I know its hard to imagine because our minds are more finite oriented. Try to imagine being inside a tube that extends from infinity back to infinity end. No amount of travel would get you closer to either end because there is no end in either direction.
Yeah, I get that. If you are trying to travel to the
ends, there aren't any.
You wouldn't have a beginning to start at to get closer to any point down the pike. To get to any point down the pike you would have to cross an infinity.
This is where you go off track. You said to "imagine being inside a tube". I'm there. I see a point three inches away. I have to cross an infinity when I only want to go three inches? No, I have to cross three inches. It is not an infinity
to any point, it's an infinity in both directions. That doesn't mean I can't travel up and down the tube, measure my travel, piss in a spot, travel away and get back to the puddle. You are saying that because the tube extends for infinity in either direction the tube must be completely empty because, extending for an infinity, you can't imagine how you would arbitrarily pick a point in that tube. That's just not true.
The problem is with the concept of time always having existed. For us to arrive at the time we are now, it had to have a beginning. If you still disagree I hope one of the resident atheists will stand up and admit they know what I'm speaking of.
That's a dick move. "If you don't agree with me then, because I'm right, perhaps someone not quite as smart as me, but still much smarter than you can explain it to you." Prove you're right and you can talk to me like that.
I don't describe God as infinite, I describe God as transcendent. This would be analogous to a scientist who causes a virtual universe to exist, the scientist is transcendent to the virtual universe.
Yes, I am aware your type describes God as being whatever is convenient for the particular day or conversation. I describe your description of God as being an irrelevant choice of words chosen, not for their accuracy at describing your deity, but for maximum undisprovableness.
Back to the conversation of infinite time, if you imagine it correctly you can break it down to a dichotomy without it being a false dichotomy. Either the universe has existed in some state for an infinity of time or it has not. If it has, time is infinite and there is not necessarily anything "outside of" our universe. I don't tend to think that is true and our current scientific understanding backs that.
If it is not true then, if our universe has not existed for an infinity of time in some state, then I don't
know. I can make claims that sound good. I can back them with scientific theory. But the truth is I don't know and I can't know because I cannot see outside of our universe, or detect it in any way. I would assume that it means something exists besides our known universe. That makes logical sense, within the rules of our universe. But that's where we run into a problem. Something outside of our universe would not be "within the rules of our universe". It is entirely possible that this "thing" actually has the same rules as our universe, that there are no rules of our universe, just bleed-through from the rules this "thing" has. It is possible that it has nothing whatsoever in our universe, the our universe the equivalent of a fleck of crud which broke off, utterly unlike the whole it departed from. It is possible there are many universes which actually make up this "thing", like cells in a body. All of this is speculation. In the end, what I
think is irrelevant. It won't ever change what
is. So it's only what I can prove which I can claim to have true knowledge of.
And that's where your problem lies. You're confusing what you "think" with what you "know". You believe your thought process to be infallible. You believe logical deduction can prove abstract thought about things we cannot gather evidence for. The reality is, if you can't physical gather data, you're just having a guess.