Does infinity prove there is a God?

[Jon]

As you approach infinity, the number of possibilities are not quite infinite. But when you reach infinity (that sounds wrong!), everything is possible probable. The permutations of something become infinite. Therefore the probability of the improbable becomes 100% probable, or certain. Thus, when the possible combinations of something are infinite, the agnostic position of a God existing goes from extremely unlikely to 100% certain. Given the potentially infinite size of the universe, or multiverse (or something else), God exists.

Discuss.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Someone has been reading too many Douglas Adams stories.

Infinity doesn't mean all of those things. "As you approach infinity" is a literary device. Mathematically, "approaching infinity" is another way of saying that a given formula, if extrapolated far enough, either converges to a very precise value or it continues to produce larger values without limit. But "as you approach infinity" in the absence of a specific context has no particular meaning.

Approaching infinity doesn't make the impossible happen. In fact, if something IS impossible, then it is infinitely impossible.

I must respectfully close by saying that the answer to the question is "No."

 

[Jon]

Actually Doc, I haven't read any Douglas Adams. I come up with the potty ideas myself! I would be interested in why you thought it was the case. Does he cover this topic?

I have little knowledge of literature. It is a gaping hole in my knowledgebase.

I would argue that you cannot approach infinity, because however far you go, you are always infinitely far away from infinity. There is more to infinity than meets the eye! In fact, when you think about it, the jump from an extremely large number to infinity is a binary jump. An infinite jump. There is no intermediate stepping stone number.

I agree, approaching infinity doesn't make the impossible happen. But it does make the exceedingly improbable almost certain. e.g. the probability of a coin toss coming up a trillion heads in a row is exceptionally unlikely. However, with an infinite number of coin throws, it is 100% certain to happen. In fact, I am wondering if it is possible for an infinite number of heads to come up given an infinite number of coin throws. But then that would exclude the possibility of a trillion consecutive tails coming up. So intuitively, I would say you cannot have an infinite number of coin throws coming up heads. But it is indeed a physical possibility (or is it?). And if something is a possibility, perhaps the infinitely improbable becomes infinitely probable. So I have arrived at a paradox, I believe. Interesting.

[Edit: It could be that the distinction is between infinitely improbable and very improbable, the latter being 100% certain and the former being impossible. Oh my head hurts!]

 

[The_Doc_Man]

This is where limit theory becomes interesting. Two-part answer.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is a ship that flies to the stars by using a variant of "quantum tunneling" called the "Infinite Improbability" drive. In essence, there is a non-zero (but very small) probability that the wave function for a given sub-atomic particle is outside of its atom's "boundaries." The I.I. drive controls this to make the ship "quantum tunnel" light-years away by somehow diddling with probability. The side-effects of this drive are wickedly humorous. There is a movie with Martin Short, Zooe Deschanel, and Sam Rockwell that exploits this theme for some really funny scenes. Not to mention Alan Rickman's portrayal as the voice actor behind a clinically depressed artificially intelligent robot who is a paragon of despair, gloom, and doom.

approaching infinity doesn't make the impossible happen. But it does make the exceedingly improbable almost certain

Yep. Given enough time and enough water with simple minerals in it, primordial oceans could, indeed, come up with the randomly combined sets of chemicals that brought life to our world. Of course, the pulpit pounders of the world would say that this is impossible, discounting the elephant in the room regarding where and when God originated.