Re: The logic of atheism

prabbit1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> So a square with infinitely long sides [. . . .]

Er. . .nice try. . .but no.

If you think about it for a minute, you can't construct a square
with infinitely long sides. Practicalities aside, a square has
those pesky right angles. Wherever you put one marks one of the
ends of that line segment. Go in either direction, and you'll
eventually get to another right angle, which marks the other end
of that line segment.

Consider for a moment that you're standing on top of a right angle
that's part of a geometric figure that's so large you can't see
the whole thing, and you wanted to know if it's a square or
not. If (one of) the line segment(s) is infinitely long, you know
that it's actually a ray and that, no matter how long you traveled
down the ray, you'd never get to a point where you could plop down
your measuring equipment to measure another angle to see if it's
90o or not.

Another way of looking at it would be to consider how you'd
plot your square with infinitely long sides on a suitably
infinitely-sized piece of graph paper. What points on the graph
would the square intersect? Whatever points you pick, you've
suddenly bounded a finite space and made your square decidedly
smaller than infinite.

Indeed, we've got another thing that's impossible for any being,
supernatural or otherwise, to do: construct a square of infinite
proportions.

Cheers,

b&

P.S. The same kinds of arguments apply to ``circles'' of infinite
diameter. b&

--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''

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