World[s] Without End?

Being convinced of something is not a decision that one can make. It is something that happens as your mind takes in information. You can decide whether or not the information being taken in is credible, but the process of being convinced happens on its own with little to no effort.

It is widely believed that the universe and time has a beginning, well this is exactly what the Bible teaches, even before Science could back it up. However, many scientists have suggested that the universe has "always" existed. Even before the Big Bang, there were materials in a super compact form till the Big Bang took place. Something that was and still is a central truth that lends itself to my being convinced of a theistic world-view, is the problem of "Infinite Regression":

An infinite regress in a series of propositions arises if the truth of proposition P₁ requires the support of proposition P₂, the truth of proposition P₂ requires the support of proposition P₃, ... , and the truth of proposition P_n-1 requires the support of proposition P_n and n approaches infinity.

 The way I have heard it best explained is to think of the history of everything as a VHS (A VHS is a primitive form of video storage and presentation which were utilized before people invented useful things). You get the VHS from a VHS rental store and when you get home to watch it you find that whoever rented it prior to you did not rewind it. You proceed to rewind the tape to get to the "beginning" but the tape just keeps rewinding. In fact, you decide to leave the tape to rewind for 20 years and it still has not stopped. Let it go another [infinite number] of years and it still will never stop rewinding.

So there is your first dilemma, you can not get far enough back to even stop the tape to begin playing it forward. But for the sake of logic, lets grant that you can press play once you "reach" the beginning of an infinite past. Your second problem is that you will never read the "present", even if you were to fast forward at as large of intervals of your liking, you would never be able to cross an infinite period of time. In other words, you and I would never be able to make it to what we call today if an infinite amount of time had to be crossed to get here.

Going even further, granting the universe an attribute of an infinite past, we are in a way "deifying" the universe. An infinite past is not something that is naturally tenable, therefore, on its own, having super-natural attributes, the universe always existing does not do anything for those arguing for a secular world-view.

So the only way I can see a secular world-view being remotely sustainable would be for everything to come from nothing, nowhere, never. Hmmm it seems my best attempt at defending secularism is precluded by logic itself. Oh well, I tried. ;)

In yet another effort to offer secular basis for life, the theory of "Multiverse" comes into play. This theory does not attempt to solve the problem of infinite regress, but does attempt to solve to problem of "Fine Tuning" which states:

The fine-tuned Universe is the idea that the conditions that allow life in the Universe can only occur when certain universal fundamental physical constants lie within a very narrow range, so that if any of several fundamental constants were only slightly different the universe would be unlikely to be conducive to the establishment and development of matter, astronomical structures, elemental diversity, or life as it is presently understood.

Starting after the problem of when, where, and what created everything, the multiverse makes it easier to believe that life can arise by chance, however statistically improbable it might be, due to the infinite number of universes that came into being at the beginning. This makes sense to me, logically, but I might remind you that the "Multiverse" is as evidentially sustainable as God is. Meaning that both require faith, which strikes odd to me that a secularist would be ok with that.

What does any of this have to do with Mormonism? Thank you for asking, you win!

Mormonism actually includes forms of both secular theories we just discussed. Like I said earlier, I have no logical problem with the multiverse theory, but I still can not see how a person can rationally hold to a world-view that fosters an infinite regression.

LDS theology holds that Earth is not the only world that is inhabited with people by our Father God. In fact The term used is "Worlds without end". This is a type of Multiverse, yet not necessarily removed by separate universes, yet if there are other worlds with people who the Jesus that died on Earth died for, it would eventually be possible for this to be evidentially supported (In the event we find such worlds).

Mormonism also holds that God the Father was actually a man on a world much like ours, with a God to Him as He is to us. Many Mormons believe that this is not the only cycle that has occurred in history. Many hold that Each God has His own God. This is one of the more perfect examples of infinite regression I have come across.

In talking with Bryan about this in the past, he admitted that this was one of the biggest things he did not understand and had a hard time believing. I was and still am impressed with his honesty and in no way am trying to prey on his weakness by posting this. In fact I purposely waited about a year to post on this subject specifically because it was one of his weaker areas of faith.

I am in no way trying to suggest that a person needs to "know everything" in order to hold certain beliefs. Neither am I trying to say that all beliefs must be rational. All I am trying to do is to get us to take a closer look at exactly what it is we believe. What we are sub-consciously convinced of. And for us to decide whether or not we are ok with that.

Apologies for the long post, but it does serve as a gauge showing how much this matters to me.

God Bless you all!