariably comes to mind. Who created God? This is, of course, a paradox that most philosophers and theologians tend to leave unexamined, as it can be mind numbingly frustrating to contemplate.
The world is full of paradoxes that seem to show us that everything we believe, even scientifically proven facts, can be found to be wrong. Paradoxes can be used to argue and disprove just about everything we have placed any stock in whatsoever. We have a sphere of experience and that has dictated to us what we believe to be the rules of physics, science and for those who believe in it, religion. The rules tend to work fairly well right up to the point that a paradox is discovered and then things tend to get a bit more interesting. Most paradoxes are really just argumentative devices concocted by clever people to shake the faith of those with strong belief systems, but there are some that deserve true consideration. The "Where Are We?" paradox is one of these.
Our realm of experience shows us that everything is contained by something. Generally things tend to be round or at least pictured that way. Molecules and atoms and particles all tend to represent the way the universe is actually constructed. Spherical objects busily whizzing around each other in orbital dances. On a larger scale we, people, are contained by the sphere of the Earth, and the Earth in turn busily whizzes around the Sun in much the same way as things do on the molecular scale. Then we have the galaxy, which is contained within the Universe and also seems to be zipping along at quite a rate of speed too. But, and this is the tricky bit, where is the Universe? What is it contained in and where is it buzzing off to?
Let's imagine that there is something bigger that contains the Universe... well, fine, that's great... but where is it? Everything in our experience tells us that things have to be somewhere... so where is everything? It helps at this point to picture a bunch of concentric circles, expanding outwards infinitely. Each circle representing a containment layer for things that appear to be expanding and moving about. The real problem is that an infinite number of containment rings is simply not possible by the fact that everything must be contained by something, and if everything is contained by something then where, and it helps to have a serious drink at this point, is everything being contained.
So we turn back to the religion argument. God created everything, but where did God come from. Did some even greater God create the God that created everything, and if so, who created the Greater God that created God, that created everything.
These are infinity paradoxes, and of course, there are an infinite number of them. Some are downright silly but these two deserve to get some attention. Obviously, we will never be able to solve these paradoxes, but at least they are more worthy of consideration than some of the less weighty puzzles out there.
It's no use to present arguments that ask the ridiculous. For instance-- If God is all powerful, could he create a God more powerful than he himself is? If God chose to create something to be the most beautiful thing ever, could he then create something even more beautiful?
Or returning back to the infinity paradoxes, if you are travelling from point A to point B and every step you take is half the size of the previous step, will you ever reach point B? If you have a cup of tea, and drink half of the remainder in the cup with every sip you take, will you ever get to the end of your cup of tea?
Of course those arguments, as puzzling as they seem to be at first just don't hold up to the concept of a true paradox. They are limited by either their absurdity or in the case of the last set of examples (which are in the spirit of Zeno's Paradoxes), or they are simply limited by physical constraints. One can only halve one's walking stride with every step up to a physical limitation. One can only sip tea with just so much precision before the limits of one's tea sipping abilities are reached. Physical Paradoxes are dismissed fairly easily.
Mathematical Paradoxes are a different breed altogether, because Mathematics isn't real. Numbers don't really exist, they are just a convention we use to describe things with. However, you could theoretically halve a number infinitely, creating an ever shrinking descriptional fraction i.e. 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, 1/256, 1/512 etc... ad infinitum. This is sort of like a mathematical black hole however, and even black holes apparently cease their infinite reduction of matter. According to the clever scientists in charge of researching this sort of thing, they claim that at the heart of a Black Hole is a singularity filled with Quantum Foam, whatever that is. So, perhaps, mathematically speaking there is a limit to infinity as well, and if we calculate enough we'll find some nasty frothy stuff oozing out of our calculators.
