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Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
I can understand and work in concepts in the order of trillions of things (1,000,000,000,000s). I have done that in some interesting ways.
I cannot recite Mersenne Prime #38, the highest known prime number, which is an interesting number indeed, taking a couple of dozen pages to record.
On the level of infinity, the thing that stops me understanding it is the issue of boundary. For example, if the universe goes on infinitely, then it conflicts with the popular theory of an expanding universe. If the universe is expanding, then what exactly is at its edges?
For me, infinity may not exist at all, because all things may in fact be finite. That is the nature of "things".
But numbers, used to represent quantities and things, can certainly deliver you a more abstract concept of infinity, that may have no particular place in reality.
Time, on the other hand, which has no characterics of any "thing" has its own infinite concept, which is eternity. That does truly exist, from a point of origin, in a non-linear direction. Obviously I believe in that.
Originally posted by heelstone
I can certainly comprehend infinity, but a lot of people around me apparently cannot. Even those who imagine an eternal afterlife in my own family cannot for one moment imagine a reality where you live forever whereas I can (even though I do not think such a thing exists). The extreme finite limits placed upon man makes many people unable to think otherwise.
Originally posted by Gazrok
Surely we have to be able to understand it if we can define what it is?
Ahh...but we coined the term God too....
We can pretend we understand infinity...just like we can pretend to understand how much a Trillion really is....but in reality, we don't really comprehend it all that well....