On God and Living Forever

[_keithb]

I often hear from religious people that they "want to live forever with God" or want to be with their family forever. I think that this has more to do with human beings having a crappy concept of what "forever" (or large numbers in general) means. For most peolpe I've met, the concept of infinity seems to vaguely means something in the back of their minds like bigger than a billion or bigger than a trillion. Here's what I think of when I envision infinity.

To explain, I'll first introduce "arrow notation", also known as the Ackermann function. Basically, you can define it recursively in terms of a "power tower" of a given number. I'll use the "|" symbol to represent an arrow. The number on the left side of the arrow represents the number composing the power tower. The number on the right of the arrow represents the height of the power tower. The progression goes like this.



3|3 = 3^3 = 27

3||3 = a power tower of 3^3^3=3^27=7.62 trillion.

Now, here's where things really start to grow out of control ...

3|||3 = ?

So what is this? It's a power tower of threes that is 7.62 trillion threes high!

Well, there is no way to express this number using elementary notation (i.e. 1,223,433,043,032 or something similar). We can't even express how many digits are in this number since that to is insanely, unimaginably large.

To give you an idea of how large, 3^(3^(3^3)) - a power tower of threes just 4 high, already has over three trillion digits in it. When I try to type 3^3^3^3^3 into Wolfram Alpha (a power tower of threes five high), it returns an error.

As unimaginably large as this number is, if God (or you, or your grandma) has lived or is going to live forever, then he has already lived (or will live) more than this number of years.

Just try to think about it -- more than this number of years. In fact, any infinite God will live much longer than any finite amount of years ... any.

That means this number squared, or cubed, or a power tower of threes as tall as whatever unimaginably large number the power of threes 7.62 trillion high equals.

Personally, I can't even begin to wrap my head around numbers that large. I don't think the rest of you can either. Even if such a creature existed or could exist, it would have no basis on which to relate to you and I.

So, does such a creature (God) exist? Perhaps. However, to me, the idea of an "infinite god" seems much more likely to be the product of a bunch of primate who are really bad at math than anything related to the objective nature of the universe.

And this isn't even mentioning the idea of "omniscience". After all, if God knows everything, then he should know what a number like this power tower of threes equals.

Every single digit of it ...

He should also know what this number squared equals, and the square root of this number, and the closest prime number to this number, and the factorial of this number, and ...

Hopefully, you get the picture.

Based on this idea and others, I have a hard time believing in an "infinite god".

[_Fence Sitter]

There is a terrific short story by Steven L Peck (a Mormon) called A Short Stay in Hell which illustrates your point in a different way. It is worth the $3.00 download.

[_Nightlion]

Apparently the all-wise ruler of heaven and earth does not abide in linear time. Withhim all truth is present, past present and future. Wrap your head around dem apple's.

[_keithb]

Apparently the all-wise ruler of heaven and earth does not abide in linear time. Withhim all truth is present, past present and future. Wrap your head around dem apple's.

Care to give me your mathematical explanation of non-linear God time? Or are you just making things up?

Consequently, this makes the case for any sort of relatable god much worse. If god is aware of past, present, and future simultaneously, then it means that he has not only lived more than 3|||3 years of existence, but also needs to have some way to reconcile all of those experiences into a coherent, persistent reality. That's a lot of information, considering even the decimal expansion of the number of years of his existence (not even mentioning the amount of information obtained during that time) is much larger than the informational capacity of our universe.

So ... yeah.

[_keithb]

There is a terrific short story by Steven L Peck (a Mormon) called A Short Stay in Hell which illustrates your point in a different way. It is worth the $3.00 download.

I downloaded it. Thanks.

[Guest]

Consider that both God and those who have eternal will enter mortality from time to time and forget all. Such as when God formed clay and placed into it the exalted and resurrected unto celestial glory, spirit of Adam, who became as a little child having forgotten all. (Yes R bodies are considered spirits....Joseph Smith said we are spirit from age to age)

Then Christ, who is the Eternal God is born mortal and forgets all.

Seems like God has been around the block a time or two and keeps his kingdom a continual joy. Be not mundane but believe.

[_keithb]

Consider that both God and those who have eternal will enter mortality from time to time and forget all. Such as when God formed clay and nreatjedinto it the exalted and resurrected unto celestial glory, spirit of Adam who became as a little child having forgotten all. (Yes R bodies are considered spirits....Joseph ugh said we are spirit from age to age)

Then Christ, who is theetetnal God is born mortal and forgets all.

Seems like God has been around the block a time or two and keeps his kingdom a continual joy. Be not mundane but believe.

Or 3|||3 times to be exact. See, this is my whole point about people having a crappy idea of what infinity means. You're talking about "a time or two" and I'm talking about a number greater than the total information in the universe.

