arundelo comments on What big goals do we have? - Less Wrong

10 Post author: cousin_it 19 January 2010 04:35PM

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Comment author: arundelo 19 January 2010 08:07:43PM *  2 points [-]

Thanks for the edit to the original comment; I was unsure whether you were arguing for a view or just describing it (though I assumed the latter based on your other comments).

Without God there's no end game, just fleeting existence.

Like the statement in the original comment (and like most arguments for religion), this one is in great need of unpacking. People invoke things like "ultimate purpose" without saying what they mean. But I think a lot of people who agreed with the above would say that life is worthless if it simply ends when the body dies. To which I say:

If a life that begins and eventually ends has no "meaning" or "purpose" (whatever those words mean), then an infinitely long one doesn't either. Zero times infinity is still zero.

(Of course I know what the everyday meanings of "meaning" and "purpose" are, but those obviously aren't the meanings religionists use them with.)

Edit: nerzhin points out that Zero times infinity is not well defined. (Cold comfort, I think, to the admittedly imaginary theist making the "finite life is worthless" argument.)

I am a math amateur; I understand limit notation and "f(x)" notation, but I failed to follow the reasoning at the MathWorld link. Does nerzhin or anyone else know someplace that spells it out more? (Right now I'm studying the Wikipedia "Limit of a function" page.)

Comment author: nerzhin 19 January 2010 08:19:21PM 5 points [-]

Zero times infinity is still zero.

Strictly speaking, no.