Reminds me of a clip: http://youtu.be/SnO9Jyz82Ps

[_Nightlion]

Apparently the all-wise ruler of heaven and earth does not abide in linear time. Withhim all truth is present, past present and future. Wrap your head around dem apple's.

Care to give me your mathematical explanation of non-linear God time? Or are you just making things up?

Consequently, this makes the case for any sort of relatable god much worse. If god is aware of past, present, and future simultaneously, then it means that he has not only lived more than 3|||3 years of existence, but also needs to have some way to reconcile all of those experiences into a coherent, persistent reality. That's a lot of information, considering even the decimal expansion of the number of years of his existence (not even mentioning the amount of information obtained during that time) is much larger than the informational capacity of our universe.

So ... yeah.

How do you compute the informational capacity of out universe? The quartz of every sphere could hold.....what? And then there are the substances of other dimensions. What can they do? For instance: there is a light that fills the universe in the dimension we call the spirit world. I basked in the warmth and love of this light for three days when fasting for an extended period of time. And I was given proofs at the time that this was no delusion and after my awareness of this light was purposely terminated by God. Details available if you would like.

There is no scripture that says infinite God. Eternal God is his name. But I admit he is from everlasting to everlasting. I doubt we understand that either. I have a theory of light as it pertains to the three degrees of glory. I figure Telestial light is the same as our light 186,000 miles per second. The Terrestrial would be a greater speed to make up a higher dimension, Celestial light would be so fast as to be instantaneous for getting from here to there. I would say the speed is infinitely fast but we are all choking on infinity right now.

And when you don't really know you got to make stuff up to figure things out. Everyone who figures things out does this. Like trying a piece of a puzzle to see if it fits. Sometimes it fits perfectly and there ya go.

How much information can you store and draw upon if your light speed approaches infinity? And what happens with time Einstein?

ETA: By speed of light per degree of glory I do not mean just the visible light we see by but the entire atomic construct of each dimension. I thought of it as a vibration of sort. And that was back in the 70s.

[_keithb]

How do you compute the informational capacity of out universe? The quartz of every sphere could hold.....what? And then there are the substances of other dimensions. What can they do? For instance: there is a light that fills the universe in the dimension we call the spirit world. I basked in the warmth and love of this light for three days when fasting for an extended period of time. And I was given proofs at the time that this was no delusion and after my awareness of this light was purposely terminated by God. Details available if you would like.

This article computes it for me: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110141. Let's say that their estimate is low. I'll grant you that it's 10 trillion orders of magnitude higher than that amount -- to account for things like extra dimensions, etc. Do you understand how trivially small this is compared to the number I described?

There is no scripture that says infinite God. Eternal God is his name. But I admit he is from everlasting to everlasting. I doubt we understand that either. I have a theory of light as it pertains to the three degrees of glory. I figure Telestial light is the same as our light 186,000 miles per second. The Terrestrial would be a greater speed to make up a higher dimension, Celestial light would be so fast as to be instantaneous for getting from here to there. I would say the speed is infinitely fast but we are all choking on infinity right now.

The speed of light is what it is -- measured by all experiments done so far to be approximately 3.0x10^8 m/s in an inertial reference frame. It doesn't mean that god knows every digit of 3|||3.

Also, do you understand that "everlasting to everlasting" means god has lived more than 3|||3 years? So ... does he remember those years? Does he remember what he did every day during those years? Do you realize that this means god would need an informational capacity far in excess of 3|||3?

And when you don't really know you got to make stuff up to figure things out. Everyone who figures things out does this. Like trying a piece of a puzzle to see if it fits. Sometimes it fits perfectly and there ya go.

How much information can you store and draw upon if your light speed approaches infinity? And what happens with time Einstein?

ETA: By speed of light per degree of glory I do not mean just the visible light we see by but the entire atomic construct of each dimension. I thought of it as a vibration of sort. And that was back in the 70s.

Okay, so simple question: does your god have an informational storage capacity greater than, equal to, or less than 3|||3? Your answers are all over the place here, so I'm trying to decide what particular flavor of god you believe in.

[_Aristotle Smith]

For most peolpe I've met, the concept of infinity seems to vaguely means something in the back of their minds like bigger than a billion or bigger than a trillion. Here's what I think of when I envision infinity.

When I think of infinity I think of Cantor's transfinite numbers. Since Georg Cantor was able to grasp infinity at a fundamental level, I don't know what you are trying to show/prove. Typing really large numbers into Wolfram alpha to see it give back an error doesn't say much of anything.

Also, since he was fond of using "aleph" and "omega" when working with transfinite numbers, you can bet Cantor saw a religious/theological component to his findings.

Based on this idea and others, I have a hard time believing in an "infinite god".

I'll go with Cantor on this one.